Bill and Jed had their hands full for a moment and as they finally mastered the puncher, Charley came up with a rope.  “Hurry up—­no use dragging it out this way.  I want to get back to the ranch some time before next week.”

“Why I ain’t no hoss-thief, you liar!” Hopalong yelled.  “My name’s Hopalong Cassidy of the Bar-20, an’ when I tell my friends about what you’ve gone an’ done they’ll make you hard to find!  You gimme any kind of a chance an’ I’ll do it all by myself, sick as I am, you yaller dogs!”

“Is that yore cayuse?” demanded Charley, pointing.

Hopalong squinted towards the animal indicated.  “Which one?”

“There’s only one there, you fool!”

“That so?” replied Hopalong, surprised.  “Well, I never seen it afore.  My cayuse is—­is—­where the devil is it?” he asked, looking around anxiously.

“How’d you get that one, then, if it ain’t yours?”

“Never had it—­’t ain’t mine, nohow,” replied Hopalong, with strong conviction.  “Mine was a hoss.”

“You stole that cayuse last night outen Stevenson’s corral,” continued Charley, merely as a matter of form.  Charley believed that a man had the right to be heard before he died—­it wouldn’t change the result and so could not do any harm.

“Did I?  Why—­” his forehead became furrowed again, but the events of the night before were vague in his memory and he only stumbled in his soliloquy.  “But I wouldn’t swap my cayuse for that spavined, saddle-galled, ring-boned bone-yard!  Why, it interferes, an’ it’s got the heaves something awful!” he finished triumphantly, as if an appeal to common sense would clinch things.  But he made no headway against them, for the rope went around his neck almost before he had finished talking and a flurry of excitement ensued.  When the dust settled he was on his back again and the rope was being tossed over the limb.

The crowd had been too busily occupied to notice anything away from the scene of their strife and were greatly surprised when they heard a hail and saw a stranger sliding to a stand not twenty feet from them.  “What’s this?” demanded the newcomer, angrily.

Charley’s gun glinted as it swung up and the stranger swore again.  “What you doing?” he shouted.  “Take that gun off’n me or I’ll blow you apart!”

“Mind yore business an’ sit still!” Charley snapped.  “You ain’t in no position to blow anything apart.  We’ve got a hoss-thief an’ we’re shore going to hang him regardless.”

“An’ if there’s any trouble about it we can hang two as well as we can one,” suggested Stevenson, placidly.  “You sit tight an’ mind yore own affairs, stranger,” he warned.

Hopalong turned his head slowly.  “He’s a liar, stranger; just a plain, squaw’s dog of a liar.  An’ I’ll be much obliged if you’ll lick hell outen ’em an’ let—­why, hullo, hoss-thief!” he shouted, at once recognizing the other.  It was the man he had met in the gospel tent, the man he had chased for a horse-thief and then swapped mounts with.  “Stole any more cayuses?” he asked, grinning, believing that everything was all right now.  “Did you take that cayuse back to Grant?” he finished.