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Harlan’s thick neck grew crimson and his eyes hard. “Lookin’ fer something?” he asked with bitter sarcasm, his hands under the bar. Johnny grinned hopefully and a sudden tenseness took possession of him as he watched for the first hostile move.

“Yes,” Hopalong replied coolly, appraising Harlan’s attitude and look in one swift glance, “but it ain’t here, now. Johnny, get out,” he ordered, backing after his companion, and safely outside, the two walked towards Jackson’s store, Johnny complaining about the little time spent in the Oasis.

As they entered the store they saw Edwards, whose eyes asked a question.

“No; he ain’t in there yet,” Hopalong replied.

“Did you look all over? Behind th’ bar?” Edwards asked, slowly. “He can’t get out of town through that cordon you’ve got strung around it, an’ he ain’t nowhere else. Leastwise, I couldn’t find him.”

“Come on back!” excitedly exclaimed Johnny, turning towards the door. “You didn’t look behind th’ bar! Come on–bet you ten dollars that’s where he is!”

“Mebby yo’re right, Kid,” replied Hopalong, and the marshal’s nodding head decided it.

In the saloon there was strong language, and Jack Quinn, expert skinner of other men’s cows, looked inquiringly at the proprietor. “What’s up now, Harlan?”

The proprietor laughed harshly but said nothing–taciturnity was his one redeeming trait. “Did you say cigars?” he asked, pushing a box across the bar to an impatient customer. Another beckoned to him and he leaned over to hear the whispered request, a frown struggling to show itself on his face. “Nix; you know my rule. No trust in here.”

But the man at the far end of the line was unlike the proprietor and he prefaced his remarks with a curse. “I know what’s up! They want Jerry Brown, that’s what! An’ I hopes they don’t get him, th’ bullies!”

“What did he do? Why do they want him?” asked the man who had wanted trust.

“Skinning. He was careless or crazy, working so close to their ranch houses. Nobody that had any sense would take a chance like that,” replied Boston, adept at sleight-of-hand with cards and very much in demand when a frame-up was to be rung in on some unsuspecting stranger. His one great fault in the eyes of his partners was that he hated to divvy his winnings and at times had to be coerced into sharing equally.

“Aw, them big ranches make me mad,” announced the first speaker. “Ten years ago there was a lot of little ranchers, an’ every one of ’em had his own herd, an’ plenty of free grass an’ water fer it. Where are th’ little herds now? Where are th’ cows that we used to own?” he cried, hotly. “What happens to a maverick-hunter, nowadays? If a man helps hisself to a pore, sick dogie he’s hunted down! It can’t go on much longer, an’ that’s shore.”

Slivers Lowe leaped up from his chair. “Yo’re right, Harper! Dead right! I was a little cattle owner onct, so was you, an’ Jerry, an’ most of us!” Slivers found it convenient to forget that fully half of his small herd had perished in the bitter and long winter of five years before, and that the remainder had either flowed down his parched throat or been lost across the big round table near the bar. Not a few of his cows were banked in the East under Harlan’s name.

The rear door opened slightly and one of the loungers looked up and nodded. “It’s all right Jerry. But get a move on!”

“Here, you!” called Harlan, quickly bending over the trap door, “Lively!“

Jerry was halfway to the proprietor when the front door swung open and Hopalong, closely followed by the marshal, leaped into the room, and immediately thereafter the back door banged open and admitted Johnny. Jerry’s right hand was in his side coat pocket and Johnny, young and self-confident, and with a lot to learn, was certain that he could beat the fugitive on the draw.