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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch, by Annie Roe Carr
+#2 in our series by Annie Roe Carr
+
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+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch
+
+Author: Annie Roe Carr
+
+Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6439]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 14, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NAN SHERWOOD AT ROSE RANCH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Prince, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+NAN SHERWOOD AT ROSE RANCH
+
+OR
+
+THE OLD MEXICAN'S TREASURE
+
+BY
+
+ANNIE ROE CARR
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+I. SCHOOL REOPENS
+
+II. INTRODUCTIONS
+
+III. "CURFEW SHALL NOT RING TO-NIGHT"
+
+IV. WALKING THE PLANK
+
+V. RHODA IS UNPOPULAR
+
+VI. THE MEXICAN GIRL
+
+VII. DOWN THE SLOPE
+
+VIII. AFTERNOON TEA
+
+IX. NOT ALWAYS "BUTTERFINGERS"
+
+X. THE TREASURE OF ROSE RANCH
+
+XI. JUANITA
+
+XII. ROSE RANCH AT LAST
+
+XIII. OPEN SPACES
+
+XIV. THE POOR LITTLE CALF
+
+XV. A TROPHY FOR ROOM EIGHT
+
+XVI. EXPECTATIONS
+
+XVII. THE ROUND-UP
+
+XVIII. THE OUTLAW
+
+XIX. A RAID
+
+XX. THE ANTELOPE HUNT; AND MORE
+
+XXI. IN THE OLD BEAR DEN
+
+XXII. AFTER THE TEMPEST
+
+XXIII. THE LETTER FROM JUANITA
+
+XXIV. UNCERTAINTIES
+
+XXV. THE STAMPEDE
+
+XXVI. WHO ARE THEY?
+
+XXVII. THE FUNNEL
+
+XXVIII. A PRISONER
+
+XXIX. A TAMED OUTLAW
+
+XXX. TREASURE-TROVE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SCHOOL REOPENS
+
+
+"And of course," drawled Laura Polk, she of the irrepressible
+spirits and what Mrs. Cupp called "flamboyant" hair, "she will come
+riding up to the Hall on her trusty pinto pony (whatever kind of
+pony that is), with a gun at her belt and swinging a lariat. She
+will yell for Dr. Beulah to come forth, and the minute the darling
+appears this Rude Rhoda from the Rolling Prairie will proceed to
+rope our dear preceptress and bear her off captive to her lair--"
+
+"My--goodness--gracious--Agnes!" exclaimed Amelia Boggs, more
+frequently addressed as 'Procrastination Boggs', "you are getting
+your metaphors dreadfully mixed. It is a four-legged beast of prey
+that bears its victim away to its 'lair.'"
+
+"How do you know Rollicking Rhoda from Crimson Gulch hasn't four
+legs?" demanded the red-haired girl earnestly. "You know very well
+from what we see in the movies that there are more wonders in the
+'Wild and Woolly West' than are dreamed of in your philosophy,
+Horatio-Amelia."
+
+"One thing I say," said a very much overdressed girl who had
+evidently just arrived, for she had not removed her furs and coat,
+and was warming herself before the open fire in the beautiful
+reception hall where this conversation was going on, "I think
+Lakeview Hall is getting to be dreadfully common, when all sorts
+and conditions of girls are allowed to come here."
+
+"Oh, I guess this Rhododendron-girl from Dead Man's Den has money
+enough to suit even you, Linda," Laura Polk said carelessly.
+
+"Money isn't everything, I hope," said the girl in furs, tossing
+her head.
+
+"Hear! Hear!" exclaimed Laura, and some of the other girls laughed.
+"Linda's had a change of heart."
+
+"Dear me!" sniffed Linda Riggs, "how smart you are, Polk. Just as
+though I was not used to anything but money--"
+
+"True. You are. But you have never talked about much of anything
+else before this particular occasion," said the red-haired girl.
+"What has happened to you, Linda mine, since you separated from us
+all at the beginning of the winter holidays?"
+
+Linda merely sniffed again and turned to speak to her particular
+chum, Cora Courtney.
+
+"You should have been with me in Chicago, Cora--at my cousin, Pearl
+Graves', house. I tried to get Pearl--she's just about our age--to
+come to Lakeview Hall; but she goes to a private school right in
+her neighborhood--oh! a _very_ select place. No girl like this
+wild Western person Polk is talking about, would be received there.
+No, indeed!"
+
+"Hi, Linda!" broke in the irrepressible red-haired girl, "why
+didn't you try to enter that wonderful school?"
+
+"I did ask to. But my father is _so_ old-fashioned," complained Linda.
+"He would not hear of it. Said it would not be treating Dr. Beulah
+right."
+
+"Oh, oh!" groaned Laura. "How the dear doctor would have suffered,
+Linda, if you had not come back to her sheltering arms."
+
+The laugh this raised among the party made Linda's cheeks flame
+more hotly than before. She would not look at the laughing group
+again. A flaxen-haired girl with pink cheeks and blue eyes--one of
+the smallest though not the youngest in the party--came timidly to
+Linda Riggs' elbow.
+
+"Did you spend all your vacation in Chicago?" she asked gently. "I
+was to go to visit Grace; but there was sickness at home, and so I
+couldn't. Didn't the Masons come back with you, Linda?"
+
+"And Nan Sherwood and Bess Harley?" questioned Amelia Boggs, the
+homely girl. "They went to the Masons' to visit, didn't they?"
+
+"I'm sure I could not tell you much about _them_," Linda said,
+shrugging her shoulders. "I had something else to do, I can assure
+you, than to look up Sherwood and Harley."
+
+"Why!" gasped the fair-haired girl, "Grace wrote me that you were
+at her house, and went to the theater with them, and that--that--"
+
+"Well, what of it, Lillie Nevins?" demanded the other sharply.
+
+"In her letter she said you had a dreadful accident. That you were
+run away with in a sleigh and that Nan Sherwood and Walter saved
+your life."
+
+"That sounds interesting!" cried Laura Polk. "So Our Nan has been
+playing the he-ro-wine again? How did it happen?"
+
+"She has been putting herself forward the same as usual," snapped
+Linda Riggs. "I suppose that is what you mean. And Grace is crazy.
+Walter did help me when Madam Graves' horses ran away; but Nan
+Sherwood had nothing to do with it. Or, nothing much, at least."
+
+"Keep on," said Laura Polk, dryly, "and I guess we'll get the facts
+of the case."
+
+"If you think I am going to join this crew that praises Nan
+Sherwood to the skies, you are mistaken," cried Linda.
+
+"All right. We'll hear all about it when Bess Harley comes," said
+Laura, laughing. She did like to plague Linda Riggs.
+
+"Where are Nan and Bess, to say nothing of Gracie?" Amelia Boggs
+wanted to know. "You came on the last train, didn't you, Linda?"
+
+"Oh, I did not pay much attention to those on the train," said
+Linda airily. "Father had his private car put on for me, and I rode
+in that."
+
+Mr. Riggs was president of the railroad, and by no chance did his
+daughter ever let her mates lose sight of that fact.
+
+"My goodness!" exclaimed Cora, "didn't you have anybody with you?"
+
+"Well, no. You see, I invited Walter and Grace Mason, but they had
+people in the chair car they thought they must entertain," and she
+sniffed again.
+
+"Oh, you Linda!" laughed Laura. "I bet I know who they were
+entertaining."
+
+"Here comes the bus!" cried Amelia suddenly.
+
+A rush of more than half the girls gathered about the open hearth
+for the great main entrance door of Lakeview Hall followed the
+announcement. This hall was almost like a castle set upon a high
+cliff overlooking Lake Huron on one side and the straggling town of
+Freeling, and Freeling Inlet, on the other.
+
+The girls flung open the door. The school bus had just stopped
+before the wide veranda. Girls were fairly "boiling out of it," as
+Laura declared. Short, tall, thin, stout girls and girls of all
+ages between ten and seventeen tramped merrily up the steps with
+their handbags. Such a hullabaloo of greeting as there was!
+
+"Come on, Cora," said Linda, haughtily. "Let us go up to our room.
+They are positively vulgar."
+
+"Oh, no, Linda!" Cora cried. "I want to stay and see the fun."
+
+"Fun!" gasped the disdainful Linda.
+
+"Yes," said Cora, who was a terrible toady, but who showed some
+spirit on this occasion. "I want to have fun with the other girls.
+I don't want to be left out of everything just because of you. Even
+if you are going to flock by yourself this term, as you did most of
+last, because you are all the time quarreling with the girls that
+have the nicest times, I'm going to get into the fun."
+
+This, according to Linda Riggs' opinion, was crass ingratitude and
+treachery. Besides, she and Cora had the nicest room in the Hall,
+for it had been fixed up especially for his daughter by Mr. Riggs;
+and Cora, who was poor, was allowed to be Linda's roommate without
+extra charge.
+
+"You mean that you want to run with that Nan Sherwood and Bess
+Harley crew!" exclaimed Linda.
+
+"I want to get into some of the fun. And so do you, Linda! Don't
+act offish," and Cora walked toward the open door to meet the new
+arrivals.
+
+It was a terrible shock to the railroad magnate's daughter--this.
+The defection of her chief henchman and ally would rather break up
+the little group which Laura Polk had unkindly dubbed "the School
+of Snobs." With all her wealth Linda had but few retainers.
+
+In the van of the newcomers were a rather comely, brown-eyed girl
+with a bright and cheerful expression of countenance, a dark beauty
+with curls and flashing eyes, and a demure but pretty girl to whom
+Lillie Nevins ran with exclamations of joy. This last was Grace
+Mason, the flaxen-haired girl's chum.
+
+"Oh, Nancy! how well you look," cried Laura, hugging the brown-eyed
+girl. And to the curly-haired one: "What mischief have you got
+into, Bess? You look just as though you had done something."
+
+"Don't say a word!" gasped Bess Harley in the red-haired girl's
+ear. "It's what we are going to do. Some sawneys have arrived.
+We'll have a procession."
+
+"Oh, say!" exclaimed Amelia Boggs, "there is one special sawney
+expected. Did she come on this train with you other girls?"
+
+"Oh, that's so! Who has seen Roistering Rhoda of the Staked Plains?
+Mrs. Cupp said she was due tonight," cried Laura.
+
+"For goodness' sake!" exclaimed Bess, "who is that?"
+
+"A sawney!" cried one of the other girls.
+
+"They say she is Rhoda Hammond, from the very farthest West there
+is," Laura said gravely. "Of course she will ride in on a mustang,
+or something like that."
+
+"What! with the snow two feet deep?" laughed the brown-eyed girl,
+tossing off her furs and smiling at the group of her schoolmates
+with happy mien.
+
+"Say not so!" begged Laura. "No pony? What is the use of having a
+cow-girl fresh from the wildest West come to Lakeview Hall unless
+she comes in proper character?"
+
+Nan Sherwood, having swept her old friends with her quick glance,
+now looked back at the group that had followed her into the hall.
+The bus had been so crowded and so dark that she had not known half
+of those who had been with her coming up from the Freeling railroad
+station.
+
+"How nice it is to get back, isn't it?" she murmured to her special
+chum, Bess Harley.
+
+"I should say!" agreed Elizabeth, warmly and emphatically.
+
+Laura Polk, as an older girl and, after all, one of the most
+thoughtful, suddenly noticed a stranger in brown who still stood
+just inside the door that somebody had thoughtfully closed.
+
+She made quite a charming, not to say striking, figure, as she
+stood there alone, just the faintest smile upon her lips, yet
+looking quite as neglected and lonely as any novice could possibly
+look.
+
+This stranger wore brown furs and a brown coat, with a hat to match
+on which was a really wonderful brown plume. She wore bronze shoes
+and hose. Even Linda Riggs was dressed no more richly than this
+girl; only the latter was dressed in better taste than Linda.
+
+Laura, leaving the gay company, went quickly toward the girl in
+brown and held out her hand.
+
+"I am sure you are a stranger here," she said. "And I am a member
+of the Welcoming Committee. I am Laura Polk. And you--?"
+
+"I am Rhoda Hammond," said the demure girl quietly.
+
+"What!" almost shouted the startled Laura. "You're never! You can't
+be! Not Rollicking Rhoda from Rustlers' Roost, the wild Western
+adventuress we've heard so much about?"
+
+"No," said the girl in brown, still placidly. "I am Rhoda Hammond
+from Rose Ranch."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+INTRODUCTIONS
+
+
+"Oh, my auntie!" murmured Amelia Boggs, using most uncommendable
+slang. "Stung!"
+
+But Laura Polk, if inclined to be boisterous and rather rude in her
+jokes, was by no means petty. She burst into such a good-natured
+and disarming laugh that the girl in brown was forced to join her.
+
+"There, Laura," said Bess Harley, "the biter for once is the
+bitten. I hope you are properly overcome."
+
+Nan Sherwood likewise hastened to offer the new girl her hand.
+
+"I am glad to greet you, Rhoda Hammond," she said sympathetically.
+"You must not mind our animal spirits. We just do slop over at this
+time, my dear. Wait till you see how gentle and decorous we have to
+be after the semester really begins. This is only letting off
+steam, you know."
+
+"Do you meet all newcomers with the same grade of hospitality?"
+asked Rhoda Hammond, with more than a little sarcasm in both her
+words and tone.
+
+"Only more so," Bess Harley assured her. "Oh, Nan! consider what
+they did to us when we came here for the first time last September.
+'Member?"
+
+Nan nodded with sudden gravity in her pretty face. She was not
+likely to forget that trying time. She had been on a very different
+footing with her schoolmates for the first few weeks of her life at
+Lakeview Hall than she was now.
+
+Rhoda Hammond, the new girl, seemed to apprehend something of this
+change, for she said quickly and with much good sense:
+
+"Well, if you two could stand it, and are evidently so much thought
+of now, I'll grin and bear it, too. Though it isn't just as we are
+taught to treat strangers out home. At Rose Ranch if a person is a
+tenderfoot we try to make it particularly easy for him."
+
+"Oh, my dear," drawled Bess, her eyes dancing, "it works just the
+opposite at a girls' boarding school, believe me!"
+
+Her chum, Nan, was for the moment not in a laughing mood. She could
+scarcely realize now that she was the same Nan Sherwood who had
+come so wonderingly and timidly to Lakeview Hall.
+
+Of the Sherwoods there were only Nan and her father and mother.
+They were an especially warmly attached trio and probably, if a
+most wonderful and startling thing had not happened, Nan and Momsey
+and Papa Sherwood would never have been separated, or been fairly
+shaken out of their family existence, as they had been just about a
+year before this present story opens.
+
+The Sherwoods lived in a little cottage on Amity Street in
+Tillbury. Bess Harley lived with her parents and brothers and
+sisters in the same town; but they were much better off financially
+than the Sherwoods. Mr. Sherwood was a foreman in the Atwater
+Mills, and when that company abruptly closed down, Nan's father was
+thrown out of work and the prospect of real poverty stared the
+Sherwoods in the face.
+
+Then the unexpected happened. A distant relative of Mrs. Sherwood's
+died, leaving her some property in Scotland. But it was necessary
+for her to appear personally before the Scotch courts to obtain
+Hughie Blake's fortune.
+
+Circumstances were such, however, that her parents could not take
+Nan with them. It was a hard blow to the girl; but she was plucky
+and ready to accept the determination of Momsey and Papa Sherwood.
+When they started for Scotland, Nan started for Pine Camp with her
+Uncle Henry, and the first book of this series relates for the most
+part Nan's exciting adventures in the lumber region of the Michigan
+Peninsula, under the title of: "Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp; Or, the
+Old Lumberman's Secret."
+
+As has been mentioned, Nan and her chum, Bess Harley, had come to
+Lakeview Hall the previous September. The matter of Momsey's
+fortune had not then been settled in the Scotch courts; but enough
+money had been advanced to make it possible for Nan to accompany
+her chum to the very good boarding school on the shore of Lake
+Huron.
+
+In "Nan Sherwood at Lakeview Hall; Or, the Mystery of the Haunted
+Boathouse," the two friends are first introduced to boarding-school
+life, and to this very merry, if somewhat thoughtless, company of
+girls that have already been brought to the attention of the reader
+in our present volume.
+
+They were for the most part nice girls and, at heart, kindly
+intentioned; but Nan had gone through some harsh experiences, as
+well as exciting times, during the fall and winter semester at
+Lakeview Hall. She had made friends, as she always did; and the
+Masons, Grace and Walter, determined to have her with them in
+Chicago over the holidays. Therefore, in the third volume of the
+series, "Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays; Or, Rescuing the
+Runaways," we find Nan and her chum with their friends in the great
+city of the Lakes.
+
+During those two weeks of absence from school Nan certainly had
+experienced some exciting times. Included in her adventures were
+her experiences in rescuing two foolish country girls who had run
+away to be motion picture actresses. In addition Nan Sherwood had
+saved little Inez, a street child, and had taken her back to "the
+little dwelling in amity," as Papa Sherwood called their Tillbury
+home. For Nan's parents had returned from across the seas, and she
+was beginning this second semester at Lakeview Hall in a much
+happier state of mind in every way than she had begun the first
+one.
+
+It was only to be expected that Nan would try to make the coming of
+the girl in brown, Rhoda Hammond, more pleasant than her own first
+appearance at school had been.
+
+But the girls who had remained at the Hall over the holidays were
+fairly wild. At least, Mrs. Cupp said so, and Mrs. Cupp, Doctor
+Beulah Prescott's housekeeper, ought to know for she had had
+complete charge of the crowd during the intermission of studies.
+
+"And, believe me," sighed Laura Polk, "we've led the dear some
+dance."
+
+Mrs. Cupp looked very stern now as she suddenly appeared from her
+office at the end of the big hall. She scarcely responded to the
+greetings of the girls who had returned--not even to Nan's--but
+asked in a most forbidding tone:
+
+"Who is there new? Girls who have for the first time arrived, come
+into my office at once. There is time for the usual formalities
+before supper."
+
+"Oh, my dear," murmured Bess Harley wickedly, and loud enough for
+the girl in brown to hear her, "she is in a dreadful temper. She
+certainly will put these poor sawneys through the wringer tonight."
+
+Rhoda Hammond evidently took this "with a grain of salt." She
+asked, before going to the office:
+
+"What sort of instrument of torture is the 'wringer,' please?"
+
+"I am speaking in metaphor," explained Bess. "But you wait! She
+will wring tears from your eyes before she gets through with you.
+As the little girls say, you can see her 'mad is up.'"
+
+"Oh, now, Elizabeth," warned Nan, "don't scare her."
+
+Rhoda walked away without another word. Bess looked after her with
+an admiring light in her eyes.
+
+"Oh, Nan! isn't she beautifully dressed?"
+
+"Richly dressed, I agree," said Nan. "But Mrs. Cupp will have
+something to say about that."
+
+"I know," giggled the wicked and slangy Bess. "She'll give her an
+earful about dressing 'out of order.' She is worse than Linda."
+
+"No. Better," said Nan confidently. "Whoever chose that girl's
+outfit showed beautiful taste, even if she is dressed much too
+richly for the standard of Lakeview Hall."
+
+Linking arms a little later, when the supper gong sounded, the two
+friends from Tillbury sought the pleasant dining-room where the
+whole school--"primes" as well as the four upper divisions--ate at
+long tables, with an instructor in charge of each division.
+
+But discipline was relaxed to-night, as it was always at such
+times. Even Mrs. Cupp, who, all through the meal, marched up and
+down the room with a hawk eye on everything and everybody, was less
+strict than ordinarily.
+
+The moment Nan Sherwood appeared the little girls hailed her as
+their chum and "Big Sister." Nothing would do but she must sit at
+their table and share their food for this one meal.
+
+"Oh, dear, Nan!" cried one little miss, "did you bring back
+Beautiful Beulah all safe and sound with you? Shall we have her to
+play with again this term?"
+
+"Why, bless you, honey!" returned the bigger girl, "I did not even
+take the doll away. Mrs. Cupp has charge of it, and if she lets me,
+we will take it up into Room Seven, Corridor Four, to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, won't that be nice?" acclaimed the little girls, for Nan's big
+doll was an institution at Lakeview Hall among more than the
+children in the primary department.
+
+But at the end of the meal Nan was dragged away by the older girls.
+They were an excited and hilarious crowd.
+
+"There's something doing!" whispered Bess in Nan's ear. "That new
+girl is on our corridor. You know the room that was shut up all
+last term?"
+
+"Number eight?"
+
+"That is the one. Rhoda has got it. And what do you think?"
+
+"Almost any mischief," replied Nan, with dancing eyes.
+
+"Oh, now, Nan! Well, Laura has told her that the room is haunted.
+Says a girl died there two years ago and it's never been used
+since. And so now her ghost will be sure to haunt it--"
+
+"I think that is both mean and silly of Laura," interrupted Nan,
+with vigor. "She will have some of these little girls, who will be
+bound to hear the tale, scared half to death. Is that poor girl
+going to live in Number Eight alone?"
+
+"She is until somebody else comes to mate with her," said Bess
+carelessly. "Come on, old Poky. We're going to have some fun with
+that wild Westerner."
+
+"I'll go along," agreed Nan, smiling again, "if only to make sure
+that you crazy ones do not go too far in your hazing."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+"CURFEW SHALL NOT RING TONIGHT"
+
+
+In Corridor Four had always been centered most of Lakeview Hall's
+"high jinks," to quote Laura Polk. Although Procrastination Boggs,
+Nan Sherwood, Bess Harley, and several other dwellers on this
+corridor stood well up in their classes, Mrs. Cupp was inclined to
+locate most infractions of the school rules in the confines of
+Corridor Four.
+
+"Our overflowing an-i-mile spirits, young ladies, are our bane,"
+quoted Laura, talking through her nose. "Dr. Beulah has been
+away--has not arrived home yet--and we unfortunate orphans have
+been driven to bed with the chickens. I, for one, have revolted."
+
+"You don't look very revolting, Laura," drawled Amelia Boggs, "even
+with that red necktie on crooked."
+
+"Just the same, I have anarchistic tendencies. I feel 'em,"
+declared the red-haired girl.
+
+"That is not anarchism you feel," scoffed Bess. "If I had eaten
+what you did for supper--"
+
+"Oh, say not so!" begged Laura. "Don't tell me that all this
+disturbance within me is from merely what I ate. Why, I feel that I
+might lead an assault on Cupp's office, take her by force, and
+immure her in--"
+
+"The old secret passage to the boathouse," put in Nan.
+
+"Oh, goodness--gracious--Agnes!" said Amelia, looking at one of her
+watches, "if we are going to do anything to that wild Western
+mustang to-night--"
+
+"Hush! Have no fear," interrupted Laura. "There is time enough."
+
+"Procrastination should know that," giggled Bess, "with all the
+watches and clocks she owns."
+
+"While we gab here," went on Amelia, "curfew time approaches."
+
+Laura struck an attitude. "Listen, girls!" she cried. "'Curfew
+shall not ring to-night!'"
+
+"Now, don't begin reciting old chestnuts like that," sniffed Bess.
+
+"It is an announcement of revolt, not a recitation, I'd have you
+know," declared the red-haired girl.
+
+"What do you mean, Laura?" Nan asked, suddenly seeing that Laura
+really had some meaning underneath her raillery.
+
+"Hush, children!" crooned the red-haired girl. "What is our
+greatest trial--our most implacable enemy--in this fair Garden of
+Eves? Tell me!"
+
+"Mrs. Cupp," sighed Nan.
+
+"Nay, nay! She is but the slave of the lamp," responded Laura,
+still in flowery fashion. "The _bete noire_ of the girls of Lakeview
+Hall is the half-past nine o'clock curfew. And I vow it shall not ring
+to-night!"
+
+"Why won't it?" asked Nan, finally grown suspicious.
+
+"Because," hissed Laura, her eyes dancing, "I climbed up into the
+tower this forenoon and unhooked and hid the bell-clapper. They
+won't find it for one while, now you mark my word!"
+
+"Oh, Laura!" gasped Nan; but then she, too, had to join in the peal
+of laughter that the other girls in Room Seven, Corridor Four,
+emitted.
+
+"What a joke!" exclaimed Bess.
+
+"It's one of those jokes best kept secret," advised Amelia Boggs,
+who, after all, possessed a fund of caution. "Mrs. Cupp will be
+desperately moved when she finds it out."
+
+"At least," Nan agreed, "Laura is right. Curfew will not ring
+to-night. But Mrs. Cupp will find some other way of making it known
+that retiring hour has arrived. We'd best get to work if we are
+going to have a procession of the sawneys."
+
+"Girls," suddenly asked Bess, "who ever started that lumberman's
+slang of 'sawney' for 'greenhorn' up in this hall of acquired good
+English?"
+
+"Oh, come, Bess!" groaned Amelia, "the term hasn't really opened
+yet. Don't make us delve into the past for the roots of our
+language. It's us for the procession now!"
+
+Nan Sherwood entered into the plan for the evening's hazing of
+newcomers for a special reason. She had liked the girl from the
+West, Rhoda Hammond, at first sight. Not for her beautiful
+clothing, but for something Nan had seen in her countenance.
+
+The former purposed to take an active part in whatever was done to
+the newcomer because she believed she could influence the more
+thoughtless girls to the extent that nothing very harsh would be
+done to Rhoda.
+
+"I'll stir up the animals," cried Bess, hopping off her bed, where
+she had been perching. "We want a big crowd to help worry that
+Hammond girl."
+
+She was gone in a flash to get together the other girls of Corridor
+Four. Laura yawned:
+
+"I wonder if we'll be able to worry that wild Western young person
+much, after all?" she said. "She looked to me like a cool sort of
+person."
+
+"I don't know," said Amelia. "I think she's stuck up."
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't say that," cried Nan.
+
+"She's dressed to kill, just the same. I'd like to take her for a
+good long tramp in that outfit she came in."
+
+"Procrastination means this Riotous Rhoda has got too much
+money--like Linda Riggs," put in Laura.
+
+"I wonder if that Rose Ranch she comes from is a nice place," said
+Nan. "Just think! A real cattle ranch!"
+
+"Pooh!" said Amelia. "My uncle owns a dairy farm. What's the
+difference whether you have muley cows or long-horned Texas
+steers?"
+
+Laura was still chuckling at this when Bess returned with several
+girls who crowded into the room behind her. There was a busy time
+for a few minutes as the girls dressed Amelia in an old pillow-slip
+with eye-holes burned in it, and placed in her hand the staff of a
+broom, over the brush-end of which was drawn another bag, on which,
+in charcoal, Grace Mason deftly drew a very wise looking owl in
+outline.
+
+Thus arrayed, Amelia was to lead the procession and be Mistress of
+Ceremonies. They were about to start when Laura Polk was suddenly
+missed.
+
+"Now, where has she gone?" demanded Bess. "She's just like a flea!
+You put your hand on her, and there she isn't!"
+
+But Laura was back in a moment. She brought with her, and dangled
+before their wondering gaze, a suit of paint-stained overalls,
+jumper and all, that evidently by their size belonged to Henry, the
+boatkeeper and man of all work of Lakeview Hall.
+
+"I hid 'em the other day," declared the red-haired girl. "You never
+know what may happen, or how such garments as these may come in
+use."
+
+"But, for pity's sake, Laura!" gasped Nan, "what are they for?"
+
+"Don't they make just the uniform needed for a cowgirl? What say? I
+bet she rides astride, and these old overalls will remind her of
+home, at Rustlers' Roost, and all that, you know."
+
+The shrieks of laughter that answered this proposal threatened to
+bring some of the teachers and so spoil the fun altogether.
+Finally, however, Amelia Boggs got the crowd into line, and the
+parade marched out of Room Seven into the corridor.
+
+Room Eight was almost directly opposite the one occupied by Nan and
+Bess; but Amelia led the procession the full length of the hall and
+returned again before rapping a summons on Rhoda Hammond's door.
+
+"Oh, yes! In a minute," cried a small voice from inside.
+
+But Amelia waited on no appeal of this character. She found on
+turning the knob that the door was unlocked. She flung it open and
+stalked in, the other girls trailing two by two behind her.
+
+"Oh, dear me! what do you want?" gasped Rhoda.
+
+She had removed and hung up in the clothes-closet the beautiful
+furs, dress, and hat. Her bag was open on the couch, but it seemed
+to contain no kimono, and the Western girl remained half hidden
+behind the portiere that hung before the closet.
+
+"What do you want?" she repeated, gazing in wonder at the tall
+figure of the Mistress of Ceremonies.
+
+"We are just in time," said Amelia behind her mask, and in a
+supposed-to-be-sepulchral voice. "The sawney is all prepared to don
+her costume. Hither, slave! and see that she dons the costume
+quickly, for we must haste."
+
+"The slave hithers," said Laura jovially. "Here you are,
+Rambunctious Rhoda from Rawhide Springs. Put 'em on."
+
+She held out the overalls and jumper to the surprised new girl, who
+hesitated to take them.
+
+"_Hic jacet!_ The varlet refuses 'em!" hissed the red-haired girl.
+
+"Goodness, Laura," whispered Nan. "That means 'here lies'--and
+nobody is telling stories."
+
+"She's got her Latin and Shakesperean English most awfully mixed,"
+giggled one of the other girls.
+
+"And 'varlet' is the wrong gender, anyway," observed Bess.
+
+"Silence!" commanded the Mistress of Ceremonies. "Silence in the
+ranks. Will she not don the costume?"
+
+"Put 'em on!" commanded Laura again, shaking the painter's suit
+before the hesitating Western girl.
+
+"She would better," said Amelia threateningly, "or I will call to
+your aid all these, my faithful followers, who have already been
+through the fiery trial."
+
+"I don't want to go through any fiery trial," said Rhoda. "But if
+you insist, I'll put on that jacket and the pants."
+
+"'Pants' is truly Western, isn't it, Laura?" asked Amelia Boggs.
+"Civilized folk say trousers."
+
+"I see I have much to learn," said Rhoda, too meekly, perhaps.
+
+She slipped quickly into the roomy overalls behind the curtain, and
+then came forth, putting on the jumper. Her bare arms and shoulders
+were brown and firm. Nan thought Rhoda's figure was as attractive
+as her face was pretty. She caught the new girl's glance and smiled
+encouragingly.
+
+"Doesn't she make a darling boy!" whispered Bess Harley to her
+chum.
+
+But the other girls--at least, some of them--meant to make the
+newcomer feel keenly her position as a "sawney."
+
+"She wears 'em just as though she was at home in them," said Laura
+drawlingly. "I tell you she is a regular cowgirl at home on the Hot
+Dog Mesa. Isn't that so, Miss Rhoda?"
+
+"You seem to know," replied the Western girl bruskly.
+
+Laura suddenly whispered to the hooded Amelia. The latter cleared
+her throat portentously and said:
+
+"Sawney, it is evident that you must be taught your place. Meekness
+becomes you lambkins when you first come to Lakeview Hall. Slave,
+prepare the bandage."
