The Motor Boys on a Ranch; or, Ned, Bob and Jerry Among the Cowboys

“Might have known it would turn out this way if we let him manage things,” grumbled Ned Slade in disgusted tones as he slumped down on one of the forward lockers of a motor boat that was drifting slowly in the middle of a blue lake. “Why didn’t you look after the details yourself, Jerry?”

“Why, Bob said he would see that everything was all right and----”

“Yes! And this shows how much he ‘saw.’ A chap with compound astigmatism in both blinkers could see better than Bob Baker!”

“Oh, come now,” protested Jerry Hopkins in soothing tones. “Aren’t you a bit rough on our fat chum,” and he glanced toward a stout chap who was bending over the motor of the boat, tinkering with its various parts in an endeavor to set it going again.

“Rough on him?” expostulated Ned. “I should say not! I’m like a piece of silk compared to a bit of sandpaper when I think of the things I could say--and haven’t the heart.”

“Don’t stop on my account!” snapped the heavy-weight, over his shoulder. “Get it out of your system and maybe you’ll feel better.”

“I won’t feel better until you get the engine started, so we won’t have to stay out in this broiling sun. And to think there’s a fine feed waiting us at the other end of the lake if we could only get to it! I should have thought you’d have had common sense enough, Bob, where the eats were concerned, to make sure of getting to them.”

“Say! Look here!” and Bob turned fiercely on his tormentor. He tried to seem angry but the effect of a smudge of oil on one cheek, with a daub of black grease on the end of his nose, while one eye appeared as though it had come off second best in a fistic encounter, caused his two companions to laugh, which altogether spoiled the effect of the vigorous protest on which the youth had started.

“How did I know this was going to happen?” he asked, waving a grimy hand at the engine, while, with the other, he beat a tattoo with a monkey wrench on the nearest cylinder. “Could I tell she was going to break down as soon as we got out in the middle of the lake?”

“Break down nothing!” scoffed Ned. “You’re out of gasoline, that’s what’s the matter. You didn’t have sense enough to see that the tank was full before you started.”

“Huh! I s’pose you never overlook a little matter like that?” sneered Bob.

“Of course not,” and, having spoken thus loftily, not to say superciliously, Ned turned away and gazed across the blue waters of Lake Carmona, now sparkling and rather uncomfortably hot under the June sun.

“Guess you don’t remember the time you invited the girls out in the car and got stalled on Mine hill just because of the same little old fact that you forgot the gas?” asked Bob. “How about that?”

“There was a leak in the tank,” defended Ned.

“It takes you to tell it.”

“Oh, dry up and get started!” exclaimed the other.

“Easy, boys,” counseled tall Jerry Hopkins. “This won’t get us anywhere. Is the gasoline really gone, Bob?”

“I guess it is,” answered the stout lad. “I did forget to have ’em put some in the tank, but I thought there was enough for the trip. Anyhow, you needn’t worry about starving. I put in a little sort of snack, as I thought we might get hungry on the way.”

A smile replaced the frown that had come over his face during the contention with Ned, and Bob brought forth from a locker a large box wrapped in paper.

“Look what he calls a little snack!” mocked Jerry, laughing. “There’s enough for a whole day’s rations.”

“Oh, not quite,” declared the stout lad. “This lake air gives me a wonderful appetite.”

“Never knew you to be without an appetite,” commented Ned, and his voice was more friendly. “I’ll take back some of what I said, Bob. But for the love of sulphur matches, what are we going to do? Eating, pleasurable as it is, isn’t going to move the boat.”

“I’ve a little gasoline in the can that I use for priming the cylinders,” returned Bob, after rummaging in the engine locker. “That might take us a little way.”

“Pooh! not a hundred yards,” scoffed Ned.

“Anyhow, lack of gasoline isn’t the only trouble,” went on Bob. “One of the cylinders doesn’t work. It began missing a while back, before the gas gave out. Even with a tank full I couldn’t run the boat until that’s fixed.”

“You get out!” advised Ned. “You forgot the gasoline and that’s all there is to it. And you wanted to have charge of all the arrangements on this little cruise. Well, you’ve had your way, but you won’t again if I know it.

“There’s nothing to do now but row,” he went on. “Not another boat in sight and there isn’t any likelihood of any coming up to this end of the lake to-day. They’re all down at those races. We’re booked for a row, and we ought to make you do it all, Bob Baker.”

“I’ll do my share,” offered the smutty-faced, fat engineer.

“Break out the oars!” cried Jerry. “Never say die! It might be worse. It’ll give us an appetite--rowing. It might be a whole lot worse.”

Ned went aft to where, in a space along the locker tops, the emergency oars were kept. He turned to Jerry and said:

“It couldn’t be!”

“Couldn’t be what?” the tall youth asked in some wonder.

“Any worse. There aren’t any oars!”

“No oars?” cried Jerry.

“Nary an oar!”

Both lads gazed at Bob. He regarded them with a crestfallen countenance.

“Aren’t--aren’t they there?” he asked falteringly.

“Look!” and Ned pointed to the vacant space.

“Hang it all! I did take them out when I was at the dock,” Bob admitted. “I couldn’t get at what was in the locker with the oars on top, so I laid them on the wharf. I meant to put them back again, but----”

Ned groaned and pretended to weep with his head hidden in his arms. Jerry smiled grimly. Bob scratched his head in perplexity.