"Here, Reddy," said Mr. Mabie to the young driver, "let me make you acquainted with some good fellows about your own age," and he introduced them one after another.
Frank saw that the cowboy was well named, for he had quite a fiery thatch; but his freckled face seemed one of the sort that invited confidence, and Frank believed he would like the other right well. Of course, Reddy was attired as all well-ordered cowboys should be. Will was secretly wild for a chance to introduce him in some picture.
"It will give such a pleasing variety to our book of views, for we haven't got a single cowboy in between the covers," he said in an aside to Frank.
They followed up the valley for over an hour. The ranch was miles removed from the railway,
and surrounded by the wildest scenery the boys could remember having looked upon, and that was saying a good deal, after such a journey.
Martin Mabie was a widower, without any family. Still, he had a number of women folks on the place, a sister keeping house for him, with a Chinese cook to attend to the kitchen part of the establishment.
"Ain't this immense?" remarked Bluff, as he waited impatiently for the men to carry the big trunk indoors, so that he could satisfy his soul about the one object that had been worrying him ever since leaving Centerville.
Somehow or other they seemed slow about doing this. The horses had to be attended to first of all. Then there seemed to be some sort of excitement in the neighborhood of the corral, for the boys noticed a mounted cowboy come dashing up and jump from his steed, which was blowing hard, as if from a rapid dash.
He wondered if this sort of thing was of daily occurrence on the big ranch, which took in the whole valley for miles, and extended even up along the sides of the mountains on either hand.
"What ails the fellow, I wonder?" observed Jerry, who, it seems, had also noticed the rush of the newcomer.