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Work on a ranch is hard enough without little boys letting the horses run wild after they have once been caught." "Oh, well, no great harm was done," said Uncle Frank with a good -natured laugh, "though it did make us ride pretty hard for a while. Come on, Trouble, I'll take you ponyback!"
There was one subject, however, upon which she had coaxed her father for a long time. In every letter she had written lately she had assured him that life was not liveable in the summer term without a pony. Diana had a passion for horses. She had ridden much in America, and her ideal of happiness was to be on ponyback.
"I told you I'd stick to him" said the foreman with a laugh. "I wish I could ride that way," said Teddy, with a little sigh when Jim came out of the corral and left Imp to have a rest. "Well, maybe you will some day," said the foreman. "You've got a good start, and there's no better place to learn to ride ponyback than at Ring Rosy Ranch."
"I knew they'd turn out all right when they learned to ride ponyback!" said Daddy Martin. "Though you mustn't ride on the trail alone after Indians again!" he said. Teddy and Janet told all that had happened to them, from getting lost, to finding the blanket and going to sleep in it on the open prairie.
He had the company of his brother Alexander as far as the town of New Galloway, where he slept the first night. The next day, accompanied by one of his future masters, Mr. James Smith, a partner of Mr. Cannan's, who had originally entered his service as a workman, they started on ponyback for Dumfries.
"But let's go and take a ride on our ponies." "Yes, I'll do that," agreed Janet, and soon, having had one of the cowboys who had been left behind at Ring Rosy Ranch saddle Clipclap and Star Face, the Curlytops started for their ride. "Don't go too far!" called Mrs. Martin after the children. "No, we won't," they promised. "I wants to go wide too!" begged Trouble. "I 'ikes a wide on a ponyback."
Carriages drove up, and ladies and gentlemen, the fathers and mothers, and elder brothers and sisters of the schoolboys. Some ladies and gentlemen came on horseback and ponyback, and several even, besides the boys, in waggons, while the provisions and servants arrived in spring-carts and dog-carts, and altogether there was a very vast assemblage.
Why was I, who was used to ride in coaches, and on ponyback, and on the shoulder of my own body-servant, and was called "Little Master," and made much of, to be carted away in a vile dray like this? But what is a child of eight years old to do? and how is he to make head against those who are older and wickeder than he? I knew nothing about lawyers, or wills, or the Rogueries of domestics.
But finally even such fun as riding ponyback tired Trouble. He wanted something else to do, and said: "Le's go an' s'ide downhill on hay in de barn." Teddy and Janet knew what that meant. They had learned this kind of fun at Grandpa Martin's Cherry Farm.
But neither the Curlytops nor their mother were as frightened at this play of the cowboys as they had been at first. "I wish I had a gun that would go bang," said Teddy one day. "Oh, The-o-dore Mar-tin!" cried his sister, after the fashion of her mother. "If you had I'd never go riding ponyback with you never again! I'd be afraid of you! So there!" "Well, so would the Indians!" said Ted.