CHAPTER XII

EXCITING TIMES

The train Oriole was on started very slowly, but the girl was at once afraid that if the boy of whom she had caught a glimpse _was_ Teddy Ford, she would be carried on so quickly that she could not attract his attention.

This, Oriole thought, would be a tragedy. Since the boy from the West had run away from Harbor Light Island she had often thought of him and wondered where he had gone--what he was doing. A boy like him traveling around the country alone, with no home and "nobody to be nice to him!" Oriole had a notion that boys could not really take care of themselves--not properly. Who would sew his buttons on? Or mend his jacket? Or darn his socks? These questions were quite serious in her opinion.

"Oh, Teddy Ford! Teddy Ford!" she shouted, as the slatted door of the car in which the horses were stabled came nearer and her train gathered speed. "Teddy Ford!"

"Hey! Hullo!" responded a voice. "Who's callin' me?"

The face of the boy appeared between the slats just as the platform of the sleeper came opposite. It was Teddy Ford!

"Oh, Teddy!" gasped Oriole.

"Gee! if it ain't that--that Skylark Putnam----"

"_Oriole._"

"Oriole, I mean!" shouted Teddy Ford. "Gee! how'd you get here? Where you going?"

"I am going to Montana! With Mr. Langdon! And the twins!"

These shouts were in crescendo as the Pullman train gathered speed. Then, at the very top of her voice, the girl cried:

"_Are you coming, too?_"

"I'm on my way!" was the shrill answer. "I'll--be--there--by--the--spring--round-up."

Oriole, rosy-faced and with her eyes dancing, took this promise back into the sleeper and to the stateroom she occupied with the twins and Nurse Brown. She did not know what a "round-up" was, but the promise was for the spring. And even beyond the Rockies the spring could not be so very far away now.

She was so full of this adventure and her sight of Teddy Ford that she had to awaken Nurse Brown to tell about it. And then the twins woke up and the day's adventures began. Later, of course, Harvey Langdon had to hear about it. And he shook his head rather soberly over the incident.

"I wish now that boy had come to see me at Littleport," he told Oriole. "Of course, he's a tough young chap, but something _might_ happen to him, roaming around the East here alone, and all."

Oriole was frankly curious.

"Is it more dangerous here in the East than anywhere else--out West, for instance?" she asked.

"Seems so," Mr. Langdon said seriously. "In the big cities--even on these railroads. Ain't like our Western country. Not much to harm a boy there--good, honest, out-of-door work, clean living and good cooking. Nothing fancy, but _good_, you know."

Oriole wondered if it was the cooking that might hurt Teddy Ford in the East. But, on the other hand, she was wise enough not to say too much at this time about the wandering boy from the West. She could see that Mr. Langdon was "coming around." He held a less harsh opinion of the boy whom he had accused of the robbery of his ranch home.

Oriole was a loyal soul. Once convinced that Teddy Ford was innocent, nothing short of his own confession could have changed her opinion of him. But she was delighted to see that Harvey Langdon was changing his opinion.

How could he help it, when he really had Teddy to thank for the life of Marian? Perhaps for the lives of both the twins? Oriole felt very sure that if she could have got Teddy Ford off that stock car and into the Pullman it would have all been "made up."

And now, as Mr. Langdon said, something easily might happen to the boy. She did not see it just as the ranchman did--she could not consider the East a more dangerous place for a boy than the West. But she had heard Uncle Nat Jardin tell the old story of the seaman when his bark was in the midst of a terrible gale, who said: "Heaven help the poor folks ashore to-night, Bill!" and understood its significance. The dangers we know seem of much less importance than unknown perils.

To Oriole the range and cattle camps seemed to be breeding-places for danger and adventure. Since knowing she was going West with the Langdons she had visualized much that would never happen to her, perhaps; but she knew her expectations were possible and reasonable.

Sadie Brown, the nurse, grew much more animated, too, as the party traveled westward. To get back to the open plains and mountain ranges of her own country she thought promised complete health for herself, after her sad experience in the Eastern hospital.

"And once you have learned to ride a mustang pony and have scampered over the Langdon Three-bar Ranch once or twice, you will never care about the sea and shore again, Oriole. Ugh! I can't think of the water without a shudder."

Mr. Langdon chuckled. "Going to make it pretty hard for you, Sadie, ever to even drink water again, isn't it?"

"I don't think I ever shall be very thirsty," she told him, smiling. "A water-hole is all very well. But I am going to shut my eyes when we cross the Mississippi River."

But that crossing was made in the night, and even Oriole did not see it. Before that, however, she saw something of Chicago, and then something of the great stockyards. She saw a herd of the Three-bar cattle (that was Mr. Langdon's brand) that had been shipped to market by the ranch manager whom Mr. Langdon spoke of as "Sol Perkins." In fact, Oriole in her observant way, noted that most of these Western people whom she met were inclined to speak of each other by their first names. Even Nurse Brown almost always prefixed Mr. Langdon's name with "Harvey." It marked a good-fellowship among the people, both employers and employees, that seemed to draw them into a closer alliance.

At Kansas City a tanned, hard-looking man, in a great sombrero and hairy chaps, came aboard the Pullman for a moment and shook hands with Mr. Langdon and gave him some message from the ranch. This was George Belden, the ranch owner said, who was trail foreman and had come on with a beef herd to the Kansas City market. Oriole liked the man, his blue eyes were so clear and steady, and his mouth wreathed with such humorous lines.

