Sunset Ranch: A Story of a Boy's Adventures in the West — page 43: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Wild Life on the Ranch. 37 and managed to master its intricacies, so that in due time he could throw it over his horse when he wanted a mount. These things pleased him mightily—he was taking on a coat of tan under sun and wind, while his frame became more rugged with the life of exposure he led. As yet Karl had not been wholly taken into his confidence, though the prairie boy began to suspect that it might be some other cause than mere love of adventure that brought Cuthbert Lee so far away from his Eastern home. Some time in the near future, perhaps, when they sat together under the friendly stars and watched the great flock of sheep belonging to the famous Kelly ranch, Cuthbert might in a burst of confidence open his heart to him and relate the circumstances connected with his past. Above all things, Cuthbert delighted to sit with the cowboys when the day’s work was over, and hear them relate their amazing experiences with the legion of dangers that beset the prairie herdsman in those early times. He learned how to separate the wheat from the chaff in these stirring yarns, and thus found a way ~ to profit through the experience of others. In the days to come he would, on more than one occasion, be able to accomplish some difficult task through having had a solution propounded by one who had run up against the same difficulty and conquered it. Thus time went by. Cuthbert appeared to be one of the boys—his tailor-made corduroys had been supplemented with leather “chaps,” he sported a wide felt hat just as saucily as the next one, and carried a quirt attached to his left wrist when driving cattle, the proud in- signia of a cowboy. He had learned to hustle with the best of them,.and few indeed among Kelly’s men CoOmiclbaoo S CO