The Heart of the Range Part 21

He proceeded to wait. He waited quite a while. The afternoon drained away. The sun set. In the dusk of the evening Racey heard footsteps.

Swing Tunstall. He'd know his step anywhere. The individual making the footsteps came to the doorway of the barn, halted an instant, then walked in. Almost at once he stumbled over the boots. Then Racey sprang upon his back with a joyous shout and slammed him headforemost over the wagon-seat into the pile of hay.

The man swore--and the voice was not that of Swing Tunstall. On the heels of this unwelcome discovery Racey made another. The man had dragged out a knife from under his armpit, and was squirmingly endeavouring to make play with it. Racey's intended practical joke on Swing Tunstall was in a fair way to become a tragedy on himself.

There was no time to make explanations, even had Racey been so inclined. The man was strong and the knife was long--and presumably sharp. Racey, pinioning his opponent's knife arm with one hand and his teeth, flashed out his gun and smartly clipped the man over the head with the barrel.

Instantly, so far as an active partic.i.p.ation in the affair of the moment, the man ceased to function. He lay limp as a sodden moccasin, and breathed stertorously. Racey knelt at his side and laid his hand on the top of the man's head. The palm came away warmly wet. Racey replaced his gun in its holster and pulled the senseless one out on the barn floor near the doorway where he could see him better.

The man was Luke Tweezy.

Racey sat down and began to pull on his boots. There was nothing to be gained by remaining in the barn. Tweezy was not badly hurt. The blow on the head had resulted, so far as Racey could discover (later he was to learn that his diagnosis had been correct), in a mere scalp wound.

Racey, when his boots were on, picked up his hat. At least he thought it was his hat. When he put it on, however, it proved a poor fit. He had taken Tweezy's hat by mistake. He dropped it on the floor and turned to pick up his own where it lay behind the wagon-seat.

But, as we wheeled, a flicker of white showed inside the crown of Tweezy's hat where it lay on the floor. Racey swung back, stooped down, and turned out the leather sweatband of Tweezy's hat, at the edge of which had been revealed the bit of white.

The latter proved to be one corner of a folded letter. Without the least compunction Racey tucked this letter into the breast pocket of his flannel s.h.i.+rt. Then he set about searching Tweezy's clothing with thoroughness. But other than the odds and odds usually to be found in a man's pockets there was nothing to interest the searcher.

Racey carefully turned back the sweatband of the hat, placed the headpiece on top of the wagon-seat, and departed. He went as far as the Happy Heart corral. Behind the corral he sat down on his heels, and took out the letter he had purloined from Luke Tweezy. He opened the envelope and read the finger-marked enclosure by the light of matches s.h.i.+elded behind his hat. The letter ran:

DEAR FRIEND LUKE:

I don't think much of your plan. Too dangerous. The Land Office is getting stricter every day. This thing must be absolutely legal in every way. You can't bull ahead and trust to luck there aren't any holes. There mustn't be any holes, not a d.a.m.n hole. Try my plan, the one I discussed so thoroughly with you last week. It will take longer, perhaps, but it is absolutely safe. You must learn to be more careful with the law from now on, Luke. I know what I'm talking about.

I tell you plainly if you don't accept my scheme and work to it religiously I'm out of the deal absolutely. I'm not going to risk my liberty because of other people's foolhardiness.

Show this letter to Jack Harpe, and let me know your decision.

Another thing, impress upon Jack the necessity of you two keeping publicly apart until after the deal is sprung. When you talk to him go off somewheres where no one will see you. I heard he spoke to you on the street. Lampher told me. This must not happen again while we are partners. Don't tell Doc Coffin's outfit more than they need to know.

Yours truly,

JACOB POOLEY.

Racey blew out the fourth match and folded the letter with care and replaced it in the envelope. He sat back on his heels and looked up into the darkening sky. Jacob Pooley. Well, well, _well_. If Fat Jakey Pooley, the register of the district, was mixed up in the business, the opposition would have its work cut out in advance. Yes, indeedy.

For no man could walk more convincingly the tight rope of the law than Fat Jakey. Racey Dawson did not know Fat Jakey, except by sight, but he had heard most of the tales told of the gentleman. And they were _tales_. Many of them were accepted by the countryside as gospel truth. Perhaps half of them were true. A good-natured, cunning, dishonest, and indefatigable featherer of a lucrative political nest--that was Fat Jakey.

Racey Dawson sat and thought hard through two cigarettes. Then he thumbed out the b.u.t.t, got to his feet, and started to return to the hotel. For it had suddenly come upon him that he was hungry.

