CHAPTER IV
JOHNNY ARRIVES
Meanwhile Hopalong and Red quarrelled petulantly and damned the erringJohnny 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 halfan hour ahead of time, for which miracle he endeavored to take great anddisproportionate credit. Dent was secretly glad about the delay, for hefound his place lonesome. He thoroughly enjoyed the company of the twogentlemen from the Bar-20, whose actions seemed to be governed by whimsand who appeared to lack all regard for consequences; and they squabbledso refreshingly, and spent their money cheerfully. Now, if they wouldonly wind up the day by fighting! Such a finish would be joy indeed. Andspeaking of fights, Dent was certain that Mr. Cassidy had been in onerecently, for his face bore marks that could only be acquired in thatway.
After supper the two guests had relapsed into a silence which enduredonly 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 hismind 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 explainit," growled Hopalong, reminiscently. "His excuses are the worst part ofit generally."
"Eh, does he--make excuses?" asked Dent, mildly surprised.
"He does to _us_," retorted Red savagely. "He's worse than a woman; takehim all in all an' you've got the toughest proposition that ever worepants. But he's a good feller, at that."
"Well, you've got a lot of nerve, you have!" retorted Hopalong. "Youdon't want to say anything about the Kid--if there's anybody that canbeat 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 thebox he had landed on in dismounting.
"Gimme a drink, quick!" he shouted wildly, dragging the box over tothe bar with a cheerful disregard for chairs and other temporaryobstructions. "Gimme a drink!" he reiterated.
"Give you six hops in the neck!" yelled Red, missing and almost sittingdown because of the enthusiasm he had put into his effort. Johnnyside-stepped and ducked, and as he straightened up to ask for whysand wherefores, Red's eyes opened wide and he paused in his furtherintentions to stare at the apparition.
"Sick?" queried Hopalong, who was frightened.
"Gimme that drink!" demanded Johnny feverishly, and when he had it heleaned 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 offa weight. "Fellers, I had a cougar soft-footing after me in thatdark canyon, my cayuse ran away on a two-foot ledge up thewall,_--an'--I--saw--a--ghost_!"
There was a respectful silence. Johnny, waiting a reasonable length oftime for replies and exclamations, flushed a bit and repeated hisfrank 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 thisborder country, _anyhow_!"
The silence continued, whereupon Johnny grew properly indignant. "Youact 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 youin the habit of having a thing like that told you? Why don't you showsome interest, you dod-blasted, thick-skulled wooden-heads?"
Red looked at Hopalong, Hopalong looked at Red, and then they bothlooked 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 theirerring friend. "Didn't you see no more'n one ghost? Anybody that can seeone ghost, an' no more, is wrong somewhere. Now, stop, an' think; didn'tyou see _two_?" He was advancing carefully while he talked, and Red wasnow behind the man who saw one ghost.
"Why, you--" there was a sudden flurry and Johnny's words were cut shortin 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. Themescal they sells down in this country ain't liquor--it's poison," hepanted. "An' he can't even stand whiskey!"
Finding the rope was easier than finding a place to put it, and theunequal battle raged across the room and into the next, where it soundedas if the house were falling down. Johnny's voice was shrill and full ofvexation and his words were extremely impolite and lacked censoring.His feet appeared to be numerous and growing rapidly, judging from theamount of territory they covered and defended, and Red joyfully kickedHopalong 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 withgreat earnestness to be allowed to apply it to parts of Johnny'sthrashing anatomy. But as the flanks continued to change withbewildering swiftness he begged in vain, and began to make suggestionsand give advice pleasing to the three combatants. Dent knew just howit should be done, and was generous with the knowledge until Johnnyzealously planted five knuckles on his one good eye, when the engagementbecame general.
The table skidded through the door on one leg and caromed off the bar ata graceful angle, collecting three chairs and one sand-box cuspidor onthe way. The box on Johnny's leg had long since departed, as Hopalong'sshin could testify. One chair dissolved unity and distributed itselflavishly over the room, while the bed shrunk silently and folded itselfon top of Dent, who bucked it up and down with burning zeal and finallyhad sense enough to crawl from under it. He immediately celebrated hisliberation by getting a strangle hold on two legs, one of which happenedto be the personal property of Hopalong Cassidy; and the battle raged ona lower plane. Red raised one hand as he carefully traced a neck to itsown proper head and then his steel fingers opened and swooped down andshut off the dialect. Hopalong pushed Dent off him and managed to catchJohnny's flaying arm on the third attempt, while Dent made tentativesorties against Johnny's spurred boots.
"Phew! Can he fight like that when he's sober?" reverently askedDent, seeing how close his fingers could come to his gaudy eye withouttouching 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 tenderlyflirted with a raw shin. "It's the mescal. I'm going to slip some ofthat stuff into Pete's cayuse some of these days," he promised, happywith 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 andpainfully followed by his disfigured companions. "One drink; then tobed."
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 andsettled 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 Inever saw it. But some of them have seen it, an' no Greasers ride thattrail no more."
"Huh!" snorted Hopalong. "Some Greasers must have filled the Kid up onghosts 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 seenthat ghost, but they were all Mexicans; now that a "white" man ofJohnny's undisputed calibre had been so honored Dent's skepticis
mwavered 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 awhile.
Hopalong laughed, dismissing the subject from his mind as being beneathfurther comment. "Well, we won't argue--I'm too tired. An' I'm sorry yougot that eye, Dent."
"Oh, that's all right," hastily assured the store-keeper, smilingfaintly. "I was just spoiling for a fight, an' now I've had it. Feelssort of good. Yes, first thing in the morning--breakfast'll be readysoon as you are. Good-night."
But the proprietor couldn't sleep. Finally he arose and tiptoed intothe room where Johnny lay wrapped in the sleep of the exhausted. Aftercautious and critical inspection, which was made hard because of hisdamaged eye, he tiptoed back to his bunk, shaking his head slowly. "Hewasn't drunk," he muttered. "He saw that ghost all right; an' I'll beteverything I've got on it!"