old rabbit would be too quick for Hank! He
must have been on his guard."

Lucy shrugged indifferently. "Filer was a master shot," she observed.
"Failed beautifully is right, Al--beautifully for us. It couldn't have
happened better. Now Brother Hank is out of it. If you can contrive
some way to shake Hank's partner, Pete, there'll be no one but you and
me to whack up.

"Since Hank is numbered among the late lamented," she continued, "I can
forgive you for bungling the Hooker end of your job. With Hank's
finger out of the pot, I'm content to split with Jerkline Jo. So, no
thanks to you, everything has worked out all right after all. Can't
you send Pete out with instructions to bite a rattlesnake, or something
like that?"

"You're mighty good-natured to-day, kid," Al said.

"Why shouldn't I be? Since we know the original document and that
boob's copy are both destroyed--and that before he had time to commit
the directions to memory. We have nothing whatever to do but wait for
Jerkline Jo to come to us and ask us what our terms are. Then if you
and I aren't foxy enough to squeeze out the amiable Mr. Pete---- Well,
leave it to me!"

"But have you thought," Drummond pointed out, "that perhaps Filer has
committed the instructions to memory?"

Lucy scoffed at this and dismissed it with: "That old lunatic? Never!
He can hardly remember the story, and now and then forgets that he's
hunting for Baby Jean and hikes back for the desert. Don't worry about
his having committed anything to memory. He has no memory to commit it
to!"

At about the time the foregoing dialogue was being spoken in Ragtown,
Jerkline Jo, in her tent at Julia, was making strange remarks to Hiram
Hooker, to wit, as follows:

"Hi-_ram_! It ti-i-i-ickles! Sto-op-op! Wait a minute, Hiram!"

"Huh!" snorted the unfeeling man. "Whoever heard of anybody being
ticklish on the head!"

"But I am, Hiram! I just know I am! And isn't that razor far too
sharp?"

"'There ain't no such thing,'" quoted the man out of the store of his
masculine experience. "Now quit wiggling, Jo, or I'm liable to cut
you."

"Now go slow, Hiram. And if I say it feels funny, you stop. Now easy
at first! Horrors! I wouldn't be a man for anything!"

"Don't blame me," mumbled Hiram. "Now quit wrinkling your scalp, Jo.
Fella'd think I was going to cut your head off, the way you dodge and
shrink."

They were alone in the tent. Jo was on her knees on the