Luke Tweezy’s knife tinkled against the wall at the moment that the sheriff, his deputy, and two other men entered from the street.  The third man was Mr. Johnson, the Wells Fargo detective.  The fourth man wore his left arm in a sling and hobbled on a cane.  The fourth man was Swing Tunstall.

“What kind of hell’s trick is this?” demanded Jack Harpe, glaring at the Wells Fargo detective.

“It’s the last trick, Bill,” said Mr. Johnson.

At the mention of which name Jack Harpe appeared to shrink inwardly.  He looked suddenly very old.

“Take chairs, gents,” invited Judge Dolan, looking about him in the manner of a minstrel show’s interlocutor.  “If everybody’s comfortable, we’ll proceed to business.”

“I thought you said this wasn’t a trial,” objected Luke Tweezy.

“And so it ain’t a trial,” the Judge rapped out smartly.  “The trial will come later.”

Luke Tweezy subsided.  His furtive eyes became more furtive than ever.

“Go ahead, Racey,” said Judge Dolan.

Racey, still holding his sixshooter, leaned hipshot against the doorjamb.

“It was this way,” he began, and told what had transpired that day in the hotel corral when he had been bandaging his horse’s leg and had overheard the conversation between Lanpher and Jack Harpe and later, Punch-the-breeze Thompson.

“They’s nothing in that,” declared Jack Harpe with contempt, twisting his neck to glower up at Racey.  “Suppose I did wanna get hold of the Dale ranch.  What of it?”

“Shore,” put in Luke Tweezy.  “What of it?  Perfectly legitimate business proposition.  Legal, and all that.”

“Not quite,” denied Racey.  “Not the way you went about it.  Nawsir.  Well, gents,” he resumed, “what I heard in that corral showed plain enough there was something up.  Dale wouldn’t sell, and they were bound to get his land away from him.  So they figured to have Nebraska Jones turn the trick by playin’ poker with the old man.  When Nebraska—­They switched from Nebraska to Peaches Austin, plannin’ to go through with the deal at McFluke’s from the beginning.  And that was where Tweezy come in.  He was to get the old man to McFluke’s, and with the help of Peaches Austin cheat Dale out of the ranch.”

“That’s a damn lie!” cried Tweezy.

“I suppose you’ll deny,” said Racey, “that the day I saw you ride in here to Farewell—­I mean the day Jack Harpe spoke to you in front of the Happy Heart, and you didn’t answer him—­that day you come in from Marysville on purpose to tell Jack an’ Lanpher about the mortgage having to be renewed and that now was their chance.  I suppose you’ll deny all that, huh?”

“Yo’re—­yo’re lyin’,” sputtered Luke Tweezy.

“Am I?  We’ll see.  When playin’ cards with old Dale didn’t work they caught the old man at McFluke’s one day and after he’d got in a fight with McFluke and McFluke downed him, they saw their chance to produce a forged release from Dale.”