CHAPTER III
Bob thought it best to stick close to his room for the rest of the day. Part of this decision was due to his mother's advice and to the fact that he really did feel tired after the fright and excitement of the morning. But part was due to the feeling that he had better let the boys cool down from the putty blower incident.
As a result of his long rest, he appeared at the supper table that evening as bright and gay as a lark.
"Bob seems to be quite like himself again to-night," remarked Mrs. Bouncer. "You see, boys, there was no real reason for you to be so anxious and worried about him as you were this morning."
Bob grinned all over his face.
"It was mighty good of them just the same," he said. "I suppose they wanted to read to me or talk to me or something."
"'Or something' is right," murmured Frank to Sammy as he nudged his knee under the table.
"You're right there!" responded Sammy in the same low tone.
Of course there was much to tell Mr. Bouncer about the events of the day. He was greatly startled when he learned of Bob's narrow escape from drowning, and very hearty in his gratitude to the boys for the way they had kept their heads and saved their chum.
"Many boys much older than you would have been completely rattled," he said warmly. "I can't thank you boys enough for what you have done and I'll never forget it. I'm sure that Bobby, too, will remember it as long as he lives."
"Sure I will," replied Bob.
"Oh, Bob has already thanked us," responded Sammy.
"Over and over again," added Frank.
"That's right," said the unsuspecting Mr. Bouncer. "And now what is all this I hear about your going out on a ranch?"
All three talked at once in explaining the proposed trip, but Mr. Bouncer finally got a clear understanding about it.
He was not quite so quick as his wife had been in agreeing to the idea. He saw a good many difficulties in the way.
But one obstacle after another yielded before the begging of the boys and the arguments of his wife. As the boys had foreseen, the accident of the morning was as strong an argument as any.
"I don't think they'll be in any more danger there than they are here," Mrs. Bouncer said. "I'm getting almost afraid of living so near the sea. I'd feel after this as though I ought to watch the boys all day long."
"The young rascals will bear a lot of watching," grinned Mr. Bouncer. "But I believe you're right about the trip, my dear, and I'm willing to let Bob go if you are."
"Hurray!" yelled Bob. "I knew you'd do it, Dad!"
"That's bully!" cried Sammy, warmly.
"It's dandy," agreed Frank.
"Now that fixes it up for two of us, but I'm left out in the cold," said Sammy a little forlornly. "I don't know yet whether I can go or not."
"Don't worry about that, Sammy," said Mr. Bouncer, cheerily. "I'm pretty sure your folks will let you go."
"I hope so," said Sammy. "I'd feel like a cat in a strange garret if I had to hang around these parts while the rest of the boys were away."
"Well, we'll know all about it in the morning anyway," remarked Frank.
"I wish that letter could have got to them to-day," observed Bob. "Then we might have got a telegram before we went to bed."
"What time was it posted this morning?" asked Mr. Bouncer.
"Just a little before ten o'clock," answered his wife.
Mr. Bouncer consulted a time table that he took from his pocket.
"In that case," he said after a pause, "it might possibly have reached your folks this afternoon. They are back in Fairview now, as well as Frank's people, I believe. It all depends on whether this local train made connection at the Junction. Half the time it doesn't, but once in a while it does; and to-day may have been one of those times."
"Good!" cried Sammy, clapping his hands. "We've got a chance then."
He had scarcely finished speaking when there came a knock at the door and Bob sprang up to answer it. A shock-headed boy who did odd jobs about the village was standing there with a blue and white envelope in his hand.
"Come in," cried Bob.
The messenger came in.
"A telegram for Sammy Brown," he announced.
"There it is!" shouted Frank.
"It came in a hurry," laughed Bob.
Mr. Bouncer signed for the telegram and then with a smile handed it over to Sammy.
"First one I ever got in my life," grinned Sammy, nervously, as he fumbled with the envelope, hardly daring to tear it open for fear the news might not be to his liking.
"I think it has good news in it," remarked Mrs. Bouncer with a smile.
"What makes you think so?" asked Sammy, eagerly.
"Well, for one thing, because it came so soon," replied Mrs. Bouncer. "Your parents know that you would feel bad if you couldn't go, and they wouldn't be in a hurry to get bad news to you."
"That's so!" came in a chorus from his chums. "Open it, Sammy, and don't stand there like a wooden Indian."
Thus encouraged, Sammy at last mustered up nerve to open the envelope. He unfolded the slip it contained and glanced at the contents. The next instant he had dropped it on the table and was doing a war dance around the room.
"I can go, fellows!" he yelled. "I can go!"
"Isn't that glorious?" cried Frank.
"The best thing that ever happened!" shouted Bob.
They joined Sammy in his excited caperings, while Bob's parents looked on with sympathetic smiles.
