THE STAMPEDE
The enthusiasm of the girls and Walter Mason did not falter,
however, no matter how much the older people scoffed at the idea of
the treasure hidden by the Mexican bandit being found near Rose
Ranch. They went forth from the ranch house with some little
expectation of returning with the plunder.
Hesitation Kane, of course, did not try to discourage them. Even a
buried treasure could not excite the horse wrangler, in the least.
"I guess an Apache raid would not ruffle Hesitation's soul," Rhoda
observed. "He is quite the calmest person I ever saw."
Since the tornado the cattle of the main herd of Rose Ranch had
been broken into small bunches and were feeding in the higher
pastures. The swales and rich arroyos, in which the grass had been
so lush, had been badly drowned out by the flood. It would be
several weeks before the lowlands offered good pasturage again.
The visitors learned that where they had camped at the time of the
round-up, the river had risen and washed away every trace of the
encampment. Indeed, Rolling Spring Valley had been under water for
miles on either flank of the main stream. A bunch of young horses
belonging to Rose Ranch, having been confined in a small corral,
were drowned at that time.
"There went several thousand dollars," Rhoda explained, when she
told her friends of the tragedy. "The losses as well as the gains
in the ranching and stock raising business are large. If daddy
sells a big herd of cattle, or a fine bunch of horses, he takes in
many thousands of dollars, it is true.
"But it is hard to compute the profit or loss on the sale. So many
things are likely to happen. Perhaps some disease hits the herd.
Thousands of cattle may die in some epidemic. Once wolves came down
in the winter, when I was little--I remember it clearly--and killed
more than a hundred steers within a mile of the house."
"Oh, dear me, Rhoda! don't tell us about any more wild animals,"
wailed Grace. "I think the West would be a much nicer place if they
had tamed all the wild creatures before man ever moved into it."
"You are not much of a sport, Sis," said her brother, laughing. "It
must have been really great around here when the buffaloes and
Indians ran wild. You can't remember that, Rhoda, can you?"
"I should hope not!" gasped Rhoda. "Do you think I am as old as
Mrs. Cupp?"
"Oh! Oh!" cried Bess. "Poor Cupp!"
"I never saw a buffalo," confessed Rhoda. "And I never heard the
war whoop. And an Indian in war paint and other togs would scare me
just as much as it would Gracie. But daddy remembers them all. He
shot buffaloes for the army, scouted for General Pope, chased a
part of Geronimo's band into Mexico, and was a Texas Ranger when
the Border Ruffians were really in existence. He can tell you all
about those times; only mother doesn't let him."
"There! I suppose she doesn't like to hear about savages and other
awful things," Grace said, with satisfaction.
"No-o; it isn't that," Rhoda returned with twinkling eyes. "But
mother does not let him talk about those times because it makes
daddy out so much older than she is!"
Tom Collins, the cook, was a talkative man, if Hesitation Kane was
not. Tom reined his pony into the group of young people and began
spinning yarns, some of which perhaps had but a thin warp of truth.
He thought it was his privilege to "string along the tenderfoots" a
little. One thing he told the girls and Walter, however, interested
them immensely.
"You know, I came pretty near roping that black outlaw the day of
the tornado. Criminy, if I'd got him!"
"Now, Tom, don't tell us that," commanded Rhoda. "You know there
isn't a horse on the ranch that can come anywhere near him in
speed."
"That's right," admitted Tom. "But I come on him sudden and
unexpected."
"How did it happen?" asked Walter.
"Did you know the boss sent me home ahead of you folks from the
rodeo? That's how come I didn't get to ride after those raiders
with the other boys. I never do have no luck," said Tom. "If it
rained soup I wouldn't have no spoon, and a hole in my hat.
"Well, it was this-a-way: I was riding right along yonder, making
for the ranch house, and not thinking of nothing--not a thing!
Crossing the mouth of one of them gulches--'twasn't far beyond the
one where you gals took refuge from the big wind--all of a sudden
my pony throwed up his head and nickered, and out of the slot in
the hill come trottin' that big, handsome black critter!
