The Heart of the Range | Page 4

at the
Bend. Jack Richie knows me. I ain't crazy--honest."
For Miss Blythe continued to look doubtful. "I--" she began.
"Lookit," he interrupted, "yesterday I got a heap drunk an' I rode off on
somebody's hoss without meaning to--I mean I thought it was my hoss
and it wasn't. An' I thought maybe you'd tell me who the hoss belongs
to so's I can return him and get mine back. She took mine, they tell me.
Not that I blame her a mite," he added, hastily.
Pretty Miss Blythe smiled suddenly. "I did hear something about a
switch in horses yesterday afternoon," she admitted. "But I thought Mr.
Flynn said Tom Dowling was the man's name. Certainly I remember
you now, Mr. Dawson, although at first your--your beard--"
"Yeah, I know," he put in, hurriedly. "I ain't shaved since I left the
Bend, and I slept mostly on my face last night, but it's li'l ol' me all
right behind the whiskers and real estate. Yeah, that's the hoss
yonder--the one next the pinto."
"I know the horse," said Miss Blythe, drawing back from the doorway.
"It belongs to the Dales over at Medicine Spring on Soogan Creek."
"Oh, I know _them_," Racey declared, confidently (he had been at the
Dales' precisely once). "The girl married Chuck Morgan. Shore, Mis'
Dale's hoss, huh? I'll take it right back soon's I get shaved. I s'pose I'll
have a jomightyful time explaining it to the old lady."
"It isn't the mother's horse. It's the daughter's. She was in town
yesterday."
"You mean Chuck's wife, Mis' Morgan?"
"I mean Miss Molly Dale, the other daughter."
"I didn't know they had another daughter," puzzled Racey, thinking of
what Piney Jackson had said anent an "old lady." "They must 'a' kept

her in the background when I was there that time. What is she--a old
maid?"
"Oh, middle-aged, perhaps," was the straight-faced reply.
"Shucks, I might have known it," grumbled Racey; "middle-aged old
maid! I know what they're like. I had one once for a school-teacher. I
can feel her lickings yet. She was the contrariest female I ever met.
Shucks, I--Well, if I gotta, I gotta. Might's well get it over with now as
later. Thanks, ma'am, for helping me out."
Racey Dawson shambled dejectedly forth to effect the feeding of Miss
Molly Dale's horse at the hotel corral. For his own breakfast he went to
Sing Luey's Canton Restaurant. Because while Bill Lainey offered no
objections to feeding the horse, Mrs. Lainey utterly refused to provide
snacks at odd hours for good-for-nothing, stick-a-bed punchers who
were too lazy to eat at the regular meal-time. So there, now.
"But I ain't gonna shave," he told himself, as he disposed of fried steak
and potatoes sloshed down by several cups of coffee. "If she's a old
maid like they say it don't matter how tough I look."
He was reflectively stirring the grounds in the bottom of his sixth cup
when a small and frightened yellow dog dashed into the restaurant and
fled underneath Racey's table, where he cowered next to Racey's boots
and cuddled a lop-eared head against Racey's knee.
Racey had barely time to glance down and discover that the yellow
nondescript was no more than a pup when a burly youth charged into
the restaurant and demanded in no uncertain tones to know where that
adjective dog had hidden himself.
Racey took an instant dislike to the burly youth, still--it was his dog.
And it is a custom of the country to let every man, as the saying is, skin
his own deer. He that takes exception to this custom and horns in on
what cannot rightfully be termed his particular business, will find
public opinion dead against him and his journey unseasonably full of
incident.

Racey moved a leg. "This him, stranger?"
The burly youth (it was evident that he was not wholly sober) glared at
Racey Dawson. "Shore it's him!" he declared. "Whatell you hidin' him
for? Get outa the way!"
Whereupon the burly youth advanced upon Racey.
This was different. Oh, quite. The burly youth had by his brusque
manner and rude remarks included Racey in his (the burly youth's)
business.
Racey met the burly youth rather more than halfway. He hit him so
hard on the nose that the other flipped backward through the doorway
and landed on his ear on the sidewalk.
Racey followed him out. The burly youth, bleeding copiously from the
nose, sat up and fumbled uncertainly for his gun.
"No," said Racey with decision, aiming his sixshooter at the word.
"You leave that gun alone, and lemme tell you, stranger, while we're
together, that I want to buy that pup of yores. A gent like you ain't fit
company for a self-respecting dog to associate with.