Rob surprises A cow-puncher

Northward from Truxton, Arizona, the desert stretches a red-hot, sandy arm, the elbow of which crooks about several arid ranges of baked hills clothed with a scanty growth of chaparral. Across this sun-bitten solitude of sand and sage brush extend two parallel steel lines the branch of the Southern Pacific which at Truxton takes a bold plunge into the white solitudes of the dry country.

Scattered few and far between on the monotonous level are desert towns, overtopped by lofty water tanks, perched on steel towers, in the place of trees, and sun-baked like everything else in the “great sandy.” These isolated communities, the railroad serves. Twice a day, with the deliberate pace of the Gila Monster, a dusty train of three cars, drawn by a locomotive of obsolete pattern, which has been not inaptly compared to a tailor’s goose with a fire in it makes its slow way.

Rumbling through a gloomy, rock-walled cut traversing the barren range of the Sierra Tortilla, the railroad emerges after much bumping through scorched foothills and rattling over straddle-legged trestles above dry arroyos at Mesaville. Mesaville stands on the south bank of the San Pedro, a scanty branch of the Gila River. To the south of this little desert community, across the quivering stretches of glaring sand and mesquite, there hangs always a blue cloud the Santa Catapina Range.

The blazing noonday sun lay smitingly over Mesaville and the inhabitants of that town, when on a September day the dust-powdered train before referred to drew up groaningly at the depot, and from one of its forward cars there emerged three boys of a type strange to the primitive settlement.

The eldest of the three, a boy of about seventeen, whom his two friends addressed as Rob, was Rob Blake, whom readers of the Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol the first volume of this series have met before. His companions were Corporal Merritt Crawford of the same patrol, and the rotund Tubby Hopkins, the son of widow Hopkins of Hampton, Long Island, from which village all three, in fact, came.

“Well, here we are at Mesaville.”

Rob Blake gazed across the hot tracks at the row of raw buildings opposite as he spoke, and the town gazed back in frank curiosity at him. Opposite the depot was a small hotel, on the porch of which several figures had been seated with their chairs tilted back, and their feet on the rail, as the train rolled in.

As it pulled out again, leaving the boys and an imposing pile of baggage exposed to the view of the Mesavillians, six pairs of feet were removed from the porch-rails as if by machinery, and their several owners bent forward in a frank stare at the newcomers.

“Must think a circus has come to town,” commented Tubby.

“Well, they know where to look for the elephant,” teased Merritt mischievously.

“And for the laughing hyena, too, I guess,” parried the fat youth, as the corporal went off into a paroxysm of suddenly checked laughter.

The boys had bought sombreros at Truxton, and in their baggage was clothing of the kind which Harry Harkness at whose invitation they had come to this part of the country had advised them to buy. But as they still wore their light summer suits of Eastern cut and make, their generally “different” look from the members of the Mesaville Hotel Loungers’ Association was quite sufficient to excite the attention of the latter.

Readers of the Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol will recall that in that book was related the formation of the patrol at Hampton Harbor, L. I., and how it had been effected. How the boys of the patrol had many opportunities to show that they were true scouts was also told. Notably was this so in the incident of the stolen uniforms, in which the boys’ enemies, Jack Curtiss, Bill Bender and Hank Handcraft, a disreputable old town character, were implicated.

It will also be remembered that while encamped on an island near their home village, the Boy Scouts put off in a motor dory to the rescue of a stranded cattle ship on which Mr. Harkness, a cattle rancher, and his son Harry, a lad of the boys’ own age, were returning from London, whither they had just taken a big consignment of stock. In return for their services, including the summoning of aid by wireless, Mr. Harkness invited the boys to spend some time on his cattle range. What adventurous boys would not have leaped at the invitation? But for a time it appeared as if it would be impossible for Rob and his chums to accept it, owing to the fact that the Hampton Academy, which they all attended, resumed its school term early in the fall.

Just at this time, however, something happened which was very welcome to all three of the Scouts. Serious defects had been discovered in the foundation of the Academy, and it had been decided that it would be unsafe for the scholars to reassemble till these had been remedied. It was estimated that the work would take two months or more. Thus it had come about that the invitation of Mr. Harkness was accepted. To the boys’ regret, however, only the members of the Patrol who stood that day on the platform at Mesaville had been able to obtain the consent of their parents to take the long, and to Eastern eyes, hazardous, trip.

Arrangements had been made by letter for Harry Harkness, the rancher’s son, to meet the boys at Mesaville, but the train had rolled in and rolled out again without his putting in an appearance.

“Maybe Harry fell in that river and was drowned,” suggested Tubby, pointing ahead down the tracks to the trestle crossing the San Pedro River. At this time of the year the so-called river was a mere trickle of mud-colored water, threading its way between high, sandy banks. The boys burst into a laugh at the idea of any one’s drowning in it.

