help you! But I'll lick
the whole bunch of you if you don't quite mauling me. Ain't you got no
manners? Don't you know anything? Come 'round waking a feller up an'
man-handling--"

"Get up!" snapped Stevenson, angrily.

"Why, ain't I seen you before? Somewhere? Sometime?" queried Hopalong,
his brow wrinkling from intense concentration of thought. "I ain't
dreaming; I've seen a one-eyed coyote som'ers, lately, ain't I?" he
appealed, anxiously, to the others.

"Get up!" ordered Charley, shortly.

"An' I've seen you, too. Funny, all right."

"You've seen me, all right," retorted Stevenson. "Get up, damn you! Get
up!"

"Why, I can't--my han's are tied!" exclaimed Hopalong in great wonder,
pausing in his exertions to cogitate deeply upon this most remarkable
phenomenon. "Tied up! Now what the devil do you think--"

"Use yore feet, you thief!" rejoined Stevenson roughly, stepping forward
and delivering another kick. "Use yore feet!" he reiterated.

"Thief! Me a thief! Shore I'll use my feet, you yaller dog!" yelled the
prostrate man, and his boot heel sank into the stomach of the offending
Mr. Stevenson with sickening force and laudable precision. He drew it
back slowly, as if debating shoving it farther. "Call me a thief,
hey! Come poking 'round kicking honest punchers an' calling 'em names!
Anybody want the other boot?" he inquired with grave solicitation.

Stevenson sat down forcibly and rocked to and fro, doubled up and
gasping for breath, and Hopalong squinted at him and grinned with
happiness. "Hear him sing! Reg'lar ol' brass band. Sounds like a cow
pulling its hoofs outen the mud. Called me a thief, he did, just now.
An' I won't let nobody kick me an' call me names. He's a liar, just a
plain, squaw's dog liar, he--"

Two men grabbed him and raised him up, holding him tightly, and they
were not over careful to handle him gently, which he naturally resented.
Charley stepped in front of him to go to the aid of Stevenson and caught
the other boot in his groin, dropping as if he had been shot. The man
on the prisoner's left emitted a yell and loosed his hold to sympathize
with a bruised shinbone, and his companion promptly knocked the bound
and still intoxicated man down. Bill Thomas swore and eyed the prostrate
figure with resentment and regret. "Hate to hit a man who can fight like
that when he's loaded an' tied. I'm glad, all the same, that he ain't
sober an' loose."

"An' you ain't going to hit him no mo