Peaches Austin looked this way and that before replying.

“I shore don’t like to tell how it happened,” he said.  “Sounds so babyish like.  But my hat blowed off over this side of Injun Ridge a ways and when I leaned down to pick her up, my hoss started, my hand slipped, and I went off on my head kerblam.  And do you know, I’ll bet I was three hours a-running from hell to breakfast before I caught that hoss where he was feedin’ in a narrow draw.  I’m all tired out yet.  They ain’t no strength in my legs.”

“I’ll fix it up with Jack,” Racey lied with a wonderfully straight face.  “Don’t you worry.”

“I ain’t worryin’,” Peaches denied, irritably.  “I ain’t afraid of Jack, I tell you.”

“Shore,” soothed Racey, who, having formed an estimate of Peaches, ranked him scarcely higher than McFluke and treated him accordingly.  “Shore, I know you ain’t.  But alla same you need considerable of a coolin’ off yoreself.  Just you stay out here now and watch me get Morgan away.”

Racey nodded blithely to Peaches Austin, and turned to go into the house.  He saw that Chuck Morgan had come outside, that he had brought McFluke with him, and was observing events with a cold and calculating eye.

“I tell you I couldn’t help his getting the whiskey,” McFluke was whining.  “It ain’t my fault if somebody gives it to him, is it?”

“Of course not,” chimed in Racey, briskly.  “Mac means all right.  He didn’t know there was any law against providing old Dale with whiskey.”

“They is a law,” insisted Chuck Morgan, belligerently, his gun trained unswervingly on McFluke’s broad stomach.  “They is a law.  I made it.  And it goes.  Peaches,” he added, raising his voice, “don’t you slide round the house now.  If you move so much as a yard from where yo’re standing I ventilate McFluke immediate.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Racey, mildly.

“I got my eye on you, too,” declared Chuck.  “What I said to Peaches goes for you, and don’t you forget it.”

“I ain’t likely to, not me.  All I want you to do is go some’ers else peaceful.  You ain’t figuring on living here, are you?”

Chuck uttered a short, hard laugh.  McFluke’s back was toward Racey.  Peaches Austin was behind him, thirty feet away.  Racey’s left eyelid drooped.  His head moved almost imperceptibly toward his horse.

“I’m going now,” said Chuck.

“I’ll go with you just to see you on yore way sort of,” said Racey.

“You was going with me anyway sort of,” Chuck told him.  “Yo’re the only man round here so far’s I can see, and I ain’t taking any chances on you, not a chance.  Yo’re going down the trail a spell with me.  Later you can come back.  Keep yore hands where they are.”

Quickly Chuck shoved McFluke to one side, rushed forward, and possessed himself of Racey’s gun.  “Crawl yore hoss,” he commanded.

Racey obeyed without a word.  Chuck climbed into his own saddle without losing the magic of the drop and without losing sight for an instant of McFluke and Peaches Austin.