"We sure do!" yelled Nort.
"Hadn't we better change our clothes?" asked the slower Dick.
"Change nothin'!" cried Nort. "Leave your coat off if you want to! I'm going to shed mine!" and shed it he did, dropping it on the ground as he leaped forward.
"What is it, Bud?" asked Slim Degnan, as he and Babe, on their way to the house, met the fleeing young rancher, who had even distanced Professor Blair, though the latter had again mounted his tired horse.
"Don't know—exactly," came the answer. "He's a stranger," and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder back toward the professor. "He and a party are camped over in the hills—where we saw the smoke a while back," he explained further. "He says a bunch of Greasers are trying to do up his boss. Wants help!"
"Wa'al, he come to th' right place," remarked Babe Milton briefly, as, with more speed than you would have believed he possessed, he ran toward the corral.
Already several cowboys, sensing that something was wrong, had begun to catch and saddle enough ponies to provide mounts for Bud, the foreman and his fat helper.
"Give my cousins Baldy and Gimp!" cried Bud to one of the cowboys who were in the corral. "You can ride those, even if you haven't got your old clothes on," he added.
"Lively now!" cried the foreman, assuming, as was his right, command of the little cavalcade. In less time than it takes to tell it, they were riding along the trail, directed by Professor Blair, whose horse seemed, somehow, to have recovered its wind sufficiently to keep pace with the fresher steeds.
"Are you all right, fellows?" Bud called back to his cousins, as he, himself, spurred ahead alongside Slim and Babe. Nort and Dick formed the rear guard with the professor.