ust 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 hot on the trail of coyotes--all kinds. Throw that
six-shooter over there in the brush, will you?"

"I hate to get the barrel all sanded up," Lone objected mildly. "You
can pack it, can't you?" He grinned a little as he handed out the gun,
muzzle toward himself. "You're playing safe, Swan, but if that dog of
yours is any good, you'll have a change of heart pretty quick. Isn't
that a man's track, just beside that flat rock? Put the dog on, why
don't you?"

"Yack is on already," Swan pointed out. "Ride ahead of me, Lone."

With a shrug of his shoulders Lone obeyed, following the dog as it
trotted through the brush on the trail of a man's footprints which Swan
had shown it. A man might have had some trouble in keeping to the
trail, but Jack trotted easily along and never once seemed at fault.
In a very few minutes he stopped in a rocky depression where a horse
had been tied, and waited for Swan, wagging his tail and showing his
teeth in a panting smile. The man he had trailed had mounted and
ridden toward the ridge to the west. Swan examined the tracks, and
Lone sat on his horse watching him.

Jack picked up the trail where the horseman had walked away toward the
road, and Swan followed him, motioning Lone to ride ahead.

"You could tell me about this, I think, but I can find out for myself,"
he observed, glancing at Lone briefly.

"Sure, you can find out, if you use your eyes and do a little
thinking," Lone replied. "I hope you do lay the evidence on the right
doorstep."

"I will," Swan promised, looking ahead to where Jack was nosing his way
through the sagebrush.

They brought up at the edge of the road nearly a quarter of a mile
nearer Echo than the place where Frank's body had been found. They saw
where the man had climbed into the wagon, and followed to where they
had found Frank beside the road, lying just as he had pitched forward
from the wagon seat.

"I think," said Swan quietly, "we will go now and find out where that
horse went la