"Sure and is ridicule all I get when I have followed you for ten miles on this baist of a horse, to offer you a proposition of marriage?"
Their friendship dated from that moment, and though Larry had renewed his proposition of marriage every time he had seen her, yet there had never been a break in their comradeship.
He looked about the well-appointed camp with a sigh of contentment. This was something like living, he thought. His enforced confinement at the ranch had been slow torture to him. He missed the presence of Hope and Sydney, for to him they were the very spirit of the place, and he was filled with anxiety to get away from it and join them.
After washing the dust from his face and hands he went through the cook's mess-box, then, having nothing else to do, laid down for a nap on one of the bunks in the second tent and was soon sleeping peacefully.
He never knew just how long he slept, though he declared he had not closed his eyes, when a whispered conversation outside the tent brought him to his feet with a start. It was suspicious to say the least, and he tore madly at his roll of belongings in search of his revolver, which he found in his hip-pocket, after he had scattered his clothes from one end of the tent to the other.
It was not yet dark. The whispers came now from the opposite tent. O'Hara's fighting blood was up. He gloried in the situation. Here was his opportunity to hold up some thieving rascals. It was almost as good as being a real desperado. It flashed upon him that they might be the real article, but he would not turn coward. He would show them what one man could do!
He peered cautiously out of the tent. Two horses with rough-looking saddles stood at the edge of the brush not far away. Larry O'Hara would not be afraid of two men.
He moved cautiously up to the front of the cook-tent, and throwing open the flap called out in thundering tones: "Throw up your hands, ye thieving scoundrels, or I'll have your loives!"
A pair of arms shot up near him like a flash, while a choking sound came from the farther side of the mess-box. Two startled, pie-be-grimed boys gazed in amazement into the barrel of Larry's gun, which he suddenly lowered, overcome with surprise as great as their own.
"May heaven preserve us!" he cried. "I thought you were murdering thieves! But if it's only supper you're after, I'll take a hand in it meself!"