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!Willyou 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 whatthatmeans!”
“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 whenthatgang 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.
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 makingusmiserable 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 inmybeds,” 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.
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, hewasdrunk. 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.”
“WhyIain'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 devilisit?” 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 ahoss.”
“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. “ButIwouldn'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 youseehe 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.