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    Hopalong Cassidy

    BY

    Clarence E. Mulford


    Author of
    The BAR-20 THREE, "TEX", Etc.

    GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers

    By arrangement with A. C. McClurg & Co.


    COPYRIGHT
    BY A. C. MCCLURG & CO.
    1910

    Published March 12, 1910
    Second Edition, March 19, 1910
    Third Edition, March 26, 1910
    Fourth Edition, May 28, 1910
    Fifth Edition, July 9, 1910
    Sixth Edition, January 28, 1911

    Entered at Stationers' Hall, London

    _All Rights Reserved_


    _Affectionately Dedicated
    to My Father_




    CONTENTS


    CHAPTER

          I. ANTONIO'S SCHEME
         II. MARY MEEKER RIDES NORTH
        III. THE ROUNDUP
         IV. IN WEST ARROYO
          V. HOPALONG ASSERTS HIMSELF
         VI. MEEKER IS TOLD
        VII. HOPALONG MEETS MEEKER
       VIII. ON THE EDGE OF THE DESERT
         IX. ON THE PEAK
          X. BUCK VISITS MEEKER
         XI. THREE IS A CROWD
        XII. HOBBLE BURNS AND SLEEPERS
       XIII. HOPALONG GROWS SUSPICIOUS
        XIV. THE COMPROMISE
         XV. ANTONIO MEETS FRIENDS
        XVI. THE FEINT
       XVII. PETE IS TRICKED
      XVIII. THE LINE HOUSE RE-CAPTURED
        XIX. ANTONIO LEAVES THE H2
         XX. WHAT THE DAM TOLD
        XXI. HOPALONG RIDES SOUTH
       XXII. LUCAS VISITS THE PEAK
      XXIII. HOPALONG AND RED GO SCOUTING
       XXIV. RED'S DISCOMFITURE
        XXV. ANTONIO'S REVENGE
       XXVI. FRISCO VISITS EAGLE
      XXVII. SHAW HAS VISITORS
     XXVIII. NEVADA JOINS SHAW
       XXIX. SURROUNDED
        XXX. UP THE WALL
       XXXI. FORTUNE SNICKERS AT DOC
      XXXII. NATURE TAKES A HAND
     XXXIII. DOC TRAILS
      XXXIV. DISCOVERIES
       XXXV. JOHNNY TAKES THE HUT
      XXXVI. THE LAST NIGHT
     XXXVII. THEIR LAST FIGHT
    XXXVIII. A DISAGREEABLE TASK
      XXXIX. THIRST
         XL. CHANGES
        XLI. HOPALONG'S REWARD




HOPALONG CASSIDY




CHAPTER I

ANTONIO'S SCHEME


The raw and mighty West, the greatest stage in all the history of the
world for so many deeds of daring which verged on the insane, was
seared and cross-barred with grave-lined trails and dotted with
presumptuous, mushroom towns of brief stay, whose inhabitants flung
their primal passions in the face of humanity and laughed in
condescending contempt at what humanity had to say about it. In many
localities the real bad-man, the man of the gun, whose claims to the
appellation he was ready to prove against the rancorous doubting of
all comers, made history in a terse and business-like way, and also
made the first law for the locality--that of the gun.

There were good bad-men and bad bad-men, the killer by necessity and
the wanton murderer; and the shifting of these to their proper strata
evolved the foundation for the law of to-day. The good bad-men, those
in whose souls lived the germs of law and order and justice, gradually
became arrayed against the other class, and stood up manfully for
their principles, let the odds be what they might; and bitter,
indeed, was the struggle, and great the price.

From the gold camps of the Rockies to the shrieking towns of the
coast, where wantonness stalked unchecked; from the vast stretches of
the cattle ranges to the ever-advancing terminals of the persistent
railroads, to the cow towns, boiling and seething in the loosed
passions of men who brooked no restraint in their revels, no one
section of country ever boasted of such numbers of genuine bad-men of
both classes as the great, semi-arid Southwest. Here was one of the
worst collections of raw humanity ever broadcast in one locality; here
the crack of the gun would have sickened except that moralists were
few and the individual so calloused and so busy in protecting his own
life and wiping out his own scores that he gave no heed to the sum
total of the killings; it was a word and a shot, a shot and a laugh or
a curse.

In this red setting was stuck a town which we will call Eagle, the
riffle which caught all the dregs of passing humanity, where men
danced as souls were freed. Unmapped, known only to those who had
visited it, it reared its flimsy buildings in the face of God and
rioted day and night with no thought of reckoning; mad, insane with
hellishness unlimited.

Late in the afternoon of a glorious day towards this town rode
Antonio, "broncho-buster" for the H2, a Mexican of little courage,
much avarice, and great capacity for hatred. Crafty, filled with
cunning of the coyote kind, shifty-eyed, gloomy, taciturn, and
scowling, he was well fitted for the part he had elected to play in
the range dispute between his ranch and the Bar-20. He was absolutely
without mercy or conscience; indeed, one might aptly say that his
conscience, if he had ever known one, had been pulled out by the roots
and its place filled with viciousness. Cold-blooded in his ferocity,
easily angered and