"We are getting nearer Bolo now, and I must stop and eat some luncheon, Genevieve says, as we sha'n't have anything else till supper on the ranch. Oh, I am so excited! Seems as if I couldn't draw a breath deep enough. And the idea of trying to eat when I feel like this!" CHAPTER V THE BOYS PREPARE A WELCOME On the back gallery of the long, low ranch house, the boys were waiting for Teresa to ring the bell for supper. Comfortably they lolled about on hammocks, chairs, and steps, with their shirts open at the neck and plentifully powdered with the dust of the corral. From the doorway, Tim Nolan, the ranch foreman, spoke to them hurriedly. "See here, boys, I'm right sorry, but I've got to see Benson to-morrow about those steers. That means that I've got to go as far as Bolo to-night, and that I sha'n't be back in time to start with the rest of you to meet the folks. But I'll see you in Bolo day after to-morrow at noon. The train is due then. Now be on hand, all of you that can. We want Miss Genevieve and her friends to have a right royal welcome. I reckon now I'd better be off. So long! Now remember--day after to-morrow at noon!" he finished, turning away. "As if we'd be a-forgettin' it," grinned Long John, a tall, lank fellow sprawled in a hammock, "when the little mistress hain't set her pretty foot on the place since last August!" "If only she wa'n't bringin' all them others," groaned the short, sandy-haired man on the steps. "I'd just like to rope the whole bunch and send 'em back East again, old lady and all--all but the little mistress, of course. Boys, what are we a-goin' to do with an old lady--even though she ain't so awful old--and five tom-fool girls on the Six Star Ranch?" "Ees not the Señorita a gurrl, also?" laughed a dark-eyed Mexican from his perch on the gallery railing. "Eh, Reddy?" "Sure, Pedro," retorted the sandy-haired man, testily. (Pedro was the only Mexican cowboy at the ranch, and even he was barely tolerated.) "But the little mistress ain't no tenderfoot girl. She don't howl at a rattlesnake nor jump at a prairie dog; and she knows how to ride, and which end of a gun goes off!" There was a general laugh, followed by a long silence--the boys did not usually talk so much together, but to-night a curious restlessness pervaded them all. Suddenly the tall man in the hammock pulled himself erect. "Look a-here, boys, that's jest it," he began in a worried voice. "What if the little mistress has changed? What if she hain't no use for us and the ranch any more? I never told ye, but at the first, last August, 'fore she went away, I heard the boss and Mr. Hartley a-talkin'. They was sayin' she'd got to go East to learn how to live like a lady should--to know girls, and books, and all that. They said she was runnin' wild here with only us for playmates, and that they had just got ter pasture her out where the grass was finer, and the fences nearer tergether."