wisp, as though it had dangled down from some fleecy cloud. But the smoke was ascending and was not the beginning of a fog descending.

"Can't be any of our boys," murmured Slim. "They aren't out on round-up yet. An' it's too early for grub."

"Indians?" questioned Bud. Sometimes the bucks from a neighboring reservation felt the call of the wild, and slipped out to have a forbidden feast on some cattleman's stock, only to be brought up with a round turn by the government soldiers.

"Don't think so," remarked Slim. "They don't have much chance t' practice their wiles, but, with all that, they know enough not t' make a fire that smokes. Must be some strangers. If it's any of them ornery sheep men," he exclaimed, "I'd feel like——"

"They wouldn't dare!" exclaimed Bud, for being the son of a cattle-ranchman he had come to dislike and despise the sheep herders, whose flocks ate so closely as to ruin the feeding range for steers. The sheep would crop grass down to the very roots, setting back its growth for many months.

"No, I don't reckon it would be sheepers," murmured Slim. "Wa'al, mebby they know at the ranch. We'll be headin' home now, I guess. Come on there, you old tumble-bug!" he called to his horse, and then he raised his voice and roared:

  "Leave me alone with a rope an' a saddle,
  Fold my spurs under my haid!
  Give me a can of them sweet, yaller peaches,
  'Cause why? My true-love is daid!"

Slim's horse started off on a lope, freshened by the rest, and Bud's followed. They topped the rise, and, then as the animals came within sight and smell of their stables, and caught the whiff of ever-welcome water, they dashed down the slope toward the green valley in which nestled the corral and buildings of Diamond X ranch.

"If I wasn't so doggoned tired," said Slim to Bud as they prepared to pull up on reaching the corral, "I'd ride over after supper, and see what that smoke was. I don't perzactly like it."

"Maybe I'll go," offered Bud. "If it should happen to be sheepers, dad'll want to know it."

"He shore will, son. But—Zow hippy! What's going on here?" cried Slim. He pointed toward the corral of the ranch—a fenced-off field where the cowboys kept their string of ponies when the animals were not in use. Here, too, spare animals were held against the time of need.

Just now a crowd of cowboys surrounded this corral. Some were perched on the rails of the fence, and others leaned over. Some were swinging their hats as though in encouragement, and one was rapidly emptying his gun on the defenseless air, which was further torn and shattered by wild yells.

As the two wayfarers neared the corral, there dashed from among the cattle punchers surrounding it an exceedingly fat cowboy, whose face, wreathed in smiles, was also wet with perspiration. He swung his hat around in a circle and yelled shrilly:

"Some ridin', boys! Some ridin'! Go to it!"

"What's the matter, Babe?" asked Slim, of his assistant who had thus given vent to his feelings.

"Go look! It's so good I don't want to spoil it!" laughed the fat one. "Two tenderfoots—Oh, my—Hole me up, somebody!" he begged. "Some ridin'!"

Bud had a glimpse, in the corral, of a youth about his own age, flying rapidly around the enclosure on the back of a bucking bronco. The lad was holding on with both arms around the horn of the saddle.

"Get him off!" cried Bud in a high pitched voice, as he recognized the pony to which the strange lad was clinging. "Tartar will kill him! Get him off!"

CHAPTER II

A CALL FOR HELP

Without waiting for his pony to come to a stop, Bud fairly flung himself out of the saddle, and with his rope, or lariat, coiled on his arm he ran toward the corral.

"What's matter?" demanded Babe Milton, the assistant foreman, pausing in his repeated exclamations of:

"Some ridin'! Some ridin'!"

"Don't you fellows know any better than to let a tenderfoot ride Tartar?" cried Bud. "That horse is next door to an outlaw, and you wouldn't get on him yourself, Babe!"

"You said an earful!" came the quick response. "I wouldn't!"

"Then how'd you come to let this fellow on? Who is he, anyhow?" cried Bud, as he slipped through a hunch of cowboys who opened to let him pass.

"Fresh tenderfoot," some one said.

"He would ride!" added another.

"Says he's your cousin," added a third ranch hand.

"My cousin!" cried Bud. Then he did not stop to do any more talking. He leaped the fence of the corral, and, as he did so he became aware of another stranger—a tenderfoot like the lad on Tartar—standing within the fenced-off place. This lad, who bore all the marks of a newly-arrived Easterner, was rather short and stout—not to say fat. He stood beside an ancient and venerable cow pony, which was never ridden when there was anything else in the corral to throw a saddle on. And this lad was gazing with fear-widened eyes at the figure of the other lad.

"Get off, Nort! Get off!" cried this stout lad.

"Don't tell him to do that!" ordered Bud sharply. "He'll break his neck sure! Stick, and I'll rope Tartar!" he shouted, trying to make his voice heard above the thunder of the feet of the half-maddened horse, and the now somewhat subdued shouts of the cowboys.

Bud Merkel knew his business. He had not lived all his sixteen years on his father's ranch not to learn how to throw a skillful rope, and he now took his position just within the corral, and at a place where he could intercept the dashing outlaw, Tartar, as the animal came around again with the flapping lad clinging to his back.

"Can you manage, Bud?" called Slim, from his cross seat in his saddle, where he was looking on.

"I'll get him!" was the grim answer.

Many thoughts were shooting through the mind of Bud Merkel, not the least of which was the remark of Babe Milton to the effect that the lad on Tartar was Bud's cousin.

"Then the other must be, too," thought Bud as he swung his rope and directed a quick glance at the fat lad now hugging the inner rails of the corral fence. "But how'd they get here, and what made him try that outlaw?"

However, this was no time to spend in asking oneself questions. There was need of action, and it came a moment later.

Hissing and swishing through the air, the coils of Bud's lariat fell around the neck of the plunging, rearing, running Tartar. In another instant Bud had taken a turn or two around a post, and, by carefully applying a snubbing pressure, the pony was brought to a stop.

"Get down—quick!" ordered Bud when the horse was quiet enough to permit of this. And as the other lad obeyed, and shook himself together, limping over toward Bud the latter asked: "Are you hurt?"

"Not a bit," was the laughing answer. "I could 'a' stuck on. He couldn't throw me."

"Don't you fool yourself!" exclaimed Bud, while some of the cowboys went into the corral and loosened his lariat from the neck of the now subdued animal. Tartar, once the offending stranger was no longer on his back, seemed normal. "Don't you fool yourself! You couldn't have stayed on a second longer."

"Betcher I could!" came the quick response. "If you'll rope him again——"

"Cut it out, Nort!" came from the fat lad, who looked enough like the