The Heart of the Range by William Patterson White (page 4)

“No,” denied the Kid, judicially, “not that lady. Even Racey’s arms ain’t long enough to reach round her. I–_Say_, one of these pies is a _raisin_ pie!”

“You can gimme that one,” suggested Racey Dawson, glad of an opportunity to change the subject.

The Kid, his teeth sunk in the raisin pie, shook a decisive head and mumbled unintelligibly. He thrust the other pie toward his friend.

Racey Dawson rode away westward munching pie. And it was a very good pie, and would have brought credit to any cook. He regretfully ate the last crumb, and rolled a cigarette. He felt fairly full and at utter peace with the world. Why not? Wasn’t it a good old world, and a mighty friendly world despite the Harpes and Tweezys and Joneses that infested it? I should say so.

Racey Dawson inhaled luxuriously, pushed back his wide hat, and let the breeze ruffle his brown hair. He rubbed the back of one hand across his straight eyebrows, and stared across the range toward the distant hills that marked his goal. Which goal was the old C Y ranch-house at Moccasin Spring on Soogan Creek, where lived the Dales and their daughter Molly.

And as he looked at the hill and bethought him of what lay beyond it, he drew a Winchester from the scabbard under his left leg and made sure that he had not forgotten to load it. For Racey laboured under no delusion as to the danger that menaced not only his own existence but that of his friend Swing. He knew that their lives hung by a thread, and a thin thread at that. They were but two against many, and their position had not been aided by the string of uneventful days succeeding their advent at the Bar S. For their enemies were taking their time in the launching of their enterprise. And Racey had not expected this. It threw him off his balance somewhat. Certainly it worried him.

It was not humanly possible that Jack Harpe could be aware that Old Man Saltoun did not believe what Racey had told him. But he was acting as if he knew. Perhaps he was waiting till Nebraska Jones should be entirely well of his wound. That was possible, but not probable. Jack Harpe had not impressed Racey as a man who would allow his plans to be indefinitely held up for such a cause. There was no telling when Nebraska would be up and about. His recovery, thanks to past dissipations, had been exceedingly slow.

Again, perhaps the delay might be merely a detail of the plan Fat Jakey Pooley mentioned in his letter to Luke Tweezy, or it might be due to the more-than-watchful care the Dales and Morgans were taking of old Mr. Dale. Wherever the old gentleman went, some one of his relations went with him. Certainly no ill-wisher had been able to approach Mr. Dale (since his spree at McFluke’s) at any time. Mr. Dale, to all intents and purposes, was impossible to isolate.

At any rate, whatever the reason, the fact remained that Harpe had not moved and showed no signs of moving. Mr. Saltoun, every time he met Racey, took special pains to ask his puncher how much twice six times two hundred was. Then Mr. Saltoun, without waiting for an answer, would walk off slapping his leg and cackling with laughter. Even Tom London was beginning to take the view that perhaps his father-in-law was in the right, after all.

“You been here near two months now, Racey,” he had said that very morning, “and they ain’t anything happened yet.”

“I’ve got four months to go,” Racey had replied with a placidity he did not feel.

Now as he rode, his eyes closely scanning the various places in the landscape providing good cover for possible bushwhackers, he recalled what Loudon had said.

“I’ll show him all the happenstances he wants to see before I’m through,” he said, aloud. “Something’s gonna happen. Something’s got to happen. Jack Harpe won’t let this slide. Not by a jugful.”

The words were confident enough, but they were words that he had been in the habit of repeating to himself nearly every day for some time. Perhaps they had lost some of their force. Perhaps–

“Twelve hundred dollars,” mused Racey. “And the same for Swing. Six months’ work for–Hell, it can’t turn out different! I know it can’t. We’ll show ’em all yet, won’t we, Cuter old settler?”

Cuter old settler waggled his ears. He was a companionable horse, never kicked human beings, and bucked but seldom.

“Yep,” continued Racey, sitting back against the cantle, “she’s a long creek that don’t bend some’ers or other.”

And then the creek that was his flow of thought shot round a bend into the broad and sparkling reaches of a much pleasanter subject than the one that had to do with Harpes and Tweezys and Joneses. After a time he came to where the pleasanter subject, on her knees, was weeding among the flowers that grew tidily round Moccasin Spring. Baby-blue-eyes, low and lovely, cuddled down between tall columbines and orange wall-flowers. Side by side with the pink geranium of old-fashioned gardens the wild geranium nodded its lavender blooms in perfect harmony.

The subject, black-haired Molly Dale, rested the point of her hand-fork between two rows of ragged sailors and Johnny-jump-ups and lifted a pair of the clearest, softest blue eyes in the world in greeting to Racey Dawson.

“This is a fine time for you to be traipsing in,” she told him, with a smile that revealed a deep dimple in each cheek. “I thought you promised to help me weed my garden to-day.”

“I did,” he returned, humbly, dismounting and sliding the reins over Cuter’s neck and head, “but you know how it is Sunday mornin’s, Molly. There’s a lot to do round the ranch sometimes. Now, this mornin’–”

“I’ll bet,” she interrupted, smoothing out the smile and frowning as severely as she was able. “I’d just tell a man that, I would. I would, indeed. I’m sure it must have taken you at least half-an-hour to shine those boots. Half-an-hour! More likely an hour. Why, I can see my face in them.”

“And a very pretty face, too,” said Racey, rising to the occasion. “If I owned that face I’d never stop looking at it myself. I mean–” He floundered, aghast at his own temerity.

But the lady smiled. “That’ll do,” she cautioned him. “Don’t try to flirt with me. I won’t have it.”

“I ain’t–” he began, and stopped.

Molly Dale continued to look at him inquiringly. But as he gave no evidence of completing the sentence, she lowered her gaze and resumed her weeding. Racey thought to have glimpsed a disappointed look in her eyes as she dropped her chin, but he could not be certain. Probably he had been mistaken. Why should she be disappointed? Why, indeed?

“Start in on that bed, Racey,” she directed, nodding her head toward the columbines and wall-flowers. “There’s some of that miserable pusley inching in on the baby-blue-eyes and they’re such tiny things it doesn’t take much to kill them. And Lord knows I had a hard enough job persuading ’em to grow in the first place.”

“Wild things never cotton to living inside a fence,” he told her. “They’re like Injuns thataway–put ’em in a house and they don’t do so well.”

“Shucks, look at the Rainbow.”

“Half-breed. There’s the difference, and besides the Rainbow ain’t lived in a house since she left the convent. She lives in a tepee same as her uncle and aunties.”

“I don’t care,” defended Molly, straightening on her knees to survey her garden. “Every single plant in my garden except the pink geraniums is wild. Look at those thimble-berry bushes round the spring, and the blue camass along the brook, and the squaw bushes round the house, and the squaw grass and pussy paws back of the clothes-lines. Some I transplanted, the rest I grew from seeds. And where will you find a better-looking garden?”

Racey sagged back on his heels and stared critically about him.

“Yeah,” he drawled, nodding a slow head, “they do look pretty good. Got to give you lots of credit. But those squaw bushes now–” He broke off, grinning.

“Oh, of course, you provoking thing!” cried she, irately. “Might know you’d pick on those squaw bushes. It is a mite too shady for ’em where they are, but still they’re doing pretty well, considering. I’m satisfied–What’s that?”

“That” was a horseman appearing suddenly among the cottonwoods that belted with a scattering grove the garden and the spring. The horseman was Lanpher, manager of the 88 ranch. He was followed by another rider, a lean, swarthy individual with a smooth-shaven, saturnine face. Racey knew the latter by sight and reputation. The man was one Skeel and rejoiced in the nick-name of “Alicran.” The furtive scorpion whose sting is death is not indigenous to the territory, but Mr. Skeel had gained the appellation in New Mexico, a region where the tail-bearing insect may be found, and when the man left the Border for the Border’s good the name left with him.

“Oh, lookout! The bushes! The bushes! Don’t trample my thimble-berries!”

But Lanpher, heeding not at all Molly’s cries of warning, spurred his sweating horse through the thimble-berry growth, breaking down three shrubs, and splashed cat-a-corneredly across the spring, the brook, and several rows of flowers.

The garden looked as if a miniature cyclone had passed that way.

Midway across the garden Lanpher’s horse halted–halted because a flying figure in chaps had appeared from nowhere and seized it by the rein. But the horse did more than halt. In obedience to a powerful jerk administered by the man in chaps the horse pivoted on its forelegs and slid its rider out of the saddle and deposited him a-sprawl and face downward among the flowers.

Lanpher arose, snarling, to face a levelled sixshooter. It did not signify that Racey had not drawn the weapon. He was perfectly capable of shooting through the bottom of his holster and Lanpher knew it. And Racey knew that he knew it.

“Get out of this garden!” ordered Racey. “Take yore friend with you,” he added, tossing the horse’s bridle to Lanpher. “And if I were you I’d walk a heap careful between the rows. I just wouldn’t go a-busting any more of these posies.”

Lanpher went. He went carefully. He was followed quite as carefully by Racey Dawson.

When Lanpher was free of the neat rows he looked up venomously into the face of Alicran Skeel who had meticulously ridden round the garden.

“I was wondering where you was,” Lanpher remarked with deep meaning.

“I ain’t rooting up nobody’s gyarden,” Alicran returned, cheerfully. “And don’t wonder too hard. Might strain yore intellect or something. I’ll always be where I aim to be–always. You done scratched yore face, Lanpher.”

Lanpher turned from Alicran Skeel and spat upon the ground.

“Alicran,” said Racey, holding his alert attitude, “the first false move you make Lanpher gets it.”

“I ain’t makin’ a move,” said Alicran, thumbs hooked in the armholes of his vest. “I got plenty to do minding my own business.”

