wait at the cabin until he knew that deputies were
headed toward the Pass. Then, with Jack, it would be a simple matter to
follow Warfield to where he overtook Al,--supposing he did overtake him.
If he did not, then Swan meant to be present when the meeting occurred.
The dog would trail Al anywhere, since the scent would be less than
twenty-four hours old. Swan would locate Warfield and lead him straight
to Al Woodruff, and then make his arrests. But he wanted to have the
deputies there.

At dusk he got his call. He learned that four picked men had started for
the Pass, and that they would reach the divide by daybreak. Others were
on their way to intercept Al Woodruff if he crossed before then.

It was all that Swan could have hoped for,--more than he had dared to
expect on such short notice. He notified the operator that he would not
be there to receive anything else, until he returned to report that he
had got his men.

"Don't count your chickens till they're hatched," came facetiously out
of the blue.

"By golly, I can hear them holler in the shell," Swan sent back,
grinning to himself as he rattled the key. "That irrigation graft is
killed now. You tell the boss Swan says so. He's right. The way to catch
a fox is to watch his den."

He switched off the current, closed the case and went out, making sure
that the cupboard-camouflaged door looked perfectly innocent on the
outside. With a bannock stuffed into one pocket, a chunk of bacon in the
other, he left the cabin and swung off again in that long, tireless
stride of his, Jack following contentedly at his heels.

At the farther end of Skyline Meadow he stopped, took a tough leather
leash from his pocket and fastened it to Jack's collar.

"We don't go running to paw nobody's stomach and say, 'Wow-wow! Here we
are back again!'" he told the dog, pulling its ears affectionately.
"Maybe we get shot or something like that. We trail, and we keep our
mouth still, Yack. One bark, and I lick you good!"

Jack flashed out a pink tongue and licked his master's chin to show how
little he was worried over the threat, and went racing along at the end
of the leash, taking Swan's trail and his own back to where they had
climbed out of the canyon.

At the bottom Swan spoke to the dog in an undertone, and Jack obediently
started up the canyon on the trail of the five horses who had passed
that way since noon. It was starlight now, and Swan did not hurry. He
was taking it fo