"I hope he never comes back. I never want to see him again. Do you know him?" "Not me. First time I ever saw him was this morning in Farewell. He was with Lanpher. When I was coming out here he and Lanpher caught up with me and passed me." "He didn't bring Lanpher here with him anyhow." "He didn't for a fact," assented Racey Dawson, his eyes following the dwindling figures of the rider and his horse. "I wonder why?" "I wonder, too." Thus Miss Dale with a gurgling chuckle. Both laughed. For Racey's sole visit to the Dale place had been made in company with Lanpher. The cause of said visit had been the rustling and butchering of an 88 cow, which Lanpher had ill-advisedly essayed to fasten upon Mr. Dale. But, due to the interference of Chuck Morgan, a Bar S rider, who later married Jane Dale, Lanpher's attempt had been unavailing. It may be said in passing that Lanpher had suffered both physically and mentally because of that visit. Of course he had neither forgiven Chuck Morgan nor the Bar S for backing up its puncher, which it had done to the limit. "I quit the 88 that day," Racey Dawson told the girl. "I know you did. Chuck told me. Look at the time, will you? Get your hat. We mustn't keep Jane waiting." "No," he said, thoughtfully, his brows puckered, "we mustn't keep Jane waitin'. Lookit, Miss Dale, as I remember yore pa he had a moustache. Has he still got it?" Miss Dale puzzled, paused in the doorway. "Why, no," she told him. "He wears a horrid chin whisker now." "He does, huh? A chin whisker. Let's be movin' right along. I think I've got something interesting to tell you and yore sister and Chuck." But they did not move along. They halted in the doorway. Or, rather, the girl halted in the doorway, and Racey looked over her shoulder. What stopped them short in their tracks was a spectacle--the spectacle of an elderly chin-whiskered man, very drunk and disorderly, riding in on a paint pony. "Father!" breathed Miss Dale in a horror-stricken whisper. And as she spoke Father uttered a string of cheerful whoops and topped off with a long pull at a bottle he had been brandishing in his right hand. "Please go," said Miss Dale to Racey Dawson. He hesitated. He was in a quandary. He did not relish leaving her with--At that instant Mr. Dale decided Racey's course for him. Mr. Dale pulled a gun and, still whooping cheerily, shook five shots into the atmosphere. Then Mr. Dale fumblingly threw out his cylinder and began to reload. "I'd better get his gun away from him," Racey said, apologetically, over his shoulder, as he ran forward. But the old man would have none of him. He cunningly discerned an enemy in Racey and tried to shoot him. It was lucky for Racey that the old fellow was as drunk as a fiddler, or certainly Racey would have been buried the next day. As it was, the first bullet went wide by a yard. The second went straight up into the blue, for by then Racey had the old man's wrist.