nized face to Tim, his chest rising. "_Hitch! Hitch!_"
he choked, fighting with all his will to master it. "_Hitch-chew!
Hitch-chew! Hitch-chew!_" he sneezed, loudly. There was a scramble below
and a ripple of mirth floated up to them.

"_Hitch-chew_?" jeered a voice. "What do we want to hit you for?"

"Look us over, children," invited another.

"Wait until the moon comes up," chuckled the third. "Be like knocking
the nigger baby down for Red an' the others. Ladies and gents: We'll now
have a little sketch entitled 'Shooting snipe by moonlight.'"

"Jack-snipe, too," laughed Pete. "Will somebody please hold the bag?"

The silence on the roof was profound and the three on the ground tried
again.

"Let me call yore attention to the trained coyotes, ladies an' gents,"
remarked Johnny in a deep, solemn voice. "Coyotes are not birds; they do
not roost on roofs as a general thing; but they are some intelligent an'
can be trained to do lots of foolish tricks. These ani-mules were--"

"Step this way, people; on-ly ten cents, two nickels," interrupted Pete.
"They bark like dogs, an' howl like hell."

"Shut up!" snapped Tim, angrily.

"After the moon comes up," said Hopalong, "when you fellers get tired
dodging, you can chuck us yore guns an' come down. An' don't forget that
this side of the house is much the safest," he warned.

"Go to hell!" snarled Duke, bitterly.

"Won't; they're laying for me down there."

Johnny crawled to the north end of the wall and, looking cautiously
around the corner, funnelled his hands: "On the roof, Red! On the roof!"

"Yes, dear," was the reply, followed by gun-shots.

"Hey! Move over!" snapped Tim, working towards the edge furthest from
the cheerful Red, whose bullets were not as accurate in the dark as they
promised to become in a few minutes when the moon should come up.

"Want to shove me off?" snarled Charley, angrily. "For heaven's sake,
Duke, do you want the whole earth?" he demanded of his second companion.

"You just bet yore shirt I do! An' I want a hole in it, too!"

"Ain't you got no sense?"

"Would I be up here if I had?"

"It's going to be hot as blazes up here when the sun gets high,"
cheerfully prophesied Tim: "an' dry, too," he added for a finishing
touch.

"We'll be lucky if we're live enough to worry about the sun's
heat--_say_, that was a _close_ one!" exclaimed Duke, frantically trying
to flatten a little more. "Ah, thought so--there's that blamed moon!"