“Huh?” Thus the sceptical Racey, who did not trust Mr. Skeel as far as he could throw a horse by the tail.

“Shucks,” said Alicran, out of deference to the lady, “you don’t believe me.”

“Shore I do,” asserted Racey, “Shore, you bet you. I–_Careful, Lanpher_! I can talk to somebody else and watch you at the same time!”

“If Alicran was worth a–” began Lanpher, furiously, and stopped.

“You was gonna say–what?” queried Alicran, softly.

“Nothing,” said Lanpher, sulkily. “Put yore gun away,” he continued to Racey. “I ain’t gonna hurt you.”

“Now that’s what I call downright generous of you, Lanpher,” Racey declared, warmly. “I’d shore hate to be hurt. I shore would. But if it’s alla same to you, I’ll keep my gun right where she is–if it’s alla same to you.”

“That’ll do, Racey. Stop this rowing. I won’t have it.” It was Molly Dale pushing past Racey and standing with arms akimbo directly in front of his gun-muzzle. Racey let his gun and holster fall up-and-down, but he did not remove his hand from the gunbutt.

“Who do you want here?” Molly inquired of Lanpher.

Lanpher’s rat-like features cracked into an ugly smile. “Is yore paw home?” he asked.

“Father’s gone to Marysville.”

“When’ll he be back?”

“Day after to-morrow, I guess.”

“Yeah, I kind of guess he’d want to spend the night so’s he could do business in the morning, huh?” The Lanpher smile grew even uglier.

“He has some business to attend to in the morning, yes.”

“I kind of thought he would. Yeah. You don’t happen to know the nature of his business, do you?”

“His business is none of yours, and I’ll thank you to pick up your feet and clear out, the pair of you.”

“Not so fast.” Lanpher spread deprecatory hands, and his smile became suddenly crooked. “I just come down to do yore paw a favour.”

“A favour? You?” Blank unbelief was patent in Molly’s tone and expression.

“A favour. Me. You see, yore paw’s got a mortgage coming due on the tenth, and the reason yore paw went to Marysville was so he could be there bright and early to-morrow morning at the bank to renew the mortgage. Ain’t I right?”

“You might be.” Molly’s face was now a mask of indifference, but there was no indifference in her heart. There was cold fear.

Racey’s expression was likewise indifferent. But there was no fear in his heart. There was anger, cold anger. For he had sensed what was coming. He knew that the previous winter had been a hard one on the Dale fortunes. They had lost most of their little bunch of cattle in a blizzard, and the roof of their stable had collapsed, killing two team horses and a riding pony. Racey had conjectured that Mr. Dale would have been forced to borrow on mortgage to make a fresh start in the spring. And at that time in the territory the legal rate was 12 per cent. Stiff? To be sure. But the security in those days was never gilt-edged–cattle were prone to die at inconvenient moments, and land was not worth what it was east of the Mississippi.

“We’ll take it I’m right,” pursued Lanpher, lapping his tongue round the words as though they possessed taste and that taste pleasant. “And being that I’m right I’ll say yore paw could ‘a’ saved himself the ride to Marysville by stayin’ to home.”

Oh, Lanpher was the sort of man who, as a boy, was accustomed to thoroughly enjoy the pastime of pulling wings from living flies and drowning a helpless kitten by inches.

Now he nodded his head and grinned anew, and put up a satisfied hand and rubbed his stubbly chin. Racey yearned to kick him. It was shameful that Molly should be compelled to bandy words with this reptile. Racey stepped forward determinedly, and slid past Molly.

Promptly she caught him by the sleeve. “Don’t mix in, Racey,” she commanded with set face. “It’s all right. It’s all right, I tell you.”

“‘Course it’s all right,” Lanpher hastened to say, more than a hint of worriment in his little black eyes. One could never be sure of these Bar S boys. They were uncertain propositions, every measly one of them. “Shore it’s all right,” went on the 88 manager. “I ain’t meaning no harm. Yo’re taking a lot for granted, Racey, a whole lot for granted.”

“Nemmine what I’m taking for granted,” flung back Racey. “I get along with taking only what’s mine, anyway.”

Which was equivalent to saying that Lanpher was a thief. But Lanpher overlooked the poorly veiled insult, and switched his gaze to Molly Dale.

“I just rid over to say,” he told her, “that if yore paw is still set on renewing the mortgage when he comes back from Marysville he’ll have to see me and Luke Tweezy at the 88. We done bought that mortgage from the bank.”

Molly Dale said nothing. Racey felt that if he held his tongue another second he would incontinently burst. He sidestepped past the girl.

“You’ve said yore li’l piece,” he told Lanpher, “and for a feller who was bellyaching so loud about keeping out of this deal it strikes me yo’re a-getting in good and deep–buying up mortgages and all. Dunno what I mean, huh? Yep, you do. Shore you do. Think back. Think way back, and it’ll come to you. Jack Harpe. You know him. Bossy-looking jigger, seemed like. Has he been a-bearing down on you lately, Lanpher? Mustn’t let him run you thataway. Bad business. Might be expensive. You can’t tell. You be careful, Lanpher. You go slow–a mite slow. Yep. Well, don’t lemme keep you. This way out.”

He flicked a thumb westward, and stared at Lanpher with bright eyes. Lanpher’s eyes dropped, lifted, then veered toward Alicran Skeel, that appreciative observer, who continued to sit his horse as good as gold and silent as a clam.

Lanpher turned to his horse without another word, slid the reins over the animal’s neck and crossed them slackly. He stuck toe in stirrup and swung up. He looked down at Molly where she stood dumbly, her troubled eyes gazing at nothing and the fingers of one hand slowly plaiting and unplaiting a corner of her apron. Lanpher opened his mouth as if to speak, but no words issued. For Racey had coughed a peremptory cough.

Lanpher turned his horse’s head toward the creek.

“Lookit here, Alicran,” the peevish Lanpher burst forth when he and his henchman had forded the creek and were riding westward, “whatsa matter with you, anyway?”

“With me?” Alicran tilted a questioning bead. “I dunno. I don’t feel a mite sick.”

“What do you think I hired you for?” Heatedly.

“Gawd he knows.” Business of rolling a cigarette.

“Yo’re supposed to be a two-legged man with a gun.”

“Yeah?” Indifferently.

“Yeah, but I got my doubts–now. Hell’s bells! Wasn’t you off to one side there when Racey pulled? Wasn’t you?”

“Wasn’t you listenin’ to what Racey said at the time? Wasn’t you?”

“After! I mean after! His gun was back hugging his leg after the girl slid in between. What more of a chance didja want?”

“So that’s it, huh?”

“That’s–it.” Between the two words was a perceptible pause.

“I ain’t shootin’ nobody in the back. I never have yet, and I ain’t beginnin’ now, not for you or any other damn man.”

“Say–” began Lanpher, threateningly.

Alicran Skeel turned a grim face on his employer so suddenly and sharply that Lanpher almost dodged.

“Lookit here, Lanpher,” said he, quietly, “don’t you try to start nothin’ that I’ll have to finish. I know you from way back, you lizard, and outside of my regular work I ain’t taking no orders from you. Don’t gimme any more of yore lip.”

“Aw, I didn’t mean nothing, Alicran. You ain’t got any call to get het. I need you in the business.”

“Shore you do,” Alicran declared, contemptuously. “You need me to do anything you ain’t got the nerve to do.”

“I got my duty to my company,” Lanpher bluffed lamely.

“Duty bedam. You ain’t got the guts for a tough job, that’s whatsa matter.”

This was rubbing it in. Lanpher plucked at the loose strings of his courage, and managed to draw out a faintly responsive twang. “I’ll show you whether I got guts–” he began.

“Oh, look,” said Alicran. “See that wild currant bush.”

To Lanpher it seemed that the sixshooter was barely out of the holster before it was back again. But there was a swirl of smoke adrift in the windless air and the topmost branch of a wild currant bush thirty feet distant had been that instant cut in two.

“What was that you was gonna say?” Alicran prompted, softly.

“I forget,” evaded Lanpher. “But they’s one thing you wanna remember, Alicran. It don’t pay to be squeamish. It comes high in the end usually. You’ll find, if you keep on being mushy thisaway, that you’ll have more’n you can swing at the finish.”

“Is that so? You leave me do things my own way, you hear? Lemme tell you if I’d ‘a’ knowed all what you was up to by coming to Dale’s this mornin’ I’d never have allowed it.”

“Allowed it!”

“Yes, allowed it, I said. Want me to spell it for you? You thumb-handed idjit, if you had any more sense you’d be a damfool. Don’t you know that in anything you do, no matter what, they’s no profit in unnecessary trimmings? Most always it’s the extra frills on a feller’s work that pushes the bridge over and lands him underneath with everything on top of him and the job to do again, if he’s lucky enough to be livin’ at the finish. And yore swashing through that girl’s gyarden was a heap unnecessary. It was a close squeak you wasn’t drilled by Racey Dawson. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had let a little light in on yore darkened soul. Done it myself in his place. And yore rubbing in that mortgage deal was another unnecessary piece o’ damfoolishness. It only made Racey have it in for you more’n ever. And after acting like more kinds of a fool thataway in less time than anybody I ever see before, you sit up on yore hunkers and tell _me_ I’ll have more’n I can swing at the finish. Say, you make me laugh! Listen, Lanpher, for a feller that’s come out second best with the Bar S outfit as many times as you have it looks to me like you was crowdin’ Providence a heap close.”

“That’s all right,” sulked Lanpher, then added, with a sudden flare of spite: “When I hired you as foreman I shore never expected to draw a skypilot full o’ sermons into the bargain.”

