Kitabı oku: «Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch; Schoolgirls Among Cowboys», sayfa 2
“Here, you Jibbeway!” exclaimed Mr. Hicks. “You hike yourself in yere and tickle these ivories a whole lot. These young ladies ain’t snakes; an’ they won’t bite ye.”
The backward puncher was urged on by his mates, too, and finally he came in, stepping through the long window and sliding onto the piano bench that had been deserted by Madge. He was a tall, straight, big-boned young man, with dark, keen face, and the moment Tom Cameron saw him he seized Bob by the shoulder and whispered eagerly:
“I know that fellow! He played fullback with Carlisle when they met Cornell three years ago. Why, he’s an educated man – he must be! And punching cattle out on this ranch!”
“Guess you forget that Theodore Roosevelt punched cattle for a while,” chuckled Bob. “Listen to that fellow play, will you?”
And the Indian could – as Mr. Hicks remarked – “tickle the ivories.” He played by ear, but he played well. Most of the tunes he knew were popular ditties and by and by he warmed the punchers up so that they began to hum their favorite melodies as Jib played them.
“Come on, there, Ike!” said the Indian, suddenly. “Give us that ‘Prayer’ you’re so fond of. Come on, now, Ike!”
Bashful Ike evidently balked a little, but Jib played the accompaniment and the melody through, and finally the foreman of Silver Ranch broke in with a baritone roar and gave them “The Cowboy’s Prayer.” Ike possessed a mellow voice and the boys hummed in chorus in the dusk, and it all sounded fine until suddenly Jib Pottoway broke off with a sudden discordant crash on the piano keys.
“Hel-lo!” exclaimed Bill Hicks, who had lain back in his wicker lounging chair, with his big feet in wool socks on another chair, enjoying all the music. “What’s happened the pinanner, Jib? You busted it? By jings! that cost me six hundred dollars at the Bullhide station.”
But then his voice fell and there was silence both in the room and on the veranda. The sound of galloping hoofs had shut the ranchman up. A pony was approaching on a dead run, and the next moment a long, loud “Ye-ow! ye-ow!” announced the rider’s excitement as something extraordinary.
“Who’s that, Ike?” cried Hicks, leaping from his chair.
“Scrub Weston,” said the foreman as he clumped down the veranda steps.
Jib slipped through the window. Hicks followed him on the jump, and Jane Ann led the exodus of the visitors. There was plainly something of an exciting nature at hand. A pony flashed out of the darkness and slid to a perilous halt right at the steps.
“Hi, Boss!” yelled the cowboy who bestrode the pony. “Fire’s sweeping up from Tintacker way! I bet it’s that Bughouse Johnny the boys have chased two or three times. He’s plumb loco, that feller is – oughtn’t to be left at large. The whole chapparel down that a-way is blazin’ and, if the wind rises, more’n ha’f of your grazin’ll be swept away.”
CHAPTER IV – THE FIRE FIGHT
The guests had followed Mr. Hicks and Jib out of the long window and had heard the cow puncher’s declaration. There was no light in the sky as far as the girls could see – no light of a fire, at least – but there seemed to be a tang of smoke; perhaps the smoke clung to the sweating horse and its rider.
“You got it straight, Scrub Weston?” demanded Bill Hicks. “This ain’t no burn you’re givin’ us?”
“Great piping Peter!” yelled the cowboy on the trembling pony, “it’ll be a burn all right if you fellows don’t git busy. I left Number Three outfit fighting the fire the best they knew; we’ve had to let the cattle drift. I tell ye, Boss, there’s more trouble brewin’ than you kin shake a stick at.”
“‘Nuff said!” roared Hicks. “Get busy, Ike. You fellers saddle and light out with Scrub. Rope you another hawse out o’ the corral, Scrub; you’ve blamed near killed that one.”
“Oh! is it really a prairie fire?” asked Ruth, of Jane Ann. “Can’t we see it?”
“You bet we will,” declared the ranchman’s niece. “Leave it to me. I’ll get the horse-wrangler to hitch up a pair of ponies and we’ll go over there. Wish you girls could ride.”
“Helen rides,” said Ruth, quickly.
“But not our kind of horses, I reckon,” returned Jane Ann, as she started after the cowboys. “But Tom and Bob can have mounts. Come on, boys!”
“We’ll get into trouble, like enough, if we go to this fire,” objected Madge Steele.
