're about it."

"Nobody can kick me and get away with it!" Bull declared,
passionately. "I'll--"

"Maybe you will, but not in a hurry. You start out after him now, and
you wouldn't last as long as a short drink in a roomful of drunkards.
Didn't you hear about Dawson's li'l run-in with Nebraska?"

"Hell, I _seen_ it!"

"You seen it, huh? And you _know_ what he done to you to-day, and
still you wanna paint for war now and immediate? No, Bully, not
a-tall. You listen to me. I got a better plan. A whole lot better
plan. Lookit...."

CHAPTER IX

THROWING SAND

After leaving the Starlight, on their way back to the hotel, Racey
said to Swing Tunstall: "Might as well tell Jack Harpe now we ain't
gonna ride for him, huh?"

"Oh, shore," Swing sighed resignedly. "Have it yore own way! Have it
yore own way! I never seen such a feller as you for gettin' his own
way in all my life."

"Yo're young yet--maybe you will," said Racey, consolingly. "So don't
get discouraged."

They did not find Jack Harpe at the hotel, nor was he at the Happy
Heart. But in the saloon Luke Tweezy was drinking by himself at one
end of the bar. Perhaps the money-lender would know the whereabouts of
Jack Harpe.

"'Lo, Luke," was Racey's greeting. "Seen Jack Harpe around anywheres?"

Luke Tweezy's thin and sandy eyebrows lifted up in what would pass
with almost any one for surprise. "Who?"

"Jack Harpe."

"Dunno him." Indifferently--too indifferently.

"You dunno him--long, slim feller, black hair and eyes, and a hawky
kind of nose? Jack Harpe. Shore you know him. Why, I seen--" Racey
broke off abruptly.

"Yeah," prompted Luke Tweezy after an interval. "You seen--what?"

"I don't see why you dunno him," parried Racey (it was a weak parry,
but the best he could encompass at the moment). "I thought you knowed
him. Somebody told me you did. My mistake. No harm done. Have a drink,
Luke."

"Who told you I knowed this here now Jack Harpe?" probed Luke Tweezy,
when he had smacked his lips over a second drink.

"I don't remember now," evaded Racey Dawson. "What does it matter?"

"It don't matter," was the answer--the miffed answer it seemed to
Racey. "It don't matter a-tall. Have one on me, boys. Don't be afraid
to fill 'em up. They's plenty more on the back shelf when this one's
empty."

They filled and drank, filled and drank. Swing thought that he had
never seen Racey overtaken by liquor so quickly. In no time he was
telling Lu