Page:Clarence Mulford - Man from Bar-20.djvu/75

 A Moonlight Reconnaissance bobbing back again, blotted out in rhythmic dashes by the swinging legs beside it.

"Big Jerry fightin' again," laughed one of the horsemen during a pause in the singing. Johnny barely was able to hear him.

rumbled the harmonizers, bursting into a thundering perpetration on the repetition of the last two words.

"Th' farther off they get th' better they sound," growled Johnny as the harmonizers were swallowed up in the darkness near the opposite cliff. "They'd sound better at about ten miles."

Lying comfortably on his stomach, his head out over the rim of the wall, he was lost in thought when a sudden, startled snort behind him nearly caused him to go over the edge. A contortionist hardly could have changed ends quicker than he did; he simply went up in the air and when he came down again he was on hands and knees, one foot where his head had been. But he did not stop there; indeed, he did not even pause there, for he kept on moving until he was on his feet, his knees bent and his head thrust forward, and each hand, without conscious direction, held a gun. And almost instantly they chocked back into the holsters. 63