“Come on!” said Heavy. “Don’t let’s show the white feather. These folks will think we haven’t any pluck at all. Eastern girls can be just as courageous as Western girls, I believe.”
But all the time Ruth was puzzling over something that the cowboy, Scrub Weston, had said when he gave warning of the fire. He had mentioned Tintacker and suggested that the fire had been set by somebody whom Ruth supposed the cowboys must think was crazy – otherwise she could not explain that expression, “Bughouse Johnny.” These range riders were very rough of speech, but certainly their language was expressive!
This Tintacker Mine in which she was so deeply interested – for Uncle Jabez’s sake – must be very near the ranch. Ruth desired to go to the mine and learn if it was being worked; and she proposed to learn the whole history of the claim and look up the recording of it, as well. Of course, the young man who had gotten Uncle Jabez to invest in the silver mine had shown him deeds and the like; but these papers might have been forged. Ruth was determined to clear up the mystery of the Tintacker Mine before she left Silver Ranch for the East again.
Just now, however, she as well as the other guests of Jane Ann Hicks was excited by the fire on the range. They got jackets, and by the time all the girls were ready Maria’s husband had a pair of half-wild ponies hitched to the buckboard. Bob elected to drive the ponies, and he and the five girls got aboard the vehicle while the restive ponies were held by the Mexican.
Tom and Jane Ann had each saddled a pony. Jane Ann rode astride like a boy, and she was up on a horse that seemed to be just as crazy as he could be. Her friends from the East feared all the time that Jane Ann would be thrown.
“Let ’em go, Jose!” commanded the Silver Ranch girl. “You keep right behind me, Mr. Steele – follow me and Mr. Tom. The trail ain’t good, but I reckon you won’t tip over your crowd if you’re careful.”
The girls on the buckboard screamed at that; But it was too late to expostulate – or back out from going on the trip. The half-wild ponies were off and Bob had all he could do to hold them. Old Bill Hicks and his punchers had swept away into the starlit night some minutes before and were now out of both sight and hearing. As the party of young folk got out of the coulie, riding over the ridge, they saw a dull glow far down on the western horizon.
“The fire!” cried Ruth, pointing.
“That’s what it is,” responded Jane Ann, excitedly. “Come on!”
She raced ahead and Tom spurred his mount after her. Directly in their wake lurched the buckboard, with the excited Bob snapping the long-lashed whip over the ponies’ backs. The vehicle pitched and jerked, and traveled sometimes on as few as two wheels; the girls were jounced about unmercifully, and The Fox and Helen squealed.
“I’m – be – ing – jolt – ed – to – a – jel – ly!” gasped Heavy. “I’ll be – one sol – id bruise.”
But Bob did not propose to be left behind by Jane Ann and Tom Cameron, and Madge showed her heartlessness by retorting on the stout girl:
“You’ll be solid, all right, Jennie, never mind whether you are bruised or not. You know that you’re no ‘airy, fairy Lillian.’”
But the rate at which they were traveling was not conducive to conversation; and most of the time the girls clung on and secretly hoped that Bob would not overturn the buckboard. The ponies seemed desirous of running away all the time.
The rosy glow along the skyline increased; and now flames leaped – yellow and scarlet – rising and falling, while the width of the streak of fire increased at both ends. Luckily there was scarcely any wind. But the fire certainly was spreading.
The ponies tore along under Bob’s lash and Jane Ann and Tom did not leave them far behind. Over the rolling prairie they fled and so rapidly that Hicks and his aides from the ranch-house were not far in advance when the visitors came within unrestricted view of the flames.
Jane Ann halted and held up her hand to Bob to pull in the ponies when they topped a ridge which was the final barrier between them and the bottom where the fire burned. For several miles the dry grass, scrub, and groves of trees had been blackened by the fire. Light smoke clouds drifted away from the line of flame, which crackled sharply and advanced in a steady march toward the ridge on which the spectators were perched.
“My goodness me!” exclaimed Heavy. “You couldn’t put that fire out by spilling a bucket of water on it, could you?”
The fire line was several miles long. The flames advanced slowly; but here and there, where it caught in a bunch of scrub, the tongues of fire mounted swiftly into the air for twenty feet, or more; and in these pillars of fire lurked much danger, for when a blast of wind chanced to swoop down on them, the flames jumped!
