Page:Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch.djvu/158

148 wish I was as brave as you are, Ruth; but I really am afraid of these horned beasts."

"I never was cut out for even a milkmaid, myself," added Heavy. "When a cow bellows it makes me feel queer up and down my spine just as it does when I go to a menagerie and hear the lions roar."

They won't bite you," sniffed Jane Ann.

"But they can hook you. And my! the noise they made when they went through this camp! You never heard the like," said the stout girl, shaking her head. No. I'm willing to start back for the ranch-house in the morning."

"Me, too," agreed Madge.

So it was agreed that the four timid girls should return to Silver Ranch with Ricarde after breakfast; but Ruth and Jane Ann, with Tom Cameron and Bob Steele, well mounted on fresh ponies, joined the gang of cow punchers who forded the river at daybreak to bring in the strays.

The frightened cattle were spread over miles of the farther plain and it was a two days' task to gather them all in. Indeed, on the second evening the party of four young folk were encamped with Jib Pottoway and three of the other punchers, quite twenty miles from the river and in a valley that cut deeply into the mountain chain which sheltered the range from the north and west.