Page:Clarence Mulford - Man from Bar-20.djvu/66

 The Man from Bar-20 friends, and they were as unconscious a part of him as his arms or his legs. And it was his creed that no man but himself should touch them, his friends excepted. He wore them low because utility demanded it; and to so wear them, and to tie them down besides, was in itself a responsibility, for there were men who would not be satisfied with the quiet warning.

In other things, from routine ranch work to man-hunting, from roping and riding to rifle shooting, the old outfit of the Bar-2O had been his teachers and they had taken him in hand at an early age. His rifle he had copied from Hopalong; but Red had taught him the use of it, and to his way of thinking Red Connors was without a peer in the use of the longer weapon.

Johnny was a genius with his six-guns, one of those few men produced in a generation; and he did not belong to the class of fancy gun-workers who shine at exhibitions and fall short when lead is flying and the nerves are sorely tried. He shot from his hips by instinct, and that is the real test of utility. Had he turned his talents to ends which lay outside the law he would have become the most dangerous and the most feared man in the cow-country.

John Logan awoke with a start, sat up suddenly in his bunk and grunted a profane query as his hand closed over his Colt. 54