On came the cowboys, yelling, shouting and shooting off their big revolvers which made noises like giant firecrackers. The men, some of whom wore big leather "pants," as Teddy said afterward, and some of whom had on trousers that seemed to be made from the fleece of sheep, swung their hats in the air. Some of them even stood up in their saddles, "just like circus riders!" as Janet sent word to Aunt Jo, who was spending the summer at Mt. Hope.
"Are they shooting real bullets, Uncle Frank?" asked Teddy, as soon as the noise died down a little and the cowboys were waving their hats to the Curlytops and the other visitors to Ring Rosy Ranch.
"Real bullets? Bless your heart, no!" exclaimed Mr. Barton. "Of course the cowboys sometimes have real bullets in their 'guns,' as they call their revolvers, but they don't shoot 'em for fun."
"What makes them shoot?" asked Janet.
"Well, sometimes it's to scare away bad men who might try to steal my cattle or horses, and again it's to scare the cattle themselves. You see," explained Uncle Frank, while the cowboys jumped from their horses and went to the bunk house to wash and get ready for supper, "a ranch is just like a big pasture that your Grandfather Martin has at Cherry Farm. Only my ranch is ever so much bigger than his pastures, even all of them put together. And there are very few fences around any of my fields, so the cattle or horses might easily stray off, or be taken.
"Because of that I have to hire men—cowboys they are called—to watch my cattle and horses, to see that they do not run away and that no white men or Indians come and run away with them.
"But sometimes the cattle take it into their heads to run away themselves. They get frightened—'stampeded' we call it—and they don't care which way they run. Sometimes a prairie fire will make them run and again it may be bad men—thieves. The cowboys have to stop the cattle from running away, and they do it by firing revolvers in front of them. So it wouldn't do to have real bullets in their guns when the cowboys are firing that way. They use blank cartridges, just as they did now to salute you when they came in."
"Is that what they did?" asked Teddy. "Saluted us?"
"That's it. They just thought they'd have a little fun with you—see if they could scare you, maybe, because you're what they call a 'tenderfoot,' Teddy."
"Pooh, I wasn't afraid!" declared Teddy, perhaps forgetting a little. "I liked it. It was like the Fourth of July!"
"I didn't like it," said Janet, with a shake of her curly head. "And what's a soft-foot, Uncle Frank?"
"A soft-foot? Oh, ho! I see!" he laughed. "You mean a tenderfoot! Well, that's what the Western cowboys call anybody from the East—where you came from. It means, I guess, that their feet are tender because they walk so much and don't ride a horse the way cowboys do. You see out here we folks hardly ever walk. If we've only got what you might call a block to go we hop on a horse and ride. So we get out of the way of walking.
"Now you Eastern folk walk a good bit—that is when you aren't riding in street cars and in your automobiles, and I suppose that's why the cowboys call you tender-feet. You don't mind, though, do you, Teddy?"
"Nope," he said. "I like it. But I'm going to learn to ride a pony."
"So'm I!" exclaimed Janet.
"I wants a wide, too!" cried Trouble. "Can't I wide, Uncle Frank? We hasn't got Nicknack, but maybe you got a goat," and he looked up at his father's uncle.
"No, I haven't a goat," laughed Uncle Frank, "though there might be some sheep on some of the ranches here. But I guess ponies will suit you children better. When you Curlytops learn to ride you can take Trouble up on the saddle with you and give him a ride. He's too small to ride by himself yet."
"I should say he was, Uncle Frank!" cried Mrs. Martin. "Don't let him get on a horse!"
"I won't," promised Mr. Barton with a laugh. But Trouble said:
"I likes a pony! I wants a wide, Muz-zer!"
"You may ride with me when I learn," promised Janet.
"Dat nice," responded William.
Uncle Frank's wife, whom everyone called Aunt Millie, came out of the ranch house and welcomed the Curlytops and the others. She had not seen them for a number of years.
"My, how big the children are!" she cried as she looked at Janet and Teddy. "And here's one I've never seen," she went on, as she caught Trouble up in her arms and kissed him.
"Now come right in. Hop Sing has supper ready for you."
"Hop Sing!" laughed Mother Martin. "That sounds like a new record on the phonograph."
"It's the name of our Chinese cook," explained Aunt Millie, "and a very good one he is, too!"
