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  Inside, the guard was growling to himself, and Hopalong heard grease spattering. The man stepped to the door. Hopalong watched him walk off the porch to throw out some water. He stepped up on the porch as the man left it. When he turned, Hopalong was standing there with a gun in his hand.

  The guard gulped and stared. “Say, what th—! Who are you?” he demanded.

  “I’m Cassidy,” Hopalong said quietly; “dropped in for supper. Fixed enough for two?”

  The man stood there helplessly. He was a lanky man with his shirt sleeves rolled up to display a soiled red flannel undershirt. His legs were very bowed and he had a droopy mustache that seemed to droop more than ever now. “I—I reckon,” he said hoarsely. “You be keerful o’ that gun, mister. I ain’t done nothin’.”

  “Then unbuckle that belt an’ let her drop,” Hopalong replied pleasantly. “I’ve no mind to kill another man unless you force it on me.”

  The man let his belt drop, and Hopalong ordered him to turn around, then walked up and appropriated the belt and gun. Stepping to the door, he grasped the rifle and shucked the shells from it. “All right,” he said, “get the rest of it fixed, an’ enough for me.”

  While the man cooked, Hopalong sat where he could keep an eye on both trails. The man noticed it finally. “No use to look,” he said, gloomily. “Won’t be nobody along.”

  “I hope not,” Hopalong assured him. “I might have to shoot you so’s you wouldn’t interfere.”

  “Don’t do it!” the man pleaded. “If’n anybody should come, an’ I swear I don’t know who or why they would, I’ll set down on the floor an’ keep shet. I ain’t hungry for no lead, mister!”

  They sat opposite each other and ate in silence. The man kept glancing up, and when each time he found Hopalong looking into his eyes from his own frosty blue ones, the older man became more uncomfortable. “I ain’t tryin’ nothin’, Cassidy,” he said. “I ain’t no gun slick an’ ain’t huntin’ no trouble.”

  Hopalong pushed back from the table. “Look, old-timer,” he said sincerely, “if you got a horse, I’d say better throw a leg over him an’ light out—south.”

  “Sparr would kill me!” the man pleaded, his face gray. He stared at Hopalong, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “He’d kill me shore!”

  “Sparr’s goin’ to be so busy aroun’ home,” Hopalong replied, “that he won’t have time to chase you. Now you do like I say; unless”—he paused suddenly—“unless you want to do somethin’ for me.”

  “What would that be?” The older man’s eyes were cautious. Hopalong waited for a minute, thinking. It would do no harm, and if the message got through it might help. Rightly, he deduced that the guard was not too happy about his present situation and would be even less happy now he knew there was to be shooting—which Hopalong Cassidy’s presence guaranteed.

  “Ride to McClellan,” he said, “and tell the banker that Hopalong Cassidy is on the Circle J and some changes are bein’ made. Tell him he was recommended to me by Josh Ledbetter.”

  “You trust me to take that message?”

  “Maybe.” Hopalong let his cold blue eyes rest on the older man. “I’m givin’ you a chance to get out. This Circle J is goin’ to be red-laced hell in another day or so, an’ men are goin’ to die. You don’t look like a bad sort, an’ no reason why you should cash in for a thief like Avery Sparr.”

  The man swallowed, then rubbed his whiskered jaw. “All right,” he said, “I’ll do it. My hoss is right in the trees.”

  Hopalong waited while the man mounted, and watched him start. Then he got on his own horse and pushed back into the trees. It was late, and the riding had been hard. He found a secluded copse where he swung down from his horse and stripped off the saddle. In a few minutes he was bedded down and asleep.

  With the first light he was up. Not chancing a fire, he ate nothing. Rolling up his bed, he strapped it behind his saddle and stamped his boots well onto his feet. He checked his guns and wiped them carefully. He was now within three miles of the ranch headquarters, and intended to be watching when the crew turned out for work.

  This morning the buckskin started off with neck bowed and a step like a dancer. Hopalong warmed to the animal. “Cayuse,” he said softly, “you got the stuff. Maybe I can buy you off Thatcher. A hoss that can take what I gave you yesterday and come back in fine fettle this mornin’ is a cayuse worth havin’!”

