"Meanin' you'll knock 'em off short before you get anything out o' me
I don't want to tell you. And I tell you flat I ain't talkin' over
Jack Harpe with you."
"Scared to?" he hazarded, boldly.
"You can give it any name you like. Pull up a chair. Dinner's most ready. They's enough for two."
Despite the fact that he had just dined at the hotel he accepted her invitation in the hope that she could be persuaded to talk. And after dinner he smoked several cigarettes with her—still hoping. Finally, finding that nothing he could say was of any avail to move her, he took up his hat and departed.
"Don't go away mad," she called after him.
"I ain't," he denied, and went on, her mocking laughter ringing in his ears.
After Racey was gone out of sight Marie turned back into her little house. There was no laughter on her lips or in her eyes as she sat down in a chair beside the table and stared across it at the chair in which Racey had been sitting.
"He's a nice boy," she whispered under her breath, after a time. "I wish—I wish—"
But what it was she wished it is impossible to relate, for, instead of completing the sentence, she hid her face in her hands and began to cry.
Early next morning Racey Dawson and Swing Tunstall rode out of town by the Marysville trail. They were bound for the Bar S and a job.