+
+"What's that?" demanded Rhoda. "Do you know, I don't like this
+foolishness much."
+
+"The fiery trial all right for yours!" exclaimed Laura, who had
+caught up a towel and was folding it dexterously. "Turn around!"
+
+"I won't!" declared Rhoda flatly.
+
+"Mutiny!" exclaimed Amelia. "Seize the captive and bandage her eyes
+at once," and she pounded on the floor with the broom handle.
+
+Nan was one of those who grabbed the Western girl. But she did so
+to whisper swiftly in Rhoda's ear:
+
+"Don't fight against it. It's only fun."
+
+"Fun!" repeated Rhoda in disgust.
+
+But she gave over struggling. Laura blindfolded her quickly and
+securely. Of course she might have torn the bandage off, for her
+hands were free. But she waited more calmly now for what might come
+next.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WALKING THE PLANK
+
+
+Nan Sherwood knew very well that there was no intention of really
+injuring the new girl; therefore she made no objection to what was
+done. Indeed, she helped haze Rhoda Hammond, but more for the sake
+of seeing that the Western girl was not taken advantage of in any
+way than for the fun of the prank.
+
+Nan did not know what Amelia and Laura had planned to do to the new
+girl, but knowing the older girls as well as she did, she was sure
+that nothing very bad was intended.
+
+Somebody found an old striped silk parasol with some of the panels
+split, and this was opened and given to Rhoda to carry. The line of
+march was then taken up, with the victim directly behind the
+Mistress of Ceremonies and Laura and Nan shutting off all chance of
+Rhoda's escape.
+
+The latter's cheeks were very red and her teeth gripped her lower
+lip tightly. Bess mentioned, giggling, that Rhoda looked already as
+though she were going through the fiery trial!
+
+Nan realized it would have gone much better for the Western girl if
+she had taken it smiling. She feared that Rhoda's attitude would
+make the hazing more severe and more prolonged. She wished she knew
+what was in the minds of Laura and Amelia Boggs regarding the new
+girl.
+
+The procession marched through Corridor Four to the rear stairway.
+Amelia stalked ahead, carrying the broom, her "wand of office." The
+stairway led threateningly near to Mrs. Cupp's room.
+
+"Don't dare breathe even, while we are going down," hissed Laura.
+
+"Silence!" reiterated Amelia.
+
+They descended carefully--all but the prisoner. But when she made
+too much noise Laura poked her.
+
+"Here!" the red-haired girl muttered, "make believe you are
+stealing upon a band of Indians to scalp 'em--the poor things! You
+don't walk like a prairie rose. You stamp along more like a
+charging buffalo."
+
+"Goodness!" sighed Lillie Nevins, in the rear, "how much our Laura
+knows about the West, doesn't she?"
+
+At the titter which followed this remark, their leader hissed for
+silence again. The procession was now winding down the stairway to
+the rear of Mrs. Cupp's office. They were bound for the basement,
+it seemed.
+
+For a moment Nan Sherwood wondered if the older girls intended to
+reach the subterranean passage which connected the trunk room with
+the boathouse at the foot of the cliff. Then she remembered that
+the trunk room would be locked at this hour and that Mrs. Cupp had
+the key.
+
+But the gymnasium was down here, too. The cellars under the school
+were enormous. Castle-like, the great, rambling building had been
+constructed by a man with more imagination than money. The latter
+ran out before his castle on the cliff was completed. After years
+of emptiness, Dr. Beulah Prescott had obtained it and made it into
+what it now was--a school for girls.
+
+The great gymnasium was not locked. Laura ran quickly when they
+entered the dusky place, and punched the light buttons.
+
+"What do you suppose Mrs. Gleason will say?" whispered Grace Mason.
+Mrs. Gleason was the athletic instructor.
+
+"She won't say a thing if she doesn't know," declared Bess
+promptly.
+
+Some one closed the door, and Nan saw then that there were at least
+twenty girls in the room. Some had joined the procession from other
+corridors. Now they all began to gabble at once, and Amelia pounded
+frantically for order.
+
+Nan saw that the bandage was sufficiently tight across Rhoda's
+eyes. Then she led her into the middle of the great room. Amelia
+was beckoning.
+
+There had been repairs going on in the gymnasium during the
+holidays, and a good deal of the paraphernalia had been
+disarranged. It was evident, too, that the workmen were not
+entirely through. A long plank, used by the men as a scaffolding,
+stretched from one set of horizontal bars to another on the
+platform at one end of the room.
+
+Laura called the other girls and in whispers directed them to
+gather all the mattresses and pile them on the platform under the
+somewhat insecure plank. Amelia, her eyes sparkling through the
+holes in the pillow-slip, held Nan and the prisoner back.
+
+"Sawney," the tall girl said sternly, "as you have filed objections
+to being tried by fire according to the ancient and honorable
+custom of Lakeview lambkins, you shall be treated as a robber--No!
+A pirate. You shall be made to walk the plank."
+
+"Well," said Rhoda, rather scornfully. She did not see anything
+funny in all this.
+
+"It will be a pretty deep well you will plop into," threatened
+Amelia. "Ready, slaves?"
+
+"Your slaves are slavishly ready," called Laura from the platform.
+"Let the sawney climb the ship's taffrail and be plunged into the
+sea."
+
+"We ought to tie her hands behind her," said one girl, as they
+marched down the room.
+
+"No," said Nan.
+
+"That is right," said Amelia. "We must give her a chance to swim
+when she strikes the water."
+
+"Oh, fiddlesticks!" murmured Rhoda.
+
+But Nan saw Laura run and fill a big dipper with water from the
+spigot and give it to one of the other girls, who climbed quickly
+to the platform. Then Laura came to seize the victim's other arm.
+She and Nan marched Rhoda, willy-nilly, down the room and up the
+steps to the platform.
+
+Rhoda stumbled on each step and held her head down. Nan, therefore,
+judged that Rhoda could see a little from under the bandage. But
+she did not call Laura's attention to this fact.
+
+"Mount her quickly, slaves!" called Amelia from below. "Force her
+to walk the plank instantly!"
+
+There had been a stepladder set up against the first horizontal bar
+set, right at the end of the plank. Nan saw that the mattresses
+were all in place and that a fall from the plank would only be
+about three feet. Such a fall was not likely to be serious, and to
+girls used to athletic drill it seemed a mere nothing. And yet--
+
+"Come on!" commanded Laura, half lifting Rhoda up the stepladder.
+
+"Careful, Laura!" whispered Nan. "If she should fall--"
+
+"Then she will escape drowning," said the red-haired girl, coolly
+and aloud.
+
+"Fudge!" muttered the victim, who seemed in a very much disgusted
+mood.
+
+"Beseemeth the candidate is not sufficiently impressed by her
+situation," hissed Laura.
+
+She and Nan had scrambled up the steps with the blindfolded Rhoda.
+There was a cross-plank which gave the three uncertain footing.
+
+"Oh, look out!" gasped Nan, wavering herself upon the edge of the
+plank.
+
+"Hey! We don't want to have to raise the 'man overboard' cry just
+yet," grumbled Laura. "Easy there, Nancy!"
+
+Nan whispered in Rhoda's ear: "Walk straight ahead. It isn't hard.
+I'll be ready to catch you."
+
+"Out on the plank, sawney!" commanded Amelia from below.
+
+Laura pushed Rhoda ahead. The candidate for initiation, even if she
+could see a little from under the bandage, had at best a very
+uncertain idea of where she was, or where she was going. Besides,
+with one's eyes practically blinded, it is very difficult indeed to
+walk a chalk line, even on the floor. And this plank that was far
+from steady was only about a foot in width.
+
+"Oh!" ejaculated Rhoda, one foot before the other and her arms
+waving for a balance. The parasol did not help much.
+
+"Oh! oh! oh!" was the prolonged wail from the crowd below.
+
+"You--think--you're--so--smart!" Again the Western girl teetered
+back and forth. Laura gave her another slight push. Rhoda took one
+more step, and let the parasol fall.
+
+"Good!" encouraged Nan.
+
+"Treason!" croaked Laura, observing Nan's encouragement of the
+candidate.
+
+"Have a care, sawney," declared Amelia Boggs sternly. "A false step
+and you are lost! The ravening sea is below you. Feel the spray
+dashing in your face!"
+
+Quick as a flash the girl with the dipper filled her palm with
+water and threw it upward. It spattered into Rhoda's face and she
+jerked back her head.
+
+The motion destroyed the balance she had gained. She uttered a
+stifled ejaculation and wavered again. Laura stretched out a hand
+and wickedly nudged the victim.
+
+"Oh, don't!" yelled Nan, and she leaped down upon the mattresses.
+
+Rhoda completely lost her equilibrium. She uttered another scream
+and stepped out into space.
+
+"Man overboard!" shouted Laura.
+
+And as Rhoda fell the girl with the dipper flung its contents over
+the flying figure of the new girl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+RHODA IS UNPOPULAR
+
+
+The blindfolded Rhoda came down so awkwardly that Nan feared she
+would be hurt. The girl from Tillbury screamed a warning--which was
+useless.
+
+But in that exciting moment Nan noted something that afterward gave
+her a sidelight upon Rhoda Hammond's character. As the Western girl
+felt herself going she snatched off the blindfolding towel.
+
+Self-possession! Rhoda owned that attribute, largely developed. She
+was cool, if angry.
+
+When she landed on the padded platform, she fell on her knees, and
+the fall must have jarred her. But she was up in a flash, and the
+girl with the dipper, Minnie Wolff, found herself in the muscular
+grasp of Rhoda's arms.
+
+"There, now, I've had enough of this foolishness!" snapped the
+Western girl, limping toward the platform steps. "I've wrenched my
+knee, and I should hope you'd be satisfied. I want nothing more to
+do with your baby plays! I came to Lakeview Hall to study and learn
+something--"
+
+"Oh, you are going to learn something all right," drawled Laura,
+interrupting Rhoda's angry speech. "But I can see it is going to
+take you some time, Miss Rhoda Hammond. You are going to have a
+nice time here!"
+
+Rhoda pushed through the group of girls with blazing face. Her eyes
+were hard and dry. She had evidently hurt her knee quite badly, for
+she could not walk without limping. Nan ran after her.
+
+"Oh, Rhoda, don't take it so," she begged in a whisper. "It will
+make it so much harder for you."
+
+"I don't care!"
+
+"But you want to be friends with us."
+
+"With those girls?" repeated Rhoda, in scorn. "Not much!"
+
+"Oh, yes, you do. Every one of them is nice."
+
+"They act so."
+
+"They are!" reiterated Nan. "And you made Minnie cry."
+
+"What did she want to throw that water on me for?"
+
+"But it didn't hurt you," Nan pointed out. "You are dressed for
+it!"
+
+"Yes," snapped Rhoda, looking down at the jumper and overalls. "I
+look like a silly in these things."
+
+"Well, you don't need to act like a silly," urged Nan, keeping pace
+with her, as Rhoda left the gymnasium. "You are making it awfully
+hard for yourself. The girls won't forgive you."
+
+"Forgive me? Well, I like that!" scoffed Rhoda.
+
+"Oh, yes. It was all in fun. We all have to go through some such
+performance--when we are greenhorns."
+
+"Not for me!" exclaimed the Western girl with emphasis.
+
+Nan was silent for a moment, guiding the new girl through the
+unfamiliar and only half-lighted passages to the back stairway.
+Then Nan asked:
+
+"Does your knee hurt?"
+
+"Of course it does."
+
+"I have some lotion in my room. It is good for a sprain, or
+anything like that. I'll get it for you and you can rub it in well
+when you go to bed."
+
+"If those girls come around to bother me again--"
+
+"I'm afraid they won't," said Nan, sorrowfully.
+
+"You're _afraid_ they won't?"
+
+"Yes. They may let you very much alone. You won't have much fun
+here."
+
+"Humph! I can flock by myself," said Rhoda, quite cheerfully.
+
+"But you can have so much better times if you are friends with the
+other girls."
+
+"I don't know about that. I don't like any of them--as far as I've
+gone. Except you. Out where I come from--at Rose Ranch--there are
+plenty of Mexican girls and Indian girls who are much more ladylike
+than this crowd. Why! these girls are savages."
+
+"Oh, no, Rhoda! Not quite that," laughed Nan. "You don't
+understand. And I am afraid they won't understand you."
+
+"Who wants 'em to?" responded Rhoda Hammond gruffly.
+
+Nan Sherwood took the liniment into Rhoda's room, and when she
+returned, bringing back the overall suit to be returned to Henry,
+she found her chum, Bess Harley, in their room, slowly preparing
+for bed.
+
+"Well! isn't that the greatest girl you ever saw?" exclaimed Bess.
+"She will have a nice time here--not! And I should think you'd not
+have anything to do with her, Nan. The other girls won't like it.
+We're just going to ignore her. A girl who can't take a joke!"
+
+"I shan't have much to do with her until she comes to her senses,"
+Nan admitted. "But I am sorry for her, just the same."
+
+"You'll waste your 'sorry' on that one," laughed Bess.
+
+"Perhaps. But don't you realize, honey, that we came near being
+just as foolish as Rhoda Hammond when we came here last fall?"
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" ejaculated Bess; but she blushed.
+
+"Think," said Nan, with twinkling eyes. "Don't you remember that
+shoe-box lunch we brought with us and that the girls made so much
+sport of? Didn't you get vexed?"
+
+"Oh! Well! Yes, a little," admitted Bess. "But, Nan! I never acted
+as foolishly as this Rhoda Hammond. Now, did I?"
+
+"No, you did not, my dear," agreed her chum.
+
+But she might honestly have claimed credit for this being a fact.
+It had been Nan's better sense and her strong influence over her
+chum that had kept Bess Harley from acting quite as unwisely as
+Rhoda Hammond was now acting.
+
+"I expect," was all Nan said, however, "that this poor Rhoda is
+going to have a very unhappy time of it here, unless she changes
+her attitude."
+
+"Well, she deserves to. She spoiled our fun and she hurt Minnie
+badly. I suppose she's had no sort of bringing-up, coming right
+from that wild country."
+
+Nan chuckled. "I wonder! She thinks we lack proper up-bringing. She
+compares us unfavorably with the Mexican and Indian girls she has
+been used to out on the ranch from which she comes."
+
+"Good-night!" gasped Bess indignantly, as she plunged into bed.
+
+It did not take a seeress to foretell Rhoda Hammond's unpopularity
+during the opening days of this term at Lakeview Hall. It seemed
+that before breakfast the next morning the whole school was buzzing
+with the story of the doings of the girls of Corridor Four.
+
+That a newcomer should set herself contrary to a custom that had
+always been honored at the Hall, was considered unpardonable. Even
+the older girls--seniors and juniors who thought themselves too
+dignified for such escapades--had merely a sarcastic smile for the
+new girl from the West. While the little girls--the "primes"--were
+frankly curious, and could scarcely keep their gaze off Rhoda at
+meals, or in the main hall at chapel.
+
+The privilege of hazing had seldom been abused by the girls. Dr.
+Prescott winked at the romps which never really hurt anybody. No
+girl with "ingrowing dignity," as Amelia Boggs called it, could
+hope to be happy with her fellows at Lakeview Hall.
+
+"A proper amount of hazing is bound to reduce the size of the
+sawney's ego," Laura remarked. "This wild Western person has a
+swelled ego, if ever I saw one. But she shall be let alone, all
+right, if that is what she is so anxious for."
+
+Nan was, as she said, sorry for Rhoda; but she could do nothing
+openly to help matters. She would not speak for the Western girl,
+for she felt that, in justice, Rhoda was in the wrong.
+
+Unlike many of the other girls, however, Nan failed to find
+anything about Rhoda's character to dislike. Even Linda Riggs was
+not pleased with the girl from Rose Ranch. The latter girl
+threatened quite unconsciously to outshine the railroad magnate's
+daughter in point of dress.
+
+Mrs. Cupp had something to say about that. It was said tartly
+enough, of course, and Rhoda had to take it before a good-sized
+party of other girls.
+
+"Where did your mother think you were coming to, Miss Hammond?"
+Mrs. Cupp demanded when she had looked over the contents of Rhoda's
+two trunks. "These clothes might be of use if you expected to
+attend the opera, or appear in society. How absurd to dress a young
+girl in such garments! Your mother--"
+
+"Please, Mrs. Cupp, do not blame my mother if you think these
+things are not suitable for me to wear. She is not at--at fault for
+their selection. They were bought for me by a friend, mostly in
+Chicago."
+
+"Humph! Your mother should have attended to your being properly
+dressed. This is a practical school, not a theatrical company, you
+have come to," snapped Mrs. Cupp, who was always very severe in
+matters of dress. "Your mother--"
+
+"Don't criticize my mother, please," interrupted Rhoda again, and
+her voice was sharper. "My--my mother is blind; she could not pick
+out my clothes."
+
+The statement sponged the smiles from the faces of all the girls
+within hearing. Unpopular as the Western girl was, the fact she had
+made public somehow made the other girls taste pity for her for the
+first time. Bess Harley fairly sobbed when she and Nan got to their
+room with the piles of their own garments, which Mrs. Cupp had
+allowed them to take from their trunks.
+
+"It--it's _mean_ that she should have a blind mother," cried
+Bess angrily. "Why, it makes us sorry for her. And she doesn't
+deserve to be pitied."
+
+"I wonder?" murmured Nan, somewhat moved herself by the incident.
+
+As the days went by, Nan Sherwood wondered more and more about
+Rhoda Hammond. Was she deserving of some sympathy for her situation
+in the school or not? Frankly, Nan was puzzled.
+
+Of course Rhoda was being absolutely left out of all the social
+good times and larks of the girls who should have been her mates.
+Likewise in classes and in indoor athletics she seemed out of
+place.
+
+She had been schooled mostly at home, it appeared. Nan
+understood--although Rhoda did not say as much--that her mother had
+personally conducted much of her education until the last two
+years. Then she had had a governess.
+
+The latter seemed to have been an English woman with rather
+old-fashioned ideas. Rhoda was grounded well in certain branches
+and densely ignorant in others which Dr. Prescott considered
+essential.
+
+And in the athletic classes!
+
+"Why, I thought these Western cowgirls were just like boys--that
+they were even born with an ability to pitch a ball underhand, for
+instance, which we girls are not," sighed Laura. "And look at that
+thing! She doesn't know how to do anything right."
+
+"Oh, not as bad as that," said Nan, smiling.
+
+"Stop trying to make excuses for her, Nan Sherwood," commanded the
+red-haired girl sharply. "I won't have it. She never saw a
+basketball game before. She can scarcely lift herself waist-high on
+the parallel bars. Couldn't chin herself five times in succession
+on the trapeze to save her life. Why! she might as well be her own
+grandmother, she knows so little about athletics."
+
+"Huh!" added Bess Harley with equal disgust, "I heard her tell Mrs.
+Gleason she thought such things were only for boys. She's a regular
+sissy!" But this made her hearers laugh.
+
+Nan joined in the laughter, but she added:
+
+"You get into a wrestling match with her and see if she's a sissy.
+She has developed her muscles by other means than gymnasium tricks.
+She is so very wiry and strong--you have no idea!"
+
+"But she walks so funny," remarked Lillie Nevins.
+
+"Perhaps that is because she has walked so little," said Nan,
+wisely.
+
+"Humph!" Amelia Boggs commented, "has she been used to being pushed
+in a baby carriage?"
+
+"Distances are long out in the cattle country. Everybody rides, I
+guess," Nan observed.
+
+"Well," one of the older girls remarked, "she's no material for
+basketball, or any other team. She can't even run, it seems. I
+guess we'll have to pass her up."
+
+Nor did Rhoda seem to mind being "passed up." At least, if she
+missed the companionship of her schoolmates, she did not show it.
+Perhaps Nan Sherwood worried more about Rhoda than Rhoda did about
+herself.
+
+There came a day, however, when the girls of Lakeview Hall saw
+something in the girl from Rose Ranch that they were bound to
+admire. Rhoda Hammond possessed one faculty that raised her, head
+and shoulders, above most of her schoolmates who so derided her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE MEXICAN GIRL
+
+
+The schoolwork was in full swing by this time, and almost every
+girl seemed to be doing well. "Dr. Beulah," as her pupils lovingly
+called the head of the school (though not, of course, to her face),
+went about with a smile most of the time; and even Mrs. Cupp was
+less grim than usual.
+
+There was an early January thaw that spoiled all outdoor sport for
+the Lakeview Hall girls. Skating, bobsledding, skiing, and even
+walking, was taboo for a while, for there was more mud in sight
+than snow. The girls had to look for entertainment on Saturday in
+other directions.
+
+Therefore it was considered a real godsend by the girls of Corridor
+Four when Lillie Nevins told them of the new shop at Adminster.
+Adminster was about ten miles from Freeling, the little town under
+the cliff, where the Lakeview Hall girls usually shopped.
+
+"It must be a delightfully funny store," said the flaxen-haired
+Lillie. "It's full of those Indian blankets, and bead-trimmed
+things, and Mexican drawn-work, and pottery. Oh! ancient pots and
+pitchers--"
+
+"Made last year in New Jersey?" scoffed Laura Polk.
+
+"No, no! These are real Mexican. Doctor Larry's girls told me about
+it. They have been over there and bought the loveliest things!"
+
+There was a good deal of talk about this. It was at the supper
+table. Nan and Bess were just as much interested as the other
+girls, and they determined to go to the Mexican curio shop if they
+could obtain permission.
+
+Nan noticed that for once Rhoda seemed interested in what the other
+girls were saying. Her brown eyes sparkled and a little color came
+and went in her cheeks as the discussion went on.
+
+The girl from Tillbury was tempted to invite Rhoda to go with her
+on Saturday. Yet she felt that Rhoda was not in a mood to accept
+any overture of peace. The Western girl treated Nan herself well
+enough; but Nan could not offend her older friends by showing Rhoda
+Hammond many favors.
+
+So many of the girls asked permission to visit Adminster on the
+next Saturday afternoon that Mrs. Cupp allowed Miss March, one of
+the younger instructors and a favorite of the girls, to accompany
+them.
+
+It was quite a party that picked its way down the muddy track into
+Freeling's Main Street where the interurban trolley car passed
+through toward Adminster. The girls under Miss March's care all but
+filled the car when it came along; but they were hardly settled
+when they spied Rhoda Hammond already sitting in a corner by
+herself.
+
+"Why, Rhoda," said Miss March, rising and going to the Western girl
+as the car started, "I did not get your name as one of my party."
+
+"No, Miss March," said Rhoda coolly.
+
+"Did you obtain permission to leave the school premises? That is a
+rule, you know."
+
+"Yes, Miss March," said Rhoda, "I obtained permission."
+
+"From whom, Rhoda?" asked the instructor, rather puzzled.
+
+"I telegraphed yesterday to my father. He sent a night letter to
+Dr. Prescott, and she got it this morning. She gave it to me. Here
+it is," said the Western girl, taking the crumpled message from her
+handbag and handing it to the teacher.
+
+Miss March looked amazed when she had read the long message. "Dr.
+Prescott, then, granted you this privilege which he asks here?"
+
+"Yes, Miss March," said Rhoda coldly, and Miss March went back to
+her seat.
+
+"Did you ever?" gasped Bess to Nan and Laura. "Why, it must have
+cost five dollars or more to telegraph back and forth."
+
+"Humph! she certainly doesn't know the value of money," commented
+Laura. "She is more recklessly extravagant than Linda."
+
+The rest of the girls paid no further attention to Rhoda. They were
+having too good a time among themselves. As there were few other
+passengers on that car to Adminster, the Lakeview Hall pupils came
+very near to taking charge of it. The conductor was good-natured,
+and the girls' fun was kept in bounds by Miss March.
+
+All the time the Western girl sat in her corner and looked out of
+the front window at the dreary landscape. It seemed too bad, Nan
+Sherwood thought more than once, that Rhoda should have allowed
+herself to become so frankly ignored by her schoolmates.
+
+Nan missed her when the crowd got out of the car in Adminster. This
+was a larger town than Freeling, and it was on the main railroad
+line instead of a branch line, as Freeling was. But at that,
+Adminster was not very metropolitan.
+
+However, the stores fronting on the main street were rather
+attractive shops. Bess and Grace, with Nan herself, had some things
+to buy in the department store which was the town's chief emporium,
+and they separated for a while from the rest of the party.
+
+But when the trio entered the Mexican shop, which was on a side
+street, there was the whole party of their schoolmates under Miss
+March's charge.
+
+Some of the girls had already made purchases, and all were excited
+over certain finds they had made in the stock. Like all such stores
+that are established for a few months only, and move from town to
+town, there was much trash exhibited together with some really
+worth while merchandise from the Southwest.
+
+Not all of the girls knew how to select the good from the trashy
+merchandise. There were a man, a woman, and a young girl who waited
+on the customers, all dressed in Mexican costumes; they were too
+wise to interfere much with the selections of the customers in any
+department.
+
+The young girl came forward to meet Nan and her companions,
+courteously offering her services in showing any goods they might
+wish to look at Nan shrewdly suspected the man and woman to be
+Jews; but this girl, with her large, black eyes, raven hair, and
+flashing white teeth, was undoubtedly a Mexican. She was very
+pretty.
+
+"I can show what dhe yoong ladies want--yes?" she inquired with a
+most disarming smile.
+
+"Oh, we want to look about, first of all," cried Bess. "Look at all
+those blankets, Nan! What bully things to throw over our couch!"
+
+"And that lovely spread!" cried Grace.
+
+They went from one lot of goods to another.
+
+The Mexican girl, smiling and quite enjoying their comments,
+strolled after them. Nan turned to ask her a question regarding a
+beaded cloth that was evidently meant for a table-scarf. And at the
+moment Rhoda Hammond entered the shop.
+
+The saleswoman was nearest and she turned to welcome the Western
+girl. But Nan saw that the girl who was waiting on her started as
+though to approach the newcomer. Then she stopped, and under her
+breath hissed an exclamation that must have been in Spanish.
+
+The girl's eyes blazed, her black brows drew together, and she gave
+every indication of an excitement that was originated by anger. It
+could be nothing else!
+
+Rhoda Hammond was perfectly unconscious of either the Mexican
+girl's attention, or her emotion. With the saleswoman who had come
+to wait on her the girl from Rose Ranch was discussing the price of
+a piece of pottery which had attracted her notice.
+
+Suddenly the Mexican girl turned to see Nan Sherwood staring at her
+in wonder. She flushed darkly and was at first inclined to turn
+away. Then her excitement overpowered her natural caution. She
+seized Nan by the wrist with a pressure of her fingers that
+actually hurt.
+
+"You know all dhese yoong ladies--yes?" she demanded. "Dhey all
+coom wit' you? Huh?"
+
+"Why, yes. We all come from the same school," admitted the
+astonished Nan.
+
+"You know dhat girl?" asked the Mexican, pointing quickly at Rhoda.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She do go to school wit' you all--yes? Her name?" demanded the
+other.
+
+"Why--"
+
+"Eet ees Ham-mon'--no?" hissed the strangely acting girl. "Senorita
+Ham-mon'?"
+
+"Her name is Hammond. Yes. Rhoda Hammond," admitted Nan, scarcely
+knowing whether it was right to tell the girl this fact or not.
+
+"Ah, eet ees so! Senorita Ham-mon', of dhe Ranchio Rose. Huh?"
+
+"Why--why--" gasped Nan. "Yes, her home is at Rose Ranch. That is
+what she calls it."
+
+"Ah!" hissed the Mexican girl, her eyes still glittering angrily.
+"See! See how reech she is dress'. Huh! The treasure of Ranchio
+Rose buy dhose dress'. Huh! Ah!"
+
+She flung herself about and walked hastily to the back of the
+store. Nan was speechless. She stood utterly amazed by the Mexican
+girl's words and actions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+DOWN THE SLOPE
+
+
+Nobody seemed to have noticed the strange actions of the Mexican
+girl save Nan--least of all Rhoda herself. There was no time to
+speak of the incident while they remained in the shop, even had Nan
+decided that it was best to do so.
+
+The Mexican girl did not reappear from the rear of the shop. The
+girls all bought something--perhaps not wisely in every case. Nan
+Sherwood saw a queer smile on Rhoda Hammond's face as she noted
+some of the trinkets the other girls purchased. Of course, the girl
+from Rose Ranch could have advised them about the real value of
+these articles. But who would ask her?
+
+It really was too bad. Most of the crowd ignored Rhoda Hammond
+altogether. They did not even speak to her when they brushed her
+furs in passing.
+
+Rhoda was beautifully dressed, and Bess audibly wondered who had
+purchased Rhoda's clothes, as her mother's affliction made it
+impossible for her to have selected them.
+
+The Western girl left the store before the others had finished
+shopping and Nan fancied Rhoda intended to catch an earlier car
+back to Freeling than the one Miss March and her party were to
+take. Nan said nothing to Bess or to Grace regarding the peculiar
+actions of the Mexican girl who had evidently recognized Rhoda, and
+knew where she came from. Nan was enormously interested in the
+mystery; but she did not think it was right to make common property
+of what she had seen or heard. She was the more tempted to go to
+Rhoda herself and ask about it.
+
+Perhaps it was something that Rhoda really ought to know. The
+Mexican girl had looked at the unnoticing Rhoda in a very angry
+way. And she had spoken very strangely.
+
+"The treasure of the Ranchio Rose buy those dresses."
+
+That was a very peculiar way to have spoken, to say the least. What
+was "the treasure of Rose Ranch?" Nan was very desirous of asking
+Rhoda Hammond to explain.
+
+Of course she could not make the inquiry without telling Rhoda
+about the Mexican girl. Nan wondered if that would be a wise thing
+to do. Rhoda had not appeared to notice the strange girl. Had she
+done so, would she have recognized the Mexican as the latter had
+her?
+
+All the time these thoughts and queries were rioting in Nan
+Sherwood's mind she had to give her open attention to the buying of
+certain articles and to the questions and observations of the other
+girls. She and Bess purchased several things for their room; but
+Nan would have been better satisfied if they had been intimate
+enough with Rhoda to have asked her advice about the purchases.
+
+They all trooped out with their bundles at last.
+
+"My goodness!" laughed Bess, "we look like a gang of Italian
+immigrants being taken by a padrone into the woods. Only we should
+wear shawls over our heads instead of hats."
+
+They went merrily along the streets to the point from which the car
+for Freeling started, and lo! there was Rhoda Hammond. She had
+evidently missed the previous car.
+
+"Is that girl going to tag us wherever we go?" Bess asked, with
+some vexation.
+
+"Sh!" warned Grace. "She has a perfect right to come over here to
+Adminster, of course."
+
+"My goodness! I should say she has," Lillie Nevins said, laughing.
+"After telegraphing to her father for permission."
+
+When the car came along Rhoda got in at the front and took the
+corner seat again, while the others crowded in through the rear
+door. The old man who acted as motorman was well known to some of
+the girls, and they hailed him, as well as the conductor, gayly.
