CHAPTER XXV. THE OUTLAW RANCH.

Suddenly he was conscious that someone was near his cot. He could hear hard breathing and then he felt a hand creeping over the covers. In a flash he grasped it and yelled aloud to Mountain Jim. Now Jim, no less tired than Ralph, had likewise dropped off to sleep despite his determined efforts to keep awake. But Ralph’s cry brought him out of his 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 the wrist he had caught. The next instant a hand was at his throat and a knee on his chest and he was choked into silence. But his cry had had its effect. Like a runaway[244] steer Mountain Jim came charging through the 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 come straight in the direction of Ralph’s cry. Without giving whoever the midnight intruder was any chance to reply, Mountain Jim encircled him with his iron arm and hurled him clear across the room. They could hear a crash and grunt as the fellow fetched up, and then a rush of feet through the darkness followed by the crash of a heavy fall, caused apparently by a violent tumble down the steep stairs leading to the attic.

They listened intently and heard somebody picking himself up and limping off.

“Well, what do you think of that?” exclaimed Mountain Jim. “Serves me right for sleeping, though, Ralph. Are you hurt?”

“Not a bit, but I feel half choked. That fellow had a half Nelson on my neck, all right.”

[245]

“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 bed apparently just as it had been dropped by the intruder when Jim’s mighty 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 same token it’s pretty near dawn now. Hear the roosters? Well, as there’s no more sleep for us to-night, we might as well get up and see to the ponies. It would be just like this outfit of scallywags to try to do them some harm or even steal ’em, if your friends, the Bloods, are about.”

But the ponies, which had been turned into a corral the night previous, were found to be all[246] right, and by the time the stars paled they had them saddled and re-entered the house. Jim banged loudly on the table of the room where they had had supper the previous night and demanded breakfast. Before long the landlord came shuffling into the room.

In the pale light they could see that under his left eye he had a big purple swelling. His hands shook, too, and altogether he appeared to be very ill at ease.

“How’d you sleep?” he asked.

“Fine,” rejoined Jim heartily. “In the night a mosquito or some other kind of low down critter bothered me, but I guess I bunged him up tolerably considerable.”

He looked at the red-bearded man with a cheerful grin, and stared him straight in the eyes. The optics of the rascal dropped. He got breakfast 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 a gun in that attic last[247] night. If the owner wants it, tell him to come to me, will you?”

The landlord looked at them for an instant and his florid skin turned green. He swung on his heel and fairly fled into the house.

“I’ll turn it over to the Mounted Police,” shouted Jim after him. “I guess they’ll be interested in finding the owner.”

They arrived at Donald Campbell’s new ranch shortly afterward, riding over a fairly good road. The old Scotchman told them that they were lucky that nothing worse had happened to them. The place was suspected to be a “whisky ranch,” and its owner had been in trouble with the police on two or three occasions.

“I guess he’ll be careful who he tackles next time,” remarked Jim with a grin.

The bargain for two tough, hard-looking ponies, broken to pack, was soon struck, and with good wishes from the old Scotchman they rode off. They reached the camp on the return[248] journey that night, and all hands sat up late listening with absorbed interest to the story of their adventures.

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 the adventurers to the Big Bend of the Columbia River. Mountain Jim had told the boys that their route would skirt the bases of some of the peaks covered with eternal snow, among which the great white Rocky Mountain goat ranges. There might even be a chance, he declared, for a sight of the famous Big Horn sheep, although these animals are now so wild as to be almost inaccessible to hunters.

They set out in high humor, the new ponies being hitched to more sedate companions so as to keep their spirits within bounds. But notwithstanding this, the lively little animals plunged and leaped about till it appeared as if their packs[249] would come off. Throughout the morning they progressed steadily toward the great snow-covered peaks that shone and glittered like diadems toward the northwest. Black ridges 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, whose green, cold waters came from the snow-capped peaks toward which their way now lay. While Jim cooked the meal, aided by Jimmie, the boys scattered in every direction gathering firewood or looking at the scenes about them. All at once there came a wild whoop of dismay from Persimmons, 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, which was rolled up on Baldy’s back, and before anyone could stop her she was off toward the torrent. Ralph was in his saddle[250] in a second and after her, 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 struck out 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 of the stream, he slipped off his pony and swam beside him till shallower water was reached.

The swift current carried them down stream for quite a distance, but at last the struggling pony’s feet found solid bottom, and he scrambled out not more than a hundred yards behind Topsy. All this had happened so quickly that those left behind had hardly time to realize it before Ralph gained the opposite shore. Then Jim hailed him:

[251]

“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 the fleeing pack animal. The wood proved to be only a strip of pine and tamaracks, and beyond was a rocky ledge leading up the side of a high mountain, for by this time they had reached the heart of the Rockies and big peaks towered all about them.

“Yip! yip!” cried Ralph entering fully into the spirit of the chase. As for Topsy, apparently not feeling the weight of the heavy pack at all, she dashed on like a lightning express. Ralph was sorry that the chase was not among the trees, for in the timber Topsy would have found it hard to get along so quickly with the encumbering pack on her back. But up the rocky ledge, which zig-zagged like a trail up the mountain, she fairly flew. The noise of her speeding hoofs was like that of castanets.

“Well, a stern chase is always a long one,[252]” thought Ralph, as he shook a kink out of his rope and spurred after her as fast as his pony was capable of going. The camp was soon left far behind and still the boy found himself on a narrow trail, or shelf of rock, that inclined steeply up the mountain side. Below him the ground dropped off to unknown depths, and on his other hand a wall of rock shot up so steeply that hardly a tree or a bush found footing on it. As they rose higher Ralph experienced a sensation as if he was riding into cloudland. Frequently he would lose sight of Topsy, and then again he could glimpse her as she darted around a shoulder of the mountain, only to be lost 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 carry him. Glancing down he saw that a sort of blue mist veiled the depths of the abyss below him. He was many feet above the tops of the tallest of the big pines. Afar off, through the crisp, clear[253] air, he could see more ridges, but he appeared far above them. To anyone gazing at him from below, the boy would have looked no larger than a fly on some steep and lofty wall.

“Fine place to meet anything,” he said to himself. “This road was only built for one.”

At the same instant another thought flashed across him. Up to this time, 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 to turn his pony around and retrace his steps?