The Pony Rider Boys in Texas (20 page)

"I winged it!" shouted the cowman, lifting his weapon for another shot.

Tad struck the gun up. The lad was excited now.

"Stop!" he commanded. "Don't do that again. Do you want to kill
somebody?"

With that Tad ran, his feet fairly flying over the ground, in the direction
of the church steps. In the flash of the gun he had caught a glimpse of a figure
standing there. The sight thrilled him through and through.

As the plucky lad reached the steps some one started to run down them.
Tripping, the unknown plunged headlong to the ground.

The boy was beside the figure in an instant.

"Big-foot!" he shouted.

The cowman came tearing up to him.

"What is it?" he bellowed in his excitement.

"It's a woman, Big-foot! It's a woman! Oh, I hope you did not hit her!"

"It's no woman; it's a spook. I know it's a spook!" fairly shouted the
cowboy.

"I tell you it's a woman!" cried Tad.

He was down on his knees by her side now, raising her head.

"Get help
quick
!"

Sanders took the shortest way of doing this. He, too, was alarmed now.
Raising his gun above his head, he pulled the trigger three times in quick
succession. As many sharp flashes leaped into the air, and as many quick reports
followed.

"Sure she ain't a spirit?" demanded the cowman, peering down suspiciously,
fearfully. He could make out the form on the ground but dimly.

"Don't be foolish. Run out there and meet them. I hear the ponies coming.
Don't let any of them use their guns, in the excitement, or some one may get
hurt," warned Tad Butler, with rare judgment.

Big-foot hurried out into the open. In the meantime Tad stroked the face and
head of the woman. She was unconscious, but her flesh seemed warm to his
touch.

"I wonder what it means," the perplexed boy asked himself. Tad could feel his
own pulses beating against his temples. It seemed to him as if all the blood in
his body were hurling itself against them.

Cowboys on their ponies came thundering up from different directions. In the
lead was Bob Stallings, the foreman of the outfit.

"You idiots!" he shouted. "Do you want to stampede the herd again? What do
you mean?"

"I've winged a spook!" yelled Big-foot Sanders. "She's over there by the
steps now. The kid's got her."

"Spooknonsense!" snapped the foreman, leaping from his pony and rushing to
the spot indicated by Big-foot.

"What" chorused the cowboys.

"Is it the boyhave they found him?"

"If you all don't insist on talking at once, mebby we can find out what the
row's about," snarled Curley Adams.

The foreman stopped suddenly as he observed Tad sitting at the foot of the
church steps. He saw, too, another form there, but it was so dimly outlined in
the deep shadows that he was unable to make it out.

"What does this mean?" he demanded sternly.

"I don't know. It's a woman. I'm afraid Big-foot's bullet hit her. We must
have a light."

"Bring matches!" roared the foreman.

No one had any.

"Rustle for the camp, and fetch a lanternand be quick about it! I've had
enough of this fooling. What was she doinghow did it happen?"

Tad explained as clearly as he could how they had been disturbed by the
strange noises, resulting finally in a shot from Big-foot's gun.

"The idiot! It'll be a sorry day for him if he's done any damage," growled
the foreman. He stooped over and ran his hand over the unconscious woman's face.
Then he applied his ear to the region of the heart.

"Huh!" he snapped, rising.

"Find anything!" asked Tad in a half whisper.

"She's alive. Heart weak, but I don't think she's seriously hurt. I don't
understand it at all."

"No more do I. I'm getting dizzy over all this rapid-fire business," added
the lad. "There they come with a light."

Stallings strode to the cowman who had brought the lantern. Jerking it from
the man's hand the foreman ran back.

"We'll straighten her up against the steps, and try to find out how badly she
is hurt," he said, placing the lantern on the ground.

Tad had partially raised her, when he let the girl drop with a sudden,
startled exclamation.

"What is it?" demanded Stallings incisively.

"It's Miss Ruth!"

"Who?"

"Miss Ruth"

By the dim lantern light the foreman saw her face outlined against the dark
background of green. His eyes were fixed upon her, and Bob Stallings seemed
scarcely to breathe.

