r of the kitchen where her father had slept just last night--it
seemed so long ago!--and almost immediately, as her senses recorded it,
bright sunlight was shining into the room.

CHAPTER XIII

LONE TAKES HIS STAND

Lone Morgan, over at Elk Spring camp, was just sitting down to eat his
midday meal when some one shouted outside. Lone stiffened in his
chair, felt under his coat, and then got up with some deliberation and
looked out of the window before he went to the door. All this was a
matter of habit, bred of Lone's youth in the feud country, and had
nothing whatever to do with his conscience.

"Hello!" he called, standing in the doorway and grinning a welcome to
Swan, who stood with one arm resting on the board gate. "She's on the
table--come on in."

"I don't know if you're home with the door shut like that," Swan
explained, coming up to the cabin. "I chased a coyote from Rock City
to here, and by golly, he's going yet! I'll get him sometime, maybe.
He's smart, but you can beat anything with thinking if you don't stop
thinking. Always the other feller stops sometimes, and then you get
him. You believe that?"

"It most generally works out that way," Lone admitted, getting another
plate and cup from the cupboard, which was merely a box nailed with its
bottom to the wall, and a flour sack tacked across the front for a
curtain. "Even a coyote slips up now and then, I reckon."

Swan sat down, smoothing his tousled yellow hair with both hands as he
did so. "By golly, my shoulder is sore yet from carrying Brit Hunter,"
he remarked carelessly, flexing his muscles and grimacing a little.

Lone was pouring the coffee, and he ran Swan's cup over before he
noticed what he was doing. Swan looked up at him and looked away
again, reaching for a cloth to wipe the spilled coffee from the table.

"How was that?" Lone asked, turning away to the stove. "What-all
happened to Brit Hunter?"

Swan, with his plate filled and his coffee well sweetened, proceeded to
relate with much detail the story of Brit's misfortune. "By golly, I
don't see how he don't get killed," he finished, helping himself to
another biscuit. "By _golly_, I don't. Falling into Spirit Canyon is
like getting dragged by a horse. It should kill a man. What you
think, Lone?"

"It didn't, you say." Lone's eyes were turned to his coffee cup.

"It don't kill Brit Hunter--not yet. I think maybe he dies with all
his bones broke, like that.