The Bobbsey Twins Megapack

by Laura Lee Hope

  “Will he chase us again?” asked Nan.

  “No, I guess I taught him a lesson,” answered Mr. Dayton.

  The steer shook himself and looked at the three figures on the horse and ponies. He did not seem to want to chase anybody now, and after a shake or two of his head the steer walked away, up over the hill and across the prairie, to join the rest of the herd from which he had strayed.

  “You want to be careful about getting off your ponies when you see a lone steer,” the foreman told Bert and Nan. “Some animals think a person on foot is a new kind of creature and want to give chase right away. On a cattle ranch keep in the saddle as much as you can when you are among the steers.”

  Bert and his sister said they would do this, and then they rode home with the red flowers. Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey thanked the foreman for again saving the children from harm.

  Mr. Charles Dayton seemed to fit in well at Three Star ranch. He was as good a ranchman as his brother Bill was a lumberman. And, true to the promise he had given Mrs. Bobbsey, the ranch foreman wrote to Bill, giving the address of Three Star.

  “I had a letter from Bill today, Mrs. Bobbsey,” said the ranch foreman to the children’s mother one afternoon.

  “Did you? That’s good!” she answered.

  “And he says he’d like to see me,” went on Mr. Charles Dayton. “He says he has something to tell me.”

  “Did he say what it was about?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey, while Bert and Nan stood near by. They were waiting for the foreman to saddle the ponies for them, as he always wanted to be sure the girths were made tight enough before the twins set out for a ride.

  “No, Bill didn’t say what it was he wanted to tell me,” went on Charley. “And he writes rather oddly.”

  “Your brother seemed to me to be a bit odd,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “As if he had some sort of a secret.”

  “Oh, well, I guess he has had his troubles, the same as I have,” said the ranch foreman.

  “We were boys together, and we didn’t have a very good time. I suppose it was as much our fault as any one’s. But you don’t think of that at the time. Well, I’ll be glad to see Bill again, but I don’t know when we’ll get together. Are you waiting for me, Bobbsey twins?” he asked.

  “Yes, if you please,” answered Nan.

  “We’d like our ponies,” added Bert, “and you promised to show me some more how to lasso.”

  “And so I will!” promised the foreman. He had already given Bert a few lessons in casting the rope. Of course Bert could not use a lasso of the regulation size, so one of the cowboys had made him a little one. With this Bert did very well. Freddie also had to have one, but his was only a toy. Freddie wanted his father to call him “little cowboy” now, instead of “little fireman,” and, to please Freddie, Mr. Bobbsey did so once in a while.

  After Bert had been given a few more lessons in casting the lasso, the two older Bobbsey twins went for a ride on their ponies, while Mrs. Bobbsey took Flossie and Freddie for a ride in the pony cart.

  It was about a week after this that the Bobbsey twins were awakened one morning by a loud shouting outside the ranch house where they slept.

  “What’s the matter? Have the Indians come?” asked Bert, for some of the cowboys had said a few Indians from a neighboring reservation usually dropped in for a visit about this time of year.

  “No, I don’t see any Indians,” answered Nan, who had looked out of a window, after hurriedly getting dressed. “But I see a lot of the cowboys.”

  “Oh, maybe they’re going after the Indians!” exclaimed Bert. “I’m going to ask mother if I can go along!”

  “I want to go, too, and get an Indian doll!” exclaimed Nan.

  But when they went out into the main room, where their father and mother were eating breakfast, and when the two Bobbsey twins had begged to be allowed to go with the cowboys to see the Indians, Mr. Bobbsey said: “This hasn’t anything to do with Indians, Bert.”

  “What’s it all about then?” asked the boy.

  “It’s the round-up,” answered his father. “The cowboys are getting ready for the half-yearly round-up, and that’s what they’re so excited about.”

  “Oh, may I see the round-up?” begged Bert,

  “What is it?” asked Nan. “What’s a round-up?”

  Before Mr. Bobbsey could answer Mr. Dayton, the foreman, came hurrying into the room. He seemed quite excited.