  Within sight of the Circle J he swung down and led the horse back into a dense clump of evergreens, where he left it. Then he walked to a low knoll covered with pine and lay down on the pine-needle-carpeted ground. It was frosty, as it was apt to be at this altitude, and despite having no breakfast, he felt fine. If all went well he would have a good breakfast down there. What he wanted now was to see Avery Sparr or Arnold Soper, and see them face to face.

  The crew turned out, but slowly. He counted eight men in all, checking them by their dress. One, with a bandaged hand, would be Mowry. Recognizing the wolf in the lean gunman, Cassidy watched carefully where he went. Wounded or not, the man was dangerous. Nothing can be worse than a gun-slick tough whose reputation has been injured. For reputation among such men is not only a matter of pride, but a matter, often enough, of survival.

  After a while the men mounted and rode off. Only Mowry and a tall man whom Hopalong had not seen before stayed behind in the bunkhouse. Cassidy watched them go, seeing nothing of either Soper or Sparr. And then, even as he watched, a gray horse cantered into the yard and Soper dismounted. This must be the horse and rider Hoppy had seen near Elk Ridge.

  He looked up and spoke to somebody on the wide and deep porch that surrounded the house on three sides. “Yes, left late last night. Stopped in a line cabin on Beaver.” Then in reply to a question: “No, I saw nobody on the trail.”

  Avery Sparr stepped down off the porch. Hopalong knew him at once because of his height. He was a hard customer, and Cassidy gave them both a careful study through his glasses, although he was close enough to have called to them. Sparr said something to Soper, and the man in the gray suit turned swiftly. “Killed Barker?” There was astonishment in his voice.

  Hopalong got to his feet and walked back to his horse. He put the glasses in a saddle pocket, then swung into the saddle and walked his horse down off the knoll. The corner of the house was between him and the two men, and he could not be seen from the bunkhouse. He was within thirty feet of them before the sound of the walking horse made them look up. “Howdy, Sparr! Soper!” He gave them time to absorb it. “I’m Cassidy.”

  Neither man moved. Both stood shocked to immobility. His sudden appearance and his bold approach startled them and left them speechless. “Figgered I’d better come down an’ see my old friend Jordan,” he said quietly. “Heard you fellers were holin’ up here.”

  He swung down, keeping the horse between himself and them, then walked around in front of it and dropped the bridle. He knew the buckskin would stand perfectly.

  Avery Sparr’s every instinct urged him to reach for his gun and kill this man, but his native shrewdness restrained him.

  “Why, shore, Cassidy!” he said. “Heard the old man speak of you. You’ll be sorry to hear he’s mighty poorly, mighty poorly.”

  “Had a run-in with some o’ your boys yesterday,” Hopalong told him. “They braced me in the trail.”

  “Yeah, sorry that happened, Cassidy.” Sparr was completely at ease now, for already he was scheming ahead, planning, working things out. “We’ve had a sight of trouble with rustlers, an’ my boys are apt to get trigger happy when they see strangers on the range.”

  Both of them were ignoring the fact that it was Sim Thatcher who was originally braced, and that it had not taken place on Circle J range, but on Thatcher’s own land.

  “Dick inside? I’d like to see him.”

  “He’ll be glad to see you too,” Sparr said quietly; “but it can’t be for a couple of hours. He never wakes much before ten, an’ the doc wants him to get plenty of sleep.”

/>   His cold eyes met Hopalong’s and they held for a minute. Then his frozen, hard face cracked in a smile.

  “Had breakfast? We just et, an’ cook’s not cleaned up yet. Come on in.”

  Anson Mowry stood in the door of the bunkhouse staring in open-eyed disbelief. Hopalong Cassidy here! Being received as a guest! He started for the house, hopping mad, then slowed down. After all, his hand was in bad shape. It would be better to wait, to be careful.

  Avery Sparr understood the situation, and with surprising ease he went up the steps first, followed by Soper. It was one of those cases when allowing a guest to come in last was definitely the most polite way. Hopalong grinned to himself, but behind the frosty blue eyes he was thinking fast.

