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Updated: June 11, 2025
Jim and Sorry, Swan and Lone had not attempted to hide their belief that the Sawtooth was responsible for Frank's death, yet not one of them had hinted at the possibility of calling the sheriff, or placing the blame where it belonged. They seemed brow-beaten into the belief that it would be useless to fight back.
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.
What you goin' to do about it? If I had the money and the land and the political pull he's got, mebby I'd have me sheriff and a judge, too. "Fred Thurman tried to fight the Sawtooth over a water right he owned and they wanted. They had the case runnin' in court till they like to of took the last dollar he had. He got bull-headed. That water right meant the hull ranch everything he owned.
"We try to prove Fred was murdered, and what's the result? Something happens: to me, mebby, or Frank, or both of us. And you can't say, 'Here, I know the Sawtooth had a hand in that. You got to prove it! And when you've proved it," he added bitterly, "you got to have officers that'll carry out the law instead of using it to hog-tie yuh." His futile, dull anger surged up again.
At the outset he was not perhaps, more unscrupulous than some of his neighbours. True, if a homesteader left his claim for a longer time than the law allowed him, Bill Warfield would choose one of his own men to file a contest on that claim. The man's wages would be paid. Frequently a Sawtooth man would file upon land before any other man had claimed it.
Far to the north the Sawtooth range showed blue, the nearer mountains pansy purple where the pine trees stood, the foothills shaded delicately where canyons swept down to the gray plain. To the south was the sagebrush, a soft, gray-green carpet under the sun. The sky was blue, the clouds were handfuls of clean cotton floating lazily.
Lone wondered sometimes what the Sawtooth meant to do about the Swede, but so far the Sawtooth seemed inclined to do nothing at all, evidently thinking his war on animal pests more than atoned for his effrontery in taking Skyline as a homestead. When he had proven up on his claim they would probably buy him out and have the water still. "Well, what do you know?"
If Lone Morgan or any other man wanted to quit, that was his privilege, providing, of course, that his leaving was not likely to menace the peace and security of the Sawtooth. Lone had made it a point to mind his own business, always. He had never asked questions, he had never surmised or gossiped.
Far away across the sedgy tundra lay the sea, a line of molten gold in the last rays of the belated June sunset. Behind them rose the snow-crested peaks of the Sawtooth Mountains, like frosted spires against an amber sky.
He did not feel sure of anything except the fact that the Quirt was like a drowning man struggling vainly against the whirlpool that is sucking him slowly under. One thing he knew, and that was his determination to stay with these two of the Sawtooth until he had some definite information; until he saw Lorraine or knew that she was safe from them.
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