Boy's Cinema (1930-31)

22 tcict without a gun?" demanded Bob ooritemptuousiy. '.'We want guns when dealing with rustiers hke you!" snapped one of the nejvconiers—a foreman, by (lie loo!; of hini, and by the way the others waited lor him to speak. "Rustlers?" hooted Ben. "Why, we'vQ been rustled " "VVhat'.s that you've got in your fi.ind?" demanded the foreman, as he slipped from liis horse.. "If that ain't a branding-iron 1 will say I've slipped up some!" Bob looked down at the iron wliich. almost instinctively, he had snatched ip at the approach of the horsemen. "I tell you, we came up to two men who had stolen our horses, and " began Bob hotly. "Rope 'em, men!" cut in the foreman bricfl%. He waited until his orders had been obeyed, and once more the unainied Bob and Ben could do nothing but submit. Ropes were .set round their arms and legs and pulled tight. "Now you're going np to the Bar O, and meet up with the owner," said the foreman grimly. "I'll say rustlers have never been caught with more evidence of guilt than you^and we sure have bud some rustlerB in these parts. Move, strangers!" Ben gave vent to H dismal grunt, and his expression was almost pathetic as he looked up at Bob. "And .Senator Lansing thought he was sending us out of trouble when he gave orders for us to be Westward bound! ' he muttered. "Oh, we'll get out of this plenty quick enough!" declared Bob, as they started the march along the trail. But he sounded a lot more confident than he felt. He had been caught witli a branding iron in his hands, with the necessary fire at his toes, and that was a whole heap of evidence. He knew that —none better! Everything depended ujxjn the ranch owner now, and if that owner was any- thing like tho>e with whom they nad already made contact, Bob had a notion that a good many more months than two would pass before Senator Lansing saw them again! A Serious Business ! " V/OU wait here!" I That was what Frank, the ranch foreman, briefly com- manded when the footsore and weary suspects were marched into Bar O. They were glad enough to halt, but in- wardly just a litde uncertain as to whether or not they were keen to learn their fate. A glance roimd at the grim faces of the captors told J5ob that a dash for freedom would be hopeless. These men showed such an aptitude for handling their guns, and l)\illets went quicker than any man or any hor.sc. There was nolhiiig for it but (o wait and see what happened. The foreman slii)i)ed round the ranch- house, followed by the man whom Bob had heard addressed as Dick—a burly, rather shifty-looking customer. At the back, just filling a washing-pan, was Emma, the housekeeper-cook. "Where's Miss Marge. Emma?" do- niand<-d Frank in his brief way. "I'm here—what's the matter?" came an uiu'xpected reply from the doorway. Marge Holt stood there, less magniii- cently dressed than she had been in the slum restaurant, l)\it none the less attrac- tive and pretty. "We caught a couple of rustlers with a running iron in tb.eir hands!" explained August 29tli, 1931. BOY'S CINEMA l''rank. " I thought you might like to have a word with them. Miss Marge, before I took them down to the sheriff. They might spill a bit if you ask them a few question.s." Marge Holt nodded. "I'll come along with you, Frank— I'd sure like to know a bit more about these rustlers," she said, with a frown. " We've lost so much cattle lately that the sooner the rustlers are all in prison the better it will be for all of us. Where are tii'ey ?" "Round the corner." They moved in a body towards the ranch-gates, Maigo with a grimly pert expression upon her pretty face, .md Emma with a distinctly curious, but ru^rvous, twinkle in her eyes. It was Emma who pulled up the party the moment they reached the corner of the house. " Why, if it isn't the two men I saw half-naked on the trail I" she exclaimed. "They ought to be hanged!" Marge did not reply—she did not even smile. She was looking at the curly head, from which Bob had removed his hat. And only for half a minute did the puzzled frown remain upon her brows. Then she smiled—a gentle, whimsical smile of anuisement. "I don't think I'll question them yet," she said suddenly, and very quietly. ■' Let us make them work. Give them forks and set them to work in the stables, Frank. After that they can do the washing-up." A moment later she had darted to- wards the house, stopping only to order the amazed Frank to wait a minute. She came back in a very short time, and it was with a pair of dark glass spec- tacles over her oyes. The others looked at her in amaze- ment. "Lawks alive. Miss Marge—and what's the business?" gasped Emma. "Leave this to me!" .said Marge, with a