CHAPTER XXV.
THE OUTLAW RANCH.
Suddenly he was conscious that someone was near his cot. He could hearhard breathing and then he felt a hand creeping over the covers. Ina flash he grasped it and yelled aloud to Mountain Jim. Now Jim, noless tired than Ralph, had likewise dropped off to sleep despite hisdetermined efforts to keep awake. But Ralph’s cry brought him out ofhis cot in a bound.
“Great Blue Bells of Scotland! What’s up?” he roared.
“There’s someone trying to rob me!” yelled Ralph, still clutching thewrist he had caught. The next instant a hand was at his throat and aknee on his chest and he was choked into silence. But his cry had hadits effect. Like a runaway steer Mountain Jim came charging throughthe darkness.
“Who in creation are you, you scallywag? What do you want?” he roared,grabbing hold of Ralph’s antagonist, for by good luck he had comestraight in the direction of Ralph’s cry. Without giving whoever themidnight intruder was any chance to reply, Mountain Jim encircled himwith his iron arm and hurled him clear across the room. They could heara crash and grunt as the fellow fetched up, and then a rush of feetthrough the darkness followed by the crash of a heavy fall, causedapparently by a violent tumble down the steep stairs leading to theattic.
They listened intently and heard somebody picking himself up andlimping off.
“Well, what do you think of that?” exclaimed Mountain Jim. “Serves meright for sleeping, though, Ralph. Are you hurt?”
“Not a bit, but I feel half choked. That fellow had a half Nelson on myneck, all right.”
“I guess I had a whole one on his,” chuckled Jim. “Strike a match,Ralph, and let’s see what we can see.”
The match showed a revolver lying on the floor by Ralph’s bedapparently just as it had been dropped by the intruder when Jim’smighty arm encircled him.
“Humph! pretty good gun,” commented Jim dryly, looking the weapon over.“I’ll bet a doughnut that the owner never sees it again, though.”
“Who do you think it was?” asked Ralph.
“Old red-whiskers. We’ll look him over in the morning, and by that sametoken it’s pretty near dawn now. Hear the roosters? Well, as there’sno more sleep for us to-night, we might as well get up and see to theponies. It would be just like this outfit of scallywags to try to dothem some harm or even steal ’em, if your friends, the Bloods, areabout.”
But the ponies, which had been turned into a corral the night previous,were found to be all right, and by the time the stars paled they hadthem saddled and re-entered the house. Jim banged loudly on the tableof the room where they had had supper the previous night and demandedbreakfast. Before long the landlord came shuffling into the room.
In the pale light they could see that under his left eye he had a bigpurple swelling. His hands shook, too, and altogether he appeared to bevery ill at ease.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked.
“Fine,” rejoined Jim heartily. “In the night a mosquito or some otherkind of low down critter bothered me, but I guess I bunged him uptolerably considerable.”
He looked at the red-bearded man with a cheerful grin, and staredhim straight in the eyes. The optics of the rascal dropped. He gotbreakfast in sullen silence and took his pay without a word.
“Oh, by the way,” Jim shouted back to him as they rode off, “I found agun in that attic last night. If the owner wants it, tell him to cometo me, will you?”
The landlord looked at them for an instant and his florid skin turnedgreen. He swung on his heel and fairly fled into the house.
“I’ll turn it over to the Mounted Police,” shouted Jim after him. “Iguess they’ll be interested in finding the owner.”
They arrived at Donald Campbell’s new ranch shortly afterward, ridingover a fairly good road. The old Scotchman told them that they werelucky that nothing worse had happened to them. The place was suspectedto be a “whisky ranch,” and its owner had been in trouble with thepolice on two or three occasions.
“I guess he’ll be careful who he tackles next time,” remarked Jim witha grin.
The bargain for two tough, hard-looking ponies, broken to pack, wassoon struck, and with good wishes from the old Scotchman they rode off.They reached the camp on the return journey that night, and all handssat up late listening with absorbed interest to the story of theiradventures.