"My soul and body!" exclaimed the cowboy earnestly, "if I'd had my
rope handy I could have put the noose right over his head! It
certainly did give me a shock."
"Humph!" said Rhoda, "it's always the biggest fishes, daddy says,
that get away."
"I guess the Big Boss is right," agreed Tom Collins. "That black
feller, he swung around on his hind laigs, and he skedaddled up
that gulch. I knowed the place. It's just a pocket, and not very
deep; but the sides couldn't be clumb by a goat, let alone a hawse.
"So I turns my pony into that hole and I got my rope ready, and
says I to me: 'Tom Collins, you're going to either get an awful
fall, or you'll be the proudest man on the old Rose Ranch!'"
"And what happened?" asked Walter.
"Well, I dunno. Either I'd been seeing things, or else that blame
black outlaw is bad medicine. He seemed to e-vap-o-rate."
"Now, Tom!" admonished Rhoda.
"Honest to pickles, Miss Rhody! I wouldn't fool you 'bout a serious
matter. And this is it."
"You mean you lost the horse?" asked Nan.
"In a blind pocket. Yes, ma'am! Criminy! I couldn't believe it
myself. I says to me: 'Tom Collins! your cinches is slipped. That's
what is the matter.'
"But you know, Miss Rhody," he added to the ranchman's daughter,
"your pa don't allow nothing stronger than spring water on the
ranch. I was as sober as a Greaser judge trying his brother-in-law
for hawse stealin'. That's what!
"That old black capering Satan went flying up that gulch; and me, I
pulled my little roan in after him and got my rope coiled. I says
to me: 'You ain't astride nothin' but a little roan goat that only
knows cows; but you got the chancet of your life, Tom Collins, to
make a killin'. That's right!'
"That is a twisty gulch--I'll show it to you while we're up here
prospectin'--and all I could hear was old Blackie's hoofs
clattering, and once in a while he'd whistle. He's got a neigh like
a steam whistle.
"Well," pursued the cowboy, "all of a sudden the noise stopped. I
couldn't hear his hoofs nor his voice. And when I got around the
next turn that give me a sight of the complete gulch, clear to the
pocket, there wasn't no hawse at all. He'd just gone up in smoke,
or something. That's what!"
"What became of the horse?" cried Bess Harley.
"There's some joke in it," Rhoda said doubtfully.
"Honest to pickles!" said the cowpuncher earnestly, "I was scared
blue myself. I ain't no more superstitious than the next feller.
But that certainly got me.
"I rid back to the mouth of the gulch, lookin' all the way, and
never seen a hoof print to show me where he'd lighted out for. He
couldn't climb the sides of the gulch. And he didn't hide out on me
and let me go back and then dodge out o' the gulch.
"No, sir! There he was one minute, then the next he wasn't there at
all. I got back to the mouth of the gulch, and there I seen that
old tornado a-comin'. You folks had passed me and 'scaped my
attention.
"Me and the roan just squatted down under a bank till the wind was
over; then we made tracks for the ranch house ahead of the rain.
Get soaked? Well, I should say! But somehow I didn't care to stay
around where that blame black Satan disappeared hisself so
strange-like. No, sir."
"Tom, I think you have been stringing the long bow," declared
Rhoda, shaking her head.
"Honest to pickles!" reiterated the cowboy. "Why--why, I'll show
you the very hole in the hill where it happened."
They laughed at that; but the Eastern girls and Walter were
inclined to believe that the cowboy had told the truth--as far as
he knew it. In some way the outlaw had managed to elude him.
"Goodness!" murmured Walter to Nan, "wouldn't it be great to catch
that black horse?"
"He's handsomer than your Prince," agreed Nan.
"He is that. I wonder where he went when Tom lost him?"
The treasure-hunting party did not go directly to the gulch in
which the girls had had their adventure at the time of the tornado.
A part of what Hesitation Kane had on his pack horse was to be
delivered to an outfit herding a bunch of steers back in the hills
a long distance.
The girls and Walter had agreed to ride that way, stop over night
with Steve's outfit, and then work down to the old bear den from
the other direction--that is, from the north.
