Chapter IX: 'that Baking Powder'

'Well, boss, we did think as you'd took root in Chicago, or mebbe that the Armours had put you through their pork-making machine.'

'Well, no, not quite that, Dick, you old sinner. How are the boys?' replied Nares to a grey-headed old man, who was sitting complacently on the driver's seat of a cart, and watching 'the boss' put his own luggage on board. There are no porters and no servants, even for a big cattle-man, out west.

'How air the boys, you said. Well, right smart and active at meal-times, thank ye, and pretty slack at any other. But what's that, anyway, that you're bringing along?' and the old man's eyes rested with a look of no little disgust on the English-dressed and (to Western eyes) soft-looking lad, Snap Hales.

'That!' replied the boss, 'that is just--well, let me see, a colt I want you to break; a child I want you to nurse, Dick,' replied Nares.

'Nuss? I'll nuss him,' growled the old man. 'We don't want no loafers up at Rosebud.'

Poor Snap coloured up to his eyes, but felt more comfortable as Nares gave him a wink and a hand-up into the cart.

'Now then, air you fixed behind?' cried Dick.

'We are,' replied Nares.

'Then git,' yelled his foreman, bringing his whip across his horses' flanks, and for the next five minutes Snap and Nares, and the boxes, bags, &c., of each of them, bounded about like parched peas in a pan.

As the old man gradually steadied his horses to a trot, he turned round with a grin.

'That's pretty well sorted you, I reckon,' said he, 'and may be took the first coat off your tender-foot's hide.'

Luckily for the tender-foot (our friend Snap), it is one of the laws of nature that, given a lot of objects of various weights shaken up together, the lightest invariably comes to the top. During the last five minutes he had varied his seat frequently from the uncompromising corner of a trunk to the yielding and comfortable person of the burly Nares, from whose waistcoat (being of a pliant and springy character) the next bump would have removed him to a seat upon the prairie. Luckily, that bump never came.

Mile after mile of prairie rolled by, yellow where the snow (very thin hereabouts) left it uncovered, and apparently too sterile to feed a goat. Further on it improved, and great tufts of golden bunch grass showed through the thin sprinkling of snow, and here and there a sage-hen fluttered up or a jack rabbit scuttled away.

About noon our friends crossed a river, on the further side of which were the feeding-lands of Nares's ranche. Some miles again from the river was a range of low rolling hills and broken lands, the shelter provided by Nature for the beasts of the field against blizzards and snowstorms. Nares used to boast his ranche had every advantage obtainable in America--plenty of water, river-lands to cut hay upon for winter feed, hills and broken land for shelter in storm-time, and a railway handy to take produce to market. There are very few such ranches nowadays in America, as even its great prairies are not boundless--a fact much overlooked by its go-ahead citizens.

'I reckon the cows sold pretty well, boss, this year,' suggested the old man when he had unhitched the team and kindled a bit of a fire for lunch.

'Yes, they sold well, Wharton, and none of them got damaged on the way down. There won't be much to do on the ranche now till spring,' added Nares.

'Guess that's why you're bringing an extra hand along,' snapped the old man. 'Why! Jeehoshaphat! what's the matter with you now?' he shouted.

Poor Snap had tried first one side of the fire, then the other, with an equal want of success. On one side the smoke nearly choked and blinded him, on the other worse things awaited him. A blanket, which just accommodated 'the boss' and Wharton, was stretched on the windward side of the fire. With a weary sigh Snap threw himself down beside it. With a yell of pain he bounded up again, holding first one foot, then the other, in the air, and all the time applying his hands sorrowfully to the softest part of his person. The old foreman had laid a trap for the tender-foot, and he had sat upon it, the 'it' being a bed of what the natives call prickly pears, a peculiarly vicious kind of cactus about the size of a small potato, which unobserved spreads all over the ground, and sends its long thin spines through everything which presses upon them. When, at last, the good-natured Nares understood his friend's sorrows, and had managed to stop laughing, he gave Snap a place on the blanket, and, turning him over on his face, proceeded tenderly to pluck him. It is no fun to be converted at a moment's notice into a well-filled pincushion.

At lunch Nares told old Wharton the story of the maniac-hunt recorded in the last chapter. As he told the story of little Madge's danger and salvation Wharton's eyes wandered from 'the boss' to the boy beside him. At last, when the story was over, he sighed softly 'Jee-hosh-a-phat.' Then he rolled his quid and expectorated. Then he got up and held out his great fist to Snap with these words, 'Say! were them pears prickly? Well, never mind. I guess you needn't sit on no more now. I'm a-gwine to be your "miss," Britisher;' and it is only fair to add, the old man kept his word.

