Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up; Or, Bar-20 by Clarence Edward Mulford (summer reading list txt) 📕

here trip, none whatever. I'm goin' to travel in style, get to Big Spring by ridin' two miles to where I could only make one on this stove. Then I'll head north along Sulpher Spring Creek an' have water an' grass all th' way, barrin' a few stretches. While you are bein' fricasseed I'll be streakin' through cottonwood groves an' ridin' in the creek.”

“Yu'll have to go alone, then,” said Red, resolutely. “Frenchy ain't a-goin' to die of lonesomeness on this desert if I knows what I'm about, an' I reckon I do, some. Me an' him'll follow out what Buck said, hunt around for a while an' then Frenchy can go back to th' ranch to tell Buck what's up an' I'll take th' trail yu are a-scared of an' meet yu at th' east end of Cunningham Lake three days from now.”

“Yu better come with me,” coaxed Hopalong, not liking what his friend had said about being afraid of the trail past the ca on and wishing to have some one with whom to talk on his trip. “I'm goin' to have a nice long swim to-morrow night,” he added, trying bribery.

“An' I'm goin' to try to keep from hittin' my blisters,” responded Red. “I don't want to go swimmin' in no creek full of moccasins—I'd rather sleep with rattlers or copperheads. Every time I sees a cotton-mouth I feels like I had just sit down on one.

“I'll flip a coin to see whether yu comes or not,” proposed Hopalong.

“If yu wants to gamble so bad I'll flip yu to see who draws our pay next month, but not for what you said,” responded Red, choking down the desire to try his luck.

Hopalong grinned and turned toward the south. “If I sees Buck afore yu do, I'll tell him yu an' Frenchy are growin' watermelons up near Last Stand Rock an' are waitin' for rain. Well, so long,” he said.

“Yu tell Buck we're obeyin' orders!” shouted Red, sorry that he was not going with his bunkie.

Frenchy and Red rode on in silence, the latter feeling strangely lonesome, for he and the departed man had seldom been separated when journeys like this were to be taken. And when in search of pleasure they were nearly always together. Frenchy, while being very friendly with Hopalong, a friendship that would have placed them side by side against any odds, was not accustomed to his company and did not notice his absence.

Red looked off toward the south for the tenth time and for the tenth time thought that his friend might return. “He's a son-of-a-gun,” he soliloquized.

His companion looked up: “He shore is, an' he's right about this rustler business, too. But we'll look around for a day or so an' then yu raise dust for th' Lake. I'll go back to th' ranch an' get things primed, so there'll be no time lost when we get th' word.”

“I'm sorry I went an' said what I did about me takin' th' trail he was a-scared of,” confessed Red, after a pause. “Why, he ain't a-scared of nothin'.”

“He got back at yu about them watermelons, so what's th' difference?” Asked Frenchy. “He don't owe yu nothin'.”

An hour later they searched the Devil's Rocks, but found no rustlers. Filling their canteens at a tiny spring and allowing their mounts to drink the remainder of the water, they turned toward Hell Arroyo, which they reached at nightfall. Here, also, their search availed them nothing and they paused in indecision. Then Frenchy turned toward his companion and advised him to ride toward the Lake in the night when it was comparatively cool.

Red considered and then decided that the advice was good. He rolled a cigarette, wheeled and faced the east and spurred forward: “So long,” he called.

“So long,” replied Frenchy, who turned toward the south and departed for the ranch.

The foreman of the Bar-20 was cleaning his rifle when he heard the hoof-beats of a galloping horse and he ran around the corner of the house to meet the newcomer, whom he thought to be a courier from the Double Arrow. Frenchy dismounted and explained why he returned alone.

Buck listened to the report and then, noting the fire which gleamed in his friend's eyes, nodded his approval to the course. “I reckon it's Trendley, Frenchy—I've heard a few things since yu left. An' yu can bet that if Hopalong an' Red have gone for him he'll be found. I expect action any time now, so we'll light th' signal fire.” Then he hesitated; “Yu light it—yu've been waiting a long time for this.”

The balls of smoke which rolled upward were replied to by other balls at different points on the plain, and the Bar-20 prepared to feed the numbers of hungry punchers who would arrive within the next twenty-four hours.

Two hours had not passed when eleven men rode up from the Three Triangle, followed eight hours later by ten from the O-Bar-O. The outfits of the Star Circle and the Barred Horseshoe, eighteen in all, came next and had scarcely dismounted when those of the C-80 and the Double Arrow, fretting at the delay, rode up. With the sixteen from the Bar-20 the force numbered seventy-five resolute and pugnacious cowpunchers, all aching to wipe out the indignities suffered.