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124 the ground; an' as the first bullet gets Glidden in the back of his head, his light goes out like a candle.

"'When the committee looks into the play they jestifies this Cimmaron. "While on the surface," they says, "the deal seems a little florid; still, when a gent armed with nothin' but a cold sense of jestice comes to pirootin' plumb through the affair with a lantern, he's due to emerge a lot with the conviction that Glidden's wrong." So Cimmaron is free in a minute.

"'But thar's Glidden's store! Thar's nobody to claim it; thar bein' no fam'ly to Glidden nohow; not even a hired man.

"‘"Which, as it seems to be a case open to doubt," observes this yere Cimmaron, "I nacherally takes this Glidden party's store an' deals his game myse'f."

"'It ain't much of a store; an' bein' as the rest of us is havin' all we-alls can ride herd on for ourse'fs, no gent makes objections, an' Cimmaron turns himse'f loose in Glidden's store, an' begins to sell things a whole lot. He's shorely doin' well, I reckons, when mebby it's a week later he comes chargin' over to a passel of us an' allows he wants the committee to settle some trouble which has cut his trail.

"‘"It's about the debts of this yere Glidden, deceased," says Cimmaron. "I succeeds to the business of course; which it's little enough for