Book: Bar 20 Days

C >> Clarence E. Mulford >> Bar 20 Days






CHAPTER IV

JOHNNY ARRIVES

Meanwhile Hopalong and Red quarrelled petulantly and damned the erring
Johnny with enthusiastic abandon, while Dent smiled at them and joked;
but his efforts at levity made little impression on the irate pair. Red,
true to his word, had turned up at the time set, in fact, he was half
an hour ahead of time, for which miracle he endeavored to take great and
disproportionate credit. Dent was secretly glad about the delay, for he
found his place lonesome. He thoroughly enjoyed the company of the two
gentlemen from the Bar-20, whose actions seemed to be governed by whims
and who appeared to lack all regard for consequences; and they squabbled
so refreshingly, and spent their money cheerfully. Now, if they would
only wind up the day by fighting! Such a finish would be joy indeed. And
speaking of fights, Dent was certain that Mr. Cassidy had been in one
recently, for his face bore marks that could only be acquired in that
way.

After supper the two guests had relapsed into a silence which endured
only as long as the pleasing fulness. Then the squabbling began again,
growing worse until they fell silent from lack of adequate expression.
Finally Red once again spoke of their absent friend.

"We oughtn't get peevish, Hoppy--he's only thirty-six hours late,"
suggested Red. "An' he might be a week," he added thoughtfully, as his
mind ran back over a long list of Johnny's misdeeds.

"Yes, he might. An' won't he have a fine cock-an'-bull tale to explain
it," growled Hopalong, reminiscently. "His excuses are the worst part of
it generally."

"Eh, does he--make excuses?" asked Dent, mildly surprised.

"He does to _us_," retorted Red savagely. "He's worse than a woman; take
him all in all an' you've got the toughest proposition that ever wore
pants. But he's a good feller, at that."

"Well, you've got a lot of nerve, you have!" retorted Hopalong. "You
don't want to say anything about the Kid--if there's anybody that can
beat him in being late an' acting the fool generally, it's you. An'
what's more, you know it!"

Red wheeled to reply, but was interrupted by a sudden uproar outside,
fluent swearing coming towards the house. The door opened with a bang,
admitting a white-faced, big-eyed man with one leg jammed through the
box he had landed on in dismounting.

"Gimme a drink, quick!" he shouted wildly, dragging the box over to
the bar with a cheerful disregard for chairs and other temporary
obstructions. "Gimme a drink!" he reiterated.

"Give you six hops in the neck!" yelled Red, missing and almost sitting
down because of the enthusiasm he had put into his effort. Johnny
side-stepped and ducked, and as he straightened up to ask for whys
and wherefores, Red's eyes opened wide and he paused in his further
intentions to stare at the apparition.

"Sick?" queried Hopalong, who was frightened.

"Gimme that drink!" demanded Johnny feverishly, and when he had it he
leaned against the bar and mopped his face with a trembling hand.

"What's the matter with you, anyhow?" asked Red, with deep anxiety.

"Yes; for God's sake, what's happened to you?" demanded Hopalong.

Johnny breathed deeply and threw back his shoulders as if to shake off
a weight. "Fellers, I had a cougar soft-footing after me in that
dark canyon, my cayuse ran away on a two-foot ledge up the
wall,_--an'--I--saw--a--ghost_!"

There was a respectful silence. Johnny, waiting a reasonable length of
time for replies and exclamations, flushed a bit and repeated his
frank and candid statement, adding a few adjectives to it. "_A real,
screeching, flying ghost_! An' I'm going _home_, an' I'm going to _stay_
there. I ain't never coming back no more, not for anything. Damn this
border country, _anyhow_!"

The silence continued, whereupon Johnny grew properly indignant. "You
act like I told you it was going to rain! Why don't you say something?
Didn't you hear what I said, you fools!" he asked pugnaciously. "Are you
in the habit of having a thing like that told you? Why don't you show
some interest, you dod-blasted, thick-skulled wooden-heads?"

Red looked at Hopalong, Hopalong looked at Red, and then they both
looked at Dent, whose eyes were fixed in a stare on Johnny.

