" he put in, hurriedly. "I ain't shaved since I left the
Bend, and I slept mostly on my face last night, but it's li'l ol' me
all right behind the whiskers and real estate. Yeah, that's the hoss
yonder--the one next the pinto."

"I know the horse," said Miss Blythe, drawing back from the doorway.
"It belongs to the Dales over at Medicine Spring on Soogan Creek."

"Oh, I know _them_," Racey declared, confidently (he had been at the
Dales' precisely once). "The girl married Chuck Morgan. Shore, Mis'
Dale's hoss, huh? I'll take it right back soon's I get shaved. I
s'pose I'll have a jomightyful time explaining it to the old lady."

"It isn't the mother's horse. It's the daughter's. She was in town
yesterday."

"You mean Chuck's wife, Mis' Morgan?"

"I mean _Miss_ Molly Dale, the _other_ daughter."

"I didn't know they had another daughter," puzzled Racey, thinking of
what Piney Jackson had said anent an "old lady." "They must 'a' kept
her in the background when I was there that time. What is she--a old
maid?"

"Oh, middle-aged, perhaps," was the straight-faced reply.

"Shucks, I might have known it," grumbled Racey; "middle-aged old
maid! I know what they're like. I had one once for a school-teacher. I
can feel her lickings yet. She was the contrariest female I ever met.
Shucks, I--Well, if I gotta, I gotta. Might's well get it over with
now as later. Thanks, ma'am, for helping me out."

Racey Dawson shambled dejectedly forth to effect the feeding of Miss
Molly Dale's horse at the hotel corral. For his own breakfast he went
to Sing Luey's Canton Restaurant. Because while Bill Lainey offered
no objections to feeding the horse, Mrs. Lainey utterly refused to
provide snacks at odd hours for good-for-nothing, stick-a-bed punchers
who were too lazy to eat at the regular meal-time. So there, now.

"But I ain't gonna shave," he told himself, as he disposed of fried
steak and potatoes sloshed down by several cups of coffee. "If she's a
old maid like they say it don't matter how tough I look."

He was reflectively stirring the grounds in the bottom of his sixth
cup when a small and frightened yellow dog dashed into the restaurant
and fled underneath Racey's table, where he cowered next to Racey's
boots and cuddled a lop-eared head against Racey's knee.

Racey had barely time to glance down and discover that the yellow
nondescript was no more than a pup when a burly youth charged into
the restaurant and demanded in no