+But the motorman seemed in no pleasant mood, for he scarcely
+answered their sallies.
+
+He shut himself into the forward platform before the conductor gave
+the signal for starting, and dropped the latch on the double doors
+so that the girls should not disturb him. When the conductor took
+up the fares he said, on being questioned by Laura Polk:
+
+"Oh, John is not feeling well, I guess. He hasn't acted like
+himself all day. But it's as much as my life's worth to ask him how
+he feels. He's got the temper of a wolf when he's under the
+weather--poor old John has."
+
+Of course, the girls gave the motorman little attention--unless
+Rhoda did from her situation up front. The rest of them only
+noticed him when he started or stopped the car with more than
+ordinary abruptness.
+
+"I do wish he wouldn't jerk the car so," complained Laura Polk.
+"He's made me almost swallow my gum twice."
+
+"Gracious, Laura!" gasped Lillie Nevins, looking alarmed, "if you
+really have any gum you had better swallow it before Miss March
+sees you."
+
+At this Laura merely chuckled delightedly.
+
+"I really don't like the way this man is running the car," Miss
+March said finally to the conductor. "Tell him to have a care. He
+will have us off the track."
+
+The interurban line was not a smooth, straight-ahead road. They
+swung around turns that were somewhat sharp. John stormed along as
+though he were running on a perfectly straight track.
+
+"I'll see what I can do," said the conductor doubtfully, and he
+went forward and tapped on the glass of the front door. But the
+motorman only gave him an angry glance and would not even reach
+around and lift the latch.
+
+"He's running away with us!" exclaimed Lillie Nevins, who was
+always easily frightened.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" laughed another girl. "What an elopement!"
+
+"I hate to do it," said the conductor, when he came back to Miss
+March. "But I'll report him to the inspector when we get to the end
+of the route."
+
+The car topped the heights of the ridge of hills that lay between
+Adminster and Freeling. On the Freeling side of the ridge the slope
+to the valley was almost continuous. But near the bottom was a
+sharp curve. Here was a low stone wall along the edge of the road,
+beyond which was a sheer drop of thirty or more feet into a rocky
+gorge. It was a perilous spot. More than one accident had happened
+there; but never an electric car accident.
+
+The rapidity with which the motorman ran the car, and the jerky way
+in which he stopped and started it, did not bother Nan Sherwood
+much, for she was not nervous. Miss March, however, began to stare
+ahead apprehensively, and the way in which she twisted her
+pocket-handkerchief in her hands as the car started down the long
+slope betrayed her feelings. Nan was really sorry for Miss March.
+
+The wheels pounded over the rail-joints and the car began to rock
+threateningly. A small obstruction on the track would very likely
+have thrown the car off the rails.
+
+"I do wish that man would have a care," sighed Miss March.
+
+Nan jumped up. She feared that the teacher would soon become
+hysterical. Also, Grace and Lillie began to betray fear and more of
+the girls were anxious. Nan stumbled forward to the end of the car.
+Rhoda sat there, looking ahead, and betraying no emotion at all.
+
+Nan could see the shoulders of the motorman, who was sitting on the
+one-legged stool on which he had a right to rest when the car was
+out of town. The rules of the company did not force him to stand
+all the time. His head seemed to sag forward on his breast. The car
+was running so fast that he pitched from side to side on his seat--
+
+Or was it from some other reason that his body swayed so? The
+question shocked Nan Sherwood.
+
+"Oh, Rhoda!" she exclaimed, turning to the Western girl, "what is
+the matter with him?"
+
+Rhoda Hammond sprang up. Her face was pale but her lips were firmly
+compressed. She clung to the handle of the door. Nan was holding
+herself upright by clinging to the other handle.
+
+"There is something the matter with that man!" cried the girl from
+Tillbury.
+
+They shook the door handles. Of course they could not open the
+door, nor did the motorman heed them in any way.
+
+Nan screamed aloud then. She saw the hands of the man slip from the
+handle of the brake and from the controller. The car seemed to leap
+ahead, gaining additional speed. The man slipped sideways from his
+stool and crumpled on the platform of the car.
+
+The other girls did not see this. Even the conductor on the rear
+platform did not know what had happened. Only Nan and Rhoda
+realized fully the trouble.
+
+"My dear!" gasped Nan, "we cannot get to him. And nobody can stop
+the car!"
+
+She felt almost a sensation of nausea at the pit of her stomach.
+She did not weep or lose control of herself. But she felt
+frightfully helpless.
+
+There seemed nothing to do but to stand there, clinging to the door
+handle, and watch the car reeling down the slope at a speed that
+promised disaster at the curve, if not before. Never in her life,
+in any time of emergency, had Nan Sherwood felt so utterly
+helpless.
+
+The girl from the West said not a word. She, too, clung to the
+handle and stared through the pane at the crumpled figure of the
+motorman on the platform. But she remained thus only for a moment.
+
+Suddenly she swung sideways and pushed Nan away from the door. The
+latter tumbled into the nearest seat. Hanging by her left hand to
+the door handle, Rhoda Hammond doubled her gloved right and smashed
+one of the glass panes in the door.
+
+At the crash of glass Nan sprang to Rhoda's side, and everybody
+screamed. The conductor burst open the rear door and started
+forward. Rhoda paid no attention to the shouts behind her.
+
+She reached through the broken pane and lifted the latch which held
+the two halves of the door together. She flung them apart and
+leaped down the single step to the enclosed front platform of the
+car, Nan close at her side.
+
+The conductor arrived. But it was the girl from Rose Ranch who did
+it all. She seized the controller and turned off the current. Her
+right hand wound up the brake as though she had practiced the work.
+Fast as the car was speeding, the pressure on the wheels made
+itself felt almost at once. Nan wished to help, but realized that
+in her ignorance she might blunder, so held herself in.
+
+"What's happened to John?" demanded the conductor. "My goodness!"
+he added to Rhoda, "you're a smart girl."
+
+But he took her place at the brake. The car did not halt at once.
+It ran down almost to the turn in the road before it came to a
+jarring halt.
+
+Some of the frightened girls had gathered around Miss March. The
+others crowded forward. Nan was holding Rhoda Hammond tight about
+the neck, and she kissed her warmly.
+
+"You are a splendid girl, Rhoda!" Nan cried. "You stopped the car."
+
+"I didn't see that you showed any white feather, Nan," urged Bess
+Harley.
+
+"Ah, but Rhoda was more than brave. She knew what to do. We'd have
+gone off the track and pitched over that wall probably, if it had
+depended on me to stop this old car," declared Nan generously.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+AFTERNOON TEA
+
+
+The girls from Lakeview Hall were not likely to forget their
+experience on the car for many a long day. And they were honestly
+appreciative of the fact that Rhoda Hammond, the girl from Rose
+Ranch, had saved their lives.
+
+But they did not really know how to show Rhoda that, in spite of
+her bad start at the Hall, the attitude of at least the party of
+girls who had been with her in the electric car, had changed toward
+her.
+
+Nan put her arms about the Western girl and kissed her warmly. She
+could do that, for from the start she had been kind to the girl
+from Rose Ranch. But the others hesitated. Rhoda was not a shallow
+girl. She did not turn easily from one attitude to another.
+
+The unconscious motorman had been picked up and laid on a seat in
+the car, and the conductor had run them into Freeling. John was
+there put in a hospital ambulance. That was all they could do for
+him.
+
+The doctors said he had been walking around suffering from
+pneumonia for several days. The girls sent him flowers and some
+other luxuries and comforts when he was better.
+
+But what could they do for Rhoda?
+
+"I don't think we had better try to do anything _for_ her," Nan
+finally said, after suggestions had been discussed ranging from
+presenting Rhoda with a gold medal to falling down on their knees
+and begging her forgiveness.
+
+"We have nothing really to ask her pardon for. It actually was her
+own stupidity that made her begin so unfortunately among us. She,
+perhaps, can't see that. Or, if she does, she is too obstinate to
+admit it."
+
+"Why, Nan!" cried warm-hearted Bess Harley, who, once moved in the
+right direction, could not do too much for the object of her
+approval. "Why, Nan! you speak as though you did not like Rhoda,
+after all. You are the only one who stood up for her all those
+weeks."
+
+"When did I stand up for her?" demanded Nan. "I would not treat her
+unkindly. But I have thought all the time she was in the wrong. And
+there is no use going to Rhoda and telling her we were wrong and
+that we are sorry. That would not only be a falsehood, but it would
+do no lasting good."
+
+"Hear! Hear!" cried Amelia. "Minerva Sherwood speaks."
+
+"I guess Nan has got the 'wise' of it," agreed Laura. "No matter
+how well we may think of Rhoda, she would be equally offended if we
+all suddenly changed toward her in a way to make her conspicuous.
+We must begin treating her naturally."
+
+"That's all right," agreed Amelia. "But we cannot overlook the
+incident of that car ride."
+
+"I should say not!" exclaimed Bess Harley.
+
+"Everybody is talking about it," said Grace.
+
+"Dr. Beulah spoke of it this morning at chapel," Lillie said,
+"although she did not mention Rhoda's name."
+
+"But everybody knew who she meant," Bess declared.
+
+"For that she can thank Miss March," laughed Laura. "She will never
+get over talking about Rhoda's bravery."
+
+"And poor Rhoda looked scared in chapel," said Nan. "She thought
+she was going to be publicly commended for what she had done," and
+Nan finished with laughter.
+
+"Well," cried Bess, "what shall we do, girls?"
+
+"No," Nan said once more with gravity, "that isn't it. It's what
+will she do? That is the question. Let Rhoda meet us half way, at
+least. Otherwise we'll all be stiff and formal and never get any
+nearer to that wild Western girl than before. I'll tell you!"
+
+"Go ahead. That's what we are waiting for. Tell us," begged Laura.
+
+They gathered closer about the girl from Tillbury and Nan lowered
+her voice while she explained her idea. So the girls of Corridor
+Four--at least, all those who had been aboard the electric car when
+Rhoda's self-possession had saved them from disaster--were merely
+courteous to the girl from Rose Ranch, or smiled at her when they
+met, and kept deftly away from the exciting adventure in their
+conversation while Rhoda was near.
+
+Apparently the afternoon tea was given in Room Seven in honor of
+Beautiful Beulah, Nan's famous doll.
+
+"But I'm too big to play dolls," Rhoda Hammond objected when Nan
+urged her attendance on a rainy Saturday afternoon.
+
+"Pshaw!" laughed Nan, "you're not too big to pass tea and cocoa and
+sweet crackers to the primes who will come to worship at the shrine
+of my Beautiful Beulah. That's what I want you for--to help. Bess
+and I can't do it all."
+
+It was hard to refuse Nan Sherwood anything.
+
+"Laura declares one has to be real mad at you to get out of
+anything you want us to do!" complained Bess one day, when yielding
+to Nan's pressure and doing something she would have preferred not
+to do.
+
+These "doll-teas" in Number Seven, Corridor Four, had become very
+popular toward the latter end of the previous term at Lakeview
+Hall. Every girl in the school--even the seniors and juniors--knew
+of Beautiful Beulah, and the little girls in the primary department
+flocked to Nan Sherwood's parties whenever they had the chance,
+bringing their own dolls.
+
+On this particular occasion, however, the young girls came early,
+were "primed" (as Laura said) with goodies and cocoa, and sent
+away; the older girls, dropping in one by one, were huddled on
+beds, chairs, the couch, and even sat Turk-fashion on the floor,
+gradually filling the room. The crowd included all those girls who
+had gone to Adminster two Saturdays previous.
+
+Nan had kept Rhoda so busy helping behind the tea table that the
+Western girl did not realize at once how the character of the party
+had changed. And shrewd Nan had got Rhoda to talking, too.
+
+A query or two about Rose Ranch, something about the Navaho blanket
+Nan and her chum had bought for their couch--before she knew it the
+girl from the West was eagerly describing her home, and telling
+more in ten minutes about her life before she had come to Lakeview
+Hall than she had related to anybody in all the weeks she had been
+here.
+
+"Rose Ranch must be a great place," sighed Bess longingly.
+
+"A beautiful country?" suggested Amelia.
+
+"Magnificent views all around us," Rhoda agreed softly. "A range of
+hills to the southeast that we call the Blue Buttes. Many mesas on
+their tops, you know, on which the ancient Indian peoples used to
+till their gardens. There was a city of Cliff Dwellers not fifty
+miles from our house."
+
+"Sounds awf'ly interesting," declared Laura.
+
+"And winding through the Blue Buttes is the old Spanish Trail. Up
+from Mexico by that trail came the Spanish Conquistadors, they
+say," Rhoda went on, quite excited herself now, in telling of her
+home and its surroundings.
+
+"And I s'pose there's an electric car line running through those
+hills now--on the Spanish Trail, I mean?" laughed Laura.
+
+"Well, no. We're not quite as far advanced as that," the Western
+girl said, good-naturedly enough. "But we don't have any Indian
+scares nowadays. The Indians used to ride through that gap in the
+Blue Buttes years ago. Now it's only Mexican bandits."
+
+"Never!" gasped Bess, sitting up suddenly.
+
+"You don't mean it?" from Grace and Lillie in unison.
+
+"You're just spoofing us, aren't you, Rhoda?" drawled Amelia Boggs.
+
+"No, no. We do have Mexican bandits. There is Lobarto. He is no
+myth."
+
+"Fancy!" exclaimed one of the other girls. "A live bandit!"
+
+"Very much so," said Rhoda. "He has made us a lot of trouble, this
+Lobarto; although it has been six years since he came into our
+neighborhood last. He drove off a band of father's horses at that
+time. But our boys got after him so quick and chased him so hard
+that they say he took less back to Mexico with him than be brought
+over the border."
+
+"What does that mean?" asked Bess quickly.
+
+"Why, he brought with him a lot of plunder, they say," Rhoda
+explained, "and he could not carry it back."
+
+"Then your folks got the plunder?" inquired Nan.
+
+"Not exactly! Lobarto hid it. But our boys got back the horses. And
+they killed several of Lobarto's gang."
+
+"Mercy! Just listen to her!" cried Laura excitedly. "Why! I was
+just making believe about your coming from the wild and woolly
+West; and you really do!"
+
+"Not very woolly around Rose Ranch," said Rhoda grimly. "Father
+does not approve of sheep. The nesters make us trouble enough,
+without having sheepmen."
+
+"What are 'nesters'?" asked Amelia.
+
+"I guess you'd call 'em 'squatters' farther East. We don't like
+them on the ranges. They are small farmers who come and take up
+quarter sections of the open lands and fence them in."
+
+"But is there really a treasure buried on Rose Ranch?" asked Nan,
+much more interested in this than she wished the others to observe.
+
+"Why, I suppose so. They all say so. Lobarto and his gang were run
+off so quick that he had to cache almost everything but the hard
+cash he had with him. He had raided two churches in Mexico and
+plundered several haciendas before coming up from the Border, so
+people say."
+
+"Why don't you ranch folks go and dig up his loot?" demanded Bess,
+wide-eyed.
+
+"Well," laughed Rhoda, "we don't know where it is cached. It sounds
+rather preposterous, too--a wagon-load of gold and silver plate,
+altar ornaments, candlesticks, jeweled cloths, and all that. It
+does sound sort of romantic, doesn't it?"
+
+"I should say it did!" the girls chorused.
+
+Nan did not say another word in comment at the time. She was
+enormously curious about what she had overheard the Mexican girl
+say in the shop at Adminster. And how strangely she had stared at
+Rhoda Hammond!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+NOT ALWAYS "BUTTERFINGERS"
+
+
+Following that afternoon tea matters changed for Rhoda Hammond at
+Lakeview Hall. Nor did she overlook Nan's part in bringing her into
+the social life of the girls whom she met in classes and at the
+table.
+
+At her books Rhoda was neither brilliant nor dull. She was just a
+good, ordinary student who stood well enough in her classes to
+satisfy Dr. Prescott. In athletics, however, Rhoda did not reach a
+high mark.
+
+In the first place she could not see the value of all the gymnasium
+exercises; and the indoor games did not interest her much. She was
+an outdoors girl herself, and had stored up such immense vitality
+and was so muscular and wiry that she possibly did not need the
+exercises that Mrs. Gleason insisted upon.
+
+They tried Rhoda at basketball, and she proved to be a regular
+"butterfingers." Laura, who captained one of the scrub teams, tried
+to make something of her, but gave it up in exasperation.
+
+Nan, Bess, and Amelia took Rhoda to the basement tennis court and
+did their best to teach her tennis. She learned the game quickly
+enough; but to her it was only "play."
+
+"She hasn't a drop of sporting blood in her," groaned Bess. "It
+seems just silly to her. It is something to pass away the time.
+Batting a little ball about with a snowshoe, she calls it! And if
+she misses a stroke, why, she lumbers after the ball like that bear
+we saw in the Chicago Zoo, Nan, that chased snowballs. 'Member?"
+
+"Well, I never!" laughed Nan. "Rhoda's no bear."
+
+"But she surely is a 'butterfingers,'" Amelia said. "No fun in her
+at all."
+
+"Says she doesn't see any reason for getting in a perspiration
+running down here, when she might be using her spare time upstairs
+reading a book, or knitting that sweater for Nan's Beautiful
+Beulah."
+
+So, after all, Rhoda Hammond did not become very popular with her
+schoolmates during those two long and dreary months, February and
+March, when outdoor exercise was almost impossible in the locality
+of Lakeview Hall.
+
+Best of all, Rhoda liked to sit in Number Seven, Corridor Four,
+with Nan and Bess and others who might drop in and talk. If Rhoda
+herself talked, it was almost always about Rose Ranch. Sometimes
+about her mother, though she did not often speak of Mrs. Hammond's
+affliction.
+
+To Nan, Rhoda had once said her mother had been a school-teacher
+who had gone from the East to the vicinity of the Mexican Border to
+conduct a school. Her eyes had been failing then; and the change of
+climate, of course, had not benefited her vision.
+
+"Daddy Hammond," said Rhoda, speaking lovingly of her father, "is
+twenty years older than mother; but he was so kind and good to her,
+I guess, when she had to give up teaching, that she just fell in
+love with him. You know, I fell in love with him myself when I got
+big enough to know how good he was," and she laughed softly.
+
+"You see, he knows me a whole lot better than mother does, for she
+has never seen me."
+
+"Doesn't that sound funny!" gasped Nan. "Fancy! Your own mother
+never having seen you, Rhoda!"
+
+"Only with her fingers," sighed Rhoda. "But mother says she has ten
+eyes to our two apiece. She 'sees' with the end of every finger and
+thumb. It is quite wonderful how much she learns about things by
+just touching them. And she rides as bravely as though she had her
+sight."
+
+"My!" exclaimed Nan, with a little shudder. "It would scare me to
+see her."
+
+"Oh, she rides a horse that is perfectly safe. Old Cherrypie seems
+to know she can't see and that he has to be extremely careful of
+her."
+
+It was when Rhoda told more about the ranch, however--of the bands
+of half-wild horses, the herds of shorthorns, the scenery all about
+her home, the acres upon acres of wild roses in the near-by
+canyons, the rugged gulches and patches of desert on which nothing
+but cacti grew, the high mesas that were Nature's
+garden-spots--that Nan Sherwood was stirred most deeply.
+
+"I think it must be a most lovely place, that Rose Ranch!" she
+cried on one occasion.
+
+"It is a lovely place; and I'd dearly love to have you see it, Nan
+Sherwood. You must go home with me when school is over. Oh, what a
+lark! That would be just scrumptious, as Bess says."
+
+"Oh, it is too long a journey. I never could go so far," Nan said,
+wistfully it must be confessed.
+
+But Rhoda nodded with confidence. "Oh, yes, you could," she
+declared. "You spent your Christmas holidays in Chicago with Grace.
+And before that, you say, you went up to a lumber camp in Michigan.
+One journey is no worse than another--only that to Rose Ranch is a
+little longer."
+
+"A _little_ longer!"
+
+"Well, comparatively. To going to China, for instance," laughed
+Rhoda. "Of course you can go home with me."
+
+But Nan laughed at that cool statement. She was quite sure Momsey
+and Papa Sherwood would veto any such wild plan. And she had been
+away so much from them during the past year. But she received fine
+reports regarding her mother's health and Papa Sherwood's new
+automobile business; and little Inez, under Momsey's tuition, was
+beginning to write brief, scrawly notes to Nan to tell her how
+happy she was in the little dwelling in amity.
+
+Winter could not linger in the lap of spring for ever. The snow
+under the hedges disappeared almost over night. The mud of the
+highways dried up.
+
+The sparkling surface of the lake was ruffled temptingly by the
+light breezes and drew the girls of Lakeview Hall boatward. The
+outdoor tennis courts, the croquet grounds, the basketball
+enclosure, and the cinder track were put into shape for the season.
+The girls buzzed outside the Hall like bees about a hive at
+swarming time.
+
+Grace Mason took up horseback riding again. Her father and mother
+were still at their town house, but her brother Walter and his
+tutor were at the summer home a short distance from Lakeview Hall,
+where he was "plugging," as he called it, for the entrance
+examinations of a college preparatory school in the fall.
+
+Walter had been unable to be much with his sister since the
+holidays; but now he came for Grace three times a week to accompany
+her on her rides.
+
+He bestrode his own big black horse, Prince, leading the speckled
+pony Grace was to ride. The pony was a nervous, excitable creature.
+Rhoda, seeing it for the first time, asked Nan:
+
+"Is Grace Mason used to that creature?"
+
+"I don't know. I never saw it before. But the pony can't be any
+worse than the big black horse that Walter rides."
+
+"Why, what is the matter with him?" asked the Western girl.
+
+"Prince is so high-spirited. You never know what he is going to
+do."
+
+"I guess the black horse is spirited; but that is not a fault,"
+Rhoda said. "He looks all right to me. But that little flea-bitten
+grey is a tricky one. You can tell that. See how her eyes roll."
+
+"Do you think the pony will bite?" asked Lillie Nevins, Grace's
+chum, who overheard the girl from Rose Ranch.
+
+"Goodness! I should hope so. She's got teeth," laughed Rhoda. "But
+I mean that probably she is skittish--will shy at the least little
+thing. And perhaps she will run away if she gets the chance."
+
+"Then I shouldn't think Walter would leave them there alone beside
+the road," Nan said thoughtfully.
+
+"Reckon he trusts that black horse to stand. He's looped the reins
+of the grey over the pommel of his own saddle. And that's not a
+smart trick," added Rhoda.
+
+"Why don't you get a horse and ride with them, Rhoda?" asked Bess
+Harley. "I guess you just ache to get on that pony?"
+
+"What! Side-saddle?" gasped the girl from Rose Ranch. "I wouldn't
+risk my neck that way."
+
+Suddenly somebody batted a determined tennis ball from far down the
+nearest court. It whizzed over the back stop, and--bang!--hit the
+grey pony on the nose.
+
+Rhoda had not been a bad prophet. The pony with the rolling eye
+leaped and snorted, all four feet in the air at once, and just as
+crazy in an instant as ever a horse could be.
+
+But perhaps a much better trained and better-tempered animal would
+have done the same. She jerked the loop of her bridle-rein off
+Prince's saddlehorn in that first jump. Then she was away like the
+wind, her little hoofs spurning the gravel of the path that crossed
+the school's athletic field and led to the broad steps that led
+down the face of the cliff to the boathouse and cove.
+
+Mad as the pony was, she might have cast herself down the steep
+flight. Frightened animals have done such things upon less
+provocation.
+
+The girls screamed, and that only lent wings to the grey's flying
+hoofs. But the horror and wild despair of the group at the edge of
+the field were not caused by the mere running away of the grey
+pony.
+
+The mad creature was headed for the brink of the cliff; but between
+the pony and that side of the field was a group of the smaller
+girls at play. There were almost thirty of the little girls of the
+Hall engaged in a game of tag, and utterly oblivious to the
+drumming hoofs of the pony!
+
+The girls did not instantly see the pony coming. And when they did
+realize their peril they milled for a minute right in her track
+like a herd of frightened cattle.
+
+Scarcely had the pony started from the road, however, and the peril
+of the girls become apparent, when Rhoda Hammond leaped into
+action, jumping to the back of Walter Mason's pawing black Prince.
+
+The girl from Rose Ranch seemed to reach the saddle in a single
+spring. She was astride the snorting horse and her feet
+instinctively sought the stirrups, as Prince leaped away in the
+track of the grey pony.
+
+The stirrup-leathers were longer than Rhoda was used to; for most
+Western riders use a shorter leather than was the custom about
+Lakeview Hall. But, almost standing erect as Prince thundered
+across the athletic field, Rhoda seemed perfectly poised both in
+body and mind. To see her, one would never suppose that it was
+possible to fall out of a saddle.
+
+The big black horse seemed to know just what was expected of him.
+He scarcely needed guiding. The girl's hair snapped out behind her
+in the wind; her set face, visible to a few of the spectators, gave
+them confidence. She was no "butterfingers" now. She was going to
+do what she had set out to do--no doubt of that!
+
+She rode slightly stooping forward from the waist, with left hand
+outstretched while Prince's reins were gathered loosely in her
+right hand. The shrieking children were huddled right before the
+grey pony. It did seem as though they could not possibly escape
+being trampled upon.
+
+But the stride of the big black horse was almost twice the length
+of the pony's. And he answered the rein perfectly. Rhoda rode to
+the right of the grey, stretched forward her long arm, and swerved
+her own mount at the same moment.
+
+A single jerk on the lines of the pony, dragging her sideways, and
+the runaway crossed her forefeet and crashed to the ground, almost
+throwing a somersault the fall was so abrupt.
+
+But the grey was not much hurt. Rhoda had drawn Prince in, was out
+of the saddle, had run to seize the pony's bridle before the fallen
+animal could get to her feet and continue her mad race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE TREASURE OF ROSE RANCH
+
+
+Walter Mason came running as hard as he could across the field; but
+he had only to seize Prince's reins and manage that excited animal.
+Rhoda had the grey pony well in hand.
+
+"Well, you're a wonder for a girl!" exclaimed Grace's brother.
+
+"Humph!" said Rhoda in return, "I don't consider that a
+compliment--if you meant it as such. Look out, or that black horse
+will step on you."
+
+"She was just as cool as a cucumber," Walter told Nan and his
+sister afterward. "Why! I never saw such a girl."
+
+"I guess," Nan Sherwood said shrewdly, "that we don't know much
+about girls who are born and brought up in the far West. Rhoda
+Hammond is a friend to be proud of. She has such good sense."
+
+"And pluck to beat the band!" cried Walter. "I'd like to see that
+country she comes from."
+
+"And me, too," agreed Bess Harley, who overheard this statement.
+
+"'Rose Ranch,'" murmured Grace. "Such a pretty name! After all, she
+has said just enough about it to be very tantalizing," and the
+smaller girl smiled.
+
+"Maybe she does that purposely," Bess remarked. "Perhaps she thinks
+we have so many things she hasn't obtained yet, that she wants to
+make us jealous a bit."
+
+"I really don't think that Rhoda worries about what she doesn't
+have," Nan put in. "Perhaps she doesn't even see that she lacks
+anything that we have."
+
+"Well, she never will go in for athletics," Bess declared.
+
+"Athletics!" burst out Walter. "Why, there isn't another girl at
+Lakeview Hall who could do what she did just now."
+
+They were all agreed on that point. Even Dr. Prescott and the staff
+of instructors commented upon Rhoda's stopping the runaway.
+Professor Krenner, the mathematics teacher, and with whom Nan and
+Amelia Boggs took architectural drawing, selected Rhoda to be one
+of a small party at his cabin up the lake one spring afternoon. And
+the professor's parties were famous and very much enjoyed by those
+girls who understood the queer and humorous old gentleman.
+
+He played his key-bugle for them, showed them how to bark birches
+for the purpose of making canoes (he was building one for his own
+use) and finally gave them a supper of wild duck, served on
+birch-bark platters, and corn pone baked on a plank before the
+embers of a campfire and seasoned mildly with wood smoke.
+
+This incident cheered Rhoda up. She had begun to be dreadfully
+homesick as the good weather came. She confessed to Nan that she
+was very much tempted to run away from school and return to the
+ranch. Only she knew her father and mother would be terribly
+disappointed in her if she did such a thing.
+
+"And besides that," Rhoda said, with a quiet little smile, "I want
+company when I go back to Rose Ranch."
+
+"Oh, yes," said the innocent Nan. "You do know people in Chicago,
+don't you?"
+
+"Humph! Mamma's friend, Mrs. Janeway. Yes," said Rhoda, still
+secretly amused, "I don't want to go away out to Rose Ranch alone
+and come back alone next fall. For I've got to come back, I
+suppose."
+
+"Why, Rhoda!" exclaimed Nan, "I can't see why you don't like
+Lakeview Hall."
+
+"Wait till you see Rose Ranch. Then you'll know."
+
+"But I don't expect ever to see that," sighed Nan; for she really
+had begun to think so much about Rhoda's home, and had listened so
+closely to the tales the Western girl related, that Nan felt
+herself drawn strongly toward an outdoor experience such as Rhoda
+enjoyed at home. It would be even more free and primitive, Nan
+thought, than her sojourn at Pine Camp.
+
+"You are terribly pessimistic," laughed the Western girl in
+rejoinder to Nan's last observation. "How do you know you'll never
+see Rose Ranch?"
+
+Even this remark did not make Nan suspect what was coming. Nor did
+Bess Harley or the Masons have any warning of the plan Rhoda
+Hammond had so carefully thought out. But the surprise "broke" one
+afternoon at mail time.
+
+Both Nan and Bess received letters from home, and they ran at once
+to Room Seven, Corridor Four, to read them. Scarcely had they
+broken the seals of the two fat missives when the door was flung
+open and Grace Mason fairly catapulted herself into the room in
+such a state of excitement that she startled the Tillbury chums.
+
+"What is the matter, Grace?" gasped Bess, as the smaller girl threw
+herself into Nan's arms.
+
+"Why! she's only happy," said Nan, holding her off and viewing her
+flushed and animated countenance. "Do get your breath, Gracie."
+
+"And--when I do--I'll take yours!" gasped Grace. She held up a
+letter. "From mother. She--she says we can go--Walter and I--both
+of us!"
+
+"Well, for mercy's sake!" exclaimed Bess, "where are you going?
+Though I should say _you_, Grace, had already gone. Crazy, you know."
+
+"To Rose Ranch!" almost shouted Grace.
+
+In astounded repetition, Nan and Bess fairly shrieked: "_To Rose
+Ranch?_"
+
+"My goodness, yes! Haven't you heard about it? My letter says
+Rhoda's invited both of you girls, too, and that Walter is going.
+Is--it a hoax?"
+
+Nan and Bess stared at each other in amazement for a single moment;
+then, like a flash, they tore open their own letters, both being
+those prized "mother letters" so dear to every boarding-school
+girl's heart, and unfolded the missives the envelopes contained. It
+was Bess who found it first.
