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,