“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.