But halfway round the corral an idea impinged upon his consciousness with the force of a bullet. "Gawdamighty," he muttered, "I am a Jack!"

He turned and retraced his steps to the corner of the corral. Here he stopped and removed his spurs. He stuffed a spur into each hip pocket, and moved cautiously and on tiptoe toward Tom Kane's barn.

It was almost full night by now. But in the west still glowed the faintly red streak of the dying embers of the day. Racey suddenly bethought him that the red streak was at his back, therefore he dropped on all fours and proceeded catwise.

He was too late. Before he reached the back of the barn he heard the feet of two people crunching the hard ground in front of it. The sound of the footsteps died out on the gra.s.s between the barn and the houses fronting on Main Street.

Racey, hurrying after and still on all fours, suddenly saw the dark shape of a tall man loom in front of him. He halted perforce. His own special brand of bull luck was with him. The dark shape, walking almost without a sound, shaved his body so closely as it pa.s.sed that he felt the stir of the air against his face.

When the men had gone on a few yards Racey looked over his shoulder.

Silhouetted against the streak of dying red was the upper half of Jack Harpe's torso. There was no mistaking the set of that head and those shoulders. Both it and them were unmistakable. Jack Harpe. Racey swore behind his teeth. If only he could have reached the barn in time to hear what the two men had said to each other.

After a decent interval Racey went on. The Happy Heart was the nearest saloon. He felt reasonably certain that Luke Tweezy would go there to have his cut head dressed. He had. Racey, his back against the bar, looked on with interest at the bandaging of Luke Tweezy by the proprietor.

"Yep," said Luke, sitting sidewise in the chair, "stubbed my toe against a cordwood stick in front of Tom Kane's barn and hit my head on a rock. Knocked me silly."

"Sh'd think it might," grunted the proprietor, attending to his job with difficulty because Luke _would_ squirm. "Hold still, will you, Luke?"

"Yo're taking twice as many st.i.tches as necessary," grumbled Luke.

"I ain't," denied the proprietor. "And I got two more to take. HOLD STILL!"

"Don't need to deafen me!" squalled Luke, indignantly.

"Shut up!" ordered the proprietor, who, for that he did not owe any money to Luke, was not prepared to pay much attention to his fussing.

"If you think I'm enjoying this, you got another guess coming. And if you don't like the way I'm doing it, you can do it yoreself."

Luke stood up at last, a white bandage encircling his head, said that he was much obliged, and would like to borrow a lantern for a few moments.

"Aw, you don't need any lantern," objected the proprietor. "I forgot to fill mine to-day, anyway. Can't you find yore way to the hotel in the dark? That crack on the topknot didn't blind you, did it?"

"I lost something," explained Luke Tweezy. "When I fell down most all my money slipped out of my pocket."

"I'll get you a lantern then," grumbled the proprietor.

Ten minutes later Luke Tweezy, frantically quartering the floor of Tom Kane's barn, heard a slight sound and looked up to see Racey Dawson and Swing Tunstall standing in the doorway.

"I didn't know you fell down _inside_ the barn," Racey observed.

"There's lots you dunno," said Luke, ungraciously.

"So there is," a.s.sented Racey. "But don't rub it in, Luke. Rubbing it in hurts my feelings. And my feelings are tender to-day--most awful tender, Luke. Don't you go for to lacerate 'em. I ain't owing you a dime, you know."

To this Luke Tweezy made no comment. But he resumed his squattering about the floor and his poking and delving in the piles of hay. He raised a dust that flew up in clouds. He coughed and snorted and snuffed. Racey and Swing Tunstall laughed.

"Makes you think of a hay-tedder, don't he?" grinned Racey. "How much did you lose, Luke--two bits?"

At this Luke looked up sharply. "Seems to me you got over yore drunk pretty quick," said he.

"Oh, my liquor never stays by me a great while," Racey told him easily. "That's the beauty of being young. When you get old and toothless an' deecrepit like some people, not to mention no names of course, why then she's a cat with another tail entirely."

"What'ell's goin' on in here?" It was Red Kane speaking. Red was Tom Kane's brother.

Racey and Swing moved apart to let him through. Red Kane entered, stared at the spectacle of Luke Tweezy and his bobbing lantern, stared and stared again.

"What you doing, Luke?" he demanded.

"Luke's lost a nickel, Red." Racey answered for the lawyer. "And a nickel, you know yoreself, is worth all of five cents."