Hopalong grinned, lifting his cold eyes with grim amusement. “You are? Now I figgered mebbe that was so, but wasn’t so sure. Of course ever’ man has some things he keeps to himself.”
Soper was suddenly alert. He sat up a little, taking a quick glance at the inner door. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded.
Hopalong rubbed out his cigarette and stood up. “Now that Elk Mountain country along the north line. I like that. Ever do much ridin’ around up there, Mister Soper?”
Soper was enraged and at the same time he was worried. If something about this got to Sparr—
“You are right, of course,” he said carefully. “There are some things we don’t talk about.”
Cassidy walked to the door and opened it. “Guess they are about ready for me in there,” he said.
“Wait!” Soper got hastily to his feet. “Avery will call you when he’s ready.”
“I’ll go now,” Hopalong replied quietly. “If the old man is awake an’ ready enough to see Sparr, who he’s known only a few months, he sure can see one of the oldest friends he’s got!”
He stepped into the intermediate room and closed the door, but even as he did so Sparr came through the other one. His eyes went cold when he saw Hopalong, and for an instant they faced each other there across the narrow room. Hoppy told himself, If he starts shootin’, I got to move right or I’d shoot through that door!
“Go on in,” Sparr said. “I’ll not bother you.”
Surprised, Hopalong watched him go, and then he stepped through into the room beyond.
* * *
Anson Mowry was furious. Hurrying up to the house, he was in time to meet Soper coming out. “What goes on here?” Mowry demanded. “That gunslinger actin’ like he belongs here!”
“Take it easy!” Soper said crisply. “Sparr knows what he’s doing! And don’t worry. You’ll get your chance at him, and soon.”
“That’s all I want,” Mowry said viciously, but with satisfaction. “Just give me a chance.”
“Horse Springs,” Soper mused; “that would be the place. We’ll talk it over with Sparr. You, Johnny Rebb, and Bizco.”
Mowry’s face mottled. “I don’t need help!”
“Yes, you do, Anson.” Soper was calm. “I know this man. We will take no chances at all, do you hear? None at all! Once a gun is drawn on this man now, he must never get on his feet again. He must never talk again. The whole show hinges on him.”
“All right,” Mowry agreed grudgingly, “I’ll stand by.” His eyes glinted. “Cross fire, eh? Three-cornered?” He chuckled. “The livery stable, that would be the place. Maybe two witnesses, and Rebb an’ Bizco could be in the shadows.”
He walked away, thinking about it. He could claim to have killed Hopalong Cassidy then! That would make them sit up and take notice! Nobody would have to know about the others. Around here a few might know, but not elsewhere. The glory would be his. And, after all, Soper was right. Why take a chance?
For that matter, Bizco had his own score to settle with Hopalong. Too bad Bizco was in Horse Springs—they might start working out the details right away.
* * *
Bizco, in Horse Springs, was having his own troubles.
Those troubles stemmed from two dusty riders who had come to town from the west, riding in over the old stage road only a few hours before. Leaving their horses in the livery stable, they had shambled over to the Old Corral and proceeded to open a bottle of Mark’s best bourbon. With a drink under their belts they had been looking over the hangers-on without much favor.
One of these young men, frozen-faced and cold-eyed, heard a voice on his left, and he turned to see a lean, hangdog man standing there.
“Them your hosses out front? Them with the Double Y brand?”
“Yeah,” Mesquite Jenkins said, “they are.”
“Feller from your outfit shore saved my bacon a while back. He come in hell a-shootin’ just in time to drive off some ’Paches. He was ridin’ a big white gelding.”
“You don’t say!” Johnny Nelson leaned on the bar to look past Mesquite. “Where was this?”
“At Clifton’s, on the Canadian. He was ridin’ West.”
Mark Connor was polishing a glass, but suddenly he was all ears. This was the man who called himself Tuck, the man Bizco wanted a look at.
“He say where he was goin’?” Johnny asked.
Leeds hesitated. Uncomfortably he had the feeling he was talking too much, but of late he had been chafing under the orders from Sparr. At first, hard-pressed by poverty, it had seemed harmless enough to allow a few horses corral space at his ranch every now and again. Even after the robbery of the bank at McClellan it had not been too bad. But horses had disappeared, and people had seen things, and now few of his neighbors spoke when they met him on the street. A man couldn’t live without neighbors. Leeds made up his mind.