+
+"It's here! It's here! Just think of Rhoda Hammond keeping this
+secret from us! She wrote her folks and they wrote to mine--and to
+yours, Nan--and Gracie's. Oh! Oh! We're going, going, going!"
+
+"Isn't it fine?" cried Grace, dancing up and down in her delight.
+
+"Delightsome! Just delightsome!" agreed Bess, coining a new word to
+express her own joy. "Three cheers and a tiger! And a wildcat! And
+a panther! And--and--Well! all the other trimmings that may go with
+three cheers," she concluded because she was out of both breath and
+inspiration.
+
+"And Rhoda's folks must be awfully nice people," Grace said warmly.
+"And her mamma--"
+
+But Nan was deep in her own letter from Momsey, and here follows
+the part of it dealing with this wonderful news which had so
+excited all three of the girls:
+
+"Your new friend, Rhoda, must be a very lovely girl, and I want you
+to bring her home to Tillbury the day school closes. I know she
+must be a nice girl by the way her mother writes me. Her mother is
+blind, but she has had somebody write me that she wants very much
+to 'see' Nan Sherwood, who has been so kind to her Rhoda during the
+latter's first term at Lakeview.
+
+"This makes me very happy and proud, Nan dear; for if your
+schoolmates love you so much that they write home about you, I am
+sure you are doing as well at school as Papa Sherwood and I could
+wish you to. And this Mrs. Hammond is very insistent that you shall
+visit Rose Ranch this summer. Mrs. Harley came to see me about it,
+and we have decided that you and Elizabeth can go home with Rhoda,
+if the Masons likewise agree to let Grace and Walter go. There is a
+lady going West to Rose Ranch at the same time--a Mrs. Janeway--who
+is a friend of Mrs. Hammond's. She will look after you young folk
+en route, and will return with you.
+
+"But we must have you a little while first, my Nan; and you must
+bring Rhoda here to the little cottage in amity for a few days, at
+least, before the party starts West. And--"
+
+But this much of the letter was all Nan would let the other girls
+hear. She was quite as happy as either Grace or Bess. And all three
+of them tripped away at once to find Rhoda and try to tell her just
+how delighted they were over this plan.
+
+"It never seemed as though _I_ should see Rose Ranch," Nan sighed
+ecstatically when they had talked it all over. "It is too good to be
+true."
+
+As the term lengthened the girls were pushed harder and harder by
+the instructors, and Bess and others like her complained a good
+deal.
+
+"The only thing that keeps me going is a mirage of Rose Ranch ahead
+of me," declared Nan's chum, shaking her head over the text books
+piled upon their study table. "Oh, dear me, Nan! if anything should
+happen to make it impossible for us to go with Rhoda, I certainly
+should fall--down--and--die!"
+
+"Oh, nothing will happen as bad as that," laughed Nan.
+
+"Well, nothing much ever does happen to us," agreed Bess. "But
+suppose something should happen to Rhoda?"
+
+"Shall we set a bodyguard about her?" asked Nan, her eyes
+twinkling. "Do you think of any particular danger she may be in? I
+fancy she is quite capable of taking care of herself."
+
+"Now, Nan!" cried Bess, "don't poke fun. It would be awful if
+anything should happen so that we couldn't go to Rose Ranch with
+her."
+
+Perhaps this was rather a selfish thought on Bess Harley's part.
+Still, Bess was not notably unselfish, although she had improved a
+good deal during the months she had been at Lakeview Hall.
+
+But Nan had occasion to remember her chum's words very clearly not
+long thereafter, for she did find Rhoda Hammond in trouble. It was
+one Friday afternoon when Nan was returning from her architectural
+drawing lesson at Professor Krenner's cabin, up the lake shore.
+Amelia had not gone that day, being otherwise engaged; so Nan was
+alone on the path through the spruce wood that here clothed the
+face of the high bluff on which Lakeview Hall was set.
+
+A company of jays squalling in a thicket had been the only
+disturbing sounds in the sun-bathed woods, when of a sudden Nan
+heard somebody speak--a high and angry voice. Then in Rhoda's
+deeper tones, she heard:
+
+"What do you mean, confronting me like this? I do not know you. You
+are crazy!"
+
+"Maybe I am cr-r-razy!" cried the second voice, its owner rolling
+her "r's" magnificently. "But I am not a thief. You, Senorita
+Ham-mon', are that! You and all your fam-i-lee are the
+thiefs--yes!"
+
+Nan's thought flashed instantly to the Mexican girl in the shop in
+Adminster. She had spoken in just this way. And she had given at
+that time every indication of hating Rhoda.
+
+The girl from Tillbury pushed into the thicket from which the
+voices sounded. Rhoda replied to the castigation of the other's
+tongue only by an ejaculation of amazement. The harsher voice
+went on:
+
+"The tr-r-reasure of the Ranchio Rose--that ees what you have
+stolen. You and your fam-i-lee. Those reeches pay for your
+dress--for your ring there on your han'--for all your good times,
+and to make you a la-dee. But _me_--I am poor that you and
+yours may be reech, Senorita Ham-mon'. The treasure of the Ranchio
+Rose belong to me and to my modder--not to you. Thiefs, I say!"
+
+Nan burst through the bushes at this juncture. Rhoda had uttered
+another cry. She was backing away from a girl with flushed
+countenance and uplifted, clenched hand--a girl that Nan Sherwood
+very well remembered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+JUANITA
+
+
+"STOP that! Don't you dare strike her!" cried Nan, and rushed
+forward bravely to the rescue of Rhoda Hammond.
+
+Rhoda was bigger and stronger than Nan; but the latter lacked no
+courage, and she believed that her friend was so much surprised and
+taken aback by the Mexican girl's accusation that she was not
+entirely ready to meet the personal assault which the stranger
+evidently intended.
+
+"Stop that!" repeated Nan, and she dashed between the two girls.
+She laid her hand upon the Mexican's chest and pushed her back.
+"You have no right to do this. Don't you know we can have you
+arrested by the police?"
+
+"Ha! eet ees the odder Senorita," gasped the Mexican girl. "By
+gracious! I see you are fr-r-riends--heh? You know about the
+tr-r-reas-ure of the Ranchio Rose--heh?"
+
+"Why, she doesn't know any more what you are talking about than I
+do," replied Rhoda Hammond, in wonder.
+
+"This girl," said Nan, "must mean the gold and silver and other
+things you said, Rhoda, that the Mexican bandit hid on your
+father's ranch somewhere."
+
+"Lobarto!" murmured Rhoda.
+
+"Dhat ees eet!" cried the Mexican girl. "Lobarto, dhe r-r-robber.
+Lobarto, dhe slayer of women and chil'ren! Ah! The fiend!" and the
+excited girl's eyes blazed again.
+
+"But what has that to do with Rhoda and her father? I am sure you
+know very well that Mr. Hammond could not help that bad Mexican
+bandit's coming up into the vicinity of Rose Ranch and hiding his
+plunder," said Nan confidently. "And what has it all to do with
+you, anyway?"
+
+"She!" exclaimed the Mexican girl, pointing to Rhoda. "She ees
+reech because I am poor. Oh, yes! I know."
+
+"You don't know anything of the kind," said Nan flatly. "Does she,
+Rhoda?"
+
+"I--I don't know what she means," stammered the girl from Rose
+Ranch.
+
+"I guess I understand something about it," said the quicker-witted
+Nan. "She has been robbed by Lobarto, and she thinks your father
+has found the hidden treasure--the plunder Lobarto left behind at
+Rose Ranch when he was driven off six years ago."
+
+"You know!" exclaimed the Mexican girl confidently. "How you know?"
+
+"I know what you think. But that doesn't make it so," returned Nan
+promptly.
+
+"I am sure she is not right in her mind," Rhoda sighed. "What could
+she have to do with all that treasure they say Lobarto stole in
+Mexico and hid on our ranch?"
+
+"Come over here and sit down--both of you," commanded Nan, seeing
+that she had got the Mexican girl quieted for the time being. There
+was a log in the shade, and they took seats upon it. Nan said
+kindly to the Mexican: "Now, please, tell us quietly and calmly
+what you mean."
+
+"Dhat Senorita Ham-mon'--"
+
+"No, no! Begin at the beginning. Don't accuse Rhoda any more. Let
+us hear all about how you came to know about the treasure, and why
+you think it is yours."
+
+"Dhat I tell you soon," said the girl quickly. "My modder an' me--"
+
+"Who are you? What is your name?" asked Nan.
+
+"Juanita O'Harra."
+
+"Why! that's both Mexican and Irish," gasped Nan.
+
+"My fader a gre't, big Irisher-man--yes!" said Juanita. "He marry
+my modder in Honoragas. She have fine hacienda from her papa--yes.
+She--"
+
+But to put it in more understandable English, as Nan and Rhoda did
+later when they talked it over with Bess and Grace Mason, Juanita
+O'Harra told a very interesting--indeed, quite an exciting--story
+about Lobarto and the lost treasure the bandit chief had carried
+into the Rose Ranch region.
+
+Juanita's mother had married the Irish contractor who had died when
+the girl was small. Six years and more before she told this tale to
+the interested Nan and Rhoda, Lobarto became a scourge of the
+country about Honoragas. He attacked haciendas, stealing and
+burning, even maltreating the helpless women and children after
+killing their defenders.
+
+After robbing the churches, he took all the wealth he had gathered
+and, with the Mexican Federal troops on his trail, ran up into the
+United States. How he came to grief there and had to run again with
+United States troops and the Rose Ranch cowboys behind him, Rhoda
+had already told her friends.
+
+But that Lobarto had left all the wealth he had stolen somewhere
+near Rose Ranch, the Mexicans knew as well as the Americans. When
+captured, members of Lobarto's gang had confessed. But they had
+been put to death by the Mexican authorities without telling just
+where the great cache of plunder was.
+
+Juanita and her mother believed that the American owner of Rose
+Ranch had recovered the treasure and held their share from them.
+These Mexican people were both ignorant and suspicious. Juanita was
+very bitter against the _Americanos_, anyway. She had only come up
+into the States to work so as to support her mother, who remained
+still on the ruined plantation in Honoragas.
+
+"I went to dhe Ranchio Rose," said Juanita, "and see thees senorita
+wit' her fader, dhe gre't Senyor Ham-mon'. He laugh at me--yes! He
+tell me he haf not found dhe tr-r-reasure. But I know better--"
+
+"You do not know anything of the kind," Nan said promptly. "You
+just have a bad temper and want to hate somebody. Rhoda tells you
+that she knows nothing about the money and jewels your mother lost.
+If they are ever found you and your mother shall have them."
+
+"Of course," Rhoda added, "we would not want anything that was not
+strictly ours. No matter what the law might say about 'findings,
+keepings,' my father is not that kind, I'd have you know. We
+haven't found the treasure. If we ever do, I promise you we'll
+write to your mother at once."
+
+"My modder cannot read the language you speak," said Juanita,
+sullenly.
+
+"We will have the letter written in Spanish," promised Rhoda.
+
+"Write it to me," said the Mexican girl eagerly. "I must do all
+business for my modder. Yes. She do not know. She ees ver' poor.
+But if what Lobarto stole from us is r-recover-red, we shall be
+reech again. By goodness, yes!"
+
+"In the end," Nan explained to Bess and Grace afterward, "I think
+we more than half convinced that Mexican girl that it was not her
+mother's money that dressed Rhoda so nicely."
+
+"How you talk!" exclaimed Rhoda. "I am sorry for that Mex. But,
+goodness! how mad she was. Just as mad as a lion!"
+
+"'Lion'!" sniffed Bess. "What do you know about lions?"
+
+"We have them about Rose Ranch," said Rhoda, smiling wickedly.
+
+"Oh, never!" squealed Grace.
+
+"Why, lions grow in Africa," said Bess, doubtfully.
+
+"More properly they are pumas, I suppose. But the boys call 'em
+lions," laughed Rhoda. "Oh, there are a lot of things about Rose
+Ranch that will surprise you."
+
+"Don't say a word! I guess that is so. Something besides the
+roses," murmured Bess.
+
+"I shall be afraid to go out of sight of the house," complained
+Grace, who was timid in any environment. "Don't tell me anything
+more, Rhoda."
+
+Nevertheless they were all--and all the time--thinking of the trip
+West. It did not interfere with their standing in classes, but
+outside of study hours and the time they spent in sleep, the three
+girls who had been invited by Rhoda to visit Rose Ranch talked of
+little else. And, of course, Rhoda herself was always willing to
+talk of her home down near the Mexican Border.
+
+"I am just as sorry for that Mexican girl and her mother as I can
+be," Rhoda said on one occasion. "I've written daddy about it. I
+expect he doesn't remember Mrs. O'Harra's coming to Rose Ranch with
+her daughter about the treasure. You know, that old treasure has
+made us a lot of trouble."
+
+"I suppose people keep coming up from Mexico looking for it?"
+suggested Grace.
+
+"Most of them think we have benefited by Lobarto's stealings,"
+sighed Rhoda. "You see, there is much hard feeling on the side of
+the Mexicans against the Americans. Even the Mexicans born on our
+side of the Border are not really Americans. They never learn to
+speak much English, and it makes them clannish and suspicious of
+English speaking people."
+
+"And how fierce they are!" murmured Nan.
+
+"Juanita would have struck you. Scratched your face, maybe."
+
+"Well, that is only their excitable way. Perhaps she did not really
+intend to strike me," Rhoda said. "I do wish we could help her and
+her mother. Somehow, I am sorry for the poor thing."
+
+"Let's get up a searching party when we get to Rose Ranch," said
+Bess excitedly, "and find that old treasure."
+
+"Wouldn't that be great!" Nan agreed. "But I am afraid if after six
+years all that plunder hasn't been found, we shouldn't be likely to
+find it."
+
+"Oh, it's been searched for," Rhoda assured them. "Time and time
+again. There have been as many men who believed they could find it
+as ever hunted for the old Pegleg Mine--and that is famous."
+
+"Never say die!" said Bess, nodding her curly head. "I'm going to
+hunt for it myself."
+
+This raised a laugh; yet every member of the little party,
+including Walter when he heard the particulars about Juanita, was
+eagerly interested in the mystery of the treasure of Rose Ranch.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ROSE RANCH AT LAST
+
+
+The closing of school came at length. Bess had said frankly that
+she feared it never would come, the time seemed to pass so slowly;
+but Nan only laughed at her.
+
+"Do you think something has happened to the 'wheels of Time' we
+read about in class the other day?" she asked her chum.
+
+"Well, it does seem," said merry Bess, "as though somebody must
+have stuck a stick in the cogs of those wheels, and stopped 'em!"
+
+Both Tillbury girls stood well in their classes; and they were
+liked by all the instructors--even by Professor Krenner, who some
+of the girls declared wickedly was the school's "self-starter,
+Lakeview Hall being altogether too modern to have a crank."
+
+In association with their fellow pupils, Nan and Bess had never any
+real difficulty, save with Linda Riggs and her clique. But this
+term Linda had not behaved as she had during the fall and winter
+semester. This change was partly because of her chum, Cora
+Courtney. Cora would not shut herself away from the other girls
+just to please Linda.
+
+Linda had even begun to try to cultivate the acquaintance of Rhoda
+Hammond--especially when she had heard more about Rose Ranch. But
+Rhoda refused to yield to the blandishments of the railroad
+magnate's daughter.
+
+"I suppose it might be good fun to take a trip across the continent
+to your part of the country," Linda said to the Western girl on one
+occasion. "You get up such a party, Rhoda, and I'll tease father
+for his private car, and we will go across in style."
+
+"Thank you," said Rhoda simply. "I prefer to pay my own way."
+
+"No use for Linda to try to 'horn in'--isn't that the
+Westernism--to our crowd," laughed Bess, when she heard of this.
+"The 'Riggs Disease' is not going to afflict us this summer, I
+should hope!"
+
+Cora Courtney, too, had tried to cultivate an acquaintance with
+Rhoda. But the girl from Rose Ranch made friends slowly. Too many
+of the girls had ignored her when she first came to Lakeview Hall
+for Rhoda easily to forget, if she did forgive.
+
+The good-bys on the broad veranda of Lakeview Hall were far more
+lingering than they had been at Christmas time. The girls were
+separating for nearly three months--and they scattered like sparks
+from a bonfire, in all directions.
+
+A goodly company started with the Tillbury chums from the Freeling
+station; but at each junction there were further separations until,
+when the time came for the porter to make up the berths, there were
+only Nan, Bess and Rhoda of all their crowd in the Pullman car.
+Even Grace and Walter had changed for a more direct route to
+Chicago.
+
+They awoke in the morning to find their coach sidetracked at
+Tillbury and everybody hurrying to get into the washrooms. Nan
+could scarcely wait to tidy herself and properly dress, for there
+was Papa Sherwood in a great, new, beautiful touring car--one of
+those, in fact, that he kept for demonstration purposes.
+
+Nan dragged Rhoda with her, while Bess ran merrily to meet what she
+called "a whole nest of Harley larks" in another car on the other
+side of the station. It had been determined that Rhoda should go
+home with Nan.
+
+"Here she is, Papa Sherwood!" cried Nan, leaping into the front of
+the big car to "get a strangle hold" around her father's neck.
+"This is our girl from Rose Ranch, Rhoda Hammond. Isn't she nice?"
+
+"I--I can't see her, Nan," said her father. "Whew! let me get my
+breath and my eyesight back."
+
+Then he welcomed Rhoda, and both girls got into the tonneau to ride
+to the Sherwood cottage. "Such richness!" Nan sighed.
+
+The little cottage in amity looked just as cozy and homelike as
+ever. Nothing had been changed there save that the house had been
+newly painted. As the car came to a halt, the front door opened
+with a bang and a tiny figure shot out of it, down the walk, and
+through the gateway to meet Nan Sherwood as she stepped down from
+the automobile.
+
+"My Nan! My Nan!" shrieked Inez, and the half wild little creature
+flung herself into the bigger girl's arms. "Come in and see how
+nice I've kept your mamma. I've learned to brush her hair just as
+you used to brush it. I'm going to be every bit like you when I get
+big. Come on in!"
+
+With this sort of welcome Nan Sherwood could scarcely do less than
+enjoy herself during the week they remained in Tillbury. Inez, the
+waif, had become Inez, the home-body. She was the dearest little
+maid, so Momsey said, that ever was. And how happy she appeared
+to be!
+
+Her old worry of mind about the possibility of "three square meals"
+a day and somebody who did not beat her too much, seemed to have
+been forgotten by little Inez. The kindly oversight of Mrs.
+Sherwood was making a loving, well-bred little girl of the odd
+creature whom Nan and Bess had first met selling flowers on the
+wintry streets of Chicago. Of course, during that week at home, the
+three girls from Lakeview Hall did not sit down and fold their
+hands. No, indeed! Bess Harley gave a big party at her house; and
+there were automobile rides, and boating parties, and a picnic. It
+was a very busy time.
+
+"We scarcely know whether we have had you with us or not, Nan
+dear," said her mother. "But I suppose Rhoda wants to get home and
+see her folks, too; so we must not delay your journey. When you
+come back, however, mother wants her daughter to herself for a
+little while. We have been separated so much that I am not sure the
+fairies have not sent a changeling to me!" and she laughed.
+
+At that, for it was not a hearty laugh and Momsey's eyes glistened,
+if Nan had not given her promise, "black and blue," to Rhoda, she
+would have excused herself and not gone to Rose Ranch at all. She
+knew that Momsey was lonely.
+
+But Mrs. Sherwood did not mean to spoil her daughter's enjoyment.
+And the opportunity to see this distant part of the country was too
+good to be neglected. Nan might never again have such a chance to
+go West.
+
+So the three girls were sent off without any tears for the
+rendezvous with the Masons and Mrs. Janeway at Chicago.
+
+They found Grace and Walter all right; but as the Masons had no
+idea what Mrs. Janeway looked like, and that lady had no
+description of the Masons, they had not met. Rhoda had to look up
+her mother's friend.
+
+"What are you going to do, Rhoda?" asked the bubbling Bess. "Track
+her down as you would an Indian? Look for signs--?"
+
+"I don't believe in signs," responded Rhoda. "I am going to look
+for the best dressed woman in Chicago. Such lovely clothes as she
+wears!"
+
+"I guess that must be so," said Grace as Rhoda walked out of
+ear-shot, "for Mrs. Janeway chose Rhoda's own outfit, and you know
+there wasn't a better dressed girl at Lakeview."
+
+"Wow!" murmured her brother. "What a long tale about dress! Don't
+you girls ever think of anything but what you put on?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir," declared Bess smartly. "And you know that Rhoda
+thinks less about what she wears than most. It's lucky her mother
+had somebody she could trust to dress her daughter before she
+appeared at the Hall."
+
+"All on the surface! All on the surface!" grumbled Walter.
+
+"Goodness, Walter," said his sister, "would you want us to swallow
+our dresses? Of course they are on the surface."
+
+"It certainly is a fact," grinned Walter impudently, "that the
+curriculum of Lakeview Hall makes its pupils wondrous sharp. Hullo!
+here comes Rhoda towing a very nice looking lady, I must admit."
+
+In fact, at first sight the three other girls fell in love with
+Mrs. Janeway. She was a childless and wealthy widow, who, as she
+asserted, "just doted on girls." She met them all warmly.
+
+"I hope," said Walter, with gravity, as she shook hands with him,
+"that a mere boy may find favor in your eyes, too. Really, we're
+not all savages. Some of us are more or less civilized."
+
+"Well," Mrs. Janeway sighed, but with twinkling eyes, "I shall see
+how well you behave. Now, for our tickets."
+
+"I have the reservations," Walter said quietly. "A stateroom for
+you four ladies and a berth for me in the same car. In half an hour
+we pull out. And, girls!"
+
+"Say it," returned Bess.
+
+"Is it something nice, Walter?" asked his sister.
+
+"There is an observation platform on our car--the end car on the
+train. It goes all the way through to Osaka, where we are going. I
+think we are fixed just right."
+
+This proved to be the case. The young people pretty nearly lived on
+that rear platform, for the weather remained pleasant all through
+the journey. Mrs. Janeway sometimes found it hard work to get them
+in to go to bed.
+
+The route this tourist car took was rather roundabout; but as
+Walter said, it landed them at the Osaka station, the nearest
+railroad point to Rose Ranch, in something like five days.
+
+By this time they were getting a little weary of traveling by rail.
+Walter declared he was "saddle-sore" from sitting so much. When
+long lines of corrals and cattle-pens came in sight, Rhoda told
+them they were nearing Osaka.
+
+"Why, there are miles and miles of those corrals!" cried Bess, in
+wonder. "You don't mean to say they are all for your father's
+cattle?"
+
+"Oh, no, my dear. Several ranchers ship from Osaka," explained
+Rhoda. "And as we all ship at about the same season, there must be
+plenty of pens and cattle-chutes. Hurry, now. Get your things
+together."
+
+Bess scrabbled her baggage together, as usual leaving a good deal
+of it for somebody else to bring. This time it was Walter who
+gathered up her belongings rather than Nan.
+
+"I never do know what I do with things," sighed Bess. "When I start
+on a journey I have so few; and when I arrive at my destination it
+does seem as though I am always in possession of much more than my
+share. Thank you, Walter," she concluded demurely. "I think boys
+are awfully nice to have around."
+
+"In that case," said Rhoda, leading the way out of the car as the
+train slowed down, "you are going to have plenty of boys to wait on
+you when you get to Rose Ranch. Those punchers are just dying for
+feminine 'scenery.' I know Ike Bemis once said that he often felt
+like draping a blanket on an old cow and asking her for a dance."
+
+"The idea!" gasped Mrs. Janeway, who was likewise making her first
+visit to the ranges.
+
+At that moment Rhoda cried:
+
+"There he is! There's Hess with the ponies."
+
+"Hess who?" asked Grace.
+
+"Hess what?" demanded Nan, as the train stopped and the colored
+porter quickly set his stool at the foot of the car steps.
+
+"Hesitation Kane," explained Rhoda, hurrying ahead. "Come on,
+folks! Oh, I am glad to get home!"
+
+Bess, who was last, save Walter, to reach the station platform,
+gave one comprehensive glance around the barren place.
+
+"Well!" she said. "If this is home--"
+
+"'Home was never like this,'" chuckled Walter.
+
+A few board shacks, the station itself unpainted, sagebrush and
+patches of alkali here and there, and an endless trail leading out
+across a vista of flat land that seemed horizonless. The train
+steamed away, having halted but a moment. To all but Rhoda the
+scene was like something unreal. "My goodness!" murmured Grace,
+"even the moving pictures didn't show anything like this."
+
+"They say the desert scenes made by some of the movie companies are
+photographed at Coney Island. And I guess it's true," said Walter.
+
+Rhoda had run across the tracks toward where a two-seated
+buckboard, drawn by a pair of eager ponies, was standing. Beside it
+stood two saddle horses, their heads drooping and their reins
+trailing before them in the dust. The man who drove the ponies wore
+a huge straw sombrero of Mexican manufacture. When he turned to
+look at his employer's daughter the others saw a very solemn and
+sunburned visage.
+
+"Oh, Hess!" cried Rhoda. "How are you? Is mother all right?"
+
+The man stared unblinkingly at her and his facial muscles never
+moved. He was thin-lipped, and his hawk nose made a high barrier
+between his eyes. He did not seem unpleasant, only naturally grim.
+And silent! Well, that word scarcely indicated the character of Mr.
+Hesitation Kane.
+
+"Come on!" shouted Rhoda, looking back at her friends, and
+evidently not at all surprised that the driver of the buckboard did
+not at once reply to her questions. "Mrs. Janeway, and Nan, and
+Bess, and Gracie--you all crowd into the buckboard. Walter and I
+are going to ride. Got my duds here, Hess?"
+
+It was lucky Mr. Kane did not have to answer verbally. He thrust
+forward a bundle. Rhoda seized it and started for the station where
+there was a room in which she could change her clothes. Before she
+quite reached the platform the driver spoke his first word:
+
+"Thanky, Miss Rhody. I'm fine."
+
+Rhoda nodded over her shoulder, laughing at the surprise and
+amusement of her friends, and disappeared. Walter helped the girls
+and Mrs. Janeway into the odd though comfortable vehicle. In a few
+moments Rhoda reappeared in a rough costume that even Mrs. Janeway
+had to admit did not make the Western girl any the less attractive.
+
+The full breeches and long coat and leggings gave her every freedom
+of action, and she had put on a wide-brimmed hat. Meanwhile Walter
+had brought forth from one of his bags a pair of leather riding
+leggings and buckled on small spurs. He had been forewarned of this
+ride by Rhoda before they left Chicago.
+
+They mounted the two ponies, and the driver of the buckboard lifted
+his reins. Then he pulled the eager ponies to a stop again and
+turned toward Rhoda, answering her second question.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, your mother's fine. She's fine," he announced.
+
+"Don't that beat all!" exclaimed Walter, exploding with laughter as
+he cantered by Rhoda's side. "That is why we call him 'Hesitation,
+'" Rhoda said.
+
+"Somebody taught him to count more than ten before speaking, didn't
+they?" commented Walter.
+
+The trail was not wide enough for the pony riders to keep their
+mounts beside the buckboard; besides, the dust would have smothered
+Rhoda and Walter. The light breeze carried the dust off the trail,
+however; so the two riders could keep within shouting distance of
+the others.
+
+In two hours or a little more they were out of the barren lands
+completely. Swerving down an arroyo, all green and lush at the
+bottom, they cantered up into the mouth of a broad gulch, the walls
+of which later became so steep that it might well be called a
+canyon.
+
+The ponies never walked--up grade, or down. They cantered or
+galloped. Hesitation Kane never spoke to them; but they seemed to
+know just what he wanted them to do by the way he used the
+reins--and they did it.
+
+"I don't see how he does it," said Walter to Rhoda. "It doesn't
+seem really possible that one could make a horse understand without
+speech."
+
+"Oh, he can speak to them if it is necessary. But he says it isn't
+often necessary to speak to a horse. The less you talk to them the
+better trained they are. And Hess is daddy's boss wrangler."
+
+"'Wrangler'?"
+
+"Horse wrangler. Horse trainer, that means."
+
+"But, my goodness!" chuckled Walter, "'to wrangle' certainly means
+quarreling in speech. I should think it was almost like a Quaker
+meeting when this Mr. Kane trains a pony."
+
+"It is a fact," laughed Rhoda, "that the ponies make much more
+noise than Hesitation does."
+
+As they entered this deeper gulch, the girls cried out in delight.
+The trail was narrow and grassy. Growing right up to the path--so
+that they could stretch out their hands and pick them--were acres
+and acres of wild roses. They scented the air and charmed the eye
+for miles and miles along the trail.
+
+They rode on and on. Finally the little cavalcade wound out of the
+gap, down a slope, crossed a tumbling river that was yards broad
+but not very deep, and the ponies quickened their pace as they
+mounted again to a higher plain.
+
+"There it is!" shouted Rhoda, and, waving her hat, she spurred her
+pony ahead and passed the buckboard at full speed.
+
+On a knoll the others saw a low-roofed, but wide-spreading,
+bungalow sort of structure, with corrals and sheds beyond. The
+latter were bare and ugly enough; but the ranch house was almost
+covered to the eaves with climbing roses in luxurious bloom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+OPEN SPACES
+
+
+"On, Nan!" cried Bess, squeezing her chum's arm, "what do you think
+of it?"
+
+"It is more beautiful than I had any idea of! And Rhoda had to come
+away from all this just to go to school," answered the equally
+excited Nan.
+
+Here Grace Mason's usual timidity showed itself, as she said:
+
+"But there is so much of it! We must have come twenty miles from
+the railroad station."
+
+"More than that," put in her brother, from his seat in the saddle.
+
+"I don't care!" cried Bess. "It's wonderful."
+
+"Oh, it is wonderful, I grant you," said Grace. "But--but
+everything is so big--and open--and lonesome."
+
+"Cheer up, Sis," said Walter. "We are all here to keep you company,
+to say nothing of the cows and the horses," and he laughed.
+
+Mrs. Janeway's opinion was practical to say the least, for her
+first words were, as the buckboard reached the house: "I certainly
+shall be glad to get a bath."
+
+Rhoda had thrown herself from her pony and rushed up the steps of
+the veranda to greet two persons who, later, the visitors found
+were Mr. and Mrs. Hammond. The former was a rather heavily built,
+shaggy-bearded man, his face burned to a brick-red and such part as
+the beard did not hide covered with fine lines like a veil. His
+wife was a tall and graceful woman who showed nothing in her clear,
+wide-open eyes of her blindness which for so many years had set her
+apart from other people.
+
+The blind woman stepped with assurance to the edge of the veranda
+to greet the visitors, and it was Mrs. Janeway she first met and
+embraced.
