Читать книгу Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders at Circle O Ranch - Josephine Chase - Страница 3

Table of Contents

“Does anyone know where we are at?” wondered Stacy Brown, the last person to leave his berth in the car that morning.

“We are in the Coso Valley,” replied Grace Harlowe Gray.

“I never heard of it,” returned Stacy. “We are still in Southern California, I presume.”

“Of course. What a silly question!” interjected J. Elfreda Briggs laughingly.

“Young man, we are nearing our destination. If you don’t make haste you will be left,” reminded Grace’s husband, Tom Gray.

“Left! What a tragedy!” murmured Emma Dean. “By the way, Chunky, did you dream last night?” she added, placing a hand on the fat boy’s arm.

“Of course I did. What’s the fun in sleeping if you don’t dream? I dreamed that I was the King of England, and you should have seen—”

“Stacy!” cried Emma in mock horror. “How unfortunate! To counteract the effect of that unhappy dream, try tonight to dream that you are a peasant. If you do not, some terrible misfortune is sure to overtake you.”

“Piffle! Where do you get that stuff, Emma? All right, Thomas. I’ll be ready by the time the train stops,” added Stacy, addressing Tom Gray, and moving on to the wash room, where he remained until the train began to slow down for Carrago, their destination. Carrago was a sleepy little far-western town whose only excuse for existence was that it was the only trading center for the ranchers within a radius of many miles in the broad valley that lay between the Argus and Coso ranges, a remote section of the country selected by Grace Harlowe’s Overland Riders for their regular summer’s outing in the saddle.

The scenery that morning had held the attention of the entire party with the exception of Stacy, who had been too busy sleeping to give heed to mere scenery, and the passengers were already detraining at Carrago when he finally came rushing through the car.

“Shall I brush you off?” asked the porter, facing him, broom in hand.

“Brush me off?” frowned Stacy, who thus far had avoided the porter. “Well, no. I reckon that I’ll just get off in the ordinary way,” he added, hurrying out to the vestibule of the Pullman and down to the station platform.

“That was rude of you, Stacy,” rebuked Miss Briggs, who had heard the boy’s retort.

“Rude? Huh! Do you think I want to be brushed off the train?”

“Oh, Stacy! You are as hopeless as ever, aren’t you?” laughed Grace. “Oh, this wonderful air!” she cried enthusiastically, turning to her companions. “Tom, aren’t you going to look for the guide who was to meet us here?”

Tom Gray said that Hippy Wingate was attending to that, and just then the Overlanders saw him halt before two bewhiskered natives standing on the station platform side by side and assuming almost identically the same pose. Both were old men. Their faces were seamed and tanned, their shoulders stooped, and as they stood with heads tilted back until their long beards protruded at almost the same angle, they presented a picture that made the Overlanders smile.

“I am looking for Jim-Sam, who is to guide us,” announced Hippy, addressing the men.

“We’re Jim-Sam,” answered the men in chorus. “Be ye the dudes?”

“Well, not exactly,” interjected Stacy Brown.

“This is the party that engaged Jim-Sam,” repeated Hippy patiently. “Which of you is Jim-Sam?”

“Both of us,” added the taller of the two men. “I’m Sam, an’ this heah galoot standin’ side me is Jim, an’—”

“I’ll have ye understand that I ain’t no galoot,” objected Jim heatedly, shaking a finger under Sam’s nose.

“Hold on, you two! Let me get this clear,” interposed Tom Gray, stepping up to them. “Do you mean that we have engaged, not one guide, but two?”

Sam explained that he and Jim were “pards,” and that they had always worked together, and “fit an’ died together” these many years, adding further, that Jim, being a spavined, ring-boned old cayuse wasn’t much good to anyone, himself included, but that he could hold the horses and howl like a coyote at the pack-horses to keep them going.

“Haw, haw!” exploded Stacy.

“I don’t know about this,” muttered Hippy, removing his hat and mopping his forehead.

“Are you two gentlemen heavy eaters?” questioned Emma. “The reason I ask is, that we already have two powerful eaters in this outfit, and I doubt if we could stand to feed more like them.”