“No?” drawled Alicran, looking hard at Lanpher. “I often wonder just what you did hire me for.”

On which Lanpher made no comment.

“Yeah,” resumed Alicran, the fish having failed to bite, “I often wonder about that. Was it a foreman you wanted or a–gunman? And what did Racey mean about Jack Harpe a-bearing down on you so hard, huh?”

“Nothing, nothing, nothing a-tall,” Lanpher replied, irritably.

“If Racey didn’t mean nothing by it, what did yore eyes flip for and why didja shuffle yore feet?”

“Whatell business is it of yores?” burst out the goaded manager.

“None,” Alicran replied, calmly. “I was just wondering. I got a curiosity to know why, thassall.”

“Then hogtie yore curiosity–or you’ll be gettin’ yore time. I’m free to admit I need you, like I said before, but I can do without you if I gotta.”

“That’s just where yo’re dead wrong,” Alicran promptly contradicted. “You can’t do without me. Lanpher, I like the job of bein’ yore foreman. I like it so well that if you was to fire me I dunno what I wouldn’t do. You know, Lanpher, a man is a whole lot bigger target than the branch of a wild currant bush.”

Frankly speculative, the eyes of Alicran travelled up and down the spare frame of the 88 manager. Which gave Lanpher furiously to think, as it were.

“Why,” said he, forcing a smile, “I guess we understand each other, Alicran.”

“Shore we do,” said Alicran, cheerfully. “And don’t you forget it.”

CHAPTER XVII

SIGNED PAPER

When the two 88 men had departed Molly Dale continued to stand where she was for a space and stare dumbly at nothing. Racey, realizing well enough that her world had crashed to pieces about her, wished that she would burst into tears. A sobbing woman is easily comforted. It is simply necessary to pet her and keep on petting her till her grief is assuaged. But this hard stillness of Molly Dale’s gave Racey no opening. He could but gaze at her uncomfortably and shift his weight from one foot to the other.

“That was a dirty trick of the Marysville bank.” Thus tentatively.

It is doubtful whether Molly heard him. “Poor Father,” she said in a low tone.

“Lookit here, Molly,” said Racey, struck by a bright idea, “I’ve got a li’l money I been saving. I–I want you should take it.”

Molly continued to stare into the distance.

“I’ve got some money–” he began again, thinking that Molly had not heard.

But she turned her face toward him at that, and he saw that her eyes were shining with unshed tears.

“Racey,” she said, with a slight catch in her voice, and laid her hand lightly on his arm. “Racey, you’re a dear, good boy. We–we’ll manage somehow. I mum-must tell Mother.”

Abruptly she swung away and left him. He watched her cross the garden and enter the kitchen of the ranch-house. Then slowly, thoughtfully, he set to work repairing as best he could the ravages left in the garden by the hoofs of Lanpher’s horse.

Came then Swing Tunstall on a paint pony and was moved to mirth at sight of Racey Dawson engaged in earthy labour.

“See the pret-ty flowers,” mouthed Swing Tunstall, after the fashion of a child wrestling with the First Reader. “Does Racey like pret-ty flow-ers? Yeth, he’th crathy ab-out them. Ain’t he cute squattin’ there all same hoptoad and a-workin’ away two-handed? Only he ain’t a-workin’ now. He’s stopped workin’. He’s gettin’ all red in the face. He’s mad at Swing who never done him no harm nohow. Whatsa matter, Racey?” he added in his natural voice. “What bit you on the ear this fine an’ summer day?”

Racey looked over his shoulder toward the house. Then he got to his feet and strode across the garden to where Swing Tunstall sat his horse.

“Swing,” said he, quietly, “are you busy just now?”

Swing, suspecting a catch somewhere, stared in swift suspicion. “Why–uh–no,” was his cautious reply.

“Then go off some’ers and die.”

Without waiting for Swing’s possible comment Racey turned his back on his friend and walked unhurriedly to his horse Cuter. Swing slouched sidewise in the saddle and watched him go.

He rolled a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled luxuriously. And all without removing his gaze from Racey’s back. He watched while Racey flung the reins crosswise over Cuter’s neck, mounted, and rode down into the creek. When he saw that Racey, after allowing Cuter to drink nearly all he wanted, rode on across the creek and up the farther bank, Swing’s brow became corrugated with a puzzled frown.

“He means business,” muttered Swing. “I ain’t seen that look on his face for some time. I wonder what did happen this morning.”

His eyes still fixed on the dwindling westward moving object that was Racey Dawson and his horse, he smoked his cigarette to a butt. Then he picked up his reins, found his stirrups, and rode away.

Racey Dawson, bound for the 88 ranch-house, did not smoke. He did not feel like it. He did not feel like doing anything but facing Lanpher. What he would be moved to do while facing Lanpher he was not sure. Time enough to cross that bridge when the crucial moment should arrive. He knew what he wanted to do, but he knew, too, that he could not do it unless Lanpher made the first break. Otherwise it would be murder, and Racey was no murderer.

“He’ll back down if he can, the snake,” Racey said aloud. “And he’ll be shore to slick and slime round till all’s blue. Damn him, riding over those flowers of hers!”

Racey did not hurry. He had no desire to come up with Lanpher on the open range. It would be better to meet the man at his own ranch-house–where there were apt to be plenty of witnesses. Racey realized perfectly that he might need a witness, several witnesses, before the sunset. He hoped that all the boys of the 88 outfit would be at the ranch. He hoped that Luke Tweezy would be there, too. Lanpher and Tweezy together, the pups.

“Fat Jakey Pooley’s li’l playmates,” he muttered and swore again–heartily.

He understood now the true reason for Jack Harpe’s lack of activity. This purchasing by Lanpher and Tweezy of the Dale mortgage was the eminently safe and lawful plan of Jakey Pooley. In his letter Fat Jakey had written that it would take longer. And wasn’t it taking longer? It was. Racey thought he saw the plan in its entirety, and was in a boil accordingly. He would have been in considerably more of a boil had he been blessed with the ability to read the future.

When he rode in among the buildings of the 88 ranch his eyes were gratified by the sight of freckle-faced Bill Allen straddling a cracker-box in front of the bunkhouse and having his hair cut by Rod Rockwell.

“That’s right,” Bill Allen was complaining, “whynell don’t you cut off the whole ear while yo’re about it?”

“Aw, shut up,” said Rod Rockwell, “it was only the tip, and I didn’t go to cut it, anyway.”

“I don’t giveadamn whether you went to cut it or not, you cut it! I can feel the blood running down the back of my neck.”

“That’s only sweat, you bellerin’ calf! Hold still, can’t you? Djuh want me to hurt you?”

“You done have already,” snarled Bill Allen, fidgeting on his cracker-box. “You wait till I cut yore hair after. I’ll fix you. I’ll scalp you, you pot-walloper.”

“That’s right, Bill,” said Racey, checking his horse beside the quarrelling pair. “Talk to him. Givem hell.”

“‘Lo, Racey,” grinned the two youngsters in unison.

“Where did you rustle _this_ hoss?” asked Bill Allen.

“Nemmine where,” smiled Racey, for both Bill and Rod had been his friends in his 88 days and could therefore insult him with impunity. “I wouldn’t wanna put li’l boys in the way of temptation. Does the cook still spank him regular, Rod?”

“Stab his hoss with the scissors, Rod,” begged Bill Allen. “Let’s see what for a rider Mr. Dawson is.”

Racey pressed his off rein against his horse’s neck. The animal whirled on a nickel, and reared, hard held, after the first plunge. The flying pebbles plentifully showered the two punchers. Bill Allen swore heartily, for one of the pebbles had clipped his damaged ear.

“You see what a good rider I am,” Racey said, sweetly. “Can’t feaze me, nohow. Sit still, Bill, and lemme try can I jump the li’l hoss over you. Rod, do you mind movin’ back a yard?”

“No,” said Bill Allen, decidedly, and picked up his cracker-box and retreated backward to the bunkhouse door. “No, you don’t play any such tricks as that on me. He’d just as soon try it as not, the idjit,” he added over his shoulder to Tile Stanton who was peering out to see what all the racket was about.

“Let him try it,” Tile Stanton advised promptly. “If the cayuse does happen to hit yore head, it won’t hurt yore thick skull. G’on, Bill, be a sport.”

“Be a sport yoreself,” returned Bill Allen, skipping into the bunkhouse. “Where’s the other scissors? I’ll finish this job myself.”

Racey, left alone with Rod Rockwell, smiled slightly. “Bill ain’t got a sense of humour this mornin’,” he observed, softly. “He must ‘a’ thought I meant it.”

There was no answering smile on Rod’s features as he looked up at Racey Dawson. “Racey,” said he, laying a hand on the horse’s mane, “have you been to McFluke’s lately?”

“I ain’t,” replied Racey, his smile fading out.

“Then keep on stayin’ away.”

“As bad as that?”

“As bad as that.”

“McFluke been talking?” was Racey’s next question.

“If McFluke was the only one it would be a mighty short hoss to curry.”

“Then there are others?”

“Plenty.” Rod Rockwell gave a short, hard laugh.

“All of Nebraska’s bunch, huh?”

“All but Nebraska.”

“How long has this been going on–this talking, I mean?”

“Doc Coffin started it about a week ago. He told Windy Taylor of the Double Diamond A he was gonna ventilate yore good health some fine day. He wasn’t drunk, neither.”

“Then he must have serious intentions.”

“Somethin’ like that. Five of us heard him say it. Lookit, while I was at McFluke’s alone day before yesterday Doc and Peaches Austin and Honey Hoke was all three bellying the bar, and while I was tucking away my nosepaint they was mumbling to themselves how you was all kinds of a pup and would stand shootin’ any day.”

