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Bar-20 Days

by Clarence Edward Mulford · English · Gutenberg #4922 · 403,806 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Bar-20 Days

Author: Clarence Edward Mulford


        
Release date: April 22, 2006 [eBook #4922]
                Most recently updated: March 16, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4922

Credits: Produced by Dagny; John Bickers; David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BAR-20 DAYS ***




Produced by Dagny; John Bickers





BAR-20 DAYS

By Clarence E. Mulford



AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO “M. D.”





BAR-20 DAYS



CHAPTER I

ON A STRANGE RANGE

Two tired but happy punchers rode into the coast town and dismounted in
front of the best hotel. Putting up their horses as quickly as possible
they made arrangements for sleeping quarters and then hastened out to
attend to business. Buck had been kind to delegate this mission to them
and they would feel free to enjoy what pleasures the town might afford.
While at that time the city was not what it is now, nevertheless it was
capable of satisfying what demands might be made upon it by two very
active and zealous cow-punchers. Their first experience began as they
left the hotel.

“Hey, you cow-wrastlers!” said a not unpleasant voice, and they turned
suspiciously as it continued: “You've shore got to hang up them guns
with the hotel clerk while you cavorts around on this range. This is
_fence_ country.”

They regarded the speaker's smiling face and twinkling eyes and laughed.
“Well, yo're the foreman if you owns that badge,” grinned Hopalong,
cheerfully. “We don't need no guns, nohow, in this town, we don't.
Plumb forgot we was toting them. But mebby you can tell us where lawyer
Jeremiah T. Jones grazes in daylight?”

“Right over yonder, second floor,” replied the marshal. “An' come
to think of it, mebby you better leave most of yore cash with the
guns--somebody'll take it away from you if you don't. It'd be an awful
temptation, an' flesh is weak.”

“Huh!” laughed Johnny, moving back into the hotel to leave his gun,
closely followed by Hopalong. “Anybody that can turn that little trick
on me an' Hoppy will shore earn every red cent; why, we've been to
Kansas City!”

As they emerged again Johnny slapped his pocket, from which sounded a
musical jingling. “If them weak people try anything on us, we may come
between them and _their_ money!” he boasted.

“From the bottom of my heart I pity you,” called the marshal, watching
them depart, a broad smile illuminating his face. “In about twenty-four
hours they'll put up a holler for me to go git it back for 'em,” he
muttered. “An' I almost believe I'll do it, too. I ain't never seen none
of that breed what ever left a town without empty pockets an' aching
heads--an' the smarter they think they are the easier they fall.” A
fleeting expression of discontent clouded the smile, for the lure of the
open range is hard to resist when once a man has ridden free under
its sky and watched its stars. “An' I wish I was one of 'em again,” he
muttered, sauntering on.

Jeremiah T. Jones, Esq., was busy when his door opened, but he leaned
back in his chair and smiled pleasantly at their bow-legged entry,
waving them towards two chairs. Hopalong hung his sombrero on a letter
press and tipped his chair back against the wall; Johnny hung grimly to
his hat, sat stiffly upright until he noticed his companion's pose,
and then, deciding that everything was all right, and that Hopalong was
better up in etiquette than himself, pitched his sombrero dexterously
over the water pitcher and also leaned against the wall. Nobody could
lose him when it came to doing the right thing.

“Well, gentlemen, you look tired and thirsty. This is considered good
for all human ailments of whatsoever nature, degree, or wheresoever
located, in part or entirety, _ab initio_,” Mr. Jones remarked, filling
glasses. There was no argument and when the glasses were empty, he
continued: “Now what can I do for you? From the Bar-20? Ah, yes; I was
expecting you. We'll get right at it,” and they did. Half an hour later
they emerged on the street, free to take in the town, or to have the
town take them in,--which was usually the case.

“What was that he said for us to keep away from?” asked Johnny with keen
interest.

“Sh! Not so loud,” chuckled Hopalong, winking prodigiously.

Johnny pulled tentatively at his upper lip but before he could reply his
companion had accosted a stranger.

“Friend, we're pilgrims in a strange land, an' we don't know the trails.
Can you tell us where the docks are?”

“Certainly; glad to. You'll find them at the end of this street,” and he
smilingly waved them towards the section of the town which Jeremiah T.
Jones had specifically and earnestly warned them to avoid.

“Wonder if you're as thirsty as me?” solicitously inquired Hopalong of
his companion.

“I was just wondering the same,” replied Johnny. “Say,” he confided in
a lower voice, “blamed if I don't feel sort of lost without that Colt.
Every time I lifts my right laig she goes too high--don't feel natural,
nohow.”

“Same here; I'm allus feeling to see if I lost it,” Hopalong responded.
“There ain't no rubbing, no weight, nor nothing.”

“Wish I had something to put in its place, blamed if I don't.”

“Why, now yo're talking--mebby we can buy something,” grinned Hopalong,
happily. “Here's a hardware store--come on in.”

The clerk looked up and laid aside his novel. “Good-morning, gentlemen;
what can I do for you? We've just got in some fine new rifles,” he
suggested.

The customers exchanged looks and it was Hopalong who first found his
voice. “Nope, don't want no rifles,” he replied, glancing around.
“To tell the truth, I don't know just what we do want, but we want
something, all right--got to have it. It's a funny thing, come to think
of it; I can't never pass a hardware store without going in an' buying
something. I've been told my father was the same way, so I must inherit
it. It's the same with my pardner, here, only he gets his weakness from
his whole family, and it's different from mine. He can't pass a saloon
without going in an' buying something.”

“Yo're a cheerful liar, an' you know it,” retorted Johnny. “You know the
reason why I goes in saloons so much--you'd never leave 'em if I didn't
drag you out. He inherits that weakness from his grandfather, twice
removed,” he confided to the astonished clerk, whose expression didn't
know what to express.

“Let's see: a saw?” soliloquized Hopalong. “Nope; got lots of 'em, an'
they're all genuine Colts,” he mused thoughtfully. “Axe? Nails? Augurs?
Corkscrews? Can we use a corkscrew, Johnny? Ah, thought I'd wake you up.
Now, what was it Cookie said for us to bring him? Bacon? Got any bacon?
Too bad--oh, don't apologize; it's all right. Cold chisels--that's the
thing if you ain't got no bacon. Let me see a three-pound cold chisel
about as big as that,”--extending a huge and crooked forefinger,--“an'
with a big bulge at one end. Straight in the middle, circling off into
a three-cornered wavy edge on the other side. What? Look here! You can't
tell us nothing about saloons that we don't know. I want a three-pound
cold chisel, any kind, so it's cold.”

Johnny nudged him. “How about them wedges?”

“Twenty-five cents a pound,” explained the clerk, groping for his
bearings.

“They might do,” Hopalong muttered, forcing the article mentioned into
his holster. “Why, they're quite hocus-pocus. You take the brother to
mine, Johnny.”

“Feels good, but I dunno,” his companion muttered. “Little wide at the
sharp end. Hey, got any loose shot?” he suddenly asked, whereat Hopalong
beamed and the clerk gasped. It didn't seem to matter whether they
bought bacon, cold chisels, wedges, or shot; yet they looked sober.

“Yes, sir; what size?”

“Three pounds of shot, I said!” Johnny rumbled in his throat. “Never
mind what size.”

“We never care about size when we buy shot,” Hopalong smiled. “But,
Johnny, wouldn't them little screws be better?” he asked, pointing
eagerly.

“Mebby; reckon we better get 'em mixed--half of each,” Johnny gravely
replied. “Anyhow, there ain't much difference.”

The clerk had been behind that counter for four years, and executing
and filling orders had become a habit with him; else he would have given
them six pounds of cold chisels and corkscrews, mixed. His mouth was
still open when he weighed out the screws.

“Mix 'em! Mix 'em!” roared Hopalong, and the stunned clerk complied, and
charged them for the whole purchase at the rate set down for screws.

Hopalong started to pour his purchase into the holster which, being open
at the bottom, gayly passed the first instalment through to the floor.
He stopped and looked appealingly at Johnny, and Johnny, in pain from
holding back screams of laughter, looked at him indignantly. Then a
guileless smile crept over Hopalong's face and he stopped the opening
with a wad of wrapping paper and disposed of the shot and screws, Johnny
following his laudable example. After haggling a moment over the bill
they paid it and walked out, to the apparent joy of the clerk.

“Don't laugh, Kid; you'll spoil it all,” warned Hopalong, as he noted
signs of distress on his companion's face. “Now, then; what was it we
said about thirst? Come on; I see one already.”

Having entered the saloon and ordered, Hopalong beamed upon the
bartender and shoved his glass back again. “One more, kind stranger;
it's good stuff.”

“Yes, feels like a shore-enough gun,” remarked Johnny, combining two
thoughts in one expression, which is brevity.

The bartender looked at him quickly and then stood quite still and
listened, a puzzled expression on his face.

_Tic--tickety-tick--tic-tic_, came strange sounds from the other side of
the bar. Hopalong was intently studying a chromo on the wall and Johnny
gazed vacantly out of the window.

“What's that? What in the deuce is that?” quickly demanded the man with
the apron, swiftly reaching for his bung-starter.

_Tickety-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic_, the noise went on, and Hopalong, slowly
rolling his eyes, looked at the floor. A screw rebounded and struck his
foot, while shot were rolling recklessly.

“Them's making the noise,” Johnny explained after critical survey.

“Hang it! I knowed we ought to 'a' got them wedges!” Hopalong exclaimed,
petulantly, closing the bottom of the sheath. “Why, I won't have no gun
left soon 'less I holds it in.” The complaint was plaintive.

“Must be filtering through the stopper,” Johnny remarked. “But don't it
sound nice, especially when it hits that brass cuspidor!”

The bartender, grasping the mallet even more firmly, arose on his toes
and peered over the bar, not quite sure of what he might discover. He
had read of infernal machines although he had never seen one. “What the
blazes!” he exclaimed in almost a whisper; and then his face went hard.
“You get out of here, quick! You've had too much already! I've seen
drunks, but--G'wan! Get out!”

“But we ain't begun yet,” Hopalong interposed hastily. “You see--”

“Never mind what I see! I'd hate to see what you'll be seeing before
long. God help you when you finish!” rather impolitely interrupted the
bartender. He waved the mallet and made for the end of the counter with
no hesitancy and lots of purpose in his stride. “G'wan, now! Get out!”

“Come on, Johnny; I'd shoot him only we didn't put no powder with the
shot,” Hopalong remarked sadly, leading the way out of the saloon and
towards the hardware store.

“You better get out!” shouted the man with the mallet, waving the weapon
defiantly. “An' don't you never come back again, neither,” he warned.

“Hey, it leaked,” Hopalong said pleasantly as he closed the door of the
hardware store behind him, whereupon the clerk jumped and reached for
the sawed-off shotgun behind the counter. Sawed-off shotguns are great
institutions for arguing at short range, almost as effective as dynamite
in clearing away obstacles.

“Don't you come no nearer!” he cried, white of face. “You git out, or
I'll let _this_ leak, an' give you _all_ shot, an' more than you can
carry!”

“Easy! Easy there, pardner; we want them wedges,” Hopalong replied,
somewhat hurriedly. “The others ain't no good; I choked on the very
first screw. Why, I wouldn't hurt you for the world,” Hopalong assured
him, gazing interestedly down the twin tunnels.

Johnny leaned over a nail keg and loosed the shot and screws into it,
smiling with childlike simplicity as he listened to the tintinnabulation
of the metal shower among the nails. “It _does_ drop when you let go of
it,” he observed.

“Didn't I tell you it would? I allus said so,” replied Hopalong, looking
back to the clerk and the shotgun. “Didn't I, stranger?”

The clerk's reply was a guttural rumbling, ninety per cent profanity,
and Hopalong, nodding wisely, picked up two wedges. “Johnny, here's yore
gun. If this man will stop talking to hisself and drop that lead-sprayer
long enough to take our good money, we'll wear em.”

He tossed a gold coin on the table, and the clerk, still holding tightly
to the shotgun, tossed the coin into the cash box and cautiously
slid the change across the counter. Hopalong picked up the money and,
emptying his holster into the nail keg, followed his companion to
the street, in turn followed slowly by the suspicious clerk. The door
slammed shut behind them, the bolt shot home, and the clerk sat down on
a box and cogitated.

Hopalong hooked his arm through Johnny's and started down the street. “I
wonder what that feller thinks about us, anyhow. I'm glad Buck sent Red
over to El Paso instead of us. Won't he be mad when we tell him all the
fun we've had?” he asked, grinning broadly.

They were to meet Red at Dent's store on the way back and ride home
together.



They were strangely clad for their surroundings, the chaps glaringly out
of place in the Seaman's Port, and winks were exchanged by the regular
_habitues_ when the two punchers entered the room and called for drinks.
They were very tired and a little under the weather, for they had made
the most of their time and spent almost all of their money; but any one
counting on robbing them would have found them sober enough to look out
for themselves. Night had found them ready to go to the hotel, but on
the way they felt that they must have one more bracer, and finish their
exploration of Jeremiah T. Jones' tabooed section. The town had begun to
grow wearisome and they were vastly relieved when they realized that the
rising sun would see them in the saddle and homeward bound, headed for
God's country, which was the only place for cow-punchers after all.

“Long way from the home port, ain't you, mates?” queried a tar of
Hopalong. Another seaman went to the bar to hold a short, whispered
consultation with the bartender, who at first frowned and then finally
nodded assent.

“Too far from home, if that's what yo're driving at,” Hopalong replied.
“Blast these hard trails--my feet are shore on the prod. Ever meet my
side pardner? Johnny, here's a friend of mine, a salt-water puncher, an'
he's welcome to the job, too.”

Johnny turned his head ponderously and nodded. “Pleased to meet you,
stranger. An' what'll you all have?”

“Old Holland, mate,” replied the other, joining them.

“All up!” invited Hopalong, waving them forward. “Might as well do
things right or not at all. Them's my sentiments, which I holds
as proper. Plain rye, general, if you means me,” he replied to the
bartender's look of inquiry.

He drained the glass and then made a grimace. “Tastes a little
off--reckon it's my mouth; nothing tastes right in this cussed town.
Now, up on our--” He stopped and caught at the bar. “Holy smoke! That's
shore alcohol!”

Johnny was relaxing and vainly trying to command his will power.
“Something's wrong; what's the matter?” he muttered sleepily.

“Guess you meant beer; you ain't used to drinking whiskey,” grinned the
bartender, derisively, and watching him closely.

“I can--drink as much whiskey as--” and, muttering, Johnny slipped to
the floor.

“That wasn't whiskey!” cried Hopalong, sleepily, “that liquor was
_fixed_!” he shouted, sudden anger bracing him. “An' I'm going to fix
_you_, too!” he added, reaching for his gun, and drawing forth a wedge.
His sailor friend leaped at him, to go down like a log, and Hopalong,
seething with rage, wheeled and threw the weapon at the man behind the
bar, who also went down. The wedge, glancing from his skull, swept a row
of bottles and glasses from the shelf and, caroming, went through the
window.

In an instant Hopalong was the vortex of a mass of struggling men
and, handicapped as he was, fought valiantly, his rage for the time
neutralizing the effects of the drug. But at last, too sleepy to stand
or think, he, too, went down.

“By the Lord, that man's a fighter!” enthusiastically remarked the
leader, gently touching his swollen eye. “George must 'a' put an awful
dose in that grog.”

“Lucky for us he didn't have no gun--the wedge was bad enough,” groaned
a man on the floor, slowly sitting up. “Whoever swapped him that wedge
for his gun did us a good turn, all right.”

A companion tentatively readjusted his lip. “I don't envy Wilkins his
job breaking in that man when he gets awake.”

“Don't waste no time, mates,” came the order. “Up with 'em an' aboard.
We've done our share; let the mate do his, an' be hanged. Hullo,
Portsmouth; coming around, eh?” he asked the man who had first felt the
wedge. “I was scared you was done for that time.”

“No more shanghaiing hair pants for me, no more!” thickly replied
Portsmouth. “Oh, my head, it's bust open!”

“Never mind about the bartender--let him alone; we can't waste no time
with him now!” commanded the leader sharply. “Get these fellers on board
before we're caught with 'em. We want our money after that.”

“All clear!” came a low call from the lookout at the door, and soon a
shadowy mass surged across the street and along a wharf. There was a
short pause as a boat emerged out of the gloom, some whispered orders,
and then the squeaking of oars grew steadily fainter in the direction of
a ship which lay indistinct in the darkness.



CHAPTER II

THE REBOUND

A man moaned and stirred restlessly in a bunk, muttering incoherently.
A stampeded herd was thundering over him, the grinding hoofs beating him
slowly to death. He saw one mad steer stop and lower its head to gore
him and just as the sharp horns touched his skin, he awakened. Slowly
opening his bloodshot eyes he squinted about him, sick, weak, racking
with pain where heavy shoes had struck him in the melee, his head
reverberating with roars which seemed almost to split it open. Slowly he
regained his full senses and began to make out his surroundings. He
was in a bunk which moved up and down, from side to side, and was never
still. There was a small, round window near his feet--thank heaven it
was open, for he was almost suffocated by the foul air and the heat.
Where was he? What had happened? Was there a salty odor in the air, or
was he still dreaming? Painfully raising himself on one elbow he looked
around and caught sight of a man in the bunk across. It was Johnny
Nelson! Then, bit by bit, the whole thing came to him and he cursed
heartily as he reviewed it and reached the only possible conclusion.
He was at sea! He, Hopalong Cassidy, the best fighting unit of a good
fighting outfit, shanghaied and at sea! Drugged, beaten, and stolen to
labor on a ship.

Johnny was muttering and moaning and Hopalong slowly climbed out of the
narrow bunk, unsteadily crossed the moving floor, and shook him. “Reckon
he's in a stampede, too!” he growled. “They shore raised h--l with us.
Oh, what a beating we got! But we'll pass it along with trimmings.”

Johnny's eyes opened and he looked around in confusion. “Wha',
Hopalong!”

“Yes; it's me, the prize idiot of a blamed good pair of 'em. How'd you
feel?”

“Sleepy an' sick. My eyes ache an' my head's splitting. Where's Buck an'
the rest?”

Hopalong sat down on the edge of the bunk and sore luridly, eloquently,
beautifully, with a fervor and polish which left nothing to be desired
in that line, and caused his companion to gaze at him in astonishment.

“I had a mighty bad dream, but you must 'a' had one a whole lot worse,
to listen to you,” Johnny remarked. “Gee, you're going some! What's the
matter with you. You sick, too?”

Thereupon Hopalong unfolded the tale of woe and when Johnny had
grasped its import and knew that his dream had been a stern reality, he
straightway loosed his vocabulary and earned a draw. “Well, I'm going
back again,” he finished, with great decision, arising to make good his
assertion.

“Swim or walk?” asked Hopalong nonchalantly.

“Huh! Oh, Lord!”

“Well, I ain't going to either swim or walk,” Hopalong soliloquized.
“I'm just going to stay right here in this one-by-nothing cellar an'
spoil the health an' good looks of any pirate that comes down that
ladder to get me out.” He looked around, interested in life once more,
and his trained eye grasped the strategic worth of their position. “Only
one at a time, an' down that ladder,” he mused, thoughtfully. “Why,
Johnny, we owns this range as long as we wants to. They can't get us
out. But, say, if only we had our guns!” he sighed, regretfully.

“You're right as far as you go; but you don't go to the eating part.
We'll starve, an' we ain't got no water. I can drink about a bucketful
right now,” moodily replied his companion.

“Well, yo're right; but mebby we can find food an' water.”

“Don't see no signs of none. Hey!” Johnny exclaimed, smiling faintly
in his misery. “Let's get busy an' burn the cussed thing up! Got any
matches?”

“First you want to drown yoreself swimming, an' now you want to roast
the pair of us to death,” Hopalong retorted, eyeing the rear wall of the
room. “Wonder what's on the other side of that partition?”

Johnny looked. “Why, water; an' lots of it, too.”

“Naw; the water is on the other sides.”

“Then how do I know?--sh! I hear somebody coming on the roof.”

“Tumble back in yore bunk--quick!” Hopalong hurriedly whispered. “Be
asleep--if he comes down here it'll be our deal.”

The steps overhead stopped at the companionway and a shadow appeared
across the small patch of sunlight on the floor of the forecastle.
“Tumble up here, you blasted loafers!” roared a deep voice.

No reply came from the forecastle--the silence was unbroken.

“If I have to come down there I'll--” the first mate made promises in no
uncertain tones and in very impolite language. He listened for a moment,
and having very good ears and hearing nothing, made more promises and
came down the ladder quickly and nimbly.

“_I'll_ bring you to,” he muttered, reaching a brawny hand for
Hopalong's nose, and missing. But he made contact with his own face,
which stopped a short-arm blow from the owner of the aforesaid nose, a
jolt full of enthusiasm and purpose. Beautiful and dazzling flashes of
fire filled the air and just then something landed behind his ear and
prolonged the pyrotechnic display. When the skyrockets went up he lost
interest in the proceedings and dropped to the floor like a bag of meal.

Hopalong cut another piece from the rope in his hand and watched his
companion's busy fingers. “Tie him good, Johnny; he's the only ace we've
drawn in this game so far, an' we mustn't lose him.”

Johnny tied an extra knot for luck and leaned forward, his eyes riveted
on the bump under the victim's coat. His darting hand brought into sight
that which pleased him greatly. “Oh, joy! Here, Hoppy; you take it.”

Hopalong turned the weapon over in his hand, spun the cylinder and
gloated, the clicking sweet music to his ears. “Plumb full, too! I never
reckoned I'd ever be so tickled over a snub-nosed gun like this--but I
feel like singing!”

“An' I feel like dying,” grunted Johnny, grabbing at his stomach. “If
the blamed shack would only stand still!” he groaned, gazing at the
floor with strong disgust. “I don't reckon I've ever been so blamed sick
in all my--” the sentence was unfinished, for the open porthole caught
his eye and he leaped forward to use it for a collar.

Hopalong gazed at him in astonishment and sudden pity took possession of
him as his pallid companion left the porthole and faced him.

“You ought to have something to eat, Kid--I'm purty hungry myself--what
the blazes!” he exclaimed, for Johnny's protesting wail was finished
outside the port. Then a light broke upon him and he wondered how soon
it would be his turn to pay tribute to Neptune.

