"Boys! Ladies!" he shouted.
Instantly every sombrero came off and was swept round each rider's head in a broad circle. It was a pretty bit of homage and the girls bowed in acknowledgment of it.
"Hooray!" yelled the horsemen as they flung themselves from their steaming but still active little mounts.
"They're not so bad after all," breathed Jess, still, however,
clinging to Peggy's shirt-waisted arm.
But the leader, hat in hand, was now advancing toward the two girls. The others hung back looking rather sheepish. They were not in the habit of meeting ladies, and to encounter two young and pretty girls in the midst of the alkali was evidently a shock to them. The leader was a stalwart figure of a man, who might have stepped from the advertising matter of a Wild West show. Leather chaparejos encased his long legs. Round his throat was loosely knotted the red handkerchief which they all wore when riding to protect their mouths and nostrils from the dust. His shirt was once blue, but it was so covered with the gray of the alkali that it was difficult to tell what color it might have been originally. For the rest he wore a big sombrero, the leather band of which was spangled with stars worked in silver wire, and a pair of workmanlike-looking gauntlets covered his hands.
"Beg pardon, ladies, for makin' sich a rough house," he said hesitating, "but, yer see, ther boys wall we didn't hardly expec' ter fin' ladies present."
"I'm sure we enjoyed it very much," rejoined Peggy quite at ease and her own cool self now "It was like—er—like Buffalo Bill—"
"Only more so," put in Jess, with her most bewitching smile.
"Um—er—quite so," rejoined the plainsman, rather more at ease now; "ye see, we're a party that's out on a horse hunt. We got on ther tracks of the band ther other side of ther San Quentin range, and figgering thet they'd cut across here ter git to ther feeding grounds on ther Pablo range on t'other side of ther desert we stopped in here fer water an' shade."
"My name's Bud Reynolds," he volunteered tentatively.