Comrades of the Saddle | Page 9

some money," commented Mrs. Wilder. "I'm real glad, though of course it isn't as though your father needed any more. I should have thought you boys would have wanted to go with them."
"Not when we could spend the summer on your ranch," returned Larry. "But we began to be afraid we would be obliged to go, and we should have if the telegram had been any later. No time ever seemed so long as when we were waiting for your answer."
"It was just luck we got your message," declared Horace. "Sometimes we don't go to town for a week. But something seemed to urge me to ride in the other morning, and when I arrived Con Brown hollered to me he had a telegram. When I read it, I didn't lose any time answering, and I made Con promise to rush it."
"Con's our telegraph operator," explained Bill. "Come on in and change your duds and then we'll look the ranch over."
Nothing loath to remove their clothes, which still smelled of engine smoke, despite their ride over the plains, as the brothers seized their suitcases and followed their young hosts, Larry exclaimed laughingly:
"You see we took your advice not to bring a trunk."
"Glad of it," asserted Horace joyously. "There's no need to dress out here. It's just great! You don't have to put on a collar from one week's end to another. But if you had brought a lot of clothes, mother would have made us dress too. That's why I mentioned the matter in my telegram."
This explanation was given in a low tone that Mrs. Wilder might not know her son had taken such effective measures to prevent his being obliged to "dress up," and the boys laughed heartily at the harmless joke.
The home of the Wilders was only one story high, but the rooms were big and comfortable. Around three sides ran the piazza, from which French windows, extending from the floor to the ceiling, opened, admitting any breeze that might be stirring.
The room assigned to the boys was on the west side of the house, and through the vines they could look across the plains to some mountains that towered in the distance.
"Our room is the next one to yours," said Bill. "We'll wait there till you are dressed. If you want anything, sing out."
Hastily Tom and Larry took off the clothes in which they had traveled, and bathed, glad of the opportunity to remove the cinders which had caused them no little discomfort.
"Bill and Horace seem just the same as when they lived in Bramley," observed Tom when they were alone. "Horace hasn't grown a bit."
"They are tanned up till they look like Indians, that's the only change I can see," returned his brother. "Horace always will be short, but Bill's tall enough for two."
"You can't wear those caps," declared Bill as Tom and Larry appeared with the light baseball caps they had brought with them.
"But that's all we have," protested Larry, "except, of course, our straw hats. You don't expect us to knock round in those, do you?"
"Sure not. But if you wore those caps you'd get sunstruck out on the plains. We've got some sombreros you can take."
As the boys trooped out onto the piazza Tom espied a five-bar fence about a hundred yards from the house.
"That's the horse corral," explained Horace, noting the direction of his friend's gaze. "We don't keep our ponies in barns out here. The horses are all out on the range now, except eight we keep at home for ourselves."
Passing from the cool veranda, the boys walked toward a long building some thirty yards away.
"This is the bunk-house, where the cowboys stay when they're home," announced Bill. "There are ten of them, the best boys in this part of the country, but they are a lively lot. It's a good thing they are with the cattle. You'll have a chance to get used to ranching before they come in or they might amuse themselves at your expense. Politeness isn't a cowboy's long suit."
"So I gathered," said Larry as he thought of his experience at the crossing in Oklahoma. But his mind was quickly diverted by his brother.
"What's that half-moon over the door mean?" asked the younger of the Alden boys as he caught sight of a gilded crescent that sparkled in the sunlight.
"Oh, tenderfoot! oh, tenderfoot! It is indeed fortunate the boys are away," exclaimed Bill in mock solemnity.
"That is the brand of this ranch. Every horse, every steer, cow and calf we own bears a half-moon because this is the Half-Moon Ranch. When any of our ponies or cattle go astray or mix with others, the only way we can tell which belong to us is by the brand."
"How do you put it on?" asked Tom.
"Burn it into the