way, and oozed into the hall. He closed the door without a sound.
He regained his own room in equal silence. Racey did not hear the
shutting of the other's door, but he heard the springs of the cot
squeak under Jack Harpe's weight as he lay down.

Swing Tunstall framed a remark with his lips only. Racey Dawson shook
his head. The partition was too thin and Jack Harpe's ears were too
long and sharp for him to risk even the tiniest of whispers. With his
hand he made the Indian sign for "to-morrow," stretched out his long
legs, yawned--and fell almost instantly asleep.




CHAPTER VII

THE RIDDLE


"We'd oughta closed with Jack Harpe last night," said Swing Tunstall,
easing his muscular body down on a broken packing-case that sat
drunkenly beside the posts of the hotel corral. "What's the sense of
putting things off thataway, Racey? Now we'll lose two days' wages for
nothing."

"I had a reason," declared Racey Dawson, threading a new rawhide
string through one of the silver conchas on his split-ear bridle. "I
wanted to talk it over good with you first."

"Why for? What's there to talk over, I'd like to know? Why--"