“He said he was goin’ to Dick Jordan’s. Jordan’s got the Circle J, south of here.”
“Jordan?” Mesquite scowled. “You know him, Johnny?”
“Sure do! Used to run the same brand back in Texas. Knowed him there an’ Montana too. Plumb forgot about him bein’ down this way, but now I remember. His wife was Spanish. She got a big ranch down here through some land-grant inheritance.”
“Old Hoppy! Won’t he be surprised when we barge in on him?”
Mark Connor stiffened. Hoppy? Hopalong Cassidy? He cursed himself for a fool. Of course! No wonder Bizco was waiting for a look at him! The story of Bizco’s run-in with Hopalong had already gone the rounds of the gang. Even as he thought of that, the squint-eyed gunman came in. With several drinks under his belt he was mean and spoiling for a fight. Nor had he missed the Double Y horses.
Connor was thinking swiftly, and he could see old man Teilhet’s eyes on the two. Those old eyes were sharp with awareness. Connor started back toward him, and when he got close the old man hissed, “Get Bizco out o’ here! He’s spilin’ for a fight with them two! They’ll kill him sure as cactus has stickers! Them two are Mesquite Jenkins an’ Johnny Nelson, o’ the old Bar 20 outfit!”
Jenkins had never known the Bar 20, but in Teilhet’s mind all of that bunch were associated with the earlier brand. He had just occasion for recalling an earlier visit by Hopalong Cassidy.
Mark moved back up the bar, trying to catch Bizco’s eyes, but with the intentness only a drinking man can muster, Bizco had eyes only for the two Double Y hands and the memory of his slugging by Hopalong Cassidy.
Yet he was not drunk enough to be altogether a fool, only drunk enough to be bolder than usual. While he preferred the fast horse to the smoking gun, he had some pride in his own prowess and knew that he was better than most hands who drifted along the trail. For these two he had nothing but contempt, and he chose the younger of the two, Mesquite Jenkins, for his challenge.
He chose him because he was younger, and so believed to be less experienced. None of these thoughts came consciously to his mind, but nevertheless they had a part in his decision. Actually, he could not have chosen worse.
Aside from Hopalong himself there probably did not exist in that time and country two men more deadly with six-guns than these two. If anything, Johnny Nelson, being less easy to prod, might have been the lesser of two evils.
Mesquite Jenkins was a young man with few qualities of mercy, and those few he had been learning only recently, from Hopalong, Johnny, Buck, and others of the outfit. He had grown up with the idea that the world had a grudge against him and every man who moved near him had a chip on his shoulder; accordingly he had acquired his own chip. It functioned easily and often.
“Bizco!”
Mark spoke sharply, and ordinarily that would have drawn the squint-eyed gunman’s instant obedience, for it was well known that Connor was the right hand of Avery Sparr. But at the moment Bizco could think of nothing but that Double Y brand and the fact that he wanted to get even. If he noticed Connor at all, he paid no attention.
“Double Y,�
� he said aloud. “I been huntin’ a man from that brand.”
The eyes of both Jenkins and Nelson turned toward his. Bizco stared at Mesquite. “I said I was huntin’ a Double Y hand.”
Mesquite’s eyes were cold. With that quick, all-seeing glance that read the brand of a man on sight, Mesquite pegged this one. He saw before him a young man of even, clean-cut features and one slightly squinted eye. That the man had been drinking he also recognized, but he was far from drunk. What he saw that was more to the immediate point was that the squint-eyed man was mean and in a quarrelsome mood.
Mark started to speak again, but something in the poised awareness of Mesquite Jenkins stopped him. “All right,” Mesquite said, “you are huntin’ a Double Y hand. What then?”
Bizco stared at the young cowhand facing him, unaware of the deadly potential destruction that lay in those cold eyes and quiet hands. Bizco rarely drank much, but when he did, he became utterly vicious, as he was now.
“Why,” he sneered, “I’m huntin’ a Double Y hand. I’m on the trail of a Double Y hand called Cassidy.”
