tranger run through--the one into the back room or
the one leadin' outdoors?"

"Why, the one leadin' outdoors, of course." McFluke's surprise at the
question was evident.

"Jake," said Racey, "s'pose now you ask Punch Thompson what the
stranger was doing when he cut down on him."

The sheriff regarded Racey with his keen gray gaze. Then he faced
about and singled out Thompson from a conversational group across the
room.

"Punch," he called, and then put Racey's question in his own words.

"What was he doin'?" said Thompson, heedless of McFluke's agonized
expression. "Which he was hoppin' through that window there"--here he
indicated the middle one of three in the side of the room--"when I
drawed and missed. I only had time for the one shot."

At this there was a sudden scrabbling behind the bar. It was McFluke
trying to retreat through the doorway into the back room, and being
prevented from accomplishing his purpose by Racey Dawson who, at the
innkeeper's first panic-stricken movement, had vaulted the bar and
grabbed him by the neck.

"None of that now," cautioned Racey Dawson, his right hand flashing
down and up, as McFluke, finding that escape was out of the question,
made a desperate snatch at the knife-handle protruding from his
bootleg.

The saloon-keeper reacted immediately to the cold menace of the
gun-muzzle pressing against the top of his spinal column. He
straightened sullenly. Racey, transferring the gun-muzzle to the small
of McFluke's back, stooped swiftly, drew out McFluke's knife and
tossed it through a window.

"You won't be needing that again," said Racey Dawson. "Help yoreself,
Kansas."

Which the deputy promptly proceeded to do by snapping a pair of
handcuffs round the thick McFluke wrists.

"Whatell you trying to do?" bawled McFluke in a rage. "I ain't done
nothing! You can't prove I done nothing! You--"

"Shut up!" interrupted Kansas Casey, giving the handcuffs an expert
twitch that wrenched a groan out of McFluke. "Proving anything takes
time. We got time. You got time. What more do you want?"

The efficient deputy towed the saloon-keeper round the bar and out
into the barroom. He faced him about in front of Jake Rule. The
sheriff fixed him with a grim stare.

"What did you try to run for, Mac?" he demanded.

"I had business outdoors," grumbled McFluke.

"What kind of business?"

"What's that to you? You ain't got no license to grab a-hold of me and
stop me from transacting