DEAR FRIEND LUKE: 

I don’t think much of your plan.  Too dangerous.  The Land Office is getting stricter every day.  This thing must be absolutely legal in every way.  You can’t bull ahead and trust to luck there aren’t any holes.  There mustn’t be any holes, not a damn hole.  Try my plan, the one I discussed so thoroughly with you last week.  It will take longer, perhaps, but it is absolutely safe.  You must learn to be more careful with the law from now on, Luke.  I know what I’m talking about.

I tell you plainly if you don’t accept my scheme and work to it religiously I’m out of the deal absolutely.  I’m not going to risk my liberty because of other people’s foolhardiness.

Show this letter to Jack Harpe, and let me know your decision.

Another thing, impress upon Jack the necessity of you two keeping publicly apart until after the deal is sprung.  When you talk to him go off somewheres where no one will see you.  I heard he spoke to you on the street.  Lampher told me.  This must not happen again while we are partners.  Don’t tell Doc Coffin’s outfit more than they need to know.

Yours truly,

JACOB POOLEY.

Racey blew out the fourth match and folded the letter with care and replaced it in the envelope.  He sat back on his heels and looked up into the darkening sky.  Jacob Pooley.  Well, well, well.  If Fat Jakey Pooley, the register of the district, was mixed up in the business, the opposition would have its work cut out in advance.  Yes, indeedy.  For no man could walk more convincingly the tight rope of the law than Fat Jakey.  Racey Dawson did not know Fat Jakey, except by sight, but he had heard most of the tales told of the gentleman.  And they were tales.  Many of them were accepted by the countryside as gospel truth.  Perhaps half of them were true.  A good-natured, cunning, dishonest, and indefatigable featherer of a lucrative political nest—­that was Fat Jakey.

Racey Dawson sat and thought hard through two cigarettes.  Then he thumbed out the butt, got to his feet, and started to return to the hotel.  For it had suddenly come upon him that he was hungry.

But halfway round the corral an idea impinged upon his consciousness with the force of a bullet.  “Gawdamighty,” he muttered, “I am a Jack!”

He turned and retraced his steps to the corner of the corral.  Here he stopped and removed his spurs.  He stuffed a spur into each hip pocket, and moved cautiously and on tiptoe toward Tom Kane’s barn.

It was almost full night by now.  But in the west still glowed the faintly red streak of the dying embers of the day.  Racey suddenly bethought him that the red streak was at his back, therefore he dropped on all fours and proceeded catwise.

He was too late.  Before he reached the back of the barn he heard the feet of two people crunching the hard ground in front of it.  The sound of the footsteps died out on the grass between the barn and the houses fronting on Main Street.