“Mr. Wilkins!” shouted a voice from the deck, and Hopalong moved back
a step. “Mr. Wilkins!” After a short silence the voice soliloquized:
“Guess he changed his mind about it; I'll get 'em up for him,” and feet
came into view. When halfway down the ladder the second mate turned his
head and looked blankly down a gun barrel while a quiet but angry voice
urged him further: “Keep a-coming, keep a-coming!” The second mate
complained, but complied.

“Stick 'em up higher--now, Johnny, wobble around behind the nice man an'
take _his_ gun--you shut yore yap! I'm bossing this trick, not you. Got
it, Kid? There's the rope--that's right. Nobody'd think you sick to see
you work. Well, that's a good draw; but it's only a pair of aces against
a full, at that. Wonder who'll be the next. Hope it's the foreman.”

Johnny, keeping up by sheer grit, pointed to the rear wall. “What about
that?”

For reply his companion walked over to it, put his shoulder to it and
pushed. He stepped back and hurled his weight against it, but it was
firm despite its squeaking protest. Then he examined it foot by foot and
found a large knot, which he drove in by a blow of the gun. Bending, he
squinted through the opening for a full minute and then reported:

“Purty black in there at this end, but up at the other there's a light
from a hole in the roof, an' I could see boxes an' things like that. I
reckon it's the main cellar.”

“If we could get out at the other end with that gun you've got we could
raise blazes for a while,” suggested Johnny. “Anyhow, mebby they can
come at us that way when they find out what we've gone an' done.”

“Yo're right,” Hopalong replied, looking around. Seeing an iron bar
he procured it and, pushing it through the knot hole in the partition,
pulled. The board, splitting and cracking under the attack, finally
broke from its fastenings with a sharp report, and Hopalong, pulling it
aside, stepped out of sight of his companion. Johnny was grinning at the
success of his plan when he was interrupted.

“Ahoy, down there!” yelled a stentorian voice from above. “Mr. Wilkins!
What the devil are you doing so long?” and after a very short wait other
feet came into sight. Just then the second mate, having managed to slip
off the gag, shouted warning:

“Look out, Captain! They've got us and our guns! One of them has--” but
Johnny's knee thudded into his chest and ended the sentence as a bullet
sent a splinter flying from under the captain's foot.

“Hang these guns!” Johnny swore, and quickly turned to secure the gag
in the mouth of the offending second mate. “You make any more yaps like
that an' I'll wing you for keeps with yore own gun!” he snapped. “We're
caught in yore trap an' we'll fight to a finish. You'll be the first to
go under if you gets any smart.”

“Ahoy, men!” roared the captain in a towering rage, dancing frantically
about on the deck and shouting for the crew to join him. He filled the
air with picturesque profanity and stamped and yelled in passion at such
rank mutiny.

“Hand grenades! Hand grenades!” he cried. Then he remembered that his
two mates were also below and would share in the mutineers' fate, and
his rage increased at his galling helplessness. When he had calmed
sufficiently to think clearly he realized that it was certain death for
any one to attempt going down the ladder, and that his must be a waiting
game. He glanced at his crew, thirteen good men, all armed with windlass
bars and belaying pins, and gave them orders. Two were to watch the
hatch and break the first head to appear, while the others returned to
work. Hunger and thirst would do the rest. And what joy would be his
when they were forced to surrender!

Hopalong groped his way slowly towards the patch of light, barking his
shins, stumbling and falling over the barrels and crates and finally,
losing his footing at a critical moment, tumbled down upon a box marked
“Cotton.” There was a splintering crash and the very faint clink of
metal. Dazed and bruised, he sat up and felt of himself--and found that
he had lost his gun in the fall.

“Now, where in blazes did it fly to?” he muttered angrily, peering
about anxiously. His eyes suddenly opened their widest and he stared in
surprise at a field gun which covered him; and then he saw parts of two
more.

“Good Lord! Is this a gunboat?” he cried. “Are we up against bluejackets
an' Uncle Sam?” He glanced quickly back the way he had come when he
heard Johnny's shot, but he could see nothing. He figured that Johnny
had sense enough to call for help if he needed it, and put that
possibility out of his mind. “Naw, this ain't no gunboat--the Government
don't steal men; it enlists 'em. But it's a funny pile of junk, all the
same. Where in blazes is that toy gun? _Well_, I'll be hanged!” and he
plunged toward the “Cotton” box he had burst in his descent, and worked
at it frantically.

“Winchesters! Winchesters!” he cried, dragging out two of them. “Whoop!
Now for the cartridges--there shore must be some to go with these
guns!” He saw a keg marked “Nails,” and managed to open it after great
labor--and found it full of army Colts. Forcing down the desire to turn
a handspring, he slipped one of the six-shooters in his empty holster
and patted it lovingly. “Old friend, I'm shore glad to see you, all
right. You've been used, but that don't make no difference.” Searching
further, he opened a full box of _machetes_, and soon after found
cartridges of many kinds and calibres. It took him but a few minutes to
make his selection and cram his pockets with them. Then he filled two
Colts and two Winchesters--and executed a short jig to work off the
dangerous pressure of his exuberance.

“But what an unholy lot of weapons,” he soliloquized on his way back to
Johnny. “An' they're all second-hand. Cannons, too--an' _machetes_!” he
exclaimed, suddenly understanding. “Jumping Jerusalem!--a filibustering
expedition bound for Cuba, or one of them wildcat republics down south!
Oh, ho, my friends; I see where you have bit off more'n you can chew.”
 In his haste to impart the joyous news to his companion, he barked his
shins shamefully.

“'Way down south in the land o' cotton, cinnamon seed an''--whoa, blast
you!” and Hopalong stuck his head through the opening in the partition
and grinned. “Heard you shoot, Kid; I reckoned you might need me--an'
these!” he finished, looking fondly upon the weapons as he shoved them
into the forecastle.

Johnny groaned and held his stomach, but his eyes lighted up when he saw
the guns, and he eagerly took one of each kind, a faint smile wreathing
his lips. “Now we'll show these water snakes what kind of men they
stole,” he threatened.

Up on the deck the choleric captain still stamped and swore, and his
crew, with well-concealed mirth, went about their various duties as
if they were accustomed to have shanghaied men act this way. They
sympathized with the unfortunate pair, realizing how they themselves
would feel if shanghaied to break broncos.

Hogan, A. B., stated the feelings of his companions very well in his
remarks to the men who worked alongside: “In me hear-rt I'm dommed glad
av it, Yensen. I hope they bate the old man at his own game. 'T is a
shame in these days for honest men to be took in that unlawful way. I've
heard me father tell of the press gangs on the other side, an' 't is
small business.”

Yensen looked up to reply, chanced to glance aft, and dropped his
calking iron in his astonishment. “Yumping Yimminy! Luk at dat fallar!”

Hogan looked. “The deuce! That's a man after me own heat-rt! Kape yore
pagan mouth shut! If ye take a hand agin 'em I'll swab up the deck wid
yez. G'wan wor-rking like a sane man, ye ijit!”

“Ay ent ban fight wit dat fallar! Luk at the gun!”

A man had climbed out of the after hatch and was walking rapidly towards
them, a rifle in his hands, while at his thigh swung a Colt. He watched
the two seamen closely and caught sight of Hogan's twinkling blue eyes,
and a smile quivered about his mouth. Hogan shut and opened one eye and
went on working.

As soon as Hopalong caught sight of the captain, the rifle went up and
he announced his presence without loss of time. “Throw up yore hands,
you pole-cat! I'm running this ranch from now on!”

The captain wheeled with a jerk and his mouth opened, and then clicked
shut as he started forward, his rage acting galvanically. But he stopped
quickly enough when he looked down the barrel of the Winchester and
glared at the cool man behind it.

“What the blank are you doing?” he yelled.

“Well, I ain't kidnapping cow-punchers to steal my boat,” replied
Hopalong. “An' you fellers stand still or I'll drop you cold!” he
ordered to the assembled and restless crew. “Johnny!” he shouted, and
his companion popped up through the hatch like a jack-in-the-box.
“Good boy, Johnny. Tie this coyote foreman like you did the others,” he
ordered. While Johnny obeyed, Hopalong looked around the circle, and
his eyes rested on Hogan's face, studying it, and found something there
which warmed his heart. “Friend, do you know the back trail? Can you
find that runt of a town we left?”

“Aye, aye.”

“Shore, you; who'd you think I was talking to? Can you find the way
back, the way we came?”

“Shure an' I can that, if I'm made to.”

“You'll swing for mutiny if you do, you bilge-wallering pirate!” roared
the trussed captain. “Take that gun away from him, d'ye hear!” he yelled
at the crew. “I'm captain of this ship, an' I'll hang every last one of
you if you don't obey orders! This is mutiny!”

“You won't do no hanging with that load of weapons below!” retorted
Hopalong. “Uncle Sam is looking for filibusters--this here gun is
'cotton,'” he said, grinning. He turned to the crew. “But you fellers
are due to get shot if you sees her through,” he added.

“I'm captain of this ship--” began the helpless autocrat.

“You shore look like it, all right,” Hopalong replied, smiling. “If
yo're the captain you order her turned around and headed over the back
trail, or I'll drop you overboard off yore own ship!” Then fierce anger
at the thought of the indignities and injuries he and his companion had
suffered swept over him and prompted a one-minute speech which left
no doubt as to what he would do if his demand was not complied with.
Johnny, now free to watch the crew, added a word or two of endorsement,
and he acted a little as if he rather hoped it would not be complied
with: he itched for an excuse.

The captain did some quick thinking; the true situation could not be
disguised, and with a final oath of rage he gave in. “'Bout ship, Hogan;
nor' by nor'west,” he growled, and the seaman started away to execute
the command, but was quickly stopped by Hopalong.

“Hogan, is that right?” he demanded. “No funny business, or we'll clean
up the whole bunch, an' blamed quick, too!”

“That's the course, sor. That's the way back to town. I can navigate,
an' me orders are plain. Ye're Irish, by the way av ye, and 't is back
to town ye go, sor!” He turned to the crew: “Stand by, me boys.” And in
a short time the course was nor' by nor'west.

The return journey was uneventful and at nightfall the ship lay at
anchor off the low Texas coast, and a boat loaded with men grounded on
the sandy beach. Four of them arose and leaped out into the mild surf
and dragged the boat as high up on the sand as it would go. Then the
two cow-punchers followed and one of them gave a low-spoken order to the
Irishman at his side.

“Yes, sor,” replied Hogan, and hastened to help the captain out onto the
sand and to cut the ropes which bound him. “Do ye want the mates, too,
sor?” he asked, glancing at the trussed men in the boat.

“No; the foreman's enough,” Hopalong responded, handing his weapons to
Johnny and turning to face the captain, who was looking into Johnny's
gun as he rubbed his arms to restore perfect circulation.

“Now, you flat-faced coyote, yo're going to get the beating of yore
life, an' I'm going to give it to you!” Hopalong cried, warily advancing
upon the man whom he held to be responsible for the miseries of the past
twenty-four hours. “You didn't give me a square deal, but I'm man enough
to give you one! When you drug an' steal any more cow-punchers--” action
stopped his words.

It was a great fight. A filibustering sea captain is no more peaceful
than a wild boar and about as dangerous; and while this one was not at
his best, neither was Hopalong. The latter luckily had acquired some
knowledge of the rudiments of the game and had the vigor of youth to
oppose to the captain's experience and his infuriated but well-timed
rushes. The seamen, for the honor of their calling and perhaps with a
mind to the future, cheered on the captain and danced up and down in
their delight and excitement. They had a lot of respect for the prowess
of their master, and for the man who could stand up against him in a
fair and square fist fight. To give assistance to either in a fair fight
was not to be thought of, and Johnny's gun was sufficient after-excuse
for non-interference.

The _sop! sop!_ of the punishing blows as they got home and the steady
circling of Hopalong in avoiding the dangerous attacks, went on minute
after minute. Slowly the captain's strength was giving out, and he
resorted to trickery as his last chance. Retreating, he half raised his
arms and lowered them as if weary, ready as a cat to strike with all
his weight if the other gave an opening. It ought to have worked--it had
worked before--but Hopalong was there to win, and without the momentary
hesitation of the suspicious fighter he followed the retreat and his
hard hand flashed in over the captain's guard a fraction of a second
sooner than that surprised gentleman anticipated. The ferocious frown
gave way to placid peace and the captain reclined at the feet of the
battered victor, who stood waiting for him to get up and fight. The
captain lay without a sign of movement and as Hopalong wondered, Hogan
was the first to speak.

“Fer the love av hiven, let him be! Ye needn't wait--he's done; I know
by the sound av it!” he exclaimed, stepping forward. “'T was a purty
blow, an' 't was a gr-rand foight ye put up, sor! A gr-rand foight, but
any more av that is murder! 'T is an Irishman's game, sor, an' ye did
yersilf proud. But now let him be--no man, least av all a Dootchman,
iver tuk more than that an' lived!”

Hopalong looked at him and slowly replied between swollen lips, “Yo're
right, Hogan; we're square now, I reckon.”

“That's right, sor,” Hogan replied, and turned to his companions. “Put
him in the boat; an' mind ye handle him gintly--we'll be sailing under
him soon. Now, sor, if it's yer pleasure, I'll be after saying good-bye
to ye, sor; an' to ye, too,” he said, shaking hands with both punches.
“Fer a sick la-ad ye're a wonder, ye are that,” he smiled at Johnny,
“but ye want to kape away from the water fronts. Good-bye to ye both,
an' a pleasant journey home. The town is tin miles to me right, over
beyant them hills.”

“Good-bye, Hogan,” mumbled Hopalong gratefully. “Yo're square all the
way through; an' if you ever get out of a job or in any kind of trouble
that I can help you out of, come up to the Bar-20 an' you won't have to
ask twice. Good luck!” And the two sore and aching punchers, wiser in
the ways of the world, plodded doggedly towards the town, ten miles
away.

The next morning found them in the saddle, bound for Dent's hotel and
store near the San Miguel Canyon. When they arrived at their destination
and Johnny found there was some hours to wait for Red, his restlessness
sent him roaming about the country, not so much “seeking what he might
devour” as hoping something might seek to devour him. He was so sore
over his recent kidnapping that he longed to find a salve. He faithfully
promised Hopalong that he would return at noon.



CHAPTER III

DICK MARTIN STARTS SOMETHING

Dick Martin slowly turned, leaned his back against the bar, and
languidly regarded a group of Mexicans at the other end of the room.
Singly, or in combinations of two or more, each was imparting all he
knew, or thought he knew about the ghost of San Miguel Canyon. Their
fellow-countryman, new to the locality, seemed properly impressed. That
it was the ghost of Carlos Martinez, murdered nearly one hundred years
before at the big bend in the canyon, was conceded by all; but there was
a dispute as to why it showed itself only on Friday nights, and why it
was never seen by any but a Mexican. Never had a Gringo seen it. The
Mexican stranger was appealed to: Did this not prove that the murder
had been committed by a Mexican? The stranger affected to consider the
question.

Martin surveyed them with outward impassiveness and inward contempt. A
realist, a cynic, and an absolute genius with a Colt .45, he was well
known along the border for his dare-devil exploits and reckless courage.
The brainiest men in the Secret Service, Lewis, Thomas, Sayre, and
even old Jim Lane, the local chief, whose fingers at El Paso felt every
vibration along the Rio Grande, were not as well known--except to those
who had seen the inside of Government penitentiaries--and they were
quite satisfied to be so eclipsed. But the Service knew of the ghost,
as it knew everything pertaining to the border, and gave it no serious
thought; if it took interest in all the ghosts and superstitions
peculiar to the Mexican temperament it would have no time for serious
work. Martin once, in a spirit of savage denial, had wasted the better
part of several successive Friday nights in the San Miguel, but to no
avail. When told that the ghost showed itself only to Mexicans he had
shrugged his shoulders eloquently and laughed, also eloquently.

“A Greaser,” he replied, “is one-half fear and superstition, an' the
other half imagination. There ain't no ghosts, but I know the _Greasers_
have seen 'em, all right. A Greaser can see anything scary if he makes
up his mind to. If _I_ ever see one an' he keeps on being one after
I shoot, I'll either believe in ghosts, or quit drinking.” His eyes
twinkled as he added: “An' of the two, I think I'd _prefer_ to see
ghosts!”

He was flushed and restless with deviltry. His fifth glass always
made him so; and to-night there was an added stimulus. He believed
the strange Mexican to be Juan Alvarez, who was so clever that the
Government had never been able to convict him. Alvarez was fearless to
recklessness and Martin, eager to test him, addressed the group with the
blunt terseness for which he was famed, and hated.

“Greasers are cowards,” he asserted quietly, and with a smile which
invited excitement. He took a keen delight in analyzing the expressions
on the faces of those hit. It was one of his favorite pastimes when
feeling coltish.

The group was shocked into silence, quickly followed by great unrest and
hot, muttered words. Martin did not move a muscle, the smile was set,
but between the half-closed eyelids crouched Combat, on its toes. The
Mexicans knew it was there without looking for it--the tone of his
voice, the caressing purr of his words, and his unnatural languor were
signs well known to them. Not a criminal sneaking back from voluntary
banishment in Mexico who had seen those signs ever forgot them, if he
lived. Martin watched the group cat-like, keenly scrutinizing each face,
reading the changing emotions in every shifting expression; he had this
art down so well that he could tell when a man was debating the pull of
a gun, and beat him on the draw by a fraction of a second.

“De senor ees meestak,” came the reply, as quiet and caressing as the
words which provoked it. The strange Mexican was standing proudly and
looking into the squinting eyes with only a grayness of face and a
tigerish litheness to tell what he felt.

“None go through the canyon after dark on Fridays,” purred Martin.

“_I_ go tro' de canyon nex' Friday night. Eef I do, then you mak apology
to me?”

“I'll limit my remark to all but one Greaser.”

The Mexican stepped forward. “I tak' thees gloove an' leave eet at
de Beeg Ben', for you to fin' in daylight,” he said, tapping one of
Martin's gauntlets which lay on the bar. “You geev' me eet befo' I go?”

“Yes; at nine o'clock to-morrow night,” Martin replied, hiding his
elation. He was sure that he knew the man now.

The Mexican, cool and smiling, bowed and left the room, his companions
hastening after him.

“Well, I'll bet twenty-five dollars he flunks!” breathed the bartender,
straightening up.

Martin turned languidly and smiled at him. “I'll take that, Charley,” he
replied.



Johnny Nelson was always late, and on this occasion he was later than
usual. He was to have joined Hopalong and Red, if Red had arrived, at
Dent's at noon the day before, and now it was after nine o'clock at
night as he rode through San Felippe without pausing and struck east
for the canyon. The dropping trail down the canyon was serious enough
in broad daylight, but at night to attempt its passage was foolhardy,
unless one knew every turn and slant by heart, which Johnny did not. He
was thirty-three hours late now, and he was determined to make up what
he could in the next three.

When Johnny left Hopalong at Dent's he had given his word to be back on
time and not to keep his companions waiting, for Red might be on time
and he would chafe if he were delayed. But, alas for Johnny's good
intentions, his course took him through a small Mexican hamlet in which
lived a senorita of remarkable beauty and rebellious eyes; and Johnny
tarried in the town most of the day, riding up and down the streets,
practising the nice things he would say if he met her. She watched
him from the heavily draped window, and sighed as she wondered if her
dashing Americano would storm the house and carry her off like the
knights of old. Finally he had to turn away with heavy and reluctant
heart, promising himself that he would return when no petulant and
sarcastic companions were waiting for him. Then--ah! what dreams youth
knows.

Half an hour ahead of him on another trail rode Juan, smiling with
satisfaction. He had come to San Felippe to get a look at the canyon on
Friday nights, and Martin had given him an excuse entirely unexpected.
For this he was truly grateful, even while he knew that the American
had tried to pick a quarrel with him and thus rid the border of a man
entirely too clever for the good of customs receipts; and failing in
that, had hoped the treacherous canyon trail would gain that end in
another manner. Old Jim Lane's fingers touched wires not one whit more
sensitive than those which had sent Juan Alvarez to look over the San
Miguel--and Lane's wires had been slow this time. When Juan had left the
saloon the night before and had seen Manuel slip away from the group and
ride off into the north, he had known that the ghost would show itself
the following night.

But Juan was to be disappointed. He was still some distance from the
canyon when a snarling bulk landed on the haunches of his horse. He
jerked loose his gun and fired twice and then knew nothing. When he
opened his eyes he lay quietly, trying to figure it out with a head
throbbing with pain from his fall. The cougar must have been desperate
for food to attack a man. He moved his foot and struck something soft
and heavy. His shots had been lucky, but they had not saved him his
horse and a sprained arm and leg. There would be no gauntlet found at
the Big Bend at daylight.

When Johnny Nelson reached the twin boulders marking the beginning of
the sloping run where the trail pitched down, he grinned happily at
sight of the moon rising over the low hills and then grabbed at his
holster, while every hair in his head stood up curiously. A wild,
haunting, feminine scream arose to a quavering soprano and sobbed away
into silence. No words can adequately describe the unearthly wail in
that cry and it took a full half-minute for Johnny to become himself
again and to understand what it was. Once more it arose, nearer, and
Johnny peered into the shadows along a rough backbone of rock, his Colt
balanced in his half-raised hand.

“You come 'round me an' you'll get hurt,” he muttered, straining his
eyes to peer into the blackness of the shadows. “Come on out, Soft-foot;
the moon's yore finish. You an' me will have it out right here an'
now--I don't want no cougar trailing me through that ink-black canyon on
a two-foot ledge--” he thought he saw a shadow glide across a dim patch
of moonlight, but when his smoke rifted he knew he had missed. “Damn
it! You've got a mate 'round here somewhere,” he complained. “Well,
I'll have to chance it, anyhow. Come on, bronc! Yo're shaking like a
leaf--get out of this!”

When he began to descend into the canyon he allowed his horse to pick
its own way without any guidance from him, and gave all of his attention
to the trail behind him. The horse could get along better by itself in
the dark, and it was more than possible that one or two lithe cougars
might be slinking behind him on velvet paws. The horse scraped along
gingerly, feeling its way step by step, and sending stones rattling and
clattering down the precipice at his left to tinkle into the stream at
the bottom.

