Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch Part 19

Out of sight of the ranch house they very quickly found themselves in what seemed to the visitors a pathless plain. Off to the left a huge herd of red and white cattle was feeding. It was broken up into little groups and the creatures looked no more harmful than cows back home. There was not a herdsman in sight.

"Why," said Bess, "I expected to see cowboys riding around and around the cattle all the time, and hear them singing songs."

"They do do that at night. The riding, anyway. And most of the boys try to sing. It takes up time and keeps 'em from being lonely,"

replied Rhoda. "But I am not sure that the cows are fond of the singing. They are patient creatures, however, and endure a good deal."

"Now, Rhoda!" exclaimed Nan, "don't squash all our beliefs about the cowpunching industry which we have learned from nursery books and movies."

Rhoda headed away from the herd, and by and by they descended a steep but gra.s.sy slope into the mouth of a rock-walled canyon. It was a wild-looking place; but there were clumps of roses growing here and there. Rhoda leaped down and let her pony stand, with the reins trailing before him on the ground.

"Isn't he cunning!" observed Bess. "He thinks he's. .h.i.tched."

"They are trained that way. You see, on the plains there are so few hitching posts," said Rhoda dryly.

The others dismounted, too. Rhoda was hunting among the great boulders that littered the gra.s.sy bottom. When they asked her what she was looking for, she called back that she would show them a boiling spring if she could find it.

Suddenly Nan lifted her head to listen. Then she started up the canon, which, in that direction, grew narrower between the walls.

"Don't you hear that calf bawling?" she demanded, when Bess asked her where she was going.

"Oh, I hear it," said Bess, keeping in the rear. "But how do you know it is a calf?"

"Then it is something imitating one very closely," sniffed Nan, and kept on. The next minute she shouted back: "It is! A little, cunning, red calf. And, oh, Bess! it has hurt its leg."

She ran forward. Bess followed with more caution. Suddenly there was a crash in the bushes, and out into the open, right beside the injured calf, came a red and white cow. This animal bawled loudly and charged for a few yards directly toward Nan Sherwood.

"Oh, goodness, Nan! Come away!" begged Bess, turning to run. "That old cow will bite you."

But it was not the anxious mother of the calf that had startled Nan. She knew she could dodge the cow. But above the place where the calf lay, on a great gray rock that gave it a commanding position, the girl saw a huge, cat-like creature with glaring eyes and a switching tail.

She had never seen a puma, not even in a menagerie. But she could not mistake the slate and fawn colored body, the c.o.c.ked ears, the bristling whiskers, and the distended claws, the latter working just like a cat's when the latter is about to make a charge.

And it looked as though the savage beast could quite overleap the cow and calf and almost reach Nan Sherwood's feet.

CHAPTER XV

A TROPHY FOR ROOM EIGHT

Nan was badly frightened. But she had once faced a lynx up at Pine Camp, and had come off without a scratch. Now she realized that this mountain lion had much less reason for attacking her than had the lynx of the Michigan woods; for the latter had had kittens to defend.

The huge puma on the rock glared at her, flexed his shoulder muscles, and opening his red mouth, spit just like the great cat he was. Really, he was much more interested in the bleating red calf than he was in the girl who was transfixed for the moment in her tracks.

Bess, who could not see the puma, kept calling to Nan to look out for the cow. She was more in fun than anything else, for she did not believe the cow could catch her chum if the latter ran back.

What amazed Bess Harley was the fact that Nan stood so long by the clump of brush which hid the rock on which the puma crouched from Bess's eyes.

"What is the matter with you?" gasped Bess at last "You look like Lot's wife, though you are too sweet ever to turn to salt, my dear.

Come on!"

Then, of a sudden, Bess heard the big cat spit! "My goodness!" she shrieked, "what is that?"

Her cry was heard by Rhoda, at a distance. The Western girl knew that something untoward was taking place. She ran for her pony and leaped into the saddle.

"What is it?" she shouted to Bess, whom she could see from horseback.

"Nan's found a red calf--and he makes the queerest noise," declared the amazed Bess. "I'm afraid of that calf."

Walter ran to mount his pony, too. But Rhoda spurred directly toward the spot where Bess stood. Being in the saddle, she was so much higher than Nan's chum that she could see right over the brush clump. Immediately she beheld Nan and the crouching lion.

"Come back, Nan!" she called quickly. "Stoop!"

She s.n.a.t.c.hed the rifle from under her knee. It leaped to her shoulder, and, standing up in her stirrups while her pony stood quivering and snorting, for he had smelled the puma, the girl of Rose Ranch took quick but unerring aim at the crouching, slate-colored body on the boulder.

The beast was about to spring. Indeed, he did leap into the air.

But that was the reflex of his muscles after the bullet from Rhoda's rifle struck him.

She had come up so that her sight had been most deadly--right behind the fore shoulder. The ball entered there, split the beast's heart, and came out of his chest. He tumbled to the ground, kicking a bit, but quite dead before he landed.

"There!" exclaimed Rhoda, "I warrant that's the lion daddy was speaking to Steve about last night. He said it wasn't coyotes that killed all the strays. He had seen the tracks of this fellow in the hills."

"Rhoda!" shrieked Bess, "is that a lion?"

"Most certainly, my dear."

"Hold me, somebody! I want to faint," gasped Bess. "And he almost jumped right down our Nan's throat."

"No," said Nan. "Scared as I was, I knew enough to keep my mouth shut."

But none of them were really as careless as they sounded. Rhoda jumped down and hugged Nan. It was true that something might have happened to the latter if the lion had missed his intended prey.

"And we'll have to shoot the poor calf. It's broken its leg," the ranch girl said, after the congratulations were over.

The red and white cow still stood over the calf and bellowed. She would occasionally run to the dead puma and try to toss it; but she did not much like the near approach of human beings, either.

"I tell you what," Walter said, examining the dead puma with a boy's interest: "That was an awfully clean shot, Rhoda. The pelt won't be hurt. You should have this skin cured and made into a rug."

"Oh, yes!" cried Bess. "Take it back to Lake-view Hall with you, Rhoda, and decorate Room Eight, Corridor Four!"

"Come along, then," the Western girl said, smiling. "We'll ride over to the herd and send one of the boys back to skin the lion and butcher the veal, too. We might as well eat that calf as to leave him for the coyotes."

They hurried away from the vicinity of the dead puma, and, to tell the truth, for the rest of the ride the visitors from the East kept very close together.

"To think," sighed Bess, when they had dismounted at the house some time later and given the ponies over to the care of two Mexican boys who came up from the corrals for them, "that one is liable to run across lions and tigers and all kinds of wild beasts so near such a beautiful house as this. It must have been a dream."