“And son,” Colonel Haywood said, in a convincing way, “I’ve made up my mind that to-night’s the last one we’ll let our cattle stay away on the range. We’ve got three big bunches out now, with two boys to act as night wranglers for each herd, it’s true, but they’re miles away from here. If anything swooped down on those steers, we mightn’t know it for hours.”
Gradually the conversation took a different
turn, and before the two boys went in to sleep they had for the time being quite forgotten the fears of the early evening.
By ten o’clock everything seemed quiet and peaceful around the ranch house. Over where the punchers bunked one cowboy was playing a banjo, and there was some little singing; but by degrees even this died away.
The moon sailed high overhead in a clear sky. Midnight came and went. A touch of coolness in the air told of coming fall, though as a rule winter was not a time to be much feared in this warm section of the southwest, even if “northers” did blow in upon them occasionally, that caught the herds on the range, and brought about some loss of stock.
Bob had been dreaming of his Kentucky home, as he often did. Perhaps with some of his boyhood comrades he may have been visiting the “ole swimmin’ hole,” and amid much whooping was engaged in one of the mud battles that marked those visits. Then again, he may have dreamed that he was once more climbing the tower of the church in the dead of night, dispatched by his prank-loving companions to ring the bell, and startle the village out of sleep.
He sat up in bed to find Frank shaking him. Yes, a bell was certainly ringing furiously enough; but it belonged to no church.
“Get up, and fling some clothes on, Bob,” Frank was saying.
“What’s the matter? House afire?” gasped Bob, a little dazed still, even as he started to follow the directions of his energetic chum.
“Don’t know,” replied the hurrying Frank; “but I hear dad shouting out there. He’s rousing the boys—you can catch their whoops now!”