"Are they shooting real bullets, Uncle Frank?" asked Teddy, as soon
as the noise died down a little and the cowboys were waving their
hats to the Curlytops and the other visitors to Ring Rosy Ranch.

"Real bullets? Bless your heart, no!" exclaimed Mr. Barton. "Of
course the cowboys sometimes have real bullets in their 'guns,' as
they call their revolvers, but they don't shoot 'em for fun."

"What makes them shoot?" asked Janet.

"Well, sometimes it's to scare away bad men who might try to steal
my cattle or horses, and again it's to scare the cattle themselves.
You see," explained Uncle Frank, while the cowboys jumped from their
horses and went to the bunk house to wash and get ready for supper,
"a ranch is just like a big pasture that your Grandfather Martin has
at Cherry Farm. Only my ranch is ever so much bigger than his
pastures, even all of them put together. 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