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Read Ebook: Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders at Circle O Ranch by Chase Josephine
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Ebook has 1461 lines and 51374 words, and 30 pages
Stacy's dream is interpreted. Jim-Sam proves to be a problem. A guide that could howl like a coyote. "Mules, like some fellers, is contrary critters." Sam's whiskers are expressive. A peace that was rudely broken.
The Overlanders prepare for defense. Stacy's weapon a tent stake. Emma Dean in the toils. The shot that stopped the roper. "Let 'em have it!" yells the guide. All because of the fat boy's dream. The alarm.
"Sit tight!" orders Hippy. A caller who threatened trouble. Sam Conifer passes the lie. "I reckon I'd kill ye whar ye stand!" Hands flash to weapons. The stranger is ordered out of camp. When brains were mixed.
Camp made in the foothills of the Cosos. "The Old Man wants ter know what ye are doin' heah!" The Overlanders are again ordered to get out. Emma explains the "imponderable something." The dance in the bunk-house. A bullet parts Sam Conifer's whiskers.
"Shoot, Sam! Shoot, I tell you!" A mysterious shot is fired. Jim finds a trail. A "lovely party" spoiled. The Overland Riders find their ponies missing. Distress at the Circle O. Jim-Sam blame each other.
A question of mules. Emma Dean looks for dreams. Sam exchanges shots with a prowler. Stacy Brown believes in safety first. Ranchers engage the rustlers in a lively battle. Lieutenant Wingate wages an unequal fight and loses.
"Give 'em the rifles!" yells Two-gun Pete. The end of the battle. An Overlander is found seriously wounded. Tom bears bad news to his companions. Elfreda gives first aid. Cowpunchers look on in open-mouthed wonder.
Hippy is complimented by Two-gun Pete. "What's a hoss when it comes to a scrap?" What Hippy Wingate dreamed. Grace Harlowe's pony is recovered. Ranchers help the Overlanders to move. Judy Hornby makes an exciting entrance.
The mountain girl wants to know what love is. Judy tries poulticing for a sick heart. "If I could talk like that I'd be a real lady." Overland girls give helpful advice. A word that drove a mustang to desperation.
"Pap sure was a scream," declares Judy. The Overland Riders witness a thrilling round-up. Stacy Brown gets into new difficulties. J. Elfreda is accused of frightening a wild steer to death. Bad news from up the valley.
Lieutenant Wingate's suspicions aroused. Two ruffians are neatly trapped. The ranch-house under rifle fire. A ruse that succeeded. "I've got to take a chance." Rifle bullets rip through the old house. Disaster again overtakes the Overland Rider.
An alarm scatters the mountain ruffians. "Hit the trail! Hit it hard!" Cowpunchers find the ranch-house on fire. A dramatic scene in Joe Bindloss's home. Captives give sullen replies. "The herd's stampeded an' Pop's been shot!" cries Idaho Jones.
Hippy at last regains consciousness. Lieutenant Wingate relates the story of the attack on the ranch-house. Cowboys howl when they hear the news. Stacy Brown mysteriously disappears. "The prisoners have got away!"
Malcolm Hornby refuses Joe Bindloss's request. "Pap's got an awful grouch today." Jim fails to follow Chunky's trail. The search is given up for the night. Judy acts strangely. "Something has happened to Jim!" Sam Conifer meets disaster.
The old guide finds the trail and a bullet finds him. Stacy and Jim are among the missing. Two-gun Pete makes a strange discovery. The mystery of the carrier pigeons. Birds for a pie. "Wal, I'll be shot!" exclaims Joe Bindloss.
Chunky writes a letter for the Rustlers. "This suspense is killing me!" cries Emma. High ransom is demanded for the fat boy. How to follow the trail of a bird. The "dove of peace" is liberated. "I've got it!" shouts Sam Conifer.
How the Overland boy was captured. Mountain ruffians make desperate plans. Money that came down from the skies. "Put up yer hands, young feller!" The fat boy in the toils. Stacy Brown finds himself under arrest as a horse thief.
Carrier pigeons point the way. The guide smells smoke. Sam Conifer stalks the rustlers to their lair. "Brown'll be a dead dude by mornin'!" A thunderbolt is hurled at the mountain ruffians. Plotters get a rude surprise.
The magician's wand. "Yer too yellow to draw!" Sam reveals his identity to Mexican Charley. Six to one. The outlaw takes a chance and loses. When the light was shot out. "That's what I calls a low-down trick!"
