“So’ll I feel better in the morning if you jiggers will close yore traps and lemme sleep,” growled a peevish voice in the next room—­on the Main Street side.

“As I live,” said Racey in a tone of vast surprise, “there’s somebody in the next room.”

“Sounds like the owner of the Starlight,” hazarded Swing Tunstall.

“It is the owner of the Starlight,” corroborated the voice, “and I wanna sleep, and I wanna sleep now.”

“We ain’t got any objections,” Racey told him.  “She’s a fine, free country.  And every gent is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, three things no home should be without.”

“Shut up, will you?” squalled the goaded proprietor of the Starlight Saloon.  “If you wanna make a speech go out to the corral and don’t bother regular folks.”

“Hear that, Swing?” grinned Racey, and twiddled his bare toes delightedly.  “Gentleman says you gotta shut up.  Says he’s regular folks, too.  You be good boy now and go by-by.”

“Shut up!”

“Here, here, Swing!” cried Racey, struck by a brilliant idea.  “What you doing with that gun?”

“I—­” began the bewildered Swing who had not even thought of his gun but was peacefully sitting on his cot pulling off his boots.

“Leave it alone!” Racey interrupted in a hearty bawl.  “Don’t you go holding it at the wall even in fun.  It might go off.  You can’t tell.  You’re so all-fired careless with a sixshooter, Swing.  Like enough you’re aiming right where the feller’s bed is, too,” he added, craftily.

Ensued then sounds of rapid departure from the bed next door.  A door flew open and slammed.  The parting guest padded down the stairs in his socks, invoking his Maker as he went.

“And that’s the last of him,” chuckled Racey.

“Oh, you needn’t think I’m forgetting,” grumbled Swing Tunstall, sliding out of his trousers and folding them tidily beside his boots.  “You soft-headed yap, have you gotta let a woman spoil everything?”

“Spoil everything?”

“You don’t think I’m going alla way to Arizona by myself, nobody to talk to nor nothing, do you?  Well, I ain’t.  You can stick a pin in that.”

Racey immediately sprang up, seized his friend’s limp hand, and pumped it vigorously.  “Bless you for them kind words,” he said.  “I knew you’d stick by me.  I knew I could depend on old Swing to do the right thing.  To-morrow you and I will traipse out and locate us a couple of jobs.”

Swing doubled a leg, flattened one bare foot against Racey’s chest, straightened the leg, and deposited Racey upon his own proper cot with force and precision.

“Don’t you come honey-fuglin’ round me,” warned Swing.  “And I didn’t say anything about sticking by you, neither.  And when it comes to the right thing you and me don’t think alike a-tall.  I—­”

“I wish you’d pull yore kicks a few,” interrupted Racey, rubbing his chest.  “You like to busted a rib.”