a whole
regiment! Hullo, Johnny!" and his hand-clasp told much.

"Yore cross fire did it, Lacey; that was the whole thing," Johnny
smiled. "Yo're all right!"

Red turned and looked out of the window toward the Oasis and then
glanced at Buck. "Reckon we better burn Harlan's place--it's all that's
left of that gang now," he suggested.

"Why, yes; I reckon so," replied the foreman. "That's as--"

"No, we won't!" Hopalong interposed quickly. "That stands till Johnny
sets it off. It's the Kid's celebration--he was shot in it."

Johnny smiled.

CHAPTER XX

BARB WIRE

After the flurry at Perry's Bend the Bar-20 settled down to the calm
routine work and sent several drive herds to their destination without
any unusual incidents. Buck thought that the last herd had been driven
when, late in the summer, he received an order that he made haste to
fill. The outfit was told to get busy and soon rounded up the necessary
number of three-year-olds. Then came the road branding, the final step
except inspection, and this was done not far from the ranch house, where
the facilities were best for speedy work.

Entirely recovered from all ill effects of his afternoon in Jackson's
store up in Perry's bend, Johnny Nelson waited with Red Connors on the
platform of the branding chute and growled petulantly at the sun, the
dust, but most of all at the choking, smarting odor of burned hair which
filled their throats and caused them to rub the backs of grimy hands
across their eyes. Chute-branding robbed them of the excitement, the
leaven of fun and frolic, which they always took from open or corral
branding--and the work of a day in the corral or open was condensed into
an hour or two by the chute. This was one cow wide, narrow at the bottom
and flared out as it went up, so the animal could not turn, and when
filled was, to use Johnny's graphic phrase, "like a chain of cows in a
ditch." Eight of the wondering and crowded animals, guided into the pen
by men who knew their work to the smallest detail and lost no time in
its performance, filed into the pen after those branded had filed out.
As the first to enter reached the farther end a stout bar dropped into
place, just missing the animal's nose; and as the last cow discovered
that it could go no farther and made up its mind to back out, it was
stopped by another bar, which fell behind it. The iron heaters tossed
a hot iron each to Red and Johnny and the eight were marked in short
o