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An hour before sunset on the day previous they had suddenly blown in from the north; a great cloud of yellow dust, lifting lazily on the sultry air, a mighty panting of winded bronchos, a single demoniacal dare-man whoop heralding their coming, a groaning of straining leather, a jingle of great spurs, and an otherwise augmented stillness even in this silent land, marking their arrival.
Ophelia nervously chewed at the finger of her glove while her eyes moistened with sympathy and pity. Skinny, Chuck and Bert sat gloomily, moodily, on their bronchos and watched Thunderbolt lead the quintette of running horses.
A clump of trees hid the trail for a bit; when she rounded it the way was empty. Whoever she had heard had turned off the trail into the cottonwoods. "Maybe he didn't water the ponies before he started," thought Frances, "and has gone down to the ford. That's a bit of carelessness that I do not like. Whom could Sam have sent with the bronchos for the doctor?"
Away and ever away, the shining morning hours and the fleeting miles racing with them, till by noon-day, all wet but still unweary, the bronchos drew up at the Big River Stopping Place, forty miles from the point of their departure. Close behind the democrat rode Dr. Martin, the steady pace of his wise old broncho making up upon the dashing but somewhat erratic gait of the colts.
The bronchos had a hundred yards of a start, but they had not run another hundred until the agonized group of watchers could see that the stallion was gaining rapidly upon them. "He'll get 'em," cried Hell, "he'll get 'em, by gum!" "But can he turn them from the bank?" groaned Mandy. "If anything in horse-flesh or man-flesh can do it," said Hell, "it'll be done."
Away plunged the bronchos on a dead gallop, as if determined to end the journey during the next half hour at most, and away with them went the doctor upon his steady broncho, the latter much annoyed at being thus ignominiously outdistanced by these silly colts and so induced to strike a somewhat more rapid pace than he considered wise at the beginning of an all-day journey.
Bushwhackers followed, cutting away windfall and throwing logs into sloughs. Horses sank to their withers in seemingly bottomless muskegs, so that packs had to be cut off and the unlucky bronchos pulled out by all hands straining on a rope.
The snow was driving bitterly in Tommy's face, but that stout little Irishman cared nothing for himself. His concern was for the man lying under the buffalo robes in the sleigh. Mile after mile the bronchos kept up their tireless lope, encouraged by the cheery admonitions and the cracking whip of their driver. "Begob, but it's cowld enough to freeze the tail aff a brass monkey.
"How dare you talk that way to me?" she flamed, and gave her surprised pony a sharp stroke with the quirt. Five minutes later the bronchos fell again to a walk, and Healy took up the conversation where it had dropped. "No use flying out like that, Phyl. I only say what any one can see. Take a look at the facts. You meet up with him making his getaway after he's all but caught rustling.
So you see, I was constantly hanging around the older kids and playing ball with them instead of hanging with kids my own age. When I was about thirteen or so, I used to carry bats for some of the Cleveland Indians, such as Elmer Flick, Napoleon Lajoie and Terry Turner. Of course, they were not called the Cleveland Indians then. They were called the Cleveland Bronchos in those days.
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