"Huh!" snorted Hopalong, warily arising. "Was that all?" he asked,
nodding at Red, who also arose and began to move cautiously toward their
erring friend. "Didn't you see no more'n one ghost? Anybody that can see
one ghost, an' no more, is wrong somewhere. Now, stop, an' think; didn't
you see _two_?" He was advancing carefully while he talked, and Red was
now behind the man who saw one ghost.

"Why, you--" there was a sudden flurry and Johnny's words were cut short
in the melee.

"Good, Red! Ouch!" shouted Hopalong. "Look out! Got any rope, Dent?
Well, hurry up: there ain't no telling what he'll do if he's loose. The
mescal they sells down in this country ain't liquor--it's poison," he
panted. "An' he can't even stand whiskey!"

Finding the rope was easier 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 sense of humor.

"That ghost was plumb lucky," grunted Red, "an' so was the sea-captain,"
he finished as an afterthought, limping off toward the bar, slowly and
painfully followed by his disfigured companions. "One drink; then to
bed."

After Red had departed, Hopalong and Dent smoked a while and then,
knocking the ashes out of his pipe, Hopalong arose. "An' yet, Dent,
there are people that believe in ghosts," he remarked, with a vast and
settled contempt.

Dent gave critical scrutiny to the scratched bar for a moment. "Well,
the Greasers all say there _is_ a ghost in the San Miguel, though I
never saw it. But some of them have seen it, an' no Greasers ride that
trail no more."

"Huh!" snorted Hopalong. "Some Greasers must have filled the Kid up on
ghosts while he was filling hisself up on mescal. Ghosts? R-a-t-s!"

"It shows itself only to Greasers, an' then only on Friday nights,"
explained Dent, thoughtfully. This was Friday night. Others had seen
that ghost, but they were all Mexicans; now that a "white" man of
Johnny's undisputed calibre had been so honored Dent's skepticism
wavered and he had something to think about for days to come. True,
Johnny was not a Greaser; but even ghosts might make mistakes once in a
while.

Hopalong laughed, dismissing the subject from his mind as being beneath
further comment. "Well, we won't argue--I'm too tired. An' I'm sorry you
got that eye, Dent."

"Oh, that's all right," hastily assured the store-keeper, smiling
faintly. "I was just spoiling for a fight, an' now I've had it. Feels
sort of good. Yes, first thing in the morning--breakfast'll be ready
soon as you are. Good-night."

But the proprietor couldn't sleep. Finally he arose and tiptoed into
the room where Johnny lay wrapped in the sleep of the exhausted. After
cautious and critical inspection, which was made hard because of his
damaged eye, he tiptoed back to his bunk, shaking his head slowly. "He
wasn't drunk," he muttered. "He saw that ghost all right; an' I'll bet
everything I've got on it!"



At daybreak three quarrelling punchers rode homeward and after a
monotonous journey arrived at the bunk house and reported. It took
them two nights adequately to describe their experiences to an envious
audience. The morning after the telling of the ghost story things began
to happen. Red starting it by erecting a sign.


NOTISE--NO GHOSTS ALOWED


An exuberant handful of the outfit watched him drive the last nail and
step back to admire his work, and the running fire of comment covered
all degrees of humor, and promised much hilarity in the future at the
expense of the only man on the Bar-20 who had seen a ghost.

In a week Johnny and his acute vision had become a bye-word in that part
of the country and his friends had made it a practice to stop him and
gravely discuss spirit manifestations of all kinds. He had thrashed Wood
Wright and been thrashed by Sandy Lucas in two beautiful and memorable
fights and was only waiting to recover from the last affair before
having the matter out with Rich Finn. These facts were beginning to have
the effect he strove for; though Cowan still sold a new concoction of
gin, brandy, and whiskey which he called "Flying Ghost," and which he
proudly guaranteed would show more ghosts per drink than any liquor
south of the Rio Grande--and some of his patrons were eager to back up
his claims with real money.