Toiling up the ridge, snorting and bellowing, tails in air and horns tossing, drifted a herd of several thousand cattle, about ready to stampede although the fire was not really chasing them. The danger lay in the fact that the flames had gained such headway, and had spread so widely, that the entire range might be burned over, leaving nothing for the cattle to eat.
The rose-light of the flames showed the spectators all this – the black smooch of the fire-scathed land behind the barrier of flame, the flitting figures on horseback at the foot of the ridge, and the herd of steers going over the rise toward the north – and the higher foothills.
“But what can they do?” gasped Ruth.
“They’re back-firing,” Tom said, holding in his pony. Tom was a good horseman and it was evident that Jane Ann was astonished at his riding. “But over yonder where they tried it, the flames jumped ahead through the long grass and drove the men into their saddles again.”
“See what those fellows are doing!” gasped Madge, standing up. “They’re roping those cattle – isn’t that what you call it, roping?”
“And hog-tieing them,” responded Jane Ann, eagerly. “That’s Jib – and Bashful Ike. There! that’s an axe Ike’s got. He’s going to slice up that steer.”
“Oh, dear me! what for?” cried Helen.
“Why, the butchering act – right here and now?” demanded Heavy. “Aren’t thinking of having a barbecue, are they?”
“You watch,” returned the Western girl, greatly excited. “There! they’ve split that steer.”
“I hope it’s the big one that bunted the automobile,” cried The Fox.
“Well, you can bet it ain’t,” snapped Jane Ann. “Old Trouble-Maker is going to yield us some fun at brandin’ time – now you see.”
But they were all too much interested just then in what was going on near at hand – and down at the fire line – to pay much attention to what Jane Ann said about Old Trouble-Maker. Bashful Ike and Jib Pottoway had split two steers “from stem to stern.” Two other riders approached, and the girls recognized one of them as Old Bill himself.
“Tough luck, boys,” grumbled the ranchman. “Them critters is worth five cents right yere on the hoof; but that fire’s got to be smothered. Here, Jib! hitch my rope to t’other end of your half of that critter.”
In a minute the ranchman and the half-breed were racing down the slope, their ponies on the jump, the half of the steer jumping behind them. At the line of fire Hicks made his frightened horse leap the flames, they jerked the half of the steer over so that the cloven side came in contact with the flames, and then both men urged their ponies along the fire line, right in the midst of the smoke and heat, dragging the bleeding side of beef across the sputtering flames.
Ike and his mate started almost at once in the other direction, and both teams quenched the fire in good shape. Behind them other cowboys drew the halves of the second steer that had been divided, making sure of the quenching of the conflagration in the main; but there were still spots where the fire broke out again, and it was a couple of hours, and two more fat steers had been sacrificed, before it was safe to leave the fire line to the watchful care of only half a dozen, or so, of the range riders.
It had been a bitter fight while it lasted. Tom and Bob, and Jane Ann herself had joined in it – slapping out the immature fires where they had sprung up in the grass from sparks which flew from the greater fires. But the ridge had helped retard the blaze so that it could be controlled, and from the summit the girls from the East had enjoyed the spectacle.
Old Bill Hicks rode beside the buckboard when they started back for the ranch-house, and was very angry over the setting of the fire. Cow punchers are the most careful people in the world regarding fire-setting in the open. If a cattleman lights his cigarette, or pipe, he not only pinches out the match between his finger and thumb, but, if he is afoot, he stamps the burned match into the earth when he drops it.
“That yere half-crazy tenderfoot oughter be put away somewhares, whar he won’t do no more harm to nobody,” growled the ranchman.
“Do you expect he set it, Uncle?” demanded Jane Ann.
“So Scrub says. He seen him camping in the cottonwoods along Larruper Crick this mawnin’. I reckon nobody but a confounded tenderfoot would have set a fire when it’s dry like this, noways.”
Here Ruth put in a question that she had longed to ask ever since the fire scare began: “Who is this strange man you call the tenderfoot?”
“Dunno, Miss Ruth,” said the cattleman. “He’s been hanging ‘round yere a good bit since Spring. Or, he’s been seen by my men a good bit. When they’ve spoke to him he’s seemed sort of doped, or silly. They can’t make him out. And he hangs around closest to Tintacker.”
“You’re interested in that, Ruth!” exclaimed Helen.
“What d’you know about Tintacker, Miss?” asked Old Bill, curiously.
“Tintacker is a silver mine, isn’t it?” asked Ruth, in return.
