“Guess you forget that Theodore Roosevelt punched cattle for a while,” chuckled Bob. “Listen to that fellow play, will you?”
And the Indian could—as Mr. Hicks remarked—“tickle the ivories.” He played by ear, but he played well. Most of the tunes he knew were popular ditties and by and by he warmed the punchers up so that they began to hum their favorite melodies as Jib played them.
“Come on, there, Ike!” said the Indian, suddenly. “Give us that ‘Prayer’ you’re so fond of. Come on, now, Ike!”
Bashful Ike evidently balked a little, but Jib played the accompaniment and the melody through, and finally the foreman of Silver Ranch broke in with a baritone roar and gave them “The Cowboy’s Prayer.” Ike possessed a mellow voice and the boys hummed in chorus in the dusk, and it all sounded fine until suddenly Jib Pottoway broke off with a sudden discordant crash on the piano keys.
“Hel-lo!” exclaimed Bill Hicks, who had lain back in his wicker lounging chair, with his big feet in wool socks on another chair, enjoying all the music. “What’s happened the pinanner, Jib? You busted it? By jings! that cost me six hundred dollars at the Bullhide station.”
But then his voice fell and there was silence both in the room and on the veranda. The sound of galloping hoofs had shut the ranchman up. A pony was approaching on a dead run, and the next moment a long, loud “Ye-ow! ye-ow!” announced the rider’s excitement as something extraordinary.
“Who’s that, Ike?” cried Hicks, leaping from his chair.
“Scrub Weston,” said the foreman as he clumped down the veranda steps.
Jib slipped through the window. Hicks followed him on the jump, and Jane Ann led the exodus of the visitors. There was plainly something of an exciting nature at hand. A pony flashed out of the darkness and slid to a perilous halt right at the steps.
“Hi, Boss!” yelled the cowboy who bestrode the pony. “Fire’s sweeping up from Tintacker way! I bet it’s that Bughouse Johnny the boys have chased two or three times. He’s plumb loco, that feller is—oughtn’t to be left at large. The whole chapparel down that a-way is blazin’ and, if the wind rises, more’n ha’f of your grazin’ll be swept away.”