Twenty minutes passed and then two puffs of smoke sailed against the sky, Red replying. Then half a dozen puffs burst into sight. A faint shout came to Red's ears and he smiled, for his friend was safe.
As Hopalong gained the chaparral he felt himself heartily kicked and, wheeling pugnaciously, looked into Buck Peters' scowling face. "Yo're a healthy fool!" growled the foreman. "Ain't you got no sense at all? Hereafter you flit over that pasture after dark, d'y hear!"
"He's th' biggest fool I ever saw, an' th' coolest," said a voice in the chaparral at the left.
"Why, hullo, Meeker," Hopalong laughed, turning from Buck. "How do you like our little party now?"
"I'm getting tired of it, an' it's some costly for me," grumbled the H2 foreman. "Bet them skunks in Eagle have cleaned out every head I owned." Then he added as an afterthought: "But I don't care a whole lot if I can see this gang wiped out—Antonio is th' coyote I'm itching to stop."
"He'll be stopped," replied Hopalong. "Hey, Buck, Red's shore thirsty."
"He can stay thirsty, then. An' don't you try to take no water to him. You stay off that pasture during daylight."
"But it was all my fault—" Hopalong began, and then he was off like a shot across the open, leaping gullies and dodging around bowlders.
"Here you!" roared Buck, and stopped to stare, Meeker at his side. A man was staggering in circles near a thicket which lay a hundred yards from them. He dropped and began to crawl aimlessly about, a good target for the eager rifles on the mesa. Bullets whined and shrilled and kicked up the dust on the plain, but still the rushing Bar-20 puncher was unhit. From the mesa came the faint crackling of rifle fire and clouds of smoke hovered over the cover sheltering Red Connors. Here and there over the pasture and along the chaparral's rim rifles cracked in hot endeavor to drive the rustlers from their positions long enough to save the reckless puncher. Buck and Meeker both were firing now, rapidly but carefully, muttering words of hope and anxiety as they worked the levers of their spurting guns. Then they saw Hopalong gain the prostrate man's side, drag him back to cover, and wave his arm. The fire from the mesa was growing weaker and as it stopped Hopalong, with the wounded man on his back, ran to the shelter of a gully and called for water.
"He's th' best man in this whole country!" cried Meeker, grabbing up a canteen and starting to go through the chaparral to give them water. "To do that for one of my men!"