The Rover Boys At Big Horn Ranch

CHAPTER I. Snow and Snowballs

SNOW AND SNOWBALLS

"Line up, fellows! No crowding ahead in this contest."

"Here, Jack, give me some elbow room if you want me to do any real snowball throwing!" cried Fred Rover.

"All the elbow room you want," returned his cousin gayly.

"Remember the prize!" shouted Andy Rover to the cadets who were stringing themselves out in a ragged line. "The first fellow to throw a snowball over the top of the barn gets a sock doughnut."

"For gracious sake! what do you call a sock doughnut?" demanded Phil Franklin, another cadet, as he paused in the act of rounding up a snowball he was making.

"A sock doughnut is one with a big hole in it," answered Andy, with a grin.

"Then my socks must be all of the doughnut variety," put in one of the cadets dolefully. "They are always full of holes."

"Never mind the socks now!" cried Randy Rover. "Let's see who can put the first snowball over the barn."

It was late in the afternoon of a day in January and a number of the cadets of Colby Hall had been amusing themselves in the snow which covered the ground to a depth of nearly a foot. They had started in to snowballing each other, but had then grown more serious and had built several snow forts and likewise two or three snowmen which later they had taken great sport in knocking apart. Then some one had suggested that they try their skill at seeing who could throw, the highest and farthest, and this had led to the present contest.

"We'll mark off a line about a hundred feet from the main barn," Jack Rover had announced. "And then we'll see who can throw highest over the roof."

The four Rovers were accompanied by half a dozen of their chums and six or eight others, and at the word from Jack the snowballs began to fly at a lively rate, a few landing on the roof of the big barn and the majority hitting the side.

"Say, look out that you don't break a window," warned Gif Garrison. "If you do, you'll have an account to settle with Captain Dale."

"Here she goes!" yelled Dan Soppinger, and let fly with so much strength that the snowball sailed up to the very ridgepole of the barn and disappeared on the other side.

"Hurrah! Dan draws first blood!" shouted Jack.

"Huh! Dan didn't throw over the barn, he just slid over it," snickered Randy.

Jack was hard at work making a small and perfectly round ball. Now, taking careful aim, he let fly with all his might.

"There she goes fair and square," he announced with pardonable pride, as the snowball cleared the top of the barn by several feet and disappeared beyond.

The snowball had scarcely been thrown when two other balls thrown by Fred and another cadet went sailing over the barn. Then those in the contest seemed to acquire better skill, and soon nearly every one of them was topping the barn with the missiles.

"Phew! some hot work, I'll say," panted Will Hendry, usually called Fatty because he was the stoutest boy in the school.

"This exercise will do you good, Fatty," returned Fred. "You need to reduce."

"If Fatty keeps on he'll be eating Colby Hall poor," announced Spouter Powell.

"Huh! I don't eat any more than any of you," grumbled Fatty. "Fact is, I hold myself down."

"Gee! listen to that, will you?" exclaimed Andy. "Fatty says he holds himself down! And this morning I saw him storing away three helpings of sausages and about 'steen dozen buckwheat cakes."

"Nothing of the kind! I didn't have a bit more than you had," growled Hendry. He broke off suddenly. "Hello! what's up now?"

"Hi! Hi! What's the meaning o' this?" cried a voice from around one end of the big barn, and a man, dressed in overalls and a heavy cap and carrying a broom, appeared.

"Hello there, Bob Nixon!" cried Jack. "What's wrong?"

"There'll be a whole lot wrong if you fellows keep on throwing those snowballs much farther," answered Bob Nixon, who was a chauffeur for the Hall and who did all sorts of odd jobs in the winter time.

"Did we hit you?" questioned Phil Franklin.

"You sure did--on the back and on my hand," answered Nixon.

"We didn't know anybody was around on that side of the barn," announced Andy.

"I don't suppose you did. But never mind me. What I want to know is, do you fellows intend to smash all the glass in those hotbed frames out yonder?"

"Great salt mackerel!" ejaculated Fred. "I forgot those hotbed frames were there."

"Why, the glass is out of 'em, anyway, isn't it?" questioned Gif.

"It was out. But they've been setting some of 'em in again, getting ready for some early stuff. You've sent those snowballs up to within ten or fifteen feet of where the frames are located."

"Gosh! it's a good thing you told us of this," burst out Fatty Hendry. "We might have had a nice lot of glassware to pay for."

"Not you, Fatty," grinned Andy. "You never even hit the top of the barn. If you break any glass it will be in some of those basement windows."

"Come on up to the other end of the barn," suggested Gif. "Then the snowballs will fly right out into the open field and do no harm."

"Well, I don't care where you throw 'em as long as you don't get into mischief," answered Bob Nixon, and disappeared into the barn.

After that the cadets continued to throw over the structure for some time. But then they gradually lost interest, and as the short winter day was coming rapidly to an end some hurried into the Hall to do a little extra school work before the bell should ring for supper.

"Well, what next?" questioned Fred Rover, when he and his three cousins and Gif, Phil and Spouter found themselves left alone.

"I've got a great scheme for to-night if you fellows will help," announced Randy. He and his twin brother were always ready for a joke.

"What is it?" questioned Jack quickly.

"This snow is just soft enough for rolling some big balls, as we found out this afternoon," answered his cousin. "What's the matter with making a whole lot of big snowballs and placing 'em in some of the bedrooms to-night?"

"Gee, that's the talk!" cried his twin merrily. "I'd like to place a couple in Codfish's room."

"He certainly deserves 'em," added Fred. "He's getting to be just as big a sneak as he ever was. All of our kindness to him seems to have been useless."

"And I thought he was going to turn over a new leaf," declared Jack. "I wonder if some of the other fellows haven't been teasing him and that has made him go back to his old tricks."

"I know one person I'd like to treat to some big snowballs!" broke out Fred. "That's Professor Duke."

"Oh, say! I'd like to square up with him myself," burst out Andy. "Gee! he certainly did have it in for us yesterday."

"Professor Duke is certainly a sour one--much worse than Asa Lemm ever dared to be," came from Gif.

"I was thinking of Duke when I mentioned it," said Randy. "You know he has his room in our building instead of with the other professors in Colonel Colby's residence."

"We don't want to get in bad with the colonel," remarked Fred seriously.

"Oh, I think we can fix it so that nobody will know who did it," returned his cousin.

The matter was talked over for several minutes, and then, having agreed on their plan for more fun, the Rover boys and their chums set to work rolling a number of snowballs which were two feet or more in diameter. These they placed close to the school building at a point where there was a series of fire-escapes leading down from the upper halls of the institution.

"We can let down the ladder just as soon as we're ready to turn the trick," announced Randy. "I don't believe anybody will notice it, for it will be dark and so cold that most everybody will be indoors."

"We've got to be on our guard to make certain that Codfish or Duke or somebody else doesn't spot us," said Spouter Powell. "Of course it wouldn't hurt if some of the regular fellows found us out, because they'd keep it to themselves."

It must be confessed that the Rover boys were rather preoccupied in mind during supper that evening. In fact, Andy grew so thoughtless that he salted some eggs he was eating three times, so that when he finally came to his senses the food had to be pushed aside. This happened just as Professor Snopper Duke was passing, and the new teacher eyed the young cadet suspiciously.

"What is the matter with that omelet, Rover?" he demanded, in his high-pitched, nervous tone of voice.

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