+
+"Marian Janeway! How I wish I could see you, to know if you have
+really changed!" cried Mrs. Hammond in the heartiest and most
+cheerful voice imaginable. It was easy to see from whom Rhoda had
+got her voice.
+
+"I've grown fat--I can tell you that," sighed the Chicago woman.
+"And you--why, you are still as graceful as you were when you were
+a girl."
+
+"Flatterer!" exclaimed Rhoda's mother, laughing. Then she seized
+upon Nan who chanced to come up the steps directly behind Mrs.
+Janeway.
+
+"Who is this?" she cried. "Wait!" Her fingers ran quickly but
+lightly over Nan's countenance. She even felt her ears, and the
+hair where it fluffed over her brow, and traced the line of her
+well marked eyebrows. "Why!" she added with decision, "this is Nan
+Sherwood that I have heard so much about."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Hammond," gasped the girl, "how did you know?"
+
+She looked up into the shining face of the blind woman and could
+scarcely believe that she was so afflicted. Mrs. Hammond's laugh
+was deep-throated and hearty, like Rhoda's own.
+
+"I know you, my dear, because Rhoda has told me so much about you.
+She has explained your character, I see, very truthfully. Your
+features bear out all she has said. You see, my dear, I am a
+witch!" and she kissed Nan warmly.
+
+She welcomed the others with grace and that wide hospitality which
+is only found, perhaps, in the West and among people of the great
+outdoors. It arises from old times, when the wanderer, seeing a
+campfire, was sure of a welcome if he approached, and a welcome
+without questioning.
+
+Mr. Hammond was equally glad to see the young folk. He spoke with a
+pleasant drawl, and aside from his gray hair and beard revealed few
+marks of age. His vigorous frame carried too much flesh, perhaps;
+but that was, he said, "because he took it easy and let the boys
+run things to suit themselves."
+
+This last statement, however, Nan, who was observant, took with the
+proverbial pinch of salt. The expression of his countenance was
+kindly, but his character was firm and he spoke at times with a
+decision that made the servants, for instance, hurry to obey him.
+He was, indeed, a very forceful man; but Nan Sherwood liked him
+immensely.
+
+The rambling ranch house covered a deal of ground and was two
+stories high. The rooms were low-ceilinged, the upper rooms
+especially so. The girls who had come to visit Rhoda had a big,
+plainly furnished, airy room on the upper floor, beside Rhoda's own
+chamber. Walter had his choice of a bed or a hammock in a room
+across the hall. The adults of the household were disposed below,
+while the servants occupied quarters away from the main dwelling.
+
+There was a water system which afforded plenty of baths, the clank
+of the pump being heard in a steady murmur from somewhere behind
+the house. It was too late, when they were freshened after the
+ride, for any exploration outside the house on this evening. All
+the visitors were ready for dinner when the Mexican waiter
+announced it.
+
+The servants included a Chinese cook, Mexican houseboys, and
+negroes for the outside work. The life at Rose Ranch was evidently
+a rather free and easy existence. The standards of etiquette were
+not just the same as at the Mason house in Chicago; but the
+Hammonds knew well how to make their guests feel at home. The
+quality of the hospitality of the ranchman and his wife was not
+strained.
+
+The party lingered long at dinner, under the glow of a hanging lamp
+that illuminated the table but left the corners and sides of the
+great room in shadow. Now and then somebody would lounge in at the
+doorway and speak to Mr. Hammond.
+
+"Ah say, Boss, where'd you say Dan's outfit was goin'? I plumb
+forgot."
+
+"You'd forget your head, Carey, if it wasn't screwed on tight,"
+declared the ranchman, without glancing at the big figure slouching
+in the doorway. "Dan and his bunch light out for Beller's Gulch
+come mornin'."
+
+A little later it was a lighter step, and the jingle of spurs on
+the veranda floor.
+
+"Tumbleweed done sprung his knee, Mist' Ham-mon'. Kyan't use him
+nohow fo' a while."
+
+"My lawsy!" ejaculated Rhoda's father, "seems to me most of you
+fellers ain't fitted to take care of a saw horse, let alone a sure
+enough pony. Some of you will have to ride mules if you don't stop
+ruinin' my horseflesh."
+
+"Wal, Tumbleweed is right fidgety," complained the cowboy.
+
+"What do you want to ride--somethin' broke to a side-saddle?"
+demanded the ranchman in disgust. "Go rope a new pony out of that
+band Hesitation's just brought up. And be mighty careful not to get
+an outlaw. Hess says there's two or three in that band that are
+fresh out of the hills."
+
+These side remarks excited Walter. The girls, too, were interested.
+Grace said she hoped there was not any horse as bad as the pony
+that ran away at Lakeview, and which Rhoda had stopped so
+dexterously.
+
+"My _dear_!" laughed Rhoda, "that wasn't a bad pony. She was
+only frisky. But Hess shall find you a perfectly safe mount."
+
+"I hope you will extend that promise to me," said Nan, laughing.
+"If I am to ride I want something I can stay on."
+
+"No bucking broncos for me, either," cried Bess. "At least, not
+until I have learned to ride better than I do at present."
+
+They went to bed that night wearied after traveling so far, but
+much excited as to what the next day would bring forth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE POOR LITTLE CALF
+
+
+Nan awoke when it was still utterly dark. Nothing had frightened
+her, and yet she felt that something really important was about to
+happen--something wonderful! What it could be, she had no idea. Her
+imagination was not at all spurring her mind. She only knew that
+she was on the verge of a new and surprising experience.
+
+There were three beds in the big room, and she could hear Bess and
+Grace breathing calmly in their own cots. But she was wide awake.
+
+Without speaking, or making any more sound than she could help, Nan
+Sherwood crept out of bed. The air from the open windows was chill,
+so she knew it must be near dawn.
+
+She slipped her feet into slippers and shrugged her robe about her.
+Then she crept to the nearest casement. She had to kneel to see
+out, for the window, which looked to the east, was under the eaves
+of the ranch house. The sill was only a foot above the floor.
+
+Nan folded her arms on this sill and looked out into the velvety
+darkness. A great silence seemed to brood over the country which
+she could not see. She remembered how lonely the ranch house seemed
+to be when she had first seen it the previous afternoon. Even the
+bunk houses where the help slept were at some distance, and not in
+this easterly direction.
+
+Blackness seemed to have shut down all about the great dwelling,
+like a curtain. The roses weighted the air with their delicious
+scent. She even had to reach forth and separate the prickly vines
+carefully so as to make an opening through which she hoped soon to
+see.
+
+For she knew now what it was that had awakened her--what it was
+that was about to happen. Dawn was coming! The sun would soon
+appear! A new day was in the making just below the horizon which
+she could not see.
+
+A haze had been drawn over the stars; therefore there was
+absolutely no light in the world. Not yet. But--
+
+There it was! A pale gray streak was drawn along the very edge of
+the world, far, far away. It was just as though a brushful of gray
+paint had been dashed along that line where the earth and the sky
+met.
+
+The gray line remained, though growing more distinct, while above
+it a band of faint pink rimmed the east as far as she could see.
+Nan drew her kimono about her shoulders and shivered ecstatically.
+This was the wonderful thing that she had awakened with in her
+mind.
+
+Sunrise!
+
+A gun could have shot the earth away out there across the rolling
+plain no more suddenly with yellow than now was done by the sun's
+reflection. It had not come into sight yet; but Nan could see the
+colors reaching upward toward the zenith. A riot of color hurried
+everywhere, over the earth and up in the sky; and then--
+
+"There he is!" shouted Nan aloud, as the edge of a fiery red ball
+appeared.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Nan Sherwood?" complained Bess, from
+her bed.
+
+"Oh, what is it? Nan!" shrieked Grace, sitting straight up in bed
+and evidently expecting that the very worst had happened.
+
+"It's morning, you lazy things," whispered Nan. "Sh! Get up and see
+the most wonderful sight you ever did see."
+
+"I bet the sun is getting up in the west," gasped Bess, hopping out
+of bed at this announcement.
+
+Already there was a stir about the place. Down at the bunk houses
+the dogs began to yap and some full-throated cow-puncher sent forth
+a "Yee! Yee! Yee! Yip!" that acted as rising call for all the
+hands. As the three girls from so much farther east gathered at the
+low window to peer out, there sounded another cowboy salute and
+there dashed by with the drumming of hoofs a little party of
+mounted men who rode just as the cowboys do in the moving pictures.
+
+Rhoda burst into the room and ran to hug her three friends. She was
+already dressed.
+
+"There goes Dan's bunch already," she said. "And see 'em turn and
+look back. They're just showing off; they know we sleep on this
+side of the house. Daddy will give them a wigging, for maybe Mrs.
+Janeway wants to sleep."
+
+Breakfast was an early repast at Rose Ranch. Mrs. Hammond and Mrs.
+Janeway were served in their rooms; but the rest of the family were
+soon at the table. It was a bountiful repast, with Ah Foon, the
+Chinese cook, coming to the door every few minutes to see for
+himself if the flapjack plates did not need replenishing.
+
+"We are going to get our ponies first of all," Rhoda announced. "Oh!
+I am so hungry for a ride--a good ride--again."
+
+"But, goodness! don't we have to be fitted to them?" demanded Bess,
+the incorrigible. "I would not like to walk right up to a pony and
+say 'You're mine!'--just like that!"
+
+"Hess will pick them out for us, won't he. Daddy?"
+
+"I reckon so," said her father, without looking up from his mail
+that one of the Mexicans had brought in the minute before.
+
+"Goodness!" exclaimed Grace. "We'll never be able to get the ponies
+to-day, then, that is sure. He won't be able to answer you so
+quickly."
+
+"That's all right," laughed Rhoda. "I asked him about them last
+night"
+
+They ran out to the corral as soon as the girls got into their new
+riding habits. They had had them made something like Rhoda's.
+
+"You see," the latter had said, "our ponies are not often trained
+for side-saddles and skirts. And, then, they are dangerous."
+
+The silent Hesitation was on hand. He had a bunch of ponies
+gathered in a particular corral, and pointed to them in answer to
+Rhoda when she asked if they were perfectly safe. About the time
+the girls and Walter had looked them over and chosen those they
+liked, the horse wrangler said:
+
+"All broke for tenderfoots. You can trust any of 'em as long as you
+keep your eyes open."
+
+"Well," murmured Bess, "I certainly do not intend to ride horseback
+when I am asleep."
+
+Nan chose for herself a cunning little fat pony, with brown and
+white patches and a pink nose. In the East it would have been
+called a calico pony; but Rhoda called it a pinto.
+
+The Eastern girls were just a little doubtful of their mounts,
+because their tails and ears were always twitching and they seemed
+quite unable to "make their feet behave."
+
+"Mine is just as nervous as I am," confessed Bess, as she gathered
+up the reins. "If he starts as quick as Walter's does, I know I
+shall be thrown as high as the cow jumped--over the moon."
+
+"Have no fear, Elizabeth," advised Nan. "Try to copy Rhoda, and
+you'll stick on all right."
+
+"Oh, I'll be a regular copy-cat," promised her chum. "I don't wish
+to be carried back to Tillbury in pieces."
+
+The little cavalcade started off from the corrals in good order.
+They went past the house and waved their hands to Mrs. Janeway and
+shouted a greeting to Rhoda's mother. Then the ranch girl led them
+at a fast canter toward the west.
+
+When Walter saw the small rifle tucked into a case under Rhoda's
+knee he expressed the wish that he had brought his own rifle West.
+
+"Do you know, I never thought of it! You're not expecting to shoot
+Indians, are you, Rhoda?" he said jokingly.
+
+"You never can tell," she replied, smiling. "But they say I am a
+pretty good shot. I don't expect to shoot an Indian."
+
+"I can shoot, too," said Grace quickly. "Walter taught me last
+year."
+
+"Mercy! what did you shoot with, Grace?" demanded Bess. "A
+squirt-gun?"
+
+"A pistol and Walter's rifle. I know I'm awfully scared of 'em, but
+I wanted to know which was the more dangerous end of a gun."
+
+"Bravo!" cried Nan, laughing.
+
+"Why, if you want, I can supply you all with firearms," said Rhoda.
+"There are plenty at the ranch. And the boys most always lug around
+a 'gat,' as they call 'em, because of the coyotes."
+
+"Oh, dear me! are they dangerous?" demanded Grace.
+
+"The coyotes? Only to stray calves and lame cattle. We seldom see
+anything more dangerous. And as long as you are on horseback you
+are perfectly safe, anyway, even from a lion."
+
+"There she goes talking about lions again," murmured Bess. "I feel
+as though I were on the African veldt."
+
+"Let's all learn how to use firearms," said Nan eagerly. "Why
+shouldn't we?"
+
+"Why, Nan Sherwood! you have the instincts of a desperado,"
+declared her chum. "I can see that."
+
+"I want to do just as the Western girls do while I am here," said
+Nan.
+
+"So I, I presume," Rhoda queried, "should wish to do just as the
+Eastern girls do when I am at Lakeview?"
+
+"Well, you'd get along better," Nan argued, quite seriously.
+
+Out of sight of the ranch house they very quickly found themselves
+in what seemed to the visitors a pathless plain. Off to the left a
+huge herd of red and white cattle was feeding. It was broken up
+into little groups and the creatures looked no more harmful than
+cows back home. There was not a herdsman in sight.
+
+"Why," said Bess, "I expected to see cowboys riding around and
+around the cattle all the time, and hear them singing songs."
+
+"They do do that at night. The riding, anyway. And most of the boys
+try to sing. It takes up time and keeps 'em from being lonely,"
+replied Rhoda. "But I am not sure that the cows are fond of the
+singing. They are patient creatures, however, and endure a good
+deal."
+
+"Now, Rhoda!" exclaimed Nan, "don't squash all our beliefs about
+the cowpunching industry which we have learned from nursery books
+and movies."
+
+Rhoda headed away from the herd, and by and by they descended a
+steep but grassy slope into the mouth of a rock-walled canyon. It
+was a wild-looking place; but there were clumps of roses growing
+here and there. Rhoda leaped down and let her pony stand, with the
+reins trailing before him on the ground.
+
+"Isn't he cunning!" observed Bess. "He thinks he's hitched."
+
+"They are trained that way. You see, on the plains there are so few
+hitching posts," said Rhoda dryly.
+
+The others dismounted, too. Rhoda was hunting among the great
+boulders that littered the grassy bottom. When they asked her what
+she was looking for, she called back that she would show them a
+boiling spring if she could find it.
+
+Suddenly Nan lifted her head to listen. Then she started up the
+canon, which, in that direction, grew narrower between the walls.
+
+"Don't you hear that calf bawling?" she demanded, when Bess asked
+her where she was going.
+
+"Oh, I hear it," said Bess, keeping in the rear. "But how do you
+know it is a calf?"
+
+"Then it is something imitating one very closely," sniffed Nan, and
+kept on. The next minute she shouted back: "It is! A little,
+cunning, red calf. And, oh, Bess! it has hurt its leg."
+
+She ran forward. Bess followed with more caution. Suddenly there
+was a crash in the bushes, and out into the open, right beside the
+injured calf, came a red and white cow. This animal bawled loudly
+and charged for a few yards directly toward Nan Sherwood.
+
+"Oh, goodness, Nan! Come away!" begged Bess, turning to run. "That
+old cow will bite you."
+
+But it was not the anxious mother of the calf that had startled
+Nan. She knew she could dodge the cow. But above the place where
+the calf lay, on a great gray rock that gave it a commanding
+position, the girl saw a huge, cat-like creature with glaring eyes
+and a switching tail.
+
+She had never seen a puma, not even in a menagerie. But she could
+not mistake the slate and fawn colored body, the cocked ears, the
+bristling whiskers, and the distended claws, the latter working
+just like a cat's when the latter is about to make a charge.
+
+And it looked as though the savage beast could quite overleap the
+cow and calf and almost reach Nan Sherwood's feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+A TROPHY FOR ROOM EIGHT
+
+
+Nan was badly frightened. But she had once faced a lynx up at Pine
+Camp, and had come off without a scratch. Now she realized that
+this mountain lion had much less reason for attacking her than had
+the lynx of the Michigan woods; for the latter had had kittens to
+defend.
+
+The huge puma on the rock glared at her, flexed his shoulder
+muscles, and opening his red mouth, spit just like the great cat he
+was. Really, he was much more interested in the bleating red calf
+than he was in the girl who was transfixed for the moment in her
+tracks.
+
+Bess, who could not see the puma, kept calling to Nan to look out
+for the cow. She was more in fun than anything else, for she did
+not believe the cow could catch her chum if the latter ran back.
+
+What amazed Bess Harley was the fact that Nan stood so long by the
+clump of brush which hid the rock on which the puma crouched from
+Bess's eyes.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" gasped Bess at last "You look like
+Lot's wife, though you are too sweet ever to turn to salt, my dear.
+Come on!"
+
+Then, of a sudden, Bess heard the big cat spit! "My goodness!" she
+shrieked, "what is that?"
+
+Her cry was heard by Rhoda, at a distance. The Western girl knew
+that something untoward was taking place. She ran for her pony and
+leaped into the saddle.
+
+"What is it?" she shouted to Bess, whom she could see from
+horseback.
+
+"Nan's found a red calf--and he makes the queerest noise," declared
+the amazed Bess. "I'm afraid of that calf."
+
+Walter ran to mount his pony, too. But Rhoda spurred directly
+toward the spot where Bess stood. Being in the saddle, she was so
+much higher than Nan's chum that she could see right over the brush
+clump. Immediately she beheld Nan and the crouching lion.
+
+"Come back, Nan!" she called quickly. "Stoop!"
+
+She snatched the rifle from under her knee. It leaped to her
+shoulder, and, standing up in her stirrups while her pony stood
+quivering and snorting, for he had smelled the puma, the girl of
+Rose Ranch took quick but unerring aim at the crouching,
+slate-colored body on the boulder.
+
+The beast was about to spring. Indeed, he did leap into the air.
+But that was the reflex of his muscles after the bullet from
+Rhoda's rifle struck him.
+
+She had come up so that her sight had been most deadly--right
+behind the fore shoulder. The ball entered there, split the beast's
+heart, and came out of his chest. He tumbled to the ground, kicking
+a bit, but quite dead before he landed.
+
+"There!" exclaimed Rhoda, "I warrant that's the lion daddy was
+speaking to Steve about last night. He said it wasn't coyotes that
+killed all the strays. He had seen the tracks of this fellow in the
+hills."
+
+"Rhoda!" shrieked Bess, "is that a lion?"
+
+"Most certainly, my dear."
+
+"Hold me, somebody! I want to faint," gasped Bess. "And he almost
+jumped right down our Nan's throat."
+
+"No," said Nan. "Scared as I was, I knew enough to keep my mouth
+shut."
+
+But none of them were really as careless as they sounded. Rhoda
+jumped down and hugged Nan. It was true that something might have
+happened to the latter if the lion had missed his intended prey.
+
+"And we'll have to shoot the poor calf. It's broken its leg," the
+ranch girl said, after the congratulations were over.
+
+The red and white cow still stood over the calf and bellowed. She
+would occasionally run to the dead puma and try to toss it; but she
+did not much like the near approach of human beings, either.
+
+"I tell you what," Walter said, examining the dead puma with a
+boy's interest: "That was an awfully clean shot, Rhoda. The pelt
+won't be hurt. You should have this skin cured and made into a
+rug."
+
+"Oh, yes!" cried Bess. "Take it back to Lake-view Hall with you,
+Rhoda, and decorate Room Eight, Corridor Four!"
+
+"Come along, then," the Western girl said, smiling. "We'll ride
+over to the herd and send one of the boys back to skin the lion and
+butcher the veal, too. We might as well eat that calf as to leave
+him for the coyotes."
+
+They hurried away from the vicinity of the dead puma, and, to tell
+the truth, for the rest of the ride the visitors from the East kept
+very close together.
+
+"To think," sighed Bess, when they had dismounted at the house some
+time later and given the ponies over to the care of two Mexican
+boys who came up from the corrals for them, "that one is liable to
+run across lions and tigers and all kinds of wild beasts so near
+such a beautiful house as this. It must have been a dream."
+
+"That puma skin doesn't look like a dream," said Walter, laughing
+and pointing to the pelt of the beast which hung from Rhoda's
+saddle and made all the ponies nervous.
+
+"Well," said Bess, with determination, "I am willing to learn to
+shoot. And hereafter I won't go out of our bedroom without
+strapping a pistol to my waist."
+
+They all laughed at this statement. But they spent that afternoon,
+with revolvers and light rifles, on what Rhoda called "the rifle
+range," down behind the bunk houses. Hesitation Kane, the horse
+wrangler, as silent almost as the sphinx, drifted out to the spot
+and showed them by gestures, if not by many words, how to hit the
+bull's-eye. Nan, as well as her chum, became much interested in
+this sport. The adventure with the big puma really had made Nan
+feel as though she should know how to use a gun.
+
+Several days passed before the party rode far from Rose Ranch
+again. But every day the young folks were in the saddle for a few
+hours, and all became fair horsewomen--all but Walter, of course,
+who was already a horseman.
+
+There was great fun inside the big ranch house, as well as in the
+open. In the evenings, especially, the young people's fun drew all
+the idle hands about the place, as well as the family itself.
+
+There were a player-piano and a fine phonograph in the big
+drawing-room. The windows of this room opened down to the floor,
+and the cowboys from the bunk house, the Mexicans, and even Ah
+Foon, gathered on the side porch to hear the music.
+
+When a dance record was put on the machine the clatter of boots on
+the piazza betrayed more than one pair of punchers solemnly dancing
+together.
+
+"Though," complained Rhoda's father, "those spurs the boys wear
+will be the ruination of my hardwood floor. Where do they think
+they are? At a regular honky-tonk? None of 'em's got right good
+sense."
+
+"Let them dance, daddy," said his wife, who usually called the
+ranch owner by the same pet name his daughter used. "They don't
+often get a chance up here at the big house to show off. You and I
+might better be out there, dancing with them."
+
+"My glory, Ladybird!" gasped Mr. Hammond, in mock alarm. "I'm in my
+stockin' feet. I'd get 'em full of splinters, like enough."
+
+"Then, Walter, you come and dance with me," the blind woman cried.
+"I'm bound to dance with somebody."
+
+And to see her weaving in and out among the dancers in Walter's
+grasp, one would never guess her affliction.
+
+That evening's entertainment was only an impromptu affair. A few
+nights later the house party was formally invited to a "ball" at
+the men's quarters. The big dining room next the bunk house was
+cleared out, two fiddles and an accordion obtained from Osaka, and
+the Rose Ranch outfit showed the visitors what a real cowboy dance
+was like.
+
+Rhoda and her friends certainly had a fine time at this ball. Boys
+from neighboring outfits attended, some riding fifty and sixty
+miles to "shake a leg" as the local expression had it.
+
+There were both Mexican and white girls from Osaka and from other
+ranches. Even a party of Indians attended, but the young squaws
+were in civilized costume and looked even more "American" than the
+Mexican girls. One young Indian, however, confided to Walter that
+he did not think the new dances were graceful or really worthy.
+
+"Really, the square dances and the good old waltz are more to my
+taste," he said. "We never took up these one--and two-steps at
+Carlisle when I was there."
+
+"Another of my cherished beliefs gone," confessed Walter,
+afterward, to Nan. "I bet that redskin doesn't know how to throw
+the tomahawk, and that he couldn't give the warhoop the proper
+pronunciation if he tried. Dear me! this Southwest is getting
+awfully civilized."
+
+But Bess Harley was delighted with the evening's fun. Going to bed
+at midnight, she said:
+
+"Dear me, Rhoda, what perfectly lovely times you can have out here
+in the wilderness. I never danced with so many nice boys before. I
+never would have believed Rose Ranch was like this."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+EXPECTATIONS
+
+
+After this Nan and Bess and Grace, as well as Walter, were well
+acquainted with the "boys" about Rose Ranch. At least, they knew
+all those employed within easy riding distance of the ranch house.
+
+It was later that they learned they had met none of "Dan's bunch."
+That was the crowd that had ridden away the very morning after the
+visitors had arrived at the ranch. The outfit headed by Dan
+MacCormack had gone to round up a horse herd many miles from
+headquarters.
+
+Mr. Hammond and several other ranchmen of the vicinity allowed
+their horses to run wild in the hills for a part of each year. The
+larger part, in fact.
+
+"You see, they get their own living up there, on pasturage that
+they never could be driven to," Rhoda explained to the girls.
+"Besides, many of the finest mustangs in the country run wild and
+will never be caught. Daddy likes to have his herds crossed with
+that wild blood. It makes the colts more vigorous and handsomer.
+Oh, I just wish you girls could see some of the wild stallions. But
+they seldom come down with the herds to the rodeo. They go back
+into the wilder hills with the scrubs that the boys don't care to
+drive in.
+
+"About this time of year the several bands belonging to Rose Ranch
+and our neighbors are driven down to the lowlands. The mares and
+yearlings are already branded, of course; so the various owners cut
+out their own animals, and the young colts, of course, run with
+their mothers.
+
+"Each ranch outfit knows its own colts and brands accordingly. We
+call it a round-up. 'Rodeo' is Mexican for it. We drive them into
+the branding pens and mark the colts. Then we cut out the horses
+that are needed on the ranch, or to train for sale, and let the
+others drift again."
+
+"And do all the poor horses have to be burned?" murmured Grace,
+with a shudder.
+
+"And our cattle, too. How else would we know them from other
+people's cattle?" demanded Rhoda. "It's nowhere near so horrid as
+it sounds. The smart is soon over. And, really, how else could we
+tell the creatures apart?"
+
+"Goodness! don't ask _me_" said Grace. "I am not in the cattle
+business."
+
+But she confessed to Nan that she intended to shut her eyes tight
+when the poor little colts were to be burned, and stuff her fingers
+into her ears, too. However, she and the other girls were very
+eager to attend the round-up; and a messenger from Dan, the
+sub-foreman, had come in to headquarters with the announcement that
+the herdsmen from the combined ranches were driving down the
+biggest bunch of horses in a decade.
+
+"You and your party, Rhoda, can start away in the morning, bright
+and early," said her father at dinner that night. "I've sent away a
+grub wagon and Ah Foon's right bower to cook for you. I know you'd
+cause a famine if you depended on the regular chuck wagon of Dan's
+outfit. There isn't but one sleeping tent; Walter will have to
+rough it."
+
+"That will not bother me, Mr. Hammond," declared the boy. "I've
+camped out more than once."
+
+"'Twon't be much of a punishment to sleep out-of-doors this
+weather," said the old ranchman. "All that may bother you is a
+tornado. We have 'em occasionally at this season."
+
+"And what do you do when there is a tornado, Mr. Hammond?" asked
+Bess, interested.
+
+"Only one thing to do--hold tight and keep your hair on," chuckled
+Mr. Hammond. "If you really do get in the path of one, lie down and
+cling to the grass-roots till it blows over."
+
+"Oh! A cyclone!" cried Bess.
+
+"Not exactly. A cyclone, I reckon, is some worse. A cyclone is a
+twister. They say if a cyclone hits a pig end to, and the wrong
+way, it twists his tail to the left instead of to the right and
+he's never the same pig again."
+
+"Now, daddy!" complained Rhoda, "what do you want to tell such
+awful jokes for? Nothing like that ever happened to our pigs."
+
+"Well," said her father, his eyes twinkling, "we never had a real
+cyclone down here. But tornadoes are bad enough."
+
+It was barely daybreak the next morning when the sleepy peons
+brought the ponies to the house. Rhoda knew the trail well, and
+within the precincts of Rose Ranch, at least, her father did not
+consider it necessary for any guard to ride with her.
+
+"I often ride to Osaka for the mail," explained Rhoda. "What should
+I be afraid of?"
+
+"Aren't there any tramps?" murmured Grace.
+
+"Well," laughed Rhoda, "not the kind you mean. Tramps afoot would
+not get far in this country. And how could a man on foot catch me?
+Your kind of tramps don't go far from the railroad lines. And if
+there are any other ne'er-do-wells in the neighborhood, they know
+daddy too well to molest me. You see, daddy used to be sheriff in
+the old days. And he has a reputation," laughed Rhoda.
+
+This conversation occurred just after they left the house on this
+windy morning, with a red sun coming up behind them "as big as a
+cartwheel," Bess announced. The level rays of the sun shot far, far
+across the plains and gilded the line of buttes and mesas Rhoda had
+told them so much about while back at Lakeview Hall.
+
+"Those are not the Blue Buttes this morning, Rhoda," declared Nan.
+"They are golden."
+
+Rhoda's eyes swept the frontage of the eminences. She carried a
+pair of glasses in a case slung from her shoulder. Suddenly she
+seized these, uncased them, and clapped them to her eyes.
+
+"Hi, cap'n!" cried Bess, "what do you spy?"
+
+"See that flash between those two hills?" said Rhoda, reining in
+her mount.
+
+They gathered about her, looking where she aimed the glasses.
+Walter exclaimed:
+
+"I see the flash! It isn't the sun shining on guns, is it?"
+
+"Nonsense!" cried Nan Sherwood.
+
+"No-o," said Rhoda. "People don't carry guns that way around here.
+Besides, the only part of a gun that the sun would flash on would
+be the bayonet; and we don't carry army rifles in this country,"
+and she laughed.
+
+"There it is again!" exclaimed Walter.
+
+"I see it, too," said Nan. "Rhoda, what can it be? Something is
+surely moving this way on a road."
+
+"That is the old Spanish Trail," said the Rose Ranch girl. "It is
+the trail I told you about, by which the old _Conquistadors_
+of Cortez reached this part of the country. And it is the most
+direct road into Mexico."
+
+"It must be some kind of caravan coming through there," said Bess
+dryly.
+
+"You are quite right," Rhoda declared. "A party of horsemen are
+riding this way. And they are Mexicans."
+
+"Rhoda!" cried Nan, "you can't see that through those glasses."
+
+"No; I cannot distinguish the horsemen. But I can see the little
+flashes moving across the saddle of the Gap and down into the
+valley on this side. And I know they are Mexicans because those
+flashes are the sun's rays shining on the silver trimming on their
+sombreros. Yes, they are Mexicans."
+
+"Glory be!" exclaimed Bess. "Can you be sure of all that?"
+
+"More. Poor Mexicans--the peons who come up here to find work--do
+not wear such sombreros. Nor do many Mexicans waste their money in
+such fashions nowadays. But there is a class that dress just that
+fancily."
+
+"Who are they?"
+
+"Men that the ranchers here will not want to see. I know that daddy
+will ride over to the rodeo behind us, or I would turn about now
+and run to tell him. There! they are gone. There must have been a
+dozen of them."
+
+"But who are they?" demanded Nan, anxiously.