“We kin rustle our own grub,” promised Jim.

“I suggest that we go into executive session and talk this over,” urged Miss Briggs.

The suggestion was approved and the Overlanders withdrew for discussion, Jim and Sam holding their positions, apparently the most disinterested persons on the station platform. Inquiry developed that the salary named in the letter of Jim-Sam covered the services of both, so, after talking the matter over, the Overland Riders decided to take on this strange pair to guide them. The fact that the guides owned their own ponies and pack-mules was an added inducement. Otherwise it would be necessary to hire or buy pack-animals.

Hippy Wingate told the guides that they had been accepted, then he introduced each member of the party to them. Nora Wingate laughingly warned the pair that they were embarking on a perilous undertaking when they set out with the Overland Riders, whereat Jim-Sam’s whiskers stiffened, but the owners made no reply.

Emma Dean, speaking confidentially to Hippy, objected to guides wearing such long whiskers, though she thought the men themselves might do very well. Emma was of the opinion that such whiskers were not sanitary, and averred that if San Antone, who had guided them through the Black Hills, were present he would correct the fault by shooting off the whiskers without making the slightest fuss about it.

Tom interrupted Emma’s conversation by urging that the Overland ponies be unloaded at once, the car containing them having, by this time, been shunted to a switch.

“When do ye reckon on gittin’ out o’ heah?” asked Sam.

“We shall be ready by the time you get your mules and packs ready,” answered Hippy. “This outfit moves without fuss, but it occasionally makes quite a racket in doing so. Get busy, boys!”

Jim-Sam turned away, still side by side, each carrying himself with a dignity that made the Overlanders laugh. While the provisions and other equipment were being purchased by the women of the party, Tom and Hippy unloaded the ponies, and Stacy, uttering many grunts and groans, piled their equipment on the ground near the stock car. The ponies were then secured to the tie-rail in front of the general store, where they were looked over and felt of by every man in the village, including several cowboys from neighboring ranches.

During the unloading, Hippy and Tom had noticed a cowboy sitting on a mustang some little distance from them, observing the Overland operations with keen interest.

“Who is that fellow?” asked Hippy of a bystander.

The native shook his head, and the horseman, seeing that he had attracted attention to himself, jerked his pony about and trotted away.

“I don’t like the looks of that chap,” declared Tom.

“I reckon he’s all right. Most cowpunchers look tougher than they really are, though it is quite possible that we may meet up with some real rough-necks. I have heard that they are not difficult to find in the Coso range,” replied Hippy.

“Oh, there come our heavenly twins,” cried Emma, who had returned from the store with an armful of packages.

Jim and Sam had just appeared dragging a pair of unwilling mules, behind which, saddled and bridled, trailed two long-haired mustangs. The two men were alternately arguing and berating each other and threatening the mules.

“What kind of an outfit is this?” wondered Emma, her merry eyes regarding the scene.

“You may search me,” was Hippy’s laughing reply. “Here come the other girls. Good gracious! Where do they expect to stow all that stuff? Jim-Sam, pull up here and sling your packs. Is that as fast as those mules can travel? If so you had better leave them at home.”

The guides were too busy arguing to give heed to Hippy’s words, but when they reached the station platform they took hold of the work with surprising alacrity and began rolling packs with skillful hands.

“What are they?” asked Emma, pointing to the lazy mules.

“Jest mules,” answered Jim without looking up, and Sam echoed his statement. “Don’t have to have no names. When my long-haired cayuse does somethin’ he oughtn’t, Sam gives him er kick, an’ when Sam’s critter cuts up capers I give his’n the boot.”

“No names?” wondered Emma. “Yes, but what do you call them when you want them to come to you?”

“Missie, what we calls ’em sometimes ain’t sootable fer a young woman to hear,” grinned Jim.

“Then kindly see that you do not call them,” retorted Emma, turning away.

