The Heart of the Range eBook

He pulled himself erect slowly and tenderly.
His knees were very shaky. His head throbbed
like a squeezed boil, but—­he wanted to learn
what was in that saddle-pocket. Possibly he might
obtain therein a clue to the horse’s owner.

He slipped the strap of the pocket-flap, flipped it
open, inserted his fingers, and drew forth a small
package wrapped in newspaper and tied with the blue
string affected by the Blue Pigeon Store in Farewell.

Mr. Dawson balanced the package on two fingers for
a reflective instant, then he snapped the string and
opened the package.

“Socks an’ a undershirt,” he said,
disgustedly, and started to say more, but paused,
for there was something queer about that undershirt.
His head was still spinning, and his eyes were sandy,
but he perceived quite plainly that there were narrow
blue ribbons running round the neck of that undershirt.
He unrolled the socks and found them much longer in
the leg than the kind habitually worn by men.
Mr. Dawson agitatedly dived his hand once more into
the saddle-pocket. And this time he pulled out
a tortoise-shell shuttle round which was wrapped several
inches of lingerie edging. But Mr. Dawson did
not call it lingerie edging. He called it tatting
and swore again.

“Oh, you’ll catch it,” chuckled
the humorous Piney. “Yep, you betcha.
You’ve got a gall, you have. Camly prancing
out of a saloon an’ glooming onto a lady’s
hoss. What kind o’ doin’s is that,
I’d like to know?”

“You blasted idjit!” cried the worried
Racey. “Whose hoss is this?”

“I kind o’ guessed maybe something disgraceful
like this here would happen when I seen you and yore
friend sashay into the Happy Heart. And the barkeep
said you had two snifters and a glass o’ milk,
too. Honest, Racey, you’d oughta be more
careful how you mix yore drinks.”

“Don’t try to be a bigger jack than you
are,” Racey adjured him in a tone that he strove
to make contemptuous. “You think yo’re
awful funny—­just too awful funny, don’t
you? I’m askin’ you, you fish-faced
ape, whose hoss this is I got here?”

“Don’t you know?” grinned Piney,
elevating both eyebrows. “Lordy, I wouldn’t
be in yore shoes for something. Nawsir. She’ll
snatch you baldheaded, she will. The old lady
was wild when she come out an’ found her good
hoss missing. And she shore said what she thought
of you some more when she seen she had to ride home
on that old crow’s dinner of a moth-eaten accordeen
you left behind.”