The Boy Scouts On The Range Part 8

"Well, get back to the pasture now, Pete, and I'll guarantee the ghost won't bother you any more. Come on, get some color in your face. You are chattering like a child."

"Won't you send somebody back with me, sir? That thing ought to be looked into."

"Nonsense! I wouldn't waste time, men or thought on such rubbish. If you get track of any Indians, let me know, but don't bother me with any ghost stories. Now be off!"

"Y-y-yes, sir," said the cow-puncher obediently, but Rob noted that his pony didn't travel back toward the far pasture as fast as it had come away from it.

"So," thought Rob to himself, "there are haunted cliff dwellings near here, as well as a rogue grizzly and a bunch of bad Indians. Well, it looks as if we had fallen into an ideal spot for Boy Scouts."

CHAPTER VI.

A BOY SCOUT "BRONCHO BUSTER."

The next morning before breakfast Rob recounted to his chums the conversation he had overheard the night before. The story of the ghost of the ancient cliff dwellings was, it appeared, no new thing on the Harkness ranch, which accounted for its owner's apathy in regard to it.

Successive batches of cow-punchers doing duty in the far pasture at night professed to have seen the grisly object on its nightly rounds, but n.o.body had ever had the courage to investigate it.

After the morning meal had been dispatched, Mr. Harkness announced that he expected to be busied about the ranch for the morning.

"But, Harry, you take the boys down to the corral," he said, "and have one of the men catch up some horses for them. You boys know best the kind of stock you want, so I'll let you choose them."

The boys thanked him, and a few moments afterward he left the room. A short time later he galloped off to make a round of the different sections of the range and to prosecute inquiries about the renegade Moquis.

The corral was, as was usually the case, full of ponies of all colors and grades of disposition, from mild beasts to fiery, half-broken bronchos. As the boys neared the enclosure, a stout little cowboy in a huge hairy pair of "chaps" approached them, airily swinging a lariat.

His eyes opened and shut as rapidly as a loose shutter slat in a breeze.

Cowboys have nick-names for everybody. His was of course "Blinky."

"Good mornin', Master Harry. Want some cattle this a. m.?" he inquired.

"Yes, Blinky. Have you got some good ones caught up?"

"Why, yes, you can have White Eye, and what kind of stock does your friends fancy?"

There was a twinkle in Blinky's fidgety optics as he asked this, for the boys, although they had donned regular ranch clothes, still bore about them that mysterious air which marks a "tenderfoot," as if they bore a brand.

"How about you, Rob?" asked Harry, also smiling slightly. "Want a bronc, or something more on the rocking-horse style?"

Now, although Rob could ride fairly well, and both Tubby and Merritt had had some practice on horseback, none of the boys were what might be called rough riders. But something in Blinky's tone and Harry's covert smile aroused all Rob's fighting blood.

"Oh, I want something with some life in it," he said boldly.

"Um-hum! The same will do for me, but not _too_ much life, if you please," chimed in Tubby, somewhat dubiously.

"Anything I don't need to use spurs on," ordered Merritt, following up the general spirit.

"All right, young fellers," said the cow-puncher, opening the corral gate. "Come on in while I catch 'em up for you."

The instant the rawhide began whirling about Blinky's head the ponies evidently realized that something was up, for they began a wild race round and round the corral, heads up and heels lashing out right and left. The three tenderfeet regarded this exhibition with some apprehension, but they were too game to say anything.

"I'll rope my own," said Harry, picking up a lariat which hung coiled over a snubbing post near the gate. The ranch boy stood by the post, leisurely whirling his rawhide and just keeping the loop open till a small bay pony, with a big patch of white round each eye, came plunging by with the rest of the stampede. The lariat suddenly became imbued with life. Faster it whirled and faster, the loop finally sailing through the air gracefully and landing in a rawhide necklace round White Eye's neck.

At almost the same instant that White Eye became a captive, Blinky let his loop go, and roped a small, active buckskin pony which, as soon as it felt the loop on its neck, laid back its ears and began squealing and bucking viciously.

"I guess that's your pony, Rob," said Tubby generously, as the cow-puncher drew the struggling little animal up to the snubbing post, and tying him there, went into the barn for a saddle.

"If you are in any hurry, you can have him," volunteered Rob.

"No, I guess I can wait. How about you, Merritt?"

"Same here, I'm in no hurry."

"Well," thought Rob, "I'm in for it now, and if that bronc doesn't buck me into the middle of next week, I'm lucky."

After more struggles, the bridle and saddle were forced on the buckskin, and Blinky cast him loose, still maintaining a grip on the bridle, however.

"All aboard!" he said, with a grin in Rob's direction.

Feeling anything but as confident as he looked, Rob boldly put his foot in the heavy wooden stirrup with its big leather tapadero covering, and swung into the saddle. Hardly had he touched it when a strange thing happened. The boy felt as if an explosion must have occurred directly beneath him, and he was being shot skyward by it. The next instant the sensation changed, and as the broncho struck the hard ground of the corral, all four legs as stiff as drum sticks, Rob felt as if every bone in his body was in process of dislocation.

"Stick to her, boy! Yow-ee-ee!"

Blinky, roaring with laughter, shouted the advice. At this moment, too, just when Rob would much rather not have had any spectators about, several cow-punchers appeared as if by magic, and perching themselves on the corral rails, settled down to enjoy the spectacle.

"Whoop!" they yelled. "That's a regular steamboat bucker."

"Go on, boy! Grip her!"

"Don't go to leather!"

These and a hundred other excited exclamations were borne dimly to Rob's ears as the buckskin threshed about, trying in vain to rid itself of the troublesome boy. How he did it Rob never knew, but he stuck like a c.o.c.kle-burr, and that without "going to leather," or, in other words, gripping any part of the saddle. He must have been a born rider to stand the antics of the maddened cayuse as he did. One second the little brute, tiring of bucking, would rear backward as if it must overbalance, and the next it would be fairly standing on its head. Once it lay down and tried to roll over, but the high horn of the saddle prevented this.

As it collapsed to the ground, Rob skillfully slipped off, and when it struggled upon its feet again, the boy was standing over it and was as firmly in his seat as ever by the time the animal was ready for a new performance.

All at once the buckskin made a mad rush for the corral fence. It was five feet in height, and Rob turned sick as he faced what seemed inevitable disaster.

The yells of the cowboys, however, made him determined to stick it out.

"I've stood it all this time. I'll stay with it if it kills me," thought the boy.

The next instant the little broncho rose at the fence. The bars rose in front like an impa.s.sable wall.

"He'll never make it," was the thought that flashed through Rob's head.

But even as the fear of a direful crash flashed through his mind, the active little animal he bestrode had cleared the barrier, its hind hoofs just splintering the upper edge of the top rail. The buckskin alighted on the other side, trembling and sweating, with expanded nostrils and heaving flanks, but its ears were no longer back, nor did its eyes show white. The broncho seemed to have realized that it had played its trump card and lost.

"Get up!" cried Rob, kicking the shivering pony in the sides.