They hurried away from the vicinity of the dead puma, and, to tell the truth, for the rest of the ride the visitors from the East kept very close together.
"To think," sighed Bess, when they had dismounted at the house some time later and given the ponies over to the care of two Mexican boys who came up from the corrals for them, "that one is liable to run across lions and tigers and all kinds of wild beasts so near such a beautiful house as this. It must have been a dream."
"That puma skin doesn't look like a dream," said Walter, laughing and pointing to the pelt of the beast which hung from Rhoda's saddle and made all the ponies nervous.
"Well," said Bess, with determination, "I am willing to learn to shoot. And hereafter I won't go out of our bedroom without strapping a pistol to my waist."
They all laughed at this statement. But they spent that afternoon, with revolvers and light rifles, on what Rhoda called "the rifle range," down behind the bunk houses. Hesitation Kane, the horse wrangler, as silent almost as the sphinx, drifted out to the spot and showed them by gestures, if not by many words, how to hit the bull's-eye. Nan, as well as her chum, became much interested in this sport. The adventure with the big puma really had made Nan feel as though she should know how to use a gun.
Several days passed before the party rode far from Rose Ranch again. But every day the young folks were in the saddle for a few hours, and all became fair horsewomen—all but Walter, of course, who was already a horseman.
There was great fun inside the big ranch house, as well as in the open. In the evenings, especially, the young people's fun drew all the idle hands about the place, as well as the family itself.
There were a player-piano and a fine phonograph in the big drawing-room. The windows of this room opened down to the floor, and the cowboys from the bunk house, the Mexicans, and even Ah Foon, gathered on the side porch to hear the music.
When a dance record was put on the machine the clatter of boots on the piazza betrayed more than one pair of punchers solemnly dancing together.
"Though," complained Rhoda's father, "those spurs the boys wear will be the ruination of my hardwood floor. Where do they think they are? At a regular honky-tonk? None of 'em's got right good sense."