"First class in 'rithmetic will take the front seats," remarked Chuck, solemnly. "The little boys mustn't sit with the little girls. Attention, children, an' I'll interduce our new teacher, Mr. Thomas Loudon, a well-known---- Hi! you leave my cayuse alone, Tom! I'm the only gent he allows to spur him. Damitall, he's goin' to buck, an' I'm all het up, anyhow. Oh, ----! I knowed it!" "Chuck ought to ride pitchers for a livin'," commented Loudon. "Ain't he graceful? Go yuh ten, Telescope, he pulls leather." Chuck returned to them ten minutes later. He sidled his now thoroughly chastened pony in between Ramsay and Laguerre. "I'll have nothin' more to do with that long-legged feller on the left o' the line," Chuck announced to the world at large. "He'd just as soon break a friend's neck as not. He ain't got no feelin's whatever. 'Rithmetic's done locoed him." "As I was sayin' before I was interrupted," said Loudon, grinning, "eighteen from twenty-five leaves seven. There oughtn't to be more'n seven men at the 88 ranch house an' they won't be expectin' callers. There's four of us. What's the answer?" "Dat ees fine," Laguerre said. "We weel geet dere before Scotty un de odders come. I say we go." "Me, too," said Johnny Ramsay. "But no more 'rithmetic!" Chuck Morgan cried in mock alarm. "It shore makes my head ache, 'rithmetic does." They swung away from Farewell and entered a long draw, dark with the purple shadows of the twilight. "Wasn't there nobody at all in Block's shack?" queried Johnny Ramsay, rolling a cigarette one-handed. "Three," replied Loudon. "Huh!" Johnny Ramsay was startled. "Two was dead an' the third was dyin'," explained Loudon. "He cashed before we come out. His name was Tom Hallaway. You remember about Cutting stealin' my hoss. Well, him an' Block turned up in Rocket, an' Cutting was ridin' a blaze-face pinto. Come to find out, the pinto belonged to a fellah named Jim Hallaway, an' Jim was found murdered. The way I figure it: Cutting knowed better'n to ride in on my hoss, so he killed Jim an' took his pony, leavin' my hoss back in the hills some'ers. Later he went back after Ranger, an' sloped with the pair. "This Tom Hallaway was Jim's brother. The two dead men in the shack was the sheriff an' Cutting. Yeah, Rufe Cutting. It'd been better for him if he'd gone south like the sheriff said he did. Rufe was carved up tremendous, an' Block had been plugged three times. Hallaway got 'em both. Two o' the Farewell boys got him though--through the window. But they didn't live long enough to tell about it. He got them plumb centre. Yep, four was Hallaway's tally. He shore paid 'em in full for killin' Jim." "Which I should say as much," murmured Chuck Morgan, admiringly. "He was some man!" "An' he had to die," said Loudon. "All on account o' them measly skunks. Well, by the time Scotty an' that crowd get through with Farewell a Sunday-school won't be in it with the town."