Page:Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch.djvu/50



getting to bed at midnight it could not be expected that the young people at Silver Ranch would be astir early on the morning following the fire scare. But Ruth, who was used to being up with the sun at the Red Mill—and sometimes a little before the orb of day—slipped out of the big room in which the six girls were domiciled when she heard the first stir about the corrals.

When she came out upon the veranda that encircled the ranchhouse, wreaths of mist hung knee-high in the coulie—mist which, as soon as the sun peeked over the hills, would be dissipated. The ponies were snorting and stamping at their breakfasts—great armfuls of alfalfa hay which the horse wranglers had pitched over the fence. Maria, the Mexican woman, came up from the cowshed with two brimming pails of milk, for the Silver Ranch boasted a few milch cows at the home place, and there had been sweet butter on the table at supper the night before—something which is usually very scarce on a cattle ranch.

Ruth ran down to the corral and saw, on the