Bar-20 Days, page 129 by Clarence E. Mulford
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m the distant Hopalong sent him forward on a run.
"Hey, Red!" cried Hopalong, pointing ahead of them. "Look there! Ain't that a house?"
"Naw; course not! It's a--it's a ship!" Red snorted sarcastically. "What did you think it might be?"
"G'wan!" retorted his companion. "It's a mission."
"Ah, g'wan yoreself! What's a mission doing up here?" Red snapped.
"What do you think they do? What do they do anywhere?" hotly rejoined Hopalong, thinking about Johnny. "There! See the cross?"
"Shore enough!"
"An' there's tracks at last--mighty wobbly, but tracks just the same. Them rocks couldn't go on forever. Red, I'll bet he's cashed in by this time."
"Cashed nothing! Them fellers don't."
"Well, if he's in that joint we might as well go back home. We won't get him, not nohow," declared Hopalong.
"Huh! You wait an' see!" replied Red, pugnaciously.
"Reckon you never run up agin a mission real hard," Hopalong responded, his memory harking back to the time he had disagreed with a convent, and they both meant about the same to him as far as winning out was concerned.
"Think I'm a fool kid?" snapped Red, aggressively.
"Well, you ain't no /kid/."
"You let /me/ do the talking; /I'll/ get him."
"All right; an' I'll do the laughing," snickered Hopalong, at the door. "Sic 'em, Red!"
The other boldly stepped into a small vestibule, Hopalong close at his heels. Red hitched his holster and walked heavily into a room at his left. With the exception of a bench, a table, and a small altar, the room was devoid of furnishings, and the effect of these was lost in the dim light from the narrow windows. The peculiar, not unpleasant odor of burning incense and the dim light awakened a latent reverence and awe in Hopalong, and he sneaked off his sombrero, an inexplicable feeling of guilt stealing over him. There were three doors in the walls, deeply shrouded in the dusk of the room, and it was very hard to watch all three at once.
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