Swing, sapient young person, walked casually to the window and watched
Luke Tweezy cross the street to Calloway's store. Then he returned to
Racey's table. Racey turned his tousled head sidewise and whispered
from a corner of his mouth, "Help me out to Tom Kane's stable. He's
out o' town, and there won't anybody bother us."
"C'mon, Racey, come alive," urged Swing Tunstall, making a great
business of shaking awake his drunken friend. "You don't wanna stay
here no longer. I know a fine place where you can sleep it off."
Ten minutes later Racey and Swing were sitting comfortably on a pile
of hay in Tom Kane's new stable. Racey pulled off his boots, flopped
down on the hay, and clasped his hands behind his head. He wiggled his
toes luxuriously and laughed.
"Gawd," said he. "Think o' that old skinflint buying nearly two
bottles of whiskey! Bet that'll lay heavy on his mind for as much as a
month. What you lookin' at me like that for?"
"Yeah, I'd ask if I was you. I shore would. What was yore bright idea
of tellin' Luke Tweezy we were gonna ride for Jack Harpe so's to watch
him?"
"So he'd know it."
"So he'd know it! So he'd know it! The man sits there and says '_so
he'd know it_'! And you call me a thickskull! Which yore head has got
mine snowed under thataway. Can't you see, you droolin' fool, that now
they'll know as much as we do?"
"No, oh, no," Racey denied with a superior smile. "Not never a-tall. I
ain't saying they mightn't know as much as you do by yoreself. But not
while you got the benefit of my brains they won't know as much as we
do. 'Tain't possibil."
"And what did you bite me for?" pursued Swing, disregarding the slur.
"Hell's bells, if you'd bit Luke I wouldn't have a word to say, but
why pick on me?"
"Well, you bumped my head so hard I saw sparks, so we're even. Say,
stop squallin' about yore hand! I didn't bite you half as hard as I
might have. Not half. You can still use the hand all right, can't you?
Yeah. Well, then, you ain't got anything to cry about, not a thing."
"Talk sense, will you? You got us into a fine mess, you have. A fi-ine
mess."
"Guess I fooled him, all right," Racey said with irritating
complacency.
"What was you trying to do, anyway?" Swing snarled, glaring at his
friend. "What was the notion of tearin' off all them confidences about
bein' busted and yore dear friends at the Bar S and how you and me
was gonna play detective? And to think Providence lets a
what-you-may-call-it like you go on living! It ain't reasonable."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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