The fat boy's story is not believed. "All hoss thieves is liars!" A barn his prison cell. "Heah's yer chuck. I hope it chokes ye!" Ordered to leave for prison. Chunky turns the tables on his jailer and compliments himself.
A mysterious shot. Pete gets a bullet hole through his hat. No trace of the missing Jim. Judy takes her time in telling bad news. "Sam's been killed and Tom and Hippy wounded!" announces the mountain girl.
Overland girls go in search of the missing ones. Judy Hornby leads the way. The mountain cabin found to be empty. Bindloss reads the trail. Startled by the sound of shots. The worst is feared. "Fire! They've set the grass on fire!"
Ponies become frantic with fear. Overland Riders feel the thrill of the moment. "Faster!" cries the mountain girl. Rifle shots sound nearer. A scene that startled the Riders. The duel. A bandit meets his reward.
Judy Hornby finds a new "Pap." Stacy Brown still stalked by trouble. "This feller is a hoss thief!" When Judy's dreams came true.
GRACE HARLOWE'S OVERLAND RIDERS AT CIRCLE O RANCH
PEACE IN THE COSO VALLEY
"Does anyone know where we are at?" wondered Stacy Brown, the last person to leave his berth in the car that morning.
"We are in the Coso Valley," replied Grace Harlowe Gray.
"I never heard of it," returned Stacy. "We are still in Southern California, I presume."
"Of course. What a silly question!" interjected J. Elfreda Briggs laughingly.
"Young man, we are nearing our destination. If you don't make haste you will be left," reminded Grace's husband, Tom Gray.
"Of course I did. What's the fun in sleeping if you don't dream? I dreamed that I was the King of England, and you should have seen--"
"Stacy!" cried Emma in mock horror. "How unfortunate! To counteract the effect of that unhappy dream, try tonight to dream that you are a peasant. If you do not, some terrible misfortune is sure to overtake you."
"Piffle! Where do you get that stuff, Emma? All right, Thomas. I'll be ready by the time the train stops," added Stacy, addressing Tom Gray, and moving on to the wash room, where he remained until the train began to slow down for Carrago, their destination. Carrago was a sleepy little far-western town whose only excuse for existence was that it was the only trading center for the ranchers within a radius of many miles in the broad valley that lay between the Argus and Coso ranges, a remote section of the country selected by Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders for their regular summer's outing in the saddle.
The scenery that morning had held the attention of the entire party with the exception of Stacy, who had been too busy sleeping to give heed to mere scenery, and the passengers were already detraining at Carrago when he finally came rushing through the car.
"Shall I brush you off?" asked the porter, facing him, broom in hand.
"Brush me off?" frowned Stacy, who thus far had avoided the porter. "Well, no. I reckon that I'll just get off in the ordinary way," he added, hurrying out to the vestibule of the Pullman and down to the station platform.
"That was rude of you, Stacy," rebuked Miss Briggs, who had heard the boy's retort.
"Rude? Huh! Do you think I want to be brushed off the train?"
"Oh, Stacy! You are as hopeless as ever, aren't you?" laughed Grace. "Oh, this wonderful air!" she cried enthusiastically, turning to her companions. "Tom, aren't you going to look for the guide who was to meet us here?"
Tom Gray said that Hippy Wingate was attending to that, and just then the Overlanders saw him halt before two bewhiskered natives standing on the station platform side by side and assuming almost identically the same pose. Both were old men. Their faces were seamed and tanned, their shoulders stooped, and as they stood with heads tilted back until their long beards protruded at almost the same angle, they presented a picture that made the Overlanders smile.
"I am looking for Jim-Sam, who is to guide us," announced Hippy, addressing the men.
"We're Jim-Sam," answered the men in chorus. "Be ye the dudes?"
"Well, not exactly," interjected Stacy Brown.
"This is the party that engaged Jim-Sam," repeated Hippy patiently. "Which of you is Jim-Sam?"
"Both of us," added the taller of the two men. "I'm Sam, an' this heah galoot standin' side me is Jim, an'--"
"I'll have ye understand that I ain't no galoot," objected Jim heatedly, shaking a finger under Sam's nose.
"Hold on, you two! Let me get this clear," interposed Tom Gray, stepping up to them. "Do you mean that we have engaged, not one guide, but two?"
Sam explained that he and Jim were "pards," and that they had always worked together, and "fit an' died together" these many years, adding further, that Jim, being a spavined, ring-boned old cayuse wasn't much good to anyone, himself included, but that he could hold the horses and howl like a coyote at the pack-horses to keep them going.
"Haw, haw!" exploded Stacy.
"I don't know about this," muttered Hippy, removing his hat and mopping his forehead.
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