+
+"Of course, I am not positive. But I think," said Rhoda, closing
+the glasses and putting them in the case again, "that they are a
+band of wanderers. Perhaps a raiding party led by one of the
+so-called 'liberators' of Mexico. You know, there are more
+'liberators' in Mexico than you can shake a stick at," and the girl
+of Rose Ranch laughed.
+
+"You mean bandits!" cried Nan.
+
+"Well, that is a harsh word. They are political leaders for the
+most part. Sometimes they become important leaders. But when they
+come over on this side of the Border they need just as close
+watching as a pack of wolves."
+
+"Are these men like that Lobarto you told us about?" said Walter.
+
+"Perhaps. Of course, I do not really know. Let us ride along, and
+when daddy overtakes us, I will tell him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE ROUND-UP
+
+
+Mr. Hammond, however, did not overtake the young people before they
+reached the mouth of the canyon through which Rhoda said the army
+of horses must be driven down to the branding pens.
+
+"Of course, we could go on to the pens and wait there," she said to
+her friends. "Our personal outfit is there already. Daddy sent it
+over last night But then you would miss a sight that I want you all
+to take back East with you as a memory. It is something you will
+never forget."
+
+"Go on, Rhoda," said Bess. "Show us. Of course, we haven't been
+seeing wonderful things right along ever since we arrived at Rose
+Ranch!"
+
+"This is something special," said Rhoda, and led the way into the
+canyon at a quick canter.
+
+The high-walled slash in the foothills narrowed rapidly, and five
+miles from the mouth of it the walls were so close together that
+Walter declared he could throw a stone from one to the other.
+
+The way was becoming rocky, too; the patches of grass were meager
+and the brush grew more sparse.
+
+The summit of the bare walls rose higher and higher. Far above the
+cut a vulture wheeled. The sun beat down into the canon, for it was
+now mid-forenoon, and, the breeze having died, the party of riders
+began to suffer from the heat.
+
+"I'm melting," declared Bess. "But that's a small matter. I was
+getting too fat, anyway."
+
+"Listen!" commanded Rhoda suddenly.
+
+They heard then a growing sound like the rolling of many barrels at
+a distance. It was not thunder. The sky was as clear as a bell.
+
+"Quick!" exclaimed Rhoda. "We must get up yonder in that cleft!
+See? And keep a tight rein on your ponies."
+
+They rode quickly off the trail, while the strange sound grew in
+volume. It certainly was something coming down the canyon; but the
+huge boulders shut out all view of what lay thirty yards away from
+the party.
+
+They reached a small cleared space against the foot of one cliff,
+but some yards above the bottom of the canyon. Now, as the growing
+sound came nearer, Nan shouted:
+
+"I know what it is! It's the herd of horses."
+
+Rhoda nodded. The clatter of the countless hoofs came nearer and
+nearer. The girls and Walter dismounted, and Rhoda warned them to
+stand in front of their mounts and keep the bridle-reins in their
+hands.
+
+They could not yet see the head of the herd; but above the boulders
+they saw a cloud of dust rising. This dust rolled down the canyon
+and reached the observers first. Then appeared several horsemen
+riding at a sharp canter. The range horse almost never trots.
+
+Rhoda had to shout to make her voice heard by her friends above the
+clatter of hoofs:
+
+"Some of those are our men; others belong to the Long Bow,
+Gridiron, and Bar One outfits. They are leading the herd and will
+spread out at the mouth of the canyon and keep the flanks of the
+mob from drifting."
+
+"Oh! The ponies!" shrieked Bess suddenly.
+
+Out of the rolling dust cloud below them were thrust the bobbing
+heads, shaking manes, and plunging forefeet of the leaders of the
+herd. Black horses, red horses, gray, white, all shades of roan,
+pinto, and the coveted buckskin color, which always sells well in
+the West.
+
+The tossing manes became like the surf of an angry sea. The thunder
+of hoofs was all but deafening. Above this noise sounded the shrill
+whistling of the male horses and the answering neighs of the
+half-mad herd.
+
+There was reason for clinging to the bridles of the saddled ponies
+from Rose Ranch. They began to answer the cries of the wild mob
+below, and stamped their little hoofs upon the rock. Bess Harley's
+mount stood up on his hind legs, and if Walter had not caught the
+reins the brute might have got away.
+
+"Why, you naughty boy!" cried Bess. "I never would have thought
+you'd do it. He seemed so tame, Rhoda!"
+
+Rhoda could not hear her, but shook a warning head. While the herd
+was passing one could not trust even the best trained saddle pony.
+It was only a few months before that they had all been members of
+just such a mob of wild horses as this.
+
+The dust was carried to the other side of the canyon by such air as
+was stirring; therefore Rhoda and her visitors obtained a better
+view of the horses as the herd flowed on. There seemed to be an
+endless stream of them. Hundreds--yes, thousands--plunged down the
+canon trail, sure footed as sheep over the rocky path.
+
+The girls fairly squealed with delight when they saw the
+long-legged colts staggering along close to their mothers' flanks.
+There was no play among them, for without doubt the younger
+creatures were all much confused, and very tired.
+
+Had there been any place where the mates could have turned out of
+the mob with their young, they would undoubtedly have done so; but
+the way was narrow and those behind pushed the others on. After
+all, Nan secretly thought, it was a cruel way to treat the animals.
+
+She did not set herself in judgment upon the method of handling the
+horses, for she knew she was utterly ignorant of the conditions.
+Yet she was sorry for them, and especially pitied the mothers and
+their young.
+
+The stream of horses was nearly an hour in passing the observation
+point Rhoda Hammond had selected. The creatures kept on at a
+swinging canter; never at a walk. Hurrying, snorting, sweating with
+fear of they knew not what! The odor and dust that rose from the
+seemingly endless stream of animals finally became rather
+unpleasant in the nostrils of the onlookers. But they were held
+there until all should have passed.
+
+By and by the last clattering hoof of the herd was gone, the rear
+brought up by a bunch of the very young and their mothers, as well
+as some few lame ones. Then Dan MacCormack, red-bearded and
+black-eyed, rode by with the rest of the herdsmen, raising his
+sombrero to Rhoda and her friends.
+
+At the extreme tail of the procession came the chuck wagons of the
+four outfits, each drawn by four mules with flopping ears and
+shaved tails, the drivers smoking corncob pipes, and the cooks
+lolling beside them on the seats, their arms folded.
+
+"Now we'll go," said Rhoda, it being possible to speak in an
+ordinary tone once again and be heard. "When we get out of the
+canyon we'll circle around the herd and precede it to Rolling
+Spring Valley, where the branding pens are set up."
+
+Grace rubbed her gloved hand tenderly over the scar on her pony's
+hip and said to him:
+
+"Did it hurt you very much when they burned you with the nasty old
+iron?" He pricked his ears forward and whisked his tail, so Bess
+said, in a most knowing way, as though he remembered the indignity
+clearly. "I don't believe I want to see the branding done," she
+added. "That ugly 'XL' doesn't improve his appearance."
+
+"That is 'Cross L' not 'XL'; and the brand is not so disfiguring as
+some," Rhoda said. "It helps sell a lot of horses for daddy. His
+brand is known all over the country."
+
+"That fact doesn't make it any the less cruel," Grace said, with
+some spirit. "How would you like to be branded, Rhoda Hammond?"
+
+"We-ell," drawled Rhoda, "you know, I'm not a horse."
+
+They clattered out of the canon at last, well behind the train, and
+then swerved directly west to escape the dust-shrouded herd. Their
+ponies were still excited, and Rhoda warned her companions to keep
+them well in hand.
+
+Skulking among the rocks at the edge of the plain, they saw several
+tawny creatures whose eyes were evidently fixed longingly on the
+herd of horses.
+
+"Coyotes," said Rhoda. "They haven't a chance, unless a colt goes
+lame and loses its mother."
+
+"Why don't we shoot them?" demanded Walter eagerly.
+
+"They are not worth the powder we'd waste," declared Rhoda. "And
+then, they are sort of scavengers. We would not think of shooting a
+vulture; so why not let the coyotes live--out here? When they sneak
+around the poultry runs, that's another thing."
+
+Two hours past noon the party rode down a broad green slope into a
+well-watered valley. A river ran through its length, and several
+small tributaries joined it. More than one grove of noble
+cottonwood trees graced the river's banks. The grass was lush,
+offering pasturage for thousands of cattle, although there was not
+a horned creature in sight The herd of horses would be contented
+here as soon as their alarm had passed.
+
+There was a camp by the riverside, and a tent was set up beside the
+special chuck wagon Mr. Hammond had sent over from Rose Ranch. But
+Rhoda's father had not arrived at this rendezvous when the little
+cavalcade rode down to the encampment.
+
+Ah Foon's assistant, a smiling Mexican lad, had prepared lunch, and
+the girls and Walter certainly were ready for it. It was fully two
+hours later before the other chuck wagons lumbered info view. (They
+had passed the herd which would be allowed to drift down into the
+valley during the evening, guarded by all the hands until daybreak
+the next day.)
+
+Mr. Hammond appeared, and Rhoda told him at once about the
+cavalcade of horsemen that she and her friends had seen riding over
+the saddle of the old Spanish Trail so early in the morning. The
+ranchman betrayed considerable interest in the matter.
+
+"Did you count 'em?" he asked his daughter.
+
+"There must have been all of a dozen. I could not make out the
+number exactly," Rhoda said.
+
+"Well," her father grumbled, shaking his shaggy head, "we've got
+our hands full just now, that's sure. But we don't need to worry
+about stranglers while there's so many of us down here. And there
+are plenty of the boys up at the house and with the cows. Reckon
+it's all right."
+
+"Do you suppose," whispered Nan, "that those Mexicans have come
+over here for some bad purpose, Rhoda?"
+
+"Maybe they are bandits, like that Lobarto you told us about," said
+Grace.
+
+"Maybe they will bury treasure somewhere around here," Bess put in
+eagerly. "And I say, Rhoda: When are we going to get up that party
+to hunt for Lobarto's treasure?"
+
+"Not until after this round-up, that's sure," laughed the girl of
+Rose Ranch.
+
+The young people went down to the corrals and branding pens and
+were told, in the course of time, by Hesitation Kane that the
+corrals would accommodate a thousand horses at once. It was
+believed that three days would be occupied in handling the great
+mob of stock that had been driven down from the hills.
+
+Strange cowboys began to drift into the camp; but all seemed well
+behaved, and they were the easiest men in the world to get along
+with. They all put themselves out to give the visitors any
+information in their power.
+
+"We're going to have a bully time here," Bess declared to Nan. "I
+do not really want to go to bed to-night. I'd rather hang about the
+campfires and listen to the boys who are off watch tell stories."
+
+But Rhoda would not agree to this, and the four girls retired at a
+reasonable hour. Walter slept under one of the cook wagons, rolled
+up in a blanket like the cowboys themselves. Everything seemed
+peaceful when they went to bed, and there surely was no sign of one
+of the tornadoes Mr. Hammond had talked about. The girls, at least,
+slept just as soundly in their tent as they had in the beds at the
+ranch house.
+
+The camp was aroused betimes the next morning. Breakfast was eaten
+by starlight. Immediately the first gang of horses, cut out of the
+main herd, was driven down.
+
+Walter and the girls were in the saddle as early as anybody. Of
+course, none of the visitors could swing a rope; but Rhoda showed
+them how to ride on the flank of the herd and keep the young and
+wild horses from running free. They had all to be driven into the
+wide entrance to the corral.
+
+It was inside this barrier that the cowboys rode among the
+frightened herd and roped those that were to be branded. Even Rhoda
+did a little of this before the day was over, and her friends
+thought it was quite wonderful that she showed no fear of the
+plunging and squealing horses.
+
+But they were much interested, even if the smell of scorching flesh
+was not pleasant. Walter declared he was going to learn to throw a
+lariat. But his sister shook her head and shut her eyes tight every
+time she saw a glowing iron taken from one of the fires.
+
+"Never mind," Nan said. "It is enormously interesting, and we shall
+likely never see the like again. Just think of growing up like
+Rhoda, among scenes of this kind. No wonder she seemed different
+from the rest of us girls when she came to Lakeview Hall."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE OUTLAW
+
+
+The first day of the round-up was done, and well done, Mr. Hammond
+said. The girls had been in the saddle for more than twelve hours;
+and how they did sleep this second night under canvas!
+
+Bess wanted to say something about plans for hunting the Mexican
+bandit's treasure before she fell asleep; but actually she dropped
+into slumber in the middle of the word "treas-ure" and never
+finished what she was going to say.
+
+Nan, however, awoke long before dawn again. She felt lame and
+stiff, like an old person afflicted with rheumatism. The
+unusualness of the previous day's activities caused this stiffness
+of the joints and soreness of her muscles.
+
+She heard the fires crackling and saw the reflection of firelight
+on the side of the tent, so she knew the cooks were astir. But
+nobody else seemed to be moving yet, and Nan might have turned over
+for another nap had it not been for a peculiar sound which suddenly
+smote upon her ear, and seemingly from a long way off.
+
+After hearing this for a minute or two, she got up and crept to the
+tent entrance. The flap was laid back for the sake of ventilation,
+and with her kimono hunched about her shoulders, she crouched in
+the doorway and looked out across the open space before the grove
+in which the camp was pitched. It was just between dark and dawn
+when strange figures seem to move in the dimness of out-of-doors.
+Yet Nan knew there really was nothing stirring there on the plain.
+The herd was much farther away.
+
+The sound that had disturbed her came to her ears again, a high,
+thin, crackling whistle--a most uncanny noise.
+
+"What can it be?" murmured Nan aloud.
+
+"Nan!" whispered a voice beyond her.
+
+"Goodness! Is that you, Walter Mason?" she demanded, huddling her
+robe closer about her.
+
+"Yes. Come on out. Do you hear that funny noise?"
+
+"Yes. What is it? I can't come out. I'm not dressed."
+
+"Well, get dressed," he said, chuckling. "I want to know what
+that--There! Hear it again?"
+
+The high whistling sound rose once more. It seemed to be coming
+nearer, and was from the north, the direction of the hills.
+
+"Isn't it funny?" gasped Nan. "Shall I ask Rhoda?"
+
+"Come on out and we'll ask one of the men if he knows what it is.
+That horse wrangler is up. I just saw him going toward the pony
+corral."
+
+"Hesitation Kane? Well, we'll never learn if we ask him," giggled
+Nan. "Wait, Walter. I'll come right out."
+
+She went softly back to her cot and sat down on it to draw on her
+stockings. She dressed as quickly and as quietly as possible. Even
+Rhoda did not awake, and, knowing that all her girl friends were
+probably just as tired and stiff as she was, Nan got out of the
+tent without disturbing them in the slightest.
+
+"Oh, Walter!" she murmured, seizing his hand in the dusk, "how
+strange everything seems. Such a wilderness! And I haven't washed
+my face."
+
+"Come on down to the brook," said her boy friend. "They call it a
+river here. They ought to see the Drainage Canal!" and he laughed.
+"What do you suppose they would say to the Mississippi River?"
+
+"Just what Rhoda said she thought of it when she first saw that
+noble stream: That it was an awful waste of land to put so much
+water on it! You know there are sections of this country down here
+where it rains only once in about eight years."
+
+They reached the river's edge. It was light enough here to see what
+they were about. Both knelt down and laved their faces and hands
+and, as Nan said, "wiggled the winkers out of their eyes."
+
+Walter produced a clean towel, for Nan had forgotten hers, and one
+on one end and one on the other, they dried their faces and hands.
+Nan's hair was in two firm plaits, and she would not dress it anew
+until later.
+
+"I don't want to wake up the tribe. They are sleeping so soundly,"
+she explained.
+
+"There's that funny call again!" exclaimed Walter, stopping in a
+vigorous scrubbing of his face with the towel to listen.
+
+"Come on!" cried Nan under her breath. "We must find out what that
+means."
+
+They started for the campfire where the cooks were at work, and
+ran, clinging to each other's hand. Before they reached the cleared
+space about the Rose Ranch chuck wagon, a figure loomed up before
+them.
+
+"Here's Mr. Kane now!" cried Nan, halting before the grim-visaged
+horseman. "Good-morning, Mr. Kane!"
+
+The man's lips twisted into a smile, and he nodded. But no word
+came from him. Nan was not to be put off easily. She asked:
+
+"Do you know what that sound is, Mr. Kane? Do listen to it!" as the
+high-pitched whistle again reached their ears.
+
+Hesitation Kane struggled to answer--and it was a struggle. They
+could see that. He flushed, and paled, and finally blurted out a
+single word:
+
+"Outlaw!"
+
+With that he strode by and was lost in the shadows of the trees.
+Nan and Walter gazed at each other in both amazement and amusement.
+
+"What do you know about that?" demanded the boy.
+
+"Well, we got him to say something," sighed the girl.
+
+"But--but it doesn't mean anything. 'Outlaw,' indeed! Does he mean
+to tell us that there is a Mexican bandit, for instance, out there
+whistling?"
+
+"How foolish!" laughed Nan. "Of course not."
+
+"Then, Miss Sherwood, please explain," commanded Walter.
+
+"You'd better ask Mr. Hesitation Kane to explain."
+
+"And get another cryptic answer? No, thanks! I want to know--There
+it is again!"
+
+The sound was closer. Nan suddenly laughed.
+
+"Why," she cried, "I know what it is. It's a horse--a wild horse.
+Of course!"
+
+"But he said 'outlaw.' Oh!" added Walter suddenly, "I know now.
+Some of the wild stallions never can be tamed. I've read about
+them. Of course, it is a stallion. We heard them calling
+day-before-yesterday.
+
+"Well, I never!" chuckled Walter. "That fellow had me fooled. I
+didn't know but we were about to be attacked by Mexican robbers."
+
+"Oh, Walter! do you suppose they were desperadoes who came through
+the Gap day-before-yesterday morning?" Nan asked.
+
+"I don't know. Maybe Rhoda and her father were fooling."
+
+"But they take it so coolly."
+
+"They take everything coolly," said the boy, with admiration. "I
+never saw such people! Why, these cowboys do the greatest stunts on
+horseback, and make no bones of it. No circus or Wild West show was
+ever the equal of it.
+
+"Hullo, here's Rhoda now!"
+
+The Rose Ranch girl appeared, smiling and wide awake. She did not
+appear to be lame from the previous day's riding.
+
+"Hear that renegade calling out there?" she asked. "He's followed
+the herd down from the hills. Come on and let's catch our ponies.
+We'll take a ride out that way before breakfast. If it is the horse
+I think it is, you'll see something worth while."
+
+They hurried down to the corral where the riding ponies were. With
+her rope Rhoda noosed first her own, then Nan's, and then Walter's
+mounts. The saddles hung along the fence, and they cinched them on
+tight to the round barrels of the ponies, and then mounted.
+
+The horses were fresh again, and started off spiritedly. The sun
+was coming up now, and again the wonder of sunrise on the plains
+impressed the girl from Tillbury.
+
+"It is just wonderful, Rhoda," she told her friend. "I shall never
+cease to marvel at it."
+
+"It is worth getting up in the morning to see," agreed Rhoda,
+smiling. "There! See yonder?"
+
+The level rays of the sun touched up the edge of the plain toward
+which they were headed. Here the broken rocks of the foothills
+joined the lush grass of the valley. On a boulder, outlined clearly
+against the background of the hill, stood a beautiful creature
+which, in the early light, seemed taller and far more noble looking
+than any ordinary horse.
+
+"Oh!" gasped Nan, "is that the outlaw?"
+
+The distant horse stretched his neck gracefully and blew another
+shrill call. He was headed toward the herd which was now being
+urged into the valley by the punchers. The horse whistled again and
+again.
+
+"What a beautiful creature!" murmured Nan. "Oh, Rhoda! can't we
+catch him?"
+
+"That's the fellow," said the Western girl. "They have been trying
+to rope him for three seasons. But nobody has ever been able to get
+near enough to him yet. He is not a native horse, either."
+
+"What do you mean by that?" asked Walter curiously.
+
+"You know, horses ran wild in this country when the Spanish first
+came in. These were of the mustang breed. The Indian pony--the
+cayuse--was found up in Utah and Idaho. Horse-breeders down here
+have bought Morgan sires and other blooded stock to run with the
+mustangs.
+
+"That fellow yonder was bought by Mr. Duranger, an Englishman, who
+owned the Long Bow. The horse got away five years ago and ran off
+with the wild herd, and now he is the wildest of the bunch. And
+swift!"
+
+"What a beauty!" exclaimed Walter.
+
+The sunlight shone full on the handsome horse. He was black, save
+for his chest, forefeet, and a star on his forehead. Those spots
+gleamed as white as silver. His tail swept the ground. His coat
+shone as though it had just been curried. He stamped his hoofs upon
+the rock and called again to the herd that he had trailed down from
+the fastnesses of the hills.
+
+"If we could only catch him!" murmured Nan.
+
+Rhoda laughed. "You want to catch that outlaw; and Bess wants to
+find the Mexican treasure. I reckon you'll both have your work cut
+out for you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+A RAID
+
+
+The branding of the horses had drawn from ranches all about every
+man that could be spared. There were upward of a hundred men,
+including the camp workers and cooks, in the Rolling Spring Valley
+for those three days.
+
+And how they did work! From early morning until dark the fires in
+the branding pens flamed. Roped horses and colts were being dragged
+in different directions all the time. Those already branded, and
+selected for training on the several ranches, were driven away in
+small bunches.
+
+The whistling outlaw went away after a day. None of the boys had
+time to try to ride him down, although there was scarcely a man of
+the lot who did not covet the beautiful creature.
+
+Rhoda and her friends did about as they pleased while the branding
+was going on; only they did not ride out of the valley. Nan began
+to suspect that the reason Rhoda would not lead them far from the
+riverside encampment could be traced to the appearance of the
+Mexican riders whom they had glimpsed coming over the old Spanish
+Trail in the Blue Buttes. Nothing more had been heard of those
+strangers; but Nan knew Mr. Hammond had warned his men all to keep
+a sharp lookout for them.
+
+It was when everything was cleared up and the outfits were getting
+under way for their respective ranches, the last colt having been
+branded, that a cowboy riding from the south, and therefore from
+the direction of the Long Bow range, came tearing across the valley
+toward the encampment by the cottonwood trees.
+
+"Something on that feller's mind besides his hair, I shouldn't
+wonder," observed Mr. Hammond, drawlingly, as he sat his horse
+beside the group of girls ready then to turn ranchward. "Hi! Bill
+Shaddock," he shouted to the Long Bow boss, "ain't that one of your
+punchers comin' yonder?"
+
+"Yes, it is, Mr. Hammond," said Bill.
+
+"Something's happened, I reckon," observed Mr. Hammond, and he rode
+down to the river's edge with the others to meet the excited
+courier.
+
+The river was broad, but shallow. The lathered pony the cowpuncher
+rode splattered through the stream and staggered on to the low bank
+on their side. Bill Shaddock, who was a rather grimly speaking man,
+advised:
+
+"Better get off an' shoot that little brown horse now, Tom. You've
+nigh about run him to death."
+
+"He ain't dead yet--not by a long shot," pronounced the courier.
+"Give me a fresh mount, and all you fellows that can ride hike out
+behind me. You're wanted."
+
+"What for?" asked Mr. Hammond.
+
+"That last bunch of stock you started for our ranch, Bill," said
+the man, in explanation, "has been run off. Mex. thieves. That's
+what! Old Man's makin' up a posse now. Says to bring all the riders
+you can spare. There's more'n a dozen of the yaller thieves."
+
+Further questioning elicited the information that, a day's march
+from the headquarters of the Long Bow outfit, just at evening, a
+troop of Mexican horsemen had swooped down upon the band of
+half-wild horses and their drivers, shot at the latter, and had
+driven off the stock. Two of the men had been seriously wounded.
+
+"Oh! isn't that awful?" Grace Mason said. "Is it far from here?"
+
+"Is what far from here?" demanded Rhoda.
+
+"Where this battle took place," replied the startled girl. "Let us
+go back to the house--do!"
+
+But the others were eager to go with the band of cowboys that were
+at once got together to follow the raiders. Mr. Hammond, however,
+would not hear to this proposal. He would not even let Walter go
+with the party.
+
+"You _young_ folks start along for the house," he advised.
+"Can't run the risk of letting you get all shot up by a party of
+rustlers. What would your folks ever say to me?" and he rode away
+laughing at the head of the cavalcade chosen to follow the Mexican
+horse thieves.
+
+"No hope for us," said Walter, rather piqued by Mr. Hammond's
+refusal. "I would like to see what they do when they overtake that
+bunch of Mexicans."
+
+"If they overtake them, you mean," said Bess. "Why, the thieves
+have nearly twenty hours' start."
+
+"But they cannot travel anywhere near as fast as father and those
+others will," explained Rhoda. "Dear me! it does seem as though the
+Long Bow boys ought to have looked out for their own horses. I
+don't like to have daddy ride off on such errands. Sometimes there
+are accidents."
+
+"I should think there would be!" exclaimed Nan Sherwood. "Why! two
+men already have been wounded."
+
+"Just like the moving pictures!" said Bess eagerly. "A five-reel
+thriller."
+
+"You wouldn't talk like that if Mr. Hammond should be hurt," said
+Grace admonishingly.
+
+"Of course he won't be!" returned Bess. "What nonsense!"
+
+But perhaps Rhoda did not feel so much assurance. At least she
+warned them all to say nothing about the raid by the Mexicans when
+they arrived at Rose Ranch.
+
+"Mother will probably not ask where daddy has gone; and what she
+doesn't know will not alarm her," Rhoda explained.
+
+All the bands of horses for the home corrals had been driven away
+before the lumbering chuck wagons started from the encampment.
+Rhoda and her friends soon were out of sight of the slower-moving
+mule teams.
+
+They did not ride straight for Rose Ranch; but, having come out of
+the valley, they skirted the hills on the lookout for game. Rhoda
+and Walter both carried rifles now, and Nan was eager to get a shot
+at something besides a tin can.
+
+The herd of horses had gone down into the valley, of course;
+therefore more timid creatures ventured out of the hills on to the
+plain. It was not an hour after high-noon when Rhoda descried
+through her glasses a group of grazing animals some distance ahead.
+
+"Goodness! what are they?" demanded Bess, when her attention had
+been called to them. "Chickens?"
+
+"The idea!"
+
+"They don't look any bigger than chickens," said Bess, with
+confidence.
+
+"Well," drawled Rhoda, handing her glass to the doubting one,
+"they've got four legs, and they haven't got feathers. So I don't
+see how you can make poultry out of them."
+
+"Oh, the cunning little things!" cried Bess, having the glasses
+focused in a moment on the spot indicated. "They--they are deer!"
+
+"Antelope. Only a small herd," said Rhoda. "Now, if we can only get
+near enough to them for a shot--"
+
+"Oh, my! have we got to shoot them, Rhoda?" asked Grace. "Are they
+dangerous--like that puma?"
+
+"Well, no," admitted the Western girl. "But they are good to eat.
+And you will be glad enough to eat roast antelope after it has hung
+for a couple of days. Ah Foon will prepare it deliciously."
+
+"Come on, Nan," said Bess, "and take a squint through the glasses.
+But don't let Grace look. She will want to capture them all and
+keep them for pets."
+
+But Nan was looking in another direction. Along the western horizon
+a dull, slate-colored cloud was slowly rising. Nan wondered if it
+was dust, and if it was caused by the hoofs of cattle or horses. It
+was a curious looking cloud.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE ANTELOPE HUNT; AND MORE
+
+
+The little party approached with caution the spot where the
+antelopes were feeding. Rhoda was no amateur; and she advised her
+friends to ride quietly, to make no quick motions, and as far as
+possible to ride along the edge of the rising ground.
+
+Of course, the wind was blowing from the antelopes; otherwise the
+party would never have got near them at all. The creatures were
+feeding so far out on the plain that it would, too, be unwise to
+try to creep up on them behind the rocks and bushes among which the
+cavalcade now rode.
+
+"When we get somewhat nearer, we shall have to ride right out into
+plain sight and run them down," Rhoda said. "That is our best
+chance."
+
+"The poor little things!" murmured Grace. "They won't have a chance
+with our ponies."
+
+"Oh, won't they?" laughed Rhoda softly. "I guess you don't know
+that the antelope is almost the fastest thing that ever crossed
+these plains. Even the iron horse is no match for the antelope."
+
+"Do you mean to say they can outrun a steam engine?" asked Bess in
+wonder.
+
+"Surely."
+
+"Then what chance have we to run them down?" demanded Nan.
+
+"Well, there are two ways by which we may get near enough for a
+shot," Rhoda explained. "I have been out with the boys hunting
+antelope, and they certainly are the most curious creatures."
+
+"Who are? The cowboys?" asked Bess.
+
+"Yes. Sometimes," laughed Rhoda. "But in this case I mean that the
+antelopes are curious. I've seen Steve get into a clump of brush
+and stand on his head, waving his legs in the air. A bunch of
+antelopes would come right up around the waving legs, and as long
+as the wind blew toward him instead of toward the antelopes, they
+would not run. So all he had to do when he got them close enough
+was to turn end for end, pick up his gun, and shoot one."
+
+"I don't suppose you girls would care to try that," Walter said,
+his eyes twinkling. "But I might do it."
+
+"Only trouble is," said Rhoda, after the laugh at Walter's
+suggestion, "I don't see any brush clumps out there. Do you?"
+
+"No-o," said Nan. "The plain is as bare as your palm."
+
+"Exactly," Rhoda agreed. "So we must try running them down."
+
+"But you say they are very speedy," objected
+
+"Oh, yes. But there are ways of running them," said Rhoda. "We will
+ride on a little further and then let our ponies breathe. I'll show
+you how you must ride."
+
+Nan was looking back again at the cloud on the horizon. "Isn't that
+a funny looking thing?" she said to Bess.
+
+"What thing?" asked her chum, staring back also.
+
+"It is a cloud of dust--perhaps?"
+
+"Who ever saw the like!" exclaimed Bess. "Say, Rhoda!"
+
+The Western girl looked around and made a quick gesture for
+silence. So neither of the Tillbury girls gave the cloud another
+thought.
+
+They came at length to a piece of high brush which, with a pile of
+rocks, hid them completely from the herd of peacefully grazing
+animals. Peering through the barrier, the girls could see the
+beautiful creatures plainly.
+
+"So pretty!" breathed Grace. "It seems a shame--"
+
+"Now, don't be nonsensical," said Bess practically. "Just think how
+pretty a chicken is; and yet you do love chicken, Grade."
+
+"Softly," warned Rhoda. "We do not know how far our voices may
+carry."
+
+Then she gave the party the simple instructions necessary, and they
+pulled the ponies out from behind the brush and rocks.
+
+"At a gallop!" commanded Rhoda, and at once the party made off
+across the plain.
+
+Rhoda rode to the west of the little herd of antelopes; Walter and
+the other girls rode as hard as they could a little to the east of
+them. Almost at once the antelopes were startled. They stopped
+grazing, sprang to attention, and for a minute huddled together,
+seemingly uncertain of their next move.