“Gee, but I wish I'd not wasted so much time,” muttered the rider
uneasily. “This here canyon-cougar combination is the worst _I_ ever
butted up against. I'll never be late again, not never; not for all the
girls in the world. Easy, bronc,” he cautioned, as he felt the animal
slip and quiver. “Won't this trail ever start going up again?” he
growled petulantly, taking his eyes off the black back trail, where no
amount of scrutiny showed him anything, and turned in the saddle to peer
ahead--and a yell of surprise and fear burst from him, while chills ran
up and down his spine. An unearthly, piercing shriek suddenly rang out
and filled the canyon with ear-splitting uproar and a glowing, sheeted
half-figure of a man floated and danced twenty feet from him and over
the chasm. He jerked his gun and fired, but only once, for his mount had
its own ideas about some things and this particular one easily headed
the list. The startled rider grabbed reins and pommel, his blood
congealed with fear of the precipice less than a foot from his side, and
he gave all his attention to the horse. But scared as he was he heard,
or thought that he heard, a peculiar sound when he fired, and he would
have sworn that he hit the mark--the striking of the bullet was not
drowned in the uproar and he would never forget the sound of that
impact. He rounded Big Bend as if he were coming up to the judge's
stand, and when he struck the upslant of the emerging trail he had made
a record. Cold sweat beaded his forehead and he was trembling from head
to foot when he again rode into the moonlight on the level plain, where
he tried to break another record.



CHAPTER IV

JOHNNY ARRIVES

Meanwhile Hopalong and Red quarrelled petulantly and damned the erring
Johnny with enthusiastic abandon, while Dent smiled at them and joked;
but his efforts at levity made little impression on the irate pair. Red,
true to his word, had turned up at the time set, in fact, he was half
an hour ahead of time, for which miracle he endeavored to take great and
disproportionate credit. Dent was secretly glad about the delay, for he
found his place lonesome. He thoroughly enjoyed the company of the two
gentlemen from the Bar-20, whose actions seemed to be governed by whims
and who appeared to lack all regard for consequences; and they squabbled
so refreshingly, and spent their money cheerfully. Now, if they would
only wind up the day by fighting! Such a finish would be joy indeed. And
speaking of fights, Dent was certain that Mr. Cassidy had been in one
recently, for his face bore marks that could only be acquired in that
way.

After supper the two guests had relapsed into a silence which endured
only as long as the pleasing fulness. Then the squabbling began again,
growing worse until they fell silent from lack of adequate expression.
Finally Red once again spoke of their absent friend.

“We oughtn't get peevish, Hoppy--he's only thirty-six hours late,”
 suggested Red. “An' he might be a week,” he added thoughtfully, as his
mind ran back over a long list of Johnny's misdeeds.

“Yes, he might. An' won't he have a fine cock-an'-bull tale to explain
it,” growled Hopalong, reminiscently. “His excuses are the worst part of
it generally.”

“Eh, does he--make excuses?” asked Dent, mildly surprised.

“He does to _us_,” retorted Red savagely. “He's worse than a woman; take
him all in all an' you've got the toughest proposition that ever wore
pants. But he's a good feller, at that.”

“Well, you've got a lot of nerve, you have!” retorted Hopalong. “You
don't want to say anything about the Kid--if there's anybody that can
beat him in being late an' acting the fool generally, it's you. An'
what's more, you know it!”

Red wheeled to reply, but was interrupted by a sudden uproar outside,
fluent swearing coming towards the house. The door opened with a bang,
admitting a white-faced, big-eyed man with one leg jammed through the
box he had landed on in dismounting.

“Gimme a drink, quick!” he shouted wildly, dragging the box over to
the bar with a cheerful disregard for chairs and other temporary
obstructions. “Gimme a drink!” he reiterated.

“Give you six hops in the neck!” yelled Red, missing and almost sitting
down because of the enthusiasm he had put into his effort. Johnny
side-stepped and ducked, and as he straightened up to ask for whys
and wherefores, Red's eyes opened wide and he paused in his further
intentions to stare at the apparition.

“Sick?” queried Hopalong, who was frightened.

“Gimme that drink!” demanded Johnny feverishly, and when he had it he
leaned against the bar and mopped his face with a trembling hand.

“What's the matter with you, anyhow?” asked Red, with deep anxiety.

“Yes; for God's sake, what's happened to you?” demanded Hopalong.

Johnny breathed deeply and threw back his shoulders as if to shake off
a weight. “Fellers, I had a cougar soft-footing after me in that
dark canyon, my cayuse ran away on a two-foot ledge up the
wall,_--an'--I--saw--a--ghost_!”

There was a respectful silence. Johnny, waiting a reasonable length of
time for replies and exclamations, flushed a bit and repeated his
frank and candid statement, adding a few adjectives to it. “_A real,
screeching, flying ghost_! An' I'm going _home_, an' I'm going to _stay_
there. I ain't never coming back no more, not for anything. Damn this
border country, _anyhow_!”

The silence continued, whereupon Johnny grew properly indignant. “You
act like I told you it was going to rain! Why don't you say something?
Didn't you hear what I said, you fools!” he asked pugnaciously. “Are you
in the habit of having a thing like that told you? Why don't you show
some interest, you dod-blasted, thick-skulled wooden-heads?”

Red looked at Hopalong, Hopalong looked at Red, and then they both
looked at Dent, whose eyes were fixed in a stare on Johnny.

“Huh!” snorted Hopalong, warily arising. “Was that all?” he asked,
nodding at Red, who also arose and began to move cautiously toward their
erring friend. “Didn't you see no more'n one ghost? Anybody that can see
one ghost, an' no more, is wrong somewhere. Now, stop, an' think; didn't
you see _two_?” He was advancing carefully while he talked, and Red was
now behind the man who saw one ghost.

“Why, you--” there was a sudden flurry and Johnny's words were cut short
in the melee.

“Good, Red! Ouch!” shouted Hopalong. “Look out! Got any rope, Dent?
Well, hurry up: there ain't no telling what he'll do if he's loose. The
mescal they sells down in this country ain't liquor--it's poison,” he
panted. “An' he can't even stand whiskey!”

Finding the rope was easier than finding a place to put it, and the
unequal battle raged across the room and into the next, where it sounded
as if the house were falling down. Johnny's voice was shrill and full of
vexation and his words were extremely impolite and lacked censoring.
His feet appeared to be numerous and growing rapidly, judging from the
amount of territory they covered and defended, and Red joyfully kicked
Hopalong in the melee, which in this instance also stands for stomach;
Red always took great pains to do more than his share in a scrimmage.
Dent hovered on the flanks, his hands full of rope, and begged with
great earnestness to be allowed to apply it to parts of Johnny's
thrashing anatomy. But as the flanks continued to change with
bewildering swiftness he begged in vain, and began to make suggestions
and give advice pleasing to the three combatants. Dent knew just how
it should be done, and was generous with the knowledge until Johnny
zealously planted five knuckles on his one good eye, when the engagement
became general.

The table skidded through the door on one leg and caromed off the bar at
a graceful angle, collecting three chairs and one sand-box cuspidor on
the way. The box on Johnny's leg had long since departed, as Hopalong's
shin could testify. One chair dissolved unity and distributed itself
lavishly over the room, while the bed shrunk silently and folded itself
on top of Dent, who bucked it up and down with burning zeal and finally
had sense enough to crawl from under it. He immediately celebrated his
liberation by getting a strangle hold on two legs, one of which happened
to be the personal property of Hopalong Cassidy; and the battle raged on
a lower plane. Red raised one hand as he carefully traced a neck to its
own proper head and then his steel fingers opened and swooped down and
shut off the dialect. Hopalong pushed Dent off him and managed to catch
Johnny's flaying arm on the third attempt, while Dent made tentative
sorties against Johnny's spurred boots.

“Phew! Can he fight like that when he's sober?” reverently asked
Dent, seeing how close his fingers could come to his gaudy eye without
touching it. “I won't be able to see at all in an hour,” he added,
gloomily.

Hopalong, seated on Johnny's chest, soberly made reply as he tenderly
flirted with a raw shin. “It's the mescal. I'm going to slip some of
that stuff into Pete's cayuse some of these days,” he promised, happy
with a new idea. Pete Wilson had no sense of humor.

“That ghost was plumb lucky,” grunted Red, “an' so was the sea-captain,”
 he finished as an afterthought, limping off toward the bar, slowly and
painfully followed by his disfigured companions. “One drink; then to
bed.”

After Red had departed, Hopalong and Dent smoked a while and then,
knocking the ashes out of his pipe, Hopalong arose. “An' yet, Dent,
there are people that believe in ghosts,” he remarked, with a vast and
settled contempt.

Dent gave critical scrutiny to the scratched bar for a moment. “Well,
the Greasers all say there _is_ a ghost in the San Miguel, though I
never saw it. But some of them have seen it, an' no Greasers ride that
trail no more.”

“Huh!” snorted Hopalong. “Some Greasers must have filled the Kid up on
ghosts while he was filling hisself up on mescal. Ghosts? R-a-t-s!”

“It shows itself only to Greasers, an' then only on Friday nights,”
 explained Dent, thoughtfully. This was Friday night. Others had seen
that ghost, but they were all Mexicans; now that a “white” man of
Johnny's undisputed calibre had been so honored Dent's skepticism
wavered and he had something to think about for days to come. True,
Johnny was not a Greaser; but even ghosts might make mistakes once in a
while.

Hopalong laughed, dismissing the subject from his mind as being beneath
further comment. “Well, we won't argue--I'm too tired. An' I'm sorry you
got that eye, Dent.”

“Oh, that's all right,” hastily assured the store-keeper, smiling
faintly. “I was just spoiling for a fight, an' now I've had it. Feels
sort of good. Yes, first thing in the morning--breakfast'll be ready
soon as you are. Good-night.”

But the proprietor couldn't sleep. Finally he arose and tiptoed into
the room where Johnny lay wrapped in the sleep of the exhausted. After
cautious and critical inspection, which was made hard because of his
damaged eye, he tiptoed back to his bunk, shaking his head slowly. “He
wasn't drunk,” he muttered. “He saw that ghost all right; an' I'll bet
everything I've got on it!”



At daybreak three quarrelling punchers rode homeward and after a
monotonous journey arrived at the bunk house and reported. It took
them two nights adequately to describe their experiences to an envious
audience. The morning after the telling of the ghost story things began
to happen. Red starting it by erecting a sign.


NOTISE--NO GHOSTS ALOWED


An exuberant handful of the outfit watched him drive the last nail and
step back to admire his work, and the running fire of comment covered
all degrees of humor, and promised much hilarity in the future at the
expense of the only man on the Bar-20 who had seen a ghost.

In a week Johnny and his acute vision had become a bye-word in that part
of the country and his friends had made it a practice to stop him and
gravely discuss spirit manifestations of all kinds. He had thrashed Wood
Wright and been thrashed by Sandy Lucas in two beautiful and memorable
fights and was only waiting to recover from the last affair before
having the matter out with Rich Finn. These facts were beginning to have
the effect he strove for; though Cowan still sold a new concoction of
gin, brandy, and whiskey which he called “Flying Ghost,” and which he
proudly guaranteed would show more ghosts per drink than any liquor
south of the Rio Grande--and some of his patrons were eager to back up
his claims with real money.

This was the condition of affairs when Hopalong Cassidy strolled into
Cowan's and forgot his thirst in the story being told by a strange
Mexican. It was Johnny's ghost, without a doubt, and when he had
carelessly asked a few questions he was convinced that Johnny had really
seen something. On the way home he cogitated upon it and two points
challenged his intelligence with renewed insistence: the ghost showed
itself only on Friday, and then only to “Greasers.” His suspicious mind
would not rest until he had reviewed the question from all sides, and
his opinion was that there was something more than spiritual about the
ghost of the San Miguel--and a cold, practical reason for it.

When he rode into the corral at the ranch he saw that another sign had
been put on the corral wall. He had destroyed the first, speaking his
mind in full at the time. He swept his gloved hand upward with a rush,
tore the flimsy board from its fastenings, broke it to pieces across
his saddle, and tossed the fragments from him. He was angry, for he had
warned the outfit that they were carrying the joke too far, that Johnny
was giving way to hysterical rage more frequently, and might easily do
something that they all would regret. And he felt sorry for the Kid; he
knew what Johnny's feelings were and he made up his mind to start a few
fights himself if the persecution did not cease. When he stepped into
the bunk house and faced his friends they listened to a three-minute
speech that made them squirm, and as he finished talking the deep voice
of the foreman endorsed the promises he had just heard made, for Buck
had entered the gallery without being noticed. The joke had come to an
end.

When Johnny rode in that evening he was surprised to find Hopalong
waiting for him a short distance from the corral and he replied to his
friend's gesture by riding over to him. “What's up now?” he asked.

“Come along with me. I want to talk to you for a few minutes,” and
Hopalong led the way toward the open, followed by Johnny, who was more
or less suspicious. Finally Hopalong stopped, turned, and looked his
companion squarely in the eyes. “Kid, I'm in dead earnest. This ain't
no fool joke--now you tell me what that ghost looked like, how he acted,
an' all about it. I mean what I say, because now I know that you saw
_something_. If it wasn't a ghost it was made to look like one, anyhow.
Now go ahead.”

“I've told you a dozen times already,” retorted Johnny, his face
flushing. “I've begged you to believe me an' told you that I wasn't
fooling. How do I know you ain't now? I'm not going to tell--”

“Hold on; yes, you are. Yo're going to tell it slow, an' just like you
saw it,” Hopalong interrupted hastily. “I know I've doubted it, but who
wouldn't! Wait a minute--I've done a heap of thinking in the past few
days an' I know that you saw a ghost. Now, everybody knows that there
ain't no such thing as ghosts; then what was it you saw? There's a game
on, Kid, an' it's a dandy; an' you an' me are going to bust it up an'
get the laugh on the whole blasted crowd, from Buck to Cowan.”

Johnny's suspicions left him with a rush, for his old Hoppy was one man
in a thousand, and when he spoke like that, with such sharp decision,
Johnny knew what it meant. Hopalong listened intently and when the short
account was finished he put out his hand and smiled.

“We're the fools, Kid; not you. There's something crooked going on in
that canyon, an' I know it! But keep mum about what we think.”

Johnny lost his grouch so suddenly and beamed upon his friends with such
a superior air that they began to worry about what was in the wind.
The suspense wore on them, for with Hopalong's assistance, Johnny might
spring some game on them all that would more than pay up for the fun
they had enjoyed at his expense; and the longer the suspense lasted the
worse it became. They never lost sight of him while he was around and
Hopalong had to endure the same surveillance; and it was no uncommon
thing to see small groups of the anxious men engaged in deep discussion.
When they found that Buck must have been told and noticed his smile was
as fixed as Hopalong's or Johnny's, they were certain that trouble of
some nature was in store for them.

Several weeks later Buck Peters drew rein and waited for a stranger to
join him.

“Howdy. Is yore name Peters?” asked the newcomer, sizing him up in one
trained glance.

“Well, who are you, an' what do you want?”

“I want to see Peters, Buck Peters. That yore name?”

“Yes; what of it?”

“My name's Fox. Old Jim Lane gave me a message for you,” and the
stranger spoke earnestly to some length. “There; that's the situation.
We've got to have shrewd men that they don't know an' won't suspect.
Lane wants to pay a couple of yore men their wages for a month or two.
He said he was shore he could count on you to help him out.”

“He's right; he can. I don't forget favors. I've got a couple of men
that--there's one of 'em now. Hey, Hoppy! Whoop-e, Hoppy!”

Mr. Cassidy arrived quickly, listened eagerly, named Red and Johnny
to accompany him, overruled his companions by insisting that if Johnny
didn't go the whole thing was off, carried his point, and galloped off
to find the lucky two, his eyes gleaming with anticipation and joy. Fox
laughed, thanked the foreman, and rode on his way north; and that night
three cow-punchers rode south, all strangely elated. And the friends who
watched them go heaved signs of relief, for the reprisals evidently were
to be postponed for a while.



CHAPTER V

THE GHOST OF THE SAN MIGUEL

Juan Alvarez had not been in San Felippe since Dick Martin left, which
meant for over a month. Martin was down the river looking for a man who
did not wish to be found; and some said that Martin cared nothing about
international boundaries when he wanted any one real bad. And there was
that geologist who wore blue glasses and was always puttering around in
the canyon and hammering chips of rock off the steep walls; he must have
slipped one noon, because his body was found on a flat boulder at the
edge of the stream. Manuel had found it and wanted to be paid for his
trouble in bringing it to town--but Manuel was a fool. Who, indeed,
would pay good money for a dead Gringo, especially after he was dead?
And there were three cow-punchers holding a herd of 6-X cattle up
north, an hour or so from the town. They wanted to buy steers from Senor
Rodriguez, but said that he was a robber and threatened to cut his ears
off. Cannot a man name his own price? These cow-punchers liked to get
drunk and gallop through San Felippe, shooting like crazy men. They got
drunk one Friday night and went shouting and singing to the Big Bend in
the canyon to see the flying ghost, and they called it names and fired
off their pistols and sang loudly; and for a week they insulted all the
Mexicans in town by calling them liars and cowards. Was it the fault
of any one that the ghost would show itself only to Mexicans? Oh, these
Gringos--might the good God punish them for their sins!

Thus the peons complained to the padre while they kept one eye open for
the advent of the rowdy cow-punchers, who always wanted to drink, and
then to fight with some one, either with fists or pistols. Why should
any one fight with them, especially with such things as fists?

“Let them fight among themselves. What have you to do with heretics?”
 reproved the good padre, who ostracized himself from the pleasant parts
of the wide world that he might make easier the life and struggles of
his ignorant flock. “God is not hasty--He will punish in His own way
when it best suits Him. And perhaps you will profit much if you are more
regular to mass instead of wasting the cool hours of the morning in bed.
Think well of what I have said, my children.”

But the cow-punchers were not punished and they swore they would not
leave the vicinity until they had all the steers they wanted, and at
their own price. And one night their herd stampeded and was checked
only in time to save it from going over the canyon's edge. And for some
reason Sanchez kept out of the padre's way and did not go to confess
when he should, for the padre spoke plainly and set hard obligations for
penance.

The cow-punchers swore that it had been done by some Mexican and said
that they would come to town some day soon and kill three Mexicans
unless the guilty one was found and brought to them. Then the padre
mounted his donkey and went out to them to argue and they finally told
him they would wait for two weeks. But the padre was too smart for
them--he sent a messenger to find Senor Dick Martin, and in one week
Senor Martin came to town. There was no fight. The Gringo rowdies were
cowards at heart and Martin could not shoot them down in cold blood,
and he could not arrest them, because he was not a policeman or even a
sheriff, but only a revenue officer, which was a most foolish law. But
he watched them all the time and wanted them to fight--there was no more
shooting or drunkenness in town. Nobody wanted to fight Senor Martin,
for he was a great man. He even went so far as to talk with them about
it and wave his arms, but they were as frightened at him as little
children might be.

So the Mexicans gossiped and exulted, some of the bolder of them even
swaggering out to the Gringo camp; but Martin drove them back again,
saying he would not allow them to bully men who could not retaliate,
which was right and fair. Then, afraid to go away and leave the mad
cow-punchers so close to town, he ordered them to drive their herd
farther east, nearer to Dent's store, and never to return to San Felippe
unless they needed the padre; and they obeyed him after a long talk.
After seeing them settled in their new camp, which was on Monday
morning, Martin returned to San Felippe and told the padre where he
could be found and then rode away again. San Felippe celebrated for
a whole day and two Mexican babies were christened after Senor Dick
Martin, which was honor all around.

Friday, when Manuel went over to spy upon the cow-punchers in their new
camp, he found them so drunk that they could not stand, and before he
crept away at dusk two of them were sleeping like gorged snakes and the
third was firing off his revolver at random, which diversion had not a
little to do with Manuel's departure.

When Manuel crept away he headed straight for a crevice near the wall of
the canyon at the Big Bend and, reaching it, looked all around and then
dropped into it. Not long thereafter another Mexican appeared, this one
from San Felippe, and also disappeared into the crevice. As darkness
fell Manuel reappeared with something under his jacket and a moment
later a light gleamed at the base of a slender sapling which grew on the
edge of the canyon wall and leaned out over the abyss. It was cleverly
placed, for only at one spot on the Mexican side of the distant Rio
Grande could it be seen--the high canyon walls farther down screened it
from any one who might be riding on the north bank of the river. In a
moment there came an answering twinkle and Manuel, covering the lantern
with a blanket, was swallowed up in the darkness of the crevice.

Without a trace of emotion, Dick Martin, from his place of concealment,
caught the answering gleam, and he watched Manuel disappear. “Cassidy
was right in every point; Lewis or Sayre couldn't 'a' done this
better. I hope he won't be late,” he muttered, and settled himself more
comfortably to wait for the cue for action, smiling as the moon poked
its rim over the low hills to his right. “This means promotion for me,
or I've very much mistaken,” he chuckled.

Hopalong was not late and as soon as it was dark he and his companions
stole into the canyon on foot. They felt their way down the east end of
the trail, not far from Dent's, toward the Big Bend, which they gained
without a mishap. Johnny was sent up to a place they had noticed and
marked in their memories at the time they had rioted down to defy the
ghost. He was to stop any one trying to escape up the San Felippe end
of the canyon trail, and his confidence in his ability to do this was
exuberant. Hopalong and Red slowly and laboriously worked their way down
the perilous path leading to the bottom, forded the stream, and crept up
the other side, where they found cover not far from a wide crack in the
canyon wall. Upon the occasion of their hilarious visit to the Big Bend
they had observed that a faint trail led to the crack and had cogitated
deeply upon this fact.