  The table was still a litter of dishes, and Sparr waved him to a place. Both men seated themselves, and Sparr called for coffee and breakfast for one. Hopalong looked up as the cook came in, then stopped, his mouth open. Standing in the door was one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen.

  Chapter 6

  BIZCO TAKES LEAD MEDICINE

  * * *

  Ironically enough, the first thing Hopalong thought of when he saw Pamela Jordan was how Bizco had laughed when he described her as all knees and freckles. No wonder he had laughed, and no wonder the description of her had stuck even in the mind of a dying outlaw, for this girl was slim, trim, and lovely. She was eighteen, but a woman in every sense. Not beautiful, but pretty, and with a strength and lithe awareness the West gives to its women.

  On her part she was even more astonished. She recognized him instantly, but somehow she had been expecting an older man. He was a man when she was still a child, yet girls come suddenly to womanhood; so suddenly, on occasion, that it leaves one gasping, and so it had been with her. Three years are not many in the life of a man, but the three years of a girl’s life from fifteen to eighteen can mean much.

  The man she saw was dressed no differently from any Western man except for the silver guns that she remembered so well. His face, already weather-beaten when she first knew him, was unchanged. If lines had deepened, she was not aware of it. Constant riding had trimmed him down, as it did all these men of the saddle. They rarely carried excess weight. There was visible within him some of that vitality which life against the wind and under the sun and rain builds in a man. He had resistance and strength, and in every move, every change of expression, there was the mark of the man he was.

  His smile was quick. “Howdy, Pam! It’s been a long time.”

  She had no idea what the situation was, and for an instant he was worried for fear some inadvertent or ill-considered remark might blow off a lid that Sparr had clamped on, and which Cassidy accepted as the best thing for the moment. A moment later and he knew he need not have worried. This girl had known her own trials, and she had grown with them.

  “It’s good to see you, Hoppy.”

  She came swiftly around the table to him and offered him both her hands. He took them and squeezed them gently, seeing the fear, doubt, puzzled worry, and hope that was in her eyes.

  “Are—are you going to be around long?”

  The question pleased him. It gave him a chance to make a reply he wanted to make. “Why, shore, Pam.”

  His eyes lifted to those of Avery Sparr.

  “I’ll be around until your dad is able to be up and around again, running things for himself.”

  Then he added, also for their information, “Sent word down to the bank at McClellan that I was comin’ here. Had some news for your dad from Josh Ledbetter and Buck, but that can wait.”

  “All right. See you later.” She turned swiftly away, and Sparr stopped her with his eyes. “When your dad wakes up, tell him I want to see him. I know Hopalong will want to see him, too, but he’d better be prepared for it. We don’t,” he said carefully, his eyes cold upon hers, “want him needlessly excited.”

  When she was gone, Hopalong started in on the food that had been placed before him, glad of the chance not to talk while he gave time to thinking this out. In the past few minutes he had acquired a new respect for Sparr. Whatever the man was planning here, he was not to be stampeded into hasty action that he might regret later. Hopalong had not missed the covert warning to Pamela and her father, and he could guess what Sparr might say when he had that brief talk with Dick Jordan before Hopalong entered.

  The situation was in his favor, he knew that. Had Sparr planned to kill him, he would have gambled at once, so obviously there was some reason why he would not be hurried. Too old in the ways of men to be fooled, Hopalong knew that Avery Sparr was not the man to be afraid. He was confident of his own gun skill and had the battles behind him to warrant that confidence.

  That he had kept his head this morning showed him to be a thinker as well as a man of action. It is not every man who can be faced with such a situation and not give rein to his first impulse. Avery Sparr knew the value of restraint, of calculation.

  Soper was yet an unknown quantity, and of that Hopalong wanted to know more. Above all, he was curious. Why had Soper lied to Sparr? For he had lied. The man had come down the trail at the same time Hopalong had come, yet for two nights he had been somewhere. And he had not mentioned turning off the trail. What was it that lay against or in the north wall of the Elks that interested Soper? Where had he been on those two nights?