"May I read it, Sammy?" asked Mr. Bouncer, picking up the paper that had caused all the hubbub.
"Of course," replied Sammy. "Read it out loud so that all of us can hear it."
Mr. Bouncer complied.
"You may go," the telegram read. "Come home and get ready. Letter follows."
It was some time before the boys quieted down and got in shape to discuss the next thing to be done.
"Of course, Frank and Sammy will have to get back to Fairview right away," remarked Mrs. Bouncer.
"Of course," assented her husband. "It will take some hard work to get these chaps ready in time."
"And we'll have to go back, too," continued Mrs. Bouncer. "Not half the things that Bob will need have been brought down here with us. We'll shut up the cottage for a week and, if we can get ready in time, we'll all go back to Fairview to-morrow afternoon."
While their elders talked over the details of the journey, the three boys got together in another room of the cottage and chattered excitedly over things that interested them more.
"They're talking about outfits," half whispered Bob. "I wonder just what they will get for us."
"I hope there'll be a pair of buckskin breeches," said Frank.
"Or sheepskin with the wool showing on the outside," suggested Sammy. "Then we'll look like real cowboys. If we wear our regular clothes they'll think we're tenderfeet."
"I'd like a Mexican sombrero," remarked Bob. "You know, the kind with a broad brim and a row of bells or silver pieces as a band. They're the real thing."
"I'd rather have a band of rattlesnake skin around mine," put in Sammy.
"Maybe you'd have to kill a rattlesnake to get it," observed Frank.
"What if I did?" answered Sammy, with perfect assurance.
"I suppose some of those cowboys will be pretty tough," guessed Bob.
"I shouldn't wonder," agreed Frank. "Maybe they'll shoot into the ground at our feet and make us dance."
"Huh, what would we be doing?" asked Bob, without the slightest idea of what theywouldbe doing on such an occasion.
"We might disarm them," suggested Sammy, a little doubtfully. "Or one of us might keep on dancing while the others slipped behind the cowboys and snatched the pistols from their hands. That's been done many a time."
"I wouldn't like to be captured by Indians while we are out there," put in Bob. "I wouldn't like to have 'em tie me up to a tree and shoot arrows at me."
"We'll have to keep our eyes peeled," said Sammy. "If we see any signs of Indians we'll have to drop to the ground and wriggle our way like a snake until we can get near enough to hear what they are talking about. That's the way to do, I've heard."
"How about guns or pistols?" asked Frank. "Do you suppose our folks will let us have them?"
"Sure they will," said Bob, confidently.
"I'm pretty sure they won't," sighed Sammy. "My mother says I'm too young for the rifle I asked for not long ago. Huh!"
"How can we defend ourselves then?" asked Frank.
"I guess we'll have to depend on Mr. Claxton and his cowboys to look after us," said Sammy, dolefully. "Still," he added hopefully, "if our folks won't give us guns at the start there's a chance to get 'em from some one that's been killed in a scrimmage. Or we may run across some place where outlaws have hidden 'em. There's lots of such places out there, and if we only have a little luck we're likely to find one."
"If," sniffed Frank.
"Some more of Sammy's mystery stuff," mocked Bob.
"All right," said Sammy, "you fellows just keep on with your knocks. When we all get rich you'll be glad enough to say that you were chums with me."
"We're glad enough to say that now, even before you've found any treasure, aren't we, Bob?" said Frank.
"You said it!" agreed Bob, emphatically.
Sammy's ruffled feathers were smoothed down at once.
"That's all right, fellows," he beamed. "But now about those guns we were talking of. I'd like to know really whether our folks will let us have 'em at the start, or whether we'll have to depend on picking them up after we get out there."
"Suppose we get Bob to ask his father right now," suggested Frank. "He's right in the other room, and if we find out the way he looks at it, we can feel pretty sure that our fathers will feel the same way about it. And you're already older—a little—than when you asked for that rifle, Sammy."
Bob, being thus chosen as a committee of one, went into the other room, from which he soon returned with a look on his face that told the whole story.
"Nothing doing, boys," he announced briefly. "Dad said that if I were a little older he might take a chance, but he's afraid just now to let me handle a pistol or a rifle."
The boys groaned in sympathy.
"We might make blowguns though," said Bob, brightening up. "They say you can learn to shoot with them just as well as with a rifle."
It was an unlucky reference, as Bob saw as soon as he had spoken.
"Just like a putty blower," suggested Frank.
"Bob won't need any practice," remarked Sammy, as he and Frank bore down on their victim.
There was a good-natured scuffle as Sammy and Frank rolled Bob over and over on the carpet. Then Mrs. Bouncer's smiling face appeared at the door, and she drove the madcap lads off to bed.