Three hours passed before the watchers in and above the canyon were
rewarded by anything further; and then a light flickered far down the
canyon and close to the edge of the stream. Immediately strange noises
were heard and suddenly the ghost swung out of the opening in the rock
wall near Hopalong and Red and danced above their heads, while the
shrieking which had so frightened Johnny and his horse filled the canyon
with uproar and sent Martin wriggling nearer to the crevice which he had
watched so closely. The noise soon ceased, but the ghost danced on, and
the sound of men stumbling along the rocky ledge bordering the stream
became more and more audible. Four were in the party and they all
carried bulky loads on their backs and grunted with pleasure and
relief as they entered the entrance in the wall. When the last man had
disappeared and the noise of their passing had died out, Johnny's rope
sailed up and out, and the ghost swayed violently and then began to sag
in an unaccountable manner towards the trail as the owner of the rope
hitched its free end around a spur of rock and made it fast. Then he
feverishly scrambled down the steep path to join his friends.

Hopalong and Red, wriggling on their stomachs towards the crack in the
wall, paused in amazement and stared across the canyon; and then the
former chuckled and whispered something in his companion's ear. “That
was why he lugged his rope along! He's just idiot enough to want
a souveneer an' plaything at the risk of losing the game. Come
on!--they'll tumble to what's up an' get away if we don't hustle.”

When the two punchers cautiously and noiselessly entered the crack
and felt their way along its rock walls they heard fluent swearing in
Spanish by the man who worked the ghost, and who could not understand
its sudden ambition to take root. It was made painfully clear to him
a moment later when a pair of brawny hands reached out of the darkness
behind him and encircled his throat a hand's width below his gleaming
cigarette. Another pair used cords with deftness and despatch and he was
left by himself to browse upon the gag when all his senses returned.

Hopalong, with Red inconsiderately stepping on his heels, felt his
way along the wall of the crevice, alert and silent, his Colt nestling
comfortably in his right hand, while the left was pushed out ahead
feeling for trouble. As they worked farther away from the canyon distant
voices could be heard and they forthwith proceeded even more cautiously.
When Hopalong came to the second bend in the narrow passage he peered
around it and stopped so abruptly that Red's nose almost spread itself
over the back of his head. Red's indignation was all the harder to bear
because it must bloom unheard.

In a huge, irregular room, whose roof could not be discerned in the dim
light of the few candles, five men were resting in various attitudes
of ease as they discussed the events of the night and tried to compute
their profits. They were secure, for Manuel, having by this time put
away the ghost and megaphone, was on duty at the mouth of the crevice,
and he was as sensitive to danger as a hound.

“The risk is not much and the profits are large,” remarked Pedro, in
Spanish. “We must burn a candle for the repose of the soul of Carlos
Martinez. It is he that made our plans safe. And a candle is not much
when we--”

“Hands up!” said a quiet voice, followed by grim commands. The Mexicans
jumped as if stung by a scorpion, and could just discern two of the
rowdy gringo cow-punchers in the heavy shadows of the opposite wall, but
the candle light glinted in rings on the muzzles of their six-shooters.
Had Manuel betrayed them? But they had little time or inclination for
cogitation regarding Manuel.

“Easy there!” shouted Red, and Pedro's hand stopped when half way to his
chest. Pedro was a gambler by nature, but the odds were too heavy and he
sullenly obeyed the command.

“Stick 'em up! Stick 'em up! Higher yet, an' hold 'em there,” purred
a soft voice from the other end of the room, where Dick Martin smiled
pleasantly upon them and wondered if there was anything on earth harder
to pound good common sense into than a “Greaser's” head. His gun was
blue, but it was, nevertheless, the most prominent part of his make-up,
even if the light was poor.

One of the Mexicans reached involuntarily for his gun, for he was a
gun-man by training; while his companions felt for their knives, deadly
weapons in a melee. Martin, crying, “Watch 'em, Cassidy!” side-stepped
and lunged forward with the speed and skill of a boxer, and his hard
left hand landed on the point of Juan Alvarez' jaw with a force and
precision not to be withstood. But to make more certain that the
Mexican would not take part in any possible demonstration of resistance,
Martin's right circled up in a short half-hook and stopped against
Juan's short ribs. Martin weighed one hundred and eighty pounds and
packed no fat on his well-knit frame.

At this moment a two-legged cyclone burst upon the scene in the person
of Johnny Nelson, whose rage had been worked up almost to the weeping
point because he had lost so much time hunting for the crevice where
it was not. Seeing Juan fall, and the glint of knives, he started in
to clean things up, yelling, “I'm a ghost! I'm a ghost! Take 'em alive!
Take 'em alive!”

Hopalong and Red felt that they were in his way, and taking care of one
Mexican between them, while Martin knocked out another, they watched the
exits,--for anything was possible in such a chaotic mix-up,--and gave
Johnny plenty of room. The latter paused, triumphant, looked around to
see if he had missed any, and then advanced upon his friends and shoved
his jaw up close to Hopalong's face. “Tried to lose me, didn't you!
Wouldn't wait for me! For seven cents an' a toothbrush I'd give you
what's left!”

Red grabbed him by trousers and collar and heaved him into the
passageway. “Go out an' play with yore souveneer or we'll step on you!”

Johnny sat up, rubbed certain portions of his anatomy, and grinned. “Oh,
I've got it, all right! I'm shore going to take that ghost home an' make
some of them fools _eat_ it!”

Martin smiled as he finished tying the last prisoner. “That's right,
Nelson; you've got it on 'em this time. Make 'em chew it.”



CHAPTER VI

HOPALONG LOSES A HORSE

For a month after their return from the San Miguel, Hopalong and his
companions worked with renewed zest, and told and retold the other
members of the outfit of their unusual experiences near the Mexican
border. Word had come up to them that Martin had secured the conviction
of the smugglers and was in line for immediate advancement. No one on
the range had the heart to meet Johnny Nelson, for Johnny carried with
him a piece of the ghost, and became pugnacious if his once-jeering
friends and acquaintances refused to nibble on it. Cowan still sold his
remarkable drink, but he had yielded to Johnny's persuasive methods and
now called it “Nelson's Pet.”

One bright day the outfit started rounding up a small herd of
three-year-olds, which Buck had sold, and by the end of the week the
herd was complete and ready for the drive. This took two weeks and when
Hopalong led his drive outfit through Hoyt's Corners on its homeward
journey he felt the pull of the town of Grant, some miles distant, and
it was too strong to be resisted. Flinging a word of explanation to the
nearest puncher, he turned to lope away, when Red's voice checked him.
Red wanted to delay his home-coming for a day or two and attend to a
purely personal matter at a ranch lying to the west. Hopalong, knowing
the reason for Red's wish, grinned and told him to go, and not to
propose until he had thought the matter over very carefully. Red's reply
was characteristic, and after arranging a rendezvous and naming the
time, the two separated and rode toward their destinations, while the
rest of the outfit kept on towards their ranch.

“A man owes something to _all_ his friends,” Hopalong mused. In this
case he owed a return game of draw poker to certain of Grant's leading
citizens, and he liked to pay his obligations when opportunity offered.

It was mid-afternoon when he topped a rise and saw below him the handful
of shacks making up the town. A look of pleased interest flickered
across his face as he noticed a patched and dirty tent pitched close up
to the nearest shack. “Show!” he exclaimed. “Now, ain't that luck!
I'll shore take it in. If it's a circus, mebby it has a trick mule to
ride--I'll never forget that one up in Kansas City,” he grinned. But
almost instantly a doubt arose and tempered the grin. “Huh! Mebby it's
the branding chute of some gospel sharp.” As he drew near he focussed
his eyes on the canvas and found that his fears were justified.

“All Are Welcome,” he spelled out slowly. “Shore they are!” he muttered.
“I never nowhere saw such hard-working, all-embracing rustlers as them
fellers. They'll stick their iron on anything from a wobbly calf or
dying dogie to a staggering-with-age mosshead, an' shout 'tally one'
with the same joy. Well, not for mine, _this_ trip. I'm going to graze
loose an' buck-jump all I wants. Anyhow, if I did let him brand me I'd
only backslide in a week,” and Hopalong pressed his pony to a more rapid
gait as two men emerged from the tent. “There's the sky-pilot now,” he
muttered--“an' there's Dave!” he shouted, waving his arm. “Oh, Dave!
Dave!”

Dave Wilkes looked up, and his grin of delight threatened to engulf
his ears. “Hullo, Cassidy! Glad to see you! Keep right on for the
store--I'll be with you in a minute.” When David told his companion the
visitor's name the evangelist held up his hand eloquently and spoke.

“I know all about him!” he exclaimed sorrowfully. “If I can lead him out
of his wickedness I will rest content though I save no more souls this
fortnight. Is it all true?”

“Huh! What true?”

“All that I have heard about him.”

“Well, I dunno what you've heard,” replied Dave, with grave caution,
“but I reckon it might be if it didn't cover lying, stealing, cowardice,
an' such coyote traits. He's shore a holy terror with a short gun, all
right, but lemme tell you something mebby you _ain't_ heard: There ain't
a square man in this part of the country that won't feel some honored
an' proud to be called a friend of Hopalong Cassidy. Them's the
sentiments rampaging hereabouts. I ain't denying that he's gone an'
killed off a lot of men first an' last--but the only trouble there is
that he didn't get 'em soon enough. They all had lived too blamed long
when they went an' stacked up agin him an' that lightning short gun of
hissn. But, say, if yo're calculating to tackle him at yore game, lead
him gentle--don't push none. He comes to life real sudden when he's
shoved. So long; see you later, mebby.”

The revivalist looked after him and mused, “I hope I was informed wrong,
but this much I have to be thankful for: The wickedness of most of these
men, these over-grown children, is manly, stalwart, and open; few of
them are vicious or contemptible. Their one great curse is drink.”

When Hopalong entered the store he was vociferously welcomed by two
men, and the proprietor joining them, the circle was complete. When the
conversation threatened to repeat itself cards were brought and the next
two hours passed very rapidly. They were expensive hours to the Bar-20
puncher, who finally arose with an apologetic grin and slapped his thigh
significantly.

“Well, you've got it all; I'm busted wide open, except for a measly
dollar, an' I shore hopes you don't want that,” he laughed. “You play a
whole lot better than you did the last time I was here. I've got to move
along. I'm going east an' see Wallace an' from there I've got to meet
Red an' ride home with him. But you come an' see us when you can--it's
_me_ that wants revenge this time.”

“Huh; you'll be wanting it worse than ever if we do,” smiled Dave.

“Say, Hoppy,” advised Tom Lawrence, “better drop in an' hear the
sky-pilot's palaver before you go. It'll do you a whole lot of good, an'
it can't do you no harm, anyhow.”

“You going?” asked Hopalong suspiciously.

“Can't--got too much work to do,” quickly responded Tom, his brother Art
nodding happy confirmation.

“Huh; I reckoned so!” snorted Hopalong sarcastically, as he shook hands
all around. “You all know where to find us--drop in an' see us when you
get down our way,” he invited.

“Sorry you can't stay longer, Cassidy,” remarked Dave, as his friend
mounted. “But come up again soon--an' be shore to tell all the boys we
was asking for 'em,” he called.

Considering the speed with which Hopalong started for Wallace's, he
might have been expecting a relay of “quarter” horses to keep it going,
but he pulled up short at the tent. Such inconsistency is trying to the
temper of the best-mannered horse, and this particular animal was not in
the least good-mannered, wherefore its rider was obliged to soothe its
resentment in his own peculiar way, listening meanwhile to the loud and
impassioned voice of the evangelist haranguing his small audience.

“I wonder,” said Hopalong, glancing through the door, “if them friends
of mine reckon I'm any ascared to go in that tent? Huh, I'll just show
'em anyhow!” whereupon he dismounted, flung the reins over his horse's
head, and strode through the doorway.

The nearest seat, a bench made by placing a bottom board of the
evangelist's wagon across two up-ended boxes, was close enough to the
exhorter and he dropped into it and glanced carelessly at his nearest
neighbor. The carelessness went out of his bearing as his eyes fastened
themselves in a stare on the man's neck-kerchief. Hopalong was hardened
to awful sights and at his best was not an artistic soul, but the
villainous riot of fiery crimson, gaudy yellow, and pugnacious and
domineering green which flaunted defiance and insolence from the
stranger's neck caused his breath to hang over one count and then come
double strong at the next exhalation. “Gee whiz!” he whispered.

The stranger slowly turned his head and looked coldly upon the impudent
disturber of his reverent reflections. “Meaning?” he questioned, with
an upward slant in his voice. The neck-kerchief seemed to grow suddenly
malignant and about to spring. “Meaning?” repeated the other with great
insolence, while his eyes looked a challenge.

While Hopalong's eyes left the scrambled color-insult and tried to
banish the horrible after-image, his mind groped for the rules of
etiquette governing free fist fights in gospel tents, and while he
hesitated as to whether he should dent the classic profile of the
color-bearer or just twist his nose as a sign of displeasure, the voice
of the evangelist arose to a roar and thundered out. Hopalong ducked
instinctively.

“--Stop! Stop before it is too late, before death takes you in the
wallow of your sins! Repent and gain salvation--”

Hopalong felt relieved, but his face retained its expression of
childlike innocence even after he realized that he was not being
personally addressed; and he glanced around. It took him ninety-seven
seconds to see everything there was to be seen, and his eyes were drawn
irresistibly back to the stranger's kerchief. “Awful! Awful thing for
a drinking man to wear, or run up against unexpectedly!” he muttered,
blinking. “Worse than snakes,” he added thoughtfully.

“Look ahere, you--” began the owner of the offensive decoration, if it
might be called such, but the evangelist drowned his voice in another
flight of eloquence.

“--_Peace_! _Peace_ is the message of the Lord to His children,” roared
the voice from the upturned soap box, and when the speaker turned and
looked in the direction of the two men-with-a-difference he found them
sitting up very straight and apparently drinking in his words with great
relish; whereupon he felt that he was making gratifying progress toward
the salvation of their spotted souls. He was very glad, indeed, that he
had been so grievously misinformed about the personal attributes of one
Hopalong Cassidy,--glad and thankful.

“Death cometh as a thief in the night,” the voice went on. “Think of
the friends who have gone before; who were well one minute and gone the
next! And it must come to all of us, to all of us, to me and to you--”

The man with the afflicted neck started rocking the bench.

“Something is coming to somebody purty soon,” murmured Hopalong. He
began to sidle over towards his neighbor, his near hand doubled up into
a huge knot of protuberant knuckles and white-streaked fingers; but as
he was about to deliver his hint that he was greatly displeased at the
antics of the bench, a sob came to his ears. Turning his head swiftly,
he caught sight of the stranger's face, and sorrow was marked so
strongly upon it that the sight made Hopalong gape. His hand opened
slowly and he cautiously sidled back again, disgruntled, puzzled,
and vexed at himself for having strayed into a game where he was so
hopelessly at sea. He thought it all over carefully and then gave it up
as being too deep for him to solve. But he determined one thing: He was
not going to leave before the other man did, anyhow.

“An' if I catch that howling kerchief outside,” he muttered, smacking
his lips with satisfaction at what was in store for it. His visit
to Wallace was not very important, anyway, and it could wait on more
important events.

“There sits a sinner!” thundered out the exhorter, and Hopalong looked
stealthily around for a sight of a villain. “God only has the right to
punish. 'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord, and whosoever takes the
law into his own hands, whosoever takes human life, defies the Creator.
There sits a man who has killed his fellow-men, his brothers! Are you
not a sinner, _Cassidy_?”

Cassidy jumped clear of the bench as he jerked his head around and
stared over the suddenly outstretched arm and pointing finger of the
speaker and into his accusing eyes.

“Answer me! Are you not a sinner?”

Hopalong stood up, confused, bewildered, and then his suspended thoughts
stirred and formed. “Guilty, I reckon, an' in the first degree. But they
didn't get no more'n what was coming to 'em, no more'n they earned. An'
that's straight!”

“How do you know they didn't? How do you know they earned it? How do you
_know_?” demanded the evangelist, who was delighted with the chance to
argue with a sinner. He had great faith in “personal contact,” and
his was the assurance of training, of the man well rehearsed and fully
prepared. And he knew that if he should be pinned into a corner by logic
and asked for _his_ proofs, that he could squirm out easily and take the
offensive again by appealing to faith, the last word in sophistry, and a
greater and more powerful weapon than intelligence. _This_ was his game,
and it was fixed; he could not lose if he could arouse enough interest
in a man to hold him to the end of the argument. He continued to drive,
to crowd. “What right have you to think so? What right have you to judge
them? Have you divine insight? Are you inspired? 'Judge not lest ye be
judged,' saith the Lord, and you _dare_ to fly in the face of that great
command!”

“You've got me picking the pea in _this_ game, all right,” responded
Hopalong, dropping back on the bench. “But lemme tell you one thing;
Command or no command, devine or not devine, I know when a man has
lived too long, an' when he's going to try to get me. An' all the gospel
sharps south of heaven can't stop me from handing a thief what he's
earned. Go on with the show, but count me out.”

While the evangelist warmed to the attack, vaguely realizing that he
had made a mistake in not heeding Dave Wilkes' tip, Hopalong became
conscious of a sense of relief stealing over him and he looked around
wonderingly for the cause. The man with the kerchief had “folded his
tents” and departed; and Hopalong, heaving a sigh of satisfaction,
settled himself more comfortably and gave real attention to the
discourse, although he did not reply to the warm and eloquent man on the
soap box. Suddenly he sat up with a start as he remembered that he had a
long and hard ride before him if he wished to see Wallace, and arising,
strode towards the exit, his chest up and his chin thrust out. The only
reply he made to the excited and personal remarks of the revivalist was
to stop at the door and drop his last dollar into the yeast box before
passing out.

For a moment he stood still and pondered, his head too full of what
he had heard to notice that anything out of the ordinary had happened.
Although the evangelist had adopted the wrong method he had gained
more than he knew and Hopalong had something to take home with him and
wrestle out for himself in spare moments; that is, he would have had
but for one thing: As he slowly looked around for his horse he came to
himself with a sharp jerk, and hot profanity routed the germ of religion
incubating in his soul. His horse was missing! Here was a pretty mess,
he thought savagely; and then his expression of anger and perplexity
gave way to a flickering grin as the probable solution came to his mind.

“By the Lord, I never saw such a bunch to play jokes,” he laughed.
“Won't they never grow up? They was watching me when I went inside an'
sneaked up and rustled my cayuse. Well, I'll get back again without much
trouble, all right. They ought to know me better by this time.”

“Hey, stranger!” he called to a man who was riding past, “have you seen
anything of a skinny roan cayuse fifteen han's high, white stocking on
the near foreleg, an' a bandage on the off fetlock, Bar-20 being the
brand?”

The stranger, knowing the grinning inquisitor by sight, suspected that
a joke was being played: he also knew Dave Wilkes and that gentleman's
friends. He chuckled and determined to help it along a little. “Shore
did, pardner; saw a man leading him real cautious. Was he yourn?”

“Oh, no; not at all. He belonged to my great-great-grandfather, who left
him to my second cousin. You see, I borrowed it,” he grinned, making his
way leisurely towards the general store, kept by his friend Dave, the
joker. “Funny how everybody likes a joke,” he muttered, opening the door
of the store. “Hey, Dave,” he called.

Mr. Wilkes wheeled suddenly and stared. “Why, I thought you was half-way
to Wallace's by now!” he exclaimed. “Did you come back to lose that lone
dollar?”

“Oh, I lost that too. But yo're a real smart cuss, now ain't you?”
 queried Hopalong, his eyes twinkling and his face wreathed with good
humor. “An' how innocent you act, too. Thought you could scare me,
didn't you? Thought I'd go tearing 'round this fool town like a house
afire, hey? Well, I reckon you can guess again. Now, I'm owning up that
the joke's on me, so you hand over my cayuse, an' I'll make up for lost
time.”

Dave Wilkes' face expressed several things, but surprise was dominant.
“Why, I ain't even seen yore ol' cayuse, you chump! Last time I saw it
you was on him, going like the devil. Did somebody pull you off it an'
take it away from you?” he demanded with great sarcasm. “Is somebody
abusing you?”

Hopalong bit into a generous handful of dried apricots, chewed
complacently for a moment, and replied: “'At's aw right; I want my
cayuse.” Swallowing hastily, he continued: “I want it, an' I've come to
the right place for it, too. Hand it over, David.”

“Dod blast it, I tell you I ain't got it!” retorted Dave, beginning
to suspect that something was radically wrong. “I ain't seen it, an' I
don't know nothing about it.”

Hopalong wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Well, then, Tom or Art does,
all right.”

“No, they don't, neither; I watched 'em leave an' they rode straight
out of town, an' went the other way, same as they allus do.” Dave was
getting irritated. “Look here, you; are you joking or drunk, or both, or
is that animule of yourn really missing?”

“Huh!” snorted Hopalong, trying some new prunes. “'Ese prunes er purty
good,” he mumbled, in grave congratulation. “I don' get prunes like 'ese
very of'n.”

“I reckon you don't! They ought to be good! Cost me thirty cents a
half-pound,” Dave retorted with asperity, anxiously shifting his feet.
It didn't take much of a loss to wipe out a day's profits with him.

“An' I don't reckon you paid none too much for 'em, at that,” Mr.
Cassidy responded, nodding his head in comprehension. “Ain't no worms in
'em, is there?”

“Shore there is!” exploded Dave. “Plumb full of 'em!”

“You don't say! Hardly know whether to take a chance with the worms or
try the apricots. Ain't no worms in them, anyhow. But when am I going to
get my cayuse? I've got a long way to go, an' delay is costly--how much
did you say these yaller fellers cost?” he asked significantly, trying
another handful of apricots.

“On the dead level, cross my heart an' hope to die, but I ain't seen
yore cayuse since you left here,” earnestly replied Dave. “If you don't
know where it is, then somebody went an' lifted it. It looks like it's
up to you to do some hunting, 'stead of cultivating a belly-ache at _my_
expense. _I_ ain't trying to keep you, God knows!”

Hopalong glanced out of the window as he considered, and saw, entering
the saloon, the same puncher who had confessed to seeing his horse. “Hey
Dave; wait a minute!” and he dashed out of the store and made good time
towards the liquid refreshment parlor. Dave promptly nailed the covers
on the boxes of prunes and apricots and leaned innocently against the
cracker box to await results, thinking hard all the while. It looked
like a plain case of horse-stealing to him.

“Stranger,” cried Hopalong, bouncing into the bar-room, “where did you
see that cayuse of mine?”

