want to wake up the
whole outfit? There'll be a lively muss about the time you do, I reckon,
and you'll wish you hadn't. If you can't keep shut, the boss'll be for
making you sleep under the chuck wagon. If you make a racket there, Pong
will dump a pot of boiling water over you. You won't be so fast to wake
up hard working cowboys after that, I reckon."

"What do you want?" demanded the boy. "What'd you wake me up for?"

"It's your trick. Get a move on you and keep still. There's the pony
ready for you. I wouldn't have saddled it but the boss said I must. I
don't take no stock in tenderfoot kids," growled the cowpuncher.

"Is breakfast ready?" asked the boy, tightening his belt and jamming his
sombrero down over his head.

"Breakfast?" jeered Lumpy. "You're lucky to be alive in this outfit, let
alone filling yourself with grub. Get out!"

Stacy ruefully, and still half asleep, made a wide circle around the
sleeping cowmen that he might not make the mistake of again stepping on
any of them.

Lumpy watched him with disapproving eyes.

The lad caught the pony that stood moping in the corral, not appearing
to be aware that his rider was preparing him for the range, Chunky all
the time muttering to himself.

Leading the pony out, the boy gathered up the reins on the right side of
the animal and prepared to mount.

Lumpy Bates came running toward him, not daring to call out for fear of
waking the camp. The cowman was swinging his arms and seeking to attract
the lad's attention. Chunky, however, was too sleepy to see anything so
small as a cowman swinging his arms a rod away.

Placing his right foot in the stirrup, the boy prepared to swing up into
the saddle.

"Hi, there!" hissed Lumpy, filled with indignation that anyone should
attempt to mount a pony from the right side.

His warning came too late. Stacy Brown's left leg swung over the saddle.
No sooner had the pony felt the leather over him than he raised his back
straight up, his head going down almost to the ground.

Stacy shot up into the air as if he had been propelled from a bow gun.
He struck the soft sand several feet in advance of the pony, his face
and head ploughing a little furrow as he drove along on his nose.

He had no more than struck, however, before the irate cowboy had him by
the collar and had jerked the lad to his feet.

"You _tenderfoot_!" he snarled, accenting the words so that they carried
a world of meaning with them. "Don't you k