said Lone. "A sheep-killer that
has made his last killin'. Right here's where I rode up and caught the
team, last night. We better take a look along here for tracks."

Swan stared at him curiously, but he did not speak, and the two went on
more slowly, their glances roving here and there along the trail edge,
looking for footprints. Once the dog Jack swung off the trail into the
brush, and Swan followed him while Lone stopped and awaited the result.
Swan came back presently, with Jack sulking at his heels.

"Yack, he take up the trail of a coyote," Swan explained, "but it's got
the four legs, and Yack, he don't understand me when I don't follow. He
thinks I'm crazy this morning."

"I reckon the team came on toward home after the fellow jumped out,"
Lone observed. "He'd plan that way, seems to me. I know I would."

"I guess that's right. I don't have experience in killing somebody,"
Swan returned blandly, and Lone was too preoccupied to wonder at the
unaccustomed sarcasm.

A little farther along Swan swooped down upon a blue dotted handkerchief
of the kind which men find so useful where laundries are but a name.
Again Lone stopped and bent to examine it as Swan spread it out in his
hands. A few tiny grains of sandstone rattled out, and in the center was
a small blood spot. Swan looked up straight into Lone's dark, brooding
eyes.

"By golly, Lone, you would do that, too, if you kill somebody," he began
in a new tone,--the tone which Lorraine had heard indistinctly in the
bunk-house when Swan was talking to the doctor. "Do you think I'm a
damn fool, just because I'm a Swede? You are smart--you think out every
little thing. But you make a big mistake if you don't think some one
else may be using his brain, too. This handkerchief I have seen you pull
from your pocket too many times. And it had a rock in it last night, and
the blood shows that it was used to hit Frank behind the ear. You think
it all out--but maybe I've been thinking too. Now you're under arrest.
Just stay on your horse--he can't run faster than a bullet, and I don't
miss coyotes when I shoot them on the run."

"The hell you say!" Lone stared at him. "Where's your authority, Swan?"

Swan lifted the rifle to a comfortable, firing position, the muzzle
pointing straight at Lone's chest. With his left hand he turned back his
coat and disclosed a badge pinned to the lining.

"I'm a United States Marshal, that's all; a government hunter," he
stated. "I'm