+
+The four riders encircling them to the north and east naturally
+disturbed the tranquillity of the deer more than that single figure
+easily cantering in a westerly direction. Swerving from the larger
+party, the wild creatures darted away.
+
+And how they could run! The ponies would evidently be no match for
+them on a straight course. But as the larger number of pursuers
+pressed eastward, the antelopes began circling, and their course
+brought them in time much nearer to Rhoda. It was an old
+trick--making the frightened but fleet animals run in a
+half-circle. Rhoda was cutting across to get within rifle shot.
+
+The breeze soon carried the scent of the pursuing party to the
+nostrils of the antelopes, too; but they did not notice Rhoda. She
+brought up her rifle, shook her pony's reins, and in half a minute
+stood up in her short stirrups and drew bead on the white spot
+behind the fore shoulder of one of the running antelopes.
+
+The distance was almost the limit for that caliber of rifle; but
+the antelope turned a somersault and lay still, while its mates
+turned off at a tangent and tore away across the plain.
+
+It was several minutes before Walter and the other girls rode up.
+Rhoda had not dismounted. She was not looking at the dead antelope.
+Instead, she had unslung her glasses again and was staring through
+them westward--toward the slate-colored cloud that was climbing
+steadily toward the zenith.
+
+When the ponies were halted and the sound of their hoofs was
+stilled, the young people could hear a moaning noise that seemed to
+be approaching from the direction toward which they were facing at
+that moment--the west.
+
+"Oh!" cried Nan, "what is that?"
+
+"Have you seen it before?" demanded Rhoda, shutting the glasses and
+putting them in the case.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I wish I had," Rhoda said. "Hurry up, Walter, and sling that
+antelope across your saddle. Look out that the pony doesn't get
+away from you. Maybe he won't like the smell of blood. Quick!"
+
+"What is the matter?" cried Bess, while Grace began to flush and
+then pale, as she always did when she was startled.
+
+"It is a storm coming," answered Rhoda shortly.
+
+"But, Rhoda," said Bess, "the wind is blowing the wrong way to
+bring that cloud toward us."
+
+"You will find that the wind will change in a minute. And it's
+going to blow some, too."
+
+"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed Nan, under her breath, "is it what your
+father warned us about?"
+
+"A tornado?" cried Walter, from the ground where he was picking up
+the dead antelope.
+
+"I never saw a cloud like that that did not bring a big wind,"
+Rhoda told them. "We've got to hurry."
+
+"Can we reach home?" asked Bess.
+
+"Not ahead of that. But we'll find some safe place."
+
+"What's that coming?" cried Nan, standing up in her stirrups to
+look toward the rolling cloud.
+
+"The wagons," said Rhoda. "See! The boys have got the mules on the
+gallop. Their only chance is to reach the ranch."
+
+"But can't we reach the house?" demanded Grace, trembling.
+
+"I won't risk it--There! See that?"
+
+The slate-colored cloud seemed to shut out everything behind the
+flying wagons like a curtain. The breeze about the little cavalcade
+had died away. But Rhoda's cry called attention to something that
+sprang up from the site of the mule-drawn chuck wagons, and flew
+high in the air.
+
+"A balloon!" gasped Bess.
+
+"A balloon your granny!" exclaimed Walter, tying the legs of the
+antelope to his saddle pommel. "Go ahead, girls. I'll be right
+after you."
+
+"It was a wagon-top," explained Rhoda, twitching her already
+nervous pony around. "They did not get it tied down soon enough."
+
+"Then a big wind is coming!" Nan agreed.
+
+"Come on!" shouted Rhoda, setting spurs to her mount.
+
+"Oh, Walter!" shrieked Grace, her own pony following the others,
+while Walter and his mount remained behind.
+
+But the boy leaped into the saddle. He waved his hand to his
+sister. They saw his mouth open and knew he shouted a cheery word.
+But they could not hear a sound for the roaring of the tornado.
+
+In a second, it seemed, the tempest burst about them. Rhoda had
+headed her pony for the hills. The mounts of the other girls were
+close beside Rhoda's pony. But Walter was instantly blotted out of
+sight.
+
+Whether he followed their trail or not the four girls could not be
+sure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+IN THE OLD BEAR DEN
+
+
+"Girls! Oh, girls!" shrieked Grace. "Walter is lost!"
+
+She might have been foolish enough to try to draw in her pony; but
+Rhoda, riding close beside her, snatched the reins out of Grace's
+hand.
+
+"More likely he thinks we are lost!" Rhoda exclaimed so that Grace,
+at least, heard her. Then she shouted to the others: "This way!
+This way!"
+
+"Wha-at wa-ay?" demanded Bess Harley. "I--I'm going
+every-which-way, right now!"
+
+But, in a very few minutes, it appeared that this sudden tempest
+was nothing to make fun over. The four girls, keeping close
+together, entered suddenly a gulch, the side of which broke the
+velocity of the wind. They stood there, the four ponies huddled
+together, in a whirl of dust and flying debris.
+
+"Shout for him!" commanded Rhoda. "Don't cry, Grace. Walter is
+quite smart enough to look out for himself."
+
+"Don't be a baby, dear," Nan said, leaning forward to pat Grace's
+arm. "He will be all right. And so shall we."
+
+"But not standing here!" exclaimed Rhoda, after they had almost
+split their throats, as Bess declared, shrieking for the missing
+boy. "We must go farther up the gulch. I know a place--"
+
+"There goes my hat!" wailed Bess.
+
+"You'll probably never see it again," said Rhoda. "Come on! Maybe
+Walter will find us."
+
+"But he doesn't know this country as you do, Rhoda," objected Nan.
+
+"He'll know what to do just the same," Rhoda said practically.
+
+"He will if he remembers what your father told us," said Bess.
+
+"What's that?" demanded her chum.
+
+"Mr. Ham-Hammond said to lie do-own and hang on to the
+grass-roots," stammered the almost breathless Bess. "And I guess
+we'd better do that, too."
+
+"Come on. I'll get you out of the wind," said Rhoda, jerking her
+horse's head around.
+
+The other animals followed. Whether the three Eastern girls were
+willing to be led away by Rhoda or not, their mounts would
+instinctively keep together.
+
+Around them the wind still shrieked, coming in gusts now and then
+that utterly drowned the voices of the girls. Rhoda seemed to have
+great confidence, but her friends felt that their situation was
+quite desperate.
+
+The deeper they went into the gulch, however, the more they became
+sheltered from the wind. This was merely a slash in the hillside;
+it was not a canyon. Rhoda told them there was no farther exit to
+the place; it was merely a pocket in the hill.
+
+"It has been used more than once as a corral for horses," she
+explained. "But there's an old bears' den up here--"
+
+"Oh, mercy!" screamed Grace. "A bear!"
+
+"Hasn't been one seen about here since I was born," declared Rhoda
+quickly. "But that old den is just the place for us."
+
+Within ten minutes they reached a huge boulder that had broken away
+from the west side of the gulch. Behind it was an opening among
+other rocks. Indeed, this whole rift in the hillside was a mass of
+broken rock. It was hard for the ponies to pick a path between the
+stones. And it had grown very dark, too.
+
+The other girls would never have dared venture into the dark pocket
+behind that boulder had Rhoda not led them. She dismounted, and,
+seizing her pony's bridle, started around the huge rock and into
+the cavity.
+
+"Must we take in the horses, too?" cried Bess. "I never!"
+
+"I won't balk at a stable, if we can get out of this wind," Nan
+declared. "Go ahead, Gracie, dear. Don't cry. Walter will be all
+right."
+
+"But do you think we shall be all right?" asked Bess of her chum,
+when Grace had started in behind Rhoda.
+
+"I guess we'll have to take Rhoda's word for it," admitted Nan.
+"This is no place to stop and argue the question, my dear."
+
+She made Bess go before, and she brought up the rear of the
+procession. It was as dark as pitch in that cavern. The entrance
+was just about wide enough for the horses to get through, and not
+much higher than a stable door.
+
+"Here we are!" shouted the Western girl, and by the echoing of her
+voice Nan knew that Rhoda must be in a much larger cavern than this
+passage.
+
+The others pressed on. The ponies' hoofs rang upon solid rock. The
+roaring of the tornado changed to a lower key as they went on. From
+somewhere light enough entered for Nan to begin to distinguish
+objects in the cave.
+
+The horses stamped and whinnied to each other. Nan's pinto snuggled
+his nose into her palm. The animal's satisfaction in having got
+into this refuge encouraged the girl.
+
+"Well, I guess we're all right in here," she said aloud. "The
+ponies seem to like it."
+
+"Cheerful Grigg!" scoffed Bess. "My! I never thought I'd live to
+see the time that I should be glad to take refuge in a bears' den."
+
+"O-o-oh, don't!" begged Grace.
+
+"Don't be a goosie," said Bess. "The bear won't hear us. He must be
+dead a long time now, if he hasn't been heard of since Rhoda was
+born."
+
+"Well, you know, bears hibernate," ventured Grace Mason. "They go
+to sleep and don't wake up, sometimes, for ever and ever so long."
+
+"Not for fifteen years," laughed Rhoda.
+
+Just then, to their surprise, not to say their fright, there came
+to their ears a most startling sound out of the darkness of the
+cave!
+
+It was a more uncanny noise than any of the young people had ever
+in their lives heard before. Rising higher, and higher, shriller
+and yet more shrill, the sound seemed to shudder through the cavern
+as though caused by some supernatural source. There was nothing
+human in a single note of it!
+
+"Oh!" whispered the shaking Grace, "is that a bear?"
+
+"Never in this world!" exclaimed Nan.
+
+"I don't know what it is," asserted Bess. "But if it is a bear, or
+not, I hope it doesn't do it again."
+
+"Rhoda, what do you think?" demanded Nan, in an awed undertone.
+
+"Hush!" returned the Western girl. "Listen."
+
+"I don't want to listen--not to that thing," declared Bess, with
+conviction. "It's worse than a banshee. Worse than the black ghost
+at the Lakeview Hall boathouse."
+
+Once more the noise reached them; and if at first it had startled
+the four girls, it now did more. For the ponies whose bridles they
+held, showed disturbance. Grace's mount lifted his head and
+answered the strange cry with a whinny that startled the echoes of
+the cavern like bats about their ears.
+
+"Oh, don't, Do Fuss!" commanded Grace. "Don't be such a bad little
+horse. You make it worse."
+
+"He surely would not have neighed if that was a bear shouting at
+us," declared Bess.
+
+"Bear, nonsense!" scoffed Rhoda.
+
+"Well, put a better name to it," challenged Bess.
+
+For a third time the eerie cry rang out. The noise completely
+silenced Rhoda for the moment. Nan said, with more apparent
+confidence than she really felt:
+
+"One thing, it doesn't seem to come nearer. But it gives me the
+shakes."
+
+"It can't be that terrible wind blowing into the cavern by some
+hole, can it?" queried Bess.
+
+"You are more inventive than practical, Bess," said her chum. "That
+is not the wind, I guarantee."
+
+"But what is it, then?"
+
+"I wish I could tell you, girls. But I really cannot guess,"
+admitted the girl of Rose Ranch, at last.
+
+"You never heard it before?" queried Grace.
+
+"I certainly never did!"
+
+"Say! I ho-ope I'll never hear it again," declared Bess.
+
+But her hope did not come true. Almost immediately the prolonged
+subterranean murmur echoed and reechoed through the cavern, dying
+away at last in a choking sound that frightened the quartette of
+girls deplorably.
+
+Grace began to sob. Nan and Bess were really frightened dumb for
+the time. Rhoda Hammond felt that she should keep up their courage.
+
+"Don't, Gracie. Don't get all worked up. There must be some
+sensible explanation of the sound. It is nothing that is going to
+hurt us--"
+
+"How do you know?" demanded Grace.
+
+"Because, if it was any animal that might attack us, it surely
+would have come nearer. And it hasn't. Besides, if it were a
+dangerous beast, the ponies would have shown signs of uneasiness
+long since."
+
+In fact, this was a very sensible statement, and Nan Sherwood, for
+one, quite appreciated the fact.
+
+"Of course you are right, Rhoda. We are in no danger."
+
+"You don't know that," grumbled Bess.
+
+"Yes, I do. Unless the sound is made by some human being. And that
+seems impossible. There is no wild man about, of course, Rhoda?"
+
+"Not that I ever heard of," said the girl of Rose Ranch. "Nobody
+wilder than our cowboys," and she tried to laugh.
+
+"Well, then, we must not pay any attention to the noise," said Nan,
+the practical.
+
+"Come on, now," said Rhoda, starting to one side with the pony she
+led. "Bring them all over here and I will hobble them. Then we can
+find some place to sit down and wait for the storm to pass. It will
+rain terribly after the wind. It always does."
+
+"That is all right, Rhoda. I had forgotten about the tornado," said
+Bess. "What I want to know is: Have you got your rifle safe?"
+
+"Of course. And it is loaded."
+
+"Then I feel better," Bess declared. "For if that dreadful
+thing--whatever it is--comes near us, you can shoot it."
+
+"I can see plainly," laughed Nan, "that you do not believe the
+noise is supernatural, Bess."
+
+"Humph! maybe you could shoot a ghost. Who knows?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+AFTER THE TEMPEST
+
+
+The party had not got away from the scene of the round-up so very
+early in the morning; and the detour to reach the herd of antelopes
+had taken considerable time. It was therefore well past noon when
+the tornado had sent the four schoolgirls scurrying for the old
+bears' den.
+
+But by that time it was almost pitch dark outside as well as inside
+the cavern. The tornado had quenched the sunlight and made it seem
+more like midnight than mid-afternoon.
+
+The situation of the girls in the cavity in the west side of the
+gulch might not have been so awe-inspiring had it not been for the
+mysterious noise that had echoed and reechoed through the hollow
+rock.
+
+Rhoda hobbled the horses in the dark at one side of the cave, and
+did it just as skillfully as though she could see. It seemed to the
+other girls as though fooling around the ponies' heels was a
+dangerous piece of work; but the ranch girl laughed at them when
+they mentioned it.
+
+"These ponies don't kick, except each other when they are playing.
+I wouldn't hobble them at all, only I don't know where they might
+stray in the dark. There may be holes in here--we don't know. I
+don't want any of you to separate from the others while we are in
+here."
+
+"Don't you be afraid of that, Rhoda," said Grace Mason earnestly.
+"I am clinging to Nan Sherwood's hand, and I wouldn't let go for a
+farm!"
+
+"As it happens, Gracie," said Bess Harley's voice, "you chance to
+be hanging to my hand. But it is all right. I am just as good a
+hanger as you are. I don't love the dark, either."
+
+Nan herself felt that she would not be fearful in this place if it
+had not been for the queer sound from the depths of the cave.
+Whatever it was, when it was repeated, and the horses stamped and
+whinnied as though in answer, Nan felt a fear of the unknown that
+she could scarcely control.
+
+"What do you think it is, Rhoda?" she whispered in the ranch girl's
+ear. "It is so mournful and uncanny!"
+
+"It's got me guessing," admitted the ranch girl. "I never heard
+that there was anything up here in the hills to be afraid of. And I
+don't believe it is anything that threatens us now. But I admit it
+gives me the creeps every time I hear it."
+
+On the other hand the roaring of the tornado was heard for more
+than an hour after they entered the cave. They had come so far from
+the mouth of the old bears' den that the sound of the elements was
+muffled.
+
+But by and by they knew that sound was changed. Instead of the
+roaring of the wind, torrents of rain dashed upon the rocks outside
+the cave. The girls ventured through the tunnel again, for Rhoda
+assured them that very heavy rain usually followed the big wind.
+
+"Daddy says the wind goes before to blow a man's roof off, so that
+the rain that comes after can soak him through and through. Oh,
+girls!" exclaimed their hostess, who was ahead, "it certainly is
+raining."
+
+"I--should--say!" gasped Bess.
+
+The moisture blew into the cavern's mouth; but that was not much.
+What startled them was that they were slopping about in several
+inches of water, and this water seemed to be rising.
+
+"There's been a cloudburst back in the hills," declared Rhoda.
+"This gulch runs a stream."
+
+"Oh, poor Walter!" cried Grace, sobbing again. "He'll be drowned."
+
+"Of course not, goosie!" said Bess. "He's on horseback."
+
+"But if this gulley is full of water--"
+
+"It isn't full," said Nan. "If it were running that deep, we'd be
+drowned in here ourselves."
+
+"We are pretty well bottled up," admitted Rhoda, coming back from
+the entrance, out of which she had tried to peer. She was wet, too.
+"The water is a roaring torrent in the bottom of the gully. You can
+see it has risen to the mouth of this cave, and is still rising.
+
+"But we need not worry about that. The floor of the cavern inside
+is even higher than where we stand. It would take an awfully hard
+and an awfully long rain to fill this cavern. And I don't imagine
+this will be a second deluge."
+
+Her light laugh cheered them. But it was an experience that none of
+them was likely to forget. Rhoda's courage was augmented by the
+actions of the ponies. Those intelligent brutes showed no signs of
+fear--not even when the mysterious sound was repeated; therefore
+the ranch girl was quite sure no harm menaced them.
+
+Time and again the girls ventured through the tunnel. The water did
+not rise much higher; but it did not decrease. Nightfall must be
+approaching. Bess and Grace both wore wrist watches; but they had
+no matches and it was too dark to see the faces of the timepieces.
+
+The girls were growing very hungry; but that was no criterion, for
+they had eaten no lunch. Time is bound to drag by very slowly when
+people are thrust into such a position as this; it might not be
+near supper time after all.
+
+"I do hope we shan't have to stay here over night. Can't we wade
+out through the gully, Rhoda?" Grace asked.
+
+"As near as I could judge, the mouth of this cave was about ten
+feet higher than the bottom of the gulch," returned the ranch girl.
+"The water seems still to fill the gulch as high as the entrance.
+Can you wade through ten feet of water?"
+
+"Oh!" murmured Grace.
+
+"Wish I had a pair of Billy's stilts," said Bess. "It might be
+done."
+
+"Do you suppose they will come hunting for us?" Nan asked.
+
+"Who?" asked Rhoda practically. "Let me tell you, every boy on the
+place will be having his hands full right now. I don't think the
+main line of the tornado struck across toward the house. At least,
+I hope not. But I bet it has done damage enough.
+
+"If it hit the herds of horses--those wild ones--good-by! They will
+all have to be rounded up again. And the cattle! Well, make up your
+minds the boys are going to have their hands full with the herds
+for a couple of days after this. They won't have time to come
+hunting for a crowd of scared girls."
+
+"Oh!" said Grace again.
+
+"And why should they?" laughed the ranch girl. "We are all
+intact--arms and legs and horses in good shape. I guess we will
+find our way home in time."
+
+"But Walter?" asked Walter's sister.
+
+"He may be home already. Anyway, I don't believe he drifted into
+this gulch behind us. He missed us somehow."
+
+Just the same she kept going to the mouth of the tunnel to try to
+look out. And it was for more than merely to discover if the rain
+had ceased. Secretly she, too, was worried about Walter.
+
+Gradually the rain ceased falling. Nor did the water rise any
+farther in the tunnel's mouth. But the heavens must still be
+overcast, for it continued as dark outside the cave as in.
+
+Finally Nan had an idea that was put into immediate practice. She
+broke the crystal of Bess's watch and by feeling the hands
+carefully made out that the time was half past six.
+
+"That's half past six at night, not in the morning, I suppose,"
+said Bess lugubriously. "But, oh, my! I am as hungry as though it
+were day-after-to-morrow's breakfast time."
+
+"Oh, we'll get out of here after a while," said Rhoda cheerfully.
+"We shall not have to kill and eat the horses--"
+
+"Or each other," sighed Bess. "Isn't that nice!"
+
+Again they ventured out to the mouth of the tunnel. The strange
+screaming back in the cave had begun again, and all four of the
+girls secretly wished to get as far away from the sound as
+possible. The water had fallen, and the rain had entirely ceased.
+There was only a puddle in a little hollow at the mouth of the
+cave. The roaring of the stream through the gorge was not so loud.
+
+"It will all soon be over--What's that?"
+
+Nan's cry was echoed by Grace: "Is it Walter? Walter!" she cried.
+
+A figure loomed up from around the corner of the boulder that half
+masked the entrance to the old bears' den. But the figure made no
+answer to the challenge. Surely it could not be Grace's brother!
+
+"Who's that?" demanded Nan again.
+
+Meanwhile Rhoda had darted back into the cave. Dark as it was, she
+found her pony and drew the rifle from its case. With this weapon
+in her hand she came running to the entrance again, and advanced
+the muzzle of the rifle toward the figure that had remained silent
+and motionless before the frightened girls.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE LETTER FROM JUANITA
+
+
+"You'd better speak up _pronto!_" exclaimed the girl from Rose
+Ranch in an unshaken tone. "I'm going to fire if you don't."
+
+"Oh, Rhoda!" shrieked Bess.
+
+"It _isn't_ Walter!" exclaimed Grace.
+
+"Speak! What do you want? Who are you?" demanded the courageous
+Rhoda.
+
+"No shoot, Thenorita!" gasped a frightened voice from the looming
+figure. "I go!"
+
+In a moment he was gone. He had disappeared around the corner of
+the boulder.
+
+"For mercy's sake!" gasped Bess, "what does that mean?"
+
+"Who was it?" asked Nan again.
+
+"A Mexican. But he wasn't one of our boys," said Rhoda. "I never
+heard his voice before. Besides, if he had been from the ranch he
+would not have acted so queerly. I don't like it."
+
+"Do you think he means us harm?" queried Nan.
+
+"I don't know what he means; but I mean him harm if he comes
+fooling around us again," declared Rhoda. "I never heard of such
+actions. Why! nine times out of ten he would have been shot first
+and the matter of who he was decided afterward."
+
+"Why, Rhoda! how awfully wicked that sounds. You surely would not
+shoot a man!" Bess Harley's tone showed her horror.
+
+"I don't know what I would do if I had to. There was something
+wrong with that fellow. Let me tell you, people do not creep up on
+you in the dark as he did--not out here in the open country--unless
+they mean mischief. If a man approaches a campfire or a cabin, he
+hails. And that Mexican--"
+
+She did not finish the sentence; but her earnestness served to take
+Grace's mind off the disappearance of Walter. She had something
+else to be frightened about!
+
+Rhoda was not trying to frighten her friends, however. That would
+be both needless and wicked. But she remembered the fact that there
+were supposedly strangers in the neighborhood, and she did not know
+who this Mexican lurking about the mouth of the bears' den might be.
+
+The girls went back into the cave and sat down again. Rhoda held
+the rifle across her lap, and they all listened for sounds from the
+entrance to the cave. But all they heard was the stamping of the
+horses and now and then the shrill and eerie cry from the depths of
+the cavern.
+
+When they made another trip to the mouth of the tunnel, it seemed
+to be lighter outside, late in the evening as it was, and the
+torrent in the gulch had receded greatly.
+
+"I believe we can get out now," said Rhoda. "You take the rifle,
+Grace. You are the best shot. And I will go after our ponies."
+
+"Oh, no! I would be afraid," gasped the girl. "Give the gun to
+Nan."
+
+So Nan took Rhoda's weapon while the ranch girl went to unhobble
+the ponies and lead her own to the cave's mouth. The other three
+followed docilely enough.
+
+Nan did not expect to fire the rifle if the Mexican--or anybody
+else--should appear. But she thought she could frighten the
+intruder just as much as Rhoda had.
+
+When the latter and the ponies arrived, Bess uttered a sigh of
+relief.
+
+"I certainly am glad to get out of that old hole in the ground.
+It's haunted," she declared. "And I want to get away from this
+place and keep away from it as long as we are at Rose Ranch. This
+has been one experience!"
+
+"And you wouldn't have missed it for a farm," Nan said to her. "I
+know how you'll talk when we get back to Lakeview Hall."
+
+"Oh! won't I?" and Bess really could chuckle. "Won't Laura turn
+green with envy?"
+
+They mounted their ponies after pulling up the cinches a little,
+and Rhoda again went ahead. The ponies splashed down into the
+running stream; but they were sure-footed and did not seem to be
+much frightened by the river that had so suddenly risen in the
+bottom of the gulch.
+
+They were only a few minutes in wading out of the gully. When the
+party came out on the plain the ponies were still hock deep in
+water. The whole land seemed to have become saturated and
+overflowed by the cloudburst.
+
+"When we do get a rain here it is usually what the boys call a
+humdinger," said Rhoda. "Now, let's hurry home."
+
+Just as she spoke there sounded a shout behind them. The girls,
+startled, drew in their horses. The latter began to whinny, and
+Rhoda said, with satisfaction:
+
+"I reckon that's Walter now. The ponies know that horse, anyway."
+
+The splash of approaching hoofs was heard after the girls had
+shouted in unison. Then they recognized the voice of the missing
+boy:
+
+"Hi! Grace! Nan! Are you there?"
+
+"Oh, Walter!" shrieked his sister, starting her pony in his
+direction. "Are you hurt?"
+
+"I'm mighty wet," declared Walter, riding up. "Are you all here?"
+
+"Most of us. What hasn't been scared off us," said Bess. "And, of
+course, we are starved."
+
+"Well, I hung on to the antelope. Want some, raw?" laughed the boy.
+"Cracky! what a storm this was."
+
+"It was pretty bad," said Nan.
+
+"What happened to you?" asked Rhoda.
+
+"I missed you, somehow. I don't know how it was," said the boy.
+
+"You must have tried to guide your pony," Rhoda said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That is where you were wrong. He would probably have found us if
+you had let him have his head."
+
+"Well, I got under the shelter of a rock out of the wind," the boy
+said. "But when it began to rain--blooey!"
+
+"Well, thank goodness," said Nan, "it is all over and nobody is
+hurt."
+
+"But, oh, Walter!" cried his sister, "we got into a haunted cave,
+and Mexicans came to shoot us, and Rhoda threatened to shoot them,
+so they went away, and--"
+
+"Whew! what's all this?" he demanded. "You are crazy, Sis."
+
+"Not altogether," laughed Nan. "We did have some adventure, didn't
+we, girls?"
+
+And when Walter heard the particulars he agreed that the experience
+must have been exciting. He rode along beside Nan in the rear of
+the others, as they cantered toward the ranch house, and he put a
+number of questions to her regarding the mysterious sound in the
+cavern.
+
+"It must have been the wind," said Nan. "Though it didn't sound
+like it."
+
+"What did it sound like?" asked her friend.
+
+"I don't know that I can tell you, Walter. It seemed so
+strange--shrill, and sort of stifled. Why! it was as uncanny as the
+neigh of that big horse we saw calling to the herd the other
+morning."
+
+"The outlaw?" asked Walter.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Maybe it was another horse," he said doubtfully.
+
+"How could that be? In that cave? Why didn't it come nearer, then?
+Oh, it couldn't have been another horse."
+
+"I don't know," ruminated Walter. "You saw that Mexican, too. There
+may have been some connection between him and that sound."
+
+"How could that be possible?" asked Nan, in wonder.
+
+"Well, if he had a horse, say? And he had hidden it deeper in the
+cave? And had hitched it so it could not run away? How does that
+sound?"
+
+"Awfully ingenious, Walter," admitted Nan, with a laugh. "But,
+somehow, it is not convincing."
+
+"Oh, all right, my lady. Then we will accept Grace's statement that
+the cave is haunted," and he laughed likewise.
+
+They arrived at the ranch house within the next two hours. They
+found everything about headquarters quite intact, for the tornado
+had swept past this spot without doing any damage. Mrs. Hammond met
+them in a manner that showed she had not become very anxious, and
+Rhoda had warned her friends to say little in her mother's hearing
+about their strange experience.
+
+Nor was anything said to Mrs. Hammond regarding the raid by the
+Mexican horse thieves. She supposed her husband was absent from the
+house because of the tornado. That, of course, had scattered the
+cattle tremendously.
+
+The girls themselves did not think much just then of the stolen
+horses and the posse that had started on the trail of the thieves.
+But another incident held their keen interest, and that connected
+with renegade Mexicans.
+
+There was a letter waiting for Rhoda when she arrived--a letter
+addressed in a cramped and unfamiliar hand. But when she opened it
+she called her friends about her with:
+
+"Do see here! What do you suppose this is? It's from that funny
+girl, Juanita O'Harra."
+
+"From Juanita?" asked Nan. "More about the treasure?"
+
+"Oh! The treasure!" added Bess, in delight. "I had almost forgotten
+about that."
+
+"Listen!" exclaimed the ranch girl. "She writes better English than
+she speaks. I should not wonder if there were an English school
+down in Honoragas."
+
+"Is she home again, then?" demanded Nan.
+
+"So it seems. Listen, I say," and Rhoda began to read:
+
+"'Miss R. HAMMOND,
+
+"'ROSE RANCH.
+
+"'_Dear Miss_:--
+
+"'I have arrived to my mother at Honoragas, and I take this pen in
+hand to let you know that Juan Sivello, Lobarto's nephew, who has
+come from the South--he is one of those who lisp--'"
+
+"What does she mean by that?" interrupted Bess, in curiosity.
+
+"The Mexicans of the southern provinces--many of the--do not
+pronounce the letter 's' clearly. They lisp," explained Rhoda. "Now
+let me read her letter." Then she pursued:
+
+"'--one of those who lisp--and it is said of him that he has of his
+uncle's hand a map, or the like, which shows where the treasure
+lies buried at Rose Ranch. This news comes to my mother's ears by
+round-about. We do not know for sure. But Juan Sivello is one bad
+man like his uncle, Lobarto. It is the truth I write with this pen.
+Juan has collected together, it is said round-about, some men who
+once rode the ranges with Lobarto, and they go up into your
+country. For what? It is too easy, Miss. It is--'"
+
+"Oh! Oh!" giggled Bess. "What delicious slang!"
+
+"I guess foreigners learn American slang before they learn the
+grammar," laughed Rhoda.
+
+"What else, Rhoda?" cried Grace.
+
+"It is to search out the treasure buried so long ago by Lobarto. If
+the map Juan has is true, he will find it. Then my mother will lose
+forever what Lobarto stole from our hacienda. Is it not possible
+that the Senor Hammond, thy father, should get soldiers of the
+Americano army, and round up those bad Mexicanos and Juan Sivello,
+take from him the map and find the treasure? My mother will pay
+much dinero for reward.
+
+"'Believe me, Senorita R. Hammond, your much good friend,
+
+"'JUANITA O'HARRA.'
+
+"She doesn't sound at all as she talked that day she caught me in
+the woods, Nan," added Rhoda with a laugh.
+
+"The poor girl!" commented Nan. "I wish we could find her mother's
+money."
+
+"Say! I wish we could find all that treasure for ourselves," cried
+Bess. "No use giving it all to your Juanita."
