d there were any number of such within a hundred
yards,--the maker of the plain trail lay in wait. Smiling savagely
he worked backward and turning, struck off in a circle. He had no
compunctions whatever now about shooting the other player of the game.
It was not long before he came upon the same trail again and he started
another circle. A bullet _zipped_ past his ear and cut a twig not two
inches from his head. He fired at the smoke as he dropped, and then
wriggled rapidly backward, keeping as flat to the earth as he could.
Elkins had taken up his position in a thicket which stood in the centre
of a level patch of sand in the old bed of the river,--the bed it had
used five years before and forsaken at the time of the big flood when it
cut itself a new channel and made the U-bend which now surrounded this
piece of land on three sides. Even now, during the rainy season,
the thicket which sheltered Mr. Elkins was frequently an island in a
sluggish, shallow overflow.

"Hole up, blast you!" jeered Hopalong, hugging the ground. The second
bullet from Mr. Elkins' gun cut another twig, this one just over his
head, and he laughed insolently. "I ain't ascared to do the moving,
even if you are. Judging from the way you keep out o' sight the canned
oysters are in the can again. _I_ never did no ambushing, you coyote."

"You can't make remarks like that an' get away with 'em--I've knowed you
too long," retorted Elkins, shifting quickly, and none too soon. "You
went an' got Slim afore he was wide awake. I know _you_, all right."

Hopalong's surprise was but momentary, and his mind raced back over the
years. Who was this man Elkins, that he knew Slim Travennes? "Yo're a
liar, Elkins, an' so was the man who told you that!"

"Call me Ewalt," jeered the other, nastily. "Nobody'll hear it, an'
you'll not live to tell it. Ewalt, Tex Ewalt; call me that."

"So you've come back after all this time to make me get you, have you?
Well, I ain't a-going to shoot no buttons off you _this_ time. I allus
reckoned you learned something at Muddy Wells--but you'll learn it
here," Hopalong rejoined, sliding into a depression, and working with
great caution towards the dry river bed, where fallen trees and hillocks
of sand provided good cover in plenty. Everything was clear now and
despite the seriousness of the situation he could not repress a smile
as he remembered vividly that day at the carnival when Tex Ewalt came to
town with the determinatio