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 "I'm supposed to be dead, Texas."

"You don't tell me, Miss Fannie!"

"Well, I am. So we've got to go easy, and don't forget I'm your old side-pardner from the Nation, and Ben Chouteau's my name."

"I'll remember; don't you doubt I'll remember."

"I've come back to this town to throw a crimp into some of the crooks that thought they'd salted my old hide down, and I want you to help me, Texas."

"My heart's with you, and my hand's the same as your own."

"We'll have a bunch of these crooks breakin' their necks to hit the timber before this time to-morrow night. But I don't want to talk around here where somebody might be listenin'. Do you care to take a little walk?"

They walked toward the railroad station, for in that direction the town quickly blended out to open prairie, where there was room for all the confidences in the world to pass from ear to ear without danger of a leak. They came into range of a noise of shouting men and the rumble of hoofs on planks as they left the town, telling that cattle were being loaded.

"It's that Texas crowd," said Fannie; "they're roundin' them up fast. They shipped a big bunch two days ago, they told me—I came up that way