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 duck-out hamlet, and when the Kid finishes his act and calls for volunteers, Battlin' Thomas, one of the plants we carried, starts up the aisle, as they is no response from the brave men and true in the audience.

to the ring the Battler is pushed to one side by a large, tall person wearin' a wide-brimmed black Stetson.

Layin' one hand on the top rope, the stranger leaps into the ring, waves his hand airily to the shoutin' crowd, and presents me and the Kid with a sneerin', full-toothed grin.

"Beats all how us boys do cross trails!" says Hurricane Kenney, the Chickasha Bone Crusher, throwin' his coat over one of the posts. "I'd admire to draw down them five thousand dollars. Whereabouts is them gauntlets?"

Twenty minutes later the Kid is shakin' hands with a somewhat battered and slightly bleedin' human shock absorber entitled Hurricane Kenney. One of Kenney's glims is a study in purple, and a cut on his left cheek bone shows the dashin' rancher to be possessed of red blood anyways. Kid Roberts is sportin' several crimson blotches on his gleamin' white body where some of the Hurricane's wild haymakers has landed, but outside of that is unharmed.

"Better luck next time, old man!" smiles the Kid as we're leaving the ring.

"I'll knock yuh out the next time!" growls the jovial Kenney.

We had a hundred-and-fifty-mile jump from this slab, and a wicked rainstorm when we got there kept most of the natives away. But it didn't keep Joe Ken-