“This is certainly some crowd of boys, all right,” laughed Cooper, taking charge of the visitor’s horse.
As a rule Colonel Sylvester was not a man to show his feelings, but on this occasion he made little effort to conceal his growing impatience. Restlessly he paced to and fro while the men and boys busied themselves in the preparation of the evening meal.
When the after-glow still lingered, touching up the landscape with mellow notes of color, they all took their places around a crackling bed of red-hot coals and began to partake of a meal, which, to appetites sharpened by outdoor life, tasted wonderfully good.
The colonel was as much pleased with the boys as they were with him, and he asked them many questions regarding their various trips.
“It’s a capital idea!” he declared. “Traveling broadens the mind, and, besides this, through life you will always have pleasant memories to look back upon.”
The light slowly faded from the sky; cooler shades began stealing over the prairie, and dusk was fast approaching when over the air came a sound which brought the ranchmen and the others instantly to their feet—the faint clatter of horses’ hoofs.
“At last!” murmured Colonel Sylvester.
“Yes, I reckon they’re coming all right,” declared Roy Cooper.
Walking quickly to a point beyond the thick grove of cottonwoods the entire party peered earnestly over the great stretch of plain, now growing dim and mysterious in the rapidly waning light.
“Hooray! There they come!” cried Don.