The Outdoor Chums After Big Game Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness

CHAPTER VI

AT THE VAL­LEY RANCH

“Lis­ten!” ex­claimed Frank, hold­ing up his hand.

“Talk to me about your Tow­er of Ba­bel! It wasn't in the same class as that row. Twen­ty men try­ing to talk all at once!” growled Jer­ry, start­ing up.

“Oh! Where are you go­ing?” asked Will.

“Out­side, to find out what the trou­ble is,” replied the oth­er.

“But you may get hurt if those bad men start to shoot­ing up the train,” ex­pos­tu­lat­ed the of­fi­cial pho­tog­ra­pher anx­ious­ly.

Jer­ry gave a hoarse laugh.

“Tell me about that, will you! He ac­tu­al­ly be­lieves we are go­ing to be put through a course of 'stand and de­liv­er' by the mer­ry gen­tle­men of the road. Why, bless you, my boy, didn't you hear one man say some­thing about a tres­tle burn­ing just ahead? It spells de­lay for us, but that's the worst of the whole af­fair.”

“Then I'm go­ing out, too,” de­clared Will, with sud­den zeal, as he snatched up his cam­era and threw the strap over his shoul­der.

He scent­ed a chance for a strik­ing pic­ture, and to ob­tain that Will would have risked even a pos­si­ble en­counter with train rob­bers.

Frank and Bluff would not be left be­hind, and quick­ly the en­tire quar­tet had reached the plat­form. They found that the stop was at a lit­tle coun­try sta­tion. A sig­nal had sud­den­ly flashed be­fore the eyes of the en­gi­neer, telling him he must not think of run­ning past, which ac­count­ed for the quick work of the com­pressed-​air brakes.

No need to tell what was wrong. Up the track a quar­ter of a mile could be seen a fire, and one glance was enough to tell the chums that, just as Jer­ry had said, a tres­tle of some sort seemed to be burn­ing.

Loud shouts at­test­ed to the fact that ev­ery avail­able man was hur­ry­ing to the scene, in the hope of sav­ing the tres­tle be­fore it was so far gone that noth­ing could be done.

“Come on, fel­lows! Our train must stay where it is un­til this thing is done burn­ing, one way or the oth­er. Per­haps we can help put the fire out with buck­ets.”

That was the first thought Frank had, to be of some as­sis­tance.

The four of them ran with the rest of the pas­sen­gers. Such a spec­ta­cle could not be wit­nessed ev­ery day, and ev­ery one was de­sirous of get­ting clos­er to the scene of ac­tion.

“How did it catch?” asked Frank of a rail­road man who was hus­tling about, hand­ing buck­ets to a line of men ex­tend­ing down to the wa­ter of the creek far be­low.

“Don't know. Per­haps from sparks left by the six-​sev­en­teen freight. Lend a hand here, lads; we need all the help we can get,” replied the oth­er.

“Sure! That's what we came for. Get along, boys, and pass these buck­ets!” cried Jer­ry, suit­ing the ac­tion to the words.

Once the string of buck­ets got to go­ing, and the con­tents be­gan to be cast up­on the creep­ing flames, there sprang up a hope that the tres­tle might be saved.

See­ing this, the work­ers re­dou­bled their ef­forts, and faster rose the full buck­ets, the emp­ties go­ing down at the same rate. It is re­al­ly as­ton­ish­ing what a large amount of wa­ter can be car­ried by such an end­less chain.

“Hur­rah! We're best­ing it, lads! Keep it up!” shout­ed the agent, who was the man Frank had first ad­dressed.

Will had not joined the re­lay. There seemed to be plen­ty of re­cruits with­out him, and, truth to tell, he was bent on get­ting a pic­ture of the scene. Doubt­less many present were star­tled by a sud­den bril­liant il­lu­mi­na­tion as he set off his flash­light car­tridge; but those who were in ig­no­rance as to what it meant were soon set wise by oth­ers.

Once they be­gan to get the up­per hand of the fire it be­came easy. For­tu­nate­ly, there was not a breath of wind at the time. Had it been oth­er­wise, no ef­forts on their part could have saved the tres­tle.

“I should think they would have them all of steel!” gasped Bluff, as he la­bored away, pass­ing end­less buck­ets up and down.

