hitching-rail to untie his horse. "See yuh later, Luke," the stranger
flung over his shoulder to Luke Tweezy as he passed on. He and Lanpher
headed diagonally across the street toward the hotel. It seemed odd to
Racey Dawson that Luke Tweezy by no word or sign made acknowledgment
of the stranger's remark.

Racey tickled his mount with the rowels of one spur and stirred him
into a trot. Have to be moving along if he wanted to get there some
time that day. He wished he didn't have to go alone, so he did. The
old lady would surely lay him out, and he wished for company to share
his misery. Why couldn't Swing Tunstall have stayed reasonably in
Farewell instead of traipsing off over the range like a tomfool. Might
not be back for a week, Swing mightn't. Idiotic caper (with other
adjectives) of Swing's, anyway. Why hadn't he used his head? Oh,
Racey Dawson was an exceedingly irritable young man as he rode out of
Farewell. The aches and pains were still throbbingly alive in his own
particular head. The immediate future was not alluring. It was a hard
world.

When he and his mount were breasting the first slight rise of the
northern slope of Indian Ridge--which ridge marks with its long,
broad-backed bulk the southern boundary of the flats south of Farewell
and forces the Marysville trail to travel five miles to go two--a
rider emerged from a small boulder-strewn draw wherein tamaracks grew
thinly.

Racey stared--and forgot his irritation and his headache. The draw
was not more than a quarter-mile distant, and he perceived without
difficulty that the rider was a woman. She quirted her mount into
a gallop, and then seesawed her right arm vigorously. Above the