own Judge Allison to move briskly on occasion.

Racey, moving steadily ahead, slid past someone's barn and opened up
a view of the dance hall. It had previously been concealed from his
sight by the high posts and rails of three corrals. The dance hall was
going full blast. At least all the windows were bright with light. He
was too far away to hear the fiddles.

The dance hall! He might have known it would still be operating at
midnight. But it was almost twice as far from the Tweezy house to the
dance hall as it was from the Judge's house to Tweezy's. That was
something. Indeed it was a great deal. But he would have to work
fast. All the neighbours would come bouncing out at the crash of the
explosion.

Racey paused to flatten an ear at the kitchen door. He heard nothing,
and tiptoed along the wall to the window of the room next the kitchen.
The ground plan of the house was almost an exact square. There was a
room in each angle. The office, which Racey knew contained the safe,
was diagonally across from the kitchen.

Racey, halting at the window of the room next the kitchen, was
somewhat surprised to find it open. He stuck in his head and saw a
faint glow beyond the half-closed door of the office. The glow seemed
to be brighter near the floor. Racey listened intently. He heard a
faint grumble and now and then a squeak.

He crouched beneath the window and removed his boots. Then he crawled
over the sill and hunkered down on the uncarpeted floor. The floor
boards did not creak. Still crouching, his arms extended in front of
him, he made his way silently across the room, skirting safely in the
process two chairs and a table, and stood upright behind the crack of
the door.

Looking through the crack he perceived that the glow he had seen from
the window emanated from a tin can pierced with several holes. The
dim, uncertain light revealed the figure of a tall and hatless man
kneeling beside the safe. The man's back was toward the lighted tin
can. One of the tall man's hands was slowly turning the knob of the
combination. The side of the man's head was pressed against the front
of the safe near the combination. Racey could not see the man's face.

Across the window of the room two blankets had been hung. The door
into the other front room was open. Then suddenly the doorway was no
longer a black void. A man stood there--a fat man with a stomach that
hung out over the waistband of his trousers. There was something ver