“Tintacker used to be a right smart camp some years ago. Some likely silver claims was staked out ‘round there. But they petered out, and ain’t nobody raked over the old dumps, even, but some Chinamen, for ten year.”
“But was there a particular mine called ‘Tintacker’?” asked Ruth.
“Sure there was. First claim staked out. And it was a good one – for a while. But there ain’t nothin’ there now.”
“You say this stranger hangs about there?” queried Tom, likewise interested.
“He won’t for long if my boys find him arter this,” growled Hicks. “They’ll come purty close to running him out o’ this neck o’ woods – you hear me!”
This conversation made Ruth even more intent upon solving the mystery of the Tintacker Mine, and her desire to see this strange “tenderfoot” who hung about the old mining claims increased. But she said nothing more at that time regarding the matter.
CHAPTER V – “OLD TROUBLE-MAKER” TURNED LOOSE
After getting to bed at midnight it could not be expected that the young people at Silver Ranch would be astir early on the morning following the fire scare. But Ruth, who was used to being up with the sun at the Red Mill – and sometimes a little before the orb of day – slipped out of the big room in which the six girls were domiciled when she heard the first stir about the corrals.
When she came out upon the veranda that encircled the ranch-house, wreaths of mist hung knee-high in the coulee – mist which, as soon as the sun peeked over the hills, would be dissipated. The ponies were snorting and stamping at their breakfasts – great armfuls of alfalfa hay which the horse wranglers had pitched over the fence. Maria, the Mexican woman, came up from the cowshed with two brimming pails of milk, for the Silver Ranch boasted a few milch cows at the home place, and there had been sweet butter on the table at supper the night before – something which is usually very scarce on a cattle ranch.
Ruth ran down to the corral and saw, on the bench outside the bunkhouse door, the row of buckets in which the boys had their morning plunge. The sleeping arrangements at Silver Ranch being rather primitive, Tom and Bob had elected to join the cowboys in the big bunkhouse, and they had risen as early as the punchers and made their own toilet in the buckets, too. The sheet-iron chimney of the chuckhouse kitchen was smoking, and frying bacon and potatoes flavored the keen air for yards around.
Bashful Ike, the foreman, met the Eastern girl at the corner of the corral fence. He was a pleasant, smiling man; but the blood rose to the very roots of his hair and he got into an immediate perspiration if a girl looked at him. When Ruth bade him good-morning Ike’s cheeks began to flame and he grew instantly tongue-tied! Beyond nodding a greeting and making a funny noise in his throat he gave no notice that he was like other human beings and could talk. But Ruth had an idea in her mind and Bashful Ike could help her carry it through better than anybody else.
“Mr. Ike,” she said, softly, “do you know about this man they say probably set the fire last night?”
Ike gulped down something that seemed to be choking him and mumbled that he supposed he had seen the fellow “about once.”
“Do you think he is crazy, Mr. Ike?” asked the Eastern girl.
“I – I swanny! I couldn’t be sure as to that, Miss,” stammered the foreman of Silver Ranch. “The boys say he acts plumb locoed.”
“‘Locoed’ means crazy?” she persisted.
“Why, Miss, clear ‘way down south from us, ’long about the Mexican border, thar’s a weed grows called loco, and if critters eats it, they say it crazies ’em – for a while, anyway. So, Miss,” concluded Ike, stumbling less in his speech now, “if a man or a critter acts batty like, we say he’s locoed.”
“I understand. But if this man they suspect of setting the fire is crazy he isn’t responsible for what he does, is he?”
“Well, Miss, mebbe not. But we can’t have no onresponsible feller hangin’ around yere scatterin’ fire – no, sir! – ma’am, I mean,” Ike hastily added, his face flaming up like an Italian sunset again.
“No; I suppose not. But I understand the man stays around that old camp at Tintacker, more than anywhere else?”
“That’s so, I reckon,” agreed Ike. “The boys don’t see him often.”
“Can’t you make the boys just scare him into keeping off the range, instead of doing him real harm? They seemed very angry about the fire.”
“I dunno, Miss. Old Bill’s some hot under the collar himself – and he might well be. Last night’s circus cost him a pretty penny.”
“Did you ever see this man they say is crazy?” demanded Ruth.
“I told you I did oncet.”
“What sort of a looking man is he?”
“He ain’t no more’n a kid, Miss. That’s it; he’s jest a tenderfoot kid.”
“A boy, you mean?” queried Ruth, anxiously.