  “Excuse me for disturbing your breakfast,” he said to Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey. “But I have some news for you. Some Indians have run off part of your cattle!”

  CHAPTER XXI

  In the Storm

  Bert Bobbsey did not pay much attention to what the foreman said, except that one word “Indians.”

  “Oh, where are they?” cried the boy. “I want to see them!”

  “And I’d like to see them myself!” exclaimed the foreman. “If I could find them I’d get back the Three Star cattle.”

  “Did Indians really take some of the steers?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.

  “Yes,” answered the foreman, “they did. You know we are getting ready for the round-up. That is a time, twice a year, when we count the cattle, and sell what we don’t want to keep,” he explained, for he saw that Nan wanted to ask a question.

  “Twice a year,” went on the foreman, “once in the spring and again in the fall, we have what is called a round-up. That is we gather together all the cattle on the different parts of the ranch. Some herds have been left to themselves for a long time, and it may happen that cattle belonging to some other ranch-owner have got in with ours. We separate, or ‘cut out’ as it is called, the strange cattle, give them to the cowboys who come for them, and look after our own. That is a round-up, and sometimes it lasts for a week or more. The cowboys take a ‘chuck’, or kitchen wagon with them, and they cook their meals out on the prairie.”

  “Oh, that’s fun!” cried Bert. “Please, Daddy, mayn’t I go on the round-up?”

  “And have the Indians catch you?” asked his mother.

  “Oh, there isn’t any real danger from the Indians,” said the foreman. “They are not the wild kind. Only, now and again, they run off a bunch of cattle from some herd that is far off from the main ranch. This is what has happened here.”

  “How did you find out about it?” asked Mr. Bobbsey.

  “A cowboy from another ranch told me,” answered the foreman. “Some of his cattle were taken and he followed along the trail the Indians left. He saw them, but could not catch them. But he saw some of the cattle that had strayed away from the band of Indians, and these steers were branded with our mark—the three stars.”

  “Well, maybe the poor Indians were hungry,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “And that is why they took some of our steers.”

  “Yes, I reckon that’s what they’d say, anyhow,” remarked the foreman. “But it won’t do to let the redmen take cattle any time they feel like it. They have money, and can buy what they want. I wouldn’t mind giving them a beef or two, but when it comes to taking part of a herd, it must be stopped.”

  “How can it be stopped?” asked Mr. Bobbsey.

  “That’s just what I came in to talk to you about,” went on Mr. Dayton. “Shall I send some of the cowboys after the Indians to see if they can catch them, and get back our cattle?”

  “I suppose you had better,” Mr. Bobbsey answered. “If we let this pass the Indians will think we do not care, and will take more steers next time. Yes, send the cowboys after the Indians.”

  “But let the Indians have a steer or two for food, if they need it,” begged Mrs. Bobbsey, who had a kind heart even toward an Indian cattle thief, or “rustler”, as they are called.

  “Well, that can be done,” agreed Mr. Dayton. “Then I’ll send some of the cowboys on the round-up, and others after the Indians. They can work together, the two bands of cowboys.”

  “Oh, mayn’t I come?” begged Bert. “I can throw a lasso pretty good now, and maybe I could rope an Indian.”

&nbs
p; “And maybe you could get me an Indian doll!” put in Nan.

  “Oh, no! We couldn’t think of letting you go, Bert,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “The cowboys will be gone several nights, and will sleep out on the open prairie. When you get bigger you may go.”

  Bert looked so disappointed that the foreman said:

  “I’ll tell you what we can do. Toward the end of the round-up the boys drive the cattle into the corrals not far from here. The children can go over then and see how the cowboys cut out different steers, and how we send some of the cattle over to the railroad to be shipped back east. That will be seeing part of the round-up, anyhow.”

  And with this Bert had to be content. He and Nan, with Flossie and Freddie, watched the cowboys riding away on their ponies, shouting, laughing, waving their hats and firing their revolvers.

