“See the pret-ty flowers,” mouthed Swing Tunstall, after the fashion of a child wrestling with the First Reader.  “Does Racey like pret-ty flow-ers?  Yeth, he’th crathy ab-out them.  Ain’t he cute squattin’ there all same hoptoad and a-workin’ away two-handed?  Only he ain’t a-workin’ now.  He’s stopped workin’.  He’s gettin’ all red in the face.  He’s mad at Swing who never done him no harm nohow.  Whatsa matter, Racey?” he added in his natural voice.  “What bit you on the ear this fine an’ summer day?”

Racey looked over his shoulder toward the house.  Then he got to his feet and strode across the garden to where Swing Tunstall sat his horse.

“Swing,” said he, quietly, “are you busy just now?”

Swing, suspecting a catch somewhere, stared in swift suspicion.  “Why—­uh—­no,” was his cautious reply.

“Then go off some’ers and die.”

Without waiting for Swing’s possible comment Racey turned his back on his friend and walked unhurriedly to his horse Cuter.  Swing slouched sidewise in the saddle and watched him go.

He rolled a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled luxuriously.  And all without removing his gaze from Racey’s back.  He watched while Racey flung the reins crosswise over Cuter’s neck, mounted, and rode down into the creek.  When he saw that Racey, after allowing Cuter to drink nearly all he wanted, rode on across the creek and up the farther bank, Swing’s brow became corrugated with a puzzled frown.

“He means business,” muttered Swing.  “I ain’t seen that look on his face for some time.  I wonder what did happen this morning.”

His eyes still fixed on the dwindling westward moving object that was Racey Dawson and his horse, he smoked his cigarette to a butt.  Then he picked up his reins, found his stirrups, and rode away.

Racey Dawson, bound for the 88 ranch-house, did not smoke.  He did not feel like it.  He did not feel like doing anything but facing Lanpher.  What he would be moved to do while facing Lanpher he was not sure.  Time enough to cross that bridge when the crucial moment should arrive.  He knew what he wanted to do, but he knew, too, that he could not do it unless Lanpher made the first break.  Otherwise it would be murder, and Racey was no murderer.

“He’ll back down if he can, the snake,” Racey said aloud.  “And he’ll be shore to slick and slime round till all’s blue.  Damn him, riding over those flowers of hers!”

Racey did not hurry.  He had no desire to come up with Lanpher on the open range.  It would be better to meet the man at his own ranch-house—­where there were apt to be plenty of witnesses.  Racey realized perfectly that he might need a witness, several witnesses, before the sunset.  He hoped that all the boys of the 88 outfit would be at the ranch.  He hoped that Luke Tweezy would be there, too.  Lanpher and Tweezy together, the pups.

“Fat Jakey Pooley’s li’l playmates,” he muttered and swore again—­heartily.