dark,” he announced.
“Got yu. Go yu ten more I gits another,” promptly responded Buck.
“That’s a shore cinch. Make her twenty.”
“She is.”
“Yu’ll have to square it with Skinny, he shore wanted Shorty plum’ bad,” Hopalong informed the unerring marksman.
“Why didn’t he say suthin’ about it? Anyhow, Jimmy was my bunkie.”
Hopalong’s cigarette disintegrated and the board at his left received a hole. He promptly disappeared and Buck laughed. He sat up in the loft and angrily spat the soaked paper out from between his lips.
“All that trouble fer nothin’, th’ white-eyed coyote,” he muttered. Then he crawled around to one side and fired at the center of his “C.” Another shot hurtled at him and his left arm fell to his side. “That’s funny—wonder where th’ damn pirut is?” He looked out cautiously and saw a cloud of smoke over a knothole which was situated close up under the eaves of the barroom; and it was being agitated. Some one was blowing at it to make it disappear. He aimed very carefully at the knot and fired. He heard a sound between a curse and a squawk and was not molested any further from that point.
“I knowed he’d git hurt,” he explained to the bandage, torn from the edge of his kerchief, which he carefully bound around his last wound.
Down in the arroyo Johnny was complaining.
“This yer's a no-good bunk,” he plaintively remarked.
“It shore ain’t—but it’s th’ best we kin find,” apologized Billy.
“That’s th’ sixth that feller sent up there. He’s a damn poor shot,” observed Johnny; “must be Shorty.”
“Shorty kin shoot plum’ good—tain’t him,” contradicted Billy.
“Yas—with a six-shooter. He’s off’n his feed with a rifle,” explained Johnny.
“Yu wants to stay down from up there, yu ijit,” warned Billy as the disgusted Johnny crawled up the bank. He slid down again with a welt on his neck.
“That’s somebody else now. He oughter a done better’n that,” he said.
Billy had fired as Johnny started to slide and he smoothed his aggrieved chum. “He could onct, yu means.”
“Did yu git him?” asked the anxious Johnny, rubbing his welt. “Plum’ center,” responded the business-like Billy. “Go up agin, mebby I kin git another,” he suggested tentatively.
“Mebby you kin go to blazes. I ain’t no gallery,” grinned the now exuberant owner of the welt.
“Who’s got the buffalo?” he inquired as the great gun roared.
“Mus’ be Cowan. He’s shore all right. Sounds like a bloomin’ cannon,” replied Billy. “Lemme alone with yore fool questions, I’m busy,” he complained as his talkative partner started to ask another. “Go an’ git me some water—I’m alkalied. An’ git some .45’s, mine’s purty near gone.”
Johnny crawled down the arroyo and reappeared at Hopalong’s barn.
As he entered the door a handful of empty shells fell on his hat and dropped to the floor. He shook his head and remarked, “That mus’ be that fool Hopalong.”
“Yore shore right. How’s business?” inquired the festive Cassidy.
“Purty fair. Billy’s got one. How many’s gone?”
“Buck’s got three, I got two and Skinny’s got one. That’s six, an’ Billy is seven. They’s five more,” he replied.
“How’d yu know?” queried Johnny as he filled his flask at the horse trough.
“Because they’s twelve cayuses behind th’ hotel. That’s why.”
“They might git away on ‘em,” suggested the practical Johnny.
“Can’t. They’s all cashed in.”
“Yu said that they’s five left,” ejaculated the puzzled water carrier.
“Yah; yore a smart cuss, ain’t yu?”
Johnny grinned and then said, “Got any smokin’?” Hopalong looked grieved. “I ain’t no store. Why don’t yu git generous and buy some?”
He partially filled Johnny’s hand, and as he put the sadly depleted bag away he inquired, “Got any papers?”
“Nope.”
“Got any matches?” he asked cynically.
“Nope.”
“Kin yu smoke ‘em?” he yelled, indignantly.
“Shore nuff,” placidly replied the unruffled Johnny. “Billy wants some .45s.”
Hopalong gasped. “Don’t he want my gun, too?”
“Nope. Got a better one. Hurry up, he’ll git mad.” Hopalong was a very methodical person. He was the only one of his crowd to carry a second cartridge strap. It hung over his right shoulder and rested on his left hip. His waist belt held thirty cartridges for the revolvers. He extracted twenty from that part of the shoulder strap hardest to get at, the back, by simply pulling it over his shoulder and plucking out the bullets as they came into reach.
“That’s all yu kin have. I’m Buck’s ammernition jackass,” he explained. “Bet yu ten we gits ‘em afore dark”—he was hedging.
“Any fool knows that. I’ll take yu if yu bets th’ other way,” responded Johnny, grinning. He knew Hopalong’s weak spot.
“Yore on,” promptly responded Hopalong, who would bet on anything.
“Well, so long,” said Johnny as he crawled away.
“Hey, yu, Johnny!” called out Hopalong, “don’t yu go an’ tell anybody I got any pills left. I ain’t no ars’nal.”
Johnny replied by elevating one foot and waving it. Then he disappeared.
Behind the store, the most precarious position among the besiegers, Red Connors and Lanky Smith were ensconced and commanded a view of the entire length of the barroom. They could see the dark mass they knew to be the rear door and derived a great amount of amusement from the spots of light which were appearing in it.
They watched the “C” (reversed to them) appear and be completed. When the wobbly “H” grew to completion they laughed heartily. Then the hardwood bar had been dragged across the field of vision and up to the front windows, and they could only see the indiscriminate holes which appeared in the upper panels at frequent intervals.
Every time they fired they had to expose a part of themselves to a return shot, with the result that Lanky’s forearm was seared its entire length.
