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

across the bar to an impatient customer. Another beckoned to him and he leaned over to hear the whispered request, a frown struggling to show itself on his face. “Nix; you know my rule. No trust in here.”

But the man at the far end of the line was unlike the proprietor and he prefaced his remarks with a curse. “I know what’s up! They want Jerry Brown, that’s what! An’ I hopes they don’t get him, the bullies!”

“What did he do? Why do they want him?” asked the man who had wanted trust.

“Skinning. He was careless or crazy, working so close to their ranch houses. Nobody that had any sense would take a chance like that,” replied Boston, adept at sleight-of-hand with cards and very much in demand when a frame-up was to be rung in on some unsuspecting stranger. His one great fault in the eyes of his partners was that he hated to divvy his winnings and at times had to be coerced into sharing equally.

“Aw, them big ranches make me mad,” announced the first speaker. “Ten years ago there was a lot of little ranchers, an’ every one of ‘em had his own herd, an’ plenty of free grass an’ water for it. Where are the little herds now? Where are the cows that we used to own?” he cried, hotly. “What happens to a maverick-hunter now-a-days? By God, if a man helps hisself to a pore, sick dogie he’s hunted down! It can’t go on much longer, an’ that’s shore.”

Cries of approbation arose on all sides, for his auditors ignored the fact that their kind, by avarice and thievery, had forever killed the occupation of maverick-hunting. That belonged to the old days, before the demand for cows and their easy and cheap transportation had boosted the prices and made them valuable.

Slivers Lowe leaped up from his chair. “Yo’re right, Harper! Dead right! I was a little cattle owner once, so was you, an’ Jerry, an’ most of us!” Slivers found it convenient to forget that fully half of his small herd had perished in the bitter and long winter of five years before, and that the remainder had either flowed down his parched throat or been lost across the big round table near the bar. Not a few of his cows were banked in the east under Harlan’s name.

The rear door opened slightly and one of the loungers looked up and nodded. “It’s all right, Jerry. But get a move on!”

“Here, you!” called Harlan, quickly bending over the trap door, “Lively!”

Jerry was half way to the proprietor when the front door swung open and Hopalong, closely followed by the marshal, leaped into the room, and immediately thereafter the back door banged open and admitted Johnny. Jerry’s right hand was in his side coat pocket and Johnny, young and self-confident, and with a lot to learn, was certain that he could beat the fugitive on the draw.

“I reckon you won’t blot no more brands!” he cried, triumphantly, watching both Jerry and Harlan.

The card-players had leaped to their feet and at a signal from Harlan they surged forward to the bar and formed a barrier between Johnny and his friends; and as they did so that puncher jerked at his gun, twisting to half face the crowd. At that instant fire and smoke spurted from Jerry’s side coat pocket and the odor of burning cloth arose. As Johnny fell, the rustler ducked low and sprang for the door. A gun roared twice in the front of the room and Jerry staggered a little and cursed as he gained the opening, but he plunged into the darkness and threw himself into the saddle on the first horse he found in the small corral.

When the crowd massed, Hopalong leaped at it and strove to tear his way to the opening at the end of the bar, while the marshal covered Harlan and the others. Finding that he could not get through. Hopalong sprang on the shoulder of the nearest man and succeeded in winging the fugitive at the first shot, the other going wild. Then, frantic with rage and anxiety, he beat his way through the crowd, hammering mercilessly at heads with the butt of his Colt, and knelt at his friend’s side.

Edwards, angered almost to the point of killing, ordered the crowd to stand against the wall, and laughed viciously when he saw two men senseless on the floor. “Hope he beat in yore heads!” he gritted, savagely. “Harlan, put yore paws up in sight or I’ll drill you clean! Now climb over an’ get in line—quick!”

Johnny moaned and opened his eyes. “Did—did I—get him?”

“No; but he gimleted you, all right,” Hopalong replied. “You’ll come ‘round if you keep quiet.” He arose, his face hard with the desire to kill. “I’m coming back for you, Harlan, after I get yore friend! An’ all the rest of you pups, too!”

“Get me out of here,” whispered Johnny.

“Shore enough, Kid; but keep quiet,” replied Hopalong, picking him up in his arms and moving carefully towards the door. “We’ll get him, Johnny; an’ all the rest, too, when–-” The voice died out in the direction of Jackson’s and the marshal, backing to the front door, slipped out and to one side, running backward, his eyes on the saloon.

“Yore day’s about over, Harlan,” he muttered. “There’s going to be some few funerals around here before many hours pass.”

When he reached the store he found the owner and two Double-Arrow punchers taking care of Johnny. “Where’s Hopalong?” he asked.

“Gone to tell his foreman,” replied Jackson. “Hey, youngster, you let them bandages alone! Hear me?”

“Hullo, Kansas,” remarked John Bartlett, foreman of the Double-Arrow. “I come nigh getting yore man; somebody rode past me like a streak in the dark, so I just ups an’ lets drive for luck, an’ so did he. I heard him cuss an’ I emptied my gun after him.”

“The rest was a-passing the word along to ride in when I left the line,” remarked one of the other punchers. “How you feeling now, Johnny?”