Save a dozen horses tied to the hitching-rail in front of various saloons and the Blue Pigeon Store and Bill Lainey, the fat landlord of the hotel, who sat snoring in a reinforced telegraph chair on the sidewalk in the shade of his wooden awning, Main Street was a howling wilderness.

Because while Bill Lainey offered no objections to feeding the horse, Mrs. Lainey utterly refused to provide snacks at odd hours for good-for-nothing, stick-a-bed punchers who were too lazy to eat at the regular meal-time.

Because while Bill Lainey offered no objections to feeding the horse, Mrs. Lainey utterly refused to provide snacks at odd hours for good-for-nothing, stick-a-bed punchers who were too lazy to eat at the regular meal-time.

And there's Mis' Lainey and Mis' Galloway looking at you from their kitchen windows.

At this juncture fat Bill Lainey wheezed round the corner of the corral.

" "That's right," Racey assented, smoothly, suddenly mindful both of a peculiar gleam in Bill Lainey's eye and a chance sentence uttered by the hasher in his hearing at breakfast.

" "Correct," said Bill Lainey, stuffing the money into a wide trousers pocket.

Is it against the law to tell a feller where Nebraska's friends hang out when they're in town?" "The dance hall and the Starlight," replied Bill Lainey, promptly.

"Might you happen to know any of their names, Bill?" "What you wanna do, Racey, is look out for a jigger named Coffin," declared Lainey, coming flatly to the point.

Racey and Swing had met him on the sidewalk in front of Lainey's hotel shortly after breakfast the following morning, and Racey had told him of their ultimate decision.

He could hear the wheezing, laboured breathing of Bill Lainey, the hotel proprietor.

"This is his room," panted Bill Lainey.

"You don't use my hotel for no calaboose," squawked Bill Lainey.

"I hear they's a new hasher at Bill Lainey's hotel," pursued the indefatigable Jimmie.

"Bet you he's gonna go see that new hasher of Bill Lainey's." "No," denied the Kid, judicially, "not that lady.

Bill Lainey was only too glad to lend him a fresh horse and a bran sack.

Racey, taking no chances on the Lainey horse stampeding at the explosion, rope-tied the animal to the trunk of the pine.

With the coil of fuse in one hand and the bran sack given him by Lainey in the other he walked toward the house of Tweezy.