"Are the cowboys coming in to eat with us?" asked Teddy, as they all went into the house, where the baggage had been carried by Uncle Frank and Daddy Martin.
"Oh, no. They eat by themselves in their own building. Not that we wouldn't have them, for they're nice boys, all of them, but they'd rather be by themselves."
"Do any Indians come in?" asked Janet, looking toward the door.
"Bless your heart, no!" exclaimed Aunt Millie. "We wouldn't want them, for they're dirty and not at all nice, though some of them do look like pictures when they wrap themselves around in a red blanket and stick feathers in their hair. We don't want any Indians. Now tell me about your trip."
"We were in a collision!" cried Janet.
"In the middle of the night," added Teddy.
"An' I mos' fell out of my bed!" put in Trouble.
Then, amid laughter, the story of the trip from the East was told. Meanwhile Hop Sing, the Chinese cook, cried out in his funny, squeaky voice that supper was getting cold.
"Well, well eat first and talk afterward," said Uncle Frank, as he led the way to the table. "Come on, folks. I expect you all have good appetites. That's what we're noted for at Ring Rosy Ranch."
"What's that?" asked Aunt Millie.
"Have you given Circle O a new name?"
"One of the Curlytops did," chuckled Uncle Frank. "They said my branding sign looked just like a ring-round-the-rosy, so I'm going to call the ranch that after this."
"It's a nice name," said Aunt Millie. "And now let me see you Curlytops—and Trouble, too—though his hair isn't frizzy like Ted's and Janet's—let me see you eat until you get as fat as a Ring Rosy yourselves. If you don't eat as much as you can of everything, Hop Sing will feel as though he was not a good cook."
The Curlytops were hungry enough to eat without having to be told to, and Hop Sing, looking into the dining-room now and then from where he was busy in the kitchen, smiled and nodded his head as he said to the maid.
"Lil' chillens eat velly good!"
"Indeed they do eat very good," said the maid, as she carried in more of the food which Hop Sing knew so well how to cook.
After supper the Curlytops and the others sat out on the broad porch of the ranch house. Off to one side were the other buildings, some where the farming tools were kept, for Uncle Frank raised some grain as well as cattle, and some where the cowboys lived, as well as others where they stabled their horses.
"I know what let's do," said Jan, when she and her brother had sat on the porch for some time, listening to the talk of the older folks, and feeling very happy that they were at Uncle Frank's ranch, where, they felt sure, they could have such good times.
"What can we do?" asked Teddy. Very often he let Jan plan some fun, and I might say that she got into trouble doing this as many times as her brother did. Jan was a regular boy, in some things. But then I suppose any girl is who has two nice brothers, even if one is little enough to be called "Baby."
"Let's go and take a walk," suggested Jan. "My legs feel funny yet from ridin' in the cars so much."
"Ri-ding!" yelled Teddy gleefully. "That's the time you forgot your g, Janet."
"Yes, I did," admitted the little girl. "But there's so much to look at here that it's easy to forget. My forgetter works easier than yours does, Ted."
"It does not!"
"It does, too!"
"It does not!"
"I—say—it—does!" and Janet was very positive.
"Now, now, children!" chided their mother. "That isn't nice. What are you disputing about now?"
"Jan says her forgetter's better'n mine!" cried Ted.
"And it is," insisted Janet. "I can forget lots easier than Ted."
"Well, forgetting isn't a very good thing to do," said Mr. Martin. "Remembering is better."
"Oh, that's what I meant!" said Jan. "I thought it was a forgetter. Anyhow mine's better'n Ted's!"
"Now don't start that again," warned Mother Martin, playfully shaking her finger at the two children. "Be nice now. Amuse yourselves in some quiet way. It will soon be time to go to bed. You must be tired. Be nice now."
"Come on, let's go for a walk," proposed Jan again, and Ted, now that the forget-memory dispute was over, was willing to be friendly and kind and go with his sister.
So while Trouble climbed up into his mother's lap, and the older folks were talking among themselves, the two Curlytops, not being noticed by the others, slipped off the porch and walked toward the ranch buildings, out near the corrals, or the fenced-in places, where the horses were kept.
There were too many horses to keep them all penned in, or fenced around, just as there are too many cattle on a cattle ranch. But the cowboys who do not want their horses which they ride to get too far away put them in a corral. This is just as good as a barn, except in cold weather.
"There's lots of things to see here," said Teddy, as he and his sister walked along.
