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 whom he recognized. He would have dodged Puckett if he could have done so, for at the sight of him a shadow of trouble seemed to flit across the road. Puckett hurried along to cross Dunham, stopped as if struck helpless by astonishment squarely in front of the restaurant door, his dissolute face pulled in an expression of mocking surprise.

"We-ll-ll, who in the hell said I was dead?" he said, trying to carry it off as if Dunham had come out of the undertaker's to throw that scare into him.

Puckett grinned derisively, as a coward taunts a better man who is restrained by some sufficient reason from knocking him down.

"It's old six hundred come back to town!" he said, Dunham ignoring him and passing on. As the screen door slapped at Dunham's heels, Puckett put his ugly face to the wire and drawled after him: "Who in the hell said I was dead!"

This last sally of wit Puckett delivered with provocative derision that would have justified a shot. Dunham passed the nagging of this trouble-hunter by, as he had determined to ignore the taunts of others who might spring this on him, unless they accompanied it by some sufficient fighting reason.

A bony young woman in black sateen, with white collar and apron, confronted him as he sat down. She stood grinning familiarly, his identification complete in her eyes by the introduction Puckett had whined through the door. Dunham knew that everybody in town soon would be fixing their mouths to shoot that taunting fool thing at him.