Bar-20 Days by Clarence Edward Mulford (new reading TXT) 📗
- Author: Clarence Edward Mulford
Book online «Bar-20 Days by Clarence Edward Mulford (new reading TXT) 📗». Author Clarence Edward Mulford
“Now, you coyotes; you pay me for that!” he gritted, resting the gun on the window sill and holding it so he could work it with one hand and shoulder.
“Wonder how them pups ever pumped up enough courage to cut loose like this?” queried Neal from behind his flour barrel.
“Whiskey,” hazarded Barr. “Harlan must 'a' got 'em drunk. An' that's three times I've missed that snake. Wish it would stop raining so I could see better.”
“Why don't you wish they'd all drop dead? Wish good when you wish at all: got as much chance of having it come true,” responded Neal, sarcastically. He smothered a curse and looked curiously at his left arm, and from it to the new, yellow-splintered hole in the wall, which was already turning dark from the water soaking into it. “Hey, Joe; we need some more boxes!” he exclaimed, again looking at his arm.
“Yes,” came Johnny's voice. “Three of 'em—five of 'em, an' about six feet long an' a foot deep. But if my outfit gets here in time we'll want more'n a dozen.”
“Say! Lacey's firing now!” suddenly cried Barr. “He's shooting out of his windy. That'll stop 'em from rushing us! Good boy, Lacey!” he shouted, but Lacey did not hear him in the uproar.
“An' he's worse off than we are, being alone,” commented Neal. “Hey! One of us better make a break for help—my ranch's the nearest. What d'ye say?”
“It's suicide; they'll get you before you get ten feet,” Barr replied with conviction.
“No; they won't—the corral hides the back door, an' all the firing is on this side. I can sneak along the back wall an' by keeping the buildings atween me an' them, get a long ways off before they know anything about it. Then it's a dash—an' they can't catch me. But can you fellers hold out if I do?”
“Two can hold out as good as three—go ahead,” Johnny replied. “Leave me some of yore Colt cartridges, though. You can't use 'em all before you get home.”
“Don't stop fer that; there's a shelfful of all kinds behind the counter,” Barr interposed.
“Well, so long an' good luck,” and the rear door closed, and softly this time.
“Two hours is some wait under the present circumstances,” Barr muttered, shifting his position behind his barricade. “He can't do it in less, nohow.”
Johnny ducked and looked foolish. “Missed me by a foot,” he explained. “He can't do it in two—not there an' back,” he replied. “The trail is mud over the fetlocks. Give him three at the least.”
“They ain't shooting as much as they was before.”
“Waiting till they gets sober, I reckon,” Johnny replied.
“If we don't hear no ruction in a few minutes we'll know he got away all right,” Barr soliloquized. “An' he's got a fine cayuse for mud, too.”
“Hey, why can't you do the same thing if he makes it?” Johnny suddenly asked. “I can hold her alone, all right.”
“Yo're a cheerful liar, you are,” laughed Barr. “But can you ride?”
“Reckon so, but I ain't a-going to.”
“Why, we both can go—it's a cinch!” Barr cried. “Come on!”
“Lord!—an' I never even thought of that! Reckon I was too mad,” Johnny replied. “But I sort of hates to leave Jackson an' Edwards,” he added, sullenly.
“But they're gone! You can't do them no good by staying.”
“Yes; I know. An' how about Lacey chipping in on our fight?” demanded Johnny. “I ain't a-going to leave him to take it all. You go, Barr; it wasn't yore fight, nohow. You didn't even know what you was fighting for!”
“Huh! When anybody shoots at me it's my fight, all right,” replied Barr, seating himself on the floor behind the breastwork. “I forgot all about Lacey,” he apologized. At that instant a tomato can went spang! and fell off the shelf. “An' it's too late, anyhow; they ain't a-going to let nobody else get away on that side.”
“An' they're tuning up again, too,” Johnny replied, preparing for trouble. “Look out for a rush, Barr.”
CHAPTER XIX THE BAR-20 RETURNS.
Hopalong Cassidy stopped swearing at the weather and looked up and along the trail in front of him, seeing a hard-riding man approach. He turned his head and spoke to Buck Peters, who rode close behind him. “Somebody's shore in a hurry—why, it's Fred Neal.”
It was. Mr. Neal was making his arms move and was also shouting something at the top of his voice. The noise of the rain and of the horses' hoofs splashing in the mud and water at first made his words unintelligible, but it was not long before Hopalong heard something which made him sit up even straighter. In a moment Neal was near enough to be heard distinctly and the outfit shook itself out of its weariness and physical misery and followed its leader at reckless speed. As they rode, bunched close together, Neal briefly and graphically outlined the relative positions of the combatants, and while Buck's more cautious mind was debating the best way to proceed against the enemy, Hopalong cried out the plan to be followed. There would be no strategy—Johnny, wounded and desperate, was fighting for his life. The simplest way was the best—a dash regardless of consequences to those making it, for time was a big factor to the two men in Jackson's store.
“Ride right at 'em!” Hopalong cried. “I know that bunch. They'll be too scared to shoot straight. Paralyze 'em! Three or four are gone now—an' the whole crowd wasn't worth one of the men they went out to get. The quicker it's over the better.”
“Right you are,” came from the rear.
“Ride up the arroyo as close as we can get, an' then over the edge an' straight at 'em,” Buck ordered. “Their shooting an' the rain will cover what noise we make on the soft ground. An' boys, no quarter!”
“Reckon not!” gritted Red, savagely. “Not with Edwards an' Jackson dead, an' the Kid fighting for his life!”
“They're still at it!” cried Lanky Smith, as the faint and intermittent sound of firing was heard; the driving wind was blowing from the town, and this, also, would deaden the noise of their approach.
“Thank the Lord! That means that there's somebody left to fight 'em,” exclaimed Red. “Hope it's the Kid,” he muttered.
“They can't rush the store till they get Lacey, an' they can't rush him till they get the store,” shouted Neal over his shoulder. “They'd be in a cross fire if
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