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 mean and sullen as he looked. "You couldn't detect a skunk under the house, you dam' snake-feeder!"

"I ain't no detective," Wallace said, trying to speak lightly, although he felt trouble as plainly as a caterpillar down his neck. "I'm just a wearin' it to have some fun with the boys."

"You couldn't 'rest a rabbit!"

"Sure I couldn't," Wallace admitted cheerfully.

"I'll take it off of you and make you chaw it, you dough-faced purp!"

"I ain't out for trouble, pardner," Wallace said, backing away from the aggressive citizen whose dignity he seemed to have offended by inadvertently displaying the badge.

It might have been better for Wallace if he had made a front of it, for with each little pulling in of his horns the fellow's insolence increased. Everything had come to a pause while everybody looked on, this pass between the cowpuncher wearing a detective's badge and the man whose feelings seemed so deeply hurt by the sight of it promising a rare piece of entertainment.

Wallace backed off a little farther, the injured party, as he appeared to hold himself, glaring after him in savage threat. Wallace wished he had stuck to the gang, and not gone projec'in' around that way; he wished he never had bought that dang badge, and he wished he was fourteen miles out on the range that minute instead of there in Eddie Kane's saloon facing that red-eyed old horsethief who looked mean enough to eat baled hay.

"I ain't out for no trouble, pardner," Wallace repeated, trying to make it sound like he'd set his claws in its boot