  While the round-up was hard work for the cowboys, still they had exciting times at it and they always were glad when it came. The ranch seemed lonesome after the band of cowboys had ridden away, but Sing Foo, the Chinese cook, was left, and one or two of the older men to look after things around the buildings. Mr. Dayton also stayed to see about matters for Mrs. Bobbsey.

  It was well on toward fall now, though the weather was still warm. The days spent by the Bobbsey twins in the great West had passed so quickly that the children could hardly believe it was almost time for them to go back to Lakeport.

  “Can’t we stay here all winter?” asked Bert. “If I’m going to be a cowboy I’d better stay on a ranch all winter.”

  “Oh, the winters here are very cold,” his father said. “We had better go back to Lakeport for Christmas, anyhow,” and he smiled at his wife.

  “Maybe Santa Claus doesn’t come out here so far,” said Freddie.

  “Then I don’t want to stay,” said Flossie. “I want to go where Santa Claus is for Christmas.”

  “I think, then, we’d better plan to go back home,” said Mrs. Bobbsey.

  It was rather lonesome at the ranch now, with so many of the cowboys away, but the children managed to have good times. The two smaller twins often went riding in the pony cart, while Bert and Nan liked saddle-riding best.

  One day as Bert and his sister started off their mother said to them: “Don’t go too far now. I think there is going to be a storm.”

  “We won’t go far!” Bert promised.

  Now the two saddle ponies were feeling pretty frisky that day. They seemed to know cold weather was coming, when they would have to trot along at a lively pace to keep warm. And perhaps Nan and Bert, remembering that they were soon to leave the ranch, rode farther and faster than they meant to.

  At any rate they went on and on, and pretty soon Nan said:

  “We had better go back. We never came so far away before, all alone. And I think it’s going to rain!”

  “Yes, it does look so,” admitted Bert. “And I guess we had better go back. I thought maybe I could see some of the cowboys coming home from the round-up, but I guess I can’t.”

  The children turned their ponies about, and headed them for the ranch house. As they did so the rain drops began to fall, and they had not ridden a half mile more before the storm suddenly broke.

  “Oh, look at the rain!” cried Nan.

  “And feel it!” exclaimed Bert. “This is going to be a big storm! Let’s put on our ponchos.”

  The children carried ponchos on their saddles. A poncho is a rubber blanket with a hole in the middle. To wear it you just put your head through the hole, the rubber comes down over your shoulders and you are kept quite dry, even in a hard storm.

  Bert and Nan quickly put on their ponchos and then started their ponies again. The rain was now coming down so hard that the brother and sister could scarcely see where they were going.

  “Are we headed right for the house?” asked Nan.

  “I—I guess so,” answered Bert. “But I’m not sure.”

  CHAPTER XXII

  New Names

  Bert and Nan rode on through the rain which seemed to come down harder and harder. Soon it grew so dark, because it was getting to be late afternoon and because of the rain clouds, that the children could not see in the least where they were going.

  “Oh, Bert, maybe we are lost!” said Nan, with almost a sob as she guided her pony up beside that of her brother.

  “Oh, I don’t guess we are exactly lost,” he said. “The ponies know their way back to the ranch houses, even if we don’t.”

  “Do you think so?” Nan asked.

  “Yes, Mr. Dayton told me if ever I didn’t know which way to go, just to let the reins rest loose on the horse’s neck, and he’d take me home.”

  “We’ll do that!” decided Nan.

  But whether the ponies did not know their way, or whether the ranch buildings were farther off than either Bert or Nan imagined, the children did not know. All they knew was that they were out in the rain, and they did not seem to be able to get to any shelter. There were no trees on the prairies about Three Star ranch, as there were in the woods at Lumberville.

  “Oh, Bert, what shall we do?” cried Nan. “It’s getting terribly dark and I’m afraid!”

  Bert was a little afraid also, but he was not going to let his sister know that. He meant to be brave and look after her. They rode along a little farther, and suddenly Nan cried:

  “Oh, Bert! Look! Indians!”

