my legitimate business whenever and wherever
I feel like it."

"You seem to know more about it than I do. Alla same unless you feel
like telling me exactly what all yore hurry was for, we'll have to
hold you for a while. Yo're shore it didn't have nothing to do with
yore saying the stranger run out the door and Thompson saying he
jumped through the window?"

"Why, shore I am," grunted McFluke.

"Glad to hear that. But how is it you and Thompson seen the same thing
different ways? It's a cinch the stranger, not being twins, didn't use
_both_ the door and the window. Yo're shore he run out the door, Mac?"

"Shore I am. I seen him, I tell you." But McFluke's tone rang flat.

"Punch," said the sheriff to Thompson who, in company with everyone
else in the room had crowded round the sheriff and the prisoner,
"Punch, how did the stranger who shot Dale leave the room?"

"Through the window, like I said," Thompson declared, defiantly. "Ask
anybody. They all seen him. Mac's drunk or crazy."

"Yo're a liar!" snarled McFluke. "I tell you he run out the door."

"Aw, close yore trap!" requested Thompson with contempt. "You ain't
packin' no gun."

"Lanpher," said the sheriff, "how did the murderer get away."

"Through the window," was the prompt reply of the 88 manager.

The sheriff asked Harpe, Coffin, Tweezy, and the others who had been
present at the killing, for their versions. In every case, each had
seen eye-to-eye with Thompson. The evidence was overwhelmingly against
the saloon-keeper. But he, a glint of fear in his hard blue eyes,
stuck to his original statement, swearing that all men were liars and
he alone was telling the truth.

Racey, standing a little back from the crowd, pulled out his
tobacco-bag. But his fingers must have been all thumbs at the moment
for he dropped it on the floor. He stooped to retrieve it. The
movement brought his eyes within a yard of the body of Dale. And now
he saw that which he had not previously taken note of--an abrasion
across the knuckles of Dale's right hand. Not only that, but the hand,
which was lying over the left hand on the body's breast, showed an odd
lumpiness at the knuckles of the first and second fingers.

Racey stuffed his tobacco-bag into his vest pocket and knelt beside
the body. It was cold, of course, but had not yet completely
stiffened. He laid the two hands side by side and compared them.
The left hand was as it should be--no lumpiness, bruises, or any
di