Racey, standing a little back from the crowd, pulled out his tobacco-bag.  But his fingers must have been all thumbs at the moment for he dropped it on the floor.  He stooped to retrieve it.  The movement brought his eyes within a yard of the body of Dale.  And now he saw that which he had not previously taken note of—­an abrasion across the knuckles of Dale’s right hand.  Not only that, but the hand, which was lying over the left hand on the body’s breast, showed an odd lumpiness at the knuckles of the first and second fingers.

Racey stuffed his tobacco-bag into his vest pocket and knelt beside the body.  It was cold, of course, but had not yet completely stiffened.  He laid the two hands side by side and compared them.  The left hand was as it should be—­no lumpiness, bruises, or any discolouration other than grime.  But now that the two hands were side by side the difference in the right hand was most apparent.

Certainly it was badly bruised across the knuckles and the skin was broken, too.  Furthermore, there was that odd lumpiness about the knuckles of the first and second fingers, a lumpiness that gave the knuckles almost the appearance of being double.

He picked up the dead hand and gingerly fingered the lumpy knuckles.  Then, in a flash of thought, it came to him.  The hand was broken.

He raised his head and looked across the room.  And as it chanced he looked across the packed shoulders and between the peering heads of the crowd straight into the face of McFluke and the black eye adorning that face.

He rose to his feet and pushed his way through the crowd to the side of the sheriff.

“Can I ask a question?” said he to the officer.

“Shore,” nodded the sheriff.  “Many as you like.”

“Thompson,” Racey said, but watching McFluke the while, “did Dale have any trouble here with anybody besides the stranger?”

“Not as I know of,” came the reply after a moment’s hesitation.

“He didn’t have any fuss with anybody,” spoke up Luke Tweezy.

“I was talking to Thompson,” Racey reminded the lawyer.  “When I want to ask you any questions I’ll let you know.”

“Huh,” Luke contented himself with grunting, and subsided.

“No fuss a-tall, Thompson?” resumed Racey.

“Nary a fuss.”

“And you was here alla time Dale was here?”

“I was here before Dale come, and I was still here when Dale—­went away.”

“In the same room with him?”

“In this room, yeah.  In the same room with him alla time.  Shore.”

“Then if Dale had had a riot with anybody else but the stranger man you’d ‘a’ knowed it.”

“You betcha.  He didn’t have no trouble, only with the stranger.”

“Did anybody else have any trouble with anybody while you was here?”

At this Thompson frowned.  Where were Racey’s questions leading him?  Was it a trap?  Knowing Racey as he did, he feared the worst.  He would have liked to leave the questioned unanswered.  But this was impossible.  As it was, he was delaying his answer longer than good sense warranted.  Both Jake Rule and Kansas Casey were staring at him fixedly.  Racey regarded him steadily, a slight and sinister smile lurking at the corner of his mouth.