! How many tunes I
gotta ask you, huh? Where is he? Say somethin', you dumb lump of slum
gullion!"

"He ain't yore dog!" denied the burly youth. "He never was yores! He's
mine, you--!"

Which last was putting it pretty strongly, even for the time, the
place, and the girl. She promptly swung a brisk right toe, kicked the
burly youth under the chin, and flattened him out.

"That'll learn you to call me names!" she snarled. "So long as I act
like a lady, I'm a-gonna be treated like one, and I'll break the neck
of the man who acts different, and you can stick a pin in that, you
dirty-mouthed beast!"

Muttering profanely true to form, the aforementioned beast essayed to
rise. But here again Racey and his ready gun held him to the ground in
a sitting position.

"You leave her alone," commanded Racey. "You got what was coming to
yuh. Let it go at that. The lady says it's her dog, anyway."

"It's my dog, I tell yuh! I--"

"Yo're a liar!" averred the girl. "You kicked the dog out when he was
sick, and I took him in and tended him and got him well. If that don't
make him my dog what does?"

"Correct," said Racey. "Call him."

The girl put two fingers in her mouth and whistled shrilly. Forth from
the Canton came the dog on the jump and bounced into the girl's arms
and began to lick her ear with despatch and enthusiasm.

"You see how it is," Racey indicated to the man on the ground. "It's
the lady's dog. You can go now."

The burly youth stared stupidly.

"You heard what I said," Racey told him, impatiently. "G'on. Go
some'ers else. Get outa here."

"Say," remarked the burly youth in what was intended to be a menacing
growl, "this party ain't over yet."

"Ain't you been enough of a fool already to-day?" interrupted Racey.
"You ain't asking for it, are you?"

"You can't run no blazer on me," denied the other, furiously.

Racey promptly holstered his sixshooter. "Now's yore best time," he
said, quietly.

When the smoke cleared away there was a rent in the sleeve of Racey's
shirt and the burly youth sat rocking his body to and fro and groaning
through gritted teeth. For there was a red-hot hole in his right
shoulder which hurt him considerably.

Racey Dawson gazed dumbly down at the muzzle of his sixshooter from
which a slim curl of gray smoke spiralled lazily upward. Then his eyes
veered to the man he had shot and to the man's sixshooter lying on the
edge of the sidewalk. It, too, like his own gun, was thinly