The new ponies proved to be anything but tractable the next morning,but eventually they were subdued and their packs firmly “diamonded”to their plunging backs. This done, the way lay clear before theadventurers to the Big Bend of the Columbia River. Mountain Jim hadtold the boys that their route would skirt the bases of some of thepeaks covered with eternal snow, among which the great white RockyMountain goat ranges. There might even be a chance, he declared, for asight of the famous Big Horn sheep, although these animals are now sowild as to be almost inaccessible to hunters.
They set out in high humor, the new ponies being hitched to moresedate companions so as to keep their spirits within bounds. Butnotwithstanding this, the lively little animals plunged and leapedabout till it appeared as if their packs would come off. Throughoutthe morning they progressed steadily toward the great snow-coveredpeaks that shone and glittered like diadems toward the northwest. Blackridges of rock appeared among the white coverings of their flanks,giving them an odd, striped appearance.
A stop was made for dinner at the side of a roaring torrent, whosegreen, cold waters came from the snow-capped peaks toward which theirway now lay. While Jim cooked the meal, aided by Jimmie, the boysscattered in every direction gathering firewood or looking at thescenes about them. All at once there came a wild whoop of dismay fromPersimmons, who had been entrusted with the duty of tethering Topsy,one of the new ponies.
The little animal had taken fright at the smell of the lion skin, whichwas rolled up on Baldy’s back, and before anyone could stop her she wasoff toward the torrent. Ralph was in his saddle in a second and afterher, swinging his lasso in true cowboy fashion.
“Yip! yip!” he yelled, delighted at the prospect of a brisk chase.
But Topsy, although she hesitated a minute on the brink of the torrent,did not, as Ralph had surmised, turn and dash along the bank. Instead,she plunged right into the seething waters, pack and all, and struckout for the opposite shore.
Ralph only paused a minute and then he was into the stream after her,urging his unwilling pony into the cold water. Reaching the middle ofthe stream, he slipped off his pony and swam beside him till shallowerwater was reached.
The swift current carried them down stream for quite a distance, but atlast the struggling pony’s feet found solid bottom, and he scrambledout not more than a hundred yards behind Topsy. All this had happenedso quickly that those left behind had hardly time to realize it beforeRalph gained the opposite shore. Then Jim hailed him:
“Can you get her, Ralph?”
“Sure!” hailed back the boy positively, and clapping his big,blunt-rowelled spurs to his pony he was off into the woods after thefleeing pack animal. The wood proved to be only a strip of pine andtamaracks, and beyond was a rocky ledge leading up the side of a highmountain, for by this time they had reached the heart of the Rockiesand big peaks towered all about them.
“Yip! yip!” cried Ralph entering fully into the spirit of the chase. Asfor Topsy, apparently not feeling the weight of the heavy pack at all,she dashed on like a lightning express. Ralph was sorry that the chasewas not among the trees, for in the timber Topsy would have found ithard to get along so quickly with the encumbering pack on her back. Butup the rocky ledge, which zig-zagged like a trail up the mountain, shefairly flew. The noise of her speeding hoofs was like that of castanets.
“Well, a stern chase is always a long one,” thought Ralph, as heshook a kink out of his rope and spurred after her as fast as his ponywas capable of going. The camp was soon left far behind and still theboy found himself on a narrow trail, or shelf of rock, that inclinedsteeply up the mountain side. Below him the gr
ound dropped off tounknown depths, and on his other hand a wall of rock shot up so steeplythat hardly a tree or a bush found footing on it. As they rose higherRalph experienced a sensation as if he was riding into cloudland.Frequently he would lose sight of Topsy, and then again he couldglimpse her as she darted around a shoulder of the mountain, only to belost to view again.
“Gracious, this is like being slung up between heaven and earth,”thought Ralph, as he loped up the trail as fast as his pony could carryhim. Glancing down he saw that a sort of blue mist veiled the depthsof the abyss below him. He was many feet above the tops of the tallestof the big pines. Afar off, through the crisp, clear air, he couldsee more ridges, but he appeared far above them. To anyone gazing athim from below, the boy would have looked no larger than a fly on somesteep and lofty wall.
“Fine place to meet anything,” he said to himself. “This road was onlybuilt for one.”
At the same instant another thought flashed across him. Up to thistime, in the heat of the chase, he had cast reflection to the winds.
The trail was narrowing. Unless it widened further up, how was he toturn his pony around and retrace his steps?