Page:Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch.djvu/29

Rh "Jest so, Boss," drawled his foreman. "I been figurin' Old Trouble-Maker better be in the can than on the hoof. He's made a plumb nuisance of himself. Yo' goin' on, Boss? Bud and Jimsey's got that bunch out o' the way of your smoke-waggin."

"We've got to shift tires, Mr. Hicks," said Tom Cameron, who, with his chum, Bob Steele, was already jacking up the rear axle. "That steer ripped a long hole in this tire something awful."

Bashful Ike—who didn't seem at all bashful when it came to handling the big black and white steer—suddenly let that bellowing beast get upon his four feet. Then he swooped down upon the steer, gathering up the coils of his rope as he rode, twitched the noose off the wide horns, and leaning quickly from his saddle grabbed the "brush" of the steer's tail and gave that appendage a mighty twist.

Bellowing again, but for an entirely different reason, the steer started off after the bunch of cattle now disappearing in the dust-cloud, and the foreman spurred his calico pony after Old Trouble-Maker, yelling at the top of his voice at every jump of his pony:

"Ye-ow! ye-ow! ye-ow!"

"I declare I'm glad to see those cattle out of the way," said Helen Cameron, with a sigh.