This was the condition of affairs when Hopalong Cassidy strolled into
Cowan's and forgot his thirst in the story being told by a strange
Mexican. It was Johnny's ghost, without a doubt, and when he had
carelessly asked a few questions he was convinced that Johnny had really
seen something. On the way home he cogitated upon it and two points
challenged his intelligence with renewed insistence: the ghost showed
itself only on Friday, and then only to "Greasers." His suspicious mind
would not rest until he had reviewed the question from all sides, and
his opinion was that there was something more than spiritual about the
ghost of the San Miguel--and a cold, practical reason for it.

When he rode into the corral at the ranch he saw that another sign had
been put on the corral wall. He had destroyed the first, speaking his
mind in full at the time. He swept his gloved hand upward with a rush,
tore the flimsy board from its fastenings, broke it to pieces across
his saddle, and tossed the fragments from him. He was angry, for he had
warned the outfit that they were carrying the joke too far, that Johnny
was giving way to hysterical rage more frequently, and might easily do
something that they all would regret. And he felt sorry for the Kid; he
knew what Johnny's feelings were and he made up his mind to start a few
fights himself if the persecution did not cease. When he stepped into
the bunk house and faced his friends they listened to a three-minute
speech that made them squirm, and as he finished talking the deep voice
of the foreman endorsed the promises he had just heard made, for Buck
had entered the gallery without being noticed. The joke had come to an
end.

When Johnny rode in that evening he was surprised to find Hopalong
waiting for him a short distance from the corral and he replied to his
friend's gesture by riding over to him. "What's up now?" he asked.

"Come along with me. I want to talk to you for a few minutes," and
Hopalong led the way toward the open, followed by Johnny, who was more
or less suspicious. Finally Hopalong stopped, turned, and looked his
companion squarely in the eyes. "Kid, I'm in dead earnest. This ain't
no fool joke--now you tell me what that ghost looked like, how he acted,
an' all about it. I mean what I say, because now I know that you saw
_something_. If it wasn't a ghost it was made to look like one, anyhow.
Now go ahead."

"I've told you a dozen times already," retorted Johnny, his face
flushing. "I've begged you to believe me an' told you that I wasn't
fooling. How do I know you ain't now? I'm not going to tell--"

"Hold on; yes, you are. Yo're going to tell it slow, an' just like you
saw it," Hopalong interrupted hastily. "I know I've doubted it, but who
wouldn't! Wait a minute--I've done a heap of thinking in the past few
days an' I know that you saw a ghost. Now, everybody knows that there
ain't no such thing as ghosts; then what was it you saw? There's a game
on, Kid, an' it's a dandy; an' you an' me are going to bust it up an'
get the laugh on the whole blasted crowd, from Buck to Cowan."

Johnny's suspicions left him with a rush, for his old Hoppy was one man
in a thousand, and when he spoke like that, with such sharp decision,
Johnny knew what it meant. Hopalong listened intently and when the short
account was finished he put out his hand and smiled.

"We're the fools, Kid; not you. There's something crooked going on in
that canyon, an' I know it! But keep mum about what we think."

Johnny lost his grouch so suddenly and beamed upon his friends with such
a superior air that they began to worry about what was in the wind.
The suspense wore on them, for with Hopalong's assistance, Johnny might
spring some game on them all that would more than pay up for the fun
they had enjoyed at his expense; and the longer the suspense lasted the
worse it became. They never lost sight of him while he was around and
Hopalong had to endure the same surveillance; and it was no uncommon
thing to see small groups of the anxious men engaged in deep discussion.
When they found that Buck must have been told and noticed his smile was
as fixed as Hopalong's or Johnny's, they were certain that trouble of
some nature was in store for them.

Several weeks later Buck Peters drew rein and waited for a stranger to
join him.

"Howdy. Is yore name Peters?" asked the newcomer, sizing him up in one
trained glance.

"Well, who are you, an' what do you want?"

"I want to see Peters, Buck Peters. That yore name?"

"Yes; what of it?"

"My name's Fox. Old Jim Lane gave me a message for you," and the
stranger spoke earnestly to some length. "There; that's the situation.
We've got to have shrewd men that they don't know an' won't suspect.
Lane wants to pay a couple of yore men their wages for a month or two.
He said he was shore he could count on you to help him out."