They entered the foothills through a pleasant, winding valley
which, had it not been for the marks of the recent cloudburst,
would have been a beautiful trail. But it was considerably torn up
by the water that had swept through it, a raging torrent.
They found Steve's outfit with the cattle--nearly a thousand head
of them--feeding in two cup-shaped hollows chained by a narrow
path. The hills were steep and rocky all around these hollows, and
a dozen steers abreast would have choked the path between the two
pastures. About half of the cattle were grazing in one hollow, and
the other half in the second cup.
The outfit gave the party a noisy welcome. These herders of cattle,
working sometimes for weeks at a stretch without getting to the
ranch house, and seeing only each other's faces, certainly get
lonely. A newcomer is hailed with joy. And of course the daughter
of the Rose Ranch owner and her friends were doubly welcome to this
outfit.
The tent was set up for the girls; but, as before, Walter roughed
it with the cowpunchers. He was enjoying every minute of his
experience on the ranch, whether his timid sister did or not!
A soft, balmy evening dropped down about the camp, which was
established in the further cup between the hills. As evening
approached the cattle from the outside cup were driven into this
inner enclosure. They could be cared for at night much more easily
in one herd.
Tom Collins and the outfit's cook outvied each other in making
supper. Then there followed two long hours of songs and stories and
chaff. The boys badgered each other, but were very polite to the
girls.
Walter wanted to ride herd with the first watch, and this was
agreed to.
"That is, young fellow, you can ride if you can sing," said Steve,
the boss of the outfit, gravely.
"Sing? Well, I don't know. What kind of singing? I'm not famous for
my voice," admitted the boy.
"Just so's you can sing something the cows like, it'll be all
right," Steve told him. "If anything should happen, you have to
sing. It keeps the cows from getting nervous."
"Maybe if I sing it will make them nervous," suggested Walter, not
so easily jollied.
"You'd better learn Henery's song, here," said Steve. "Henery has
one he _calls_ 'My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean' an' he sings it in seven
different keys and there's forty stanzas to it. And when a cow hears
_that_--"
One of "Henery's" boots sailed through the air just then, and Steve
had to dodge it. Henry was not on the first watch.
Walter went out with the first crew. Somebody lent him a slicker,
for rain was prophesied. Steve said, drawlingly:
"If it keeps on like this so wet, we might's well be in the middle
of the Pacific Ocean. It's rained twice in ten weeks."
Walter's instructions were to keep just in sight of the man riding
around the herd ahead of him, to take it easy, and not to do
anything to disturb the quiet herd. Some of the cattle were lying
down chewing their cud; others were moving slowly while they
cropped the grass, all headed west. Riding herd seemed, after an
hour or two, to be the dreariest kind of work to the Eastern boy.
Then he noticed that there was a chill in the air and that distant
lightning played on the clouds to the north. The cattle all got
upon their feet. It did not appear that they were really unquiet;
yet there was a certain tension in the air that they must have
felt, as well as the herders.
Suddenly there was a near-by flash of lightning followed by a peal
of thunder. The camp remained quiet; but the cattle began to snort
and paw the earth. Each flash showed Walter that the animals were
crowding closer and closer together. They were still heading west.
In the light of another dazzling bolt the boy beheld several
horsemen riding down the other side of the cup shaped valley--the
west side. They were not of this Rose Ranch outfit. Indeed, in that
single glance he realized that they were not dressed like the
cowpunchers.
Who could these strangers be? He was about to ride faster and
overtake one of the other herders and ask, when the thunder seemed
to split the firmament right over the valley. A vivid blue flash
lit up the whole arena.
Walter saw one of the group of strange horsemen dash down toward
the cattle, flying a slicker high over his head. This horseman made
a frightful object charging along the front of the already uneasy
steers.
The latter wheeled. With loud bellowings and a thunder of hoofs,
the herd started east--started full pelt for the narrow opening
between the two hollows.
It was a stampede! Walter had heard of such catastrophes; but he
had never dreamed that a charging herd of cattle could make so
fearful an appearance. His own horse snorted, jumped about, and
started to run away with him; and pull at the bit as Walter did, he
could not at once gain control of the terrified little beast.