Mr. Connors obeyed the summons and peered out cautiously. “I can't see him, nohow; where is the coyote?”
“Over there in that little chaparral; see him now? There! See him moving. Do you mean to tell me—”
“Yep; I see him, all right. You watch,” was the reply. “He's just over nine hundred—where's yore Sharps?” He took the weapon, glanced at the Buffington sight, which he found to be set right, and aimed carefully.
Hopalong blinked through another hole as his friend fired and saw the Indian flop down and crawl aimlessly about on hands and knees. “What's he doing now, Red?”
“Playing marbles, you chump; an' here goes for his agate,” replied the man with the Sharps, firing again. “There! Gee!” he exclaimed, as a bullet hummed in through the window he had quitted for the moment, and thudded into the wall, making the dry adobe fly. It had missed him by only a few inches and he now crept along the floor to the rear of the room and shoved his rifle out among the branches of a stunted mesquite which grew before a fissure in the wall. “You keep away from that windy for a minute, Hoppy,” he warned as he waited.
A terror-stricken lizard flashed out of the fissure and along the wall where the roof had fallen in and flitted into a hole, while a fly buzzed loudly and hovered persistently around Red's head, to the rage of that individual. “Ah, ha!” he grunted, lowering the rifle and peering through the smoke. A yell reached his ears and he forthwith returned to his window, whistling softly.
Evidently Mr. Cassidy's eyes were better and his temper sweeter, for he hummed “Dixie” and then jumped to “Yankee Doodle,” mixing the two airs with careless impartiality, which was a sign that he was thinking deeply. “Wonder what ever became of Powers, Red. Peculiar feller, he was.”
“In jail, I reckon, if drink hasn't killed him.”
“Yes; I reckon so,” and Mr. Cassidy continued his medley, which prompted his friend quickly to announce his unqualified disapproval.
“You can make more of a mess of them two songs than anybody I ever heard murder 'em! Shut up!”—and the concert stopped, the vocalist venting his feelings at an Indian, and killing the horse instead.