“Hoorah!” shouted Bess, hugging her.
“Why! you are getting to be a regular sport.
We’ve got Tom and Mr. Kane with us, besides Frank,
the other cowboy. I am not afraid of the Mexicans—not
much, that is—whether they are Juan Sivello
and his gang or not.”
“Hear! Hear!” agreed Nan. “And
having done so much harm in this neighborhood, perhaps
they have run away a good many miles to escape pursuit.
Let us go and take a look in the bears’ den,
anyway.”
And so it was agreed.
THE FUNNEL
It was not until the last of the cattle had disappeared
through the gap between the hollows, and the chuck
wagon likewise had trundled out of sight, that the
girls and their party left the encampment which had
been the scene of the night’s excitement.
It was not impossible—and even Rhoda mentioned
it—that they would none of them ever experience
again so strenuous an eight hours as that since the
beginning of the stampede.
The disaster was one that would be long remembered
by the Rose Ranch cowpunchers, as well as by the ranch
owner himself. A more disastrous stampede had
seldom been known in that vicinity.
Already the coyotes were appearing—slip-footed
and sneaking! They began to gorge on the more
distant carcasses of the dead cattle before the chuck
wagon was out of sight. And around and around
overhead the buzzards circled, dropping at last to
the ground and pecking at the stiffened carcasses.
Bald-headed these vultures, with scrofulous looking
necks and unwinking eyes. There was something
vile looking about these carrion-crows.
Having no wagon to bother with, Rhoda and her party
could take almost any direction they wished out of
the valley. Their tent and camp utensils were
borne by the pack horse, so they struck into a narrow
bridle path over the hills to the southward.
The three men with the girls and Walter were in rather
a gloomy mood when they started off. Even Tom
Collins seemed to have lost his spirits. To tell
the truth, they were all deeply enough interested
in the welfare of the ranch to feel depressed because
of the money loss to Mr. Hammond.
Rhoda, however, would not allow her visitors to be
overshadowed by this trouble for long. She possessed
a good share of her father’s cheerfulness and
dry humor. She began to tell semi-humorous tales
of her own experiences about the ranch and on the
ranges, and this started Tom and Frank to swapping
tales—some of them altogether too ridiculous
to be wholly true.
Only Hesitation Kane remained silent; but that made
him no different from usual. He even grinned
cheerfully under the sallies of his companions.
About midday the little cavalcade wound around a knob
of a hill and arrived at the brink of a sheer bank,
below which was a pocket in the hillside. Tom
Collins had been guiding them for more than an hour,
and now he announced this was the place.