“Mumblin’ loud enough for you to hear, huh?”

“Naturally, or I wouldn’t ‘a’ heard it.”

“Then they wanted you to hear. Guess they know yo’re a friend of mine.”

“Guess they do now,” Rod Rockwell said, grimly.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothin’. I just talked to ’em a li’l bit.”

“And you wasn’t shot? Didn’t they do anything?”

“Hell, no,” Rod denied, disgustedly. “Kansas Casey come in just at the wrong time, and throwed down on the four of us and said he’d do all the shooting they was to be done. And when he went he took me with him. Said he’d arrest me if I didn’t go peaceable. Ain’t that just like Kansas?”

“Wearing the star shore means a lot to him.”

“Aw, since he’s been deputy he’s gotten too big for his boots. And Jake the same way. The country’s played out, that’s whatsa matter. Law and order, law and order, till a feller can’t turn round no more without fallin’ into jail.”

“She’s one lucky thing for you, cowboy,” said Racey, seriously, “that Kansas did come. Three of ’em! You had yore gall. Lookit here, next time you let ’em talk. Names don’t hurt less they’re said to a feller’s face.”

“They knowed you was my friend,” said Rod, simply. “Anyway, you keep away from McFluke’s.”

“Maybe I will take yore advice. It has its points of interest, as the feller said when he sat down on the porkumpine. And speakin’ of porkumpines, have you seen Lanpher?”

“Shore. Him and Alicran pulled in a hour ago. Guess he’s in the office–Lanpher.”

“See anything of Tweezy lately?”

“Luke seems to be living with us _lately_.”

“I never knowed him and Lanpher was good friends?” Racey cast at a venture.

“I didn’t either–till lately.”

“Jack Harpe ever come out here?”

“Long-geared feller–supposed to have capital? Hangs out in Farewell? The one that Marie girl tried to down? Bo, he ain’t been here as I know of, but then he could easy drift in and out and me not know it.”

Racey nodded. “Marie jump Jack again, do you know?” he asked.

“Damfino. Don’t guess so, though. I seen her pass him on Main Street, and she didn’t even look at him.”

“I’ll bet he looked at her.”

“You can gamble he did. He ain’t trustin’ her, not him. I wonder what was at the bottom of the fuss between him an’ her?” A sharp glance at Racey accompanied this remark.

“I dunno,” yawned Racey. “They say Mr. Harpe has had a career both high, wide, and handsome.”

“That’s what I’d call one too many,” grinned Rod Rockwell.

“You can put down a bet the career has been one too many, too.”

“Yeah?” said Rod, wondering what was coming next.

“Yeah,” said Racey, nodding mysteriously, but disappointing his friend by immediately changing the subject. “Say, Rod, I’d take it as a favour if you and Tile and Bill would sort of freeze round the bunkhouse till after I’m through with Lanpher.”

“Shore,” said Rod. “Tweezy’s in the office, too, I guess.”

Racey nodded, and started his horse toward the office.

He understood well enough that Rod and the other two punchers would not interfere in any way with him and whatever acts he might be called upon to perform during his conversation with Lanpher. Loyal to the last cartridge and after whenever it was ranch business, none of the 88 punchers ever felt it incumbent upon him to go out of his way so far as Lanpher personally was concerned. The manager was not the man either to engender or to foster personal loyalty.

At the open doorway of the office Racey dismounted. He dropped the reins over his horse’s head and walked to the doorway. There he stopped and looked in. He saw Lanpher sitting behind his big homemade desk. Lanpher was watching him. At one side of the desk, on a chair tilted back against the wall, sat Luke Tweezy. Luke was chewing a straw. His eyes were half closed, but Racey detected their glitter. Luke Tweezy was not overlooking any bets at that moment.

Racey stepped across the doorsill and halted just within the room. The thumb of his left hand was hooked in his belt. His right hand hung at his side. He was ready for action.

“Lanpher,” said Racey without preliminary, “I want to serve notice on you here and now that if I catch you within one mile of Moccasin Spring you come a-shooting because I will.”

Lanpher’s hand remained motionless on the desktop. Then the man picked up a pencil and began to tap it on the wood. He licked his lips cat-fashion.

“Is that a threat or a promise?” he asked.

“You can take it she’s both,” Racey told him.

“You hear that, Luke?” Lanpher turned to Luke Tweezy. “Threatenin’ my life, huh?”

“Shore,” nodded Luke Tweezy. “Actionable, that is. Mustn’t threaten a man’s life, Racey. Against the law, you know.”

Racey moved to one side and leaned his back comfortably against the wall. “Against the law, huh, Luke?” he said nervously. “Then I can be arrested?”

“You can,” Luke Tweezy declared with evident relish. “That is, you can if Lanpher wants to make a complaint.”

“You hear, Lanpher?” asked Racey, still more nervously. “You wanna make a complaint, huh?”

Lanpher had not failed to note the nervousness of Racey’s tone. Now he licked his lips again. He felt quite cheerful of a sudden. It gave him a warm and pleasant feeling to think that Racey Dawson was to a certain degree in his power. Having licked his lips several times he rubbed his chin judicially and coughed, likewise judicially.

“Well, I dunno as I wanna make a complaint exactly,” he said, slowly. “But you wanna walk a chalkline round here, Racey. You got too much to say for a fact.”

“What do you think, Luke?” queried Racey. “Have I got too much to say?”

“You heard what Lanpher said,” replied the cautious Luke.

“Yep, I heard all right. I just wanted to get yore opinion, because I ain’t through yet–through talking, I mean. What I was going to say is that I wouldn’t be particular about catching Lanpher round Moccasin Spring. If I only _heard_ he’d been hanging round there it would be enough.”

“Meaning you’ll drill him on suspicion?”

“Meaning I’ll do just that.”

“Now yo’re threatenin’ me again.” Thus Lanpher.

“Takes you a long time to wake up, don’t it?” The nervousness had vanished from Racey’s voice. “Lanpher, you lousy skunk! Why don’t you pull? There’s a gun in that open drawer not six inches from your hand. Go after it, you hound-dog!”

Lanpher was not inordinately brave. He would go out of his way to avoid an appeal to lethal weapons. But Racey’s words were more than he could stand. His hand jerked sidewise and down toward the sixshooter in the open drawer.

Bang! Shooting from the hip Racey drove an accurate bullet through the manager’s right forearm. Lanpher grunted and gurgled with pain. But he made no attempt to seize his weapon with his left hand.

Luke Tweezy picked himself up from the floor where he had thrown himself a split second before the shot. Luke Tweezy’s leathery face was mottled yellow with rage.

“I’ll get you ten years for this!” he squalled, pointing a long arm at Racey. “You started this fight! You tried to murder him!”

“Oh, say not so,” said Racey. “If I’d wanted to kill him I wouldn’t ‘a’ plugged him in the arm, would I? That wouldn’t ‘a’ been sensible.”

“You provoked this fraycas!” snarled Luke, disregarding Racey’s point in a true lawyer-like way. “You–”

“Why, no, Luke, yo’re wrong, all wrong,” interrupted Swing Tunstall, leaning over the windowsill at Tweezy’s back. “I seen the whole thing, I did, and I didn’t see Racey do anything he shouldn’t. I could swear to it on the stand if I had to,” he added, thoughtfully.

Come then Rod Rockwell, Bill Allen, and Tile Stanton from the bunkhouse. None made any comment on the state of affairs. But while Rod fetched water in a basin, Bill Allen cut away the sleeve of his groaning employer, and made all ready.

A few minutes later Alicran Skeel entered the office. “I thought I heard a gun,” he drawled, his calm eyes embracing everyone in the room.

“That man!” bubbled Luke Tweezy, shaking his fist at Racey. “That man tried to kill Lanpher! I call upon you not to let him leave the premises until I can go to Farewell and swear out a warrant for his arrest.”

“That man,” said Swing Tunstall, pointing a derisive finger at Luke Tweezy, “is a liar by the clock. I saw the whole thing. And all I gotta say is that Lanpher went after his gun first.”

“I ain’t doubting yore word, Swing,” Alicran said, tactfully, “but they seems to be a difference of opinion sort of, and–”

“I say that Luke Tweezy is a damn liar,” reasserted Swing, “and they ain’t no difference of opinion about that.”

“Well, of course, if Luke–” Alicran did not complete the sentence.

“I am a lawyer,” Luke Tweezy explained, hurriedly. “I ain’t paying any attention to what his man says–now.”

“Or any other time,” jibed Swing.

“Any of you boys see this?” Alicran asked of his three punchers.

“He tried to kill me, I tell you!” Lanpher gritted through his teeth. “He didn’t gimme a chance!”

“Any of you boys see it?” repeated Alicran, paying no attention to Lanpher.

“How could we?” asked Rod Rockwell, glancing up from the bandaging of Lanpher’s arm. “We was all in the bunkhouse.”

“Then for the benefit of the gents who wasn’t here,” said Racey, smoothly, “I don’t mind saying that I told Lanpher to go after his gun, and he did, and I did.”

“He’s a liar,” gibbered Lanpher. “Alicran, ain’t you man enough to take care of Racey Dawson?”

Alicran nodded composedly. “I guess him and me would come to some kind of an agreement provided I was shore he needed taking care of. But I ain’t none shore he does. Looks like it was a even break to me–the word of you and Luke against his and Swing’s. And what’s fairer than that I’d like to know?”

“Alicran!” squalled Lanpher. “I’m telling you to–”

“Yo’re all worked up, that’s whatsa matter,” Alicran assured him. “You don’t mean more’n half you say. You lie down now after Rod gets through with you and cool off–cool off considerable, I would. Do you a heap o’ good. Yeah.”

