Peaches Austin wetted his lips with the tip of a careful tongue.  “I heard shootin’,” he admitted, stiff-lipped.

“And what did you think it was?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t you see Thompson ride away?”

“Shore.”

“And didn’t you think anything about that, either?”

“Oh, I thought, but—­”

“But you had yore orders to sit here and wait for li’l Willie.  And you always obey orders.  That it, Peaches?”

“What are you drivin’ at?”

“Yo’re always asking me that, Peaches.  Try something new for a change.  Look.”

Racey extended a long arm past Peaches’ nose and pointed up the street toward the Starlight Saloon.  A man was backing out through the doorway.  Another followed, walking forward.  Between them they were carrying a third man.  The hat of the third man was over his face.  His arms, which hung down, jerked like the arms of a doll.  Even at that distance Peaches could see that there was no life in the third man.

“That’s Doc Coffin,” Racey murmured without rancour.  “I wonder where they’re taking him?  He used to bach with Nebraska Jones, didn’t he?  I guess that’s where they’re taking him to.  Yep, they’ve gone round the corner of the stage company’s corral.”

“Where’s Honey?” queried Peaches in a still, small voice.

“In the Starlight.  He ain’t hurt bad.  Foot and arm.  Lucky, huh?”

Peaches Austin considered these things a moment.  “Doc Coffin was reckoned a fast man,” he said in the tone of one who, after adding up a column of figures, has found the correct total, “and Honey Hoke wasn’t none slow himself.  And you got ’em both.”

“I didn’t get ’em both,” corrected Racey.  “Honey is only wounded.”

“Same thing.  You could ‘a’ got ’him if you wanted to.  Yo’re lucky, that’s what it is.  Yo’re lucky.  And you been lucky from the beginning.  I ain’t superstitious, but—­” Here he lied.  Like most gamblers Peaches was sadly superstitious.  He looked at Racey, and there was something much akin to wonder on his countenance.  He shook his head and was silent a long thirty seconds.  “Yo’re too lucky for me—­I quit,” he finished.

“How much?”

“Complete.  I tell you, I don’t buck no such luck as yores no longer.  I’ll never have none myself if I do.  I’m goin’.”

Peaches Austin got to his feet and walked across the street to the hotel.  Twenty minutes later Racey, sitting on the bench in front of the blacksmith shop, saw him issue from the hotel, carrying a saddle, packed saddlebags, and cantenas, blanket and bridle, and go to the hotel corral.

Within three minutes Peaches Austin rode out from behind the hotel.  As he passed the blacksmith shop he said “So long” to Racey.

“See you later,” nodded that serene young man.

“I hope not,” tossed back Peaches, and rode on down the trail that leads over Indian Ridge to Marysville and the south.