Page:Frank Spearman--Whispering Smith.djvu/173

 “Let me see the hat.”

McCloud produced it. It was a heavy, broad-brimmed Stetson, with a bullet-hole cut cleanly through the front and the back of the crown. Smith made McCloud put the hat on and describe his position when the shot was fired. McCloud stood up, and Whispering Smith eyed him and put questions.

“What do you think of it?” asked McCloud when he had done.

Smith leaned forward on the table and pushed McCloud’s hat toward him as if the incident were closed. “There is no question in my mind, and there never has been, but that Stetson puts up the best hat worn on the range.”

McCloud raised his eyebrows. “Why, thank you! Your conclusion clears things so. After you speak a man has nothing to do but guess.”

“But, by Heaven, George,” exclaimed Smith, speaking with unaccustomed fervor, “Miss Dicksie Dunning is a hummer, isn’t she? That child will have the whole range going in another year. To think of her standing up and lashing her cousin in that way when he was browbeating a railroad man!”

“Where did you hear about that?”

“The whole Crawling Stone country is talking about it. You never told me you had a mis- 149