The Curlytops at Uncle Frank's Ranch Part 30

Around and around the drove of half-wild ponies rode the yelling and shouting men, firing off many blank cartridges to scare the little animals back into the corral.

Some of the ponies, frightened by the noise, did turn back. They ran up to the corral gate, which was still open, and sniffed at the fence.

They may have said to themselves:

"We don't like it, being shut up in there, but maybe we'll have to go back in, for we don't like being shouted at, and we don't like the bang-bang noises like thunder."

But, even when some of the ponies had run back as far as the corral gate they did not go in. Once again they turned around and would have galloped across the prairie again. But Uncle Frank shouted:

"Get after them, boys! Drive those few in and the rest will follow after like sheep! Get after them!"

So the cowboys rode up on their own swift ponies, that seemed to be having a good time, and then the other ponies nearest the corral gate were turned in through it. Then as the rest were driven up they did as the first ones had done and galloped back where they had been before Trouble let them out.

One after another the ponies ran back into the corral until every one was there. Then Uncle Frank closed the gate, and this time he locked it so that no one could open it without the key. But no one would try, not even Trouble, for, crying and sobbing to be allowed to go out and play, he had been given a lesson that he would not soon forget.

"I'm sorry I had to punish him," said Mother Martin to the Curlytops, when they came in after the ponies were once more in the corral, "but I just had to. Work on a ranch is hard enough without little boys letting the horses run wild after they have once been caught."

"Oh, well, no great harm was done," said Uncle Frank with a good-natured laugh, "though it did make us ride pretty hard for a while. Come on, Trouble, I'll take you ponyback!"

This was what Trouble liked, and he soon dried his tears and sat on the saddle in front of Uncle Frank as happy as could be. Janet and Ted got out their ponies, and rode with Uncle Frank and Trouble around the outside of the corral, looking at the little horses inside the fence.

They were quieter now, and were eating some oats the cowboys had put out for them.

Two or three days after this, when the ponies had been driven away to the railroad station to be shipped to a far-off state, a cowboy came riding in with news that he had seen a band of two or three Indians pa.s.s along the prairie near the rocks where Teddy and Janet had found Clipclap.

"If we ride after them," said the cowboy, "maybe we can find where the other Indians are, and where they have hidden your horses and cattle, Mr. Barton."

"That's it!" exclaimed Uncle Frank. "We'll get on the trail after these Indians. I'm sure they must have some of my animals hidden away in the hills, for I would have heard of it if they had sold them around here.

We'll get on the trail!"

"What's the trail, Daddy?" asked Teddy of his father.

"Oh, it means the marks the Indians' ponies may have left in the soft ground," said Mr. Martin. "Uncle Frank and his cowboys will try to trail, or follow, the marks of the horses' feet, and see where the Indians have gone."

"Can't I come?" asked Teddy. "I can ride good now!"

"Oh, no indeed you can't go!" cried Mother Martin. "Are you going?" she asked her husband.

"Yes," he answered. "I think I'll go on the trail with Uncle Frank."

CHAPTER XVII

THE CURLYTOPS ALONE

Teddy and Janet sat on a bench outside the cowboys' bunkhouse, as their father, Uncle Frank and a number of the ranchmen rode away over the prairies on the trail of the Indians. The Curlytops did not seem very happy.

"Don't you wish _we_ could go, Jan?" asked Teddy, after he and his sister had sat in silence for some time.

"I just guess I _do_!" she exclaimed. "I can ride good, too. Almost as good as you, Ted, and I don't see why we couldn't go!"

"Yes, you ride nice, Jan," said her brother. "But I thought you were afraid of Indians."

"I used to be, but I'm not any more. Anyway, if you'd stay with me I wouldn't be. And, anyhow, Uncle Frank says the Indians won't hurt us."

"Course they won't! I'm not afraid! I'd go on the trail after 'em if they'd let us."

"So would I. We could throw stones at 'em if they tried to hurt us, Teddy."

"Yes. Or we could ride our ponies fast and get away. Uncle Frank told me the Indians didn't have any good ponies, and that's why they took his."

"But we can't go," said Janet with a sigh.

"No; we've got to stay at home."

A little later a cowboy came limping out of the bunkhouse. His name was Sim Body, but all his friends called him "Baldy" because he had so little hair on his head.

"h.e.l.lo, Curlytops!" cried Baldy in a jolly voice, for he was always good-natured. Even now he was jolly, though he had a lame foot where a horse had stepped on it. That is why he was not on the trail after the Indians with the other cowboys.

"h.e.l.lo," answered Teddy, but he did not speak in a jolly voice.

"Why, what's the matter?" asked Baldy with a laugh, as he limped to the bench and sat down near the two children. "You act as sad and gloomy as if there wasn't a Christmas or a New Year's any more, to say nothing of Fourth of July and birthdays! What's the matter? Seems to me, if I had all the nice, curly hair you two have, I'd be as happy as a horned toad and I'd go around singing all day long," and Baldy rubbed his hand over his own smooth head and laughed.

"I don't like my hair," grumbled Teddy. "It's always getting snarled and the comb gets stuck in it."

"And it does in mine, too," added Janet. "And mother pulls when she tries to untangle it. Mine's longer than Ted's."

"Yes, and nicer, for that reason," went on Baldy. "Though I'd be glad if I had even half of yours, Teddy. But never mind about that. I won't take your hair, though I'd like to know what makes you both so gloomy-like.

Can't you smile?"

Ted and Janet could not help laughing at Baldy, he seemed so funny. He was a good friend of theirs.

"We can't go on the trail after Indians," said Janet. "We want to go, but we've got to stay here."

"And we can ride our ponies good, too," went on Teddy. "Uncle Frank said we could."

"Yes, you're getting to be pretty good riders," admitted Baldy. "But that isn't saying you're big enough to go on a trail after Indians. Of course these Indians may not be very bad, and maybe they aren't the ones that took our horses. But riding on a trail takes a long while, and maybe the boys will be out all night in the open. You wouldn't like that."

"We went camping with our grandpa once," declared Teddy.

"And we slept in a tent," added his sister.

"And we saw a funny blue light and we thought it was a ghost but it wasn't," continued Teddy.

"Hum! A ghost, eh?" laughed Baldy. "Well, I've never been on a trail after one of _them_, but I've trailed Indians--and helped catch 'em, too."

"How do you do it?" asked Teddy eagerly.