d, modestly.

"No," the stranger said, decidedly. "Yo're all right, Punch. But even
if we can get old Chin Whisker drunk, the hand has gotta be quicker
than the eye. Y' understand?"

Thompson, it appeared, did understand. He grunted sulkily.

"We'll have to give Peaches Austin a show," resumed the stranger.
"Nemmine giving me a argument, Punch. I said I'd use Austin. C'mon,
le's go get a drink."

The three men moved away. Racey Dawson cautiously eased his long body
up from behind the pony. With slightly narrowed eyes he stared at the
gate behind which Jack Harpe and his two friends had been standing.

"Now I wonder," mused Racey Dawson, "I shore am wonderin' what kind of
skulduggery li'l Mr. Lanpher of the 88 is a-trying to crawl out of and
what Mr. Stranger is a-trying to drag him into. Nebraska, too, huh? I
was wondering what that feller's name was."

He knelt down again and swiftly completed the bandaging of the cut on
the pony's near fore.

As he rode round the corner of the hotel to reach Main Street he saw
Luke Tweezy single-footing into town from the south. The powdery dust
of the trail filled in and overlaid the lines and creases of Luke
Tweezy's foxy-nosed and leathery visage. Layers of dust almost
completely concealed the original colour of the caked and matted hide
of Luke Tweezy's well-conditioned horse. It was evident that Luke
Tweezy had come from afar.

In common with most range riders Racey Dawson possessed an automatic
eye to detail. Quite without conscious effort his brain registered
and filed away in the card-index of his subconscious mind the picture
presented by the passing of Luke Tweezy, the impression made
thereby, and the inference drawn therefrom. The inference was almost
trivial--merely that Luke Tweezy had come from Marysville, the town
where he lived and had his being. But triviality is frequently
paradoxical and always relative. If Dundee had not raised an arm to
urge his troopers on at Killiekrankie the world would know a different
England. A single thread it was that solved for Theseus the mystery of
the Cretan labyrinth.

Racey Dawson did not like Luke Tweezy. From the sparse and sandy
strands of the Tweezy hair to the long and varied lines of the Tweezy
business there was nothing about Mr. Tweezy that he did like. For Luke
Tweezy's business was ready money and its possibilities. He drove hard
bargains with his neighbours and harder ones with strangers. He bought
county scrip