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"Yep, I'd gone to the Bend, damitall, and it shore seems like I'd stayed there too long. Didn't you ever guess McFluke's wheel wasn't straight?" "Aw, it was so straight. Mac wouldn't cheat nobody. Yo're yo're mistaken, Racey." "I am, huh? Likell I'm mistaken. I know what I'm talking about. I tell you flat, McFluke is so crooked he could swallow a nail and spit out a corkscrew.
He stared non-committally at Racey Dawson. It was evident that Peaches Austin was taking no one on trust. He nodded briefly to Racey, and strode to the bar. McFluke went behind the bar. "Ain't I seen you in Farewell, stranger?" Peaches Austin asked, shortly. "You might have," returned Racey. "I'm mighty careless where I travel." "Known Jack long?" Peaches was becoming nothing if not personal.
"I didn't do it, gents!" cried McFluke, thrusting out his hands before his face as though to ward off a blow. "I didn't kill him! I didn't! It's all a lie! I didn't kill him!" Fat Jacob Pooley whirled to face three guns. His right hand fell away reluctantly from the butt of his sixshooter. Slowly his arms went above his head. Racey Dawson and his two companions entered the room.
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.
He scratched a match on the chair seat, held it to the end of the cigarette, and stared across the pulsing flame straight into the eyes of the Marysville lawyer. Tweezy's gaze wavered and fell away. Racey inhaled strongly, then got to his feet and lazed across to the bar where Jake Rule, with Kansas Casey at his elbow, was perfunctorily questioning McFluke.
You see, I'd heard somebody say I disremember exactly who now that Jack Harpe's real name was Bill Smith, that he'd shaved off his beard and part of his eyebrows to make himself look different, and that he'd done something against the law to some company in some town. I didn't know what company nor what town, but I had somethin' to start with when McFluke was let loose.
"Good big hole," replied Peaches, conservatively. "Too big that is, too big for just McFluke, or for any other feller the size of McFluke." "What of it?" "Don't be in a hurry, Peaches, and you'll last longer. Did you know Mac's handcuffs were picked open?" "How picked open?" "Whoever opened 'em didn't use a key," Racey explained.
We was gonna foreclose. In order to save trouble all round he made the ranch over to us." "You mean to tell me Dale did that just to save trouble?" burst out Racey. "Just because he liked you two fellers and wanted to make it as easy as possible for you? Aw, hell, Tweezy. Aw, hell again. Yo're as poor a liar as yore side-kicker McFluke."
We got a log chain and the biggest pair of handcuffs in our stock and we ironed McFluke by the ankles to a stanchion in the middle of the warehouse. Besides that his hands was handcuffed, and no matter how he stretched he couldn't reach nothing. We seen to that." "But, my Gawd, hownell did they have time to file through that log chain or them cuffs?
"Then," said Racey, turning suddenly on McFluke, "how did you get that black eye?" McFluke's eyes flickered at the question. His body appeared to sink inward. Then he straightened, and flung back his wide shoulders, and glowered at Racey Dawson. "I ran into a door this morning," said the saloon-keeper in a tone of the utmost confidence. "Oh, you ran into a door, did you," Racey observed, sweetly.
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