The Overlanders observed that their guides now wore heavy revolvers and that the saddle-boot of each held a rifle, which aroused apprehension in the minds of at least two of the girls. Jim-Sam, however, assured them that the Coso Valley and the mountain ranges on either side of it were as peaceful as “Sunday meetin’,” and, further, that “nothin’” ever happened there. Something did threaten to happen, though, when it came to lashing the packs to the mules, and Jim-Sam instantly became involved in a violent argument as to how the packs should be “thrown,” the two men in their anger shaking belligerent fists under each other’s nose until they nearly came to blows.

“If I had a disposition like your’n I’d go shoot myself,” raged Jim.

“If I was a cantankerous cuss like you I’d go live with the coyotes where I could snarl all day an’ bark all night. Git outer my way afore I soak ye in the jaw!” threatened Sam.

“That’s right, Sam. Hit him!” urged Stacy Brown. “He isn’t any good.”

“Yes, he is, too! Don’t ye say nothin’ agin my pardner. I ain’t standin’ fer nothin’ like that.”

“Here, here!” interrupted Tom Gray. “Stacy, let these men alone and pack your pony. Jim-Sam, you will stop your quarreling and do your work or we may change our minds about taking you along.”

“You understand, we wish to head for the Bindloss ranch—the Circle O Ranch, I believe they call it. We do not know Bindloss, but we propose to get acquainted with him.” Hippy grinned as he said it.

“This really promises to be a peaceful journey,” observed Miss Briggs solemnly, whereat the Overland girls gave way to the merriment that for some moments they had been restraining, then preparations for the start were resumed with renewed speed and vigor.

Departure for the Circle O was made within an hour. The Circle O was a ranch where a friend of Lieutenant Hippy Wingate had put up while on a hunting trip in the mountains some time before, and it was because of what his friend had told him of Old Joe Bindloss and his ranch that Hippy decided to take in the Circle O on their summer’s ride.

The start was accomplished to the accompaniment of shouts and yells from Jim-Sam to get the mules started and headed in the right direction as well as to keep them going. It was a task that proved too much for the old guides, who, finally, after getting well out in the valley, rode on ahead with the Overlanders. The pack-mules, finding themselves being left behind, increased their pace and soon caught up with the outfit.

“That’s the way with mules. Contrary critters jest like some fellers I know of,” volunteered Jim, giving Sam a withering glance. “If ye wants ’em to go back’ards jest try to drive ’em for’ards.”

“An’ then agin, some fellers is so gosh darn stubborn they won’t go either way when ye tells ’em to go t’other,” retorted Sam. “Folks, git yer appetites workin’ fer we’ll soon be eatin’.”

Luncheon that first day was taken sitting on the sand by a water hole, and was a brief affair, for Jim-Sam had a camping place in mind, to reach which meant a long, hard ride. It was some time after nightfall when they arrived there, and still later when the lazy mules dragged themselves in, uttering long-drawn brays of satisfaction or dissatisfaction or whatever it might be. The animals were quickly relieved of their packs and turned loose to roll and feed on the desert sage through the night. All day long Jim-Sam had argued and quarreled, and by the time they made camp they had reached a point where they no longer spoke to each other.

“What are we going to do with them?” wondered Tom Gray frowningly.

“Keep them, of course,” answered Grace. “Tom, they are a real treat, but if Stacy and Emma do not stop stirring them up we may have to send for the sheriff of the county. Just look at them now,” she added laughingly.

Jim and Sam were sitting back to back unrolling packs, each man muttering to himself his opinion of the other. Later in the evening the Overlanders got them talking and drew the guides out. It developed that the pair had been prospectors nearly all their lives; that they had loved and fought each other for so many years that they had lost count of them, and when their halting story had finally been finished, the Overland Riders looked upon Jim-Sam with new appreciation. Emma Dean characterized them as a pair of “beloved vagabonds.”

This having been their first day in the saddle since the previous season, the Overlanders were saddle-weary, and some of them were sore and lame. Miss Briggs hobbled about painfully and complainingly, and Nora Wingate lay by the little campfire rolled in her blanket, the picture of woe. Emma and Grace, however, appeared not to be suffering the slightest degree of discomfort.

