"Jake," said Racey, "s'pose now you ask Punch Thompson what the stranger was doing when he cut down on him." The sheriff regarded Racey with his keen gray gaze. Then he faced about and singled out Thompson from a conversational group across the room. "Punch," he called, and then put Racey's question in his own words. "What was he doin'?" said Thompson, heedless of McFluke's agonized expression. "Which he was hoppin' through that window there"--here he indicated the middle one of three in the side of the room--"when I drawed and missed. I only had time for the one shot." At this there was a sudden scrabbling behind the bar. It was McFluke trying to retreat through the doorway into the back room, and being prevented from accomplishing his purpose by Racey Dawson who, at the innkeeper's first panic-stricken movement, had vaulted the bar and grabbed him by the neck. "None of that now," cautioned Racey Dawson, his right hand flashing down and up, as McFluke, finding that escape was out of the question, made a desperate snatch at the knife-handle protruding from his bootleg. The saloon-keeper reacted immediately to the cold menace of the gun-muzzle pressing against the top of his spinal column. He straightened sullenly. Racey, transferring the gun-muzzle to the small of McFluke's back, stooped swiftly, drew out McFluke's knife and tossed it through a window. "You won't be needing that again," said Racey Dawson. "Help yoreself, Kansas." Which the deputy promptly proceeded to do by snapping a pair of handcuffs round the thick McFluke wrists. "Whatell you trying to do?" bawled McFluke in a rage. "I ain't done nothing! You can't prove I done nothing! You--" "Shut up!" interrupted Kansas Casey, giving the handcuffs an expert twitch that wrenched a groan out of McFluke. "Proving anything takes time. We got time. You got time. What more do you want?" The efficient deputy towed the saloon-keeper round the bar and out into the barroom. He faced him about in front of Jake Rule. The sheriff fixed him with a grim stare. "What did you try to run for, Mac?" he demanded. "I had business outdoors," grumbled McFluke. "What kind of business?" "What's that to you? You ain't got no license to grab a-hold of me and stop me from transacting 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.