“And when you get all well, Lanpher,” put in Racey, “will I still be a liar like you say?”

Lanpher looked at Racey and looked away. His heated blood was cooling fast. His arm–Lord, how it hurt! He perceived that discretion was necessary to preserve the rest of his precious skin from future perforation.

“I–I guess I was a li’l hasty,” he mumbled, his eyelids lowered.

“Now that’s what I call right down handsome–for you,” drawled Racey. “Gawd knows I ain’t a hawg. I’m satisfied. Luke, s’pose you and me walk out to the corral together. I got a secret for yore pearly ear.”

It was obvious that Luke Tweezy was of two minds. Racey grinned to see the other’s hesitation.

“What you scared of, Luke?” he inquired. “It ain’t far to the corral, and you can ask Alicran to come outside and watch me while I’m talkin’ to you.”

“I ain’t got any business with you,” denied Luke Tweezy.

“Oh, yo’re mistaken, a heap mistaken. Yes, indeedy, you got business with me. But it ain’t my fault, Luke. I can’t help it. Of course, if you don’t wanna talk to me private like, I can reel her off in here. My thoughts were all of you and yore feelin’s, Luke, when I said the corral. I was shore you’d be happier there.”

“I ain’t got a thing to hide, not a thing,” declared Luke Tweezy. “But if you want to we’ll go out to the corral.”

They went out to the corral and Racey found a seat on an empty nailkeg. Luke Tweezy sat perforce on the hardbaked ground. He hunched up his legs, clasped his hands round his shins, and rested his sharp chin on his bony knees. His eyes were fixed on Racey. The latter seemed in no hurry to begin. He rolled a cigarette with irritating slowness. To force one’s opponent to wait is always good strategy.

“Well,” said Luke Tweezy.

“Is it?” smiled Racey. “Have it yore own way, if you like. Lookit, Luke, you buy a lot of scrip now and then, don’t you?”

“Shore,” nodded Luke.

“Good big discount, I’ll bet.”

“Why not? I ain’t in business for my health. They’s no law–”

“Of course there ain’t. And yore mortgages, Luke. Do a good business in mortgages, don’t you?”

“So-so.”

“This mortgage of Old Man Dale’s now–you figurin’ on foreclosin’ if he can’t pay?”

“Whadda you know about Dale’s mortgage?”

“I heard Lanpher yawpin’ about it. He talks too loud sometimes, don’t he? You gonna foreclose on him, I suppose?”

“Like that!” Luke Tweezy snapped his teeth together with a click.

“But foreclosing takes time. You can’t sell a man up the minute his mortgage is due. There’s got to be notices in the papers and the like of that. Suppose now he gets to borrow the money some’ers before the sale? He’ll have plenty of time to look round.”

“Who’d lend him money?”

“Old Salt would. He’s tight, but he’d rather have Dale at Moccasin Spring than someone else, and he’d lend Dale money rather than have him drove out.”

“Shucks, he wouldn’t lend him a dime. I know Old Salt. Don’t fret, we’ll foreclose when we get ready.”

“I ain’t fretting,” said Racey. “You’ll foreclose, huh? Aw right. I just wanted to be shore. You can go now, Luke.”

Thus dismissed Tweezy rose to his feet and glared down at Racey Dawson. His little eyes shone with spite.

“Say it,” urged Racey. “You’ll bust if you don’t.”

But Luke Tweezy did not say it. He knew better. Without a word he returned to the house.

“They ain’t going to foreclose, that’s a cinch,” said Racey when the ponies were fox-trotting toward Soogan Creek and the Bar S range five minutes later. “Luke’s telling me they were proves they ain’t.”

“Shore,” acquiesced Swing, “but what are they gonna do?”

“I ain’t figured that out yet.”

“You mean you dunno. That’s the size of it,”

“How’d you happen to be at that window so providential this mornin’?” Racey queried, hurriedly.

“How’d you s’pose? Don’t you guess I’d know they was something up from the nice, kind way you said so-long to me back there at the Dales’? Huh? ‘Course I did–I ain’t no fool. You’d oughta had sense enough to take me along in the first place instead of makin’ me trail you miles an’ miles. And where would you ‘a’ been if I hadn’t come siftin’ along, I’d like to know? Might know you’d need a witness. Them two jiggers put together could easy make you lots of trouble. What was you thinking of, anyhow, Racey?”

“How could I tell they were _both_ gonna be together? Besides, three of the 88 boys were over in the bunkhouse. I was counting on them.”

“Over in the bunkhouse, huh? A lot of good they’d done you there. A lot of good. Oh, yo’re bright, Racey. I’d tell a man that, I would.”

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SHOWDOWN

Racey, walking suddenly round the corner of the Dale stable, came upon Mr. Dale tilting a bottle toward the sky. The business end of the bottle was inserted between Mr. Dale’s lips. His Adam’s apple slid gravely up and down. He did not see Racey Dawson.

“Howdy,” said the puncher.

Mr. Dale removed the bottle, whirled, and thrust the bottle behind him.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said, blinking, and slowly producing the bottle. “Huh-have one on me.”

“Not to-day,” refused Racey, shaking his head. “I got a misery in my stummick. Doctor won’t lemme drink any.”

“Yeah?” Thus Mr. Dale with interest. Then, again proffering the liquor, he said: “This here’s fine for the misery. Better have a snooter.”

“No, I guess not.”

“Well, I will,” averred Mr. Dale and downed three swallows rapidly. “Yeah,” he continued, driving in the cork with the heel of his hand, “a feller needs a drink now and then.”

“Helps him stand off trouble, don’t it?” Racey hazarded, sympathetically, perceiving an opening.

“Shore does,” answered Mr. Dale. “I should say so. Dunno who’d oughta know that better’n I do. Trouble, Racey–well, say, I’m just made of trouble I am.”

“Aw, it ain’t as bad as that,” encouraged Racey.

“Yes, it is, too,” contradicted the other. “I got more trouble on my hands than a rat-tailed hoss tied short in fly-time. Trouble–nothing but.”

“Nothing is as bad as it looks.”

“Heaps of times she’s worse.”

“I’m yore friend. You know me. If I can help you–”

“Nobody can help me. I dunno what to do, Racey.”

“Well, you know best, I expect, but I’ve always found if I talk over with somebody else anythin’ that bothers me it don’t seem to stick up half so big.”

Mr. Dale sank down upon one run-over heel and stared blearily off across the flats. The bottle in his hip-pocket made a pronounced bulge under the cloth.

“I dunno what to do, Racey,” he said, looking up sidewise at Racey where he stood in front of him, his hands in his pockets and his hat on the back of his head. “I owe a lot of money. I dunno how I’m gonna pay it, and I’m worried.”

“Let the other feller do the worrying,” suggested Racey.

“I wish I could,” said Mr. Dale, drearily. “I wish I could.”

“Why don’t you, then?”

“He’ll foreclose–they’ll foreclose, I mean.”

“Aw, maybe not.”

“Yeah, they will. I know ’em! —- ’em! They’d have the shirt off my back if they could. You see, Racey, she’s thisaway: I borrowed five thousand dollars from the Marysville bank, on a mortgage, and there they went and sold the mortgage to Lanpher of the 88 and Luke Tweezy. And there’s the rub, Racey. The bank would ‘a’ renewed all right, but you can put down a bet and go the limit that Lanpher and Tweezy won’t. I done asked ’em.”

“Five thousand dollars is a lot of money,” said Racey, soberly. He had been thinking that the mortgage would not have been above two thousand at the outside. But five thousand! What in Sam Hill had old Dale done with the money? In the next breath Dale answered the unspoken question.

“I needed the money,” he said in a low voice, his eyes lowered, “and–and I had bad luck with it.”

“Yeah, I know, the cattle dying and all.”

“Cattle! What cattle?” Mr. Dale stared blankly at Racey. “Oh, them! Hell, they didn’t have nothin’ to do with it, them cattle didn’t. I’d worked out a system, Racey–a system to beat roulette, and I was shore it was all right. By Gawd, it was all right! They was nothin’ wrong with that system. But I had bad luck. I had most awful bad luck.”

“And the system, I take it, didn’t work?”

“It didn’t–against my bad luck.”

Mr. Dale again dropped his eyes, and Racey stared down at the hump-shouldered old figure with something akin to pity in his gaze. Certainly he was sorry for him. He was not in the least scornful despite the fact that it did not seem possible that any sensible man could be such a fool. A system–a system to beat roulette! And bad luck! The drably ancient and moth-eaten story with which every unsuccessful gambler seeks to establish an alibi.

“Whose wheel was it?” said Racey.

“Lacey’s at Marysville.”

“In the back room of the Sweet Dreams, huh? An’ there’s nothing crooked about Lacey’s wheel, either. It’s as square as Lacey himself.”

“Lacey’s wasn’t the only wheel. They was McFluke’s, too.”

So McFluke had a wheel, had he? This was news to Racey Dawson.

“How long has McFluke been runnin’ a wheel?” inquired Racey.

“Quite a while,” was the vague reply.

“A year?”

“Maybe longer. I dunno.”

“Funny it never got round.”

“It was a private wheel. Only for his friends. Nothin’ public about it.”

“Who used to play it besides you?” persisted Racey, hanging to his subject like a bull-pup to a tramp’s trousers.

Mr. Dale wrinkled his forehead. “Besides me? Lessee now. They were Doc Coffin, Nebraska Jones, Honey Hoke, and Punch-the-breeze Thompson.”

“Nobody else?”

“Aw, Galloway and Norton and that bunch,” Mr. Dale said, shamefacedly.

