News of the beating the Ramblin' Kid gave Sabota traveled fast.
It was flashed over Eagle Butte that the Greek was dead.
"So th' Ramblin' Kid killed old Sabota, did he?" the hostler at the livery barn asked Skinny as he stepped out to care for the cowboy's horse. "What was it over? Sabota having th' Ramblin' Kid 'doped' the day of the sweepstakes?"
Skinny looked keenly, searchingly, at the stableman.
"What do you mean--'Sabota having th' Ramblin' Kid doped?'" he asked sharply.
"Why, didn't you know?" the hostler replied. "I thought everybody knowed. Gyp Streetor told me about it the day of the race--I used to know Gyp when he was a kid back east. I saw him as he was beating it to get out of town. He borrowed five dollars from me. Said Sabota hired him to put 'knock-out' in some coffee for th' Ramblin' Kid and he reckoned the dose wasn't big enough or something. Anyhow, it didn't hold him under long as they thought it would and when he saw the Gold Dust maverick show up on the track he got scared--was afraid it would leak out or th' Ramblin' Kid would suspect him and try to 'get' him after the race, so he ducked out of town--"
"You ain't lying about that?" Skinny asked.
"What would I want to lie about it for?" the other replied. "Wasn't that what made th' Ramblin' Kid kill the Greek?"
"No, it was something else," Skinny answered; "but Sabota ain't dead. He's just crunched up pretty bad--th' Ramblin' Kid jumped on him, like Captain Jack did on that feller from the Chickasaw that tried to steal him!"
So the Ramblin' Kid was not drunk the day of the race! He was drugged-- sick--yet, in spite of everything, rode the Gold Dust maverick and beat the black wonder-horse from the Vermejo! Lord! and they had all thought he was on a tear!
The bottle of whisky was still in the bosom of Skinny's shirt.
He had not touched it. He felt a sudden revulsion for the vile stuff.
"Here," he said, jerking the flask from its hiding-place and handing it to the hostler, "maybe you'd like that bottle of 'rot-gut'--I've swore off!"
"I ain't," the stableman laughed and took it eagerly.
Skinny remained in town that night and the next day, waiting for Parker and the Quarter Circle KT cowboys to come in with the beef cattle. They arrived about noon. Old Heck drove in with the Clagstone "Six." Ophelia and Carolyn June came with him. Skinny met them when Old Heck stopped the in front of the Occidental Hotel. He told them, while they still sat in the automobile, of the fight and the escape of the Ramblin' Kid.