“Not much older than that yere whitehead ye brought with yuh,” said Ike, beginning to grin now that he had become a bit more familiar with the Eastern girl, and pointing at Bob Steele. “And he ain’t no bigger than him.”
“You wouldn’t let your boys injure a young fellow like that, would you?” cried Ruth. “It wouldn’t be right.”
“I dunno how I’m goin’ to stop ’em from mussin’ him up a whole lot if they chances acrost him,” said Ike, slowly. “He’d ought to be shut up, so he had.”
“Granted. But he ought not to be abused. Another thing, Ike – I’ll tell you a secret.”
“Uh-huh?” grunted the surprised foreman.
“I want to see that young man awfully!” said Ruth. “I want to talk with him – ”
“Sufferin’ snipes!” gasped Ike, becoming so greatly interested that he forgot it was a girl he was talking with. “What you wanter see that looney critter for?”
“Because I’m greatly interested in the Tintacker Mine, and they say this young fellow usually sticks to that locality,” replied Ruth, smiling on the big cow puncher. “Don’t you think I can learn to ride well enough to travel that far before we return to the East?”
“To ride to Tintacker, Miss?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Why, suah, Miss!” cried Ike, cordially. “I’ll pick you-all out a nice pony what’s well broke, and I bet you’ll ride him lots farther than that. I’ll rope him now – I know jest the sort of a hawse you’d oughter ride – ”
“No; you go eat your breakfast with the other boys,” laughed Ruth, preparing to go back to the ranch-house. “Jane Ann says we’re all to have ponies to ride and she maybe will be disappointed if I don’t let her pick out mine for me,” added Ruth, with her usual regard for the feelings of her mates. “But I am going to depend on you, Mr. Ike, to teach me to ride.”
“And when you want to ride over to Tintacker tuh interview that yere maverick, yo’ let me know, Miss,” said Bashful Ike. “I’ll see that yuh git thar with proper escort, and all that,” and he grinned sheepishly.
Tom and Bob breakfasted with the punchers, but after the regular meal at the ranch-house the two boys hastened to join their girl friends. First they must all go to the corral and pick out their riding ponies. Helen, Madge and The Fox could ride fairly well; but Jane Ann had warned them that Eastern riding would not do on the ranch. Such a thing as a side-saddle was unknown, so the girls had all supplied themselves with divided skirts so that they could ride astride like the Western girl. Besides, a cow pony would not stand for the long skirt of a riding habit flapping along his flank.
Now, Ruth had ridden a few times on Helen’s pony, and away back when she was a little girl she had ridden bareback on an old horse belonging to the blacksmith at Darrowtown. So she was not afraid to try the nervous little flea-bitten gray that Ike Stedman roped and saddled and bridled for her. Jane Ann declared it to be a favorite pony of her own, and although the little fellow did not want to stand while his saddle was being cinched, and stamped his cunning little feet on the ground a good bit, Ike assured the girl of the Red Mill that “Freckles,” as they called him, was “one mighty gentle hawse!”
There was no use in the girls from the East showing fear; Ruth was too plucky to do that, anyway. She was not really afraid of the pony; but when she was in the saddle it did seem as though Freckles danced more than was necessary.
These cow ponies never walk – unless they are dead tired; about Freckles’ easiest motion was a canter that carried Ruth over the prairie so swiftly that her loosened hair flowed behind her in the wind, and for a time she could not speak – until she became adjusted to the pony’s motion. But she liked riding astride much better than on a side-saddle, and she soon lost her fear. Ike had given her some good advice about the holding of her reins so that a sharp pull on Freckles’ curb would instantly bring the pony down to a dead stop. The bashful one had screwed tiny spurs into the heels of her high boots and given her a light quirt, or whip.
The other girls – all but Heavy – were, as we have seen, more used to riding than the girl of the Red Mill; but with the stout girl the whole party had a great deal of fun. Of course, Jennie Stone expected to cause hilarity among her friends; she “poked fun” at herself all the time, so could not object if the others laughed.
“I’ll never in this world be able to get into a saddle without a kitchen chair to step upon,” Jennie groaned, as she saw the other girls choosing their ponies. “Mercy! if I got on that little Freckles, he’d squat right down – I know he would! You’ll have to find something bigger than these rabbits for me to ride on.”
