CHAPTER V—“OLD TROUBLE-MAKER” TURNED LOOSE
After 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 ranch-house, wreaths of mist hung knee-high in the coulee—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 bench outside the bunkhouse door, the row of buckets in which the boys had their morning plunge. The sleeping arrangements at Silver Ranch being rather primitive, Tom and Bob had elected to join the cowboys in the big bunkhouse, and they had risen as early as the punchers and made their own toilet in the buckets, too. The sheet-iron chimney of the chuckhouse kitchen was smoking, and frying bacon and potatoes flavored the keen air for yards around.
Bashful Ike, the foreman, met the Eastern girl at the corner of the corral fence. He was a pleasant, smiling man; but the blood rose to the very roots of his hair and he got into an immediate perspiration if a girl looked at him. When Ruth bade him good-morning Ike’s cheeks began to flame and he grew instantly tongue-tied! Beyond nodding a greeting and making a funny noise in his throat he gave no notice that he was like other human beings and could talk. But Ruth had an idea in her mind and Bashful Ike could help her carry it through better than anybody else.
“Mr. Ike,” she said, softly, “do you know about this man they say probably set the fire last night?”
Ike gulped down something that seemed to be choking him and mumbled that he supposed he had seen the fellow “about once.”
“Do you think he is crazy, Mr. Ike?” asked the Eastern girl.
“I—I swanny! I couldn’t be sure as to that, Miss,” stammered the foreman of Silver Ranch. “The boys say he acts plumb locoed.”
“‘Locoed’ means crazy?” she persisted.