t, and knelt at his friend's side.

Edwards, angered almost to the point of killing, ordered the crowd
to stand against the wall, and laughed viciously when he saw two men
senseless on the floor. "Hope he beat in yore heads!" he gritted,
savagely. "Harlan, put yore paws up in sight or I'll drill you clean!
Now climb over an' get in line--quick!"

Johnny moaned and opened his eyes. "Did--did I--get him?"

"No; but he gimleted you, all right," Hopalong replied. "You'll come
'round if you keep quiet." He arose, his face hard with the desire to
kill. "I'm coming back for _you_, Harlan, after I get yore friend! An'
all the rest of you pups, too!"

"Get me out of here," whispered Johnny.

"Shore enough, Kid; but keep quiet," replied Hopalong, picking him up in
his arms and moving carefully towards the door. "We'll get him, Johnny;
an' all the rest, too, when----" The voice died out in the direction of
Jackson's and the marshal, backing to the front door, slipped out and to
one side, running backward, his eyes on the saloon.

"Yore day's about over, Harlan," he muttered. "There's going to be some
few funerals around here before many hours pass."

When he reached the store he found the owner and two Double-Arrow
punchers taking care of Johnny. "Where's Hopalong?" he asked.

"Gone to tell his foreman," replied Jackson. "Hey, youngster, you let
them bandages alone! Hear me?"

"Hullo, Kansas," remarked John Bartlett, foreman of the Double-Arrow. "I
come nigh getting yore man; somebody rode past me like a streak in the
dark, so I just ups an' lets drive for luck, an' so did he. I heard him
cuss an' I emptied my gun after him."

"The rest was a-passing the word along to ride in when I left the line,"
remarked one of the other punchers. "How you feeling now, Johnny?"

CHAPTER XVI

THE END OF THE TRAIL

The rain slanted down in sheets and the broken plain, thoroughly
saturated, held the water in pools or sent it down the steep sides of
the arroyo, to feed the turbulent flood which swept along the bottom,
foam-flecked and covered with swiftly moving driftwood. Around a bend
in the arroyo, where the angry water flung itself against the ragged
bulwark of rock and flashed away in a gleaming line of foam, a horseman
appeared bending low in the saddle for better protection against
the storm. He rode along the edge of the stream on the farther bank,
opposite the steep bluff on the northern side, forcing his wounded and
ja