“The ancient relic of yore family was aheading towards Hoyt's Corners,”
 the stranger replied, grinning broadly. “It's a long walk. Have
something before you starts?”

“Damn the walk! Who was riding him?”

“Nobody at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wasn't being rid when I saw him.”

“Hang it, man; that cayuse was stole from me!”

“Somewhat in the nature of a calamity, now ain't it?” smiled the
stranger, enjoying his contributions to the success of the joke.

“You bet yore life it is!” shouted Hopalong, growing red and then pale.
“You tell me who was leading him, understand?”

“Well, I couldn't see his face, honest I couldn't,” replied the
stranger. “Every time I tried it I was shore blinded by the most awful
an' horrible neck-kerchief I've ever had the hard luck to lay my eyes
on. Of all the drunks I ever met, them there colors was--Hey! Wait a
minute!” he shouted at Hopalong's back.

“Dave, gimme yore cayuse an' a rifle--quick!” cried Hopalong from
the middle of the street as he ran towards the store. “Hypocrite
son-of-a-hoss-thief went an' run mine off. Might 'a' knowed nobody but a
thief could wear such a kerchief!”

“I'm with you!” shouted Dave, leading the way on the run towards the
corral in the rear of his store.

“No, you ain't with me, neither!” replied Hopalong, deftly saddling.
“This ain't no plain hoss-thief case--it's a private grudge. See you
later, mebby,” and he was pacing a cloud of dust towards the outskirts
of the town.

Dave looked after him. “Well, that feller has shore got a big start on
you, but he can't keep ahead of that Doll of mine for very long. She can
out-run anything in these parts. 'Sides, Cassidy's cayuse looked sort
of done up, while mine's as fresh as a bird. That thief will get what's
coming to him, all right.”



CHAPTER VII

MR. CASSIDY COGITATES

While Hopalong tried to find his horse, Ben Ferris pushed forward,
circling steadily to the east and away from the direction of Hoyt's
corners, which was as much a menace to his health and happiness as the
town of Grant, twenty miles to his rear. If he could have been certain
that no danger was nearer to him than these two towns, he would have
felt vastly relieved, even if his horse was not fresh. During the last
hour he had not urged it as hard as he had in the beginning of his
flight and it had dropped to a walk for minutes at a stretch. This was
not because he felt that he had plenty of time, but for the reason that
he understood horses and could not afford to exhaust his mount so early
in the chase. He glanced back from time to time as if fearing what might
be on his trail, and well he might fear. According to all the traditions
and customs of the range, both of which he knew well, somewhere between
him and Grant was a posse of hard-riding cow-punchers, all anxious and
eager for a glance at him over their sights. In his mind's eye he
could see them, silent, grim, tenacious, reeling off the miles on that
distance-eating lope. He had stolen a horse, and that meant death if
they caught him. He loosened his gaudy kerchief and gulped in fear,
not of what pursued, but of what was miles before him. His own saddle,
strapped behind the one he sat in, bumped against him with each reach of
the horse and had already made his back sore--but he must endure it for
a time. Never in all his life had minutes been so precious.

Another hour passed and the horse seemed to be doing well, much better
than he had hoped--he would rest it for a few minutes at the next water
while he drank his fill and changed the bumping saddle. As he rounded a
turn and entered a heavily grassed valley he saw a stream close at hand
and, leaping off, fixed the saddle first. As he knelt to drink he caught
a movement and jumped up to catch his mount. Time after time he almost
touched it, but it evaded him and kept up the game, cropping a mouthful
of grass during each respite.

“All right!” he muttered as he let it eat. “I'll get my drink while you
eat an' then I'll get you!”

He knelt by the stream again and drank long and deep. As he paused for
breath something made him leap up and to one side, reaching for his
Colt at the same instant. His fingers found only leather and he swore
fiercely as he remembered--he had sold the Colt for food and kept the
rifle for defence. As he faced the rear a horseman rounded the turn and
the fugitive, wheeling, dashed for the stolen horse forty yards away,
where his rifle lay in its saddle sheath. But an angry command and the
sharp hum of a bullet fired in front of him checked his flight and he
stopped short and swore.

“I reckon the jig's up,” remarked Mr. Cassidy, balancing the up-raised
Colt with nicety and indifference.

“Yea; I reckon so,” sullenly replied the other, tears running into his
eyes.

“Well, I'm damned!” snorted Hopalong with cutting contempt. “Crying like
a li'l baby! Got nerve enough to steal my cayuse, an' then go an'
beller like a lost calf when I catch you. Yo're a fine specimen of a
hoss-thief, I don't think!”

“Yo're a liar!” retorted the other, clenching his fists and growing red.

Mr. Cassidy's mouth opened and then clicked shut as his Colt swung down.
But he did not shoot; something inside of him held his trigger finger
and he swore instead. The idea of a man stealing his horse, being caught
red-handed and unarmed, and still possessed of sufficient courage to
call his captor a name never tolerated or overlooked in that country!
And the idea that he, Hopalong Cassidy, of the Bar-20, could not shoot
such a thief! “Damn that sky pilot! He's shore gone an' made me loco,”
 he muttered, savagely, and then addressed his prisoner. “Oh, you ain't
crying? Wind got in yore eyes, I reckon, an' sort of made 'em leak a
little--that it? Or mebby them unholy green roses an' yaller grass on
that blasted fool neck-kerchief of yourn are too much for _your_ eyes,
too!”

“Look ahere!” snapped the man on the ground, stepping forward, one fist
upraised. “I came nigh onto licking you this noon in that gospel sharp's
tent for making fun of that scarf, an' I'll do it yet if you get any
smart about it! You mind yore own business an' close yore fool eyes if
you don't like my clothes!”

“Say! You ain't no cry-baby after all. Hanged if I even think yo're a
real genuine hoss-thief!” enthused Mr. Cassidy. “You act like a twin
brother; but what the devil ever made you steal that cayuse, anyhow?”

“An' that's none of yore business, neither; but I'll tell you, just the
same,” replied the thief. “I had to have it; that's why. I'll fight
you rough-an'-tumble to see if I keep it, or if you take the cayuse an'
shoot me besides: is it a go?”

Hopalong stared at him and then a grin struggled for life, got it, and
spread slowly over his tanned countenance. “Yore gall is refreshing!
Damned if it ain't worse than the scarf. Here, you tell me what made you
take a chance like stealing a cayuse this noon--I'm getting to like you,
bad as you are, hanged if I ain't!”

“Oh, what's the use?” demanded the other, tears again coming into his
eyes. “You'll think I'm lying an' trying to crawl out--an' I won't do
neither.”

“_I_ didn't say _you_ was a liar,” replied Hopalong. “It was the other
way about. Reckon you can try me, anyhow; can't you?”

“Yes; I s'pose so,” responded the other, slowly, and in a milder tone
of voice. “An' when I called you that I was mad and desperate. I was
hasty--you see, my wife's dying, or dead, over in Winchester. I was
riding hard to get to her before it was too late when my cayuse stepped
into a hole just the other side of Grant--you know what happened. I shot
the animal, stripped off my saddle an' hoofed it to town, an' dropped
into that gospel dealer's layout to see if he could make me feel any
better--which he could not. I just couldn't stand his palaver about
death an' slipped out. I was going to lay for you an' lick you for the
way you acted about this scarf--had to do something or go loco. But when
I got outside there was yore cayuse, all saddled an' ready to go. I
just up an' threw my saddle on it, followed suit with myself an' was
ten miles out of town before I realized just what I'd done. But the
realizing part of it didn't make no difference to me--I'd 'a' done
it just the same if I had stopped to think it over. That's flat, an'
straight. I've got to get to that li'l woman as quick as I can, an' I'd
steal all the cayuses in the whole damned country if they'd do me any
good. That's all of it--take it or leave it. I put it up to you. That's
yore cayuse, but you ain't going to get it without fighting me for it!
If you shoot me down without giving me a chance, all right! I'll cut a
throat for that wore-out bronc!”

Hopalong was buried in thought and came to himself just in time to cover
the other and stop him not six feet away. “Just a minute, before you
make me shoot you! I want to think about it.”

“Damn that gun!” swore the fugitive, nervously shifting his feet and
preparing to spring. “We'd 'a' been fighting by this time if it wasn't
for that!”

“You stand still or I'll blow you apart,” retorted Hopalong, grimly. “A
man's got a right to think, ain't he? An' if I had somebody here to mind
these guns so you couldn't sneak 'em on me I'd fight you so blamed quick
that you'd be licked before you knew you was at it. But we ain't going
to fight--_stand still_! You ain't got no show at all when yo're dead!”

“Then you gimme that cayuse--my God, man! Do you know the hell I've been
through for the last two days? Got the word up at Daly's Crossing an'
ain't slept since. I'll go loco if the strain lasts much longer! She
asking for me, begging to see me: an' me, like a damned idiot, wasting
time out here talking to another. Ride with me, behind me--it's only
forty miles more--tie me to the saddle an' blow me to pieces if you find
I'm lying--do anything you wants; but let me get to Winchester before
dark!”

Hopalong was watching him closely and at the end of the other's outburst
threw back his head. “I reckon I'm a plain fool, a jackass; but I don't
care. I'll rope that cayuse for you. You come along to save time,”
 Hopalong ordered, spurring forward. His borrowed rope sailed out,
tightened, and in a moment he was working at the saddle. “Here, you; I'm
going to swamp mounts with you--this one is fresher an' faster.” He had
his own saddle off and the other on in record time, and stepped back.
“There; don't stand there like a fool--wake up an' hustle! I might
change my mind--that's the way to move! Gimme that neck-kerchief for
a souveneer, an' get out. Send that cayuse back to Dave Wilkes, at
Grant--it's hissn. Don't thank me; just gimme that scarf an' ride like
the devil.”

The other, already mounted, tore the kerchief from his throat and handed
it quickly to his benefactor. “If you ever want a man to take you out of
hell, send to Winchester for Ben Ferris--that's me. So long!”

Mr. Cassidy sat on his saddle where he had dropped it after making the
exchange and looked after the galloping horseman, and when a distant
rise had shut him from sight, turned his eyes on the scarf in his hand
and cogitated. Finally, with a long-drawn sigh he arose, and, placing
the scarf on the ground, caught and saddled his horse. Riding gloomily
back to where the riot of color fluttered on the grass he drew his Colt
and sent six bullets through it with a great amount of satisfaction. Not
content with the damage he had inflicted, he leaned over and swooped
it up. Riding further he also swooped up a stone and tied the kerchief
around it, and then stood up in his stirrups and drew back his arm with
critical judgment. He sat quietly for a time after the gaudy missile had
disappeared into the stream and then, wheeling, cantered away. But he
did not return to the town of Grant--he lacked the nerve to face Dave
Wilkes and tell his childish and improbable story. He would ride on and
meet Red as they had agreed; a letter would do for Mr. Wilkes, and after
he had broken the shock in that manner he could pay him a personal visit
sometime soon. Dave would never believe the story and when it was told
Hopalong wanted to have the value of the horse in his trousers pocket.
Of course, Ben Ferris _might_ have told the truth and he might return
the horse according to directions. Hopalong emerged from his reverie
long enough to appeal to his mount:

“Bronc, I've been thinking: am I or am I not a jackass?”



CHAPTER VIII

RED BRINGS TROUBLE

After a night spent on the plain and a cigarette for his breakfast,
Hopalong, grouchy and hungry, rode slowly to the place appointed for his
meeting with Red, but Mr. Connors was over two hours late. It was now
mid-forenoon and Hopalong occupied his time for a while by riding out
fancy designs on the sand; but he soon tired of this makeshift diversion
and grew petulant. Red's tardiness was all the worse because the erring
party to the agreement had turned in his saddle at Hoyt's Corners and
loosed a flippant and entirely uncalled-for remark about his friend's
ideas regarding appointments.

“Well, that red-headed Romeo is shore late this time,” Hopalong
muttered. “Why don't he find a girl closer to home, anyhow? Thank the
Lord I ain't got no use for shell games of any kind. Here I am, without
anything to eat an' no prospects of anything, sitting up on this locoed
layout like a sore thumb, an' can't move without hitting myself! An'
it'll be late to-day before I can get any grub, too. Oh, well,” he
sighed, “I ain't in love, so things might be a whole lot worse with me.
An' he ain't in love, neither, only he won't listen to reason. He gets
mad an' calls me a sage hen an' says I'm stuck on myself because some
fool told me I had brains.”

He laughed as he pictured the object of his friend's affections. “Huh;
anybody that got one good, square look at her wouldn't ever accuse him
of having brains. But he'll forget her in a month. That was the life of
his last hobbling fit an' it was the worst he ever had.”

Grinning at his friend's peculiarly human characteristics he leaned back
in the saddle and felt for tobacco and papers. As he finished pouring
the chopped alfalfa into the paper he glanced up and saw a mounted man
top the sky-line of the distant hills and shoot down the slope at full
speed.

“I knowed it: started three hours late an' now he's trying to make it up
in the last mile,” Hopalong muttered, dexterously spreading the tobacco
along the groove and quickly rolling the cigarette. Lighting it he
looked up again and saw that the horseman was wildly waving a sombrero.

“Huh! Wigwagging for forgiveness,” laughed the man who waited. “Old
son-of-a-gun, I'd wait a week if I had some grub, an' he knows it.
Couldn't get mad at him if I tried.”

Mr. Connors' antics now became frantic and he shouted something at the
top of his voice. His friend spurred his mount. “Come on, bronc; wake
up. His girl said 'yes' an' now he wants me to get him out of his
trouble.” Whereupon he jogged forward. “What's that?” he shouted,
sitting up very straight. “What's that?”

Red energetically swept the sombrero behind him and pointed to the rear.
“War-whoops! W-a-r w-h-o-o-p-s! Injuns, you chump!” Mr. Connors appeared
to be mildly exasperated.

“Yes?” sarcastically rejoined Mr. Cassidy in his throat, and then
shouted in reply: “Love an' liquor don't mix very well in you. Wake up!
Come out of it!”

“That's straight--I mean it!” cried Mr. Connors, close enough now to
save the remainder of his lungs. “It's a bunch of young bucks on their
first war-trail, I reckon. 'T ain't Geronimo, all right; I wouldn't be
here now if it was. Three of 'em chased me an' the two that are left are
coming hot-foot somewhere the other side of them hills. They act sort of
mad, too.”

“Mebby they ain't acting at all,” cheerily replied his companion. “An'
then that's the way you got that graze?” pointing to a bloody furrow on
Mr. Connors' cheek. “But just the same it looks like the trail left by a
woman's finger nail.”

“Finger nail nothing,” retorted Mr. Connors, flushing a little. “But,
for God's sake, are you going to sit here like a wart on a dead dog
an' wait for 'em?” he demanded with a rising inflection. “Do you reckon
yo're running a dance, or a party, or something like that?”

“How many?” placidly inquired Mr. Cassidy, gazing intently towards the
high sky-line of the distant hills.

“Two--an' I won't tell you again, neither!” snapped the owner of the
furrowed cheek. “The others are 'way behind now--but we're standing
_still_!”

“Why didn't you say there was others?” reproved Hopalong. “Naturally
I didn't see no use of getting all het up just because two sprouted
papooses feel like crowding us a bit; it wouldn't be none of _our_
funeral, would it?” and the indignant Mr. Cassidy hurriedly dismounted
and hid his horse in a nearby chaparral and returned to his companion at
a run.

“Red, gimme yore Winchester an' then hustle on for a ways, have an
accident, fall off yore cayuse, an' act scared to death, if you know
how. It's that little trick Buck told us about, an' it shore ought to
work fine here. We'll see if two infant feather-dusters can lick the
Bar-20. Get a-going!”

They traded rifles, Hopalong taking the repeater in place of the
single-shot gun he carried, and Red departed as bidden, his face
gradually breaking into an enthusiastic grin as he ruminated upon the
plan. “Level-headed old cuss; he's a wonder when it comes to planning or
fighting. An' lucky,--well, I reckon!”

Hopalong ran forward for a short distance and slid down the steep bank
of a narrow arroyo and waited, the repeater thrust out through the dense
fringe of grass and shrubs which bordered the edge. When settled to his
complete satisfaction and certain that he was effectually screened from
the sight of any one in front of him, he arose on his toes and looked
around for his companion, and laughed. Mr. Connors was bending very
dejectedly apparently over his prostrate horse, but in reality was
swearing heartily at the ignorant quadruped because it strove with might
and main to get its master's foot off its head so it could arise. The
man in the arroyo turned again and watched the hills and it was not
long before he saw two Indians burst into view over the crest and gallop
towards his friend. They were not to be blamed because they did not
know the pursued had joined a friend, for the second trail was yet some
distance in front of them.

“Pair of budding warriors, all right; an' awful important. Somebody must
'a' told _them_ they had brains,” Mr. Cassidy muttered. “They're just
at the age when they knows it all an' have to go 'round raising hell all
the time. Wonder when they jumped the reservation.”

The Indians, seeing Mr. Connors arguing with his prostrate horse, and
taking it for granted that he was not stopping for pleasure or to view
the scenery, let out a yell and dashed ahead at grater speed, at the
same time separating so as to encircle him and attack him front and rear
at the same time. They had a great amount of respect for cowboys.

This manoeuvre was entirely unexpected and clashed violently with Mr.
Cassidy's plan of procedure, so two irate punchers swore heartily at
their rank stupidity in not counting on it. Of course everybody that
knew anything at all about such warfare knew that they would do just
such a thing, which made it all the more bitter. But Red had cultivated
the habit of thinking quickly and he saw at once that the remedy
lay with him; he astonished the exultant savages by straddling his
disgruntled horse as it scrambled to its feet and galloping away from
them, bearing slightly to the south, because he wished to lure his
pursuers to ride closer to his anxious and eager friend.

This action was a success, for the yelling warriors, slowing perceptibly
because of their natural astonishment at the resurrection and speed of
an animal regarded as dead or useless, spurred on again, drawing closer
together, and along the chord of the arc made by Mr. Connors' trail.
Evidently the fool white man was either crazy or had original and
startling ideas about the way to rest a horse when hard pressed, which
pleased them much, since he had lost so much time. The pleasures of the
war-trail would be vastly greater if all white men had similar ideas.

Hopalong, the light of fighting burning strong in his eyes, watched them
sweep nearer and nearer, splendid examples of their type and seeming to
be a part of their mounts. Then two shots rang out in quick succession
and a cloud of pungent smoke arose lazily from the edge of the arroyo
as the warriors fell from their mounts not sixty yards from the hidden
marksman.

Mr. Connors' rifle spat fire once to make assurance doubly sure and he
hastily rejoined his friend as that person climbed out of the arroyo.

“Huh! They must have been half-breeds!” snorted Red in great disgust,
watching his friend shed sand from his clothes. “I allus opined that
'Paches was too blamed slick to bite on a game like that.”

“Well, they are purty 'lusive animals, 'Paches; but there are
exceptions,” replied Hopalong, smiling at the success of their scheme.
“Them two ain't 'Paches--they're the exceptions. But let me tell you
that's a good game, just the same. It is as long as they don't see the
second trail in time. Didn't Buck and Skinny get two that way?”

“Yes, I reckon so. But what'll we do now? What's the next play?” asked
Red, hurriedly, his eyes searching the sky-line of the hills. “The rest
of the coyotes will be here purty soon, an' they'll be madder than ever
now. An' you better gimme back that gun, too.”

“Take yore old gun--who wants the blamed thing, anyhow?” Hopalong
demanded, throwing the weapon at his friend as he ran to bring up the
hidden horse. When he returned he grinned pleasantly. “Why, we'll go on
like we was greased for calamity, that's what we'll do. Did you reckon
we was going to play leap-frog around here an' wait for the rest of them
paint-shops, like a blamed fool pair of idiots?”

“I didn't know what _you_ might do, remembering how you acted when I met
you,” retorted Red, shifting his cartridge belt so the empty loops were
behind and out of the way. “But I shore knowed what we ought to do, all
right.”

“Well, mebby you also know how many's headed this way; do you?”

“You've got me stumped there; but there's a round dozen, anyway,” Red
replied. “You see, the three that chased me were out scouting ahead of
the main bunch; an' I didn't have no time to take no blasted census.”

“Then we've got to hit the home trail, an' hit it hard. Wind up that
four-laigged excuse of yourn, an' take my dust,” Hopalong responded,
leading the way. “If we can get home there'll be a lot of disgusted
braves hitting the high spots on the back trail trying to find a way
out. Buck an' the rest of the boys will be a whole lot pleased, too. We
can muster thirty men in two hours if we gets to Buckskin, an' that's
twenty more than we'll need.”

“Tell you one thing, Hoppy; we can get as far as Powers' old ranch
house, an' that's shore,” replied Red, thoughtfully.

“Yes!” exploded his companion in scorn and pity. “That old sieve of a
shack ain't good enough for _me_ to die in, no matter what you think
about it. Why, it's as full of holes as a stiff hat in a melee. Yo're on
the wrong trail; think again.”

Mr. Cassidy objected not because he believed that Powers' old ranch
house was unworthy of serious consideration as a place of refuge and
defence, but for the reason that he wished to reach Buckskin so his
friends might all get in on the treat. Times were very dull on the
ranch, and this was an occasion far too precious to let slip by.
Besides, he then would have the pleasure of leading his friends against
the enemy and battling on even terms. If he sought shelter he and
Red would have to fight on the defensive, which was a game he hated
cordially because it put him in a relatively subordinate position and
thereby hurt his pride.

“Let me tell you that it's a whole lot better than thin air with a
hard-working circle around us--an' you know what that means,” retorted
Mr. Connors. “But if you don't want to take a chance in the shack, why
mebby we can make Wallace's, or the Cross-O-Cross. That is, if we don't
get turned out of our way.”

“We don't head for no Cross-O-Cross or Wallace's,” rejoined his friend
with emphasis, “an' we won't waste no time in Powers' shack, neither;
we'll push right through as hard as we can go for Buckskin. Let them
fellers find their own hunting--our outfit comes first. An' besides
that'll mean a detour in a country fine for ambushes. We'd never get
through.”

“Well, have it yore own way, then!” snapped Red. “You allus was a
hard-headed old mule, anyhow.” In his heart Red knew that Hopalong was
right about Wallace's and the Cross-O-Cross.

