Another hour passed and the horse seemed to be doing well, much better than he had hoped—­he would rest it for a few minutes at the next water while he drank his fill and changed the bumping saddle.  As he rounded a turn and entered a heavily grassed valley he saw a stream close at hand and, leaping off, fixed the saddle first.  As he knelt to drink he caught a movement and jumped up to catch his mount.  Time after time he almost touched it, but it evaded him and kept up the game, cropping a mouthful of grass during each respite.

“All right!” he muttered as he let it eat.  “I’ll get my drink while you eat an’ then I’ll get you!”

He knelt by the stream again and drank long and deep.  As he paused for breath something made him leap up and to one side, reaching for his Colt at the same instant.  His fingers found only leather and he swore fiercely as he remembered—­he had sold the Colt for food and kept the rifle for defence.  As he faced the rear a horseman rounded the turn and the fugitive, wheeling, dashed for the stolen horse forty yards away, where his rifle lay in its saddle sheath.  But an angry command and the sharp hum of a bullet fired in front of him checked his flight and he stopped short and swore.

“I reckon the jig’s up,” remarked Mr. Cassidy, balancing the up-raised Colt with nicety and indifference.

“Yea; I reckon so,” sullenly replied the other, tears running into his eyes.

“Well, I’m damned!” snorted Hopalong with cutting contempt.  “Crying like a li’l baby!  Got nerve enough to steal my cayuse, an’ then go an’ beller like a lost calf when I catch you.  Yo’re a fine specimen of a hoss-thief, I don’t think!”

“Yo’re a liar!” retorted the other, clenching his fists and growing red.

Mr. Cassidy’s mouth opened and then clicked shut as his Colt swung down.  But he did not shoot; something inside of him held his trigger finger and he swore instead.  The idea of a man stealing his horse, being caught red-handed and unarmed, and still possessed of sufficient courage to call his captor a name never tolerated or overlooked in that country!  And the idea that he, Hopalong Cassidy, of the Bar-20, could not shoot such a thief!  “Damn that sky pilot!  He’s shore gone an’ made me loco,” he muttered, savagely, and then addressed his prisoner.  “Oh, you ain’t crying?  Wind got in yore eyes, I reckon, an’ sort of made ’em leak a little—­that it?  Or mebby them unholy green roses an’ yaller grass on that blasted fool neck-kerchief of yourn are too much for your eyes, too!”

“Look ahere!” snapped the man on the ground, stepping forward, one fist upraised.  “I came nigh onto licking you this noon in that gospel sharp’s tent for making fun of that scarf, an’ I’ll do it yet if you get any smart about it!  You mind yore own business an’ close yore fool eyes if you don’t like my clothes!”

“Say!  You ain’t no cry-baby after all.  Hanged if I even think yo’re a real genuine hoss-thief!” enthused Mr. Cassidy.  “You act like a twin brother; but what the devil ever made you steal that cayuse, anyhow?”