Page:Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch.djvu/48

38 Old Bill Hicks rode beside the buckboard when they started back for the ranchhouse, and was very angry over the setting of the fire. Cow punchers are the most careful people in the world regarding fire-setting in the open. If a cattleman lights his cigarette, or pipe, he not only pinches out the match between his finger and thumb, but, if he is afoot, he stamps the burned match into the earth when he drops it.

"That yere half-crazy tenderfoot oughter be put away somewhares, whar he won't do no more harm to nobody," growled the ranchman.

"Do you expect he set it, Uncle?" demanded Jane Ann.

"So Scrub says. He seen him camping in the cottonwoods along Larruper Crick this mawnin'. I reckon nobody but a confounded tenderfoot would have set a fire when it's dry like this, noways."

Here Ruth put in a question that she had longed to ask ever since the fire scare began: "Who is this strange man you call the tenderfoot?"

"Dunno, Miss Ruth," said the cattleman. "He's been hanging 'round yere a good bit since Spring. Or, he's been seen by my men a good bit. When they've spoke to him he's seemed sort of doped, or silly. They can't make him out. And he hangs around closest to Tintacker."