And there are very few
fences around any of my fields, so the cattle or horses might easily
stray off, or be taken.
"Because of that I have to hire men--cowboys they are called--to
watch my cattle and horses, to see that they do not run away and that
no white men or Indians come and run away with them.
"But sometimes the cattle take it into their heads to run away
themselves. They get frightened--'stampeded' we call it--and they
don't care which way they run. Sometimes a prairie fire will make
them run and again it may be bad men--thieves. The cowboys have to
stop the cattle from running away, and they do it by firing revolvers
in front of them. So it wouldn't do to have real bullets in their
guns when the cowboys are firing that way. They use blank cartridges,
just as they did now to salute you when they came in."
"Is that what they did?" asked Teddy. "Saluted us?"
"That's it. They just thought they'd have a little fun with you--see
if they could scare you, maybe, because you're what they call a
'tenderfoot,' Teddy."
"Pooh, I wasn't afraid!" declared Teddy, perhaps forgetting a
little. "I liked it. It was like the Fourth of July!"
"I didn't like it," said Janet, with a shake of her curly head. "And
what's a soft-foot, Uncle Frank?"
"A soft-foot? Oh, ho! I see!" he laughed. "You mean a tenderfoot!
Well, that's what the Western cowboys call anybody from the East--
where you came from.
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