d 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 grave-yard 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 sigh