THE SADDLE BOYS AT CIRCLE RANCH
CHAPTER I
THE STRANGE RETURN OF OLD BALDY
“Did you find your knife, Bob?”
“No such good luck, Frank.”
“That’s kind of queer, isn’t it?”
“I’m beginning to think so myself,” and Bob Archer looked meaningly at his chum, as though a suspicion might be forming in his mind to the effect that there was a practical joke back of it all; and that Frank Haywood really knew more about the missing article than he chose to admit.
And yet, Frank, as a rule, was not given to pranks.
“Did you go all over the ground where Ted Conway was teaching you yesterday how to pick up a handkerchief from the back of a galloping pony?” Frank continued.
“Covered every foot of it, and more,” replied Bob.
“And still didn’t find the knife you value so much?” persisted his chum.
“Never saw a sign of it,” replied Bob; whose home had originally been in Old Kentucky, although a year or so back he had come to the Southwest to live, his father being interested in various ranches and mines with Colonel Leonidas Haywood.
“Oh! well, I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” observed Frank. “It’s sure to turn up, sooner or later. Perhaps one of the boys happened to pick it up, and is waiting for an owner to claim it.”
“I asked every one on the ranch,” Bob went on, gloomily; “and they all had the same story to tell—never saw the thing. I hate to have anything like that happen. Seems as if I feel every little while that it’s on the tip of my tongue to say what I did with that knife. Then I get all mixed up again, and for the life of me I can’t remember where and when I had it last.”
The two boys, while talking in this manner, were galloping over the level plain at a fair clip. Bob was riding Domino, a big black horse he had brought with him from the blue grass region of Kentucky. Frank rode a yellow pony of great endurance, and wise beyond the average of his class. Buckskin he was called, true to his color; and Frank had taught him many of the tricks known to the favorite mounts of cowboys.
Frank and Bob were seen riding over the country so much, that, far and wide, they had become known as the “Saddle Boys.” Some months before the time when they are introduced to the reader in the present volume they had investigated a mysterious noise that seemed to come from a spur of the great Rocky Mountains within twenty miles of Circle Ranch.
This queer rumbling had awed the Indians for a century or more, and they really believed it to be the voice of Manitou. What the two lads saw, and the adventures that befell them on that occasion, have been related in the first story in this series, entitled: “The Saddle Boys in the Rockies; Or, Lost on Thunder Mountain.”
Later on, a sudden call came for them to go to the wonderful region where the great Colorado River runs for some hundreds of miles through the most astonishing canyon in all the world; and here they not only saw strange sights, but had some lively times. These are narrated in the story called: “The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon; Or, The Hermit of Echo Cave.”
Colonel Haywood was laid up with a broken leg when a summons came that required his presence at Cherry Blossom mine, so he was compelled to ask the two boys to go in his stead. This mine was a most valuable property; and the disaster that hung over it like a cloud gave the two lads considerable work before they could feel that they had won out. The remarkable things that happened when on this gallop over plain and desert, and through mountain trails are told of in the third book of this series, entitled: “The Saddle Boys on the Plains; Or, After a Treasure of Gold.”
After passing through these troubles of magnitude, here was Bob bemoaning the loss of a knife, as though such a little thing distressed him beyond measure.
“It was a present, you see, Frank,” he said, for perhaps the tenth time, as they rode along side by side.
“Oh! yes. I know,” replied Frank, as though really getting quite tired of hearing about that wonderful knife; “some girl you knew in Old Kentucky, wanting to give you a present that you could use out in the wild and woolly West, drew all her pin money she had saved, and actually bought you that fine hunting knife. Too bad that if it was so valuable you didn’t keep a closer watch on it, Bob.”
“But you said you didn’t have it, didn’t you, Frank?” went on the other.
“Sure I haven’t; take my word for that, Bob,” said Frank. “Don’t you think I’d give it to you, if I had it around? Though, for that matter, I think you deserve to be punished a little for being so careless about a present that a girl gave you.”
“But perhaps you could give me a hint about what I did with it, if you cared to, Frank?”
“No, I don’t believe I could,” replied the other, slowly, and in what Bob chose to consider a suspicious way. “You’ll remember after a little. Perhaps it’ll pop into your mind as you wake up in the morning. I’ve had things do that more’n a few times. But look at that steer cavorting around over yonder. Whatever in the world do you suppose he’s doing, Bob?”
The Kentucky boy shook his head as though still unsatisfied.
“I reckon now, Frank might know a little about that knife,” he murmured to himself, as he looked at his chum. “But for some reason he wants to play innocent and let me think things out. And it isn’t like Frank, to act this way. Perhaps I’d best keep quiet, and watch him. He might give himself away somehow when he isn’t on his guard.”
Frank, meanwhile, seemed to be really interested in the actions of the animal to which he had called the attention of his chum.
“Say, suppose we turn aside here,” he remarked, presently; “and go a little closer to that old chap. Looks to me he’s acting mighty queer. See him throw up the dirt; and I can hear him bellow from here. Something’s made him ugly.”
“All right; anything you say goes, Frank,” replied the other, suiting his actions to his words, and wheeling to the left.