  The man was unreadable. He was pleasant, and he knew how to make conversation, as he was doing now, talking smoothly and easily of range conditions, growing cattle in high altitudes, and the benefit of late rains on mountain grass. There was no false note in the man anywhere. A big, tough, hard-cased man, old in the ways of the West and of crime, a man cunning as a fox and vicious as a lobo wolf, a man who was definitely out for himself and after—what?

  There was no sign of neglect on the ranch. Hopalong had noticed that from the time he crossed the river. The few cattle he had seen looked good, and the stables and corrals were all in good shape. Nothing loose lay around the ranch yard. It gave no evidence that Sparr was planning a quick cleanup and getaway. No, the big gunman planned to stay.

  Hopalong sat back from his meal. “Good grub,” he said, smiling a little. “This country seems to favor good cooks. Sim Thatcher has a good one.”

  “Couldn’t say,” Sparr said. “We aren’t exactly neighborly. Been cattle missin’, we’ve lost our share, too, an’ some of the small outfits figger we’re responsible. Nothin’ to it.”

  “You say ‘our’—you mean you’re foreman here now?”

  “No.” Sparr put it to him bluntly: “Partner.”

  “Noticed a lot o’ young stuff wearin’ a Circle S. Your brand?”

  “Yeah.” Sparr felt irritation grow in him. “My brand.”

  “This partnership—any papers on file? Any notice given?”

  “Should there be?” Sparr shrugged. “Plenty of time for that. I’m still in this fairly small. Sort of runnin’ the show for Jordan.”

  “I see.”

  Hopalong reached for the pot then, and filled his coffee cup once more, taking his time. He would have a chance to talk to Jordan, but Sparr would be present. They would give him no chance to be alone with the man, and to insist would only be to precipitate trouble.

  If he was correct and the whole ranch was what they wanted, they would be trying to give the thing an appearance of being legitimate. Therefore they would probably wait until he was off the ranch to attempt his death. Their excuse in that could lie with the killing of Barker. They would send Mowry against him, and someone else, probably the same double tactics that killed Charley Kitchen. Kitchen had been a friend of his. They had been over the trail to Dodge together, the first time for each.

  Pamela came to the door. “Father will see you now.”

  Her eyes went from Sparr, who was rising, to Hopalong.

  “He was glad to know you had come, but he wants to know whether all the boys are with you, or if they are following?”

  The question brought Sparr up short, and Hopalong
saw his face change color. Cassidy concealed his pleasure behind a casual expression. The question had been a neat one, and showed Dick—or Pamela—was thinking. “I reckon Mesquite an’ Johnny are already here,” he lied. “Only a couple of the others comin’.”

  “What’s that for?” Sparr demanded, alert and puzzled.

  “Huh?” Hopalong’s expression of surprise was perfect. “You mean you are a partner an’ Dick never told you about the young stuff we were buyin’ from him for a drive? Deal made months ago,” he added, “for six hundred head of two-year-old stuff, some yearlin’s.”

  Avery Sparr was caught, and he knew it. Nothing had been said of this by anyone on the Circle J, yet it might be the truth. If it was not, he was fairly trapped by anything he might say. If it was true, and he had not been told, his status as a partner was questionable.

  “Oh? Yeah.”

  He finally got the words out and pushed from the room, leaving Hopalong with Soper.

  This was the man Hopalong wanted to know more about, but he was shrewd enough to leave the opening to Soper. Yet the man on the trail had been Soper. Of that he was positive.

  “Odd,” Soper suggested suddenly; “there is nothing in the ranch papers about any such deal.”

  Cassidy took a swallow of his coffee, then put the cup down. It was lukewarm. “Never made a paper deal in my life,” he said quietly, “an’ doubt if Dick ever made one with anybody he knew.” He threw a quick glance at Soper. “Why does it interest you? Another partner, or what?”

  Soper stiffened, for once at a loss, even if momentarily, at how to answer the question. Outside, he had allowed it to be known that while Sparr was becoming a partner, he was temporarily managing the ranch affairs for Jordan. However, he had a feeling that that would not go over so well with Hopalong Cassidy. “I’ve been helping,” he said, “with ranch business. Avery and I are working together.”