Ship o’ State was beginning the twenty-seventh stanza in the melodious history of an incorrigible reprobate who deserved death in every one of them, when he was utterly confounded to hear a voice, almost at his ear, command him to "throw up his hands an’ climb down of ’n that cayuse, _pronto_." Contrary to what all his friends would have expected him to do, he obeyed the command instantly and to the letter. He was relieved of his gun and was being very effectually secured when the strangely quavering voice of Cracker was heard and came near. Ship eyed his captor in wonder. If Cracker were to be captured in the same manner, then this was the coolest man in the country. Nearer and nearer came the voice until Ship actually found himself worrying over the narrowness of the margin of safety. It was not until Cracker went by that he understood. The grotesque shape could only be accounted for in one way: Cracker’s captor was straddling the same pony.
It was just when Ship had reached this conclusion that a very unpleasant bunch of rags was thrust into his mouth and he was lifted and thrown face down across the back of his horse. Hopalong got into the saddle and they rode away from the herd. They had not gone far before another horseman joined them and Ship could hear the singing Cracker as he circled the herd. "There’s three of ’em anyway," was his thought, wherein he was wrong. Cracker, with his hands trussed high behind his back and his feet hobbled, was stumbling slowly along with the threat in his memory that if he stopped singing until he was told, his head stood a good chance of being separated from the rest of his carcass, when he would never be able to sing again; and the further information that, if the herd should stampede, he was in a fair way to be crushed to a pulp. The latter he knew to be true and he was equally convinced that the other would be quite likely to take place.
Fifty yards from the herd, Ship was quietly dumped to the ground. Far enough away from him the horses were picketed and two forms crept carefully upon the three men in camp.
Dark as it was, there was no difficulty in finding two of the three. Spence and Bennett, the latter agreeably surprised to find that Shanghai had depleted the general treasury to the extent of one cow, had both eaten a large and satisfying meal; their hunger appeased, weariness had asserted itself in double force and nothing less than a determined kick would have awakened either of them. But Hopalong and Tex prowled around looking for Shanghai without success.