"Ruth Brayton!" he gasped.

"Yes," answered Tad in a low voice, not fully comprehending the meaning of
the scene that was being enacted before him.

"Ruth Brayton," repeated Stallings, slowly passing a hand across his
forehead. "Ruth!" he cried, throwing himself to his knees beside her.

"I tell ye I winged a spook," insisted Big-foot Sanders to a companion as
they came up.

Tad raised a warning hand for silence.

"Get back to that herd!" commanded the foreman sharply. "All of you! Tad, you
stay with me. The girl has fallen and struck her head on the flagging. I don't
think she is seriously hurt."

Not understanding the meaning of it all, the cowmen drew back and slouched to
their ponies. Most of them were off duty at the time, so they took their way
back to camp to be ready for whatever emergency might arise.

Not a man of them spoke until they had staked their ponies and seated
themselves around the camp-fire. Such a silence was unusual among the cowboys.
Ned and Walter, who had followed them in, were standing aside, equally silent
and thoughtful.

Shorty Savage was the first to speak.

"What's it all about? That's what I'd like to know," he asked.

"You won't find out from me," answered Curley.

"Big-foot thinks he winged a spook," said a voice.

"Allee samee," chuckled Pong, who had been taking in the scene with mouth and
eyes agape.

Big-foot fixed him with a baneful eye.

"I said I'd forget you were the cook some day," said he. "I'm forgetting it,
now, faster'n a broncho can run!"

Pong's pigtail bobbed up and down like the streaming neckkerchief of a cowboy
in saddle as he dived for the protection of the trail wagon.

"I reckon he can understand king's English when he wants to," laughed Shorty.
"Now how about that spook, Big-foot?"

Sanders stood up, hitched his trousers and tightened his belt a notch.

"Reckon we've all gone plumb daffy, fellows. I'm the champeen dummy of the
bunch."

The cowpunchers laughed heartily.

"But was she a spook?" persisted Shorty.

"She were not. She were a womana friend of the boss."

Shorty whistled.

"Lucky for me I missed her. I was rattled, or I'd never taken that shot."

"Who is she?" asked Curley.

"One of the young women from the Ox Bow. It gets me what she was doing in
that spook place alone at night. I"

"W-o-w!"

The exclamation was uttered by a familiar voice, at the sound of which the
cowmen sprang to their feet.

"It's the gopher!" they cried.

"Chunky!" shouted Ned and Walter, running forward with a yell.

"I fell in," wailed the fat boy.

At sight of him the cowboys yelled with merriment. Chunky's clothes were
torn. He was covered with dirt from head to foot, and his face was so grimy as
to be scarcely recognizable.

Big-foot was staring at him in amazement. Striding forward, he grasped the
lad roughly by the shoulder, jerking him into the full light of the
camp-fire.

"Where you been, gopher?" he demanded sternly.

"I fell in," stammered the boy.

"Where?"

"Some kind of a well. It was in the bushes just outside the back door. I went
there to hide. I fell down to the bottom and went to sleep."

"Just like him. Have anything to eat down there?" jeered Ned Rector.

"When I woke up it was dark. Then I found another holea passage. It went
both ways. Guess one end went under the church. I followed it the other way, and
came out near where the steers are bedded down."

"Hold on a minute. Let's get this straight," interrupted Curley. "You mean
you found an underground passage at the bottom of the old well? Is that it?"

Chunky nodded.

"And the opening was near the spring at the point of rocks just above the
herd?"

"Yes. But I had to dig out through a brush heap."

"Huh! Not such a terrible mystery, after all," sniffed Curley
contemptuously.

"How came that underground passage there? What's it for?" asked Big-foot.

"Probably dug out in Indian times. I'll bet it has saved the scalp of more
than one old fellow. There's an opening into it from the church somewhere, you
can depend upon that. I'm thinking, too, that the well was a bluffthat it
wasn't intended for water at all. We'll smash the mystery of the adobe church
before we pull out of here to-morrow, see if we don't."

