caught. He had bucked too much. As he fell Shorty ran for the Houston House.
Pistol shots were common, for they were the universal method of expressing emotions. The poker players grinned, thinking their victim was letting off his indignation. Lanky sized up his hand and remarked half audibly, “He’s a shore good kid.”
The bartender, fearing for his new beveled, gilt-framed mirror, gave a hasty glance out the window. He turned around, made change and remarked to Buck, “Yore kid, Jimmy, is plugged.” Several of the more credulous craned their necks to see, Buck being the first. “Judas!” he shouted, and ran out to where Jimmy lay coughing, his toes twitching. The saloon was deserted and a crowd of angry cowboys surrounded their chum—a boy. Buck had seen Shorty enter the door of the Houston House and he swore. “Chase them C-80 and Arrow cayuses behind the saloon, Pete, an’ git under cover.”
Jimmy was choking and he coughed up blood. “He’s shore—got me. My—gun stuck,” he added apologetically. He tried to sit up, but was not able and he looked surprised. “It’s purty—damn hot—out here,” he suggested. Johnny and Billy carried him in the saloon and placed him by the table, in the chair he had previously vacated. As they stood up he fell across the table and died.
Billy placed the dead boy’s sombrero on his head and laid the refractory six-shooter on the table. “I wonder who th’ dirty killer was.” He looked at the slim figure and started to go out, followed by Johnny. As he reached the threshold a bullet zipped past him and thudded into the frame of the door. He backed away and looked surprised. “That’s Shorty’s shootin’—he allus misses ‘bout that much.” He looked out and saw Buck standing behind the live oak that Shorty had leaned against, firing at the hotel. Turning around he made for the rear, remarking to Johnny that “they’s in th’ Houston.” Johnny looked at the quiet figure in the chair and swore softly. He followed Billy. Cowan, closing the door and taking a buffalo gun from under the bar, went out also and slammed the rear door forcibly.
CHAPTER III.
The Argument
Up the street two hundred yards from the Houston House Skinny and Pete lay hidden behind a bowlder. Three hundred yards on the other side of the hotel Johnny and Billy were stretched out in an arroyo. Buck was lying down now, and Hopalong, from his position in the barn belonging to the hotel, was methodically dropping the horses of the besieged, a job he hated as much as he hated poison. The corral was their death trap. Red and Lanky were emitting clouds of smoke from behind the store, immediately across the street from the barroom. A buffalo gun roared down by the plaza and several Sharps cracked a protest from different points. The town had awakened and the shots were dropping steadily.
Strange noises filled the air. They grew in tone and volume and then dwindled away to nothing. The hum of the buffalo gun and the sobbing pi-in-in-ing of the Winchesters were liberally mixed with the sharp whines of the revolvers.
There were no windows in the hotel now. Raw furrows in the bleached wood showed yellow, and splinters mysteriously sprang from the casings. The panels of the door were producing cracks and the cheap door handle flew many ways at once. An empty whisky keg on the stoop boomed out mournfully at intervals and finally rolled down the steps with a rumbling protest. Wisps of smoke slowly climbed up the walls and seemed to be waving defiance to the curling wisps in the open.
Pete raised his shoulder to refill the magazine of his smoking rifle and dropped the cartridges all over his lap. He looked sheepishly at Skinny and began to load with his other hand.
“Yore plum loco, yu are. Don’t yu reckon they kin hit a blue shirt at two hundred?” Skinny cynically inquired. “Got one that time,” he announced a second later.
“I wonder who’s got th’ buffalo,” grunted Pete. “Mus’ be Cowan,” he replied to his own question and settled himself to use his left hand.
“Don’t yu git Shorty; he’s my meat,” suggested Skinny.
“Yu better tell Buck—he ain’t got no love fer Shorty,” replied Pete, aiming carefully.
The panic in the corral ceased and Hopalong was now sending his regrets against the panels of the rear door. He had cut his last initial in the near panel and was starting a wobbly “H” in its neighbor. He was in a good position. There were no windows in the rear wall, and as the door was a very dangerous place he was not fired at.
He began to get tired of this one-sided business and crawled up on the window ledge, dangling his feet on the outside. He occasionally sent a bullet at a different part of the door, but amused himself by annoying Buck.
“Plenty hot down there?” he pleasantly inquired, and as he received no answer he tried again. “Better save some of them cartridges fer some other time, Buck.”
Buck was sending .45 Winchesters into the shattered window with a precision that presaged evil to any of the defenders who were rash enough to try to gain the other end of the room.
Hopalong bit off a chew of tobacco and drowned a green fly that was crawling up the side of the barn. The yellow liquid streaked downward a short distance and was eagerly sucked up by the warped boards.
A spurt of smoke leaped from the battered door and the bored Hopalong promptly tumbled back inside. He felt of his arm, and then, delighted at the notice taken of his artistic efforts, shot several times from a crack on his right. “This yer’s shore gittin’ like home,” he gravely remarked to the splinter that whizzed past his head. He shot again at the door and it sagged outward, accompanied by the thud of a falling body. “Pies like mother used to make,” he announced to the loft as he slipped the magazine full of .45s. “An’ pills like popper used to take,” he continued when he had lowered the level of the water in his flask.
He rolled a cigarette and tossed the match into the air, extinguishing it by a shot from his Colt.
“Got any cigarettes, Hoppy?” said a voice from below.
“Shore,” replied the joyous puncher, recognizing Pete; “how’d yu git here?”
“Like a cow. Busy?”
“None whatever. Comin’ up?”
“Nope. Skinny wants a smoke too.”
Hopalong handed tobacco and papers down the hole. “So long.”
“So long,” replied the daring Pete, who risked death twice for a smoke.
The hot afternoon dragged along and about three o’clock Buck held up an empty cartridge belt to the gaze of the curious Hopalong. That observant worthy nodded and threw a double handful of cartridges, one by one, to the patient and unrelenting Buck, who filled his gun and piled the few remaining ones up at his side. “Th’ lives of mice and men gang aft all wrong,” he remarked at random.
“Th’ son-of-a-gun’s talkin’ Shakespeare,” marveled Hopalong.
“Satiate any, Buck?” he asked as that worthy settled down to await his chance.
“Two,” he replied, “Shorty an’ another. Plenty damn hot down here,” he complained. A spurt of alkali dust stung his face, but the hand that made it never made another. “Three,” he called. “How many, Hoppy?”
“One. That’s four. Wonder if th’ others got any?”
“Pete