“He’ll be here before long,” said Rob confidently. “It’s a drive of more than fifty miles to the ranch, remember, and we can’t start out till to-morrow morning, anyhow.”

Just then a white-aproned Chinaman appeared on the porch of the hotel and vigorously rang a bell. At the signal the lounging cow-punchers and plainsmen rose languidly from their chairs and bolted into the dining-room. From the few stores also appeared the merchants of Mesaville, most of whom lived at the hotel.

“Sounds like dinner,” remarked Tubby hopefully, sniffing the air on which an odor of food was wafted across the tracks. “Smells like it, too.”

“Trust Tubby to detect grub,” laughed Rob.

“He’s a culinary Sherlock Holmes,” declared Merritt, but his remark was made to Rob alone, for Tubby was beyond the reach of his sarcasm. He had started at once to cross the tracks and find the dining-room.

“I guess it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have something to eat while we’re waiting,” said Rob. “Let’s go over.”

Tubby was already installed in a seat at the long table when his chums entered. He had in front of him a plate of soup, on the top of which floated a sort of upper crust of grease. From time to time an investigating fly ventured too near the edge and was miserably drowned. It was Tubby’s initiation into desert hotel life, and he didn’t look as if he was enjoying it.

On both sides of the table, however, the cow-punchers, teamsters, and Mesaville commercial lights, were shoveling away their food without the flicker of an eyelash. Opposite to Tubby were seated two young fellows in cowboy garb, who seemed to extract much noisy amusement from watching the stout youth eat. They didn’t seem to care if he overheard their somewhat personal remarks.

“Ah, there’s a lad who’ll be a help to his folks when he grows up,” grinned one of the stout boy’s tormentors, as Rob and Merritt took their seats.

“Which will be before you do,” placidly murmured Tubby, continuing to eat his soup.

A shout of laughter went up at this, and it wasn’t at Tubby’s expense, either.

The two youths who had been so anxious to display their wit reddened, and one of them angrily said something about “the fresh tenderfoot.”

“Here’s two more of ’em,” tittered the other, as Merritt and Rob came in. Rob wore on his breast, but pinned on his waistcoat and out of sight, the Red Honor for lifesaving, which had been presented to him for heroism at the time of the waterlogging of the hydroplane, as narrated in the Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol. Merritt also wore the decoration in the same inconspicuous place.

As the leader of the Eagle Patrol sat down, however, his coat caught against Tubby’s shoulder and was thrown back, exposing the decoration.

“Oh! ho! Look at the tenderfoot’s medal,” chuckled one of the young cattlemen; “wonder what it’s for?”

“The championship of the bread and milk eaters of New York State, I reckon,” grinned the other, and another shout of laughter bore witness to the table’s approval of this primitive humor.

Rob flushed angrily, but said nothing. He did not wish to stir up trouble with two such ill-mannered young boors as the cattle-punchers were showing themselves to be. Encouraged by his silence, the badgering went on. One by one the other guests had been served by the Chinese attendant, with raisin pie and half-melted cheese, and had arisen and left the room. The two young cow-punchers and the Boy Scouts were shortly left alone in the fly-infested apartment. Rob and Merritt, who found the surroundings little to their liking, hurried through their meal, but Tubby ate conscientiously through everything that was brought him.

It now grew plain, even if it had not been so before, that the two sun-burned young plainsmen sitting opposite the boys were deliberately trying to aggravate them.

Interpreting the boys’ silence as fear, they grew bolder and bolder in their remarks.

“Have to catch up a real cow, I reckon,” dreamily went on one of the boys’ tormentors, gazing at the ceiling abstractedly, but fingering the condensed milk can.

“What for?” inquired the other, playing into his hand.

“Why, the tin cow might disagree with mama’s boys.”

“Ho-ho-ho! Say, Clark.”

“What, Jess?”

“Reckon they must be overstocked with yearlings East.”

“Looks that way. Do you suppose Easterners are born or jest grow?”

The youth addressed by his companion as Jess looked straight at Rob as he spoke, and the insult was unmistakable. Rob’s self-control suddenly deserted him with a rush.

“I’ll answer for your friend,” he snapped out. “They grow-and-they-grow-right.”

Tubby looked up in surprise from his raisin pie, and Merritt’s eyes opened wide at Rob’s tone. It foreboded trouble as sure as a hurricane signal foretells a storm.

“My! my!” grinned Jess, but it was an uncomfortable sort of a grin, “hear the little boy with the medal talk. Come on, Clark, let’s go see to the ponies while the tenderfeet wait for their nurse to come and take their bibs off.”

They rose from the table, but Rob, still inwardly raging but outwardly cool as ice, stopped them.

“Say,” he said, “are you fellows cattlemen?”

