have Nebraska Jones
turn the trick by playin' poker with the old man. When Nebraska--They
switched from Nebraska to Peaches Austin, plannin' to go through with
the deal at McFluke's from the beginning. And that was where Tweezy
come in. He was to get the old man to McFluke's, and with the help of
Peaches Austin cheat Dale out of the ranch."

"That's a damn lie!" cried Tweezy.

"I suppose you'll deny," said Racey, "that the day I saw you ride in
here to Farewell--I mean the day Jack Harpe spoke to you in front of
the Happy Heart, and you didn't answer him--that day you come in from
Marysville on purpose to tell Jack an' Lanpher about the mortgage
having to be renewed and that now was their chance. I suppose you'll
deny all that, huh?"

"Yo're--yo're lyin'," sputtered Luke Tweezy.

"Am I? We'll see. When playin' cards with old Dale didn't work they
caught the old man at McFluke's one day and after he'd got in a fight
with McFluke and McFluke downed him, they saw their chance to produce
a forged release from Dale."

"Who did the forging?" broke in the Judge.

"I dunno for shore. This here was found in Tweezy's safe." He held out
a letter to the Judge.

Judge Dolan took the letter and read it carefully. Then he looked
across at Luke Tweezy.

"This here," said he, tapping the letter with stiffened forefinger,
"is a signed letter from Dale to you. It seems to be a reply in the
negative to a letter of yores askin' him to sell his ranch."

The Judge paused and glanced round the room. Then his cold eyes
returned to the face of Luke Tweezy who was beginning to look
extremely wretched.

"Underneath the signature of Dale," continued the Judge, "somebody has
copied that signature some fifty or sixty times. I wonder why."

"I dunno anything about it," Luke Tweezy denied, feebly.

"We'll come back to that," the Judge observed, softly. "G'on, Racey."

"I figure," said Racey, "that they'd hatched that forgery some while
before Dale was killed. The killing made it easier to put it on
record."

"Looks that way," nodded the Judge.

"Lookit here," boomed Jack Harpe, "you ain't got any right to judge us
thisaway. We ain't on trial."

"Shore you ain't," asserted the Judge. "I always said you wasn't. This
here is just a talk, a friendly talk. No trial about it."

"Here's another letter, Judge," said Racey Dawson.

The Judge read the other letter, and again fixed Luke Tweezy with his
eye.

"This ain't a letter exactly,