"But I dunno what I'm talkin' about," pointed out Racey. "I make mistakes, you know that. And you were so shore nothin' was gonna happen. Are you still shore?"
"Well—" hesitated Mr. Saltoun.
"If you take us up you stand to be in the wages of two punchers for six months. That's four hundred and eighty dollars. Almost five hundred dollars. Of course, it's a chance. What ain't, I'd like to know? But yo're so shore she's gonna keep on come-day-go-day like always, that I'd oughta have odds."
"Five to one," mused Mr. Saltoun, pulling at the ends of his gray mustache.
"And fair enough—seeing that nothing is going to happen."
"I wouldn't do it," put in Tom Loudon. "These trick bets are unlucky."
"Oh, I dunno," said Mr. Saltoun, running true to form in that he rarely took kindly to advice. "Looks like a good chance to get six months' work out of two men for nothing."
"Looks like a good chance to lose twenty-four hundred dollars," exclaimed Tom Loudon, wrathfully.
"My Gawd, Tom," said Mr. Saltoun, cocking a grizzled eyebrow, "you don't mean to tell me you think they's any chance a-tall of Racey's winning this bet, do you?"
"They's just about ten times more chance for him to win than to lose."
"Tom, do you ever see any li'l pink lizards with blue tails an' red feet? I hear that's a sign, too."
"Aw right, have it yore own way," said Tom Loudon with every symptom of disgust. "Only don't say I didn't warn you."
"Gawd, Tom, y' old wet blanket, yo're always a-warnin' me. I never see such a feller."
"Aw right, I said. Aw right. But when yo're a-writin' out a check for twenty-four hundred dollars, just remember how I always told you somebody was gonna horn in here some day and glom half the range."
"Laugh," said Mr. Saltoun. "Yo're shore the jokin'est feller, TomLoudon. Even Racey and his partner are laughing."
"I should think they would," Tom Loudon returned, savagely. "I'd laugh, too, if I stood to win twenty-four hundred in six months."
Mr. Saltoun shook a whimsical head at Racey Dawson. "Whatsa use?" he asked, sorrowfully. "Whatsa use?"
* * * * *
"You was too easy with him," declared Swing, as he and Racey were unsaddling at the Bar S corral. "You could 'a' stuck him for three hundred a month just as easy."
Racey shook a decided head. "No, there's a limit even to Old Salt's stubbornness. I know him better'n you do … Aw, what you kicking about? We've got enough coin in our overalls to last out six months if you don't drink too much."
"If I don't drink too much, hey! IfIdon't drink too much! Which I like that. Who's—"
"Racey," interrupted Tom Loudon, who had approached unperceived, "this is a fine way to treat yore friends."
"What's bitin' you?"
"You hadn't oughta take advantage of Old Salt thisaway."
"And why not? What's wrong with the bet? Fair bet. Leave it to anybody."
"Shore, shore, but alla same, Racey, you'd oughta gone a li'l easy.Twenty-four hundred dollars—"
"What's the dif? You won't have to pay it."
"'Tsall right, but I didn't think it of you, damfi did. You know howOld Salt is—always certain shore he's right, and you took advantage."
"Shore I took advantage," Racey acquiesced, amiably. "I got sense, I have. Alla same, he'd never 'a' taken me up if you hadn't slipped in yore li'l piece of advice for him not to. That was a bad play, Tom. You might know he'd go dead against you. But I ain't complaining, not me. Nor Swing ain't, either. We'll thank you for yore helping hand to our dying day."
"I guess you will," Tom Loudon said, ruefully. "When you get through here, Racey, you and Swing come on over to the wagon shed. I wanna sift through this Jack Harpe business once more."
"Kind friends, you must pity my horrible tale.I'm an object of sorrow, I'm looking quite stale.I gone up my trade selling Pink's Patent PillsTo go hunting gold in the dreary Black Hills."
"I wish to Gawd you'd stayed there," said Jimmie, the Bar S cook, pausing in his march past to poke his head in at the bunkhouse doorway. "Honest, Racey, don't you ever get tired of yell-bellerin' thisaway?"
Racey Dawson, standing in front of the mirror, ceased not to adjust his necktie. The mirror was small and he was not, and it was only by dint of much wriggling that he was succeeding in his purpose. To Jimmie and his question he paid absolutely no attention.
"Don't go away, stay at home if you can, Stay away from that city, they call it Cheyenne."
"Seemin'ly he don't get tired," Jimmie answered the question for himself. "And what's more, he don't ever get tired of dandy-floppin' himself all up like King Solomon's pet pony. Yup," Jimmie continued with enthusiasm, addressing the world at large, "I can remember when Racey used to ride for the 88 and the Cross-in-a-box how he was a regular two-legged human being. A handkerchief round his neck was good enough for himalways. If his pants had a rip in 'em anywheres, or they was buttons off his vest, or his shirt was tore, did it matter? No, it didn't matter. It didn't matter a-tall. But now he's gotta buy new pants if his old ones is tore, and a new shirt besides, and he sews the buttons on his vest, and he's took to wearin' a necktie. Anecktie!"
