Bar-20 Days by Clarence E. Mulford (read the beginning after the end novel .TXT) 📕

they could extemporize in the open. Mr. Connors hotly and hastily dissented as he led the horses into the building, and straightway the subject was arbitrated with much feeling and snappy eloquence. Finally Hopalong thought that Red was a chump, and said so out loud, whereat Red said unpleasant things about his good friend’s pedigree, attributes, intelligence, et al., even going so far as to prognosticate his friend’s place of eternal abode. The remarks were fast getting to be somewhat personal in tenor when a whine in the air swept up the scale to a vicious shriek as it passed between them, dropped rapidly to a whine again and quickly died out in the distance, a flat report coming to their ears a few seconds later. Invisible bees seemed to be winging through the air, the angry and venomous droning becoming more pronounced each passing moment, and the irregular cracking of rifles grew louder rapidly. An angry s-p-a-t! told of where a stone behind them had launched the ricochet which hurled skyward with a wheezing scream. A handful of ‘dobe dust sprang from the corner of the building and sifted down upon them, causing Red to cough.

“That ricochet was a Sharps!” exclaimed Hopalong, and they lost no time in getting into the building, where the discussion was renewed as they prepared for the final struggle. Red grunted his cheerful approval, for now he was out of the blazing sun and where he could better appreciate the musical tones of the flying bullets; but his companion, slamming shut the door and propping it with a fallen roof-beam, grumbled and finally gave rein to his rancor by sneering at the Winchester.

“It shore gets me that after all I have said about that gun you will tote it around with you and force yoreself into a suicide’s grave,” quoth Mr. Cassidy, with exuberant pugnacity. “I ain’t in no way objecting to the suicide part of it, but I can’t see that it’s at all fair to drag me onto the edge of everlasting eternity with you. If you ain’t got no regard for yore own life you shore ought to think a little about yore friend’s. Now you’ll waste all yore cartridges an’ then come snooping around me to borrow my gun. Why don’t you lose the damned thing?”

“What I pack ain’t none of yore business, which same I’ll uphold,” retorted Mr. Connors, at last able to make himself heard. “You get over on yore own side an’ use yore Colt; I’ve wondered a whole lot where you ever got the sense to use a Colt—I wouldn’t be a heap surprised to see you toting a pearl-handled .22, like the kids use. Now you ‘tend to yore graveyard aspirants, an’ lemme do the same with mine.”

“The Lord knows I’ve stood a whole lot from you because you just can’t help being foolish, but I’ve got plumb weary and sick of it. It stops right here or you won’t get no ‘Paches,” snorted Hopalong, peering intently through a hole in the shack. The more they squabbled the better they liked it,—controversies had become so common that they were merely a habit; and they served to take the grimness out of desperate situations.

“Aw, you can’t lick one side of me,” averred Red loftily. “You never did stop anybody that was anything,” he jeered as he fired from his window. “Why, you couldn’t even hit the bottom of the Grand Canyon if you leaned over the edge.”

“You could, if you leaned too far, you red-headed wart of a half-breed,” snapped Hopalong. “But how about the Joneses, Tarantula Charley, Slim Travennes, an’ all the rest? How about them, hey?”

“Huh! You couldn’t ‘a’ got any of ‘em if they had been sober,” and Mr. Connors shook so with mirth that the Indian at whom he had fired got away with a whole skin and cheerfully derided the marksman. “That ‘Pache shore reckons it was you shooting at him, I missed him so far. Now, you shut up—I want to get some so we can go home. I don’t want to stay out here all night an’ the next day as well,” Red grumbled, his words dying slowly in his throat as he voiced other thoughts.

Hopalong caught sight of an Apache who moved cautiously through a chaparral lying about nine hundred yards away. As long as the distant enemy lay quietly he could not be discerned, but he was not content with assured safety and took a chance. Hopalong raised his rifle to his shoulder as the Indian fired and the latter’s bullet, striking the edge of the hole through which Mr. Cassidy peered, kicked up a generous handful of dust, some of which found lodgment in that individual’s eyes.

“Oh! Oh! Oh! Wow!” yelled the unfortunate, dancing blindly around the room in rage and pain, and dropping his rifle to grab at his eyes. “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

His companion wheeled like a flash and grabbed him as he stumbled past. “Are you plugged bad, Hoppy? Where did they get you? Are you hit bad?” and Red’s heart was in his voice.

“No, I ain’t plugged bad!” mimicked Hopalong. “I ain’t plugged at all!” he blazed, kicking enthusiastically at his solicitous friend. “Get me some water, you jackass! Don’t stand there like a fool! I ain’t going to fall down. Don’t you know my eyes are full of ‘dobe?”

Red, avoiding another kick, hastily complied, and as hastily left Mr. Cassidy to wash out the dirt while he returned to his post by the window. “Anybody’d think you was full of red-eye, the way you act,” muttered Red peevishly.

Hopalong, rubbing his eyes of the dirt, went back to the hole in the wall and looked out. “Hey, Red! Come over here an’ spill that brave’s conceit. I can’t keep my eyes open long enough to aim, an’ it’s a nice shot, too. It’d serve him right if you got him!”

