Read the Riders Of High Rock (1993) for Free Online Page B

shoved back in his chair. "You tell Jack he needn't worry about Cassidy. I'll pick
    up my outfit and we'll go through them hills so careful we could find any rabbit and squirrel in the place. We'll find those two, and when we do, Jack's trouble regardin' them'll be over."
    After Sim was gone, Grat looked across the table at Bones. He shook his head. "Too good to last! I knowed it. I hate to tell Jack. He'll raise the roof."
    Bones looked like a soiled cupid, his round face heavy with knowledge of a chance lost. "That musta been Cassidy we seen at White Rock. We could've bushed him," he said, "if we knowed."

    Chapter 5
    Ranch Spy .
    C opper Mountain's Cave was exactly where Letsinger had advised Hoppy. It was after dark when Red Connors and he made it, but once at the mouth, Hopalong took time to investigate the terrain as thoroughly as possible. The cave was big, and pack rats had dragged in huge piles of dead brush to make nests. They offered a good supply of kindling.
    When he had a fire going and Red was bedded down, Hopalong examined his friend's wound. It looked bad, and obviously the long day's ride had done it no good at all. After bathing the wound and dressing it once more, Hopalong returned to the fire and got busy with supper. The horses had been unsaddled and picketed on grass in the nearby woods. The grass was thick, and as little game and no stock came up this high, it was undisturbed. The fire was well back into the cave, and the mouth was concealed anyway by the wall formed by the stand of trees.
    "Gibson's the only one who's been very suspicious of Bolt, and he may be wrong," Red offered suddenly. "Until I followed this trail, there was no evidence of any kind against him. It might be just that Aragon outfit."
    "Heard of them. Three of 'em, aren't there?"
    "Uh-huh. And they got three or four gents ridin' with 'em. Rough crowd. Reminds me of that bunch Nevady had down south, that time. Sim's the boss. He's a long, thin galoot who fancies himself with a gun. He's purty good, too. Pete and Manuel are the other two. Both of 'em plumb salty."
    "They run with the Bolt outfit?"
    "Not so's you'd notice. Nobody likes the Aragons. Poison mean. They'd as soon shoot you as look at you."
    "Red," Hopalong said as they were eating, "there's grub enough here for several days. You've got plenty of firewood without moving to get it, and your horse will do all right on that grass. There's water back in the cave, and I notice that there's some rain in a pool outside that'll do your cayuse."
    "All of which means you're pullin' your freight?" Red grinned at him. "Shucks, Hoppy, hit the trail! I can get along, and Gibson will be needin' help."
    "Well, I think you'll be all right," Hopalong said. "At least until I can get back or send someone for you."
    Rolling up in his blankets, Hopalong tried to get to sleep. Red Connors stared at him and grinned. Not for the world would he have hinted to his old friend how good it was to have him back, but now there would be little to worry about, for the famous gunman could always, in his experience, outfigure and outshoot anybody who came along the pike. With the first sense of comfort he had felt in days, Red Connors stretched out and was soon asleep. When he awakened, the first gray of day was appearing far off over the mountains. Hopalong Cas-sidy was already gone.
    Before Hopalong lay a vast sweep of sunken gorges and towering peaks, most of them timber-clad, but gradually growing less so towards the west until, near the area where the 3TL lay, the hills were almost without a tree. That country to the west was barren and showed no sign of water, yet Hopalong knew it was there--if a man knew how to find it.
    Below him all was dark and still. The stars were bright overhead, and the hint of dawn lay along the sky far away, a thin spreading gray in the east. The palouse took to the trail with ears pricked up, eager to be going. Angling across the mountain, Hopalong found a way into the forest