Jimmie, words failing him for the moment, paused and hooked one foot comfortably behind the other. He leaned hipshot against the doorjamb, and spat accurately through a knothole in the bunkhouse floor.
"Yop," he went on, ramming his quid into the angle of his jaw, "and he's always admiring himself in the mirror, Racey is. He pats his hair down, after partin' it and usin' enough goose-grease on it to keep forty guns from rusting for ten years, and he shines his boots with blacking,mystove-blacking, the rustling scoundrel. Scrouge southwest a li'l more, Racey, and look at yore chin. They's a li'l speck of dust on it. Oh, me, oh, my! Li'l sweetheart will have to wash his face again. Who is she?"
Still Racey did not deign to reply. He placed, removed, and replaced a garnet stickpin in the necktie a dozen times handrunning. Jimmie beat the long roll with his knuckles on the bottom of the frying-pan, and winked at the broad back of Racey Dawson.
"I hear they's a new hasher at Bill Lainey's hotel," pursued the indefatigable Jimmie. "Tim Page told me she only weighed three hundred pounds without her shoes. It ain't her! Don't tell me it's her! You ain't, are you, Racey?"
Racey, pivoting on a spurred heel, faced Jimmie, stuck his arms akimbo, and spoke:
"Not mentioning any names, of course, but there's some people round here got an awful lot to say. Which if a gent was to say their tongues are hung in the middle he'd be only tellin' half the truth. Not that you ain't popular with me, James. You are. I think the world of you. How can I help it when you remind me all the time of my aunt's pet parrot in yore face and language. Except you ain't the right colour. If yore whiskers had only grown out green."
"We're forgetting what we was talkin' about," tucked in Jimmie the cook, smiling sweetly. "The lady, Racey. Who is she?"
"James," said Racey, his smile matching that of the cook, "they's something about you to-day, something I don't like. I dunno the name for it exactly. But if you'll step inside the bunkhouse a minute, I'll show you what I mean. I'll show you in two shakes."
Jimmie shook a wise head and backed out into the open. "Not while I got my health. You come out here and show me."
"Oh, I ain't gonna play any tricks on you," protested Racey Dawson.
"You bet you ain't," Jimmie concurred, warmly. "Not by severial jugfuls. I—" He broke off, cocking a listening ear.
"Yeah," grinned Racey, "you hear a noise in the cook-shack, huh? IthoughtI saw the Kid slide past in the lookin'-glass while you were standing in the doorway."
"And you never told me!" squalled Jimmie, speeding toward his beloved place of business.
He reached it rather late. When he entered by the doorway the Kid, a pie in each hand, was disappearing through a back window.
"Did you ever get left!" tossed back the Kid as the flung frying-pan buzzed past his ear.—"Now see what you done," he continued, skipping safely out of range; "dented yore nice new frypan all up. You oughtn'ta done that, Jimmie. Fry-pans cost money. Some day, if you ain't careful, you'll break something, you and yore temper."
"Them's the Old Man's pies," declared Jimmie, leaning over the window-sill and shaking an indignant fist at the Kid. "You bring 'em back, you hear?"
"They ain't, and I won't, and I do," was the brisk answer. "Yo're making a big mistake, Jimmie boy, if you think they'rehispies. Don't you s'pose I know he's gone to Piegan City, and he won't be back for a coupla weeks? And don't you s'pose I know them pies would be too stale for him to eat by the time he got back? You must take me for a fool, Jimmie. And you lied to me, Jimmie, you lied. Just for that I'll keep these pies, I'll keep 'em and eat 'em no matter how big a pain I get, and let this be a lesson to you. Hey, Racey, Jimmie gimme a coupla pies! C'mon out and we'll eat 'em where Jimmie can watch us."
"If I catch you—" began the angry Jimmie.
"But you ain't gonna catch me," tantalized the Kid. "C'mon, Racey, hurry up."
Racey came slowly and with dignity.
The Kid stared. "Well, I bedam! Where are you goin'?"
"Ride, just a li'l ride," was the vague reply.
"Is that all? I thought it was a funeral or a wedding or something, an' I was wonderin'. Just a li'l ride, huh? And where might you be a-going to ride to, if I may make so bold as to ask?"
"You can ask, of course," replied Racey, shrugging his wide shoulders and spreading his hands after the fashion of Telescope Laguerre.
"But that ain't sayin' he'll tell you," put in Jimmie. "Bet you he's gonna go see that new hasher of Bill Lainey's."
"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 araisinpie!"
"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 overCuter'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 byRacey 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 yoreface, 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 toRacey. "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 tellmeI'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."
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 rustlethishoss?" 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. AndJake 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 morewithout 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 uslately."
"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 onlyheardhe'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 atRacey. "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 toLanpher.
"How could we?" asked Rod Rockwell, glancing up from the bandaging ofLanpher'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 RaceyDawson. 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 werebothgonna 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."