field and Hawkins, but he hoped to get it when the real crisis came.
They could not have known of Al Woodruff's intentions towards Lorraine,
else they would have kept themselves in the background and would not
have risked the failure of their own plan.

On the other hand, Al must have been wholly ignorant of Warfield's
scheme to try and prove Lorraine crazy. It looked to Swan very much
like a muddling of the Sawtooth affairs through over-anxiety to avoid
trouble. They were afraid of what Lorraine knew. They wanted to
eliminate her, and they had made the blunder of working independently
to that end.

Lone's anxiety he did not even consider. He believed that Lone would
be equal to any immediate emergency and would do whatever the
circumstances seemed to require of him. Warfield counted him a
Sawtooth man. Al Woodruff, if the four men met unexpectedly, would
also take it for granted that he was one of them. They would probably
talk to Lone without reserve,--Swan counted on that. Whereas, if he
were present, they would be on their guard, at least.

Swan's plan was to 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-camoufl