Читать онлайн
Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch; Schoolgirls Among Cowboys
Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch / Schoolgirls Among Cowboys
CHAPTER I – “OLD TROUBLE-MAKER”
Where the Silver Ranch trail branches from the state road leading down into Bullhide, there stretch a rambling series of sheds, or “shacks,” given up to the uses of a general store and provision emporium; beside it is the schoolhouse. This place on the forked trails is called “The Crossing,” and it was the only place nearer than the town of Bullhide where the scattered population of this part of Montana could get any supplies.
One of Old Bill Hicks’ herds was being grazed on that piece of rolling country, lying in the foothills, right behind the Crossing, and two of his cow punchers had ridden in for tobacco. Being within sight of rows upon rows of tinned preserves (the greatest luxury extant to the cowboy mind), and their credit being good with Lem Dickson, who kept the store, the two cattle herders – while their cayuses stood with drooping heads, their bridle-reins on the road before them – each secured a can of peaches, and sitting cross-legged on the porch before the store, opened the cans with their knives and luxuriated in the contents.
“Old man’s nigh due, ain’t he?” asked Lem, the storekeeper, lowering himself into a comfortable armchair that he kept for his own particular use on the porch.
“Gittin’ to Bullhide this mawnin’,” drawled one of the cowboys. “An’ he’s got what he went for, too.”
“Bill Hicks most usually does git what he goes after, don’t he?” retorted the storekeeper.
The other puncher chuckled. “This time Old Bill come near goin’ out after rabbit an’ only bringin’ back the hair,” he said. “Jane Ann is just as much of a Hicks as Bill himself – you take it from me. She made her bargain b’fore Old Bill got her headed back to the ranch, I reckon. Thar’s goin’ to be more newfangled notions at Silver Ranch from now on than you kin shake a stick at. You hear me!”
“Old Bill can stand scattering a little money around as well as any man in this State,” Lem said, ruminatively. “He’s made it; he’s saved it; now he might’s well l’arn to spend some of it.”
“And he’s begun. Jane Ann’s begun for him, leastways,” said one of the cowboys. “D’ye know what Mulvey brought out on his wagon last Sat’day?”
“I knowed he looked like pitchers of ‘movin’ day’ in New York City, or Chicago, when he passed along yere,” grunted the storekeeper. “Eight head o’ mules he was drivin’.”
“He sure was,” agreed the cow puncher. “There was all sorts of trucks and gew-gaws. But the main thing was a pinanner.”