"So long," replied the daring Pete, who risked death twice for a smoke.

The hot afternoon dragged along and about three o'clock Buck held up an
empty cartridge belt to the gaze of the curious Hopalong. That observant
worthy nodded and threw a double handful of cartridges, one by one, to
the patient and unrelenting Buck, who filled his gun and piled the few
remaining ones up at his side. "Th' lives of mice and men gang aft all
wrong," he remarked at random.

"Th' son-of-a-gun's talkin' Shakespeare," marveled Hopalong. "Satiate
any, Buck?" he asked as that worthy settled down to await his chance.

"Two," he replied, "Shorty an' another. Plenty damn hot down here," he
complained. A spurt of alkali dust stung his face, but the hand that
made it never made another. "Three," he called. "How many, Hoppy?"

"One. That's four. Wonder if th' others got any?"

"Pete said Skinny got one," replied the intent Buck.

"Th' son-of-a-gun, he never said nothin' about it, an' me a fillin' his
ornery paws with smokin'." Hopalong was indignant.

"Bet yu ten we don't git 'em afore dark," he announced.

"Got yu. Go yu ten more I gits another," promptly responded Buck.

"That's a shore cinch. Make her twenty."

"She is."

"Yu'll have to square it with Skinny, he shore wanted Shorty plum' bad,"
Hopalong informed the unerring marksman.

"Why didn't he say suthin' about it? Anyhow, Jimmy was my bunkie."

Hopalong's cigarette disintegrated and the board at his left received
a hole. He promptly disappeared and Buck laughed. He sat up in the loft
and angrily spat the soaked paper out from between his lips.

"All that trouble fer nothin', th' white-eyed coyote," he muttered.
Then he crawled around to one side and fired at the center of his "C."
Another shot hurtled at him and his left arm fell to his side. "That's
funny--wonder where th' damn pirut is?" He looked out cautiously and saw
a cloud of smoke over a knothole which was situated close up under the
eaves of the barroom; and it was being agitated. Some one was blowing at
it to make it disappear. He aimed very carefully at the knot and fired.
He heard a sound between a curse and a squawk and was not molested any
further from that point.

"I knowed he'd git hurt," he explained to the bandage, torn from the
edge of his kerchief, which he carefully bound around his last wound.

Down in the arroyo Johnny was complaining.

"This yer's a no good bunk," he plaintively remarked.