The Heart of the Range | Page 7

listen to me. Yo're in this as deep as I am. If you think you ain't, try to pull yore wagon out. Just try it, thassall."
"I ain't doing none of the work, that's flat," Lanpher denied, doggedly.
"You gotta back me up alla same," declared the stranger.
"That wasn't in the bargain," fenced Lanpher.
"It is now," chuckled the stranger. "If I lose, you lose, too. Lookit," he added in a more conciliatory tone, "can't you see how it is? I need you, an' you need me. All I'm asking of you is to back me up when I want you to. Outside of that you can sit on yore shoulder-blades and enjoy life."
"We didn't bargain on that," harked back Lanpher.
"But that was then, and this is now. Which may not be logic, but it is necessity, an' Necessity, Mr. Lanpher, is the mother of all kinds of funny things. So you and I we got to ride together."
Lanpher pushed back his hat and looked over the hills and far away. The well-known carking care was written large upon his countenance.
Slowly his eyes slid round to meet for a brief moment the eyes of his companion.
"I can't answer for my men," said Lanpher, shortly.
"Can you answer for yoreself?" inquired the stranger quickly.
"I'll back you up." Grudgingly.
"Then that's all right. You can keep the men from throwing in with the other side, anyway, can't you?"
"I can do that much."
"Which is quite a lot for a ranch manager to be able to do," was the stranger's blandly sarcastic observation. "C'mon. We've gassed so much I'm dry as a covered bridge. I--What does Thompson want now? 'Lo, Punch."
"'Lo, Jack. Howdy, Lanpher." Racey could not see the newcomer, but he recognized the voice. It was that of Punch-the-breeze Thompson, a gentleman well known to make his living by the ingenious capitalization of an utter lack of moral virtue. "Say, Jack," continued Thompson, "Nebraska has been plugged."
"Plugged?" Great amazement on the part of the stranger.
"Plugged."
"Who done it?"
"Feller by the name of Dawson."
"Racey Dawson?" nipped in Lanpher.
"Yeah, him."
Lanpher chuckled slightly.
"Why the laugh?" asked Jack Harpe.
"I'd always thought Nebraska could shoot."
"Nebraska is supposed to be some swift," admitted the stranger. "How'd it happen, Punch?"
Thompson told him, and on the whole, gave a truthful account.
"What kind of feller is this Dawson?" the stranger inquired after a moment's silence following the close of the story.
"A skipjack of a no-account cow-wrastler," promptly replied Lanpher. "He thinks he's hell on the Wabash."
"Allasame he must be old pie to put the kybosh on Nebraska thataway."
"Luck," sneered Lanpher. "Just luck."
"Is he square?" probed the stranger.
"Square as a billiard-ball," said Lanpher. "Why, Jack, he's so crooked he can't lay in bed straight."
At which Racey Dawson was moved to rise and declare himself. Then the humour of it struck him. He grinned and hunkered down, his ears on the stretch.
"Well," said the stranger, refraining from comment on Lanpher's estimate of the Dawson qualities, "we'll have to get somebody in Nebraska's place."
"I'm as good as Nebraska," Punch-the-breeze Thompson stated, 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