I'll ask her again about that grip she said she hid under a bush.

I never heard about any of the boys finding it." His thoughts returned to Al Woodruff and stopped there.

Determined still to attend strictly to his own affairs, his thoughts persisted in playing truant and in straying to a subject he much preferred not to think of at all.

Why should Al Woodruff be interested in the exact spot where Brit Hunter's daughter had spent the night of the storm?
Why should Lone instinctively discount her statement and lie whole-heartedly about it?
"Now if Al catches me up in that, he'll think I know a lot I don't know, or else----" He halted his thoughts there, for that, too, was a forbidden subject.
Forbidden subjects are like other forbidden things: they have a way of making themselves very conspicuous.

Lone was heading for the Quirt ranch by the most direct route, fearing, perhaps, that if he waited he would lose his nerve and would not go at all.