At that she heard the girls giggling behind her and turned to face a great, droop-headed, long-eared roan mule, with hip bones that you could hang your hat on – a most forlorn looking bundle of bones that had evidently never recovered the climatic change from the river bottoms of Missouri to the uplands of Montana. Tom Cameron held the mule with a trace-chain around his neck and he offered the end of the chain to Heavy with a perfectly serious face.
“I believe you’d better saddle this chap, Jennie,” said Tom. “You see how he’s built – the framework is great. I know he can hold you up all right. Just look at how he’s built.”
“Looks like the steel framework of a skyscraper,” declared Heavy, solemnly. “Don’t you suppose I might fall in between the ribs if I climbed up on that thing? I thought you were a better friend to me than that, Tom Cameron. You’d deliberately let me risk my life by being tangled up in that moth-eaten bag o’ bones if it collapsed under me. No! I’ll risk one of these rabbits. I’ll have less distance to fall if I roll.”
But the little cow ponies were tougher than the stout girl supposed. Ike weighed in the neighborhood of a hundred and eighty pounds – solid bone and muscle – and the cayuse that he bestrode when at work was no bigger than Ruth’s Freckles. They hoisted Heavy into the saddle, and Tom offered to lash her there if she didn’t feel perfectly secure.
“You needn’t mind, Tommy,” returned the stout girl. “If, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for me to disembark from this saddle, I’ll probably want to get down quick. There’s no use in hampering me. I take my life in my hand – with these reins – and – ugh! ugh! ugh!” she finished as, on her picking up the lines, her restive pony instantly broke into the liveliest kind of a trot.
But after all, Heavy succeeded in riding pretty well; while Ruth, after an hour, was not afraid to let her pony take a pretty swift gait with her. Jane Ann, however, showed remarkable skill and made the Eastern girls fairly envious. She had ridden, of course, ever since she was big enough to hold bridle reins, and there were few of the punchers who could handle a horse better than the ranchman’s niece.
But the visitors from the East did not understand this fact fully until a few days later, when the first bunch of Spring calves and yearlings were driven into a not far distant corral to be branded. Branding is one of the big shows on a cattle ranch, and Ruth and her chums did not intend to miss the sight; besides, some of the boys had corraled Old Trouble-Maker near by and promised some fancy work with the big black and white steer.
“We’ll show you some roping now,” said Jane Ann, with enthusiasm. “Just cutting a little old cow out of that band in the corral and throwing it ain’t nothing. Wait till we turn Old Trouble-Maker loose.”
The whole party rode over to the branding camp, and there was the black and white steer as wild as ever. While the branding was going on the big steer bellowed and stamped and tried to break the fence down. The smell of the burning flesh, and the bellowing of the calves and yearlings as their ears were slit, stirred the old fellow up.
“Something’s due to happen when that feller gits turned out,” declared Jib Pottoway. “You goin’ to try to rope that contrary critter, Jane Ann?”
“It’ll be a free-for-all race; Ike says so,” cried Jane Ann. “You wait! You boys think you’re so smart. I’ll rope that steer myself – maybe.”
The punchers laughed at this boast; but they all liked Jane Ann and had it been possible to make her boast come true they would have seen to it that she won. But Old Trouble-Maker, as Jib said, “wasn’t a lady’s cow.”
It was agreed that only a free-for-all dash for the old fellow would do – and out on the open range, at that. Old Trouble-Maker was to be turned out of the corral, given a five-rod start, and then the bunch who wanted to have a tussle with the steer would start for him. Just to make it interesting Old Bill Hicks had put up a twenty dollar gold piece, to be the property of the winner of the contest – that is, to the one who succeeded in throwing and “hog-tieing” Old Trouble-Maker.
It was along in the cool of the afternoon when the bars of the small corral were let down and the steer was prodded out into the open. The old fellow seemed to know that there was fun in store for him. At first he pawed the ground and seemed inclined to charge the line of punchers, and even shook his head at the group of mounted spectators, who were bunched farther back on the hillside. Bashful Ike stopped that idea, however, for, as master of ceremonies, he rode in suddenly and used his quirt on the big steer. With a bellow Old Trouble-Maker swung around and started for the skyline. Ike trotted on behind him till the steer passed the five-rod mark. Then pulling the big pistol that swung at his hip the foreman shot a fusilade into the ground which started the steer off at a gallop, tail up and head down, and spurred the punchers into instant action, as well.
“Ye-yip!” yelled Bashful Ike. “Now let’s see what you ’ombres air good for with a rope. Go to it!”
