d 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 eye asked a question.

"No; he ain't in there yet," Hopalong replied.

"Did you look all over? Behind the 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 the 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, the 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 for it. Where are the
little herds now? Where are the cows that _we_ used to own?" he cried,
hotly. "What happens to a maverick-hunter now-a-days? By God, 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."

Cries of approbation arose on all sides, for his auditors ignored the
fact that their kind, by avarice a