Racey nodded his head slowly. A crooked wheel. Of course it was crooked. Why not? That Dale, Galloway, Norton, and a few other gentlemen of the neighbourhood were under their wives’ thumbs to such a degree that they did not dare to gamble openly was a matter of common knowledge. What more natural than that someone should provide them with a private gambling place? With such cappers as Nebraska and his gang, losers would not feel equal to making much of an outcry. It must be a paying occupation for McFluke, Nebraska, or whoever was at the bottom of the business.

Racey nodded again and squatted down on his heels. He picked up a stick and squinted along its length.

“None of my business, of course,” he said, casually, “but would you mind telling me how much you lost to McFluke?”

“About seven thousand.”

Racey looked up at the sky. Seven thousand dollars. The full amount of the mortgage and two thousand more. And McFluke had it all.

“You see,” said Mr. Dale, dolefully. “I began to make money after I’d been here awhile and my health come back. Yeah, I made money all right, all right.” He pushed back his hat and scratched a grizzled head. “I had luck,” he added. “But you wasn’t round here then. You’d gone to the Bend.”

“Yep, I’d gone to the Bend, damitall, and it shore seems like I’d stayed there too long. Didn’t you ever guess McFluke’s wheel wasn’t straight?”

“Aw, it was so straight. Mac wouldn’t cheat nobody. Yo’re–yo’re mistaken, Racey.”

“I am, huh? Likell I’m mistaken. I know what I’m talking about. I tell you flat, McFluke is so crooked he could swallow a nail and spit out a corkscrew. And he’s got that wheel trained. You just bet he has. Look under the table and see what he’s doing with his feet or his knees. My Gawd, Dale, didn’t you know they make roulette wheels with a brake like a wagon?”

“I–I’ve heard of ’em,” Mr. Dale nodded, hesitatingly. “But I’m shore Mac’s is on the level.”

“And you bet seven thousand dollars it was on the level, didn’t you?”

“But–”

“But where did you come out? Do you think you ever got a show for yore money?”

“Oh, I won a bet now and then,” defended Mr. Dale.

“Small ones, shore. Naturally he has to let you win now and then to sort of toll you along and keep you good-natured. You won now and then, yep. But did you ever win when you had a sizable stake up?”

Mr. Dale shook his head. “No, come to think of it, I don’t believe I ever did.”

“I knowed you didn’t,” exclaimed Racey, triumphantly. “I tell you that wheel is crooked.”

“Not so loud,” cautioned Mr. Dale. “They’ll hear you in the house.”

“Don’t they know nothing about it a-tall?” probed Racey.

“They know about the five-thousand-dollar mortgage,” admitted Dale, reluctantly.

Racey rubbed his chin. “I was here when Molly found it out.”

Mr. Dale nodded miserably. He was too utterly wretched to resent Racey’s interference with his affairs. “She–she told me,” he said.

“Don’t they know about the other two thousand you lost to McFluke, or what you dropped at Lacey’s?”

Mr. Dale shook his head. “I never told ’em. I–I only lost fifteen or sixteen hundred at Lacey’s, anyway.”

“Fifteen or sixteen hundred is a whole lot when you ain’t got it,” said the direct and brutal Racey. “Instead of seven thousand then, you done lost eighty-five or eighty-six hundred. I swear I don’t see how you managed to lose all that and yore family not find it out.”

“I kept quiet.”

“I guess you did keep quiet. Gawd, yes! Lookit, Dale, I’m going to help you out of this. But you’ll have to start fresh. You’ve got to go in and make a clean breast to the family about where the other thirty-six hundred over and above the five thousand went.”

Mr. Dale’s jaw dropped. “I–I never even told ’em where the five thousand went.”

“Huh? I thought you said they knew about the mortgage–after Molly found it out.”

“They knew about the mortgage all right enough, but they dunno where the money went. Yuh see, Racey, I–I done told ’em I lost it in a land deal.”

“You did! Aw right, you go right in and tell ’em the truth, all of it, every last smidgen.”

“I cuc-can’t!” protested Mr. Dale. “I ain’t got the heart!”

“You ain’t got the nerve, you mean. You go on and tell ’em, Dale, an’ I’ll fix it up for you, but I won’t fix up anything for you if you ain’t gonna play square with those women from now on. And you can’t play square with ’em without you begin by telling ’em the truth.”

“How you gonna help me out?” temporized Mr. Dale.

“I’m goin’ to Old Salt, that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll fix it up with him to lend you the money.”

Mr. Dale shook his head. “He won’t do it.”

“Shore he’ll do it. You don’t think he’s gonna have somebody else come in here in yore place, do you? Not much he ain’t. He’ll lend you the money and glad to.”

“I done already asked him, an’ he wouldn’t.”

“‘You asked him, and he wouldn’t?'” repeated Racey, stupidly. “When did you ask him?”

“About two months ago–soon as ever I found out I wouldn’t be able to pay off the mortgage.”

“And he wouldn’t lend it to you? I don’t understand it, damfi do. It ain’t reasonable. Lookit here, did you tell him what you wanted it for? Did you tell him about the mortgage?”

“Non-no,” said Mr. Dale in a still, small voice. “I didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I was afraid he’d take advantage of me. I was afraid he’d fix it so as to take my ranch away from me if he knowed how bad and what for I needed it.”

“But ain’t that exactly what the Marysville bank could ‘a’ done if it wanted?” demanded Racey, aghast at the Dale obtuseness.

“Yeah, but I had hopes of standing off the bank, and–”

“But you ain’t got any hope of standing off Lanpher and Tweezy. Nary a hope. Now lookit, Old Salt is yore only chance round here. Of course, he’d fix it to take away yore ranch if he could. That’s his business. And it’s yore business to see he don’t. An’ it’s my business to help you see he don’t. Suppose now I go to Old Salt and get him to lend you the money on a mortgage, say a ten-year mortgage?”

“But I got one mortgage on the place now. He’d never take a second mortgage.”

“Naw, naw, that ain’t gonna be the way of it a-tall. It will be fixed so’s Old Salt’s mortgage won’t go into effect till the first one’s paid off.”

“But then till the first one is paid off–maybe it will be three-four days–Old Salt’s five thousand will be unsecured.”

“It won’t be unsecured. It won’t go out of Saltoun’s hands. He’ll pay off the mortgage himself.”

“Do you think you can get a easy rate from Old Salt?” asked Dale, the light of a new hope dawning in his faded old eyes. “It’s a awful tax on a feller paying the full legal rate.”

“We’ll have to take what we can get, but I’ll do my best to tone it down. Sometimes a man will take less if he has another object in view besides the interest. And you bet Old Salt will have a plenty big object in view in keeping out Lanpher and Tweezy. Money ain’t tight now, anyway. I’ll do the best I can for you. Don’t you fret. You go on in now and square up with the women and I’ll slide out to the Bar S instanter.”

Mr. Dale, the poor old man, laid a hand on Racey’s strong young forearm. “I’ll tell ’em,” he said. “I’ll tell ’em. You–you fix it up with Old Salt.”

Abruptly he turned away and hobbled hurriedly around the corner of the barn.

CHAPTER XIX

THE SHOOTING

Racey Dawson, riding back to Moccasin Spring, was in a warm and pleasant frame of mind. With him rode Old Salt, and with Old Salt rode Old Salt’s check book. Racey had, after much argument and persuasion, made excellent arrangements with Mr. Saltoun. The latter, anxious though he was to own the Dale place himself, had agreed to pay off the mortgage bought by Lanpher and Tweezy and take in return a 6 per cent. mortgage for ten years. No wonder Racey was pleased with himself. He had a right to be.

As they crossed the Marysville and Farewell trail Racey’s horse picked up a fortuitous stone. Racey dismounted. Mr. Saltoun, slouching comfortably back against his cantle, looked doubtfully down at Racey where he stood humped over, the horse’s hoof between his knees, tapping with a knife handle at the lodged stone.

“A ten-year mortgage is a long one, kind of,” he said, slowly.

“I thought we’d settled all that.” Racey lifted a quick head.

“Shore we’ve done settled it,” Mr. Saltoun acquiesced, promptly. “That’s all right. I’m going through with my part of it. Gotta do it. Nothing else to do. I was just a-thinking, that’s all.”

Racey merely grunted. He resumed his tapping.

“Alla same,” Mr. Saltoun said, suddenly, “I don’t believe this Jack Harpe feller had anything to do with this mortgage deal, Racey.”

“Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t. You can’t make me believe they’s any coon in _that_ tree. If they was why ain’t Jack Harpe done something before this? Tell me that. Why ain’t he?”

“Damfino.”

“Shore you don’t. You was mistaken, Racey. Badly mistaken. Yore judgment was out by a mile. She’s all just Luke Tweezy and that lousy skunk of a Lanpher trying to act spotty. No more than that.”

“Well, ain’t that enough?”

“Shore, but–”

“But nothing. Where’d you be if I hadn’t found out about it, huh? Wouldn’t you look nice feedin’ other folks’ cows on yore grass?”

“Alla same, they wouldn’t ‘a’ been Jack Harpe’s cows.”

“Which is all you know about it. You never would take warning, and you know it. How about the time when Blakely was the 88 manager, and they were rustling yore cattle so fast it made a quarter-hoss racing full split look slow?”

“Well, but–” interrupted Mr. Saltoun, beginning to fidget with his reins.

“And the time Cutnose Canter tried to run off a whole herd of hosses on you?” Racey breezed on, warming to his subject. “You wouldn’t let Chuck warn you. Oh, no, not you. He didn’t know what he was talking about. No, he didn’t. And how did it turn out, huh? What did that li’l party cost you? Yeah, I would begin frizzling round if I was you. You’ll generally notice the feller who’s the last to laugh enjoys it the most. I’m that feller–me and Swing both.”

