ess the point. He smiled widely instead.

"We weren't talking about her, for a fact," he assented. "Coming right
down to cases, we'd oughta be about done talking, oughtn't we?"

"Depends," said Racey. "It all depends. I'd just like folks to know
that I'd take it a heap personal if any tough luck came to old Dale
and his ranch."

"Meanin'?"

"What I said. No more. No less."

"What you said can be took more ways than one."

"What do you care?" flashed Racey. "What I said concerns only the gent
or gents who are fixing to colddeck old Dale. Nobody else a-tall. So
what do you care?"

"I don't. Not a care, not a care. Only--only one thing. Mister Man, if
you're aiming to drynurse old Dale you're gonna have yore paws most
awful full of man's size work. Leastaways, that's the way she looks
to a man up a tree. Me, I'm a great hand for mindin' my own business,
but--"

"Yo're like Luke Tweezy thataway," cut in Racey. "That's what he's
always doing."

"Who's Luke Tweezy?"

"So you've learned yore lesson," chuckled Racey. "It was about time.
Guess you must 'a' bothered Luke Tweezy some when you spoke to him
that day in front of the Happy Heart just before you and Lanpher
crawled yore cayuses and rode to Dale's on Soogan Creek.... Don't
remember, huh? I do. You said, 'See you later, Luke,' and he didn't
speak back. Just kept on untying his hoss and keeping his head bent
down like he hadn't heard a word you said. 'S'funny, huh?"

"Damfunny," assented Jack Harpe with an odd smoothness.

"Yeah, you fellers that don't know each other are all of that. Tell me
something, do you meet in the cemetery by a dead nigger's grave in the
dark of the moon at midnight or what? I'm free to admit I'm puzzled.
She's all a heap too mysterious for me."

"Crazy talk," commented Jack Harpe. "You been wallowing in the
nosepaint and letting yore imagination run on the range too much."

"Maybe," Racey said, equably. "Maybe. You can't tell. As a young one I
had a powerful imagination. I might have it yet."

Jack Harpe gazed long and silently at Racey Dawson. The latter
returned the stare with interest. With the sixth sense possessed by
most men who live in a country where the law and the sixshooter are
practically synonymous terms, Racey was conscious that Marie, the
Happy Heart Lookout, had suddenly drifted up to his left flank and now
stood with arms akimbo on the inner edge of the sidewalk. Her body
was turned partly toward him but her h