“Mine’s Cassidy, an’ that’s Connors, of the Bar-20.  Are you hurt very bad?”

“No; not very bad,” lied Holden, trying to smile.  “Gee, but I’m glad I fell in with you two fellers,” he exclaimed.  He was but little more than a boy, and to him Hopalong Cassidy and Red Connors were names with which to conjure.  “But I’m plumb sorry I went an’ brought you more trouble,” he added regretfully.

“Oh, pshaw!  We had it before you came—­you needn’t do no worrying about that, Holden; besides, I reckon you couldn’t help it,” Hopalong grinned facetiously.  “But tell us how you came to mix up with that bunch,” he continued.

Holden shuddered and hesitated a moment, his companions alertly shifting from crack to crack, window to window, their rifles cracking at intervals.  They appeared to him to act as if they had done nothing else all their lives but fight Indians from that shack, and he braced up a little at their example of coolness.

“It’s an awful story, awful!” he began.  “I was riding towards Hoyt’s Corners an’ when I got about half way there I topped a rise an’ saw a nester’s house about half a mile away.  It wasn’t there the last time I rode that way, an’ it looked so peaceful an’ home-like that I stopped an’ looked at it a few minutes.  I was just going to start again when that war-party rode out of a barranca close to the house an’ went straight for it at top speed.  It seemed like a dream, ’cause I thought Apaches never got so far east.  They don’t, do they?  I thought not—­these must ‘a’ got turned out of their way an’ had to hustle for safety.  Well, it was all over purty quick.  I saw ’em drag out two women an’—­an’—­purty soon a man.  He was fighting like fury, but he didn’t last long.  Then they set fire to the house an’ threw the man’s body up on the roof.  I couldn’t seem to move till the flames shot up, but then I must ‘a’ went sort of loco, because I emptied my gun at ’em, which was plumb foolish at that distance, for me.  The next thing I knowed was that half of ’em was coming my way as hard as they could ride, an’ I lit out instanter; an’ here I am.  I can’t get that sight outen my head nohow—­it’ll drive me loco!” he screamed, sobbing like a child from the horror of it all.

His auditors still moved around the room, growing more and more vindictive all the while and more zealously endeavoring to create a still greater deficit in one Apache war-party.  They knew what he had looked upon, for they themselves had become familiar with the work of Apaches in Arizona.  They could picture it vividly in all its devilish horror.  Neither of them paid any apparent attention to their companion, for they could not spare the time, and, also, they believed it best to let him fight out his own battles unassisted.

Holden sobbed and muttered as the minutes dragged along, at times acting so strangely as to draw a covert side-glance from one or both of the Bar-20 punchers.  Then Mr. Connors saw his boon companion suddenly lean out of a window and immediately become the target for the hard-working enemy.  He swore angrily at the criminal recklessness of it.  “Hey, you!  Come in out of that!  Ain’t you got no brains at all, you blasted idiot!  Don’t you know that we need every gun?”