the Rustlers Of West Fork (1951) Read Free

get fat waitin'. Rose feeds you too good, Buck.
    You're losin' your figger."
    Buck's face fired up. "My figger's my own business!" He glared suspiciously at Hopalong. "What happened? I can smell trouble writ all over you!" Dropping into a seat, Cassidy forked a slab of beef to his plate and accepted the hot coffee Rose poured for him. Then he told them briefly and quietly just what had happened. He left out nothing except the remarks on the subject of Dick Jordan. While Rose worried and Buck chafed at the bit and talked about outlaws, Hopalong's mind was already away from the table and far down the trail he was about to travel.
    If anything had gone wrong, it would be a good thing that he was going out. Dick Jordan was a fine man, a big man, and hardhanded, but just, and noted always for hospitality. His ranch had been a favored stopping place, and no man had ever been turned from his door lacking food. Jordan himself had been a buffalo hunter turned trader. As a boy he had worked for a cattle buyer in the East, and finally he went back to that, but his great desire was to own a ranch. He soon had it, and the Circle J had always worked hand in glove with Peters's outfit in everything.
    The dying outlaw had mentioned names. They came back to Hopalong's mind suddenly.
    What were they again? Soper an' Sparr. Sparr!
    Hopalong put his cup down so hard that some of the coffee slopped over into the saucer. Buck and Rose were staring at him. Sparr! "What bit you?"
    Buck demanded, his eyes alert and shrewd. "You got an idear?"
    "Me?" Hopalong demanded innocently. "About what?" "You know what I mean," Buck growled irritably. "I mean this here holdup! This Jordan business! If I know you, you just had a thought-not that it wouldn't feel mighty strange under that silver thatch so' yourn."
    Carefully Hopalong lifted his cup and then poured the spilled coffee from the saucer back into the cup. This gave him time to assemble his thoughts a little, and he tried to be casual about the question. "Is Mesquite back yet?"
    Buck's eyes brightened. "See?" he said to Rose. "I knowed it! He's got somethin' on his mind that smells of trouble! If he hadn't, he would never think of askin' about Mesquite at a time like this!" Cassidy forked another slab of beef onto his plate and piled mashed potatoes around it. "The kid's a top hand in any crowd. Look at the way he worked through the roundup. And who is any better with a rough string than him? He's as good with bad horses aSeaJohnny was. Maybe better!" Buck stared at Hopalong. "He's good with a gun too. Mean an' on the prod. I never in my life seen but one hombre as ready for trouble as he is!"
    "Now who would that be?" Hopalong demanded innocently. "You, you wall-eyed galoot! You always did hunt trouble! Most folks could ride through a town without anything happenin', but not you. You go into a place filled with old-maid schoolmarms an' right away trouble busts loose an' splashes all over everybody!"
    "This here trip," Hopalong lied cheerfully, "looks like the quietest sort of ride. Dick Jordan may have trouble from time to time, but you know Dick. I'll take your money out there an' deliver it safe."
    The thought that had come to him as he ate was far from a pleasant one. The name Sparr had at last struck a responsive chord in his brain. Of course there could be many Sparrs. Soper he had never heard of.
    But there was one Sparr of whom he knew, and none of what he knew was good. Like Jordan himself, Avery Sparr had been a buffalo hunter. From buffalo hunting, he had graduated to town marshal of a tough Western town. Indiscriminate killings won him quick removal from that job and he had drifted West. From Ellsworth, to Abilene, to Dodge, to Ogallala, to Cimarron and Bloomfield, and in each one there had been gun battles or killings.
    A couple of the known ones had been outright murder, and there were some others of which the same had been suspected.
    His surly nature and ready guns earned him no friends