CHAPTER XVI
THE JOKE THAT FAILED
The two girls rode into the melting darkness of the night, and once out of the radiance of the campfires became suddenly appreciative of the subdued sounds arising from the far-extending valley in which the herd lay
At a great distance a coyote howled in mournful cadence. There was the uncertain movements of the cattle on the riders' left hand—here one lapped its body with its great tongue—again horns clashed—then a big steer staggered to its feet and blew through its nostrils a great sigh. There was, too, the steady chewing of many, many cuds.
A large part of the herd was lying down. Although stars flecked the sky quite thickly the whole valley in which the cattle fed seemed overmantled with a pall of blackness. Shapes loomed through this with sudden, uncertain outline.
"My! it's shivery, isn't it?" whispered Ruth.
"There won't nothing bite us," chuckled the Western girl. "Huh! what's that?"
The sudden change in her voice made Ruth giggle nervously. "That's somebody riding ahead of us. You're not afraid, Nita? '
"Well, I should say not!" cried the other, very boldly. "It's one of the boys. Hello, Darcy! I thought you were a ghost."
"You gals better git back to the camp," grunted the cowboy. "We're going to have a shower later. I feel it in the air."
"We're neither sugar nor salt," declared Jane Ann. "We've both got slickers on our saddles."
"Ridin' herd at night ain't no job for gals," said Darcy. "And that cloud yander is goin' ter spit lightnin'."
"He's always got a grouch about something. I never did like old Darcy," Jane Ann confided to her friend.
But there was a general movement and confusion in the herd before the girls had ridden two miles. The cattle smelled the storm coming and, now and then, a faint flash of lightning penciled the upper edge of the cloud that masked the Western horizon.
"'Tain't going to amount to anything," declared Jane Ann.
"It just looks like heat lightning," agreed Ruth.
"May not rain at all to-night," pursued the other girl, cheerfully.
"Who's that yelling?" queried Ruth, suddenly.
"Huh! that's somebody singing."
"Singing?"
"Yep."
"'Way out here?"
"Yep. It's Fred English, I guess. And he's no Caruso."
"But what's he singing for?' demanded the disturbed Ruth, for the sounds that floated to their ears were mournful to a degree.
"To keep the cattle quiet," explained the ranch girl. "Singing often keeps the cows from milling"
"Milling?" repeated Ruth.
"That's when they begin to get uneasy, and mill around and around in a circle. Cows are just as foolish as a flock of hens."
"But you don't mean to say the boys sing 'em to sleep?" laughed Ruth.
"Something like that. It often keeps 'em quiet. Lets 'em know there's humans about."
"Why, I really thought he must be making that noise to keep himself from feeling lonely," chuckled Ruth.
"Nobody'd want to do that, you know," returned Jane Ann, with seriousness. "Especially when they can't sing no better than that Fred English."
"It is worse than a mourning dove," complained the girl from the East. "Why doesn't he try something a bit livelier?"
"You don't want to whistle a jig-tune to keep cows quiet," Jane Ann responded, sagely.
The entire herd seemed astir now. There was a sultriness in the air quite unfamiliar on the range. The electricity still glowed along the horizon; but it seemed so distant that the girls much doubted Darcy's prophecy of rain.
The cattle continued to move about and crop the short herbage. Few of them remained "bedded down." In the distance another voice was raised in song. Ruth's mount suddenly jumped to one side, snorting. A huge black steer rose up and blew a startled blast through his nostrils.
"Gracious! I thought that was a monster rising out of the very earth! And so did Freckles, I guess," cried Ruth, with some nervousness. "Whoa, Freckles! Whoa, pretty!"
"You sing, too, Ruthie," advised her friend. "We don't want to start some foolish steer to running."
The Eastern girl's sweet voice—clear and strong—rang out at once and the two girls rode on their way. The movement of the herd showed that most of the cattle had got upon their feet; but there was no commotion.
As they rode around the great herd they occasionally passed a cowboy riding in the other direction, who hailed them usually with some witicism. But if Ruth chanced to be singing, they broke off their own refrains and applauded the girl's effort.
Once a coyote began yapping on the hillside near at hand, as Ruth and Jane Ann rode. The latter jerked out the shiny gun that swung at her belt and fired twice in the direction of the brute's challenge.
"That'll scare him," she explained. "They're a nuisance at calving time."
Slowly, but steadily, the cloud crept up the sky and snuffed out the light of the stars. The lightning, however, only played at intervals, with the thunder muttering hundreds of miles away, in the hills.
"It is going to rain, Nita," declared Ruth, with conviction.
"Well, let's put the rubber blankets over us, and be ready for it," said the ranch girl, cheerfully. "We don't want to go in now and have the boys laugh at us."
"Of course not," agreed Ruth.
Jane Ann showed her how to slip the slicker over her head. Its folds fell all about her and, as she rode astride, she would be well sheltered from the rain if it began to fall. They were now some miles from the camp on the river bank, but had not as yet rounded the extreme end of the herd. The grazing range of the cattle covered practically the entire valley.
The stirring of the herd had grown apace and even in the thicker darkness the girls realized that most of the beasts were in motion. Now and then a cow lowed; steers snorted and clashed horns with neighboring beeves. The restlessness of the beasts was entirely different from those motions of a grazing herd by day.
Something seemed about to happen. Nature, as well as the beasts, seemed to wait in expectation of some startling change. Ruth could not fail to be strongly impressed by this inexplicable feeling.
"Something's going to happen, Nita. I feel it," she declared.
"Hark! what's that?" demanded her companion, whose ears were the sharper.
A mutter of sound in the distance made Ruth suggest: "Thunder?"
"No, no!" exclaimed Jane Ann.
Swiftly the sound approached. The patter of ponies' hoofs—a crowd of horses were evidently charging out of a nearby coulie into the open plain.
"Wild horses!" gasped Jane Ann.
But even as she spoke an eyrie, soul-wracking chorus of shrieks broke the oppressive stillness of the night. Such frightful yells Ruth had never heard before—nor could she, for the moment, believe that they issued from the lips of human beings!
"Injuns!" ejaculated Jane Ann and swung her horse about, poising the auirt to strike. "Come on"
Her words were drowned in a sudden crackle of electricity—seemingly over their very heads. They were blinded by the flash of lightning which, cleaving the cloud at the zenith, shot a zigzag stream of fire into the midst of the cattle!
Momentarily Ruth gained a view of the thousands of tossing horns. A chorus of bellowing rose from the frightened herd.
But Jane Ann recovered her self-confidence instantly. "It's nothing but a joke, Ruthie!" she cried, in her friend's ear. "That's some of the boys riding up and trying to frighten us. But there, that's no joke!"
Another bolt of lightning and deafening report followed. The cowboys' trick was a fiasco. There was serious trouble at hand.
"The herd is milling!" yelled Jane Ann. "Sing again, Ruthie! Ride close in to them and sing! We must keep them from stampeding if we can!" and she spurred her own pony toward the bellowing, frightened steers.