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T was late that evening when the news began to fly around Cottonwood that Johnnie Mackey had transferred his interests to Jud Springer and quit the town in the dark. It was the biggest sensation that Cottonwood ever had experienced. Even the thrashing of the mayor became a secondary incident in the town's history, and in the minds of the knowing ones merely a forerunning branch of this great event. For, closely as their meeting with Mackey had been guarded, there were some who were aware of it, and Texas and the dark little stranger were at once clothed with a mysterious importance that lifted them to a conspicuous situation in the public eye.

Detectives, it was generally said they were, who had a line on Mackey's past, brought in by Jud Springer for the purpose of smoking him out. Springer got the credit for it; nobody ever had heard of a shrewder business move.

The town remained awake longer than usual to talk about it, the citizens and visitors shifting from one of Jud Springer's gaping doors to the other,