Chapter 11 - Page 2

much." He looked at her--through her, it seemed to Lorraine. In spite of her fear, in spite of her grief, she felt that Swan was reading her very soul, and she backed away from him.

"I could help your father very much," he said soberly, "but I should tell you a secret if I do that. I should maybe ask that you tell a lie if somebody asks questions. Could you do that, Miss?"

"Lie?" Lorraine laughed uncertainly. "I'd kill!--if that would help dad."

Swan was folding his coat very carefully and placing it under Brit's head. "My mother I love like that," he said, without looking up. "My mother I love so well that I talk with my thoughts to her sometimes. You believe people can talk with their thoughts?"

"I don't know--what's that got to do with helping dad?" Lorraine knelt beside Brit and began stroking his forehead softly, as is the soothing way of women with their sick.

"I could send my thought to my mother. I could say to her that a man is hurt and that a doctor must come very quickly to the Quirt ranch. I could do that, Miss, but I should not like it if people knew that I did it. They would maybe say that I am crazy. They would laugh at me, and it is not right to laugh at those things."

"I'm not laughing. If you can do it, for heaven's sake go ahead! I don't believe it, but I won't tell any one, if that's what you want."

"If some neighbors should ask, 'How did that doctor come so quick?'----"

"I'd rather lie and say I sent for him, than say that you or any one else sent a telepathic message. That would sound more like a lie than a lie would. How are we going to make a stretcher? We've got to get him home, somehow----"

"At my cabin is blankets," Swan told her briskly. "I can climb the hill--it is up there. In a little while I will come back."

He started off without waiting to see what Lorraine would have to say about it, and with some misgivings she watched him run down to the canyon's bottom and go forging up the opposite side with a most amazing speed and certainty. In travel pictures she had seen mountain sheep climb like that, and she likened him now to one of them. It seemed a shame that he was a bit crazy, she thought; and immediately she recalled his perfect assurance when he told her of sending thought messages to his mother. She had heard of such things, she had even read a little on the subject, but it had never seemed to her a practical means of communicating. Calling a doctor, for instance, seemed to Lorraine rather far-fetched an application of what was at best but a debatable theory.

Considering the distance, he was back in a surprisingly short time with two blankets, a couple of light poles and a flask of brandy. He seemed as fresh and unwinded as if he had gone no farther than the