“Better luck than I hoped for,” Swing remarked from a safe distance.  “I didn’t think it would slide down inside yore undershirt, too.  Burn you much, Racey, dear?  You look awful cute standin’ there with nothing on but yore pants.  All you need now is a pair of wings and a bow n’arrer and you’d be a dead ringer for Cupid growed up.  And there’s Mis’ Lainey and Mis’ Galloway looking at you from their kitchen windows.  They can hear what yo’re saying, too.  Fie, for shame.”

But Racey Dawson had gathered up his clothing and fled to the back of the corral.  Muttering to himself he was pulling on his shirt when Swing joined him—­at a safe distance.

“Helluva trick to play on a feller,” grumbled Racey.

“Served you right,” was the return.  “You hadn’t oughta called me half-witted.  Do you know you look just like a turtle in his shell with yore shirt half on half off thataway?”

“Aw, go sit on yoreself!”

At this juncture fat Bill Lainey wheezed round the corner of the corral.

“What you been doin’, Racey?” inquired the hotel-keeper.  “Taking a bath?”

“Naw, I ain’t been taking a bath!” Racey denied ungraciously.  “I do this for fun and my health twice a day—­once on Sundays.”

“Well, it must ‘a’ been a heap funny whatever it was, or Swing wouldn’t be laughin’ so hard.  Yeah.  Lookit, Racey—­I meant to catch you at breakfast, but you was through before I got back from Mike Flynn’s—­lookit, I wish you’d go a li’l slow when yo’re roughhousin’ round in my place.  Rack Slimson, my most payin’ customer, hadda sleep on the dinin’ room table all night because you druv him out of his room.”

“Bill, that was a joke,” Racey intoned, solemnly.  “I didn’t like the way the feller snored.  Likewise he had too much to say.  So naturally I had to make him take it on the run.  What else could I do?  I ask you, what else could I do?”

“Don’t you believe him, Bill,” cut in Swing, fearful that Racey would get credit for an effort at humour where, in his own estimation, none was due.  “Racey hasn’t got the guts to pick a fuss with a pack rat.  It was me that chased Rack Slimson downstairs.”

“That’s right,” Racey assented, smoothly, suddenly mindful both of a peculiar gleam in Bill Lainey’s eye and a chance sentence uttered by the hasher in his hearing at breakfast.  “That’s right.  It was Swing Tunstall what made so free and outrageous with Rack Slimson.  You go and crawl Swing’s hump, Bill.  Lord knows he needs it.  He’s been getting awful brash and uppity lately.  No living with him.  Give him hell, Bill.”

“I don’t wanna give nobody hell.  Live at peace is my motto.  All I wanna know is who’s gonna settle for six cups, eleven sassers, ten plates, and a middle-size pitcher Rack Slimson busted when he rolled off the table with ’em durin’ the night.  I don’t think Rack oughta hafta pay, because he wouldn’t ‘a’ had to sleep there on the table only bein’ druv out thataway he couldn’t help it like.”