So Russ got back to the ranch house full to the lips with the idea of acting in the moving picture. Rose's ankle had only been twisted a little, and she was perfectly able to walk the next day. But Mother Bunker would not hear to the children going far from the house after that without daddy or herself being with them.
"I believe our six little Bunkers can get into more adventures than any other hundred children," she said earnestly. "To think of that coyote being there with Rose for hours!"
"If he had not been in the trap he would have run away from her fast enough," returned Daddy Bunker.
Just the same he, too, felt that the children would better not get far out of their sight. They could play with the ponies about the house, for the fields were mostly unfenced. And the ponies were certainly great play-fellows. Laddie was sure that Pinky was a most intelligent horse.
"If we had known just how to talk to him," declared Laddie, "I am sure he would have told us all about Rose and where he had left her that day."
"Maybe he would," said Rose, though she spoke rather doubtfully. "But I slipped right out of that saddle, and I am not going to ride him any more. I would rather drive Brownie hitched to the cart."
"You mean Dinah, don't you?" asked Margy.
"Oh, no! Oh, no!" cried Mun Bun. "Let _me_ name that pony. I want to call him Jerry. I want to call him after our Jerry Simms at home in Pineville."
And this was finally agreed upon. All the Bunker children liked Jerry Simms, who had been the very first person to tell them stories about the army and about this great West that they had come to.
"I guess Jerry Simms would have known all about this moving picture the soldiers and Mr. Black Bear's Indians are making," Russ remarked. "And mayn't we all go and act in it, Daddy?"
Russ talked so much about this that finally Mrs. Bunker agreed to go with the children to see the representation of the Indian attack on the fort. The six little Bunkers looked forward to this exciting proposal for several days, and when Mr. Habback sent word that the scene was ready to "shoot," as he called it, the children could scarcely contain themselves until the party started from the ranch house.
It was to be a grand picnic, for they took cooked food and a tent for Mother Bunker and the children to sleep in. Russ and Laddie rode their ponies, and all the rest of the party crowded into one of Cowboy Jack's big blue automobiles when they set out for a distant part of the ranch.