"He's right; he can. I don't forget favors. I've got a couple of men
that--there's one of 'em now. Hey, Hoppy! Whoop-e, Hoppy!"

Mr. Cassidy arrived quickly, listened eagerly, named Red and Johnny
to accompany him, overruled his companions by insisting that if Johnny
didn't go the whole thing was off, carried his point, and galloped off
to find the lucky two, his eyes gleaming with anticipation and joy. Fox
laughed, thanked the foreman, and rode on his way north; and that night
three cow-punchers rode south, all strangely elated. And the friends who
watched them go heaved signs of relief, for the reprisals evidently were
to be postponed for a while.



CHAPTER V

THE GHOST OF THE SAN MIGUEL

Juan Alvarez had not been in San Felippe since Dick Martin left, which
meant for over a month. Martin was down the river looking for a man who
did not wish to be found; and some said that Martin cared nothing about
international boundaries when he wanted any one real bad. And there was
that geologist who wore blue glasses and was always puttering around in
the canyon and hammering chips of rock off the steep walls; he must have
slipped one noon, because his body was found on a flat boulder at the
edge of the stream. Manuel had found it and wanted to be paid for his
trouble in bringing it to town--but Manuel was a fool. Who, indeed,
would pay good money for a dead Gringo, especially after he was dead?
And there were three cow-punchers holding a herd of 6-X cattle up
north, an hour or so from the town. They wanted to buy steers from Senor
Rodriguez, but said that he was a robber and threatened to cut his ears
off. Cannot a man name his own price? These cow-punchers liked to get
drunk and gallop through San Felippe, shooting like crazy men. They got
drunk one Friday night and went shouting and singing to the Big Bend in
the canyon to see the flying ghost, and they called it names and fired
off their pistols and sang loudly; and for a week they insulted all the
Mexicans in town by calling them liars and cowards. Was it the fault
of any one that the ghost would show itself only to Mexicans? Oh, these
Gringos--might the good God punish them for their sins!

Thus the peons complained to the padre while they kept one eye open for
the advent of the rowdy cow-punchers, who always wanted to drink, and
then to fight with some one, either with fists or pistols. Why should
any one fight with them, especially with such things as fists?

"Let them fight among themselves. What have you to do with heretics?"
reproved the good padre, who ostracized himself from the pleasant parts
of the wide world that he might make easier the life and struggles of
his ignorant flock. "God is not hasty--He will punish in His own way
when it best suits Him. And perhaps you will profit much if you are more
regular to mass instead of wasting the cool hours of the morning in bed.
Think well of what I have said, my children."

But the cow-punchers were not punished and they swore they would not
leave the vicinity until they had all the steers they wanted, and at
their own price. And one night their herd stampeded and was checked
only in time to save it from going over the canyon's edge. And for some
reason Sanchez kept out of the padre's way and did not go to confess
when he should, for the padre spoke plainly and set hard obligations for
penance.

The cow-punchers swore that it had been done by some Mexican and said
that they would come to town some day soon and kill three Mexicans
unless the guilty one was found and brought to them. Then the padre
mounted his donkey and went out to them to argue and they finally told
him they would wait for two weeks. But the padre was too smart for
them--he sent a messenger to find Senor Dick Martin, and in one week
Senor Martin came to town. There was no fight. The Gringo rowdies were
cowards at heart and Martin could not shoot them down in cold blood,
and he could not arrest them, because he was not a policeman or even a
sheriff, but only a revenue officer, which was a most foolish law. But
he watched them all the time and wanted them to fight--there was no more
shooting or drunkenness in town. Nobody wanted to fight Senor Martin,
for he was a great man. He even went so far as to talk with them about
it and wave his arms, but they were as frightened at him as little
children might be.

So the Mexicans gossiped and exulted, some of the bolder of them even
swaggering out to the Gringo camp; but Martin drove them back again,
saying he would not allow them to bully men who could not retaliate,
which was right and fair. Then, afraid to go away and leave the mad
cow-punchers so close to town, he ordered them to drive their herd
farther east, nearer to Dent's store, and never to return to San Felippe
unless they needed the padre; and they obeyed him after a long talk.
After seeing them settled in their new camp, which was on Monday
morning, Martin returned to San Felippe and told the padre where he
could be found and then rode away again. San Felippe celebrated for
a whole day and two Mexican babies were christened after Senor Dick
Martin, which was honor all around.

