Swing's nice new boot alone, will you? Don't go gnawin' at it
thataway. It ain't a bone."

Swing, pulling on his pants, left the room, hopping physically and
mentally. Racey rested both elbows on the sill and waited happily for
his comrade to appear beneath him.

"Shucks," he said in a tone of great surprise when Swing shot round
the corner of the hotel, "I shore thought there was a dog there
a-teasin' that boot. I could have took my Bible oath there was a
great, big, black, curly-haired feller with lots of teeth down there.
I saw him, Swing. Shore thought I did. Must 'a' been mistaken. And you
went and believed me, and got splinters in yore feet because you were
in such a hurry. Never mind, Swing, here's the other one."

He jerked the boot in question at his friend's head, and sat down on
his cot to complete his own dressing.

Came then the sound of a prodigious yawn from the room next door
occupied by Jack Harpe. A cot creaked. A boot was scraped along the
floor.

"Shore must be a sound sleeper," said Racey Dawson to himself, "if he
really did just wake up."

He buckled on his gunbelt, set his hat a-tilt on one ear, and went
down to wash his face and hands in the common basin on the wash-bench
outside the kitchen door.

But Swing Tunstall was before him, and was disposed to make an issue