“Aw, say–”

“Yeah, me and Swing will be thanking you for a healthy big check apiece when our time-limit is up. Yes, indeedy, that’s us.”

“Is _that_ so? _Is_ that so? You got another guess, Racey, and it’s me that will get the most out of that laugh. If it’s like I say, even if Lanpher and Tweezy are trying a game you don’t get paid a nickel if Jack Harpe and his cattle ain’t in on the deal. You done put in the Jack Harpe end of it yoreself. I heard you. So did Tom Loudon, and Swing, too. Jack Harpe. Yeah. He is the tune you was playing alla time. And up to now I can’t see that Jack Harpe has made a move, not a move.”

“But–”

“Lanpher and Tweezy wasn’t in the bet,” insisted Mr. Saltoun. “It was Jack Harpe, and you know it. ‘If Jack Harpe don’t start trying to get Dale’s ranch away from him and run cattle in on you inside of six months you don’t have to pay us.’ Them was yore very words, Racey. I got ’em wrote down all so careful. I know ’em by heart.”

“I’ll bet you do,” Racey told him, heartily. “I’ll gamble you been studying those words in all yore spare time.”

“It pays to be careful,” smiled Mr. Saltoun. “Always bear that in mind. I ain’t wanting to rub anything in, Racey, but if you’d been a mite more careful, just a mite more careful, you wouldn’t be out so much at the finish. Drinks are on you, cowboy. And when you stop to think that I’d ‘a’ made the bet just the same if you’d wanted Lanpher and Tweezy in on it. Only you didn’t.”

“Guess I must ‘a’ overlooked ’em, huh?” grinned Racey. “Feller can’t think of everything, can he?”

“I’m glad to see yo’re taking it thisaway,” approved Mr. Saltoun. “Working for six months for nothing don’t seem to bother you a-tall.”

“I ain’t worked six months for nothing–yet,” pointed out Racey. “The six months ain’t up–yet. You wanna remember, Salt, that a race ain’t over till the horses cross the line.”

“You gotta prove Jack Harpe’s connection,” began Mr. Saltoun.

Racey topped his mount, but as the horse started he held him up.

“Lessee who’s coming,” he suggested, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

He and Mr. Saltoun both turned their heads. Someone was riding toward them along the trail from the direction of the Lazy River ford–Racey had caught the clatter of the horse’s hoofs on the rocks of a wash wherein the trail lay concealed.

“Siftin’ right along,” said Mr. Saltoun.

Racey nodded. Horse and rider slid into sight above the side of the wash and trotted toward them.

“Looks like Punch-the-breeze Thompson,” said Mr. Saltoun.

“It is Thompson,” confirmed Racey. “Didn’t it strike you he sort of hesitated a li’l bit when he first seen us–like a man would whose breakfast didn’t rest easy on his stomach, as you might say.”

Mr. Saltoun nodded. “He did sway back on them lines at the top.”

“And he ain’t boiling along quite as fast now as he was in the wash,” elaborated Racey.

“I noticed that, too,” admitted Mr. Saltoun.

They waited, barring the trail. Punch-the-breeze Thompson did not attempt to ride around them. He pulled up and nodded easily to the two men.

“They’s been a fraycas down at McFluke’s,” Thompson said.

“Fraycas?” Racey cocked an eyebrow.

“Yeah–old Dale and a stranger.”

Racey nodded. He knew with a great certainty what was coming next. “Anybody hurt?” he asked.

“Old Dale.”

“Bad?”

“Killed.”

Racey nodded again. “Even break?”

“We don’t think so,” Thompson stated, frankly.

“Who’s we?” queried Racey.

“Oh, Austin, Honey Hoke, Doc Coffin, McFluke, Jack Harpe, Lanpher, and Luke Tweezy. We all just didn’t like the way the stranger went at it, so I’m going to Farewell after the sheriff.”

“Yo’re holdin’ the stranger then, I take it?” put in Mr. Saltoun.

“Well, no, not exactly,” replied Thompson. “He got away, that stranger did.”

“And didn’t none of you make any try at stopping him a-tall?” demanded Racey.

“Plenty,” Thompson replied with a stony face. “I took a shot at him myself just as he was hopping through the window. I missed.”

“Yet they say yo’re a good snap shot, Thompson,” threw in Racey.

“I am–most usual,” admitted Thompson. “But this time my hand must ‘a’ shook or something.”

“Yep,” concurred Racey, “I shore guess it must ‘a’ shook or–something.”

Thompson faced Racey. “‘Or something,'” he repeated, hardily. “Meaning?”

“What I said,” replied Racey, calmly. “I never mean more’n I say–ever.”

Thompson continued to regard Racey fixedly. Mr. Saltoun was glad that he himself was two yards to the right, and he would not have objected to double the distance.

Racey’s hands were folded on the horn of his saddle. Thompson’s right hand hung at his side. Racey had told the truth when he spoke of Thompson as a good snap shot. He was all of that. And he was fairly quick on the draw as well. It would seem that, taking into consideration the position of Thompson’s right hand, that Thompson had a shade the better of it. Racey thought so. But he hoped, nevertheless, by shooting through the bottom of his holster, to plant at least one bullet in Thompson before the latter killed him.

The decision lay with Thompson. Would he elect to fight? Racey could almost see the thoughts at conflict behind Thompson’s frontal bone. Mr. Saltoun, hoping against hope, sat tensely silent. Racey’s eyes held Thompson’s steadily.

Slowly, inch by inch, Thompson’s right hand moved upward–and away from the gun butt. He gathered his reins in his left hand and with his hitherto menacing right he tilted his hat forward and began to scratch the back of his head.

“If you don’t mean more’n you say,” offered Thompson, “you don’t mean much.”

“Which is all the way you look at it,” said Racey.

“And a damn good way, too,” nipped in Mr. Saltoun, hurriedly, inwardly cursing Racey for not letting well enough alone. “What was the fight about, Thompson?”

“Cards,” said Thompson, laconically, switching his eyes briefly to Mr. Saltoun’s face.

“And the stranger cold-decked him?” inquired Racey.

“Something like that, but I can’t say for shore. I wasn’t playing with him. Doc Coffin was, and so was Honey Hoke and Peaches Austin. Peaches said he kind of had an idea the stranger dealt himself a card from the bottom just before old Dale started to crawl his hump. But Peaches ain’t shore about it. Seemin’ly old Dale is the only one was shore, and he’s dead.”

“And yo’re going for the coroner, huh?” asked Racey.

“I said so.”

“But you didn’t say if anybody was chasing the stranger now. Are they?”

“Shore,” was the prompt reply. “They all took out after him–all except McFluke, that is.”

Racey nodded. “I expect McFluke would want to stay with Dale,” he said, gently, “just as you’d want to go to Farewell after the coroner. Yo’re shore it is the coroner, Thompson?”

“Say, how many times do you want me to tell you?” demanded the badgered Thompson. “Of course it’s the coroner. In a case like this the coroner’s gotta be notified.”

“I expect,” assented Racey. “I expect. But if yo’re really goin’ for the coroner, Thompson, what made you tell us when you first met us you were going for the sheriff?”

“Why,” said Thompson without a quiver, “I’m a-goin’ for him, too. I must ‘a’ forgot to say so at first.”

“Yeah, I guess you did.” Thus Racey, annoyed that Thompson had contrived to crawl through the fence. He had hoped that Thompson might be tempted to a demonstration, for which potentiality he, Racey, had prepared by removing his right hand from the saddle horn.

“It don’t always pay to forget, Thompson,” suggested Mr. Saltoun, coldly.

“It don’t,” Thompson assented readily. “And I don’t–most always.”

“Don’t stay here any longer on our account, Thompson,” said Racey. “You’ve told us about enough.”

“Try and remember it,” Thompson bade him, and lifted his reins.

“We will, and, on the other hand, don’t you forget yore sheriff and yore coroner.”

“I won’t,” grinned Thompson and rode past and away.

“He ain’t goin’ for the sheriff and the coroner any more’n I am,” declared Mr. Saltoun, disgustedly, turning in the saddle to gaze after the vanishing horseman.

“Of course he ain’t!” almost barked Racey. “In this country fellers like Thompson don’t ride hellbent just to tell the sheriff and the coroner a feller has been killed. Murder ain’t any such e-vent as all that. Unless,” he added, thoughtfully, “Thompson is the stranger.”

“You mean Thompson might ‘a’ killed him?”

“I don’t think it would spoil his appetite any. You remember how fast he was pelting along down in the wash, and how he slowed up after seeing us? A murderer would act just thataway.”

Mr. Saltoun nodded. “A gent can’t do anything on guesswork,” he said, bromidically. “Facts are what count.”

“You’ll find before we get to the bottom of this business,” observed Racey, sagely, “that guesswork is gonna lead us to a whole heap of facts.”

“I hope so,” Mr. Saltoun said, uncomfortably conscious that the death of Dale might seriously complicate the lifting of the mortgage.

Racey was no less uncomfortable, and for the same reason. He felt sure that the killing of Dale had been inspired in order to settle once for all the future of the Dale ranch. No wonder Luke Tweezy had been so positive in his assertion that Old Man Saltoun would not lend any money to Dale. The latter had been marked for death at the time.

Despite the fact that Tweezy and Harpe were at last being seen together in public, thus indicating that the “deal,” to quote Pooley’s letter to Tweezy, had been “sprung,” Racey doubted that the murder formed part of Jacob Pooley’s “absolutely safe” plan for forcing out Dale. While in some ways the murder might be considered sufficiently safe, the method of it and the act itself did not smack of Pooley’s handiwork. It was much more probable that the killing was the climax of Luke Tweezy’s original plan adhered to by the attorney and his friends against the advice and wishes of Jacob Pooley.

