"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?"