“He’d be glad to know that,” Jenkins replied. He took an easy step forward, and Mark Connor shifted his feet uneasily, fascinated by the cold death he read in those eyes. “Mebbe I’d do as well?”
Johnny Nelson moved easily, merely fading from the scene to a spot well to one side, but one from which he could command the room. “Looks like your friend is on the prod,” he said quietly but clearly. “Let’s all leave ’em alone, huh?” Gently phrased though it was, the hint was plain enough. Bizco ignored it, his only interest being Jenkins.
“Maybe you would!” Bizco hooked his thumbs in his belt. “Maybe you would at that! Your amigo Cassidy dry-gulched a couple of friends of mine.”
“Hoppy never dry-gulched anybody.” Mesquite’s voice was cold and level. “If he killed some friends o’ yours, they had it comin’.” Mesquite took a step nearer. “Furthermore,” he added, “you are a liar, an’ you know you’re a liar!”
Bizco had been standing wide-legged and mean, awaiting that word. He had known it was coming, and had been ready for it, and with a sudden laugh of triumph his hand dropped for his gun.
Afterward there were those who said that Bizco died twice. The first time from astonishment, the second time from Mesquite’s bullet. The astonishment because with his eyes riveted on Mesquite, his hand swept back for the gun, grasped the butt and started to lift, all in the flickering space of a split second, only to find himself looking into the black muzzle of a Colt that had materialized in Mesquite’s hand as if by magic.
The black muzzle winked and stabbed flame, and Bizco’s nerveless fingers relaxed and his gun slid back into the leather. Slowly his knees buckled and he sagged, then pitched over on his face.
For an instant, with the sound dying in the room and the acrid smell of powder smoke drifting where it had drifted so many times before, nobody spoke. And then Johnny said evenly, “Anythin’ about this that anybody don’t like?”
The two young men faced the room, Mesquite still with his drawn Colt, Johnny with his hands on his hips. Slowly their eyes searched from face to face, waiting.
“Fair shooting,” one man said finally, “if I ever seen one.”
“He ast for it.”
Jenkins slid his Colt back into the holster and turned back to the bar, ignoring the dead man. “Now tell me,” he said to Mark Connor, “what was he on the prod about?”
Mark Connor shrugged. “He had some trouble with Cassidy back up the line. Hopalong downed two of his partners an’ slugged him on the jaw. From what I hear,” he added, honestly enough, “they tried to jump him about somethin’ an’ tackled more than they could handle.”
“Seen Hoppy around?” Johnny asked.
Mark hesitated. He knew now that Hopalong Cassidy was the man who had called himself Tuck, and he was quite sure that he had started for the Jordan ranch, but he also knew that one gun-handy man could be plenty of trouble, even for Sparr, without three on his hands.
“I don’t know Cassidy,” he said, “by sight. Lots of fellers drift in an’ out.”
The two took another drink while a couple of husky town loafers removed the body of Bizco. Then, as they were turning to leave, the door opened and Red walked in. With him was another T Bar hand, and both of them pushed up to the bar. Red was bursting with the news.
“Well, Mark,” he said, grinning with grim pleasure, “you won’t see Barker no more!”
Instinctively Mark Connor guessed what was coming. He looked up, waiting. Mesquite and Johnny halted as they reached the door and turned to listen. “That feller Cassidy,” he said. “Barker jumped the boss an’ him out on the trail. Cassidy killed Barker an’ shot the gun out of Mowry’s hand! Man, is that hombre fast!”
“Where’s Cassidy now?” Teilhet asked worriedly.
“Him?” Red chuckled. “Why, he’s gone callin’! He took off for the Circle J to pay a visit to the Jordans. Figgered on havin’ a talk with Avery Sparr too. Reckon,” he said with satisfaction, “things’ll be different around here from now on.”
Jenkins stepped out on the porch, and Johnny, with one swift backward glance to make sure nobody was going to gamble on a back shot, followed. Outside, both men hastily got away from the light, then paused in the shadows. “Hopalong’s havin’ trouble,” Mesquite suggested, “an’ I reckon we better drift down that way, Johnny, an’ lend a hand.”
“Why, sure!” Johnny looked down the narrow street in which the only lights showed from the saloons. “At least we can count the bodies!”
