Chapter 22 - Page 2

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 for granted that Warfield and Hawkins would stop when it became too dark to follow the hoofprints, and without Jack to show them the way they would perforce remain where they were until daybreak.

They would do that, he reasoned, if they were sincere in wanting to overtake Lorraine and in their ignorance that they were also following Al Woodruff. And try as he would, he could not see the object of so foolish a plan as this abduction carried out in collusion with two men of unknown sentiments in the party. They had shown no suspicion of Al's part in the affair, and Swan grinned when he thought of the mutual surprise when they met.

He was not disappointed. They reached timber line, following the seldom used trail that wound over the divide to Bear Top Pass and so, by a difficult route which he did not believe Al would attempt after dark, to the country beyond the mountain. Where dark overtook them, they stopped in a sheltered nook to wait, just as Swan had expected they would. They were close to the trail, where no one could pass without their knowledge.

In the belief that it was only Lorraine they were