Red joyfully kicked Hopalong in the melee, which in this instance also stands for stomach; Red always took great pains to do more than his share in a scrimmage.  Dent hovered on the flanks, his hands full of rope, and begged with great earnestness to be allowed to apply it to parts of Johnny’s thrashing anatomy.  But as the flanks continued to change with bewildering swiftness he begged in vain, and began to make suggestions and give advice pleasing to the three combatants.  Dent knew just how it should be done, and was generous with the knowledge until Johnny zealously planted five knuckles on his one good eye, when the engagement became general.

The table skidded through the door on one leg and caromed off the bar at a graceful angle, collecting three chairs and one sand-box cuspidor on the way.  The box on Johnny’s leg had long since departed, as Hopalong’s shin could testify.  One chair dissolved unity and distributed itself lavishly over the room, while the bed shrunk silently and folded itself on top of Dent, who bucked it up and down with burning zeal and finally had sense enough to crawl from under it.  He immediately celebrated his liberation by getting a strangle hold on two legs, one of which happened to be the personal property of Hopalong Cassidy; and the battle raged on a lower plane.  Red raised one hand as he carefully traced a neck to its own proper head and then his steel fingers opened and swooped down and shut off the dialect.  Hopalong pushed Dent off him and managed to catch Johnny’s flaying arm on the third attempt, while Dent made tentative sorties against Johnny’s spurred boots.

“Phew!  Can he fight like that when he’s sober?” reverently asked Dent, seeing how close his fingers could come to his gaudy eye without touching it.  “I won’t be able to see at all in an hour,” he added, gloomily.

Hopalong, seated on Johnny’s chest, soberly made reply as he tenderly flirted with a raw shin.  “It’s the mescal.  I’m going to slip some of that stuff into Pete’s cayuse some of these days,” he promised, happy with a new idea.  Pete Wilson had no sense of humor.

“That ghost was plumb lucky,” grunted Red, “an’ so was the sea-captain,” he finished as an afterthought, limping off toward the bar, slowly and painfully followed by his disfigured companions.  “One drink; then to bed.”

After Red had departed, Hopalong and Dent smoked a while and then, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, Hopalong arose.  “An’ yet, Dent, there are people that believe in ghosts,” he remarked, with a vast and settled contempt.

Dent gave critical scrutiny to the scratched bar for a moment.  “Well, the Greasers all say there is a ghost in the San Miguel, though I never saw it.  But some of them have seen it, an’ no Greasers ride that trail no more.”

“Huh!” snorted Hopalong.  “Some Greasers must have filled the Kid up on ghosts while he was filling hisself up on mescal.  Ghosts?  R-a-t-s!”