“Here come the boys from Tilford’s ranch,” he said. “I knew they’d be the first ones to show up.”
The boys watched the approaching riders with interest. Before long they could be plainly seen, and, as they came near the ranch, they broke into a mad gallop and came tearing across the prairie.
Anything wilder in appearance than those leather-clad “punchers” the imagination could not conceive. They yelled and cracked their quirts, spreading out into a long line, mounted on tough little ponies, which tore over the ground with a twinkling movement of the legs which was bewildering to one accustomed to the movements of an ordinary galloping horse.
Upon the heads of the riders were broad-brimmed hats, some of them being of stiff rawhide and some being the well-known Stetson sombrero, which cost anywhere from eighteen to eighty dollars.
Every man had a handkerchief knotted about his neck, and a cartridge belt, bearing heavy revolvers in open holsters, about his waist.
Their hair was long and unkempt, and their faces were weather-tanned.
Some had on long-legged, high-heeled boots, and some wore leather leggins, while at the heels of every man were heavy, murderous-looking spurs.
With their jangling spurs, flapping ropes and buckskin strings, broad-brimmed hats, bright-colored handkerchiefs, they certainly were a most impressive cavalcade of prairie scamperers.
As they swept toward the corrals near the ranch, Rodney’s men ran out and greeted them with a yell.
In return the Tilford men suddenly jerked out their “guns,” and sent twenty shots into the air. Then they flung the little ponies on their haunches, stopping in an instant with such suddenness that almost any fairly expert rider must have been sent flying headlong over the animal’s ears to the ground.