“I thought I had hit upon something,” said Ned, to himself, as he jumped down the steps and walked toward the corral, which was the name given to the enclosure in which the riding-horses belonging to the ranche were kept. “And I believe yet that if father would only take his herd away from him he would be too discouraged to start another. He would have to do something, of course—George isn’t the one to remain long idle—and as there is no other business he can go into in this country, perhaps he would go off somewhere to seek his fortune and leave us a clear field. I wish Gus Robbins was here now. Two heads are better than one, and perhaps he could suggest something.”
Ned was looking for his friend Gus every day, although how the latter was going to find his way over the hundred and fifty miles of wilderness that lay between Palos, which was the end of the stage route, and the rancho, Ned didn’t know. If Gus could have told him when he expected to reach Palos, the case would have been different. Ned could have sent one of the herdsmen down there to meet him and show him the way home; but, as it was, Gus would have to take his chances. He would have to wait at Palos until he fell in with some of the neighbors who might happen to go there on business, as some of them did nearly every month. But a month was a long time to wait. He wished his friend was with him now, for he was growing more lonely every day. He ought to be on the way by this time, Ned often told himself, and of late he had fallen into the habit of riding to the top of a high swell about five miles from the rancho, and spending the most of the day there waiting for Gus. When he came he would pass along the trail leading over the top of that swell, and Ned could see him while he was yet a long distance away.
When Ned was mounted and fully equipped for a gallop, a stranger would have taken him for a masquerader on his way to a ball. If he had sported a big mustache and had a few more years on his shoulders, he might have easily passed for the leader of a band of brigands. He always wore a Mexican sombrero, buckskin coat, fawnskin vest, corduroy trowsers, and high top-boots, the heels of which were armed with huge silver-plated spurs. These was intended for ornament and not for use, for Ned could not have been hired to touch his horse with them. He had tried it once. The animal was as steady an old cob as Uncle John could find in the settlement, but he did not like spurs, and on one occasion he had convinced his rider of the fact by throwing him head over heels into a ditch. That was when Ned first purchased him, and before he knew anything about riding on horseback. He was growing somewhat accustomed to the saddle now, and was beginning to look about him for a better mount. There were plenty of horses on the ranche—fleet, hardy animals they were, too—but Ned wanted a thorough-bred, such as some of the settlers were purchasing in Kentucky.