An hour or two afterwards Nares and Snap got out at Rosebud, and our hero entered his new home, a big one-storied house built of rough logs dovetailed into each other, the cracks filled up with moss and covered over with clay. Indoors, the floor was covered with skins. On the walls were antlers of deer and wapiti and mountain sheep, from which hung half a dozen rifles, hunting-knives, &c. There was a bench or two about the place, a big table, at one end a huge open stove, and along the walls were ranged a dozen shelves or bunks not unlike those you see on board ship. A small room opened off from the main apartment, and in this Nares himself slept and kept his accounts. Outside were some few smaller buildings--a cook-house, a forge, and so on. A huge piece of land enclosed with rough timber fencing ran alongside the house. This was a corral for horses or weak cattle. A smaller corral for horses likely to be wanted at a short notice also adjoined the ranche.

'Now, Snap,' said Nares, 'this is Rosebud. Rosy enough for a worker, what we call a "rustler" out here, but not a bed of roses for a loafer. There's your bunk when you are up here, but I expect you'll be wanted out on the feeding-grounds most of your time. Anyhow, for the first day or two you can help me with the books, and try your hand at the cooking.'

So Snap tried his hand at bread-making and failed; flour and water won't make bread of themselves, and, even when you have made your dough, if you don't flour your hands the compound will stick to them. However, old Wharton set the boy right and gave him the soup to look after.

'Put some salt in it,' said the old chap, 'you'll find it in a tin up there,' pointing to a shelf over his head. 'You'd better just taste it to see as you get it right. The boys don't like no fooling with their broth.'

So Snap got down the tin and put a couple of spoonfuls into the broth and tasted it; two more, and tasted again; and still the compound did not seem salt enough.

'I say, Wharton,' said Snap, after tasting the salt itself, 'this is very weak salt of yours.'

'Guess it is,' replied the old man, 'table-salt the boss calls it; I call it jist rubbish. But never mind, shove in the lot if it don't taste strong enough.' So in it went, and Snap stirred vigorously, added some onions, and himself looked forward to a share of his _chef d'œuvre_.

By-and-by the 'boys' trooped in, tall, bronzed fellows in great wideawake hats, loose shirts, and huge spurs. Each brought his saddle with him and chucked it into a corner as he entered. 'How do, boss?' they remarked; 'How do, Wharton?' and then most of them added, staring at Snap, 'Why, who the deuce are you anyway?' This question having been satisfactorily answered, all sat down to food, and Snap thought he had never seen such a rapid and wholesale consumption of meat and drink in his life.

'Where are the rest of the boys?' asked Nares of one of the three who had come in.

'Gone after a band of cattle which we found after you left, boss. I guess we'll have 'em in to-morrow. There are several want branding: one old scrub bull in partickler.'

'Yes,' added another, 'and I'm thinking he'll go on wanting for some time yet. You can't hold him with any ropes on this ranche.'

Gradually even the cowboys' appetites seemed satisfied, and one by one they stretched themselves out on rugs by the fire, and puffed away silently at their pipes. They were long thin men for the most part, and tightly belted at the waist.

'Mighty good soup that to-day,' said one.

'Glad you liked it,' said Snap proudly; 'I made that. I don't think it was bad for a first attempt.'

'Satisfying, anyhow,' said Nares, 'I never felt so full before.'

'Yes, I'm full up,' added someone else, and then silence again ensued for a space. Presently there was a crack and the tinkle of falling brass, and a button flew on to the hearth.

'Bless me,' cried old Dick Wharton, 'if I don't feel as if I was getting fuller every minute.' This seemed to be the general feeling; even Snap shared it.

'Why, what in thunder's the matter?' cried Frank Atkins, leanest and hardest of hard riders. 'This yere belt has gone round me with six holes to spare these two years, and now it won't meet by an inch.'

It certainly was odd. They had sat down like Pharaoh's lean cattle, they had risen like his fat cattle, and they had gone on 'rising' ever since, until now they were all portly as aldermen. Suddenly a light dawned upon Wharton.

'Say, boy, what did you put in that broth?'

'Nothing,' said Snap, 'except salt and onions.'

'Where did you get that salt?'

'Why, out of the tin over your head,' said Snap.

'This 'un, eh?' inquired the old man, holding up a small round tin.

'Yes, that's it.'

'Wal,' said the old man slowly, 'I've heerd of Houses of Parliament being blowed up by dynamite, but I never heerd tell of a ranche being bust up by Borwick's baking-powder afore!'