“I will tell you how I intend to arrange matters,” said Uncle John, and George thought he looked and acted as though he did not much like the business he had set out to perform. “I am going to bring your herd in and distribute it among the others. You two can take care of more than three hundred cattle.”
“But I don’t want my herd broken up. I earned it without help; it belongs to me individually, and I am going to keep it. Zeke belongs to me, too; and while he is in my employ he shan’t herd cattle for anybody else.”
“Why, George!” exclaimed Uncle John, who seemed to be very much astonished at the emphasis the boy threw into his words. “I never knew you to be so disobedient before.”
“You will find me so every time you try to trample on me,” declared George, boldly. “I don’t know why you should want to take my herd away from me, but I do know there’s not a man on the place who would help you do it. Ah! I forgot you,” thought George, as his eye fell upon the Mexican cook, who just then crossed the yard, walking slowly and carrying his head on one side as if he were trying to overhear what passed between Uncle John and his nephew. “I believe that you are mean enough to do anything, Master Philip!”
“I intend that you shall obey me,” replied Uncle John, “and if you will not do it willingly, you must do it unwillingly. I shall discharge Zeke at once.”
“I don’t see how you can do that,” thought George, as Uncle John turned on his heel and walked into the house, “for you don’t pay him his wages. I don’t see how you are going to take my cattle away from me either, for the first thing will be to find them, and what would Zeke and I be doing while you were trying to drive them away? I should call it robbery, and I wouldn’t submit to it.”
The emphatic manner in which the boy nodded his head as he said this, and the look of determination that settled on his face would have surprised Uncle John if he could have seen them. The boy was resolved to hold fast to his property and to stubbornly resist any attempt that might be made to deprive him of it. It would be an act of gross injustice to take his earnings away from him, and George found it hard to believe that his uncle could think seriously of such a thing.
“If he tries it, it will only be in keeping with other mean things he has done since he has been here,” said George. “He and Ned are coming down on me harder and harder every month, and I should like to know what they mean by it.”
George seemed to put a little more energy into his work as he turned these matters over in his mind, and when at last the bridle was finished he threw it upon the porch, put the awl and what was left of the waxed-end ‘carefully away in a box that lay beside him on the ground, and taking the box in his hand started toward a little shed which stood a short distance in the rear of the house.
As he drew near to the shed, two animals he had left there a little while before greeted him, each after his own fashion. One was Bonaparte (called Bony, for short) George’s pack mule, and the other was Ranger, his favorite riding nag. These animals, which were among the best of their kind, had been the boy’s almost constant companions, ever since he returned from school and settled down to the business of herding cattle. Bony was small and clean-limbed, sleek as a mole and treacherous as mules generally are. He took unbounded delight in knocking over everything and everybody that came within reach of his hind feet, and when he felt in the humor for doing it, he could kick himself out from under the pack-saddle with the greatest ease. Ranger, on the other hand, did not know how to kick or bite, but he understood the business of cattle-herding, and would answer his master’s whistle as promptly as a well-trained dog. Nothing which his strength or agility could overcome would keep him from George’s side when he heard that whistle. He would jump a fence or swim a river to obey it. When in camp George never confined the animal with a lasso unless it was near the full of the moon and raids were expected from the Mexicans or Indians, for Ranger never thought of straying away. He was as black as midnight, very fleet and enduring, and George had almost as much affection for him as he would have had for a brother, for he was the last gift he had ever received from his father. The animals seemed to be ready for a journey, for Bony carried a loaded pack-saddle on his back, and Ranger was saddled but not bridled.