Racey watched him out of town.  Then he went to Mike Flynn’s to see and, if it were possible, to cheer up his wounded friend, Swing Tunstall.  But he was not allowed to see him.  Swing, it appeared, had been given an opiate by Joy Blythe, who was acting as nurse, and she refused to awaken her patient for anybody.  So there.

Racey went to the Happy Heart to while away the remainder of the hour set by Judge Dolan.  The bartender greeted him respectfully and curiously.  So did several other men he knew.  For that respect and that curiosity he understood the reason.  It lay on a bunk in Nebraska Jones’s shack.

No one asked him to drink.  People are usually a little backward in social intercourse with a citizen who has just killed his fellowman.  Of course in time the coolness wears off.  In this case the time would be short, Doc Coffin having been one of those that more or less encumber the face of the earth.  But for the moment Racey felt his ostracism and resented it.

He set down his drink half drunk and walked out of the Happy Heart.

* * * * *

“See anything of Luke Tweezy lately?” asked Judge Dolan when Racey was sitting across the table from him in the Judge’s office.

“Saw him to-day.”

“Where?”

“Moccasin Spring.”

Judge Dolan nodded and rasped a hand across his stubbly chin.  “Luke is in town now,” said he.

“I ain’t lost any Luke Tweezys,” observed Racey, looking up at the ceiling.

“I wonder how long Luke is figuring on staying in town,” went on Judge Dolan, sticking like a stamp to his original subject.

“Nothing to me.”

“It might be.  It might be.  You never can tell about them things, Racey.”

Racey Dawson’s eyes came down from the ceiling.  He studied the Judge’s face attentively.  What was Dolan driving at?  Racey had known the Judge for several years, and he was aware that the more indirect the Judge became in his discourse the more important the subject matter was likely to be.

“No,” said Racey, willing to bite, “you never can tell.”

“We was talking one day about a feller making mistakes.”  The tangent was merely apparent.

“Yep,” acquiesced Racey.  “We were saying Luke Tweezy made a good many.”

“Something like that, yeah.  You run across any of Luke’s mistakes yet, Racey?”

Racey shook his head.  “No.”

“Did you go to Marysville?”

“Why for Marysville?”

“Luke Tweezy lives in Marysville.”

“And you think there’s somebody in Marysville would talk?”

Judge Dolan looked pained.  “I didn’t say so,” he was quick to remark.

“I know you didn’t, but—­”

“I don’t guess they’s many folks in Marysville know much about Luke—­no, not many.  Luke is careful and clever, damn clever.  But they’s other things besides folks which might have useful information.”