The Boy Ranchers of Puget Sound

It was the middle of an afternoon in May. An old side-wheeler was steaming south toward Puget Sound across the land-locked waters that lie between Vancouver Island and the state...

Frank awoke a little before daylight, feeling considerably better. The nausea and dizziness had gone, and the sloop seemed to be lying almost still, which was a relief to him. T...

Dusk was not far away when the boys, stumbling down a low hillside, came into sight of an oblong clearing in the forest with a wooden house standing on one side of it. That was...

The two boys spent most of the following week rolling logs and they were busy among them one hot afternoon when Mr. Oliver walked out of the bush nearby. As they did not immedia...

Three or four weeks slipped by uneventfully, and Frank was commencing to like the simple, laborious life at the ranch. He and Harry were standing together one evening on the shi...

Mr. Oliver did not come back until nightfall. He said nothing about his visit to the settlement and several days passed before the boys heard anything further of the matter. In...

Frank looked about him with some curiosity when they reached the settlement, which struck him as a singularly unattractive place. In a hole chopped out of the forest that crept...

Leader was the name of one of the missing horses, and Frank started as he remembered what the storekeeper had said, but feeling Miss Oliver's eyes upon him, turned his head and...

Mr. Oliver bought another horse from one of his scattered neighbors, and a few days afterward he and Jake set off for an inlet along the coast near which a few ranchers lived. H...

The hay was almost in when Frank and Harry stood one evening close under the apex of the roof in the log barn. The crop was heavy and because the barn was small it had been thei...

When the boat brought up to her anchor the boys spent some time straightening up her gear and pumping her out. The work put a little warmth into them, but they were glad to craw...

A couple of days later the party pitched their camp in the depths of a lonely valley sloping to the Pacific, which was not far away. It was filled with great redwoods, balsams a...

It was early in the evening when after a toilsome march Mr. Barclay and the boys reached a Siwash rancherie built just above high-water mark on the pebbly beach of a sheltered i...

"I did," said his father. "You were out of the door before I quite realized what was going on, and it didn't seem altogether wise to commence talking when you came back, but tha...

It was getting dark when the boys retired to their room, in which two beds were standing at opposite corners. Harry chose the one nearest the door, and they left the window open...

"If it was early morning, I'd try one of the rock outcrops where nothing grows," he observed. "The deer get up on to those places out of the dew then. As it's afternoon, I don't...

It was about a week after the boys' hunting trip when Mr. Oliver's nearest neighbor, Mr. Webster, drove up to the ranch in a dilapidated wagon. It was dark when he arrived, for...

On crawling into the cabin Frank found the stove burning fiercely with the register open full blast. He was sitting near it wrapped in a thick blanket from which his bare legs a...

Mr. Oliver came home soon after the boys' visit to the island, and when he had heard Harry's narration of their adventures he made him tell it over again in the presence of Mr....

A month passed, which the boys spent quietly in grubbing up stumps and chopping. Then Mr. Oliver suggested that they go over to Mr. Webster's ranch and burn off his slashing, as...

There was a sprinkle of snow upon the ground, and the boys were working in Mr. Oliver's slashing one afternoon a week after their visit to Mr. Webster's ranch when Harry, who ha...

The frost soon broke up, and it was raining heavily one afternoon, when the boys were at work in an excavation they had driven under a big fir stump shortly after their shooting...

A day or two after they had got back to the ranch Mr. Oliver asked the boys if they would like another trip, and as both of them preferred it to grubbing stumps they paddled off...

After they had trimmed sail Frank sat still for a while to recover his breath and, if possible, his composure. He felt that it was necessary to demand an explanation from his co...

The boys reached the ranch the next morning, and Mr. Oliver, who followed by a different route a couple of days later, seemed satisfied with the result of his journey.

It appeared that one of the letters which Harry had secured was from Mr. Barclay, and shortly after the boys got back to the ranch Mr. Oliver sent them off to Bannington's with...

The wind freshened after they reached shelter and it blew very hard. For a time Frank found sleep impossible, though he was glad to lie snug in the warm cabin with the lamp burn...

Frank had some difficulty in getting about the vessel. She was rolling wildly and loose ropes and blocks whipped blindly to and fro, but he noticed that the boat had gone, and t...

"I don't know exactly. The messenger said several. Besides, the crew of the schooner abandoned her, and it seems likely that they got ashore. That would make two parties who may...

The silence was becoming unendurable when it was suddenly broken by two sharp, ringing crashes in quick succession. Though Frank was afterward ashamed of it, he fairly jumped an...

Three or four days had passed since the attack on the ranch when one afternoon the boys stood on the deck of the sloop. Bright sunshine streamed down on the cove and there was a...