Some time after the two punchers had quitted the scene of their trap,
several Apaches loped up, read the story of the tragedy at a glance, and
galloped on in pursuit. They had left the reservation a fortnight before
under the able leadership of that veteran of many war-trails--Black
Bear. Their leader, chafing at inaction and sick of the monotony of
reservation life, had yielded to the entreaties of a score of restless
young men and slipped away at their head, eager for the joys of raiding
and plundering. But instead of stealing horses and murdering isolated
whites as they had expected, they met with heavy repulses and were
now without the mind of their leader. They had fled from one defeat to
another and twice had barely eluded the cavalry which pursued them. Now
two more of their dwindling force were dead and another had been found
but an hour before. Rage and ferocity seethed in each savage heart and
they determined to get the puncher they had chased, and that other whose
trail they now saw for the first time. They would place at least one
victory against the string of their defeats, and at any cost. Whips rose
and fell and the war-party shot forward in a compact group, two scouts
thrown ahead to feel the way.

Red and Hopalong rode on rejoicing, for there were three less Apaches
loose in the Southwest for the inhabitants to swear about and fear, and
there was an excellent chance of more to follow. The Southwest had
no toleration for the Government's policy of dealing with Indians and
derived a great amount of satisfaction every time an Apache was killed.
It still clung to the time-honored belief that the only good Indian
was a dead one. Mr. Cassidy voiced his elation and then rubbed an
empty stomach in vain regret,--when a bullet shrilled past his head,
so unexpectedly as to cause him to duck instinctively and then glance
apologetically at his red-haired friend; and both spurred their mounts
to greater speed. Next Mr. Connors grabbed frantically at his perforated
sombrero and grew petulant and loquacious.

“Both them shots was lucky, Hoppy; the feller that fired at me did it
on the dead run; but that won't help us none if one of 'em connects
with us. You gimme that Sharps--got to show 'em that they're taking big
chances crowding us this way.” He took the heavy rifle and turned in the
saddle. “It's an even thousand, if it's a yard. He don't look very big,
can't hardly tell him from his cayuse; an' the wind's puffy. Why don't
you dirty or rust this gun? The sun glitters all along the barrel. Well,
here goes.”

“Missed by a mile,” reproved Hopalong, who would have been stunned by
such a thing as a hit under the circumstances, even if his good-shooting
friend had made it.

“Yes! Missed the coyote I aimed for, but I got the cayuse of his off
pardner; see it?”

“Talk about luck!”

“That's all right: it takes blamed good shooting to miss that close in
this case. Look! It's slowed 'em up a bit, an' that's about all I hoped
to do. Bet they think I'm a real, shore-'nuff medicine-man. Now gimme
another cartridge.”

“I will not; no use wasting lead at this range. We'll need all the
cartridges we got before we get out of this hole. You can't do nothing
without stopping--an' that takes time.”

“Then I'll stop! The blazes with the time! Gimme another, d'ye hear?”

Mr. Cassidy heard, complied, and stopped beside his companion, who was
very intent upon the matter at hand. It took some figuring to make a
hit when the range was so great and the sun so blinding and the wind
so capricious. He lowered the rifle and peered through the smoke at the
confusion he had caused by dropping the nearest warrior. He was said to
be the best rifle shot in the Southwest, which means a great deal,
and his enemies did not deny it. But since the Sharps shot a special
cartridge and was reliable up to the limit of its sight gauge, a matter
of eighteen hundred yards, he did not regard the hit as anything worthy
of especial mention. Not so his friend, who grinned joyously and loosed
his admiration.

“Yo're a shore wonder with that gun, Red! Why don't you lose that
repeater an' get a gun like mine? Lord, if I could use a rifle like you,
I wouldn't have that gun of yourn for a gift. Just look at what you did
with it! Please get one like it.”

“I'm plumb satisfied with the repeater,” replied Red. “I don't miss very
often at eight hundred with it, an' that's long enough range for most
anybody. An' if I do miss, I can send another that won't, an' right on
the tail of the first, too.”

“Ah, the devil! You make me disgusted with yore fool talk about that
carbine!” snapped his companion, and the subject was dropped.

The merits of their respective rifles had always been a bone of
contention between them and one well chewed, at that. Red was very well
satisfied with his Winchester, and he was a good judge.

“You did stop 'em a little,” asserted Mr. Cassidy some time later when
he looked back. “You stopped 'em coming straight, but they're spreading
out to work up around us. Now, if we had good cayuses instead of these
wooden wonders, we could run away from 'em dead easy, draw their best
mounted warriors to the front an' then close with 'em. Good thing their
cayuses are well tired out, for as it is we've got to make a stand purty
soon. Gee! They don't like you, Red; they're calling you names in the
sign language. Just look at 'em cuss you!”

“How much water have you got?” inquired his friend with anxiety.

“Canteen plumb full. How're you fixed?”

“I got the same, less one drink. That gives us enough for a couple of
days with some to spare, if we're careful,” Mr. Connors replied.
New Mexican canteens are built on generous lines and are known as
life-preservers.

“Look at that glory-hunter go!” exclaimed Red, watching a brave who was
riding half a mile to their right and rapidly coming abreast of them.
“Wonder how he got over there without us seeing him.”

“Here; stop him!” suggested Hopalong, holding out his Sharps. “We can't
let him get ahead of us and lay in ambush--that's what he's playing to
do.”

“My gun's good, and better, for me, at this range; but you know, I can't
hit a jack-rabbit going over rough country as fast as that feller is,”
 replied his companion, standing up in his stirrups and firing.

“Huh! Never touched him! But he's edging off a-plenty. See him cuss you.
What's he calling you, anyhow?”

“Aw, shut up! How the devil do _I_ know? I don't talk with my arms.”

“Are you superstitious, Red?”

“No! Shut up!”

“Well, I am. See that feller over there? If he gets in front of us it's
a shore sign that somebody's going to get hurt. He'll have plenty of
time to get cover an' pick us off as we come up.”

“Don't you worry--his cayuse is deader'n ours. They must 'a' been
pushing on purty hard the last few days. See it stumble?--what'd I tell
you!”

“Yes; but they're gaining on us slow but shore. We've got to make a
stand purty soon--how much further do you reckon that infernal shack is,
anyhow?” Hopalong asked sharply.

“'T ain't fur off--see it any minute now.”

“Here,” remarked Hopalong, holding out his rifle, “stencil yore mark on
his hide; catch him just as he strikes the top of that little rise.”

“Ain't got time--that shack can't be much further.”

And it wasn't, for as they galloped over a rise they saw, half a mile
ahead of them, an adobe building in poor state of preservation. It was
Powers' old ranch house, and as they neared it, they saw that there was
no doubt about the holes.

“Told you it was a sieve,” grunted Hopalong, swinging in on the tail of
his companion. “Not worth a hang for anything,” he added bitterly.

“It'll answer, all right,” retorted Red grimly.



CHAPTER IX

MR. HOLDEN DROPS IN

Mr. Cassidy dismounted and viewed the building with open disgust,
walking around it to see what held it up, and when he finally realized
that it was self-supporting his astonishment was profound. Undoubtedly
there were shacks in the United States in worse condition, but he hoped
their number was small. Of course he knew that the building was small.
Of course he knew that the building would make a very good place of
defence, but for the sake of argument he called to his companion and
urged that they be satisfied with what defence they could extemporize in
the open. Mr. Connors hotly and hastily dissented as he led the horses
into the building, and straightway the subject was arbitrated with much
feeling and snappy eloquence. Finally Hopalong thought that Red was a
chump, and said so out loud, whereat Red said unpleasant things about
his good friend's pedigree, attributes, intelligence, et al., even going
so far as to prognosticate his friend's place of eternal abode. The
remarks were fast getting to be somewhat personal in tenor when a whine
in the air swept up the scale to a vicious shriek as it passed between
them, dropped rapidly to a whine again and quickly died out in the
distance, a flat report coming to their ears a few seconds later.
Invisible bees seemed to be winging through the air, the angry and
venomous droning becoming more pronounced each passing moment, and the
irregular cracking of rifles grew louder rapidly. An angry _s-p-a-t!_
told of where a stone behind them had launched the ricochet which hurled
skyward with a wheezing scream. A handful of 'dobe dust sprang from the
corner of the building and sifted down upon them, causing Red to cough.

“That ricochet was a Sharps!” exclaimed Hopalong, and they lost no time
in getting into the building, where the discussion was renewed as they
prepared for the final struggle. Red grunted his cheerful approval, for
now he was out of the blazing sun and where he could better appreciate
the musical tones of the flying bullets; but his companion, slamming
shut the door and propping it with a fallen roof-beam, grumbled and
finally gave rein to his rancor by sneering at the Winchester.

“It shore gets me that after all I have said about that gun you will
tote it around with you and force yoreself into a suicide's grave,”
 quoth Mr. Cassidy, with exuberant pugnacity. “I ain't in no way
objecting to the suicide part of it, but I can't see that it's at all
fair to drag _me_ onto the edge of everlasting eternity with you. If you
ain't got no regard for yore own life you shore ought to think a little
about yore friend's. Now you'll waste all yore cartridges an' then
come snooping around me to borrow my gun. Why don't you lose the damned
thing?”

“What I pack ain't none of yore business, which same I'll uphold,”
 retorted Mr. Connors, at last able to make himself heard. “You get over
on yore own side an' use yore Colt; I've wondered a whole lot where you
ever got the sense to use a Colt--_I_ wouldn't be a heap surprised to
see you toting a pearl-handled .22, like the kids use. Now you 'tend to
yore grave-yard aspirants, an' lemme do the same with mine.”

“The Lord knows I've stood a whole lot from you because you just can't
help being foolish, but I've got plumb weary and sick of it. It stops
right here or you won't get no 'Paches,” snorted Hopalong, peering
intently through a hole in the shack. The more they squabbled the better
they liked it,--controversies had become so common that they were
merely a habit; and they served to take the grimness out of desperate
situations.

“Aw, you can't lick one side of me,” averred Red loftily. “You never did
stop anybody that was anything,” he jeered as he fired from his window.
“Why, you couldn't even hit the bottom of the Grand Canyon if you leaned
over the edge.”

“You could, if you leaned too far, you red-headed wart of a half-breed,”
 snapped Hopalong. “But how about the Joneses, Tarantula Charley, Slim
Travennes, an' all the rest? How about them, hey?”

“Huh! You couldn't 'a' got any of 'em if they had been sober,” and Mr.
Connors shook so with mirth that the Indian at whom he had fired got
away with a whole skin and cheerfully derided the marksman. “That 'Pache
shore reckons it was you shooting at him, I missed him so far. Now, you
shut up--I want to get some so we can go home. I don't want to stay out
here all night an' the next day as well,” Red grumbled, his words dying
slowly in his throat as he voiced other thoughts.

Hopalong caught sight of an Apache who moved cautiously through a
chaparral lying about nine hundred yards away. As long as the distant
enemy lay quietly he could not be discerned, but he was not content
with assured safety and took a chance. Hopalong raised his rifle to his
shoulder as the Indian fired and the latter's bullet, striking the
edge of the hole through which Mr. Cassidy peered, kicked up a generous
handful of dust, some of which found lodgment in that individual's eyes.

“Oh! Oh! Oh! Wow!” yelled the unfortunate, dancing blindly around the
room in rage and pain, and dropping his rifle to grab at his eyes. “Oh!
Oh! Oh!”

His companion wheeled like a flash and grabbed him as he stumbled past.
“Are you plugged bad, Hoppy? Where did they get you? Are you hit bad?”
 and Red's heart was in his voice.

“No, I ain't plugged bad!” mimicked Hopalong. “I ain't plugged at all!”
 he blazed, kicking enthusiastically at his solicitous friend. “Get me
some water, you jackass! Don't stand there like a fool! I ain't going to
fall down. Don't you know my eyes are full of 'dobe?”

Red, avoiding another kick, hastily complied, and as hastily left
Mr. Cassidy to wash out the dirt while he returned to his post by the
window. “Anybody'd think you was full of red-eye, the way you act,”
 muttered Red peevishly.

Hopalong, rubbing his eyes of the dirt, went back to the hole in the
wall and looked out. “Hey, Red! Come over here an' spill that brave's
conceit. I can't keep my eyes open long enough to aim, an' it's a nice
shot, too. It'd serve him right if you got him!”

Mr. Connors obeyed the summons and peered out cautiously. “I can't see
him, nohow; where is the coyote?”

“Over there in that little chaparral; see him now? _There!_ See him
moving. Do you mean to tell me--”

“Yep; I see him, all right. You watch,” was the reply. “He's just over
nine hundred--where's yore Sharps?” He took the weapon, glanced at the
Buffington sight, which he found to be set right, and aimed carefully.

Hopalong blinked through another hole as his friend fired and saw the
Indian flop down and crawl aimlessly about on hands and knees. “What's
he doing now, Red?”

“Playing marbles, you chump; an' here goes for his agate,” replied the
man with the Sharps, firing again. “There! Gee!” he exclaimed, as a
bullet hummed in through the window he had quitted for the moment, and
thudded into the wall, making the dry adobe fly. It had missed him by
only a few inches and he now crept along the floor to the rear of the
room and shoved his rifle out among the branches of a stunted mesquite
which grew before a fissure in the wall. “You keep away from that windy
for a minute, Hoppy,” he warned as he waited.

A terror-stricken lizard flashed out of the fissure and along the wall
where the roof had fallen in and flitted into a hole, while a fly buzzed
loudly and hovered persistently around Red's head, to the rage of that
individual. “Ah, ha!” he grunted, lowering the rifle and peering through
the smoke. A yell reached his ears and he forthwith returned to his
window, whistling softly.

Evidently Mr. Cassidy's eyes were better and his temper sweeter, for he
hummed “Dixie” and then jumped to “Yankee Doodle,” mixing the two
airs with careless impartiality, which was a sign that he was thinking
deeply. “Wonder what ever became of Powers, Red. Peculiar feller, he
was.”

“In jail, I reckon, if drink hasn't killed him.”

“Yes; I reckon so,” and Mr. Cassidy continued his medley, which prompted
his friend quickly to announce his unqualified disapproval.

“You can make more of a mess of them two songs than anybody I ever heard
murder 'em! _Shut up!_”--and the concert stopped, the vocalist venting
his feelings at an Indian, and killing the horse instead.

“Did you get him?” queried Red.

“Nope; but I got his cayuse,” Hopalong replied, shoving a fresh
cartridge into the foul, greasy breech of the Sharps. “An' here's where
I get him--got to square up for my eyes some way,” he muttered, firing.
“Missed! Now what do you think of that!” he exclaimed.

“Better take my Winchester,” suggested Red, in a matter-of-fact way, but
he chuckled softly and listened for the reply.

“Aw, you go to the devil!” snapped Mr. Cassidy, firing again. “Whoop!
Got him that time!”

“Where?” asked his companion, with strong suspicion.

“None of yore business!”

“Aw, darn it! Who spilled the water?” yelled Red, staring blankly at the
overturned canteen.

“Pshaw! Reckon I did, Red,” apologized his friend ruefully. “Now of all
the cussed luck!”

“Oh, well; we've got another, an' you had to wash out yore eyes. Lucky
we each had one--_Holy smoke!_ It's most all gone! The top is loose!”

Heartfelt profanity filled the room and the two disgusted punchers went
sullenly back to their posts. It was a calamity of no small magnitude,
for, while food could be dispensed with for a long time if necessary,
going without water was another question. It was as necessary as
cartridges.

Then Hopalong laughed at the ludicrous side of the whole affair, thereby
revealing one of the characteristics which endeared him to his friends.
No matter how desperate a situation might be, he could always find in it
something at which to laugh. He laughed going into danger and coming out
of it, with a joke or a pleasantry always trembling on the end of his
tongue.

“Red, did it ever strike you how cussed thirsty a feller gets just
as soon as he knows he can't have no drink? But it don't make much
difference, nohow. We'll get out of this little scrape just as we've
allus got out of trouble. There's some mad war-whoops outside that are
worse off than we are, because they are at the wrong end of yore gun. I
feel sort of sorry for 'em.”

“Yo're shore a happy idiot,” grinned Red. “Hey! Listen!”

Galloping was heard and Hopalong, running to the door, looked out
through a crack as sudden firing broke out around the rear of the shack,
and fell to pulling away the props, crying, “It's a puncher, Red; he's
riding this way! Come on an' help him in!”

“He's a blamed fool to ride this way! I'm with you!” replied Red,
running to his side.

Half a mile from the house, coming across the open space as fast as he
could urge his horse, rode a cowboy, and not far behind him raced about
a dozen Apaches, yelling and firing.

Red picked up his companion's rifle, and steadying it against the
jamb of the door, fired, dropping one of the foremost of the pursuers.
Quickly reloading again, he fired and missed. The third shot struck
another horse, and then taking up his own gun he began to fire rapidly,
as rapidly as he could work the lever and yet make his shots tell.
Hopalong drew his Colt and ran back to watch the rear of the house, and
it was well that he did so, for an Apache in that direction, believing
that the trapped punchers were so busily engaged with the new
developments as to forget for the moment, sprinted towards the
back window; and he had gotten within twenty paces of the goal when
Hopalong's Colt cracked a protest. Seeing that the warrior was no longer
a combatant, Mr. Cassidy ran back to the door just as the stranger fell
from his horse and crawled past Red. The door slammed shut, the props
fell against it, and the two friends turned to the work of driving back
the second band, which, however, had given up all hope of rushing the
house in the face of Red's telling fire, and had sought cover instead.

The stranger dragged himself to the canteens and drank what little water
remained, and then turned to watch the two men moving from place to
place, firing coolly and methodically. He thought he recognized one of
them from the descriptions he had heard, but he was not sure.

“My name's Holden,” he whispered hoarsely, but the cracking of the
rifles drowned his voice. During a lull he tried again. “My name's
Holden,” he repeated weakly. “I'm from the Cross-O-Cross, an' can't get
back there again.”

“Mine's Cassidy, an' that's Connors, of the Bar-20. Are you hurt very
bad?”

“No; not very bad,” lied Holden, trying to smile. “Gee, but I'm glad I
fell in with you two fellers,” he exclaimed. He was but little more than
a boy, and to him Hopalong Cassidy and Red Connors were names with which
to conjure. “But I'm plumb sorry I went an' brought you more trouble,”
 he added regretfully.

“Oh, pshaw! We had it before you came--you needn't do no worrying about
that, Holden; besides, I reckon you couldn't help it,” Hopalong grinned
facetiously. “But tell us how you came to mix up with that bunch,” he
continued.

Holden shuddered and hesitated a moment, his companions alertly
shifting from crack to crack, window to window, their rifles cracking at
intervals. They appeared to him to act as if they had done nothing else
all their lives but fight Indians from that shack, and he braced up a
little at their example of coolness.

“It's an awful story, awful!” he began. “I was riding towards Hoyt's
Corners an' when I got about half way there I topped a rise an' saw a
nester's house about half a mile away. It wasn't there the last time I
rode that way, an' it looked so peaceful an' home-like that I stopped
an' looked at it a few minutes. I was just going to start again when
that war-party rode out of a barranca close to the house an' went
straight for it at top speed. It seemed like a dream, 'cause I thought
Apaches never got so far east. They don't, do they? I thought not--these
must 'a' got turned out of their way an' had to hustle for safety.
Well, it was all over purty quick. I saw 'em drag out two women
an'--an'--purty soon a man. He was fighting like fury, but he didn't
last long. Then they set fire to the house an' threw the man's body up
on the roof. I couldn't seem to move till the flames shot up, but then
I must 'a' went sort of loco, because I emptied my gun at 'em, which was
plumb foolish at that distance, for me. The next thing I knowed was that
half of 'em was coming my way as hard as they could ride, an' I lit
out instanter; an' here I am. I can't get that sight outen my head
nohow--it'll drive me loco!” he screamed, sobbing like a child from the
horror of it all.

His auditors still moved around the room, growing more and more
vindictive all the while and more zealously endeavoring to create a
still greater deficit in one Apache war-party. They knew what he had
looked upon, for they themselves had become familiar with the work of
Apaches in Arizona. They could picture it vividly in all its devilish
horror. Neither of them paid any apparent attention to their companion,
for they could not spare the time, and, also, they believed it best to
let him fight out his own battles unassisted.

Holden sobbed and muttered as the minutes dragged along, at times acting
so strangely as to draw a covert side-glance from one or both of the
Bar-20 punchers. Then Mr. Connors saw his boon companion suddenly lean
out of a window and immediately become the target for the hard-working
enemy. He swore angrily at the criminal recklessness of it. “Hey, you!
Come in out of that! Ain't you got no brains at all, you blasted idiot!
Don't you know that we need every gun?”

“Yes; that's right. I sort of forgot,” grinned the reckless one, obeying
with alacrity and looking sheepish. “But you know there's two thundering
big tarantulas out there fighting like blazes. You ought to see 'em
jump! It's a sort of a leap-frog fight, Red.”

“Fool!” snorted Mr. Connors belligerently. “_You'd_ 'a' jumped if one of
them slugs had 'a' got you! Yo're the damnedest fool that ever walked on
two laigs, you blasted sage-hen!” Mr. Connors was beginning to lose his
temper and talk in his throat.

“Well, they didn't get me, did they? What you yelling about, anyhow?”
 growled Hopalong, trying to brazen it out.

“An' _you_ talking about suicide to me!” snapped Mr. Connors, determined
to rub it in and have the last word.

Mr. Holden stared, open-mouthed, at the man who could enjoy a miserable
spider fight under such distressing circumstances, and his shaken nerves
became steadier as he gave thought to the fact that he was a companion
of the two men about whose exploits he had heard so much. Evidently the
stories had not been exaggerated. What must they think of him for giving
way as he had? He rose to his feet in time to see a horse blunder into
the open on Red's side of the house, and after it blundered its owner,
who immediately lost all need of earthly conveyances. Holden laughed
from the joy of being with a man who could shoot like that, and he
took up his rifle and turned to a crack in the wall, filled with the
determination to let his companions know that he was built of the right
kind of timber after all, wounded as he was.

Red's only comment, as he pumped a fresh cartridge into the barrel, was,
“He must 'a' thought he saw a spider fight, too.”

“Hey, Red,” called Hopalong. “The big one is dead.”