Yet his face was grave, and he remembered again the other towns where men of the old outfit had ridden together, and the troubles they had faced together, and the lead they had spent.
A man stepped from the shadows by the livery barn and stood there waiting for them. “Double Y,” he said.
They stopped, a little apart. “Yeah?” Mesquite re-plied.
“I’m Leeds. Want to talk, but it’s got to be fast. They catch me talkin’ to you hombres an’ they’d kill me quick.”
“Who are ‘they’? An’ why would they kill you?”
They moved toward him, and he drew back against the wall of the stable.
“Sparr’s outfit. He’s got spies all over the country. That bartender, Mark. He’s one o’ them. That hombre you killed, he was a Sparr gunman. Fact is”—he hesitated—“I done some work for him m’self.”
“What d’you want to tell us?” Johnny asked. “An’ why?”
“That Cassidy feller. He done saved us all, my wife an’ boy an’ me. Them ’Paches would have had us in another minute at best.”
He hesitated, craning his neck to look up and down the street. “Cassidy’s gone to the Circle J,” he said, “an’ that outfit won’t never let him off alive. Not unless they figger to kill him some place else. They don’t dast.”
“What are they doin’ down there?” Nelson wanted to know.
“Don’t know exactly, but I figger they are out to steal that ranch from Jordan. He’s all crippled up, can’t walk nohow, an’ he ain’t got a gun. I know that much. Heerd talk around amongst them. I do know all the young stock is bein’ branded with Sparr’s brand, an’ he seems to be gradually takin’ over.
“Him an’ Soper, they have give out that Sparr has a workin’ partnership, give to him because Jordan was laid up. Don’t you believe it! No man in his right mind would take that lobo into the same house with him, let alone in partnership! Folks are gettin’ used to seein’ Soper an’ Sparr around, so purty quick, when Jordan sort of dies, then they’ll be in the saddle. Somehow they figger to get legal title. How, I dunno.”
“You must have more reason than because Hoppy helped you for tellin’ us this,” Nelson interposed.
Leeds spat. “Durned right I have! I’m a poor man, y’see, an’ mighty little money comes my way. I’m tryin’ to git organized on my place, but it takes aplenty. Well, one o’ them Sparr riders come down, the one you kille
d t’night, in fact. He suggested that my corral would hold a few horses mighty easy, an’ that he wanted to leave some overnight. He suggested there might be a little money in it if I kept them, an’ a heap of trouble if I didn’t. I kept ’em.
“It got worse an’ worse. They got to tellin’ me where to go an’ when, an’ my neighbors got suspicious. A man needs good neighbors, an’ I seen I was doin’ wrong but couldn’t get out. If I tell yuh this, mebbe Avery Sparr will git his come-uppance an’ I’ll be let alone.”
After the man was gone, the two waited a minute or two. “That settles it!” Johnny said. “We’ll start come mornin’.”
“I’m not tired,” Mesquite said quietly. “Let’s camp on the trail.”
Chapter 7
CROSS FIRE ON THE CIRCLE J
* * *
Hopalong Cassidy had played poker with Dick Jordan, and there are few better ways of gauging a man—if one is a good poker player. As he stepped through the door, Hopalong’s eyes went at once to Jordan’s face, knowing he would read the answer or some of it there. That Avery Sparr would not have allowed him to enter alone if he expected Hopalong to be told anything was clear enough. Moreover, it showed that Sparr was confident, quite confident of his power here, and his ability to force upon the Jordans obedience to his commands—if the situation was as Hopalong believed.
Dick Jordan looked up, and his hard old eyes glinted. “Howdy, Hoppy! How’s Buck an’ the boys?”
“Fine, old-timer! You look mighty good yourself.”
Hopalong had never lied with more enthusiasm. In truth, Dick Jordan was only a whisper of his once jovial, bearlike self. His huge frame was much depleted, wasted away to a great shell of bones and hide. His cheeks were sunken, and from his eyes Hopalong knew that no physical inaction, the accident, or any other physical cause had done this. For the first time in his life Jordan was helpless.
Hopalong made conversation easily, and in a few casual glances assayed the room. It contained no weapons nor anything that might be used as a weapon. There was no way out except through the door, for the windows here were high above the ground. It would be impossible to get in or out of this room save through the door by which he had entered.
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