Part 17 (1/2)

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.