The Heart of the Range | Page 5

Nawsir."
"You got the drop," grumbled the burly youth.
"Which is one on you," Racey observed, good-humouredly.
"Maybe I'll be seein' you again," suggested the other.
"Don't lemme see you first," advised Racey. "Never mind getting up.
Just sit nice and quiet like a good boy, and keep the li'l hands spread
out all so pretty with the thumbs locked over yore head. 'At's the boy.
How much for yore dog, feller?"
"What you done to my dog?" A woman's voice broke on Racey's ears.
But he did not remove his slightly narrowed eyes from the face of the
burly youth.

"What you done to my dog?" The question was repeated, and the
speaker came close to the burly youth and looked down at him. Now
that the woman was within his range of vision Racey perceived that she
was the Happy Heart lookout, a good-looking creature with brown hair
and a lithe figure.
The girl's fists were clenched so tightly that her knuckles showed
whitely against the pink. Two red spots flared on the white skin of her
cheeks.
"Dam yore soul!" swore the lady. "I want my dog! 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 smoking
at the muzzle. The burly youth put a hand to his shoulder. The fingers
came away red. Racey was glad he had not killed him. He had not
intended to. But accidents will happen.
He stepped forward and kicked the burly youth's discarded sixshooter

into the middle of the street. He looked about him. The girl and her dog
had vanished.
Kansas Casey had taken her place apparently. From windows and
doorways along the street peered interested faces. One knew that they
were interested despite their careful lack of all expression. It is never
well to openly express approval of a shooting. The shooter undoubtedly
has friends, and little breaches of etiquette are always remembered.
Racey Dawson looked at Kansas Casey and shoved his sixshooter
down into its holster.
"It was an even break," announced Racey.
"Shore," Kansas nodded. "I seen it. There'll be no trouble--from us," he
added, significantly.
The deputy sheriff knelt beside the wounded man. Racey Dawson went
into