"Down to Eagle for grub to tide us over for a few days."
"Huh!" exclaimed Hall. "Everything considered we're goin' to fight like th' devil out here someday. Down to Eagle!"
"We can fight!" retorted Shaw. "An' if we has to run for it, there's th' desert."
"I'd ruther die right here fighting than on that desert," remarked Cavalry, shuddering. "When I go I want to go quick, an' not be tortured for 'most a week." He had an insistent and strong horror of that gray void of sand and alkali so near at hand and so far across. He was nervous and superstitious, and it seemed always to be calling him. Many nights he had awakened in a cold sweat because he had dreamed it had him, and often it was all he could do to resist going out to it.
Shaw laughed gratingly. "You don't like it, do you?"
Hall smiled and walked towards the slanting trail.
"Why, it ain't bad," he called over his shoulder.
"It's an earthly hell!" Cavalry exclaimed. He glanced up the mesa wall. "We can hold that till we starve, or run out of cartridges—then what?"
"You're a calamity howler!" snapped Shaw. "That desert has wore a saddle sore on yore nerves somethin' awful. Don't think about it so much! It can't come to you, an' you ain't going to it," he laughed, trying to wipe out the suggestion of fear that had been awakened in him by the thought of the desert as a place of refuge. He had found a wanderer, denuded of clothes, sweating blood and hopelessly mad one day when he and Cavalry had ridden towards the desert; and the sight of the unfortunate's dying agonies had remained with him ever since. "We ain't going to die out here—they won't look for us where they don't think there's any grass or water."
Fragments of Manuel's song floated down to them as they strode towards the trail, and reassured that all would be well, their momentary depression was banished by the courage of their hearts.
The desert lay beyond, quiet; ominous by its very silence and inertia; a ghastly, malevolent aspect in its every hollow; patient, illimitable, scorching; fascinating in its horrible calm, sinister, forbidding, hellish. It had waited through centuries—and was still waiting, like the gigantic web of the Spider of Thirst.
Chapter IX.
On the Peak
Hopalong Cassidy had the most striking personality of all the men in his outfit; humorous, courageous to the point of foolishness, eager for fight or frolic, nonchalant when one would expect him to be quite otherwise, curious, loyal to a fault, and the best man with a Colt in the Southwest, he was a paradox, and a puzzle even to his most intimate friends. With him life was a humorous recurrence of sensations, a huge pleasant joke instinctively tolerated, but not worth the price cowards pay to keep it. He had come onto the range when a boy and since that time he had laughingly carried his life in his open hand, and although there had been many attempts to snatch it he still carried it there, and just as recklessly.
Quick in decisions and quick to suspect evil designs against him and his ranch, he was different from his foreman, whose temperament was more optimistic. When Buck had made him foreman of the line riders he had no fear that Meeker or his men would take many tricks, for his faith in Hopalong's wits and ability was absolute. He had such faith that he attended to what he had to do about the ranch house and did not appear on the line until he had decided to call on Meeker and put the question before him once and for all. If the H2 foreman did not admit the agreement and promise to abide by it then he would be told to look for trouble.
While Buck rode towards Lookout Peak, Hopalong dismounted at the line house perched on its top and found Red Connors seated on the rough bench by the door. Red, human firebrand both in hair and temper, was Hopalong's loyal chum—in the eyes of the other neither could do wrong. Red was cleaning his rifle, the pride of his heart, a wicked-shooting Winchester which used the Government cartridge containing seventy grains of powder and five hundred grains of lead. With his rifle he was as expert as his friend was with the Colt, and up to six hundred yards, its limit with accuracy, he could do about what he wished with it.
"Hullo, you," said Red, pleasantly. "You looks peevish."
"An' you look foolish. What you doing?"
"Minding my business."
"Hard work?" sweetly asked Hopalong, carelessly seating himself on the small wooden box which lay close to his friend.
"Hey, you!" cried Red, leaping up and hauling him away. "You bust them sights an' you'll be sorry! Ain't you got no sense?"
"Sights? What are you going to do with 'em?"
"Wear 'em 'round my neck for a charm! What'd you reckon I'd do with 'em!"
"Didn't know. I didn't think you'd put 'em on that thing," Hopalong replied, looking with contempt at his friend's rifle. "Honest, you ain't a-goin' to put 'em on that lead ranch, are you? You're like th' Indians—want a lot of shots to waste without re-loadin'."
"I ain't wasting no shots, an' I'm going to put sights on that lead ranch, too. These old ones are too coarse," Red replied, carefully placing the box out of danger. "Now you can sit down."
"Thanks; please can I smoke?"
Red grunted, pushed down the lever of the rifle, and began to re-assemble the parts, his friend watching the operation. When Red tried to slip the barrel into its socket Hopalong laughed and told him to first draw out the magazine, if he wanted to have any success.
The line foreman took a cartridge from the pile on the bench and compared it with one which he took from his belt, a huge, 45-caliber Sharps special, shooting five hundred and fifty grains of lead with one hundred and twenty grains of powder out of a shell over three inches long; a cartridge which shot with terrific force and for a great distance, the weight of the large ball assuring accuracy at long ranges. Beside this four-inch cartridge the Government ammunition appeared dwarfed.
"When are you going to wean yoreself from popping these musket caps, Red?" he asked, tossing the smaller cartridge away and putting his own back in his belt.
"Well, you've got gall!" snorted Red, going out for his cartridge. Returning with it he went back to work on his gun, his friend laughing at his clumsy fingers.
"Yore fingers are all thumbs, an' sore at that."
"Never mind my fingers. Have you seen Johnny around?"
"Yes; he was watching one of them new H2 Greasers. He'll go off th' handle one of these days, for he hates Greasers worse'n I do, an' that coffee face'll drive him to gun-play. He reminds me a whole lot of a bull-pup chained with a corral-ful of cats when there's Greasers around."
Red laughed and nodded. "Where's Lanky?"
"Johnny said he was at Number Four fixin' that saddle again. He ain't done nothin' for th' last month but fix it. Purty soon there won't be none of it left to fix."
"There certainly won't!"
"His saddle an' yore gun make a good pair."
"Let up about the gun. You can't say nothin' more about it without repeatin' yoreself."
"It's a sawed-off carbine. I'd ruther have a Spencer any day."
"You remind me a whole lot of a feller I once knowed," Red retorted.
"That so?" asked Hopalong, suspiciously. "Was he so nice?"
"No; he was a fool," Red responded, going into the house.
"Then that's where you got it, for they say it's catching."
Red stuck his head out of the door. "On second thought you remind me of another feller."
"You must 'a knowed some good people."
"An' he was a liar."
"Hullo, Hop Wah!" came from the edge of the hilltop and Hopalong wheeled to see Skinny Thompson approaching.
"What you doing?" Skinny asked, using his stock question