chuckle of girlish delight. And it was slie who led the way uji to the suspects and stood before them in an attitude of lofty contempt. "So you are two of the rustlers who have been raiding my cattle!" she saifl cuttingly. "I've always thouglit rustlers were real men I" " Look here, ma'am—we're not rustlers " began Bob warnvly. "Take them round the stables, Frank!" interjected Marge. " But " "Move!" snapped Frank, and fingered his gun Ijy way of persuasion. Ben and Bob moved, helpless and utterly forlorn. There simply was tio use in argument at that time. The cattle-.sheds were chosen as lli'^ spot upon which they were first to work. and it was Marge who handed tlieni forks. "Clean up the sheds." s!ie said brieflv, and Bob stared suspiciously at the black glasses as there appeared to him to be a chuckle behind the command. But the eyes remained hidden—and Frank, standing with his hand upon his gun. moved it .slightly as a sign that he was getting impatient. If thev felt humiliated in raking out the smelly cattle-sheds, that was nothing to what they felt when they were set (o work, half an hour later, at a huge basin of water in which reposed various kitchen utensils. It was the first time in their lives that they had "done the washing-U|)." and they did not like it. They were tired in mind and body when nightfall came, and disgusted enough to wish that the sheriff would come along with the toughest length of rope and string them up to the nearest tree. Matters'were not improved when Every Tuesday thoy wore parted for the night. Bob being locked in a side-room by tho horse stables, and Ben taken and put under lock and key by tho fodder-room. But things certainly appeared to be turning their way when Ben's door was suddenly unlocked, well into the night, and tho man Dick appeared. "Not a whisper!" muttered Dick, before ho had closed the door again. "If you reckon I'm gonna start doin' more woman's work, you can get your gun out and start shootin' right now !" growled Ben. "I'm through!" "Sh'sh!" Dick's warning was mi- patient. "I'm sort o' sorry for you fellers—you don't seem much like old- time rustlers to me." "We ain't rustlers at all!" " There's a couple of horses saddled down by the corral—here's a key that will release your partner—beat it !" "Shucks! Now you're talking boss .sense !" gloated Ben. and in a moment he had snatched at the key and was at the door. "One 'of these days we'll meet up again, mister, and then I'll loll you what I think of you." He could not have seen the grin that crept across Dick's shifty face or ho might have been a little less exuberant. As it was he slipped across the vard to the stables, and in a few seconds ho had released Bob and thev were making for the corral as hard as their legs would take them. The horses were there, saddled and ready for the trail and, with Dick look- ing on from the cover of a stable, they mounted and dug in their spurs. In half a minute they were careering wildly down the trail. Two minutes later Dick was also mounted, but he cut oflf in a different direction to that taken by the runaway suspects. His was not an aimless ride. Dawn was coming up when he rodo straight up to a shack that was prac- tically hidden in tlie thick under- growth. Inside were a number of men who appeared to find something disconcert- ing in the thunder of his approach, for their hands were upon their guns when Dick opened the door and walked in. "They're gone!" he announced at once. "Took it like a dog takes a bone, .Tim!" "Good I Let's be going!" snapped tho man addressed as .Tim Stone. The result of that escape and Dick'-t ride were manifest not so very mucfi after. Dick burst into the kitchen of tho ranch. "The prisoners have escr)ped—.ind thev've taken a hundred head of catlli with them!" he said breathlessly. "Two horses have gone, too!" "A hundred head of cattle—gone'" ga.sped Marge, and a spoon dropped with a clatter from her nerveless fingers to the floor. For a moment they watched licr — noticing the expression of dismay that flitted across her face. They put it down to the loss of her cattle—and a hundred liead of cattle being lost was certainly something to cause her concern. But it was not that. M.org'^ was think- ing only very dimly of the cattle. They formed, as it were, only a background to a rather handsome, smiling face—a liead of curly hair—and a pair of merry eyes that had looked so extraordinarily nice when filled with an expression of di>may and resignation. "Get—get the boys all out. and we'll hunt them over the range!" she whispered. "They can't beat n> it they've, a hundred head of cattle to look after." "They'll bo making for the "border,' t if