"Well, it was this-a-way: I was riding right along yonder, making for the ranch house, and not thinking of nothing—not a thing! Crossing the mouth of one of them gulches—'twasn't far beyond the one where you gals took refuge from the big wind—all of a sudden my pony throwed up his head and nickered, and out of the slot in the hill come trottin' that big, handsome black critter!
"My soul and body!" exclaimed the cowboy earnestly, "if I'd had my rope handy I could have put the noose right over his head! It certainly did give me a shock."
"Humph!" said Rhoda, "it's always the biggest fishes, daddy says, that get away."
"I guess the Big Boss is right," agreed Tom Collins. "That black feller, he swung around on his hind laigs, and he skedaddled up that gulch. I knowed the place. It's just a pocket, and not very deep; but the sides couldn't be clumb by a goat, let alone a hawse.
"So I turns my pony into that hole and I got my rope ready, and says I to me: 'Tom Collins, you're going to either get an awful fall, or you'll be the proudest man on the old Rose Ranch!'"
"And what happened?" asked Walter.
"Well, I dunno. Either I'd been seeing things, or else that blame black outlaw is bad medicine. He seemed to e-vap-o-rate."
"Now, Tom!" admonished Rhoda.
"Honest to pickles, Miss Rhody! I wouldn't fool you 'bout a serious matter. And this is it."
"You mean you lost the horse?" asked Nan.