Friday, when Manuel went over to spy upon the cow-punchers in their new
camp, he found them so drunk that they could not stand, and before he
crept away at dusk two of them were sleeping like gorged snakes and the
third was firing off his revolver at random, which diversion had not a
little to do with Manuel's departure.

When Manuel crept away he headed straight for a crevice near the wall of
the canyon at the Big Bend and, reaching it, looked all around and then
dropped into it. Not long thereafter another Mexican appeared, this one
from San Felippe, and also disappeared into the crevice. As darkness
fell Manuel reappeared with something under his jacket and a moment
later a light gleamed at the base of a slender sapling which grew on the
edge of the canyon wall and leaned out over the abyss. It was cleverly
placed, for only at one spot on the Mexican side of the distant Rio
Grande could it be seen--the high canyon walls farther down screened it
from any one who might be riding on the north bank of the river. In a
moment there came an answering twinkle and Manuel, covering the lantern
with a blanket, was swallowed up in the darkness of the crevice.

Without a trace of emotion, Dick Martin, from his place of concealment,
caught the answering gleam, and he watched Manuel disappear. "Cassidy
was right in every point; Lewis or Sayre couldn't 'a' done this
better. I hope he won't be late," he muttered, and settled himself more
comfortably to wait for the cue for action, smiling as the moon poked
its rim over the low hills to his right. "This means promotion for me,
or I've very much mistaken," he chuckled.

Hopalong was not late and as soon as it was dark he and his companions
stole into the canyon on foot. They felt their way down the east end of
the trail, not far from Dent's, toward the Big Bend, which they gained
without a mishap. Johnny was sent up to a place they had noticed and
marked in their memories at the time they had rioted down to defy the
ghost. He was to stop any one trying to escape up the San Felippe end
of the canyon trail, and his confidence in his ability to do this was
exuberant. Hopalong and Red slowly and laboriously worked their way down
the perilous path leading to the bottom, forded the stream, and crept up
the other side, where they found cover not far from a wide crack in the
canyon wall. Upon the occasion of their hilarious visit to the Big Bend
they had observed that a faint trail led to the crack and had cogitated
deeply upon this fact.

Three hours passed before the watchers in and above the canyon were
rewarded by anything further; and then a light flickered far down the
canyon and close to the edge of the stream. Immediately strange noises
were heard and suddenly the ghost swung out of the opening in the rock
wall near Hopalong and Red and danced above their heads, while the
shrieking which had so frightened Johnny and his horse filled the canyon
with uproar and sent Martin wriggling nearer to the crevice which he had
watched so closely. The noise soon ceased, but the ghost danced on, and
the sound of men stumbling along the rocky ledge bordering the stream
became more and more audible. Four were in the party and they all
carried bulky loads on their backs and grunted with pleasure and
relief as they entered the entrance in the wall. When the last man had
disappeared and the noise of their passing had died out, Johnny's rope
sailed up and out, and the ghost swayed violently and then began to sag
in an unaccountable manner towards the trail as the owner of the rope
hitched its free end around a spur of rock and made it fast. Then he
feverishly scrambled down the steep path to join his friends.

Hopalong and Red, wriggling on their stomachs towards the crack in the
wall, paused in amazement and stared across the canyon; and then the
former chuckled and whispered something in his companion's ear. "That
was why he lugged his rope along! He's just idiot enough to want
a souveneer an' plaything at the risk of losing the game. Come
on!--they'll tumble to what's up an' get away if we don't hustle."

When the two punchers cautiously and noiselessly entered the crack
and felt their way along its rock walls they heard fluent swearing in
Spanish by the man who worked the ghost, and who could not understand
its sudden ambition to take root. It was made painfully clear to him
a moment later when a pair of brawny hands reached out of the darkness
behind him and encircled his throat a hand's width below his gleaming
cigarette. Another pair used cords with deftness and despatch and he was
left by himself to browse upon the gag when all his senses returned.

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