  Bert, who was riding along with his head bent low to keep the rain out of his face, glanced up through the gathering dusk. He saw, just ahead of him and coming toward him and his sister a line of men on horses. But Bert either looked more closely than did his sister or else he knew more about Indians. For after a second glance he cried:

  “They aren’t Indians! They’re cowboys! Hello, there!” cried the boy. “Will you please show us the way to the house on Three Star ranch?”

  Some of the leading cowboys pulled up their horses, and stopped on hearing this call. They peered through the rain and darkness and saw the two children on ponies.

  “Who’s asking for Three Star ranch?” cried one cowboy.

  “We are!” Bert answered. “We’re the Bobbsey twins!”

  “Oh, ho! I thought so!” came back the answer. “Well, don’t worry! We’ll take you home all right!”

  With that some of the cowboys (and they really were that and not Indians) rode closer to Nan and Bert. And as soon as Bert caught a glimpse of the faces of some of the men he cried:

  “Why, you belong to Three Star!”

  “Sure!” answered one, named Pete Baldwin. “We’re part of the Three Star outfit coming back from the round-up. But where are you two youngsters going?”

  “We came out for a ride,” answered Bert “but it started to rain, and we want to go home.”

  “Well, you won’t get home the way you are going,” said Pete. “You were traveling right away from home when we met you. Turn your ponies around, and head them the other way. We’ll ride back with you.”

  Bert and Nan were glad enough to do this.

  “It’s a good thing we met you,” said Bert, as he rode beside Pete Baldwin. “And did you catch the Indians?”

  “Yes, we found them, and got back your mother’s cattle—all except one or two we gave them.”

  “And is the round-up all over?” asked Bert.

  “Yes, except for some cattle a few of the boys will drive in to-morrow or next day,” the cowboy answered. “You can see ’em then. It’s a good thing you youngsters had those rubber ponchos, or you’d be soaked through.”

  The cowboys each had on one of these rubber blankets, and they did not mind the rain. Some of them even sang as their horses plodded through the wet.

  Bert and Nan were no longer afraid, and in about half an hour they rode with their cowboy friends into the cluster of ranch buildings.

  “Oh, my poor, dear children! where have you been?” cried Mrs. Bobbsey. “Daddy and Mr. Dayton were just going to start hunting for you! What happened?”

  “We got lost in the rain
, but the cowboys found us,” said Bert.

  “And first I thought they were Indians,” added Nan, as she shook the water from her hair.

  “Well, it’s a good thing they did find you,” said Mr. Bobbsey.

  The two Bobbsey twins were given some warm milk to drink, and soon they were telling Flossie and Freddie about their ride in the rain.

  “I wish I could see an Indian,” sighed Freddie.

  “All I want now is an Indian doll,” said Nan.

  Two days later the cowboys came riding in with a bunch of cattle which they had rounded-up and cut out from a larger herd. These steers were to be shipped away, but, for a time, were kept in a corral, or fenced-in pen, near the ranch buildings. There Bert and the other children went to look at the big beasts, and the Bobbsey twins watched the cowboys at work.

  It was about a week after Bert and Nan had been lost in the rain that Mrs. Bobbsey met the foreman, Charles Dayton on the porch of the ranch house one day.

  “Oh, Mr. Dayton!” called the children’s mother, “I have had a letter from your brother Bill, who has charge of my lumber tract. He is coming on here.”

  “Bill is coming here?” exclaimed the cattleman in great surprise. “Well, I’m right happy to hear that. I’ll be glad to see him. Haven’t seen him for several years. Is he coming here just to see me?”

  “No,” answered Mrs. Bobbsey, “he is coming here to see Mr. Bobbsey and myself about some lumber business. After we left your brother found there were some papers I had not signed, so, instead of my going back to Lumberville, I asked your brother to come here. I can sign the papers here as well as there, and this will give you two brothers a chance to meet.”

  “I am glad of that!” exclaimed the cattleman. “I suppose Bill and I are going to be kept pretty busy—he among the trees and I among the cattle—so we might not get a chance to meet for a long time, only for this.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, while Bert and Nan listened to the talk, “Well, your brother will be here next week.”