Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up; Or, Bar-20 by Clarence Edward Mulford (positive books to read .TXT) 📖

of five yards and his sombrero was shot from his head. Another dash and his empty holster was ripped from its support. As he crouched behind a rock he heard a yell from Hopalong, and saw that interested individual waving his sombrero to cheer him on. An angry pang! from the knoll caused that enthusiastic rooter to drop for safety.

“Locoed son-of-a-gun,” complained Pete. “He'll shore git potted.” Then he glanced at Billy, who was the center of several successive spurts of dust.

“How's business, Billy?” he called pleasantly.

“Oh, they'll git me yet,” responded the pessimist. “Yu needn't git anxious. If that off buck wasn't so green he'd 'a' had me long ago.”

“Ya-hoo! Pete! Oh, Pete!” called Hopalong, sticking his head out at one side and grinning as the wondering object of his hail craned his neck to see what the matter was.

“Huh?” grunted Pete, and then remembering the distance he shouted, “What's th' matter?”

“Got any cigarettes?” asked Hopalong.

“Yu poor sheep!” said Pete, and turning back to work he drove a .45 into a yellow moccasin.

Hopalong began to itch and he saw that he was near an ant hill. Then the cactus at his right boomed out mournfully and a hole appeared in it. He fired at the smoke and a yell informed him that he had made a hit. “Go 'way!” he complained as a green fly buzzed past his nose. Then he scratched each leg with the foot of the other and squirmed incessantly, kicking out with both feet at once. A warning metallic whir-r-r! on his left caused to yank them in again, and turning his head quickly he the pleasure of lopping off the head of a rattlesnake with his Colt's.

“Glad yu wasn't a copperhead,” he exclaimed. “Somebody had ought 'a' shot that fool Noah. Blast the ants!” He drowned with a jet of tobacco juice a Gila monster that was staring at him and took a savage delight in its frantic efforts to bury itself.

Soon he heard Skinny swear and he sung out: “What's the matter, Skinny? Git plugged again?”

“Naw, bugs—ain't they mean?” Plaintively asked his friend. “They ain't none over here. What kind of bugs?”

“Sufferin' Moses, I ain't no bugologist! All kinds!”

But Hopalong got it at last. He had found tobacco and rolled a cigarette, and in reaching for a match exposed his shoulder to a shot that broke his collar bone. Skinny's rifle cracked in reply and the offending brave rolled out from behind a rock. From the fuss emanating from Hopalong's direction Skinny knew that his neighbor had been hit.

“Don't yu care, Hoppy. I got th' cuss,” he said consolingly. “Where'd he git yu?” he asked.

“In di' heart, yu pie-faced nuisance. Come over here an' corral this cussed bandage an' gimme some water,” snapped the injured man.

Skinny wormed his way through the thorny chaparral and bound up the shoulder. “Anything else?” he asked.

“Yes. Shoot that bunch of warts an' blow that tobacco-eyed Gila to Cheyenne. This here's worse than the time we cleaned out th' C 80 outfit!” Then he kicked the dead toad and swore at the sun.

“Close yore yap; yore worse than a kid! Anybody'd think yu never got plugged afore,” said Skinny indignantly.

“I can cuss all I wants,” replied Hopalong, proving his assertion as he grabbed his gun and fired at the dead Indian. A bullet whined above his head and Skinny fired at the smoke. He peeped out and saw that his friends were getting nearer to the knoll.

“They's closin' in now. We'll soon be gittin' home,” he reported.

Hopalong looked out in time to see Buck make a dash for a bowlder that lay ten yards in front of him, which he reached in safety. Lanky also ran in and Pete added five more yards to his advance. Buck made another dash, but leaped into the air, and, coming down as if from an intentional high jump, staggered and stumbled for a few paces and then fell flat, rolling over and over toward the shelter of a split rock, where he lay quiet. A leering red face peered over the rocks on the knoll, but the whoop of exultation was cut short, for Red's rifle cracked and the warrior rolled down the steep bank, where another shot from the same gun settled him beyond question.

Hopalong choked and, turning his face away, angrily dashed his knuckles into his eyes. “Blast 'em! Blast 'em! They've got Buck! They've got Buck, blast 'em! They've got Buck, Skinny! Good old Buck! They've got him! Jimmy's gone, Johnny's plugged, and now Buck's gone! Come on!” he sobbed in a frenzy of vengeance. “Come on, Skinny! We'll tear their cussed hides into a deeper red than they are now! Oh, blast it, I can't see—where's my gun?” He groped for the rifle and fought Skinny when the latter, red-eyed but cool, endeavored to restrain him. “Lemme go, curse yu! Don't yu know they got Buck? Lemme go!”

“Down! Red's got di' skunk. Yu can't do nothin'—they'd drop yu afore yu took five steps. Red's got him, I tell yu! Do yu want me to lick yu? We'll pay 'em back with interest if yu'll keep yore head!” exclaimed Skinny, throwing the crazed man heavily.

Musical tones, rising and falling in weird octaves, whining pityingly, diabolically, sobbing in a fascinating monotone and slobbering in ragged chords, calling as they swept over the plain, always calling and exhorting, they mingled in barbaric discord with the defiant barks of the six-shooters and the inquiring cracks of the Winchesters. High up in the air several specks sailed and drifted, more coming up rapidly from all directions. Buzzards know well where food can be found.

As Hopalong leaned back against a rock he was hit in the thigh by a ricochet that tore its way out, whirling like a circular saw, a span above where it entered. The wound was very nasty, being ripped twice the size made by an ordinary shot, and it bled profusely. Skinny crawled over and attended to it, making a tourniquet of his neckerchief and clumsily bandaging it with a strip torn from his shirt.

“Yore shore lucky, yu are,” he grumbled as he made his way back to his post, where he vented his rancor by emptying the semi-depleted magazine of his Winchester at the knoll.

Hopalong began to sing and shout and he talked of Jimmy and his childhood, interspersing the broken narrative with choice selections as sung in the music halls of Leavenworth and Abilene. He wound up by yelling and struggling, and Skinny had his hands full in holding him.

“Hopalong! Cassidy! Come out of that! Keep quiet—yu'll shore git plugged if yu don't stop that plungin'. For gosh sake, did yu hear that?” A bullet viciously hissed between them and flattened out on a near-by rock; others cut their way through the chaparral to the sound of falling twigs, and Skinny threw himself on the struggling man and strapped Hopalong with his belt to the base of a honey mesquite that grew at his side.

“Hold still, now, and let that bandage alone. Yu allus goes off di' range when yu gets plugged,” he complained. He cut down a