Thereupon the two brothers told everything that had happened since they rode off together two days before, to haze back the bunch of wild steers.
"Hum! That's quite a yarn," commented Bud's father who, with Slim Degnan, Babe Milton and several of the cowboys, had listened to the lads' story.
"Did they harm you at all?" asked motherly Mrs. Merkel.
"No, they were very polite about it," answered Nort. "But of course we weren't going to stay with them on that account."
"I should say not!" chuckled Bud. "So you put paregoric in the Greaser's coffee! That was rich! Even Zip Poster couldn't have done better!"
"Oh, Zip! He'd 'a' drugged the whole camp, and brought 'em away one at a time on his shoulder," said Slim, with a wink at the others.
"Hum! You know a lot—don't you?" murmured Bud, but it was easy to see he did not like any fun poked at Zip Foster, a very mysterious personage, it appeared.
"How'd you come to find us?" asked Nort, when his own tale, and that of his brother, had been sufficiently told.
"Well, it was mainly luck, in a way," Bud answered. "After you two rode off that time, we didn't pay much attention to you for a while, as we had our hands full with the cattle. Then we didn't worry, even when it began to get dark, for we figured that the steers had given you more of a run than usual. We didn't worry, for I told dad that you were getting to be real ranchers."
Nort and Dick smiled proudly at this tribute.