than finding a place to put it, and the
unequal battle raged across the room and into the next, where it sounded
as if the house were falling down. Johnny's voice was shrill and full of
vexation and his words were extremely impolite and lacked censoring.
His feet appeared to be numerous and growing rapidly, judging from the
amount of territory they covered and defended, and Red joyfully kicked
Hopalong in the melee, which in this instance also stands for stomach;
Red always took great pains to do more than his share in a scrimmage.
Dent hovered on the flanks, his hands full of rope, and begged with
great earnestness to be allowed to apply it to parts of Johnny's
thrashing anatomy. But as the flanks continued to change with
bewildering swiftness he begged in vain, and began to make suggestions
and give advice pleasing to the three combatants. Dent knew just how
it should be done, and was generous with the knowledge until Johnny
zealously planted five knuckles on his one good eye, when the engagement
became general.

The table skidded through the door on one leg and caromed off the bar at
a graceful angle, collecting three chairs and one sand-box cuspidor on
the way. The box on Johnny's leg had long since departed, as Hopalong's
shin could testify. One chair dissolved unity and distributed itself
lavishly over the room, while the bed shrunk silently and folded itself
on top of Dent, who bucked it up and down with burning zeal and finally
had sense enough to crawl from under it. He immediately celebrated his
liberation by getting a strangle hold on two legs, one of which happened
to be the personal property of Hopalong Cassidy; and the battle raged on
a lower plane. Red raised one hand as he carefully traced a neck to its
own proper head and then his steel fingers opened and swooped down and
shut off the dialect. Hopalong pushed Dent off him and managed to catch
Johnny's flaying arm on the third attempt, while Dent made tentative
sorties against Johnny's spurred boots.

"Phew! Can he fight like that when he's sober?" reverently asked
Dent, seeing how close his fingers could come to his gaudy eye without
touching it. "I won't be able to see at all in an hour," he added,
gloomily.

Hopalong, seated on Johnny's chest, soberly made reply as he tenderly
flirted with a raw shin. "It's the mescal. I'm going to slip some of
that stuff into Pete's cayuse some of these days," he promised, happy
with a new idea. Pete Wilson had no