"I know that man is going to be a friend of mine," Oriole confided to Nurse Brown.

"What! George?" cried Sadie Brown. "That fellow is the most reckless cowpuncher on the Three-bar. I wouldn't make a friend of him, Oriole Putnam, if I were you," she added with a sniff.

"Oh! he isn't really _wicked_, is he? He can't be, I'm sure, with such a--a funny mouth and such twinkling eyes."

"'Wicked?' No," said Sadie Brown shortly. "He's just silly. He hasn't got but a single idea in his head--and that's a nonsensical one."

"What is it?" asked Oriole, her curiosity aroused.

"Just an idea that he wants to get married. It's all he thinks of," declared the twins' nurse. "I never did see such a silly man."

Oriole considered this statement in silence. She had never imagined before that getting married was classed as "silly." Sadie Brown seemed to have a personal feeling about it--quite a spiteful feeling. Just the same, Oriole had liked the looks of George Belden.

Two days later the train-tired party alighted from a branch road train at Teeman's Station, forty miles by the trail from the Langdon Ranch. That forty miles could only be covered on horseback or in some kind of vehicle; and the only vehicles in sight were two buckboards for the twins and Oriole and the baggage. Sadie Brown was supplied with a rough-and-ready riding costume, and she mounted a fierce little black mustang that Oriole secretly admitted she would have been afraid of.

Mr. Langdon had a much bigger mount--a thoroughbred that was one of the prize horses on the ranch. There were several other employees of the ranch riding along beside the drivers of the buckboards. They made quite a jolly party, and on the way Oriole began to learn much about the cattle country and stock raising (Mr. Langdon bred horses for the market as well as raised cattle) that interested and surprised her.

In a bushy and wild-looking hollow through which they rode, the trail winding tortuously among the patches of prickly brush, the party raised a cow with a yearling calf running by her side. Mr. Langdon was instantly interested.

"Hey!" he shouted to his men, "isn't that a Three-bar cow? One of our cows?"

"You said it, Boss," agreed one of the punchers, pricking his mount into a faster stride.

"Then that long-ear is ours," declared the cattleman. "That cow's been lost two years, I bet. And she's worth sixty dollars of any man's money. The maverick is worth another twenty just as he runs. Get him!"

The man who had answered and another started after the loping cow and her calf.

"What will they do to the poor cow?" asked Oriole anxiously of Nurse Brown.

"Nothing much, honey."

"Oh! They are after the calf, then?"

"Just you watch, honey."

One puncher distanced the other and drew close to the running cow and her calf. He made his cast and missed it. His mount swerved aside at the very instant he made the cast and the rope dragged.

"Hi, Lenny!" shouted Mr. Langdon, "I'd massage that horse of yours a pile with that rope. He ain't a cow-pony any more than he is a spread-eagle. Look out!"

When the puncher proceeded to slap the horse he rode with the re-coiled lariat, the creature fell to frantic pitching, and the rider was quite out of the running for the unbranded yearling.

The second man went at the attack with more success. Ten rods beyond the scene of the other man's fiasco the second puncher's rope circled the calf's neck. The puncher flipped the slack before the calf's nose and the latter crossed it and fell with a crash.

"Oh!" cried Oriole, standing up in the buckboard and clinging to the broad shoulders of the driver. "They _will_ hurt that poor calf."

"Not 'nough to do damage," the driver of the buckboard assured her.

The man who had roped the yearling got down from his saddle and ran down the rope, loosing the hogging string hanging from his belt as he ran. He dropped on his knees, gathered the yearling's struggling feet, and tied them together most expertly.

The puncher stood up, grinning, and re-coiled his lariat--"la reata," to give it its proper, and Spanish, name. He tied the rope to his saddle horn. From under the horn on the other side he took an iron three-eighths of an inch in diameter, a foot long, and shaped like a shepherd's crook.

"That is what we call a 'running iron,'" explained Mr. Langdon to the round-eyed Oriole.

"Oh! Where does he run with it?" she asked. "And isn't he hurting that poor calf?"

"Well," the ranchman said slowly, "the yearling doesn't like it, I imagine. But he won't be hurt--much. It's the only way we have of keeping run of our stock."

"Oh!"

"They have all to be branded. Otherwise some other brand will get 'em. We know this chap belongs to the Three-bar now, for he is running with his mother--Er, where did that cow go, Lenny?"

"Into the brush--My hickey, here she comes! Mad as a hatter! Locoed, for fair."

There suddenly burst from the chaparral the cow the calf had been running with. The calf was blatting forlornly, and his cry had brought the mother back in a desperate temper.

The puncher, Mr. Langdon, and Nurse Brown spurred their mounts out of the way. The sharp horns of the maddened cow were not to be scorned. Yet the Westerners were more amused than frightened.

However, the cow plunged straight ahead at the buckboard on which the twins and Oriole were seated. The driver could not whip up his ponies in time. They began to dance and snort rather than draw the vehicle out of the path of the mad cow.

"Look out!" shouted the ranch owner again. "Get a move on you, Long Jim!"

The half-broken ponies drawing the buckboard would not be urged ahead. Long Jim laid his quirt along their flanks without avail. Oriole stood up in excitement if not in fear, and Myron and Marian clung to her, shrieking.