THE X BAR X BOYS ON THE RANCH
[Illustration: DOWN TOWARD THE ROAD SWEPT THE RIDERS.]
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THE X BAR X BOYS ON THE RANCH
BY
JAMES CODY FERRIS
Author of “The X Bar X Boys in Thunder Canyon,”
“The X Bar X Boys on Whirlpool River,” etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY
Walter S. Rogers
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
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WESTERN STORIES FOR BOYS
By JAMES CODY FERRIS
THE X BAR X BOYS BOOKS
THE X BAR X BOYS ON THE RANCH
THE X BAR X BOYS IN THUNDER CANYON
THE X BAR X BOYS ON WHIRLPOOL RIVER
THE X BAR X BOYS ON BIG BISON TRAIL
THE X BAR X BOYS AT THE ROUND-UP
(OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION.)
GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
Copyright, 1926, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP
The X Bar X Boys on the Ranch
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CONTENTS
I The Road to Eagles
II A Disheartening Loss
III A Puncher in a Checked Shirt
IV A Clue
V Rimor’s Place
VI The Three Horsemen
VII Rattlers
VIII The Fall
IX Facing a Mountain Lion
X Searching
XI The Return
XII Visitors
XIII Norine Entertains
XIV Gus Comes Home
XV Planning a Dance
XVI Bug Eye’s Arrival
XVII Pursuit
XVIII The Man With the Scar
XIX Escape
XX The Decision
XXI News From the 8 X 8
XXII The Storm
XXIII Discovery
XXIV Brand
XXV The Round-Up
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THE X BAR X BOYS ON THE RANCH
CHAPTER I
THE ROAD TO EAGLES
Two boys loped along the winding, dusty road on the way to Eagles.
One of them, astride a white-faced mustang, was leading a third
horse, a bay, which, though riderless, was saddled and bridled. The
day was hot; the road steep and tortuous; and the riderless horse,
with head held low, was doing his best to retard the procession.
Taking a firmer hold of the leading rein, the boy gave it a jerk
forward.
“Come up here, General!” he cried. “Where do you think you’re
going--to a funeral? Pretty near train time and we still have a good
stretch ahead of us!”
His companion, a slightly older youth, riding a brown pony, turned
in his saddle.
“Is he holding back on you, Teddy? Those Spanish bridles make
awfully poor leading. I think he’s got a sore mouth. And, if he has,
dad’ll find it out quick!”
“Boy, don’t I know it! Why,” Teddy Manley added with a chuckling
laugh, “I bet dad could tell if General didn’t sleep well the night
before. He sure is crazy over this horse!”
“I’ll tell a maverick he is!” cried Roy Manley. “Last thing he told
me before he left was to be sure to bring General in to meet him.
But as far as liking goes, you don’t exactly hate that Flash of
yours, I notice.”
The other boy grinned and patted the side of his bronco.
“Well,” he admitted, “I’m not saying much, but you have no right to
talk about falling in love with a horse. The way you treat Star
would make any one think he was made of cut glass! All the while
it’s easy now, Star, you might hurt yourself! Is that cinch-strap
too tight, Star? Here, let me brush that fly off your ear!’ Huh! Do
you tuck him in bed and kiss him good-night, Roy?”
Roy Manley refused the bait.
“I remember,” he said calmly, wiping the sweat from his upper lip
and leaving in its stead a streak of black dust, “when you first got
Flash. Dad gave him to you for your birthday. You were just a little
shaver then--”
“Aw, donkey-dust! Who do you think you are--Methuselah? Just because
you’re a year older--”
“You were just a little shaver then,” Roy went on imperturbably,
“and maybe you didn’t know what you were doing. You simply went into
ecstasy. Get that--ecstasy? Sixty-cent word. Yep, you jumped up and
down with glee, I’ll tell a maverick!”
“Well, if I jumped up and down with glee, you, by golly, stood on
your head when dad gave you Star! Now laugh that off!”
“We won’t argue about it,” Roy replied, with assumed dignity. “Baby,
this road is sure some dusty! Wind’s right at our backs, too. If I
took a drink of water now I’d turn into a mud-pie. Hey, Teddy, think
you can coax that cayuse you’re riding into something more than a
trickle? Maybe he’ll run, if you talk to him real nice.”