Jim cooked the supper, and it was a good one, for he made biscuits and served them hot, soaked in bacon gravy, a luxury to which the Riders had not been accustomed. They made the most of their opportunity, and Stacy Brown’s appetite, as usual, was not fully satisfied until some time after his companions had finished supper. Then all hands gathered about the fire for a chat.

“Samuel, do you ever dream?” questioned Emma after thoughtfully regarding the old guide for some moments.

“Sure I do, Missie. I dreamed last night that that critter—that ornery mule o’ Jim’s—kicked the everlasting daylight out o’ me,” growled Sam.

“Oh, you don’t mean it? That was fine,” glowed Emma.

“Eh?” Sam’s whiskers stood out belligerently. The old guide’s whiskers could express varying shades of emotion.

“Your dream means that you are going to have good luck—the best ever. Perhaps you are about to discover a gold mine or a hole in the ground where one has been, or something like that,” bubbled Emma.

“Wrong up here again,” muttered Stacy Brown, significantly tapping his head with a finger.

“I should say that Emma has read one of those five-cent dream books,” suggested Miss Briggs.

“It is my opinion that she has been fitting herself for a lunatic seminary—cemeter—sanitarium,” corrected Stacy.

“Tell us about it,” urged Grace, smiling over at Miss Dean.

“I will if you folks won’t laugh at me. I am a student of Professor Freud’s new science of dreams,” announced Emma with dignity. “The professor has demonstrated beyond question that there is an imponderable quality within us—”

“You mean hot biscuit and gravy,” interjected Hippy Wingate. “Since I overate this evening I surely have an imponderable quality in my midst,” he added amid much laughter.

Emma elevated a disdainful chin.

“I see nothing funny in a scientific discussion,” she retorted. “As I was about to say when so rudely interrupted, Professor Freud has conclusively proved that every dream has its meaning—that the imponderable quality in the subconscious mind never ceases to work; that it even works when we sleep, and—”

“Old Subconscious ought to join a union,” suggested Stacy.

“And that, if we will but learn a few simple rules, we shall be able to interpret those dreams and be better able to avoid many perils as well as to take advantage of real opportunities. Always let the imponderable quality have its way,” urged Emma.

Jim-Sam’s whiskers drooped, and the Overlanders repressed their laughter.

“Perhaps you yourself might dream out the solution of a mystery for us,” suggested Grace. “I mean as to the identity and purpose of the horseman who has been riding a parallel course with us all day, evidently keeping us under observation.”

The guides gave her a quick, keen look.

“Miss, I reckon as ye ain’t no tenderfoot,” observed Sam dryly.

“A man following us?” cried Nora. “It has come already! I knew it would. I knew that trouble would follow this outfit, just as it has done from the moment we set out over the Old Apache Trail right on down until we ended our vacation in the Black Hills last summer.”

Others of the party had observed the solitary horseman, but had attached no particular significance to his traveling in the same direction that they were following.

“Watching us, do you think?” wondered Emma.

“What about him, Jim-Sam?” demanded Tom Gray.

“Wal, I reckons mebby he is the feller that was hangin’ ’round when ye folks was unloadin’ at Carrago. He was a-snoopin’, an’ I don’t reckon as he was doin’ it fer no good. I didn’t like the look of him nohow,” growled Jim.

“Ye ain’t dreamed nothin’ ’bout that, has ye, Miss Dean?” asked Sam.

“No. Not yet. However, in case it means trouble for us either I or one of the others will get a reaction in advance and—”

“Ha, ha!” laughed Hippy. “A reaction in advance! That surely is a new one. Were Freud to hear that he himself surely would have a bad attack of nightmare.”

“I mean that one of us will feel that imponderable quality stirring within us,” explained Emma, her color rising. “We shall know. No harm can come to us without our being warned in advance. I—”

A volley of revolver shots punctuated the silence of the desert night—shots close at hand, accompanied by yells, hoots and howls, and the thudding of many unshod hoofs.