Mr. Connors obeyed the summons and peered out cautiously. “I can’t see him, nohow; where is the coyote?”

“Over there in that little chaparral; see him now? There! See him moving. Do you mean to tell me—”

“Yep; I see him, all right. You watch,” was the reply. “He’s just over nine hundred—where’s yore Sharps?” He took the weapon, glanced at the Buffington sight, which he found to be set right, and aimed carefully.

Hopalong blinked through another hole as his friend fired and saw the Indian flop down and crawl aimlessly about on hands and knees. “What’s he doing now, Red?”

“Playing marbles, you chump; an’ here goes for his agate,” replied the man with the Sharps, firing again. “There! Gee!” he exclaimed, as a bullet hummed in through the window he had quitted for the moment, and thudded into the wall, making the dry adobe fly. It had missed him by only a few inches and he now crept along the floor to the rear of the room and shoved his rifle out among the branches of a stunted mesquite which grew before a fissure in the wall. “You keep away from that windy for a minute, Hoppy,” he warned as he waited.

A terror-stricken lizard flashed out of the fissure and along the wall where the roof had fallen in and flitted into a hole, while a fly buzzed loudly and hovered persistently around Red’s head, to the rage of that individual. “Ah, ha!” he grunted, lowering the rifle and peering through the smoke. A yell reached his ears and he forthwith returned to his window, whistling softly.

Evidently Mr. Cassidy’s eyes were better and his temper sweeter, for he hummed “Dixie” and then jumped to “Yankee Doodle,” mixing the two airs with careless impartiality, which was a sign that he was thinking deeply. “Wonder what ever became of Powers, Red. Peculiar feller, he was.”

“In jail, I reckon, if drink hasn’t killed him.”

“Yes; I reckon so,” and Mr. Cassidy continued his medley, which prompted his friend quickly to announce his unqualified disapproval.

“You can make more of a mess of them two songs than anybody I ever heard murder ‘em! Shut up!“—and the concert stopped, the vocalist venting his feelings at an Indian, and killing the horse instead.

“Did you get him?” queried Red.

“Nope; but I got his cayuse,” Hopalong replied, shoving a fresh cartridge into the foul, greasy breech of the Sharps. “An’ here’s where I get him—got to square up for my eyes some way,” he muttered, firing. “Missed! Now what do you think of that!” he exclaimed.

“Better take my Winchester,” suggested Red, in a matter-of-fact way, but he chuckled softly and listened for the reply.

“Aw, you go to the devil!” snapped Mr. Cassidy, firing again. “Whoop! Got him that time!”

“Where?” asked his companion, with strong suspicion.

“None of yore business!”

“Aw, darn it! Who spilled the water?” yelled Red, staring blankly at the overturned canteen.

“Pshaw! Reckon I did, Red,” apologized his friend ruefully. “Now of all the cussed luck!”

“Oh, well; we’ve got another, an’ you had to wash out yore eyes. Lucky we each had one—_Holy smoke!_ It’s most all gone! The top is loose!”

Heartfelt profanity filled the room and the two disgusted punchers went sullenly back to their posts. It was a calamity of no small magnitude, for, while food could be dispensed with for a long time if necessary, going without water was another question. It was as necessary as cartridges.

Then Hopalong laughed at the ludicrous side of the whole affair, thereby revealing one of the characteristics which endeared him to his friends. No matter how desperate a situation might be, he could always find in it something at which to laugh. He laughed going into danger and coming out of it, with a joke or a pleasantry always trembling on the end of his tongue.

“Red, did it ever strike you how cussed thirsty a feller gets just as soon as he knows he can’t have no drink? But it don’t make much difference, nohow. We’ll get out of this little scrape just as we’ve allus got out of trouble. There’s some mad war-whoops outside that are worse off than we are, because they are at the wrong end of yore gun. I feel sort of sorry for ‘em.”

“Yo’re shore a happy idiot,” grinned Red. “Hey! Listen!”

Galloping was heard and Hopalong, running to the door, looked out through a crack as sudden firing broke out around the rear of the shack, and fell to pulling away the props, crying, “It’s a puncher, Red; he’s riding this way! Come on an’ help him in!”

“He’s a blamed fool to ride this way! I’m with you!” replied Red, running to his side.

Half a mile from the house, coming across the open space as fast as he could urge his horse, rode a cowboy, and not far behind him raced about a dozen Apaches, yelling and firing.

Red picked up his companion’s rifle, and steadying it against the jamb of the door, fired, dropping one of the foremost of the pursuers. Quickly reloading again, he fired and missed. The third shot struck another horse, and then taking up his own gun he began to fire rapidly, as rapidly as he could work the lever and yet make his shots tell. Hopalong drew his Colt and ran back to watch the rear of the house, and it was well that he did so, for an Apache in that direction, believing that the trapped punchers were so busily engaged with the new developments as to forget for the moment, sprinted towards the back window; and he had gotten within twenty paces of the goal when Hopalong’s Colt cracked a protest. Seeing that the warrior was no longer a combatant, Mr. Cassidy ran back to the door just as the stranger fell from his horse and crawled past Red.