“Most of them are, I un­der­stand, but in this case, you see, it is a long stretch, and per­haps it wasn't thought nec­es­sary,” replied Frank.

“We're go­ing to save it, all right; but I won­der if our train dare pass over? It seems to me the fire must have weak­ened the struc­ture more or less,” re­marked Jer­ry.

“Oh, well, they'll find some means of strength­en­ing it in that case. I'm on­ly wor­ry­ing about the de­lay. Mr. Ma­bie will have to wait so long.”

“But, Frank, they must wire the news, and he will know the rea­son for our hold-​up,” said Will quick­ly, and the oth­ers all agreed that this must be so.

Less than an hour lat­er the last spark had been ex­tin­guished. Then men climbed all over the tres­tle to as­cer­tain just how much it had been weak­ened by the fire.

There was a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion among them, some declar­ing that it was as good as ev­er, and the oth­ers shak­ing their heads solemn­ly, as they proph­esied all man­ner of dire things if the through train, with its heavy sleep­ers, at­tempt­ed to go over.

While some gangs of men were hasti­ly brac­ing up a weak spot with what ma­te­ri­al lay close at hand, kept for an emer­gen­cy of this sort, a freight train that hap­pened to be on a sid­ing at the sta­tion, was pushed out on the tres­tle to dis­cov­er how the sit­ua­tion stood.

The chums watched op­er­ations with their hearts in their mouths, fig­ura­tive­ly speak­ing; but no catas­tro­phe fol­lowed, and it be­gan to ap­pear that, af­ter all, the ex­press might pass over in safe­ty.

An­oth­er tri­al was giv­en, this time with the heavy freight en­gine at­tached to some of the largest flats, laden with steel beams. The tres­tle bore the strain hand­some­ly.

“That set­tles it, fel­lows. Back to our car for us. We're go­ing across!” sang out Jer­ry as he turned and made off down the track.

“How long were we here?” asked Bluff, sigh­ing, and they knew he was think­ing again of the weary hours that must elapse ere he could open that big trunk in or­der to as­cer­tain whether his fears in con­nec­tion with that beloved hunt­ing-​knife had any foun­da­tion or not.

“Three hours, about. Give them an­oth­er half hour to get mov­ing, and there you are. Hark! The en­gi­neer has start­ed to whis­tle. That is to tell the pas­sen­gers a start is in­tend­ed; and here they come, rush­ing pell-​mell, fear­ful of get­ting left.” And Frank laughed at the en­er­gy dis­played by some of those who had been aboard.

It was a crit­ical time when the train slow­ly pushed out up­on the long tres­tle. Ev­ery­body doubt­less held their breath, and doubt­less many a heart throbbed with sus­pense.

“It's all right, boys! We're safe­ly over!” ex­claimed Jer­ry, as, look­ing out of the open win­dow, he could see that they had passed the crit­ical stage.

“Oh! I'm so glad! I don't know when I've felt such a flut­ter about my heart. But, any­way, I se­cured a crack­ing good snap­shot of that burn­ing bridge. Ev­ery time we look at it we can re­mem­ber our hold-​up,” ob­served Will, sigh­ing with re­lief.

It was now about ten o'clock at night, and on ac­count of the de­lay, trav­el was more or less con­gest­ed along the line.

Frank, up­on mak­ing in­quiries, learned that they would not ar­rive at their des­ti­na­tion un­til about day­break, and so he and his chums went to their berths to se­cure what sleep was pos­si­ble.

Frank had them up in good time, and long be­fore dawn they were ful­ly dressed, await­ing the ar­rival of the train at the val­ley sta­tion with im­pa­tience.

“An­oth­er hour now, and then I shall know,” Bluff was say­ing to him­self.

“Thank good­ness!” ex­claimed Jer­ry, who hap­pened to over­hear him. “And for the peace of the par­ty, I do hope the first thing you see when you open your bag will be that aw­ful sword.”

“We're stop­ping, fel­lows!” cried Will, trem­bling with ea­ger­ness.

Five min­utes lat­er they jumped down from the train.

“Hel­lo, boys! Glad to see you! Bet­ter late than nev­er!” said a hearty voice, and then they found them­selves shak­ing hands with a big man, whose gray-​beard­ed face seemed to be a pic­ture of good na­ture.

Of course, this was Mr. Ma­bie, the ranch­man. He saw to it that their big trunk was dropped off the bag­gage car, to be seized by a cou­ple of cow­boys and hus­tled on to the back of a long buck­board wag­on, drawn by a cou­ple of skit­tish hors­es.

Then they were off, not five min­utes af­ter the train had pulled out.

“Here, Red­dy,” said Mr. Ma­bie to the young driv­er, “let me make you ac­quaint­ed with some good fel­lows about your own age,” and he in­tro­duced them one af­ter an­oth­er.

Frank saw that the cow­boy was well named, for he had quite a fiery thatch; but his freck­led face seemed one of the sort that in­vit­ed con­fi­dence, and Frank be­lieved he would like the oth­er right well. Of course, Red­dy was at­tired as all well-​or­dered cow­boys should be. Will was se­cret­ly wild for a chance to in­tro­duce him in some pic­ture.

“It will give such a pleas­ing va­ri­ety to our book of views, for we haven't got a sin­gle cow­boy in be­tween the cov­ers,” he said in an aside to Frank.

They fol­lowed up the val­ley for over an hour. The ranch was miles re­moved from the rail­way, and sur­round­ed by the wildest scenery the boys could re­mem­ber hav­ing looked up­on, and that was say­ing a good deal, af­ter such a jour­ney.

Mar­tin Ma­bie was a wid­ow­er, with­out any fam­ily. Still, he had a num­ber of wom­en folks on the place, a sis­ter keep­ing house for him, with a Chi­nese cook to at­tend to the kitchen part of the es­tab­lish­ment.

“Ain't this im­mense?” re­marked Bluff, as he wait­ed im­pa­tient­ly for the men to car­ry the big trunk in­doors, so that he could sat­is­fy his soul about the one ob­ject that had been wor­ry­ing him ev­er since leav­ing Cen­ter­ville.

Some­how or oth­er they seemed slow about do­ing this. The hors­es had to be at­tend­ed to first of all. Then there seemed to be some sort of ex­cite­ment in the neigh­bor­hood of the cor­ral, for the boys no­ticed a mount­ed cow­boy come dash­ing up and jump from his steed, which was blow­ing hard, as if from a rapid dash.

He won­dered if this sort of thing was of dai­ly oc­cur­rence on the big ranch, which took in the whole val­ley for miles, and ex­tend­ed even up along the sides of the moun­tains on ei­ther hand.

“What ails the fel­low, I won­der?” ob­served Jer­ry, who, it seems, had al­so no­ticed the rush of the new­com­er.

“From the way he bolt­ed in­to the of­fice where Mr. Ma­bie went, I imag­ine he must have brought im­por­tant news of some sort,” re­marked Frank.

“Per­haps our very in­tro­duc­tion to the Big M Ranch is go­ing to be in a whirl of ex­cite­ment, fel­lows. I've no­ticed that some­how we seem to stir up things wher­ev­er we go; not that we mean to have things hap­pen, but they just pick out such a time to play hob,” said Jer­ry, shak­ing his head as if thor­ough­ly con­vinced.

“Here comes Mr. Ma­bie, hur­ry­ing this way!” de­clared Bluff, be­gin­ning to for­get his oth­er anx­iety for the time be­ing in this new mys­tery.

“And there goes the cow­boy back to the horse cor­ral. He's shout­ing some­thing, too, and as sure as you live ev­ery man is jump­ing to get a horse handy be­tween his legs. Look at them slap­ping sad­dles on! Why, they'll be off like the wind! Boys, some­thing is up! I know it!”

Frank and his chums saw sev­er­al cow­boys dash away as though pos­sessed, shout­ing, and wav­ing their hats in a reck­less man­ner, as if about to charge an en­emy who had de­signs on the cat­tle of the ranch.

“What­ev­er can it mean?” said Will again.

“For the life of me I can't imag­ine,” re­turned Frank, sore­ly puz­zled.

“But we'll soon know, fel­lows, for here comes Mr. Ma­bie, and he's swing­ing his hat as though just as ex­cit­ed as the bal­ance of the crowd. What­ev­er it is, he means to tell us!” cried Jer­ry, his eyes glow­ing with the nerve-​rack­ing anx­iety.