ng a bath!" Racey denied ungraciously. "I do
this for fun and my health twice a day--once on Sundays."

"Well, it must 'a' been a heap funny whatever it was, or Swing
wouldn't be laughin' so hard. Yeah. Lookit, Racey--I meant to catch
you at breakfast, but you was through before I got back from Mike
Flynn's--lookit, I wish you'd go a li'l slow when yo're roughhousin'
round in my place. Rack Slimson, my most payin' customer, hadda sleep
on the dinin' room table all night because you druv him out of his
room."

"Bill, that was a joke," Racey intoned, solemnly. "I didn't like the
way the feller snored. Likewise he had too much to say. So naturally I
had to make him take it on the run. What else could I do? I ask you,
what else could I do?"

"Don't you believe him, Bill," cut in Swing, fearful that Racey would
get credit for an effort at humour where, in his own estimation, none
was due. "Racey hasn't got the guts to pick a fuss with a pack rat. It
was me that chased Rack Slimson downstairs."

"That's right," Racey assented, smoothly, suddenly mindful both of a
peculiar gleam in Bill Lainey's eye and a chance sentence uttered by
the hasher in his hearing at breakfast. "That's right. It was Swing
Tunstall what made so free and outrageous with Rack Slimson. You
go and crawl Swing's hump, Bill. Lord knows he needs it. He's been
getting awful brash and uppity lately. No living with him. Give him
hell, Bill."

"I don't wanna give nobody hell. Live at peace is my motto. All I
wanna know is who's gonna settle for six cups, eleven sassers, ten
plates, and a middle-size pitcher Rack Slimson busted when he rolled
off the table with 'em durin' the night. I don't think Rack oughta
hafta pay, because he wouldn't 'a' had to sleep there on the table
only bein' druv out thataway he couldn't help it like."

"Huh--how much, Bill?" inquired Swing in a still small voice, and
thrust his hand within his pocket.

"Well, seein' as it's you, Swing," was the prompt reply, "I'll only
say ten dollars and six bits. And that's dirt cheap. Honest, I'll bet
it'll cost me fifteen dollars and a half to replace 'em, what with the
scandalous prices we got now."

"And I hope that'll make you a better boy, Swing," said Racey,
observing with relish the transfer of real money from Swing's hand to
the landlord's palm. "There's such a thing, Swing, old settler, as
being too quick, as whirling too wide a loop as the man said when he
roped the locomotive.