“What big one?”

“Why, don't you remember? That big tarantula I was watching. One was
bigger than the other, but the little feller shore waded into him an'--”

“Go to the devil!” shouted Red, who had to grin, despite his anger.

“Presently, presently,” replied Hopalong, laughing.

So the day passed, and when darkness came upon them all of the defenders
were wounded, Holden desperately so.

“Red, one of us has got to try to make the ranch,” Hopalong suddenly
announced, and his friend knew he was right. Since Holden had appeared
upon the scene they had known that they could not try a dash; one of
them had to stay.

“We'll toss for it; heads, I go,” Red suggested, flipping a coin.

“Tails!” cried Hopalong. “It's only thirty miles to Buckskin, an' if I
can get away from here I'm good to make it by eleven to-night. I'll stop
at Cowan's an' have him send word to Lucas an' Bartlett, so there'll be
enough in case any of our boys are out on the range in some line house.
We can pick 'em up on the way back, so there won't be no time lost. If
I get through you can expect excitement on the outside of this sieve
by daylight. You an' Holden can hold her till then, because they never
attack at night. It's the only way out of this for us--we ain't got
cartridges or water enough to last another day.”

Red, knowing that Hopalong was taking a desperate chance in working
through the cordon of Indians which surrounded them, and that the house
was safe when compared to running such a gantlet, offered to go through
the danger line with him. For several minutes a wordy war raged and
finally Red accepted a compromise; he was to help, but not to work
through the line.

“But what's the use of all this argument?” feebly demanded Holden. “Why
don't you both go? I ain't a-going to live nohow, so there ain't no use
of anybody staying here with me, to die with me. Put a bullet through me
so them devils can't play with me like they do with others, an' then get
away while you've got a chance. Two men can get through as easy as one.”
 He sank back, exhausted by the effort.

“No more of that!” cried Red, trying to be stern. “I'm going to stay
with you an' see things through. I'd be a fine sort of a coyote to sneak
off an' leave you for them fiends. An', besides, I can't get away; my
cayuse is hit too hard an' yourn is dead,” he lied cheerfully. “An'
yo're going to get well, all right. I've seen fellers hit harder than
you are pull through.”

Hopalong walked over to the prostrate man and shook hands with him. “I'm
awful glad I met you, Holden. Yo're pure grit all the way through, an'
I like to tie to that kind of a man. Don't you worry about nothing; Red
can handle this proposition, an' we'll have you in Buckskin by to-morrow
night; you'll be riding again in two weeks. So long.”

He turned to Red and shook hands silently, led his horse out of the
building and mounted, glad that the moon had not yet come up, for in the
darkness he had a chance.

“Good luck, Hoppy!” cried Red, running to the door. “Good luck!”

“You bet--an' lots of it, too,” groaned Holden, but he was gone. Then
Red wheeled. “Holden, keep yore eyes an' ears open. I'm going out to see
that he gets off. He may run into a--” and he, too, was gone.

Holden watched the doors and windows, striving to resist the weak, giddy
feeling in his head, and ten minutes later he heard a shot and then
several more in quick succession. Shortly afterward Red called out, and
almost immediately the Bar-20 puncher crawled in through a window.

“Well?” anxiously cried the man on the floor. “Did he make it?”

“I reckon so. He got away from the first crowd, anyhow. I wasn't very
far behind him, an' by the time they woke up to what was going on he
was through an' riding like blazes. I heard him call 'em half-breeds a
moment later an' it sounded far off. They hit me,--fired at my flash,
like I drilled one of them. But it ain't much, anyhow. How are you
feeling now?”

“Fine!” lied the other. “That Cassidy is shore a wonder--he's all right,
an' so are you. I'll never see him again, but I shore hope he gets
through!”

“Don't be foolish. Here, you finish the water in yore canteen--I picked
it up outside by yore cayuse. Then go to sleep,” ordered Red. “I'll do
all the watching that's necessary.”

“I will if you'll call me when you get sleepy.”

“Why, shore I will. But don't you want the rest of the water? I ain't a
bit thirsty--I had all I could hold just before you came,” Red remarked
as his companion pushed the canteen against him in the dark. He was
choking with thirst. “Well, then; all right,” and Red pretended to
drink. “Now, then, you go to sleep; a good snooze will do you a world of
good--it's just what you need.”



CHAPTER X

BUCK TAKES A HAND

Cowan's saloon, club, and place of general assembly for the town of
Buckskin and the nearby ranches, held a merry crowd, for it was pay-day
on the range and laughter and liquor ran a close race. Buck Peters,
his hands full of cigars, passed through the happy-go-lucky,
do-as-you-please crowd and invited everybody to smoke, which nobody
refused to do. Wood Wright, of the C-80, tuned his fiddle anew and swung
into a rousing quick-step. Partners were chosen, the “women” wearing
handkerchiefs on their arms to indicate the fact, and the room shook and
quivered as the scraping of heavy boots filled the air with a cloud of
dust. “Allaman left!” cried the prompter, and then the dance stopped as
if by magic. The door had crashed open and a blood-stained man staggered
in and towards the bar, crying, “Buck! Red's hemmed in by 'Paches!”

“Good God!” roared the foreman of the Bar-20, leaping forward, the
cigars falling to the floor to be crushed and ground into powder by
careless feet. He grasped his puncher and steadied him while Cowan slid
an extra generous glassful of brandy across the bar for the wounded man.
The room was in an uproar, men grabbing rifles and running out to get
their horses, for it was plain to be seen that there was hard work to be
done, and quickly. Questions, threats, curses filled the air, those
who remained inside to get the story listening intently to the jerky
narrative; those outside, caring less for the facts of an action past
than for the action to come, shouted impatiently for a start to be made,
even threatening to go on and tackle the proposition by themselves if
there were not more haste. Hopalong told in a graphic, terse manner all
that was necessary, while Buck and Cowan hurriedly bandaged his wounds.

“Come on! Come on!” shouted the mounted crowd outside, angry, and
impatient for a start, the prancing of horses and the clinking of metal
adding to the noise. “Get a move on! _Will_ you hurry up!”

“Listen, Hoppy!” pleaded Buck, in a furore. “Shut up, you outside!” he
yelled. “You say they know that you got away, Hoppy?” he asked. “All
right--_Lanky!_” he shouted. “_Lanky!_”

“All right, Buck!” and Lanky Smith roughly pushed his way through the
crowd to his foreman's side. “Here I am.”

“Take Skinny and Pete with you, an' a lead horse apiece. Strike straight
for Powers' old ranch house. Them Injuns'll have pickets out looking for
Hoppy's friends. You three get the pickets nearest the old trail through
that arroyo to the southeast, an' then wait for us. We'll come along the
high bank on the left. Don't make no noise doing it, neither, if you can
help it. Understand? Good! Now ride like the devil!”

Lanky grabbed Pete and Skinny on his way out and disappeared into the
corral; and very soon thereafter hoof-beats thudded softly in the sandy
street and pounded into the darkness of the north, soon lost to the ear.
An uproar of advice and good wishes crashed after them, for the game had
begun.

“It's Powers' old shack, boys!” shouted a man in the door to the
restless force outside, which immediately became more restless. “Hey!
Don't go yet!” he begged. “Wait for me an' the rest. Don't be a lot of
idiots!”

Excited and impatient voices replied from the darkness, vexed, grouchy,
and querulous. “Then get a move on--_whoa!_--it'll be light before we
get there if you don't hustle!” roared one voice above the confusion.
“You know what _that_ means!”

“Come on! Come on! For God's sake, are you tied to the bar?”

“Yo're a lot of old grandmothers! Come on!”

Hopalong appeared in the door. “I'll show you the way, boys!” he
shouted. “Cowan, put my saddle on yore cayuse--_pronto_!”

“Good for you, Hoppy!” came from the street. “We'll wait!”

“You stay here; yo're hurt too much!” cried Buck to his puncher, as he
grabbed up a box of cartridges from a shelf behind the bar. “Ain't you
got no sense? There's enough of us to take care of this without you!”

Hopalong wheeled and looked his foreman squarely in the eyes. “Red's
out there, waiting for me--I'm going! I'd be a fine sort of a coyote to
leave him in that hell hole an' not go back, wouldn't I!” he said, with
quiet determination.

“Good for you, Cassidy!” cried a man who hastened out to mount.

“Well, then, come on,” replied Buck. “There's blamed few like you,” he
muttered, following Hopalong outside.

“Here's the cayuse, Cassidy,” cried Cowan, turning the animal over to
him. “_Wait_, Buck!” and he leaped into the building and ran out again,
shoving a bottle of brandy and a package of food into the impatient
foreman's hand. “Mebby Red or Hoppy'll need it--so long, an' good
luck!” and he was alone in a choking cloud of dust, peering through the
darkness along the river trail after a black mass that was swallowed up
almost instantly. Then, as he watched, the moon pushed its rim up over
the hills and he laughed joyously as he realized what its light would
mean to the crowd. “There'll be great doings when _that_ gang cuts
loose,” he muttered with savage elation. “Wish I was with 'em. Damn
Injuns, anyhow!”

Far ahead of the main fighting force rode the three special-duty men,
reeling off the miles at top speed and constantly distancing their
friends, for they changed mounts at need, thanks to the lead horses
provided by Mr. Peters' cool-headed foresight. It was a race against
dawn, and every effort was made to win--the life of Red Connors hung in
the balance and a minute might turn the scale.



In Powers' old ranch house the night dragged along slowly to the grim
watcher, and the man huddled in the corner stirred uneasily and babbled,
ofttimes crying out in horror at the vivid dreams of his disordered
mind. Pacing ceaselessly from window to window, crack to crack, when
the moon came up, Mr. Connors scanned the bare, level plain with anxious
eyes, searching out the few covers and looking for dark spots on the
dull gray sand. They never attacked at night, but still--. Through the
void came the quavering call of a coyote, and he listened for the reply,
which soon came from the black chaparral across the clearing. He knew
where two of them were hiding, anyhow. Holden was muttering and tried
to answer the calls, and Red looked at him for the hundredth time that
night. He glanced out of the window again and noticed that there was a
glow in the eastern sky, and shortly afterwards dawn swiftly developed.

Pouring the last few drops of the precious water between the wounded
man's parched and swollen lips, he tossed the empty canteen from him and
stood erect.

“Pore devil,” he muttered, shaking his head sorrowfully, as he realized
that Holden's delirium was getting worse all the time. “If you was all
right we could give them wolves hell to dance to. Well, you won't
know nothing about it if we go under, an' that's some consolation.” He
examined his rifle and saw that the Colt at his thigh was fully loaded
and in good working order. “An' they'll pay us for their victory, by
God! They'll pay for it!” He stepped closer to the window, throwing the
rifle into the hollow of his arm. “It's about time for the rush; about
time for the game--”

There was movement by that small chaparral to the south! To the east
something stirred into bounding life and action; a coyote called
twice--and then they came, on foot and silently as fleeting shadows,
leaning forward to bring into play every ounce of energy in the slim,
red legs. Smoke filled the room with its acrid sting. The crashing of
the Winchester, worked with wonderful speed and deadly accuracy by the
best rifle shot in the Southwest, brought the prostrate man to his
feet in an instinctive response to the call to action, the necessity of
defence. He grasped his Colt and stumbled blindly to a window to help
the man who had stayed with him.

On Red's side of the house one warrior threw up his arms and fell
forward, sprawling with arms and legs extended; another pitched to one
side and rolled over twice before he lay still; the legs of the third
collapsed and threw him headlong, bunched up in a grotesque pile
of lifeless flesh; the fourth leaped high into the air and turned a
somersault before he struck the sand, badly wounded, and out of the
fight. Holden, steadying himself against the wall, leaned in a window
on the other side of the shack and emptied his Colt in a dazed
manner--doing his very best. Then the man with the rifle staggered back
with a muttered curse, his right arm useless, and dropped the weapon to
draw his Colt with the other hand.

Holden shrieked once and sank down, wagging his head slowly from side
to side, blood oozing from his mouth and nostrils; and his companion,
goaded into a frenzy of blood-lust and insane rage at the sight, threw
himself against the door and out into the open, to die under the clear
sky, to go like the man he was if he must die. “Damn you! It'll cost you
more yet!” he screamed, wheeling to place his back against the wall.

The triumphant yells of the exultant savages were cut short and turned
to howls of dismay by a fusillade which thundered from the south where a
crowd of hard-riding, hard-shooting cow-punchers tore out of the thicket
like an avalanche and swept over the open sand, yelling and cursing, and
then separated to go in hot pursuit of the sprinting Apaches. Some stood
up in their stirrups and fired down at a slant, making a short, chopping
motion with their heavy Colts; others leaned forward, far over the necks
of their horses, and shot with stationary guns; while yet others, with
reins dangling free, worked the levers of blue Winchesters so rapidly
that the flashes seemed to merge into a continuous flame.

“Thank God! Thank God--an' Hoppy!” groaned the man at the door of the
shack, staggering forward to meet the two men who had lost no time in
pursuit of the enemy, but had ridden straight to him.

“I was scared stiff you was done fer!” cried Hopalong, leaping off his
horse and shaking hands with his friend, whose hand-clasp was not as
strong as usual. “How's Holden?” he demanded, anxiously.

“He passed. It was a close--” began Red, weakly, but his foreman
interposed.

“Shut up, an' drink this!” ordered Buck, kindly but sternly. “We'll do
the talking for a while; you can tell us all about it later on. Why,
_hullo_!” he cried as Lanky Smith and his two happy companions rode up.
“Reckon you must 'a' got them pickets.”

“Shore we did! Stalked 'em on our bellies, didn't we, Skinny?” modestly
replied Mr. Smith, the roping expert of the Bar-20. “Ropes an' clubbed
guns did the rest. Anyhow, there was only two anywhere near the trail.”

“We didn't see you,” responded the foreman, tying the knot of a bandage
on Mr. Connors' arm. “An' we looked sharp, too.”

“Reckon we was hunting for more; we sort of forgot what you said about
waiting for you,” Mr. Smith replied, grinning broadly.

“An' you've got a good memory now,” smiled Mr. Peters.

“We didn't find no more, though,” offered Mr. Pete Wilson, with grave
regret. “An' we looked good, too. But we got Red, an' that's the whole
game. Red, you old son-of-a-gun, you can lick yore weight in powder!”

“It's too bad about Holden,” muttered Red, sullenly.



CHAPTER XI

HOPALONG NURSES A GROUCH

After the excitement incident to the affair at Powers' shack had died
down and the Bar-20 outfit worked over its range in the old, placid way,
there began to be heard low mutterings, and an air of peevish discontent
began to be manifested in various childish ways. And it was all caused
by the fact that Hopalong Cassidy had a grouch, and a big one. It
was two months old and growing worse daily, and the signs threatened
contagion. His foreman, tired and sick of the snarling, fidgety,
petulant atmosphere that Hopalong had created on the ranch, and
driven to desperation, eagerly sought some chance to get rid of the
“sore-thumb” temporarily and give him an opportunity to shed his
generous mantle of the blues. And at last it came.

No one knew the cause for Hoppy's unusual state of mind, although there
were many conjectures, and they covered the field rather thoroughly; but
they did not strike on the cause. Even Red Connors, now well over all
ill effects of the wounds acquired in the old ranch house, was forced to
guess; and when Red had to do that about anything concerning Hopalong he
was well warranted in believing the matter to be very serious.

Johnny Nelson made no secret of his opinion and derived from it a great
amount of satisfaction, which he admitted with a grin to his foreman.

“Buck,” he said, “Hoppy told me he went broke playing poker over in
Grant with Dave Wilkes and them two Lawrence boys, an' that shore
explains it all. He's got pack sores from carrying his unholy licking.
It was due to come for him, an' Dave Wilkes is just the boy to deliver
it. That's the whole trouble, an' I know it, an' I'm damned glad they
trimmed him. But he ain't got no right of making _us_ miserable because
he lost a few measly dollars.”

“Yo're wrong, son; dead, dead wrong,” Buck replied. “He takes his
beatings with a grin, an' money never did bother him. No poker game that
ever was played could leave a welt on him like the one we all mourn, an'
cuss. He's been doing something that he don't want us to know--made a
fool of hisself some way, most likely, an' feels so ashamed that he's
sore. I've knowed him too long an' well to believe that gambling had
anything to do with it. But this little trip he's taking will fix him
up all right, an' I couldn't 'a' picked a better man--or one that I'd
rather get rid of just now.”

“Well, lemme tell you it's blamed lucky for him that you picked him to
go,” rejoined Johnny, who thought more of the woeful absentee than he
did of his own skin. “I was going to lick him, shore, if it went on
much longer. Me an' Red an' Billy was going to beat him up good till he
forgot his dead injuries an' took more interest in his friends.”

Buck laughed heartily. “Well, the three of you might 'a' done it if
you worked hard an' didn't get careless, but I have my doubts. Now look
here--you've been hanging around the bunk house too blamed much lately.
Henceforth an' hereafter you've got to earn your grub. Get out on that
west line an' hustle.”

“You know I've had a toothache!” snorted Johnny with a show of
indignation, his face as sober as that of a judge.

“An' you'll have a stomach ache from lack of grub if you don't earn yore
right to eat purty soon,” retorted Buck. “You ain't had a toothache in
yore whole life, an' you don't know what one is. G'wan, now, or I'll
give you a backache that'll ache!”

“Huh! Devil of a way to treat a sick man!” Johnny retorted, but he
departed exultantly, whistling with much noise and no music. But he was
sorry for one thing: he sincerely regretted that he had not been present
when Hopalong met his Waterloo. It would have been pleasing to look
upon.

While the outfit blessed the proposed lease of range that took him out
of their small circle for a time, Hopalong rode farther and farther
into the northwest, frequently lost in abstraction which, judging by its
effect upon him, must have been caused by something serious. He had not
heard from Dave Wilkes about that individual's good horse which had been
loaned to Ben Ferris, of Winchester. Did Dave think he had been killed
or was still pursuing the man whose neck-kerchief had aroused such
animosity in Hopalong's heart? Or had the horse actually been returned?
The animal was a good one, a successful contender in all distances from
one to five miles, and had earned its owner and backers much money--and
Hopalong had parted with it as easily as he would have borrowed five
dollars from Red. The story, as he had often reflected since, was as old
as lying--a broken-legged horse, a wife dying forty miles away, and a
horse all saddled which needed only to be mounted and ridden.

These thoughts kept him company for a day and when he dismounted before
Stevenson's “Hotel” in Hoyt's Corners he summed up his feelings for the
enlightenment of his horse.

“Damn it, bronc! I'd give ten dollars right now to know if I was a
jackass or not,” he growled. “But he was an awful slick talker if he
lied. An' I've got to go up an' face Dave Wilkes to find out about it!”

Mr. Cassidy was not known by sight to the citizens of Hoyt's Corners,
however well versed they might be in his numerous exploits of wisdom and
folly. Therefore the habitues of Stevenson's Hotel did not recognize him
in the gloomy and morose individual who dropped his saddle on the floor
with a crash and stamped over to the three-legged table at dusk and
surlily demanded shelter for the night.

“Gimme a bed an' something to eat,” he demanded, eyeing the three men
seated with their chairs tilted against the wall. “Do I get 'em?” he
asked, impatiently.

“You do,” replied a one-eyed man, lazily arising and approaching him.
“One dollar, now.”

“An' take the rocks outen that bed--I want to sleep.”

“A dollar per for every rock you find,” grinned Stevenson, pleasantly.
“There ain't no rocks in _my_ beds,” he added.

“Some folks likes to be rocked to sleep,” facetiously remarked one of
the pair by the wall, laughing contentedly at his own pun. He bore all
the ear-marks of being regarded as the wit of the locality--every hamlet
has one; I have seen some myself.

“Hee, hee, hee! Yo're a droll feller, Charley,” chuckled Old John
Ferris, rubbing his ear with unconcealed delight. “That's a good un.”

“One drink, now,” growled Hopalong, mimicking the proprietor, and
glaring savagely at the “droll feller” and his companion. “An' mind that
it's a good one,” he admonished the host.

“It's better,” smiled Stevenson, whereat Old John crossed his legs and
chuckled again. Stevenson winked.

“Riding long?” he asked.

“Since I started.”

“Going fur?”

“Till I stop.”

“Where do you belong?” Stevenson's pique was urging him against the
ethics of the range, which forbade personal questions.

Hopalong looked at him with a light in his eye that told the host he had
gone too far. “Under my sombrero!” he snapped.

“Hee, hee, hee!” chortled Old John, rubbing his ear again and nudging
Charley. “He ain't no fool, hey?”

“Why, I don't know, John; he won't tell,” replied Charley.

Hopalong wheeled and glared at him, and Charley, smiling uneasily, made
an appeal: “Ain't mad, are you?”

“Not yet,” and Hopalong turned to the bar again, took up his liquor
and tossed it off. Considering a moment he shoved the glass back again,
while Old John tongued his lips in anticipation of a treat. “It is
good--fill it again.”

The third was even better and by the time the fourth and fifth had
joined their predecessors Hopalong began to feel a little more cheerful.
But even the liquor and an exceptionally well-cooked supper could not
separate him from his persistent and set grouch. And of liquor he had
already taken more than his limit. He had always boasted, with truth,
that he had never been drunk, although there had been two occasions when
he was not far from it. That was one doubtful luxury which he could not
afford for the reason that there were men who would have been glad to
see him, if only for a few seconds, when liquor had dulled his brain and
slowed his speed of hand. He could never tell when and where he might
meet one of these.

He dropped into a chair by a card table and, baffling all attempts
to engage him in conversation, reviewed his troubles in a mumbled
soliloquy, the liquor gradually making him careless. But of all the
jumbled words his companions' diligent ears heard they recognized and
retained only the bare term “Winchester”; and their conjectures were
limited only by their imaginations.

Hopalong stirred and looked up, shaking off the hand which had aroused
him. “Better go to bed, stranger,” the proprietor was saying. “You
an' me are the last two up. It's after twelve, an' you look tired and
sleepy.”

“Said his wife was sick,” muttered the puncher. “Oh, what you saying?”

“You'll find a bed better'n this table, stranger--it's after twelve an'
I want to close up an' get some sleep. I'm tired myself.”

