CHAPTER VIII
THROWING THE ROPE
Silence followed this greeting and question, and then the two boy ranchers, and their cowboy friends, waited for Bud to speak, he being, in a sense, the head of the new organization. Though Dick and Nort held equal shares, purchased for them by their father, the two lads who had lived so long in the east deferred to the boy of the west in this matter, thinking, naturally, that he would better be able to handle it.
"Looking for a place?" asked Bud, genially enough, as he surveyed the newcomer, from the top of his broad-brimmed range hat to the pawing hoofs of his black steed, for the horse was impatiently digging in the dirt.
"Yep!" was the answer. "I'm looking for a place." The voice was pleasant, and there was none of that clipping off of the final "g" in his words, so common a practice among most of the cowboys. Perhaps they didn't have time to use the proper endings. "I'm dead anxious to ride for some outfit," went on "Four Eyes," as he had been dubbed and as he came to be called, as long as he remained with Diamond X Second. "Your father sent me over here," he added.
"My father!" exclaimed Bud. "Do you know him? I don't know you!" he added quickly, for he sensed that the stranger, in some manner, had managed to pick him from all the others as the son of the proprietor of Diamond X.
"I don't claim to know your father, only having met him once, when I rode up, yesterday, to ask for a job," went on Four Eyes. "I slept out last night—back there," he added with a wave of 'is quirt in the direction of Diamond X. "Had supper with the boys at your father's ranch, and he told me you might be needing some one. If you don't——" He paused suggestively, evidently ready to ride on and try his luck elsewhere if there was no chance in the valley.
"I may need some one," Bud said. In fact, he was in need of an additional hand, and since this latest action on the part of rustlers he wanted help more than ever, for he was about to put into execution a plan for getting on the trail of these marauders. "But how'd you know who I was?" he asked, anxious to ascertain how the stranger had picked him out, as distinguished from Nort or Dick.
"Oh, your father looks like you," was the easy answer, given with a laugh, in which Snake, Yellin' Kid and the boy ranchers joined. "When he said he didn't need any riders, adding that perhaps you might, I decided to take a chance."
"All right. I can use another hand—or, rather, we can," and Bud waved his hand toward his cousins. "You can turn your pony into the corral," he added, "and we'll give you something to eat—unless you've had breakfast?" he questioned.