The Curlytops at Uncle Frank's Ranch Part 16

"No, wait just a little!" he begged. "I'll go in and come right out again--that is if it's anything that bites. If it isn't you can come in with me."

"No, I'm not going to do that!" and Janet shook her head very decidedly to say "no!" Once more she looked over her shoulder.

"Well, you don't have to come in," Teddy said. "I'll go alone. I'm not scared."

Just then Janet looked across the fields, and she saw a man riding along on a pony.

"Oh, Teddy!" she called to her brother. "Here's a man! We can get him to go in and see what it is."

Teddy looked to where his sister pointed. Surely enough, there was a man going along. He was quite a distance off, but the Curlytops did not mind that. They were fond of walking.

"Holler at him!" advised Janet. "He'll hear us and come to help us find out what's in here."

Teddy raised his voice in the best shout he knew how to give. He had strong lungs and was one of the loudest-shouting boys among his chums.

"Hey, Mister! Come over here!" cried Teddy.

But the man kept on as if he had not heard, as indeed he had not. For on the prairies the air is so clear that people and things look much nearer than they really are. So, though the man seemed to be only a little distance away, he was more than a mile off, and you know it is quite hard to call so as to be heard a mile away; especially if you are a little boy.

Still Teddy called again, and when he had done this two or three times, and Jan had helped him, the two calling in a sort of duet, Teddy said:

"He can't hear us."

"Maybe he's deaf, like Aunt Judy," said Janet, speaking of an elderly woman in the town in which they lived.

"Well, if he is, he can't hear us," said Teddy; "so he won't come to us.

I'm going in anyhow."

"No, don't," begged Janet, who did not want her brother to go into danger. "If he can't hear us, Teddy, we must go nearer. We can walk to meet him."

Teddy thought this over a minute.

"Yes," he agreed, "we can do that. But he's a good way off."

"He's coming this way," Janet said, and it did look as though the man had turned his horse toward the children, who stood near the pile of rocks from which the queer noises came.

"Come on!" decided Ted, and, taking Janet's hand, he and she walked toward the man on the horse.

For some little time the two Curlytops tramped over the green, gra.s.sy prairies. They kept their eyes on the man, now and then looking back toward the rocks, for they did not want to lose sight either of them or of the horseman.

"I'm going to holler again," said Teddy. "Maybe he can hear me now.

We're nearer."

So he stopped, and putting his hands to his mouth, as he had seen Uncle Frank do when he wanted to call to a cowboy who was down at a distant corral, the little boy called:

"Hi there, Mr. Man! Come here, please!"

But the man on the horse gave no sign that he had heard. As a matter of fact, he had not, being too far away, and the wind was blowing from him toward Teddy and Jan. If the wind had been blowing the other way it might have carried the voices of the children toward the man. But it did not.

Then Teddy made a discovery. He stopped, and, shading his eyes with his hands, said:

"Jan, that man's going away from us 'stid of coming toward us. He's getting littler all the while. And if he was coming to us he'd get bigger."

"Yes, I guess he would," admitted the little girl. "He is going away, Teddy. Oh, dear! Now he can't help us!"

Without a word Teddy started back toward the rocks, and his sister followed. He was close to them when Janet spoke again.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I'm going in there and see what that noise was," Teddy replied.

"Oh, you mustn't!" she cried, hoping to turn him away. But Teddy answered:

"Yes, I am, too! I'm going to see what it is!"

"I'm not!" cried Janet. "I'm going home. You'd better come with me!"

But, though she turned away and went a short distance from the rocks in the direction she thought the ranch house of Ring Rosy Ranch should be, she very soon stopped. She did not like going on alone. She looked back at Ted.

Teddy had walked a little way toward the hole in the rocks. Now he called to his sister.

"The noise comes from in here," he said. "It's in this little cave."

"Are you going in?" asked Janet, trying to pretend she was not afraid.

"I want to see what made that noise," declared Teddy. Since he and his sister had gone camping with Grandpa Martin they were braver than they used to be. Of course, Ted, being a year older than his sister, was a little bolder than she was.

Janet, not feeling that she ought to run on home and leave Teddy there and yet not feeling brave enough to go close to the cave among the rocks with him, hardly knew what to do. She walked back a little way and then, suddenly, the noise came, more loudly than at first.

"Oh, there it goes again!" cried Janet, once more running back.

"I heard it," Teddy said. "It didn't war-whoop like an Indian."

"If he's sick he couldn't," explained Janet.

"And if he's sick he can't hurt us," went on Teddy. "I'm going to holler at him and see what he wants."

"You'd better come back and tell daddy or Uncle Frank," suggested Janet.

Teddy rather thought so himself, but he did not like to give up once he had started anything. He felt it would be a fine thing if he, all alone, could find one of the Indians.

"And maybe it is one of those who took Uncle Frank's ponies," thought Teddy to himself.

Again the groan sounded, this time not quite so loud, and after it had died away Teddy called:

"Who's in there? What's the matter with you?"

No answer came to this. Then Ted added: