Sunset Ranch: A Story of a Boy's Adventures in the West — page 35: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Chased by a Prairie Fire. 29 After that it was easy, and about noon they came up with the caravan that had halted to rest their cattle for an hour or so. -Cuthbert was eager to learn whether his treach- erous cayuse had, with the wonderful instinct of his kind, made the camp, and was delighted to learn that this was so. He had promised Bob a good thrashing to pay for his miserable trick, but the animal greeted him with a glad whinny that quite disarmed his master. Moreover, Cuthbert was now of the opinion that the fault was wholly his own; since meeting the young range rider he had learned more points in connection with bronchos than he had ever dreamed of in his philosophy, and chief of all, never to trust them wholly. Preparations for leaving the caravan were soon completed. Karl was pleased to discover the small amount of goods he had to pack on Bob’s unwilling back, for truth to tell, the prairie boy had been haunted by a terrible fear lest his new-found friend would produce a Saratoga trunk and stagger them about its transportation. Many of the “mule skinners’” knew the cowboy, and greeted him with rough enthusiasm, so that evi- dently Karl was well liked among the teamsters of the freight trail. He had a genial word or a joke for every one, and Cuthbert flattered himself that he had been fortunate indeed to make so warm a friend out of a character so universally commended. A bite of lunch and they were off, just as the teamsters were shouting and swearing to get their refractory mules in motion. Cuthbert, seated once more in his own saddle, in- stead of hanging upon a horse’s withers, felt light- hearted enough to shout. His ambition, laughed at by Eastern:college mates, was in a fair way of » Comicbooks CO