Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch Part 17

him. I wouldn't bother."

"Why, he saved my life!" cried Ruth. "I want to thank him. I want to help him. And-and-indeed, I need very much to see and speak with him, Ike."

"Ya-as. That does make a difference," admitted the foreman. "He sure did kill that bear."

The ponies rattled away behind the heavy wagon, drawn by six mules. In the lead cantered Ricarde and his father, herding the dozen or more half-wild cow-ponies. The Mexican horse-wrangler was a lazy looking, half-asleep fellow; but he sat a pony as though he had grown in the saddle.

Ruth, on her beloved little Freckles, rode almost as well now as did Jane Ann. The other girls were content to follow the mule team at a more quiet pace; but Ruth and the ranchman's niece dashed off the trail more than once for a sharp race across the plain.

"You're a darling, Ruthie!" declared Jane Ann, enthusiastically. "I wish you were going to live out here at Silver Ranch all the time-I do! I wouldn't mind being 'buried in the wilderness' if you were along--"

"Oh, but you won't be buried in the wilderness all the time," laughed the girl from the Red Mill. "I am sure of that."

"Huh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Western girl, startled. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that we've been talking to Uncle Bill," laughed Ruth.

"Oh! you ain't got it fixed for me?" gasped the ranchman's neice. "Will he send me to school?"

"Surest thing you know, Nita!"

"Not to that boarding school you girls all go to?"

"Unless he backs down-and you know Mr. Bill Hicks isn't one of the backing-down kind."

"Oh, bully for you!" gasped Jane Ann. "I know it's your doing. I can see it all. Uncle Bill thinks the sun just about rises and sets with you."

"Helen and Heavy did their share. So did Madge-and even Heavy's aunt, Miss Kate, before we started West. You will go to Briarwood with us next half, Nita. You'll have a private teacher for a while so that you can catch up with our cla.s.ses. It's going to be up to you to make good, young lady-that's all."

Jane Ann Hicks was too pleased at that moment to say a word-and she had to wink mighty hard to keep the tears back. Weeping was as much against her character as it would have been against a boy's. And she was silent thereafter for most of the way to the camp.

They rode over a rolling bit of ground and came in sight suddenly of the great herd in care of Number Two outfit. Such a crowd of slowly moving cattle was enough to amaze the eastern visitors. For miles upon miles the great herd overspread the valley, along the far side of which the hurrying river flowed. The tossing horns, the lowing of the cows calling their young, the strange, bustling movement of the whole ma.s.s, rose up to the excited spectators in a great wave of sound and color. It was a wonderful sight!

Jib rode up the hill to meet them. The men on duty were either squatting here and there over the range, in little groups, playing cards and smoking, or riding slowly around the outskirts of the herd. There was a chuck-tent and two sleeping tents parked by the river side, and the smoke from the cook's sheet-iron stove rose in a thin spiral of blue vapor toward that vaster blue that arched the complete scene.

"What a picture!" Ruth said to her chum. "The mountains are grand. That canon we visited was wonderful. The great, rolling plains dwarf anything in the line of landscape that we ever saw back East. But _this_ caps all the sights we have seen yet."

"I'm almost afraid of the cattle, Ruthie," declared Helen. "So many tossing horns! So many great, nervous, moving bodies! Suppose they should start this way-run us down and stamp us into the earth? Oh! they could do it easily."

"I don't feel that fear of them," returned the girl from the Red Mill.

"I mean to ride all around the herd to-night with Nita. She says she is going to help ride herd, and I am going with her."

This declaration, however, came near not being fulfilled. Jib Pottoway objected. The tent brought for the girls was erected a little way from the men's camp, and the Indian stated it as his irrevocable opinion that the place for the lady visitors at night was inside the white walls of that tent.

"Ain't no place for girls on the night trick, Miss Jinny-and you know it," complained Jib. "Old Bill will hold me responsible if anything happens to you."

"'Twon't be the first time I've ridden around a bunch of beeves after sundown," retorted Jane Ann, sharply. "And I've promised Ruth. It's a real nice night. I don't even hear a coyote singing."

"There's rain in the air. We may have a blow out of the hills before morning," said Jib, shaking his head.

"Aw shucks!" returned the ranchman's niece. "If it rains we can borrow slickers, can't we? I never saw such a fellow as you are, Jib. Always looking for trouble."

"You managed to get into trouble the other day when you went over to the canon," grunted the Indian.

"'Twarn't Ruthie and me that made you trouble. And that c.o.x girl wouldn't dare ride within forty rods of these cows," laughed the ranchman's niece.

So Jib was forced to give way. Tom and Bob had craved permission to ride herd, too. The cowboys seemed to accept these offers in serious mood, and that made Jane Ann suspicious.

"They'll hatch up some joke to play on you-all," she whispered to Ruthie. "But we'll find out what they mean to do, if we can, and just cross-cut 'em."

The camp by the river was the scene of much hilarity at supper time. The guests had brought some especially nice rations from the ranch-house, and the herders welcomed the addition to their plain fare with gusto.

Tom and Bob ate with the men and, when the night s.h.i.+ft went on duty, they set forth likewise to ride around the great herd which, although seemingly so peacefully inclined, must be watched and guarded more carefully by night than by day.

Soon after Jane Ann and Ruth rode forth, taking the place together of one of the regular herders. These additions to the night gang left more of the cow punchers than usual at the camp, and there was much hilarity among the boys as Jane Ann and her friend cantered away toward the not far-distant herd.

"Those fellows are up to something," the ranchman's niece repeated. "We must be on the watch for them-and don't you be scared none, Ruthie, at anything that may happen."

CHAPTER XVI-THE JOKE THAT FAILED

The two girls rode into the melting darkness of the night, and once out of the radiance of the campfires became suddenly appreciative of the subdued sounds arising from the far-extending valley in which the herd lay.

At a great distance a coyote howled in mournful cadence. There was the uncertain movements of the cattle on the riders' left hand-here one lapped its body with its great tongue-again horns clashed-then a big steer staggered to its feet and blew through its nostrils a great sigh.

There was, too, the steady chewing of many, many cuds.

A large part of the herd was lying down. Although stars flecked the sky quite thickly the whole valley in which the cattle fed seemed over-mantled with a pall of blackness. Shapes loomed through this with sudden, uncertain outline.

"My! it's s.h.i.+very, isn't it?" whispered Ruth.

"There won't nothing bite us," chuckled the Western girl. "Huh! what's that?"

The sudden change in her voice made Ruth giggle nervously. "That's somebody riding ahead of us. _You're_ not afraid, Nita?"

"Well, I should say not!" cried the other, very boldly. "It's one of the boys. h.e.l.lo, Darcy! I thought you were a ghost."

"You gals better git back to the camp," grunted the cowboy. "We're going to have a shower later. I feel it in the air."

"We're neither sugar nor salt," declared Jane Ann. "We've both got slickers on our saddles."

"Ridin' herd at night ain't no job for gals," said Darcy. "And that cloud yander is goin' ter spit lightnin'."

"He's always got a grouch about something. I never did like old Darcy,"

Jane Ann confided to her friend.

But there was a general movement and confusion in the herd before the girls had ridden two miles. The cattle smelled the storm coming and, now and then, a faint flash of lightning penciled the upper edge of the cloud that masked the Western horizon.