A six-shooter roared and a bullet crashed into the ceiling.

“Git out of the way we’re a-goin’ by!” howled someone, and instantly the chorus drowned the rattle of spurs and the clatter of high-heeled boots as the men crowded to the door.

  “Cowboys out on a yip ti yi! 
  Coyotes howl and night birds cry
  And we’ll be cowboys ’til we die!”

Out in the street horses snorted and whirled against each other, spurs rattled, and leather creaked as the men leaped into their saddles.  With a thunder of hoofs, a whirl of white dust, the slapping of quirts and ropes against horses’ flanks, the wicked bark of forty-fives, and a series of Comanche-like yells the cowboys dashed out onto the flat.  Once more Tex Benton found himself drawn up side by side with Jack Purdy before the girl, for whose handkerchief they had raced.  Both waved their hats, and Alice smiled as she waved her handkerchief in return.

“Looks like I was settin’ back with an ace in the hole, so far,” muttered Tex, audibly.

Purdy scowled:  “Ace in the hole’s all right sometimes.  But it’s the lad that trails along with a pair of deuces back to back that comes up with the chips, cashin’ in time.”

Slim Maloney announced a quarter-mile dash and when Purdy lined up with the starters, Tex quietly eased his horse between two wagons, and, slipping around behind the lumber-piles, rode back to the Headquarters Saloon.  The place was deserted and in a chair beside a card table, with his head buried in his arms, sat Cinnabar Joe, asleep.  The cowpuncher crossed the room and shook him roughly by the shoulder: 

“Hey, Joe—­wake up!”

The man rolled uneasily and his eyelids drew heavily apart.  He mumbled incoherently.

“Wake up, Joe!” The Texan redoubled his efforts but the other relapsed into a stupor from which it was impossible to rouse him.

A man hurrying past in the direction of the flats paused for a moment to peer into the open door.  Tex glanced up as he hurried on.

“Doc!” There was no response and the cowpuncher crossed to the door at a bound.  The street was deserted, and without an instant’s hesitation he dashed into the livery and feed barn next door whose wide aperture yawned deserted save for the switching of tails and the stamping of horses’ feet in the stalls.  The door of the harness room stood slightly ajar and Tex jerked it open and entered.  Harness and saddles littered the floor and depended from long wooden pegs set into the wall while upon racks hung sweatpads and saddle blankets of every known kind and description.  Between the floor and the lower edge of the blankets that occupied a rack at the farther side of the room a pair of black leather shoes showed.

“Come on, Doc, let’s go get a drink.”  The shoes remained motionless.  “Gosh!  There’s a rat over in under them blankets!” A forty-five hammer was drawn back with a sharp click.  The shoes left the floor simultaneously and the head and shoulders of a man appeared above the rack.