"Huh; I reckoned so!" snorted Hopalong sarcastically, as he shook hands
all around. "You all know where to find us--drop in an' see us when you
get down our way," he invited.

"Sorry you can't stay longer, Cassidy," remarked Dave, as his friend
mounted. "But come up again soon--an' be shore to tell all the boys we
was asking for 'em," he called.

Considering the speed with which Hopalong started for Wallace's, he
might have been expecting a relay of "quarter" horses to keep it going,
but he pulled up short at the tent. Such inconsistency is trying to the
temper of the best-mannered horse, and this particular animal was not in
the least good-mannered, wherefore its rider was obliged to soothe its
resentment in his own peculiar way, listening meanwhile to the loud and
impassioned voice of the evangelist haranguing his small audience.

"I wonder," said Hopalong, glancing through the door, "if them friends
of mine reckon I'm any ascared to go in that tent? Huh, I'll just show
'em anyhow!" whereupon he dismounted, flung the reins over his horse's
head, and strode through the doorway.

The nearest seat, a bench made by placing a bottom board of the
evangelist's wagon across two up-ended boxes, was close enough to the
exhorter and he dropped into it and glanced carelessly at his nearest
neighbor. The carelessness went out of his bearing as his eyes fastened
themselves in a stare on the man's neck-kerchief. Hopalong was hardened
to awful sights and at his best was not an artistic soul, but the
villainous riot of fiery crimson, gaudy yellow, and pugnacious and
domineering green which flaunted defiance and insolence from the
stranger's neck caused his breath to hang over one count and then come