For the time being he put all thought of the missing present from his mind. Just as Frank had said, the chances were he would find it again, sooner or later. Yet Bob admitted to himself that it had been a long time since anything had arisen to annoy him so much.
They were now bearing down upon the spot where the steer was acting so strangely. He circled around a small patch of timber and brush that was too dense for him to push through, every little while bellowing angrily, shaking his long horns, and giving every evidence of having been worked up to a pitch where he could not contain himself.
“Strikes me he’s keeping close to that motte of timber, Frank?” suggested Bob, as they kept galloping closer to the spot.
“Just what I had in mind,” replied his chum.
“Look at him behaving as if he’d give anything to be able to rush it; but no long-horn could push through that thick scrub. There’s something in the bunch that makes him furious, that’s what, Frank!” went on Bob.
“Reckon you’re right, Bob; anyhow that’s what I was thinking myself.”
“Could it be a rattler?” asked the Kentucky lad.
“Well, now, I hardly think a steer would act that way if it was,” replied the youth who had been brought up on a ranch, and knew a great many things that were as yet mysterious to a recent tenderfoot like Bob. “In the open, some steers might try and jump on a snake that was coiled, just as I’ve seen a deer do more’n once, grinding it to pieces under his hoofs. But if the snake got in among the brush, a steer would let him go.”
“Then what can it be?” queried the boy from Kentucky; “a sneaking coyote?”
“Hardly that, either,” declared his chum, decidedly. “You see these old steers size up a coyote as a harmless thing, not worth wasting time over. Now, if it were a wolf that would be another thing. A steer hates a mountain wolf like poison. Seems like they know how the gray rascal is always hanging around, waiting to pull down a calf when the chance comes.”
“So I’ve been told,” declared Bob; “Ted related an instance where a steer and a wolf had a battle over the body of a heifer the robber had stolen.”
“Yes, I happened to see that fight; and the steer won out, too. The wolf was as mad as they make ’em, and wouldn’t quit. He grabbed the steer several times by the nose, but couldn’t hold on. And finally the steer managed to pin him to the ground by one horn. After that it was all over with Mr. Wolf.”
“But see here, Frank, supposing there is a wolf in that bunch of timber and scrub? He’s been sneaking around, thinking to get a dinner while the cowboys are away on the other side of the ranch, twenty miles from here. But a wolf can outrun even the fastest steer, can’t he?”
“I reckon he can, every time,” admitted Frank.
“Then why wouldn’t this beast make for his home in the mountains; tell me that, please?” persisted Bob.
“Oh! there might be a reason,” his chum rejoined, as he continued to watch the actions of the steer. “In the first place, this might happen to be a particularly bold wolf; and having started out to get a dinner, he hates to give up the idea just because a silly old steer prances around his hiding place, and dares him to come out into the open.”
“But there might be another reason?” pursued Bob, always eager to learn.
“If it is a wolf,” Frank continued; “he might happen to be lame, and not feel like taking chances on the open with a lively old steer. That would explain it, you see.”
“Well, anyway, we’ll soon know, Frank.”
“Yes, because we’re nearly there,” the other remarked, as he reached around to unfasten his repeating rifle from the saddle, where he often carried it, rather than over his back by means of a strap.
“And before we leave here it’s going to be a hard winter for Mr. Wolf, if that’s what’s making the trouble. If he runs, the steer will catch up with him; and if he stays, it’s a bit of lead between his ribs. I’m sorry for him, Frank; but I reckon he’s been responsible for more than a few heifers that have disappeared mysteriously from time to time.”
“Yes, that’s so,” replied Frank. “Stockmen hate wolves more’n anything on four legs. There’s only one thing that hits ’em worse.”
“Rustlers, you mean, Frank?” remarked the Kentucky boy.
“Yes, the Mexicans or halfbreeds, who drop down on a herd of cattle, or the saddle band of the punchers’ horses, and disappear with them. And of all the rustlers in Arizona, there’s none equal to Pedro Mendoza. Look at the steer, Bob!”
“Seems to just know we’re coming to lend a helping hand,” laughed Bob. “There he gallops around to the other side of the timber, as if he wanted to cut off Mr. Wolf before he took a start from that side. He’s a sharp one, that steer.”
“None smarter, and I ought to know, because that’s Old Baldy!” remarked Frank.
“What!” cried Bob, “didn’t you tell me a long time ago that Old Baldy had been nipped, with a bunch of cattle; and your foreman believed the rustlers had him?”
“That’s what we felt sure of, and I believe it yet,” Frank said. “But all the same, I don’t think I’m mistaken when I say that’s our Old Baldy, come back as straight as he disappeared.”
“Perhaps he broke out of some corral in the mountains, where the rustlers were keeping him penned up, and took the home trail on the gallop,” suggested Bob.
“Maybe,” Frank remarked. “Later on we’ll see if his brand has been altered, because that would tell the story. But turn off here, Bob, and let’s cover as much ground as we can. Have your gun handy; and if the wolf vamooses, give him a little start. Then we’ll have a bully gallop, and see who will be the first to nail him. Whoop! there’s something doing right now, Bob!”