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 seemed to look upon the doings of the Sawtooth as an act of Providence, like being struck by lightning or freezing to death, as men sometimes did in that country.
To Lorraine that passive submission was the most intolerable part, the one thing she could not, would not endure.

Had she lived all of her life on the Quirt, she probably would never have thought of fighting back and would have accepted conditions just as her dad seemed to accept them.
But her mimic West had taught her that women sometimes dared where the men had hesitated.

It never occurred to her that she should submit to the inevitable just because the men appeared to do so.
Wherefore it was a new Lorraine who rose at daybreak and silently cooked breakfast for the men, learned from Jim that Sorry was not back from Echo, and that Swan and Lone had gone down to the place where Frank had been found.