“Guess we’d better go on to McFluke’s,” was Racey’s suggestion.

They went.

“Looks like they got back mighty soon from chasing the stranger,” said Racey, when they came in sight of the place, eying the number of horses tied to the hitching-rail.

“Maybe they got him quick,” Mr. Saltoun offered, sardonically.

They rode on and added their horses to the tail-switching string in front of the saloon. Racey did not fail to note that none of the other horses gave any evidence of having been ridden either hard or lately. Which, in the face of Thompson’s assertion that the men he left behind had ridden in pursuit of the murderer, seemed rather odd. Or perhaps it was not so odd, looking upon it from another angle.

The saloon, when they had ridden up, had been quiet as the well-known grave. It remained equally silent when they entered.

McFluke, behind the bar, wearing a black eye and a puffed nose, nodded to them civilly. In chairs ranged round the walls sat an assortment of men–Peaches Austin, Luke Tweezy, Jack Harpe, Doc Coffin, Honey Hoke, and Lanpher. The latter was nursing a slung right arm. They were all there, the men mentioned by name by Thompson as having been in the place when Dale was killed.

“What is this, a graveyard meetin’?” asked Racey of McFluke, glancing from the assembled multitude to McFluke and smiling slightly. It was no part of wisdom, thought Racey, to let these men know of his encounter with Thompson. He had Thompson’s story. He was anxious to hear theirs.

‘”A graveyard meeting,'” repeated the saloon-keeper. “Well, and that’s what it is in a manner of speaking.”

Racey stared. “I bite. What’s the answer?”

The saloon-keeper cleared his throat. “Old Dale’s been killed.”

“Has, huh? Who killed him?” Racey allowed his eyes casually to skim the expressionless faces of the men backed against the walls.

“A stranger killed him,” replied McFluke, heavily.

Racey removed his eyes from the slack-chinned countenance of the saloon-keeper to thin-faced, foxy-nosed Luke Tweezy. Luke’s little eyes met his.

“You saw this stranger, Luke?” he asked.

Luke Tweezy nodded. “We all saw him.”

“He was playing draw with Honey Hoke and Peaches Austin and me,” Doc Coffin offered, oilily.

“And the stranger?” amended Racey.

“And the stranger,” Doc Coffin accepted the amendment.

“What was the trouble?” pursued Racey.

“Well, we kind of thought”–Doc Coffin’s eyes slid round to cross an instant the shifty gaze of Peaches Austin–“we thought maybe this stranger dealt a card from the bottom. We ain’t none shore.”

“Dale said he did, anyhow,” said Peaches Austin.

“He said so twice,” put in Lanpher.

Racey turned deliberately. “You here,” said he, softly. “I didn’t see you at first. I must be getting nearsighted. You saw the whole thing, did you, Lanpher?”

“Yeah,” replied Lanpher.

“Who pulled first?”

“The stranger.” The answer came patly from at least five different men.

Racey looked grimly upon those present. “Most everybody seems shore the stranger’s to blame,” he observed. “Besides saying the stranger was dealing from the bottom did Dale use any other fighting words?”

“He called him a–tinhorn,” burst simultaneously from the lips of McFluke and Peaches Austin.

“Only two this time,” said Racey, shooting a swift glance at Jack Harpe and overjoyed to find the latter dividing a glare of disgust between McFluke and Austin. “But you’ll have to do better than that.”

Mr. Saltoun shivered inwardly. He was a man of courage, but not of foolhardy courage, the species of courage that dares death unnecessarily. He was getting on in years, and hoped, when it came his time to die, to pass out peacefully in his nightshirt. And here was that fool of a Racey practically telling Harpe and the other rascals that he was on to their game. No wonder Mr. Saltoun shivered. He expected matters to come to push of pike in a split second. So, being what he was, a fairly brave man in a tight corner, he put on a hard, confident expression and hooked his thumbs in his belt.

Racey Dawson spread his legs wide and laughed a reckless laugh. He felt reckless. He likewise felt for these men ranged before him the most venomous hate of which he was capable. These men had killed the father of Molly Dale. It did not matter whether any one or all of them had or had not committed the actual murder, they were wholly responsible for it. They had brought it about. He knew it. He knew it just as sure as he was a foot high. And as he looked upon them sitting there in flinty silence he purposed to make them pay, and pay to the uttermost. That the old man had been a gambler and a drunkard, and the world was undoubtedly a better world for his leaving it, were facts of no moment in Racey’s mind. He, Racey, was not one to condone either murder or injustice. And this murder and the injustice of it would cruelly hurt three women.

He laughed again, without mirth. His blue eyes, glittering through the slits of the drawn-down eyelids, were pin-points of wrath. His hard-bitten stare challenged his enemies. Damn them! let them shoot if they wanted to. He was ready. He, Racey Dawson, would show them a fight that would stack up as well as any of which a hard-fighting territory could boast. So, feeling as he did, Racey stared upon his enemies with a frosty, slit-eyed stare and mentally dared them to come to the scratch.

But in moments like these there is always one to say “Let’s go,” or give its equivalent, a sign. And that one is invariably the leader of one side or the other. Racey Dawson saw Luke Tweezy turn a slow head and look toward Jack Harpe. He saw Doc Coffin, Honey, and Austin, one after the other, do the same. But Jack Harpe sat immobile. He neither spoke nor gave a sign. Perhaps he did not consider the present a sufficiently propitious moment. No one knew what he thought. Had he known what the future held in store he might have gone after his gun.

Tense, nerves wire-drawn, Racey and Mr. Saltoun awaited the decision.

It came, and like many decisions, its form was totally unexpected. Jack Harpe looked at Racey and said smilelessly:

“Wanna view the remains?”

CHAPTER XX

DRAWING THE COVER

“You don’t understand it, do you, Peaches?” Racey inquired genially of Peaches Austin when he found himself neighbours with that slippery gentleman at the inquest.

Peaches shied away from Racey on general principles. He feared a catch. There were so many things about Racey that he did not understand.

“Whatcha talking about?” Peaches grunted, surlily.

“You–me–Chuck–everybody, more or less. You don’t, do you?”

“Don’t what?” A trifle more surlily.

“You don’t see how and why Chuck Morgan is so all-fired friendly with me, and how I’m a-riding for a good outfit like the Bar S, when the last you seen of me, Chuck was a-hazing me up the trail with my hands over my head. You don’t understand it none. I can see it in your light green eyes, Peaches.”

Peaches modestly veiled his pale green eyes beneath dropped lids and turned his head away. He would have given a great deal to go elsewhere. But to do that would be to make himself conspicuous, and there were many reasons, all more or less cogent, why he did not wish to make himself conspicuous. Peaches sat still on his chair and broke into a gentle perspiration.

Racey perceived the other’s discomfort and ached to increase it. “Did you stay here three-four days like I told you to that time a few weeks ago? And was Jack Harpe most Gawd-awful hot under the collar when you did see him final? And if so, what happened?”

Racey gaped at Peaches like an expectant terrier watching a rat-hole. It may be that Peaches felt like a holed rat in a hole too small for comfort. He turned on Racey with a flash of defiance.

“There was a feller once,” said Peaches, “who bit off more’n he could chew.”

“I’ve heard of him,” Racey admitted, gravely. “He was first cousin to the other feller that grabbed the bear by the tail.”

“I dunno whose first cousin he was,” frowned Peaches. “All I know is he didn’t show good sense.”

“Now that,” said Racey, “is where you and I don’t think alike. I may be wrong in what I think. I may have made a mistake, but I gotta be showed why and wherefore. Anybody is welcome to show me, Peaches, just anybody.”

Racey accompanied his remarks with a chilling look. The perspiration of Peaches turned clammy.

“Meaning?” Peaches queried.

“Meaning? Why, meaning that you can show me if you like, Peaches.”

This was too much for Peaches. He was out of his depth and unable to swim. He sank with a gurgle of, “I dunno what yo’re drivin’ at.”

Racey shook a sorrowful head. “I’m shore sorry to hear it. I was guessin’ you did. I had hopes of you, Peaches. You’ve done gimme a disappointment. Yep, she’s a cruel world when all’s said and done.”

This was too much for Peaches. He resolved to shift his seat whether it made him conspicuous or not. The gambler removed to a vacant windowsill, upon which he sat and looked anywhere but at Racey Dawson. That young man leaned back in his chair and surveyed the multitude.

Besides the citizens found in the saloon on his and Mr. Saltoun’s arrival there were now present Dolan, who combined with his office of justice of the peace that of coroner, and twelve good men and true, the coroner’s jury and most intimate friends, ready and willing at any and all times to serve the territory for ten dollars a day and expenses. In addition to this representative group Alicran Skeel had dropped in from nowhere, Chuck Morgan had driven over with a wagon from Soogan Creek (mercifully the family at Moccasin Spring had not yet been informed of their bereavement), and Sheriff Jake Rule and his deputy Kansas Casey had ridden out from Farewell. Punch-the-breeze Thompson had returned with the sheriff. Which circumstance either disposed of the theory that Thompson was the murderer, or else Thompson had more nerve than he was supposed to have. Racey began to nurse a distinct grievance against Thompson.

The main room of the saloon, into which the body had been brought from the back room, was a fog of smoke and a blabber of voices. McFluke had not been idle at the bar, and the coroner’s jury was three parts drunk. The members had not yet agreed on a verdict. But the delay was a mere matter of form. They always liked to stretch the time, and give the territory a good run for her money.

Racey Dawson, conscious that both Jack Harpe and Luke Tweezy were watching him covertly, rolled a meticulous cigarette. He scratched a match on the chair seat, held it to the end of the cigarette,