The Pony Rider Boys in the Alkali Part 29

"Tom Parry didn't," objected the guide. "Master Tad read the trail himself."

"Shake," glowed Bud, extending his hand to Tad. "You're the right sort for this outfit. We'll let you help point the bunch into the corral when we get them going. You'll see stars before you get through with that job--stars that ain't down on the sky-pilot's chart."

"It won't be the first time, Mr. Stevens. I've seen enough of them to make a Fourth of July celebration, already."

Just after breakfast, to which the camp had sat down at break of day, the horse-hunters began their preliminary work. Bud directed two of his men to work south, two more to ride north, while he would take the center of the range.

"What I want," he explained to the boys, "is to find where the wild horses are waterin' these days. They've been around these parts for more than two weeks, so we know they've got a nice cold water hole somewhere."

"What were they doing on the desert?" asked Walter. "I thought they had just come across."

"No; they were out for a play. That shows they had had plenty to eat and drink. Professor, I think I'll take the kiddie along with me,"

announced Bud, much to Tad's surprise, and, judging from the expression of the lad's face, pleasure, as well.

Professor Zepplin glanced at the guide inquiringly. Parry nodded his head.

"He'll be all right."

"Yes, you may go, Tad. But be careful. Don't let him get into any difficulties, Mr. Stevens. He's a venturesome lad."

"Guess he's able to wiggle out of anything he gets into," grinned the horse-hunter. "Come along; take a hunch on your cinch straps, a chunk of grub in your pocket; then we're ready to find where the Angel washes his face every morning and night."

Tad lost no time in getting ready for the trip to trail the wild horses to their lair, and in a few moments the horse-hunters rode from the camp, followed by the envious glances of the Pony Rider Boys.

"Wish I were going along," muttered Chunky ruefully, as he turned his back on them and gazed off across the desert.

CHAPTER XV

BUD PROMISES SOME EXCITEMENT

The horse-hunter and his young companion laid their course at right angles to the reach of the range.

The trail rose slowly to pa.s.s between low b.u.t.tes, leading on under the great spreading Joshua trees that capped the range itself. Off to the east and south of them, plainly exposed to view, lay the yellow stretch of the Ralston Valley that went on and on until it eventually terminated in Death Valley. The dry lake beds in the desert, looked, with the sun shining on them, like great pearls set in the Desert Maze.

Tad thought they were water, but Bud Stevens informed him that they were filled with water only after a heavy thunderstorm, or in the early spring.

"You ought to have come down here earlier in the season," he told the lad. "It's a pretty bad time to cross the desert now."

"Yes, we know that. But we are not looking for easy trips," laughed the lad.

As they moved slowly along, the cowboy horse-hunter explained many of the secrets of the trail to his young companion, as well as describing horse-hunts in which he had taken part in the past.

"But I don't understand why they have come all the way across the desert to get into this range?" said Tad. "Why did they not remain on the other side where, I understand, there is plenty of forage?"

"It's a peculiar thing, kiddie, but hosses, wild or tame are like human beings in some ways. They like to get back home."

"What do you mean?"

"Wild horses always will go back to the range where they were born.

Sometimes they run away from the range ahead of a storm; sometimes they are captured and taken away. But if they ever get the chance, back they go to the place where they were born. Angel was born in this range, and so were most of the mares and others that have come over with him. When a halfbreed Cherokee came into camp and told us the band of horses was seen stretched out on the mesa on the other side, I knew they were getting ready to hike across the desert, so we prepared to come here."

Tad was listening intently. All this was new to him and much of it not entirely understandable.

"Did you ever notice how animals act before a big storm?" asked Bud.

"No; I can't say that I have."

"Next time you see a lot of horses stretched out on the ground on their sides, heads close to the ground, all looking as if they were asleep, you'll know there's a big storm coming."

"Why do they do that?"

"I don't know, unless it is to rest themselves thoroughly before running away from the storm that they know is coming."

"How do they know a storm is coming, unless they can see it?" marveled the boy.

"Kiddie, you'll have to ask the horses. Bud Stevens don't know--n.o.body knows. A fellow with whiskers and wearing spectacles one of--of them scientific gents--told me once that it was a kind of wireless telegraph, that newfangled way of sending ghost messages. Said they got it in the air. Mebby they do; I don't know. They get it.

Sometimes you'll see the colts running up and down. That's another sign of storm."

"That's strange. I never heard it before," mused the lad.

"And speaking of colts, did you ever know that sometimes a band of horses will take a great fancy to a frisky young colt?"

"No."

"Yes. They'll follow the colt for days, with their eyes big and full of admiration for the awkward critter. And they'll fight for him too.

But 'tisn't often necessary, 'cause very few horses will bother a colt.

Ever see a hoss fight?"

Tad admitted that he had not.

"Ought to see one. It's the liveliest scrimmage that you ever set eyes on. Beats that one back there on the desert, when you plunked me on my head in a water hole. Jimminy! but you did dump me proper," grinned the cowboy.

"Hope you don't lay it up against me," laughed Tad.

"No. Got all over that. I got what was coming to me--coming on the run. Say, got the trail on your side there? They seem to have shuffled over to the northward a bit."

"Yes, I'm riding on their footprints now."

"That's all right then. Don't want to let it get away from us."

"Where do you think they are heading, Mr. Stevens?"

"For the mesas up the range further. There's plenty of grazing there and there must be water close by. What we want to do, to-day, is to locate them and find out just where they go for their water. Then, when the schooner gets down to your camp, we'll haul our outfit up in the range and build a corral to drive them into."

"Do you always make a capture?"

"Us? No. Sometimes the leaders of the band are too smart for us.