more coming up rapidly from all directions. Buzzards know well where
food can be found.

As Hopalong leaned back against a rock he was hit in the thigh by a
ricochet that tore its way out, whirling like a circular saw, a span
above where it entered. The wound was very nasty, being ripped twice
the size made by an ordinary shot, and it bled profusely. Skinny
crawled over and attended to it, making a tourniquet of his
neckerchief and clumsily bandaging it with a strip torn from his
shirt.

"Yore shore lucky, yu are," he grumbled as he made his way back to
his post, where he vented his rancor by emptying the semi-depleted
magazine of his Winchester at the knoll.

Hopalong began to sing and shout and he talked of Jimmy and his
childhood, interspersing the broken narrative with choice selections
as sung in the music halls of Leavenworth and Abilene. He wound up by
yelling and struggling, and Skinny had his hands full in holding him.

"Hopalong! Cassidy! Come out of that! Keep quiet-yu'll shore git
plugged if yu don't stop that plungin'. For gosh sake, did yu hear
that?" A bullet viciously hissed between them and flattened out on a
near-by rock; others cut their way through the chaparral to the sound
of falling twigs, and Skinny threw himself on the struggling man and
strapped Hopalong with his belt to the base of a honey mesquite that
grew at his side.

"Hold still, now, and let that bandage alone. Yu allus goes off di'
range when yu gets plugged," he complained. He cut down a cactus and