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 "Well, I don't know as that's exac'ly any of your business, friend," Dunham replied, outwardly unruffled, but feeling in that area which he defined as his craw a sinking and dragging, which told him as well as any barometer of human passions that ever might be devised, that trouble was standing in the road.

"I make it my business when I find a man ridin' off on my horse," the slab-sided fellow said. "I've been trailin' that horse, and I'm here to take him."

"You'll have to prove your ownership—I'm not goin' to take your word for that, pardner," Dunham replied, getting a little hot around the sweatband. "I bought this outfit from the man that owns this stable, and I've got his bill of sale."

"I ain't carin' a cuss about the man that had him; I'm talkin' to the man that's got him. Back up there, feller, and give me this horse!"

Dunham didn't believe the man ever saw the horse before. He raised his hand in a cautioning gesture, turned to the door and called the liveryman, whom he had left in his dusty little office smelling of neat's foot oil only a minute before.

The liveryman had disappeared. He didn't answer to the hail that Dunham sent roaring through the empty barn, but an open door at the back told which way he had gone. Whether he had dusted it out of caution, or because there was something crooked about the ownership of the horse, Dunham did not try to guess.

It came to Dunham suddenly, through that subtle sense that pricks its ears when a man confronts a situation bulging with danger, and strains every faculty to