Teddy Manley did not reply, but clucked softly to his mount. Flash
responded with a leap that caused General, the bay that Teddy was
leading, to toss his head in protest.
“You’d better be careful,” Roy cautioned. “There’s only one man who
can boss General, and that’s dad. If the bay takes it into his head
to stop, he’ll _stop_, and neither one of us will be able to budge
him. Then dad’s train will pull in, and he’ll expect to find General
at the station waiting for him. And where’ll we be?”
“Down in the cellar eating spinach,” Teddy answered, with a grin.
“Flash, here, won’t let General balk on us! will you, old boy?” and
Teddy leaned forward and rubbed the horse’s nose. Flash nuzzled his
master’s hand affectionately.
“Why don’t you let up on that mush?” Roy asked in a disgusted tone.
“Go on, whisper pretty nothings in his ear! Talk about me and Star!
Why, when Gilly Froud--”
Eyes blazing, Teddy turned swiftly on his brother.
“Don’t mention that cur’s name to me,” he said thickly. “You know
what he did to Flash? He kicked him, that’s what he did! Kicked him!
And if dad hadn’t stopped me, I’d have--I’d have--”
“Cool off, cool off,” Roy advised soothingly. “I don’t like Froud
any more than you do. You know that. Anyway, dad threw him off the
ranch, so let’s forget him. Come on, step on it. Dad’s train is due
soon.”
Breathing heavily at the memory of Froud’s mistreatment of Flash,
Teddy pulled General’s leading rein and urged his own mount to a
faster pace.
This Gilly Froud had been a hand on the X Bar X ranch, which was
owned by Mr. Manley, the father of Roy and Teddy. One day the ranch
owner had caught Froud abusing Flash. Teddy had come around the
corner of the bunkhouse at the same instant, and took in the scene
at a glance. White to the lips, the boy started for Froud. Mr.
Manley took one look at his son’s face, and, springing forward,
seized Teddy by the shoulders. Flash--Teddy’s Flash--had been
kicked, and Teddy had seen it. Mr. Manley tightened his grip on his
son’s shoulders. There was not going to be that sort of fight on his
ranch if he could prevent it.
Teddy had come to his senses quickly, and Mr. Manley released him.
Then he turned and looked at Froud, whose face was sickly pale
underneath his tan. After this occurrence, Froud went away from that
ranch in something of a hurry.
As Teddy recalled the incident, his fist clenched and he
unconsciously drew up on Flash’s rein. The horse snorted and shook
his head, as though he knew what was passing through his master’s
mind.
“Always did hate a man who mistreated a horse,” Teddy murmured.
“Sure to be something else the matter with him. No decent fellow
would kick a pony.”
“Still thinking about Gilly Froud?” Roy asked. “Come on, snap out of
it! Lots of nicer things to think about. For instance, that wrist
watch you bought at school. Baby, wait till Nick Looker finds out
you own a wrist watch! Maybe he won’t ride you a little!”
Teddy grinned in reply, and pushed his sombrero back from his
forehead. It was certainly a hot day.
The two Manley brothers, Teddy, aged fifteen, and Roy, one year
older, were at home, for a long time, they hoped, if not for good,
from the Hopper Boarding School, an institution just outside of
Denver. Teddy had the golden hair and blue eyes of his mother,
Barbara Manley, “the blonde angel of the West,” her husband often
jokingly called her. But the laugh that always went with this remark
deceived no one--least of all the boys. They caught the note of love
in their father’s voice, and it found an echo in their own hearts.
“Jinks! She _is_ an angel!”
Roy, the taller of the two, had hair as brown as the hills around
him, and eyes but a trifle lighter in hue. He it was who had
inherited from his mother a fondness for literature, and, though
this last was carefully concealed, a liking for poetry.
Barbara Manley, before her marriage, had been a teacher of English
in a Denver school, and until she had met Bardwell Manley, poetry
had been her only sweetheart. Her eyes would shine with maternal
pride when she observed Roy reading a “book of silly verses,” as
Teddy called it.
Yet Roy was a real boy. More, he was a real Western boy, which is
saying a great deal. He was one of the best shots on the X Bar X
ranch, and although Teddy had a slight edge on him when it came to
riding, Roy could “fork” an unbroken bronco almost as well as any
man on the ranch. In build the boys were much alike--lean, wiry
products of range life.