"I come mighty near doing for one of them," added Big-foot Sanders
ruefully.

"Got anything to eat?" interrupted Stacy Brown.

"For goodness' sake, boys, take your fat friend over to the chuck wagon and
fill him up. He's like a Mexican steerhe'll bed down safer when he's full of
supper."

In the meantime, another scene was being enacted off at the Ox Bow rancha
scene that was to add still another chapter to the romance of the trail.

Tad Butler was sitting alone in the darkness on the steps of the McClure
mansion. The boy, chin in hands, was lost in thought. Stallings had carried Ruth
Brayton in his arms all the way to the ranch where she had soon revived.

After leaving her, the foreman and Colonel McClure had locked themselves in
the library, where they remained in consultation for more than an hour.

"How is Miss Ruth?" asked the boy eagerly, when Stallings finally came
out.

"Better than in many months," answered the foreman. There was a new note in
his voice.

"I'm so glad," breathed Tad.

"Old man," began Stallings, slapping Tad on the shoulder, "come along with
me. We'll lead our ponies back to camp and talk. I presume you are aching to
know what all this mystery means?" laughed the foreman.

"Naturally, I am a bit curious," admitted Tad.

"It means, Pinto, that not only have you rendered a great service to Mr.
Miller and his herd, but you have done other things as well."

"I've mixed things up pretty well, I guess."

"No. You have solved a riddle, and made me the happiest man in the Lone Star
State. Miss Brayton and I have known each other almost since childhood. When I
was in Yale"

"You a college man!" exclaimed Tad in surprise.

"Yes. We were engaged. My people were quite wealthy; but, in a panic, some
years ago, father lost everything, dying soon after. Miss Brayton's family then
refused their consent to our marriage. I determined to seek my fortune in the
growing West. My full name is Robert Stallings Hamilton, though I never had used
the middle name until I adopted it when I became a cowboy. But to return to Miss
Brayton. Ruth was taken to Europe, and then sent to her uncle here. Her trouble
preyed on her mind to such an extent that she grew 'queer.' She had heard that I
was a cattle man, somewhere in the West. Strangely enough, when in her moods,
she developed a strong antipathy to herds of cattle. Whenever a herd was near,
Ruth would slip from the house and steal away to them in the night, A stampede
usually followed. It's a wonder she wasn't shot. Whether or not she caused these
intentionally, Ruth does not know"

"And that is the mystery?" asked Tad.

"Yes."

"It is the strangest story I ever heard," said the boy quietly.

"What I was about to say, is that the herd will go on without me. Colonel
McClure is sending his own foreman through with it instead. Ruth and I are to be
married at once, and we shall go to my little ranch in Montana."

In view of the fact that Stallings was severing his connection with the herd,
Professor Zepplin decided to do likewise.

Next morning, at sunrise, Bob Stallings, with Miss Ruth, by his side, both
radiantly happy, rode out to the camp. The Pony Rider Boys had packed their kits
and loaded their belongings on their ponies. Regretfully they bade good-bye to
the cowmen.

Tad's parting with Big-foot was most trying. In the short time they had been
together, a strong affection had grown up between the two. The plainsman had
been quick to perceive Tad's manly qualities, and the boy, in his turn, had been
won by the big, generous nature of the man. They parted, each vowing that they
must see each other again.

As the great herd moved slowly northward, three cheers were proposed for Bob
Stallings and Miss Brayton. This the cowboys gave with a will, adding a tiger
for the Pony Rider Boys.

The trail wagon, pulling out at the same time, held a grinning Chinaman,
huddled in the rear.

"Good-bye, Pong!" shouted the lads.

"Allee samee," chuckled the cook, shaking hands with himself
enthusiastically.

And here for a time we will take leave of the Pony Rider Boys, whose further
exciting experiences will be chronicled in the next volume, entitled: "
The Pony Rider Boys in Montana
; Or, the Mystery of the Old
Custer Trail." This will be a story of adventure, full of absorbing interest and
thrilling incidents. The reader will then go over the same trails that General
Custer rode in the wilder days.

The End.

HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY'S

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