“You bet, stranger, from the ground up,” rejoined Clark, with a vast air of self-importance.

“Well, then we’ve been misinformed in the East,” said Rob, coolly brushing a few stray crumbs from his knees.

“How’s that?”

“Why, we’d been told that cattlemen were natural gentlemen; but whoever told us that was dead wrong. Judging by you fellows, they’re not natural, and certainly not the other thing.”

Clark’s face grew crimson and he muttered something about “fixing the fresh kid,” but his companion drew him away.

“We’ll have plenty of time to rope and brand these young mavericks,” he said, as they left the room.

As they vanished Rob burst into a shout of laughter.

“Score one for the Boy Scouts,” he said. “If ever there were two discomfited cow-punchers, those fellows are it.”

The landlord, who had entered the room a few moments before, came forward as the boys arose from the table. He was a tall, lanky man, with a look of perpetual gloom on his face. A drooping, straw-colored mustache did not help to enliven his funereal features.

“Say, strangers,” he said, in a dismal voice, “you’ve started in bad.”

“How’s that?” inquired Rob, in a somewhat peppery tone.

“Why, riling up Clark Jennings and Jess Randell; they’s two of the toughest boys in the country.”

“Think so, I guess,” snorted Tubby.

“Well, wait and see,” said the landlord, with a melancholy shrug of his sloping shoulders. “Three dinners, please.”

He extended a yellow palm.

“How much?” asked Rob, putting his hand in his pocket.

“Three dollars and six bits.”

“What! three dollars and seventy-five cents for that fly-ridden stuff?”

“That’s the charge, stranger.”

Rob, seeing there was no use arguing, paid over the money, in exchange for which they had received three greasy plates of soup, three portions of ragged, overdone bull beef, and three slabs of raisin pie, together with three cups of muddy, inky coffee. But a sudden impulse of curiosity gripped him.

“Say, what’s the twenty-five cents extra all round for?” he asked.

“Fer your ponies,” rejoined the landlord, more miserably than ever. He seemed to be on the point of bursting into tears.

“Ponies!” gasped Rob. “We haven’t got any.”

“Never mind, it’s a rule of the house,” said the landlord, as if that settled the matter; “and if you ain’t got any ponies it ain’t my fault, is it?”

There was no answering this sort of logic, and the boys strolled out to the porch to see if they could sight any trace of Harry Harkness. There was no sign of him, however, and after a prolonged period of gazing across the blazing desert, the boys sank back in three of the big rockers that stood in a row on the porch. It was dull, sitting there in the intense heat and drowsy silence, broken only at long intervals by the clatter of a pony’s hoofs as some cow-puncher ambled by at an easy lope. A loud snore from Tubby soon proclaimed that he was off, and Merritt and Rob were about to follow him into the land of dreams, when there came a sudden interruption.

Rob felt his shoulder roughly seized from behind, and a harsh, mandatory voice addressed him:

“Say, that’s my chair you’re sitting in. You’ll have to get out.”

The boy turned and saw Clark Jennings glaring at him. Close beside him, with a grin on his face, was Jess Randell.

“Even supposing it is your chair,” said Rob, “you can ask me for it like a gentleman, then,” he added to himself, “I’ll think over giving it to you.”

“Oh, I guess you think you’re a mighty fine gentleman?”

“I hope I am one, yes.”

“Well, out here gentlemen have to fight for their title. Are you going to give me that chair?”

“As you are no more a guest of this hotel than I am, I shall sit here till I get ready to get up.”

“Then I’ll have to help you out Ouch!”

The remark and the exclamation came close together. Clark Jennings had bent forward as he spoke, and roughly laid hold of Rob to pull him from the chair by main force. As he did so, however, Rob had suddenly changed from a passive, rather sleepy boy, to a bundle of steel springs full of fight. Clark Jennings, as he laid hold of Rob, had felt himself hurled backward. Unable to check his impetus, he had landed against the wall of the hotel with a force which caused him to give vent to the exclamation recorded.

“Look out, tenderfoot, he’ll kill yer,” warned the melancholy landlord from the window of the office, where he had been entering in a greasy book the extortion practiced on the boys.

Several cow-punchers awoke to interest at the same time as Tubby and Merritt began to realize what was happening.

His eyes blazing with fury, Clark Jennings crouched low, and then reaching back drew a revolver from his hip. He aimed it full at Rob, but simultaneously a strange thing happened. Rob was seen to dart forward, diving right under the leveled pistol. The next instant the weapon was spinning through the air. It landed with a thump in the middle of the dusty road. But Clark Jennings didn’t see it, for the excellent reason that at that precise moment he was lying flat on his back on the hotel veranda. Before his eyes swam a whole galaxy of constellations. Over him stood Rob, with flushed face and clinched fists.