Five minutes later, smoking a grateful cigarette, he again started to ride out of town. As he curved his horse round a freight wagon in front of the Blue Pigeon he saw three men issue from the doorway of the Happy Heart Saloon. Two of the men were Lanpher and the stranger. The third was Luke Tweezy. The latter stopped at the saloon hitching-rail to untie his horse. "See yuh later, Luke," the stranger flung over his shoulder to Luke Tweezy as he passed on. He and Lanpher headed diagonally across the street toward the hotel. It seemed odd to Racey Dawson that Luke Tweezy by no word or sign made acknowledgment of the stranger's remark. Racey tickled his mount with the rowels of one spur and stirred him into a trot. Have to be moving along if he wanted to get there some time that day. He wished he didn't have to go alone, so he did. The old lady would surely lay him out, and he wished for company to share his misery. Why couldn't Swing Tunstall have stayed reasonably in Farewell instead of traipsing off over the range like a tomfool. Might not be back for a week, Swing mightn't. Idiotic caper (with other adjectives) of Swing's, anyway. Why hadn't he used his head? Oh, Racey Dawson was an exceedingly irritable young man as he rode out of Farewell. The aches and pains were still throbbingly alive in his own particular head. The immediate future was not alluring. It was a hard world. When he and his mount were breasting the first slight rise of the northern slope of Indian Ridge--which ridge marks with its long, broad-backed bulk the southern boundary of the flats south of Farewell and forces the Marysville trail to travel five miles to go two--a rider emerged from a small boulder-strewn draw wherein tamaracks grew thinly. Racey stared--and forgot his irritation and his headache. The draw was not more than a quarter-mile distant, and he perceived without difficulty that the rider was a woman. She quirted her mount into a gallop, and then seesawed her right arm vigorously. Above the pattering drum of her horse's hoofs a shout came faintly to his ears. He pulled up and waited. When the woman was close to him he saw that it was the good-looking, brown-haired Happy Heart lookout, the girl whose dog he had protected. She dragged her horse to a halt at his side and smiled. And, oddly enough, it was an amazingly sweet smile. It had nothing in common with the hard smile of her profession. "I'm sorry I had to leave without thanking you for what you done for me back there," said she, with a jerk of her head toward distant Farewell. "Why, that's all right," Racey told her, awkwardly. "It meant a lot to me," she went on, her smile fading. "You wouldn't let that feller hurt me or my dog, and I think the world of that dog." "Yeah." Thus Racey, very much embarrassed by her gratitude and quite at a loss as to the proper thing to say.