"Yes," she agreed. "It's lots of fun. I'm glad I came."
"So'm I. Oh, look at the lots of ponies!" she cried, as she and Ted turned a corner of one of the ranch buildings and came in sight of a new corral. In it were a number of little horses, some of which hung their heads over the fence and watched the Curlytops approaching.
"I'd like to ride one," sighed Teddy wistfully.
"Oh, you mustn't!" cried Jan. "Uncle Frank wouldn't like it, nor mother or father, either. You have to ask first."
"Oh, I don't mean ride now," said Ted. "Anyhow, I haven't got a saddle."
"Can't you ride without a saddle?" asked Janet.
"Well, not very good I guess," Ted answered. "A horse's back has a bone in the middle of it, and that bumps you when you don't have a saddle."
"How do you know?" asked Janet.
"I know, 'cause once the milkman let me sit on his horse and I felt the bone in his back. It didn't feel good."
"Maybe the milkman's horse was awful bony."
"He was," admitted Ted. "But anyhow you've got to have a saddle to ride a horse, lessen you're a Indian and I'm not."
"Well, maybe after a while Uncle Frank'll give you a saddle," said Janet.
"Maybe," agreed her brother, "Oh, see how the ponies look at us!"
"And one's following us all around," added his sister. For the little horses had indeed all come to the side of the corral fence nearest the Curlytops, and were following along as the children walked.
"What do you s'pose they want?" asked Teddy.
"Maybe they're hungry," answered Janet.
"Let's pull some grass for 'em," suggested Teddy, and they did this, feeding it to the horses that stretched their necks over the top rail of the fence and chewed the green bunches as if they very much liked their fodder.
But after a while Jan and Ted tired of even this. And no wonder—there were so many horses, and they all seemed to like the grass so much that the children never could have pulled enough for all of them.
"Look at that one always pushing the others out of the way," said Janet, pointing to one pony, larger than the others, who was always first at the fence, and first to reach his nose toward the bunches of grass.
"And there's a little one that can't get any," said her brother. "I'd like to give him some, Jan."
"So would I. But how can we? Every time I hold out some grass to him the big horse takes it."
Teddy thought for a minute and then he said:
"I know what we can do to keep the big horse from getting it all."
"What?" asked Janet.
"We can both pull some grass. Then you go to one end of the fence, and hold out your bunch. The big horse will come to get it and push the others away, like he always does."
"But then the little pony won't get any," Janet said.
"Oh, yes, he will!" cried Teddy. "'Cause when you're feeding the big horse I'll run up and give the little horse my bunch. Then he'll have some all by himself."
And this the Curlytops did. When the big horse was chewing the grass Janet gave him, Ted held out some to the little horse at the other end of the corral, And he ate it, but only just in time, for the big pony saw what was going on and trotted up to shove the small animal out of the way. But it was too late.
Then Janet and Teddy walked on a little further, until Janet said it was growing late and they had better go back to the porch where the others were still talking.
Evening was coming on. The sun had set, but there was still a golden glow in the sky. Far off in one of the big fields a number of horses and cattle could be seen, and riding out near them were some of the cowboys who, after their supper, had gone out to see that all was well for the night.
"Is all this your land, Uncle Frank!" asked Teddy as he stood on the porch and looked over the fields.
"Yes, as far as you can see, and farther. If you Curlytops get lost, which I hope you won't, you'll have to go a good way to get off my ranch. But let me tell you now, not to go too far away from the house, unless your father or some of us grown folks are with you."
"Why?" asked Janet.
"Well, you might get lost, you know, and then—oh, well, don't go off by yourselves, that's all," and Uncle Frank turned to answer a question Daddy Martin asked him.
Ted and Janet wondered why they could not go off by themselves as they had done at Cherry Farm.
"Maybe it's because of the Indians," suggested Jan.
"Pooh, I'm not afraid of them," Teddy announced.
Just then one of the cowboys—later the children learned he was Jim Mason, the foreman—came walking up to the porch. He walked in a funny way, being more used to going along on a horse than on his own feet.
"Good evening, folks!" he said, taking off his hat and waving it toward the Curlytops and the others.
"Hello, Jim!" was Uncle Frank's greeting. "Everything all right?"
"No, it isn't, I'm sorry to say," answered the foreman. "I've got bad news for you, Mr. Barton!"
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