Miss Blythe, Mike Flynn’s partner in the Blue Pigeon Store!  She would know whose horse it was, for certainly the horse’s owner had bought the undershirt and the stockings at the Blue Pigeon.  Furthermore, Miss Blythe looked like a right-minded individual.  She would take no pleasure in devilling a man.  Not she.

Racey Dawson set down his glass and hurried to the Blue Pigeon Store.  Miss Blythe, at his entrance, ceased checking tomato cans and came forward.

“Ma’am,” said Racey, “will you come to the door a minute?  No, no, don’t be scared!” he added as the lady drew back a step.  “I’m kind of in trouble, an’ I want you to help me out.  I’m—­my name’s Racey Dawson, an’ I used to ride for the Cross-in-a-box before I got a job up at the Bend.  Jack Richie knows me.  I ain’t crazy—­honest.”

For Miss Blythe continued to look doubtful.  “I—­” she began.

“Lookit,” he interrupted, “yesterday I got a heap drunk an’ I rode off on somebody’s hoss without meaning to—­I mean I thought it was my hoss and it wasn’t.  An’ I thought maybe you’d tell me who the hoss belongs to so’s I can return him and get mine back.  She took mine, they tell me.  Not that I blame her a mite,” he added, hastily.

Pretty Miss Blythe smiled suddenly.  “I did hear something about a switch in horses yesterday afternoon,” she admitted.  “But I thought Mr. Flynn said Tom Dowling was the man’s name.  Certainly I remember you now, Mr. Dawson, although at first your—­your beard—­”

“Yeah, I know,” he put in, hurriedly.  “I ain’t shaved since I left the Bend, and I slept mostly on my face last night, but it’s li’l ol’ me all right behind the whiskers and real estate.  Yeah, that’s the hoss yonder—­the one next the pinto.”

“I know the horse,” said Miss Blythe, drawing back from the doorway.  “It belongs to the Dales over at Medicine Spring on Soogan Creek.”

“Oh, I know them,” Racey declared, confidently (he had been at the Dales’ precisely once).  “The girl married Chuck Morgan.  Shore, Mis’ Dale’s hoss, huh?  I’ll take it right back soon’s I get shaved.  I s’pose I’ll have a jomightyful time explaining it to the old lady.”

“It isn’t the mother’s horse.  It’s the daughter’s.  She was in town yesterday.”

“You mean Chuck’s wife, Mis’ Morgan?”

“I mean Miss Molly Dale, the other daughter.”

“I didn’t know they had another daughter,” puzzled Racey, thinking of what Piney Jackson had said anent an “old lady.”  “They must ‘a’ kept her in the background when I was there that time.  What is she—­a old maid?”

“Oh, middle-aged, perhaps,” was the straight-faced reply.

“Shucks, I might have known it,” grumbled Racey; “middle-aged old maid!  I know what they’re like.  I had one once for a school-teacher.  I can feel her lickings yet.  She was the contrariest female I ever met.  Shucks, I—­Well, if I gotta, I gotta.  Might’s well get it over with now as later.  Thanks, ma’am, for helping me out.”