Their father, Bardwell Manley, owned the X Bar X, a cattle ranch
some thirty hours’ ride “on the cars” west from Chicago on Rocky Run
River, a small stream. This ranch had been in the Manley family
since Temple Manley, the boys’ grandfather, now several years dead,
had settled there in 1868.
Roy and Teddy, together with their sister, Belle Ada, a girl now
twelve years old, had, of course, lived much of their lives on the X
Bar X. But as soon as they became old enough Mrs. Manley had
insisted that the two brothers go away to study in Denver, and the
last three winters Roy and Teddy had spent at the Hopper Academy.
Although their school days were happy enough, both boys were always
eager for summer to come, bringing with it vacation time, which
meant the ranch, with Flash and Star to gallop about on over many a
winding trail. Roy and Teddy had the real cowboy’s love for a good
pony and the wind-swept range. Though they did as well as most boys
at their studies and Roy rather better than the average, they were
both eager for the time to come when they could leave school and
follow in the footsteps of their father.
It was now the third week since school had closed, and today the
boys were riding to Eagles, a railroad station twelve miles from the
X Bar X, to meet Mr. Manley, who had stipulated that they must bring
his own special mount, General, for him to ride back. Of course they
could have made the trip in an auto, but Mr. Manley always said he
preferred “hoss flesh to flivvers.”
“Shucks! I don’t see the use of having an auto trail to Eagles when
dad rides General all the time,” Teddy half grumbled as he sank his
chin deeper into his neckerchief. “This is too blame dusty!”
In the memory of some at the X Bar X, there had been a time when
this road, winding up the mountain, had been just a trail, hardly
wide enough for two horses abreast. But the auto had since invaded
the West, and had widened the path into a dusty highway. In the
opinion of Roy and Teddy Manley, it was a change for the worse.
“Stop beefing,” challenged Roy, grinning. “Here! Take a look at that
and be thankful you’re allowed to live in the country!”
The two boys had come to a turn in the road almost at the top of the
mountain. The horses stood, champing their bits, on a small plateau.
The road wound itself about the elevation on either side, stretching
out like a long, brown ribbon. To the left, where the highway made
its sharpest curve, was a small slope, and beyond this the mountain
seemed to have been shorn off with a giant axe, making a sheer drop
of some three hundred feet.
Often and often the boys traveled this road, yet each time they
reached Bitter Cliff, as it was called, and looked off over that
vast stretch of country, they halted, fascinated anew by the beauty
of the scene before them.
Down below, the whole range was spread out in a clear-cut panorama.
Far in the rear rose the ranch buildings of X Bar X; the mess-house,
where Sing Lung, the cook, invented the sometimes strange but always
very palatable combinations of food; the high-fenced corral, now
almost empty, for the cattle were out on the grazing ground; the
ranch house--the home of Roy and Teddy; the “bronco-peeler’s”
bunkhouse; and the Rocky Run River, like a streak of dull silver,
flowing placidly through a border of cottonwoods and willows about
half a mile from the ranch house.
To the west, like another section of some great map, lay 8 X 8
ranch, owned by Peter Ball, an old friend and neighbor of Bardwell
Manley.
“She’s sure some view!” exclaimed Teddy, with a long, indrawn sigh
of peace and satisfaction. “Some view! Just as good as that picture
of the Great Open Spaces we’ve got hanging up in the school
auditorium.”
“Huh! Comparing this to a _picture_!” Roy snorted. “Why, man, this
is _real_! As good as a picture! Huh!”
“All right! All right!” Teddy said easily. “Then it isn’t! You can’t
get me sore,” he smiled amiably.
“What isn’t?” demanded his brother. “You mean to tell me you’d speak
of a picture in our school auditorium in the same breath
with--with--” and Roy flung out his arm in a mute and helpless
gesture of finality.
“All right, I said! Go easy with that arm of yours! You made General
jump then! But look! Isn’t the air clear? You can almost count the
horses down at 8 X 8!”
“So you can. Well, we’d better be on our way. Dad won’t want to be
kept waiting. He’ll be anxious to climb aboard General again, after
a week of walking and flivvers in the city.”
“My boy, that’s just what I’ve been thinking. You show remarkable
powers of perception. As soon as you can wake up that cayuse of
yours, we’ll be moving.”