about to start blustering.

"Forget it, Joe," murmured Monty Lewis. "The man is let- ting us out, right?" He turned and glanced up at Rip Hassell. He had surprisingly blue eyes, and long, almost girlish, dark lashes.

Hassell nodded in agreement. "It's tough here," he admitted, trying to let them down easily. "You'll find it easier in other places."

"What other places?" Blake's mouth was twisted into a sneer. "There aren't any other places. This is the lowest you can get."

""

Hassell stiffened and might have made an angry rejoinder, but Monty Lewis forestalled him. "Don't be bitter, Joe," he said lightly. "Look on the bright side. You can go out on your own now."

The partners exchanged glan- ces, Blake's full of hostility and wounded pride, Lewis's a look of sympathy and compassion. Lewis broke the exchange, stood up and went over to the two large costume chests. The top half of the lid swung open at his touch. "We inherited these from our fathers," he said he said to Hassell. "They were the first Blake and Lewis."

Hassell nodded. "I saw them in Chicago," he said, "and on the River, I think."

Monty Lewis smiled. "Yes," he said. "Dad and Uncle Frank worked the riverboats for several years." He opened up the chest fully and began to put away the policeman and convict costumes the pair used in one of their sketches. To Hassell's surprise, there was a woman's dress, black and red, on the first hanger in the chest.

"What's that?" he asked.

Lewis touched the dress be- fore replying. "This? Well, we bought up a lot of costumes in St. Louis." He glanced at blake,

who had turned his back to them had lit up a cheroot and was glaring at his reflection in the mirror. "We had scripts, too, for a couple of new sketches, includ- ing bringing dance hall queens, and the like, into the act. But it didn't work out."

"Why not?" asked Rip with interest. "What your act needs is new sketches. Some of that material you're doing is pretty old."

There was an awkward silence. Monty Lewis glanced nervously at his partner's back. Joe Blake finally spoke. "The sketches we're doing are the ones our fathers taught us." He frowned at Hassell in the mirror. "That new stuff isn't half as good as the old. Besides, you're not getting me into a woman's dress, even on the stage," he added sarcastically

"But we've never given it a chance," said Lewis in a mild protest.

"This act," Blake's eyes were inflamed, "kept our fathers in the business for over forty years. And we do it better than they did."

Lewis looked unhappy. "Well,' he sighed. "We've argued over this before, haven't we? I just don't think Blake and Lewis have to do the same thing from gener- ation to generation.

""

Hassell finally left the un- happy pair and retreated to his office. He was half-way through a poor-grade bottle of bourbon when he heard the shot from the bar and Dix Leonard, one of the barkeeps, threw his door open and yelled for Rip.

There was quite a crowd around the body of Joe Blake by the time that Rip got into the saloon.

"Stupid fool!" Ed Jones, a foreman miner, said to him. "This tinhorn called out Ross for cardsharping." The foreman squinted at Rip. "I doubt Ross's

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ever done a dirty trick in his life. Everyone knows that!" Rip look- ed at the pale, skinny youth, be- ing held back by other cowboys from the River Circle.

He sighed. "Let him go," he said.

Monty Lewis was bending over the body. He looked up at Rip. "He's dead," he said quietly. He stared at the money on the green topped table.

"That's mine," the skinny cowboy said. "Won it fair and square, as anyone here'll tell you.'

There was a chorus of assent from the men about the table. Lewis nodded and looked down at the contorted mask of his partner's face. "Joe never was a good poker player," he said.

"No," Hassell told Monty the next day. "We don't have a town marshal. We found that they only become targets for the drunks on Saturday night. Al Kwenskin, at the Mines, Big Jim Douglas out at the River Circle or Lyle and I here in town report to the territorial marshals on crimes such as shooting. I'll get depositions from all the boys in the game, but I'm afraid Ross Connors will keep his money and stay out of jail."

Monty Lewis' smooth, unlined face began to crease with worry. "But that was all the money we had in the world," he said.

Hassell shrugged. "You got your return tickets in South Bend, didn't you?" he asked.

Lewis shook his head. "Joe wanted to keep as big a stake as possible for his poker."

"Oh," Rip lit up one of the cigars he kept in his office desk. Lewis refused one. "Don't you have relatives you could tap... or Blake's family?"

Monty Lewis shook his head miserably. "There's only Becky,'