Hopalong Cassidy Sees Red

watch. The Mexican told with painful effort about the loss of the horses, growing steadily more incoherent from the condition of his jaw and from his own rising rage. Men came, and went out again on various duties, one of them closely interrogating the owner of the freight wagon, whose anger had died swiftly by the recovery of the great tongue, which was none the worse for its usage except for certain indentations of no moment. A friend of Quayle and hostile to Kane and for what Kane stood for, the wagon owner allowed his replies to be short, and yet express a proper indignation, which did not exist, about the whole affair. When again alone in the sanctity of his home he allowed himself the luxury of low-voiced laughter and determined to put his crowbar where any needy individual of the future could readily find it.

Bill Trask, because of his short-gun expertness temporarily relieved of guarding the partition door, led three companions toward Quayle's hotel, his face and the faces of the others tense and determined. Two went around to the stable, via Red Frank's and the rear street and one of them stopped near it while the other slipped along the kitchen wall and crouched at the edge of the kitchen door. The third man went silently into the hotel office as Trask sauntered carelessly into the barroom and nodded at its inmates.

'Them fellers shore raised cain,' he announced to Ed Doane as he motioned for a drink.

'They did,' replied Doane, spinning a glass after the sliding bottle, after which he flung the coin into the old cigar box and assiduously polished the bar, wondering why Trask patronized him instead of Kane's.

'They shore had nerve,' persisted the newcomer, looking at Johnny.

'They shore did,' acquiesced the man at the table, who then returned to his idle occupation of trying to decipher the pattern of the faded-out wall paper. Wall paper was a rarity in the town and deserved some attention.

'Them guards was plumb careless,' said Kane's hired man. Not knowing to whom he was speaking there was no reply, and he tried again, addressing the bartender.

'They was careless,' replied Doane, without interest.

Johnny was alert now, the persistent remarks awakening suspicion in his mind, and a slight sound from the wall at his back caused him to push his chair from the table and assume a more relaxed posture. His glance at the lower and nearer corner of the window let him memorize its exact position and he waited, expectant, for what ever might happen. The surprise and capture of his two friends had worked, but that had been the first time; there would be no second, he told himself, especially as far as he was concerned.

'Is th' boss in?' asked the visitor.

'Th' boss ain't in,' answered Ed Doane as Johnny glanced at the front door, the front window and the door of the office, which the bartender noticed. 'Too dusty,' said Doane, going around the bar to the front wall and closing the window.

'When will he be in?'

'Dunno,' grunted the bartender, once more in his accustomed place.

'I got to see him.'

'I handle things when he ain't here,' said Doane. 'See me,' he suggested, looking through the door leading to the office, where he fancied he had heard a creak.

'Got to see him, an' pronto,' replied the visitor. 'He made some remarks this mornin' about gettin' them fellers out. We know it was done by somebody on th' outside, an' we got a purty good idea of who it was since Quayle shot off his mouth. He's been gettin' too swelled up lately. If he don't come in purty quick I'm aimin' to dig him out, myself.'

Johnny was waiting for him to utter the cue word and knew that there would be a slight change in facial expression, enunciation, or body posture just before it came. He was not swallowing the suggestions that it was Quayle who was wanted.

'You shore picked out a real job to handle all alone,' said Doane, not letting his attention wander from the hotel office. 'Any dog can dig out a badger, but that's only th' beginning',' he said pleasantly, his hand on the gun which always lay under the bar. He expected a retort to his insult, and when none came it put a keener edge to his growing suspicions.

'I'm diggin' him out, just th' same,' said Trask. 'There's law in this town, an' everybody's on one side or th' other. Bein' a deputy it's my job to see about them that's on th' other side. Gettin' arrested men out of jail is serious an' I got to ask questions about it. Of course, Quayle don't allus say what he means—we none of us do. We all like to have our jokes; but I got to do my duty, even if it's only askin' questions. Is he out, or layin' low?'

'He's out,' grunted Doane, 'but he'll be back any minute, I reckon.'

'All right; I'll wait,' said Trask, carelessly, but he tensed himself. 'How's business?' and at the words he flashed into action.

A chair crashed and a figure leaped back from it, two guns belching at its hips. The face and hand which popped up into the rear window disappeared again as the smoking Colt swung past the opening and across Johnny's body to send its second through the office doorway, and curses answered both shots. Trask, bent over, held his right arm with his left hand, his gun against the wall near the front door. The first shot of Johnny's right-hand Colt had torn it from Trask's hand as it left the holster and the second had rendered the arm useless for the moment. A shot from the corner of the stable sang through the window and barely missed its mark as Johnny leaned forward, but his instant reply ended all danger from that point.

'Trask,' he said, 'I'm leavin' town. I ain't got a chance among buildin's again' pot-shooters. I'm leavin'—but th' Lord help Kane an' his gang when I come back. You can tell him I'm comin' a-shootin'. An' you can tell him this: I'm goin' to get him, Pecos Kane, if I has to pull him out of his hideout like I pulled Thorpe. Go ahead of me to th' stable—I'll blow you apart if any pot-shooter tries at me. G'wan!'

Trask obeyed, the gun against his spine too eloquent a persuader to be ignored. He knew that there were no pot-shooters yet, and he was glad of it, for if there had been one, and his captor was killed, the relaxation of the tense thumb holding back the hammer of a gun whose trigger was tied back would fire the weapon. The man who held it would fire one shot after his own death, however instantaneous it might be.

Passing through the kitchen Johnny picked up his saddle and ordered his captive to carry the rifle and slicker roll. They disappeared into the stable and when they came out again Johnny ordered Trask into the saddle, mounted behind him and rode for the arroyo which lay not far from the hotel. At last away from the buildings he made Trask dismount, climbed over the cantle and settled himself in the vacated saddle.

'I'm goin' down to offer myself to McCullough,' he said. 'You can tell Kane that, too. They'll need men down there, an' I'll be th' maddest man they got. An' th' next time me an' you have any gun talk, I'm shootin' to kill. Adios!'

He left the cursing deputy and went straight for the trail, where the rising wind played with the dust, and along it until stopped by a voice in a barranca.

'I'm puttin' 'em up,' he called. 'My name's Nelson an' I'm mad clean through. Get a rustle on; I want to see Mac.'

'Go ahead, Bar-20,' drawled the voice. 'I wasn't dead shore. There's a good friend of yourn down there.'

'Quayle?' asked Johnny.

'There's another: Waffles, of th' O-Bar-O,' came the reply, and a verse of a nearly forgotten song arose on the breeze.

I've swum th' Colorado where she runs down clost to—

I've braced th' faro layouts in Cheyenne;

I've fought for muddy water with a howlin' bunch of Sioux,

An' swallered hot tamales, an' cayenne.

'There's more, but I've done forgot most of it,' apologized the singer.

Johnny laughed with delight. 'Why, that's Lefty Allen's old song. Here's th' second verse:'

I've rid a pitchin' broncho till th' sky was underneath,

I've tackled every desert in th' land;