“Oh, that all? Shore I'll go to bed--like to see anybody stop me! Ain't
no rocks in it, hey?”

“Nary a rock,” laughingly reassured the host, picking up Hopalong's
saddle and leading the way to a small room off the “office,” his
guest stumbling after him and growling about the rocks that lived in
Winchester. When Stevenson had dropped the saddle by the window and
departed, Hopalong sat on the edge of the bed to close his eyes for just
a moment before tackling the labor of removing his clothes. A crash and
a jar awakened him and he found himself on the floor with his back
to the bed. He was hot and his head ached, and his back was skinned
a little--and how hot and stuffy and choking the room had become!
He thought he had blown out the light, but it still burned, and
three-quarters of the chimney was thickly covered with soot. He was
stifling and could not endure it any longer. After three attempts he
put out the light, stumbled against his saddle and, opening the window,
leaned out to breathe the pure air. As his lungs filled he chuckled
wisely and, picking up the saddle, managed to get it and himself through
the window and on the ground without serious mishap. He would ride
for an hour, give the room time to freshen and cool off, and come back
feeling much better. Not a star could be seen as he groped his way
unsteadily towards the rear of the building, where he vaguely remembered
having seen the corral as he rode up.

“Huh! Said he lived in Winchester an' his name was Bill--no, Ben
Ferris,” he muttered, stumbling towards a noise he knew was made by a
horse rubbing against the corral fence. Then his feet got tangled up in
the cinch of his saddle, which he had kicked before him, and after great
labor he arose, muttering savagely, and continued on his wobbly way.
“Goo' Lord, it's darker'n cats in--_oof_!” he grunted, recoiling from
forcible contact with the fence he sought. Growling words unholy he felt
his way along it and finally his arm slipped through an opening and he
bumped his head solidly against the top bar of the gate. As he righted
himself his hand struck the nose of a horse and closed mechanically over
it. Cow-ponies look alike in the dark and he grinned jubilantly as he
complimented himself upon finding his own so unerringly.

“Anything is easy, when you know how. Can't fool me, ol' cayuse,” he
beamed, fumbling at the bars with his free hand and getting them down
with a fool's luck. “You can't do it--I got you firs', las', an' always;
an' I got you good. Yessir, I got you good. Quit that rearing, you ol'
fool! Stan' still, can't you?” The pony sidled as the saddle hit its
back and evoked profane abuse from the indignant puncher as he risked
his balance in picking it up to try again, this time successfully. He
began to fasten the girth, and then paused in wonder and thought deeply,
for the pin in the buckle would slide to no hole but the first. “Huh!
Getting fat, ain't you, piebald?” he demanded with withering sarcasm.
“You blow yoreself up any more'n I'll bust you wide open!” heaving
up with all his might on the free end of the strap, one knee pushing
against the animal's side. The “fat” disappeared and Hopalong laughed.
“Been learnin' new tricks, ain't you? Got smart since you been
travellin', hey?” He fumbled with the bars again and got two of them
back in place and then, throwing himself across the saddle as the horse
started forward as hard as it could go, slipped off, but managed to save
himself by hopping along the ground. As soon as he had secured the grip
he wished he mounted with the ease of habit and felt for the reins.
“G'wan now, an' easy--it's plumb dark an' my head's bustin'.”

When he saddled his mount at the corral he was not aware that two of the
three remaining horses had taken advantage of their opportunity and had
walked out and made off in the darkness before he replaced the bars, and
he was too drunk to care if he had known it.

The night air felt so good that it moved him to song, but it was not
long before the words faltered more and more and soon ceased altogether
and a subdued snore rasped from him. He awakened from time to time, but
only for a moment, for he was tired and sleepy.

His mount very quickly learned that something was wrong and that it was
being given its head. As long as it could go where it pleased it could
do nothing better than head for home, and it quickened its pace towards
Winchester. Some time after daylight it pricked up its ears and broke
into a canter, which soon developed signs of irritation in its rider.
Finally Hopalong opened his heavy eyes and looked around for his
bearings. Not knowing where he was and too tired and miserable to give
much thought to a matter of such slight importance, he glanced around
for a place to finish his sleep. A tree some distance ahead of him
looked inviting and towards it he rode. Habit made him picket the horse
before he lay down and as he fell asleep he had vague recollections
of handling a strange picket rope some time recently. The horse slowly
turned and stared at the already snoring figure, glanced over the
landscape, back the to queerest man it had ever met, and then fell
to grazing in quiet content. A slinking coyote topped a rise a short
distance away and stopped instantly, regarding the sleeping man with
grave curiosity and strong suspicion. Deciding that there was nothing
good to eat in that vicinity and that the man was carrying out a fell
plot for the death of coyotes, it backed away out of sight and loped on
to other hunting grounds.



CHAPTER XII

A FRIEND IN NEED

Stevenson, having started the fire for breakfast, took a pail and
departed towards the spring; but he got no farther than the corral gate,
where he dropped the pail and stared. There was only one horse in the
enclosure where the night before there had been four. He wasted no time
in surmises, but wheeled and dashed back towards the hotel, and his
vigorous shouts brought Old John to the door, sleepy and peevish. Old
John's mouth dropped open as he beheld his habitually indolent host
marking off long distances on the sand with each falling foot.

“What's got inter you?” demanded Old John.

“Our broncs are gone! Our broncs are gone!” yelled Stevenson, shoving
Old John roughly to one side as he dashed through the doorway and on
into the room he had assigned to the sullen and bibulous stranger. “I
knowed it! I knowed it!” he wailed, popping out again as if on springs.
“He's gone, an' he's took our broncs with him, the measly, low-down dog!
I knowed he wasn't no good! I could see it in his eye; an' he wasn't
drunk, not by a darn sight. Go out an' see for yoreself if they ain't
gone!” he snapped in reply to Old John's look. “Go on out, while I throw
some cold grub on the table--won't have no time this morning to do no
cooking. He's got five hours' start on us, an' it'll take some right
smart riding to get him before dark; but we'll do it, an' hang him,
too!”

“What's all this here rumpus?” demanded a sleepy voice from upstairs.
“Who's hanged?” and Charley entered the room, very much interested. His
interest increased remarkably when the calamity was made known and he
lost no time in joining Old John in the corral to verify the news.

Old John waved his hands over the scene and carefully explained what
he had read in the tracks, to his companion's great irritation, for
Charley's keen eyes and good training had already told him all there
was to learn; and his reading did not exactly agree with that of his
companion.

“Charley, he's gone and took our cayuses; an' that's the very way he
came--'round the corner of the hotel. He got all tangled up an' fell
over there, an' here he bumped inter the palisade, an' dropped his
saddle. When he opened the bars he took my roan gelding because it was
the best an' fastest, an' then he let out the others to mix us up on
the tracks. See how he went? Had to hop four times on one foot afore he
could get inter the saddle. An' that proves he was sober, for no drunk
could hop four times like that without falling down an' being drug to
death. An' he left his own critter behind because he knowed it wasn't no
good. It's all as plain as the nose on your face, Charley,” and Old John
proudly rubbed his ear. “Hee, hee, hee! You can't fool Old John, even if
he is getting old. No, sir, b' gum.”

Charley had just returned from inside the corral, where he had looked
at the brand on the far side of the one horse left, and he waited
impatiently for his companion to cease talking. He took quick advantage
of the first pause Old John made and spoke crisply.

“I don't care what corner he came 'round, or what he bumped inter; an'
any fool can see that. An' if he left that cayuse behind because he
thought it wasn't no good, he _was_ drunk. That's a Bar-20 cayuse, an'
no hoss-thief ever worked for that ranch. He left it behind because
he stole it; that's why. An' he didn't let them others out because he
wanted to mix us up, neither. How'd he know if we couldn't tell the
tracks of our own animals? He did that to make us lose time; that's what
he did it for. An' he couldn't tell what bronc he took last night--it
was too dark. He must 'a' struck a match an' seen where that Bar-20
cayuse was an' then took the first one nearest that wasn't it. An' now
you tell me how the devil he knowed yourn was the fastest, which it
ain't,” he finished, sarcastically, gloating over a chance to rub it
into the man he had always regarded as a windy old nuisance.

“Well, mebby what you said is--”

“Mebby nothing!” snapped Charley. “If he wanted to mix the tracks would
he 'a' hopped like that so we couldn't help telling what cayuse he rode?
He knowed we'd pick his trail quick, an' he knowed that every minute
counted; that's why he hopped--why, yore roan was going like the wind
afore he got in the saddle. If you don't believe it, look at them
toe-prints!”

“H'm; reckon yo're right, Charley. My eyes ain't nigh as good as they
once was. But I heard him say something 'bout Winchester,” replied Old
John, glad to change the subject. “Bet he's going over there, too. He
won't get through that town on no critter wearing my brand. Everybody
knows that roan, an'--”

“Quit guessing!” snapped Charley, beginning to lose some of the tattered
remnant of his respect for old age. “He's a whole lot likely to head for
a town on a stolen cayuse, now ain't he! But we don't care where he's
heading; we'll foller the trail.”

“Grub pile!” shouted Stevenson, and the two made haste to obey.

“Charley, gimme a chaw of yore tobacker,” and Old John, biting off a
generous chunk, quietly slipped it into his pocket, there to lay until
after he had eaten his breakfast.

All talk was tabled while the three men gulped down a cold and
uninviting meal. Ten minutes later they had finished and separated to
find horses and spread the news; in fifteen more they had them and were
riding along the plain trail at top speed, with three other men close at
their heels. Three hundred yards from the corral they pounded out of
an arroyo, and Charley, who was leading, stood up in his stirrups and
looked keenly ahead. Another trail joined the one they were following
and ran with and on top of it. This, he reasoned, had been made by one
of the strays and would turn away soon. He kept his eyes looking
well ahead and soon saw that he was right in his surmise, and without
checking the speed of his horse in the slightest degree he went ahead
on the trail of the smaller hoof-prints. In a moment Old John spurred
forward and gained his side and began to argue hot-headedly.

“Hey! Charley!” he cried. “Why are you follering this track?” he
demanded.

“Because it's his; that's why.”

“Well, here, wait a minute!” and Old John was getting red from
excitement. “How do you know it is? Mebby he took the other!”

“He started out on the cayuse that made these little tracks,” retorted
Charley, “an' I don't see no reason to think he swapped animules. Don't
you know the prints of yore own cayuse?”

“Lawd, no!” answered Old John. “Why, I don't hardly ride the same cayuse
the second day, straight hand-running. I tell you we ought to foller
that other trail. He's just cute enough to play some trick on us.”

“Well, you better do that for us,” Charley replied, hoping against hope
that the old man would chase off on the other and give his companions a
rest.

“He ain't got sand enough to tackle a thing like that single-handed,”
 laughed Jed White, winking to the others.

Old John wheeled. “Ain't, hey! I am going to do that same thing an'
prove that you are a pack of fools. I'm too old to be fooled by a common
trick like that. An' I don't need no help--I'll ketch him all by myself,
an' hang him, too!” And he wheeled to follow the other trail, angry and
outraged. “Young fools,” he muttered. “Why, I was fighting all around
these parts afore any of 'em knowed the difference between day an'
night!”

“Hard-headed old fool,” remarked Charley, frowning, as he led the way
again.

“He's gittin' old an' childish,” excused Stevenson. “They say warn't
nobody in these parts could hold a candle to him in his prime.”



Hopalong muttered and stirred and opened his eyes to gaze blankly into
those of one of the men who were tugging at his hands, and as he stared
he started his stupefied brain sluggishly to work in an endeavor to
explain the unusual experience. There were five men around him and
the two who hauled at his hands stepped back and kicked him. A look of
pained indignation slowly spread over his countenance as he realized
beyond doubt that they were really kicking him, and with sturdy vigor.
He considered a moment and then decided that such treatment was most
unwarranted and outrageous and, furthermore, that he must defend himself
and chastise the perpetrators.

“Hey!” he snorted, “what do you reckon yo're doing, anyhow? If you want
to do any kicking, why kick each other, an' I'll help you! But I'll lick
the whole bunch of you if you don't quite mauling me. Ain't you got no
manners? Don't you know anything? Come 'round waking a feller up an'
man-handling--”

“Get up!” snapped Stevenson, angrily.

“Why, ain't I seen you before? Somewhere? Sometime?” queried Hopalong,
his brow wrinkling from intense concentration of thought. “I ain't
dreaming; I've seen a one-eyed coyote som'ers, lately, ain't I?” he
appealed, anxiously, to the others.

“Get up!” ordered Charley, shortly.

“An' I've seen you, too. Funny, all right.”

“You've seen me, all right,” retorted Stevenson. “Get up, damn you! Get
up!”

“Why, I can't--my han's are tied!” exclaimed Hopalong in great wonder,
pausing in his exertions to cogitate deeply upon this most remarkable
phenomenon. “Tied up! Now what the devil do you think--”

“Use yore feet, you thief!” rejoined Stevenson roughly, stepping forward
and delivering another kick. “Use yore feet!” he reiterated.

“Thief! Me a thief! Shore I'll use my feet, you yaller dog!” yelled the
prostrate man, and his boot heel sank into the stomach of the offending
Mr. Stevenson with sickening force and laudable precision. He drew it
back slowly, as if debating shoving it farther. “Call me a thief,
hey! Come poking 'round kicking honest punchers an' calling 'em names!
Anybody want the other boot?” he inquired with grave solicitation.

Stevenson sat down forcibly and rocked to and fro, doubled up and
gasping for breath, and Hopalong squinted at him and grinned with
happiness. “Hear him sing! Reg'lar ol' brass band. Sounds like a cow
pulling its hoofs outen the mud. Called me a thief, he did, just now.
An' I won't let nobody kick me an' call me names. He's a liar, just a
plain, squaw's dog liar, he--”

Two men grabbed him and raised him up, holding him tightly, and they
were not over careful to handle him gently, which he naturally resented.
Charley stepped in front of him to go to the aid of Stevenson and caught
the other boot in his groin, dropping as if he had been shot. The man
on the prisoner's left emitted a yell and loosed his hold to sympathize
with a bruised shinbone, and his companion promptly knocked the bound
and still intoxicated man down. Bill Thomas swore and eyed the prostrate
figure with resentment and regret. “Hate to hit a man who can fight like
that when he's loaded an' tied. I'm glad, all the same, that he ain't
sober an' loose.”

“An' you ain't going to hit him no more!” snapped Jed White, reddening
with anger. “I'm ready to hang him, 'cause that's what he deserves, an'
what we're here for, but I'm damned if I'll stand for any more mauling.
I don't blame him for fighting, an' they didn't have no right to kick
him in the beginning.”

“Didn't kick him in the beginning,” grinned Bill. “Kicked him in the
ending. Anyhow,” he continued seriously, “I didn't hit him hard--didn't
have to. Just let him go an' shoved him quick.”

“I'm just naturally going to clean house,” muttered the prisoner,
sitting up and glaring around. “Untie my han's an' gimme a gun or a club
or anything, an' watch yoreselves get licked. Called me a thief! What
are you fellers, then?--sticking me up an' busting me for a few measly
dollars. Why didn't you take my money an' lemme sleep, 'stead of waking
me up an' kicking me? I wouldn't 'a' cared then.”

“Come on, now; get up. We ain't through with you yet, not by a whole
lot,” growled Bill, helping him to his feet and steadying him. “I'm
plumb glad you kicked 'em; it was coming to 'em.”

“No, you ain't; you can't fool me,” gravely assured Hopalong. “Yo're
lying, an' you know it. What you going to do now? Ain't I got money
enough? Wish I had an even break with you fellers! Wish my outfit was
here!”

Stevenson, on his feet again, walked painfully up and shook his fist at
the captive, from the side. “You'll find out what we want of you, you
damned hoss-thief!” he cried. “We're going to tie you to that there limb
so yore feet'll swing above the grass, that's what we're going to do.”

Bill and Jed had their hands full for a moment and as they finally
mastered the puncher, Charley came up with a rope. “Hurry up--no use
dragging it out this way. I want to get back to the ranch some time
before next week.”

“Why _I_ ain't no hoss-thief, you liar!” Hopalong yelled. “My name's
Hopalong Cassidy of the Bar-20, an' when I tell my friends about what
you've gone an' done they'll make you hard to find! You gimme any kind
of a chance an' I'll do it all by myself, sick as I am, you yaller
dogs!”

“Is that yore cayuse?” demanded Charley, pointing.

Hopalong squinted towards the animal indicated. “Which one?”

“There's only one there, you fool!”

“That so?” replied Hopalong, surprised. “Well, I never seen it afore.
My cayuse is--is--where the devil _is_ it?” he asked, looking around
anxiously.

“How'd you get that one, then, if it ain't yours?”

“Never had it--'t ain't mine, nohow,” replied Hopalong, with strong
conviction. “Mine was a _hoss_.”

“You stole that cayuse last night outen Stevenson's corral,” continued
Charley, merely as a matter of form. Charley believed that a man had the
right to be heard before he died--it wouldn't change the result and so
could not do any harm.

“Did I? Why--” his forehead became furrowed again, but the events of
the night before were vague in his memory and he only stumbled in
his soliloquy. “But _I_ wouldn't swap my cayuse for that spavined,
saddle-galled, ring-boned bone-yard! Why, it interferes, an' it's got
the heaves something awful!” he finished triumphantly, as if an appeal
to common sense would clinch things. But he made no headway against
them, for the rope went around his neck almost before he had finished
talking and a flurry of excitement ensued. When the dust settled he was
on his back again and the rope was being tossed over the limb.

The crowd had been too busily occupied to notice anything away from the
scene of their strife and were greatly surprised when they heard a hail
and saw a stranger sliding to a stand not twenty feet from them. “What's
this?” demanded the newcomer, angrily.

Charley's gun glinted as it swung up and the stranger swore again. “What
you doing?” he shouted. “Take that gun off'n me or I'll blow you apart!”

“Mind yore business an' sit still!” Charley snapped. “You ain't in no
position to blow anything apart. We've got a hoss-thief an' we're shore
going to hang him regardless.”

“An' if there's any trouble about it we can hang two as well as we can
one,” suggested Stevenson, placidly. “You sit tight an' mind yore own
affairs, stranger,” he warned.

Hopalong turned his head slowly. “He's a liar, stranger; just a plain,
squaw's dog of a liar. An' I'll be much obliged if you'll lick hell
outen 'em an' let--_why, hullo, hoss-thief_!” he shouted, at once
recognizing the other. It was the man he had met in the gospel tent, the
man he had chased for a horse-thief and then swapped mounts with. “Stole
any more cayuses?” he asked, grinning, believing that everything was all
right now. “Did you take that cayuse back to Grant?” he finished.

“Han's up!” roared Stevenson, also covering the stranger. “So yo're
another one of 'em, hey? We're in luck to-day. Watch him, boys, till I
get his gun. If he moves, drop him quick.”

“You damned fool!” cried Ferris, white with rage. “He ain't no thief,
an' neither am I! My name's Ben Ferris an' I live in Winchester. Why,
that man you've got is Hopalong Cassidy--Cassidy, of the Bar-20!”

“Sit still--you can talk later, mebby,” replied Stevenson, warily
approaching him. “Watch him, boys!”

“Hold on!” shouted Ferris, murder in his eyes. “Don't you try that on
me! I'll get one of you before I go; I'll shore get one! You can listen
a minute, an' I can't get away.”

“All right; talk quick.”

Ferris pleaded as hard as he knew how and called attention to the
condition of the prisoner. “If he did take the wrong cayuse he was too
blind drunk to know it! Can't you _see_ he was!” he cried.

“Yep; through yet?” asked Stevenson, quietly.

“No! I ain't started yet!” Ferris yelled. “He did me a good turn once,
one that I can't never repay, an' I'm going to stop this murder or
go with him. If I go I'll take one of you with me, an' my friends an'
outfit'll get the rest.”

“Wait till Old John gets here,” suggested Jed to Charley. “He ought to
know this feller.”

“For the Lord's sake!” snorted Charley. “He won't show up for a week.
Did you hear that, fellers?” he laughed, turning to the others.

“Stranger,” began Stevenson, moving slowly ahead again. “You give us
yore guns an' sit quiet till we gets this feller out of the way. We'll
wait till Old John Ferris comes before doing anything with you. He ought
to know you.”

“He knows me all right; an' he'd like to see me hung,” replied the
stranger. “I won't give up my guns, an' you won't lynch Hopalong Cassidy
while I can pull a trigger. That's flat!” He began to talk feverishly
to gain time and his eyes lighted suddenly. Seeing that Jed White was
wavering, Stevenson ordered them to go on with the work they had come to
perform, and he watched Ferris as a cat watches a mouse, knowing that
he would be the first man hit if the stranger got a chance to shoot. But
Ferris stood up very slowly in his stirrups so as not to alarm the five
with any quick movement, and shouted at the top of his voice, grabbing
off his sombrero and waving it frantically. A faint cheer reached his
ears and made the lynchers turn quickly and look behind them. Nine men
were tearing towards them at a dead gallop and had already begun to
forsake their bunched-up formation in favor of an extended line. They
were due to arrive in a very few minutes and caused Mr. Ferris' heart to
overflow with joy.

“Me an' my outfit,” he said, laughing softly and waving his hand towards
the newcomers, “started out this morning to round up a bunch of cows,
an' we got jackasses instead. Now lynch him, damn you!”

The nine swept up in skirmish order, guns out and ready for anything in
the nature of trouble that might zephyr up. “What's the matter, Ben?”
 asked Tom Murphy ominously. As under-foreman of the ranch he regarded
himself as spokesman. And at that instant catching sight of the rope, he
swore savagely under his breath.

“Nothing, Tom; nothing now,” responded Mr. Ferris. “They was going to
hang my friend there, Mr. Hopalong Cassidy, of the Bar-20. He's the
feller that lent me his cayuse to get home on when Molly was sick. I'm
going to take him back to the ranch when he gets sober an' introduce him
to some very good friends of hissn that he ain't never seen. Ain't I,
Cassidy?” he demanded with a laugh.

But Mr. Cassidy made no reply. He was sound asleep, as he had been
since the advent of his very good and capable friend, Mr. Ben Ferris, of
Winchester.



CHAPTER XIII

MR. TOWNSEND, MARSHAL

Mr. Cassidy went to th

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