Tom, the horse rustler, brought the saddled horses into the yard, and each rider was assigned a mount.
“Pick out a good strong one for that half starved little chap there,” said Mr. Vreeland, pointing to Dumplin’. “All you boys are good riders, I suppose?”
“Oh, sure,” said Bennie. “We gallop all the time over the wide prairies of Massachusetts. Got a nice mantelpiece for me to eat off of tonight?”
“It’s tomorrow night you’ll need that,” the man laughed. “All aboard!”
In spite of his weight and his gray hair, Mr. Vreeland swung into his saddle with the ease and grace of a cowboy. The doctor and Mr. Stone and Pep were not quite so easy, but they knew how to ride. Dumplin’, however, was as green as the two eastern scouts, and the three of them made a mess of mounting, and after they were mounted and their horses had started on a slow trot out of the yard, they bobbed around and jounced up and down like three apples in a dump-cart.
“Say, how do you manage this stunt?” Bennie called to his uncle. “If I keep on this way, I’ll all fall apart.”
“Stand in your stirrups as naturally and easily as you can, and then lean forward a little from your waist,” the doctor called back. “Don’t try to do anything but just relax from your waist up, and stand on your stirrups.”
The boys tried this, and gradually, very gradually, they began to get on to the trick, so that their bodies rode a little better with the motions of the horses’ backs. It was hard work, though, and they were glad enough when they had crossed the highway, headed east up a road through the yellow pines, and finally dropped down to a walk as the road began to climb. When the horses stopped trotting, the three boys sat back in their saddles and took the weight off their tired legs. Of course, they bounced a bit, but that didn’t matter when the horse wasn’t trotting.
They were on the lower slopes of Newberry Crater now, which is an 8,000-foot mountain standing fifty miles or more east of the Cascade range, all alone in the desert pines, and was once a volcano. On the top, Uncle Billy told them, is a big crater, almost as large as Crater Lake, but only a few hundred feet deep, and instead of being filled with water, it contains two ponds and a lot of summer camps. The whole mountain is a State game reserve, for the slopes are covered with pine woods, and the water attracts both birds and animals.
The party climbed slowly up the dusty road for two hours, while the boys wriggled and shifted in their saddles to find easy positions (which they couldn’t find), and the rifle Bennie was carrying either banged his back or had to be held across his saddle, growing heavier and heavier.