+
+"Do you suppose, girls," said Rhoda thoughtfully, "that those men
+we saw coming through the gap in the Blue Buttes were this Sivello
+and his gang?"
+
+"Are they horse thieves?" cried Bess.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"And how about that fellow you were going to shoot over at the
+bears' den?" asked Grace suddenly. "Why, Rhoda, that fellow lisped.
+He said 'Theniorita.' I heard him."
+
+The other girls all acclaimed Grace Mason's good memory. Spurred by
+her words they all recalled now that the strange man who had so
+frightened them at the mouth of the bears' den had used in his
+speech "th" for "s."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+UNCERTAINTIES
+
+
+The quartette of girl chums from Lakeview Hall and Walter Mason, to
+whom the girls at once revealed the contents of Juanita's letter,
+were greatly excited over the Mexican treasure and the seekers
+therefor.
+
+Without doubt the Mexican girl at Honoragas had written the truth,
+as she knew it, to Rhoda. Lobarto, the bandit, had met his death
+five or six years before. It seemed quite probable that he should
+have sent word to his relatives in the South of the existence of
+his plunder and the place where he had been forced to cache it.
+When he was chased out of American territory, the treasure he had
+left behind would become a legacy for his relatives if they could
+find it and were as inclined to dishonesty as Lobarto himself.
+
+This nephew of the old bandit chief, Juan Sivello, seemed eager to
+find the hidden treasure; and if he was really supplied with a
+diagram indicating the location of the cache, Juan would probably
+make a serious attempt to uncover it.
+
+The question was, as Walter Mason very sensibly pointed out, having
+come up to Rose Ranch for this particular purpose, would the
+Mexicans endanger their plans by making a raid on the horses, and
+so be chased away without securing the buried riches of Lobarto?
+
+"Doesn't seem reasonable, after all, to me," said Walter, "that the
+Mexicans your father and the cowboys set out in chase of are the
+same crowd that Juanita says started up here to find the treasure.
+There are two gangs of 'em."
+
+"You may be right, Walter," said Rhoda.
+
+"It sounds very reasonable," agreed Nan.
+
+"You are a very smart boy, Walter," said Bess. "I don't see how you
+do it."
+
+Walter gave the last saucy Miss a grin as he pursued the topic:
+"That fellow who scared you girls out of your seven wits at the
+bears' den did not belong to the gang of horse thieves. That's a
+cinch. They were a hundred miles to the southwest of that place,
+for sure, and heading back to Mexico."
+
+"Reckon you are right, Walter," again agreed Rhoda.
+
+"Why, if that Mexican we saw--the man who lisped--was looking for
+the buried treasure, perhaps it is right around that den. Maybe
+Lobarto hid it in that hole."
+
+"I told you that cave was haunted!" Grace cried.
+
+"They say when the old pirates buried their loot they used to leave
+a dead pirate to watch it," chuckled Bess.
+
+"Believe me!" said Nan, with emphasis, "if that was a dead bandit
+we heard shrieking in that cave, he must still be suffering a great
+deal. But I scorn such superstitions. And I should like to go back
+there with torches or lanterns and look for the treasure-trove
+myself."
+
+"Fine!" cried Bess. "I'll go."
+
+"Not while that Mexican is around there," objected Grace.
+
+"Why, he was much more afraid of Rhoda's gun than we were of him,"
+Bess told her.
+
+"I don't know how badly he was scared; but I know very well how
+much I was frightened. Nothing would lead me back there--not even a
+certainty of riches--unless we have a big crowd with us."
+
+"I don't know that any harm is to be feared from that fellow,"
+Rhoda said. "But until daddy returns and I talk with him, I won't
+agree to any search. We want to know what these fellows are after,
+it is true. But daddy will want a finger in the pie," and she
+smiled.
+
+So they had to possess their souls with patience while they awaited
+the return of the ranchman. When Mr. Hammond came back on the
+following day he confessed that the Mexican thieves had got away
+and over the Border with the band of horses from the Long Bow
+outfit.
+
+"That big wind comin' up, and the rain followin', spoiled the trail
+for us," the ranchman said. "Guess you believe now, children, what
+I told you about our tornadoes, eh?"
+
+"Including the poor pigs' tails being twisted the wrong way--yes,
+sir," said Bess with gravity. "Oh, it's all true."
+
+When Mr. Hammond heard of their adventures at the bears' den he
+became serious at once. But it was not the strange noise they heard
+that disturbed his serenity. It was regarding the unknown Mexican
+lurking about the gulch.
+
+"Got to look him up. Maybe nobody but some harmless critter. Can't
+always tell. But there is one sure thing," added Mr. Hammond
+slowly. "We crossed the trail of that gang of horse thieves where
+they broke up into two parties. One party skirted the range, going
+north. We followed the others because they were driving the stolen
+critters.
+
+"That's the upshot of it--the rats! If what this Mexican girl
+friend of yours, Rhoda, says is so, that Sivello and his party made
+a clean-up of the Long Bow horses, and the bulk of them started
+back for the Border. Maybe their leader and his personal friends
+came up this way, thinking to make another search for old Lobarto's
+plunder.
+
+"I swanny! I wish they'd find the stuff and get away with it. Every
+once in a while a bunch of them comes up here and makes us trouble;
+and the excuse is always that old Mex. treasure. My idea, they
+always have their eyes on our cattle and horses. If they don't find
+the gold, they pick up a few strays, and it always pays 'em for
+makin' the trip up here."
+
+"But can't you keep the Mexicans from coming here?" asked Walter.
+
+"If they'd keep their thievin' hands off things, I wouldn't care if
+they hunted the treasure all the time," said Mr. Hammond. "They'll
+never find it."
+
+"Oh, Daddy!" exclaimed Rhoda, "we were just thinking of hunting for
+it ourselves. Can't we? Don't you believe--"
+
+"No law against your huntin' for it all you want to," said her
+father, laughing. "Go ahead. I didn't say you couldn't hunt for it;
+I only said I did not think it would be found. Lobarto hid it too
+well."
+
+"But, Daddy! you don't encourage us," cried Rhoda. "And we are all
+so interested. We want really to find the money so that Juanita and
+her mother need not be poor."
+
+"Well, well!" exclaimed the ranchman, "do you want me to go out and
+bury some money, so you can find it?"
+
+"No. But we want some of the boys to go with us. I want to search
+that old bears' den, and the gulch there, and all about."
+
+"Go to it, Honey-bird," he said, patting her shoulder. "You shall
+have Hess and any other two boys you want. That's enough to handle
+any little tad of Mexicans that may be hanging about up there. I'll
+speak to Hess. Want to go to-morrow?"
+
+This plan was agreed to. Of course the girls and Walter did not
+want to rest after their exciting experiences at the round-up and
+afterward.
+
+"All you young people want to do," Mr. Hammond declared, "is to
+keep moving!"
+
+Walter made certain preparations for a search of the bears' den.
+One of the cowpunchers chosen to accompany the party was a good
+cook. Hesitation Kane took a pack horse with more of a camping
+outfit than would have been the case had there not been four girls
+in the party.
+
+"I don't see," drawled Mr. Hammond, "how you girls manage to travel
+at all without a Saratoga trunk apiece. Got your curlin'-tongs,
+Rhoda? And be sure and take a lookin' glass and white gloves."
+
+"Now, Daddy! you know you malign me," laughed his daughter. "And as
+for these other girls, they fuss less than any girls you ever saw
+from the East."
+
+"I don't know. I'm kind of sorry for that pack horse," chuckled her
+father, who delighted to plague them.
+
+They might have made the trip to the gulch where the girls had
+taken refuge from the tornado and returned the next day; but they
+proposed to trail around the foothills for several days. Indeed,
+even the cowboys in the party had become interested once more in
+the buried treasure.
+
+"It strikes us about once in so often," said the cook, as they
+started away from the corrals, "and some of us git bit regular with
+this treasure-hunting bug. Long's we know the treasure is somewhere
+hid and there is a chance of finding it, we are bound to feel that
+way. Then we waste the boss's time and wear ourselves out hunting
+Lobarto's cache. Course, we won't never find it; but it is loads of
+fun."
+
+"I declare!" cried Rhoda, tossing her head, "you are just as
+encouraging, Tom Collins, as daddy is. I never heard the like!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE STAMPEDE
+
+
+The enthusiasm of the girls and Walter Mason did not falter,
+however, no matter how much the older people scoffed at the idea of
+the treasure hidden by the Mexican bandit being found near Rose
+Ranch. They went forth from the ranch house with some little
+expectation of returning with the plunder.
+
+Hesitation Kane, of course, did not try to discourage them. Even a
+buried treasure could not excite the horse wrangler, in the least.
+
+"I guess an Apache raid would not ruffle Hesitation's soul," Rhoda
+observed. "He is quite the calmest person I ever saw."
+
+Since the tornado the cattle of the main herd of Rose Ranch had
+been broken into small bunches and were feeding in the higher
+pastures. The swales and rich arroyos, in which the grass had been
+so lush, had been badly drowned out by the flood. It would be
+several weeks before the lowlands offered good pasturage again.
+
+The visitors learned that where they had camped at the time of the
+round-up, the river had risen and washed away every trace of the
+encampment. Indeed, Rolling Spring Valley had been under water for
+miles on either flank of the main stream. A bunch of young horses
+belonging to Rose Ranch, having been confined in a small corral,
+were drowned at that time.
+
+"There went several thousand dollars," Rhoda explained, when she
+told her friends of the tragedy. "The losses as well as the gains
+in the ranching and stock raising business are large. If daddy
+sells a big herd of cattle, or a fine bunch of horses, he takes in
+many thousands of dollars, it is true.
+
+"But it is hard to compute the profit or loss on the sale. So many
+things are likely to happen. Perhaps some disease hits the herd.
+Thousands of cattle may die in some epidemic. Once wolves came down
+in the winter, when I was little--I remember it clearly--and killed
+more than a hundred steers within a mile of the house."
+
+"Oh, dear me, Rhoda! don't tell us about any more wild animals,"
+wailed Grace. "I think the West would be a much nicer place if they
+had tamed all the wild creatures before man ever moved into it."
+
+"You are not much of a sport, Sis," said her brother, laughing. "It
+must have been really great around here when the buffaloes and
+Indians ran wild. You can't remember that, Rhoda, can you?"
+
+"I should hope not!" gasped Rhoda. "Do you think I am as old as
+Mrs. Cupp?"
+
+"Oh! Oh!" cried Bess. "Poor Cupp!"
+
+"I never saw a buffalo," confessed Rhoda. "And I never heard the
+war whoop. And an Indian in war paint and other togs would scare me
+just as much as it would Gracie. But daddy remembers them all. He
+shot buffaloes for the army, scouted for General Pope, chased a
+part of Geronimo's band into Mexico, and was a Texas Ranger when
+the Border Ruffians were really in existence. He can tell you all
+about those times; only mother doesn't let him."
+
+"There! I suppose she doesn't like to hear about savages and other
+awful things," Grace said, with satisfaction.
+
+"No-o; it isn't that," Rhoda returned with twinkling eyes. "But
+mother does not let him talk about those times because it makes
+daddy out so much older than she is!"
+
+Tom Collins, the cook, was a talkative man, if Hesitation Kane was
+not. Tom reined his pony into the group of young people and began
+spinning yarns, some of which perhaps had but a thin warp of truth.
+He thought it was his privilege to "string along the tenderfoots" a
+little. One thing he told the girls and Walter, however, interested
+them immensely.
+
+"You know, I came pretty near roping that black outlaw the day of
+the tornado. Criminy, if I'd got him!"
+
+"Now, Tom, don't tell us that," commanded Rhoda. "You know there
+isn't a horse on the ranch that can come anywhere near him in
+speed."
+
+"That's right," admitted Tom. "But I come on him sudden and
+unexpected."
+
+"How did it happen?" asked Walter.
+
+"Did you know the boss sent me home ahead of you folks from the
+rodeo? That's how come I didn't get to ride after those raiders
+with the other boys. I never do have no luck," said Tom. "If it
+rained soup I wouldn't have no spoon, and a hole in my hat.
+
+"Well, it was this-a-way: I was riding right along yonder, making
+for the ranch house, and not thinking of nothing--not a thing!
+Crossing the mouth of one of them gulches--'twasn't far beyond the
+one where you gals took refuge from the big wind--all of a sudden
+my pony throwed up his head and nickered, and out of the slot in
+the hill come trottin' that big, handsome black critter!
+
+"My soul and body!" exclaimed the cowboy earnestly, "if I'd had my
+rope handy I could have put the noose right over his head! It
+certainly did give me a shock."
+
+"Humph!" said Rhoda, "it's always the biggest fishes, daddy says,
+that get away."
+
+"I guess the Big Boss is right," agreed Tom Collins. "That black
+feller, he swung around on his hind laigs, and he skedaddled up
+that gulch. I knowed the place. It's just a pocket, and not very
+deep; but the sides couldn't be clumb by a goat, let alone a hawse.
+
+"So I turns my pony into that hole and I got my rope ready, and
+says I to me: 'Tom Collins, you're going to either get an awful
+fall, or you'll be the proudest man on the old Rose Ranch!'"
+
+"And what happened?" asked Walter.
+
+"Well, I dunno. Either I'd been seeing things, or else that blame
+black outlaw is bad medicine. He seemed to e-vap-o-rate."
+
+"Now, Tom!" admonished Rhoda.
+
+"Honest to pickles, Miss Rhody! I wouldn't fool you 'bout a serious
+matter. And this is it."
+
+"You mean you lost the horse?" asked Nan.
+
+"In a blind pocket. Yes, ma'am! Criminy! I couldn't believe it
+myself. I says to me: 'Tom Collins! your cinches is slipped. That's
+what is the matter.'
+
+"But you know, Miss Rhody," he added to the ranchman's daughter,
+"your pa don't allow nothing stronger than spring water on the
+ranch. I was as sober as a Greaser judge trying his brother-in-law
+for hawse stealin'. That's what!
+
+"That old black capering Satan went flying up that gulch; and me, I
+pulled my little roan in after him and got my rope coiled. I says
+to me: 'You ain't astride nothin' but a little roan goat that only
+knows cows; but you got the chancet of your life, Tom Collins, to
+make a killin'. That's right!'
+
+"That is a twisty gulch--I'll show it to you while we're up here
+prospectin'--and all I could hear was old Blackie's hoofs
+clattering, and once in a while he'd whistle. He's got a neigh like
+a steam whistle.
+
+"Well," pursued the cowboy, "all of a sudden the noise stopped. I
+couldn't hear his hoofs nor his voice. And when I got around the
+next turn that give me a sight of the complete gulch, clear to the
+pocket, there wasn't no hawse at all. He'd just gone up in smoke,
+or something. That's what!"
+
+"What became of the horse?" cried Bess Harley.
+
+"There's some joke in it," Rhoda said doubtfully.
+
+"Honest to pickles!" said the cowpuncher earnestly, "I was scared
+blue myself. I ain't no more superstitious than the next feller.
+But that certainly got me.
+
+"I rid back to the mouth of the gulch, lookin' all the way, and
+never seen a hoof print to show me where he'd lighted out for. He
+couldn't climb the sides of the gulch. And he didn't hide out on me
+and let me go back and then dodge out o' the gulch.
+
+"No, sir! There he was one minute, then the next he wasn't there at
+all. I got back to the mouth of the gulch, and there I seen that
+old tornado a-comin'. You folks had passed me and 'scaped my
+attention.
+
+"Me and the roan just squatted down under a bank till the wind was
+over; then we made tracks for the ranch house ahead of the rain.
+Get soaked? Well, I should say! But somehow I didn't care to stay
+around where that blame black Satan disappeared hisself so
+strange-like. No, sir."
+
+"Tom, I think you have been stringing the long bow," declared
+Rhoda, shaking her head.
+
+"Honest to pickles!" reiterated the cowboy. "Why--why, I'll show
+you the very hole in the hill where it happened."
+
+They laughed at that; but the Eastern girls and Walter were
+inclined to believe that the cowboy had told the truth--as far as
+he knew it. In some way the outlaw had managed to elude him.
+
+"Goodness!" murmured Walter to Nan, "wouldn't it be great to catch
+that black horse?"
+
+"He's handsomer than your Prince," agreed Nan.
+
+"He is that. I wonder where he went when Tom lost him?"
+
+The treasure-hunting party did not go directly to the gulch in
+which the girls had had their adventure at the time of the tornado.
+A part of what Hesitation Kane had on his pack horse was to be
+delivered to an outfit herding a bunch of steers back in the hills
+a long distance.
+
+The girls and Walter had agreed to ride that way, stop over night
+with Steve's outfit, and then work down to the old bear den from
+the other direction--that is, from the north.
+
+They entered the foothills through a pleasant, winding valley
+which, had it not been for the marks of the recent cloudburst,
+would have been a beautiful trail. But it was considerably torn up
+by the water that had swept through it, a raging torrent.
+
+They found Steve's outfit with the cattle--nearly a thousand head
+of them--feeding in two cup-shaped hollows chained by a narrow
+path. The hills were steep and rocky all around these hollows, and
+a dozen steers abreast would have choked the path between the two
+pastures. About half of the cattle were grazing in one hollow, and
+the other half in the second cup.
+
+The outfit gave the party a noisy welcome. These herders of cattle,
+working sometimes for weeks at a stretch without getting to the
+ranch house, and seeing only each other's faces, certainly get
+lonely. A newcomer is hailed with joy. And of course the daughter
+of the Rose Ranch owner and her friends were doubly welcome to this
+outfit.
+
+The tent was set up for the girls; but, as before, Walter roughed
+it with the cowpunchers. He was enjoying every minute of his
+experience on the ranch, whether his timid sister did or not!
+
+A soft, balmy evening dropped down about the camp, which was
+established in the further cup between the hills. As evening
+approached the cattle from the outside cup were driven into this
+inner enclosure. They could be cared for at night much more easily
+in one herd.
+
+Tom Collins and the outfit's cook outvied each other in making
+supper. Then there followed two long hours of songs and stories and
+chaff. The boys badgered each other, but were very polite to the
+girls.
+
+Walter wanted to ride herd with the first watch, and this was
+agreed to.
+
+"That is, young fellow, you can ride if you can sing," said Steve,
+the boss of the outfit, gravely.
+
+"Sing? Well, I don't know. What kind of singing? I'm not famous for
+my voice," admitted the boy.
+
+"Just so's you can sing something the cows like, it'll be all
+right," Steve told him. "If anything should happen, you have to
+sing. It keeps the cows from getting nervous."
+
+"Maybe if I sing it will make them nervous," suggested Walter, not
+so easily jollied.
+
+"You'd better learn Henery's song, here," said Steve. "Henery has
+one he _calls_ 'My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean' an' he sings it in seven
+different keys and there's forty stanzas to it. And when a cow hears
+_that_--"
+
+One of "Henery's" boots sailed through the air just then, and Steve
+had to dodge it. Henry was not on the first watch.
+
+Walter went out with the first crew. Somebody lent him a slicker,
+for rain was prophesied. Steve said, drawlingly:
+
+"If it keeps on like this so wet, we might's well be in the middle
+of the Pacific Ocean. It's rained twice in ten weeks."
+
+Walter's instructions were to keep just in sight of the man riding
+around the herd ahead of him, to take it easy, and not to do
+anything to disturb the quiet herd. Some of the cattle were lying
+down chewing their cud; others were moving slowly while they
+cropped the grass, all headed west. Riding herd seemed, after an
+hour or two, to be the dreariest kind of work to the Eastern boy.
+
+Then he noticed that there was a chill in the air and that distant
+lightning played on the clouds to the north. The cattle all got
+upon their feet. It did not appear that they were really unquiet;
+yet there was a certain tension in the air that they must have
+felt, as well as the herders.
+
+Suddenly there was a near-by flash of lightning followed by a peal
+of thunder. The camp remained quiet; but the cattle began to snort
+and paw the earth. Each flash showed Walter that the animals were
+crowding closer and closer together. They were still heading west.
+
+In the light of another dazzling bolt the boy beheld several
+horsemen riding down the other side of the cup shaped valley--the
+west side. They were not of this Rose Ranch outfit. Indeed, in that
+single glance he realized that they were not dressed like the
+cowpunchers.
+
+Who could these strangers be? He was about to ride faster and
+overtake one of the other herders and ask, when the thunder seemed
+to split the firmament right over the valley. A vivid blue flash
+lit up the whole arena.
+
+Walter saw one of the group of strange horsemen dash down toward
+the cattle, flying a slicker high over his head. This horseman made
+a frightful object charging along the front of the already uneasy
+steers.
+
+The latter wheeled. With loud bellowings and a thunder of hoofs,
+the herd started east--started full pelt for the narrow opening
+between the two hollows.
+
+It was a stampede! Walter had heard of such catastrophes; but he
+had never dreamed that a charging herd of cattle could make so
+fearful an appearance. His own horse snorted, jumped about, and
+started to run away with him; and pull at the bit as Walter did, he
+could not at once gain control of the terrified little beast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+WHO ARE THEY?
+
+
+The encampment of Steve's outfit, and therefore the tent in which
+the four girls were sheltered, was on the side of the hill to the
+south of the narrow path connecting the twin valleys. It seemed as
+though the chuck wagon and tent, as well as the horse corral, were
+well out of the path of the charging cattle.
+
+But when Nan Sherwood and her companions, awakened by the louder
+peal of thunder, gazed out of the tent opening and gained, by aid
+of the lightning, their initial glimpse of the stampede, it seemed
+as though a thousand bellowing throats and twice that number of
+tossing horns threatened the encampment.
+
+"Grab your things and get out this way!" shouted Rhoda, leading the
+retreat through the rear of the tent.
+
+Fortunately the girls had not taken off more than their outer
+clothing and their boots. They had no cots during this outing, but
+used sleeping-bags instead. Seizing such of their possessions as
+they could find in the dark, they followed Rhoda out at the rear
+and up the hillside.
+
+From below the pandemonium of sound of the enraged and terrified
+cattle was all but deafening. At the corral the men who had been
+off watch were mounting their ponies. The girls heard Steve's
+stentorian voice shouting to Hesitation Kane:
+
+"Can we swing 'em before they clog that cut into the other hollow,
+Hess?"
+
+"Nope!" and to the girls' surprise the horse wrangler snapped out
+the answer. "Shoot the leaders and pile 'em up in the gap. Then
+swing 'em."
+
+"Oh, I don't want to do that," yelled Steve. "The boss will have a
+fit. Who started this thing, anyway? That fool boy?"
+
+"Oh! where is Walter?" gasped Grace.
+
+But another cowboy from down below shouted:
+
+"It's a put up job. I saw somebody start 'em. They've been
+stampeded, Steve."
+
+The next moment the hullabaloo of the cattle themselves made human
+voices unbearable. A flash of lightning showed the front of the
+herd as it charged up the slight rise to the mouth of the cut.
+
+Ahead of them, riding like mad and using his coiled rope to urge
+his pony, came a single rider. Another flash of lightning revealed
+his identity to the girls.
+
+"Walter! Oh, Walter! He will be killed!" shrieked Grace.
+
+Nan Sherwood leaped a pace in advance as though she would go, afoot
+as she was, to his rescue. Bess covered her face with her hands.
+Rhoda shouted in so ear-piercing a tone that the men at the corral
+heard her:
+
+"Save him! Don't let him go under, boys! Daddy will never forgive
+you if Walter is hurt."
+
+But before she spoke a single rider had left the encampment like a
+missile from a gun. It was Hesitation Kane, riding low along his
+horse's neck, and swinging his big pistol in his left hand. He had
+taken it upon himself to go against Steve's orders.
+
+A fusillade of shots met the forefront of the stampeded cattle just
+as it seemed Walter Mason must be overwhelmed. It was in the narrow
+cut between the two valleys. The leaders went down in a heap, and
+against the ridge made by their bodies the steers directly behind
+them crashed with an impact like two colliding trains!
+
+The lightning revealed from moment to moment the awful sight. The
+cattle behind pressed against those ahead. The bellowing beasts
+were smothered--were crushed--by the score! It seemed to the girls
+and to Walter, who now had gained control of his pony and came
+riding back, as though half that herd of mad beasts must be
+sacrificed.
+
+But Steve and the other herders saw their chance. They swept down
+on the flank of the herd. The well trained ponies made a living
+wall against the cattle. The latter began to mill--that is, turn
+and travel on the herd's own center.
+
+Of course, many dropped and were trampled. It was a situation that
+took every ounce of pluck in a man's body to go up against that
+maddened herd. But Steve and his crew did it.
+
+A rider appeared madly from the west. "Get your guns, boys!" he
+yelled. "It is a raid! Greasers! I seen 'em start the cattle
+stampeding!"
+
+"You are bringing us stale news, boy," shouted the outfit's cook.
+"We're going after them Greasers."
+
+He and Tom Collins were already astride their ponies. Rhoda had got
+into her boots and now she ran and noosed her pony out of the herd,
+making the cast by the light of the electric flashes. She saddled,
+mounted, and was away after the two cooks. Walter joined her,
+followed quickly by Nan. Bess had to stay behind with Grace, who
+would never have ventured on such an expedition.
+
+They charged down the swale toward the west. Walter shouted to the
+others what he had seen at the start of the stampede.
+
+"That is it," cried Rhoda. "Mexicans! When daddy hears about this
+he will be just about wild."
+
+When the little party had swept to the far end of the hollow there
+were no signs of the Mexicans who had ridden down into the place to
+stampede the steers. The rain began to fall; but there was not much
+of that. It was mostly a tempest of thunder and lightning.
+
+The circling cattle swung west finally and came down the valley at
+a less dangerous pace. The two cooks, with Rhoda, Nan and Walter,
+remained to meet and turn their front again. By the time the cattle
+had circled the valley twice, they were leg-weary and their fears
+were quenched.
+
+It was a hard night that followed for all. Half the gang had to
+ride herd until daybreak to make sure that the nervous creatures
+did not start again. The other men and ponies dragged the dead
+beasts out of the throat of that gap between the two hollows.
+
+More than a hundred were either dead or had to be shot. The bodies
+had to be dragged out of the way on the hillsides. Otherwise the
+steers remaining could not have been got out of the pasture.
+
+Rhoda cried. Every carcass dragged out of the way meant a decided
+loss for Rose Ranch. And the pity of it!
+
+One puncher was sent to the ranch house to report and ask for a
+beef wagon to come up. But not more than two carcasses could be
+used by the whole ranch force at this time of year. The weather was
+too hot.
+
+By morning the path was cleared. Steve said:
+
+"Get 'em out! Get 'em out as soon as possible. Before night the
+heavens will be black with buzzards and the hills yellow with
+coyotes. There will be some singing around this place for a day or
+two."
+
+They drove the exhausted cattle slowly into the outer pasture, and
+from there headed them deeper into the hills to a larger valley
+where the herbage was known to be good.
+
+"I don't know who them Mexicans were. I don't believe it was the
+same outfit that the boss and the Long Bow crowd chased. They got
+over the Border, I understand," said Steve.
+
+Walter and the girls talked this mystery over by themselves. It
+puzzled them vastly.
+
+They had come up here to hunt for the Mexican bandit's treasure;
+and here they had run into a gang of outlaws just as bad as the old
+Lobarto gang that had been such a scourge to the country six years
+before.
+
+"I believe the single Mexican you girls saw at the bears' den
+belonged to this gang that started the cattle stampeding," Walter
+declared.
+
+"It must be true," agreed Rhoda.
+
+"Then what shall we do? Don't you think you girls had better go
+back to the ranch house and postpone treasure hunting until the
+Mexicans are rounded up?"
+
+"And let them find Lobarto's treasure?" demanded Bess. "Maybe that
+is what they are after."
+
+"Bess says something sensible, that is sure," Rhoda broke in. "I
+hate to think of any of those mean Mexicans getting the hidden
+wealth."
+
+"Just think of poor Juanita and her mother," Nan said, agreeing
+with her girl friends. "These bad Mexicans will never give back any
+of the money Lobarto stole."
+
+"Scarcely!" exclaimed Rhoda.
+
+"I suppose Walter is speaking for me," said his sister simply. "I
+know I am timid. But I will stick if you other girls do."
+
+"Hoorah!" shouted Bess, hugging her. "Why! you are getting to be a
+regular sport. We've got Tom and Mr. Kane with us, besides Frank,
+the other cowboy. I am not afraid of the Mexicans--not much, that
+is--whether they are Juan Sivello and his gang or not."
+
+"Hear! Hear!" agreed Nan. "And having done so much harm in this
+neighborhood, perhaps they have run away a good many miles to
+escape pursuit. Let us go and take a look in the bears' den,
+anyway."
+
+And so it was agreed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE FUNNEL
+
+
+It was not until the last of the cattle had disappeared through the
+gap between the hollows, and the chuck wagon likewise had trundled
+out of sight, that the girls and their party left the encampment
+which had been the scene of the night's excitement.
+
+It was not impossible--and even Rhoda mentioned it--that they would
+none of them ever experience again so strenuous an eight hours as
+that since the beginning of the stampede.
+
+The disaster was one that would be long remembered by the Rose
+Ranch cowpunchers, as well as by the ranch owner himself. A more
+disastrous stampede had seldom been known in that vicinity.
+
+Already the coyotes were appearing--slip-footed and sneaking! They
+began to gorge on the more distant carcasses of the dead cattle
+before the chuck wagon was out of sight. And around and around
+overhead the buzzards circled, dropping at last to the ground and
+pecking at the stiffened carcasses. Bald-headed these vultures,
+with scrofulous looking necks and unwinking eyes. There was
+something vile looking about these carrion-crows.
+
+Having no wagon to bother with, Rhoda and her party could take
+almost any direction they wished out of the valley. Their tent and
+camp utensils were borne by the pack horse, so they struck into a
+narrow bridle path over the hills to the southward.
+
+The three men with the girls and Walter were in rather a gloomy
+mood when they started off. Even Tom Collins seemed to have lost
+his spirits. To tell the truth, they were all deeply enough
+interested in the welfare of the ranch to feel depressed because of
+the money loss to Mr. Hammond.
+
+Rhoda, however, would not allow her visitors to be overshadowed by
+this trouble for long. She possessed a good share of her father's
+cheerfulness and dry humor. She began to tell semi-humorous tales of
+her own experiences about the ranch and on the ranges, and this
+started Tom and Frank to swapping tales--some of them altogether
+too ridiculous to be wholly true.
+
+Only Hesitation Kane remained silent; but that made him no
+different from usual. He even grinned cheerfully under the sallies
+of his companions.
+
+About midday the little cavalcade wound around a knob of a hill and
+arrived at the brink of a sheer bank, below which was a pocket in
+the hillside. Tom Collins had been guiding them for more than an
+hour, and now he announced this was the place.
+
+"This here's it," he said with confidence. "I run that black outlaw
+right up into this here pocket and--there he wasn't!"
+
+"Oh, Tom!" demanded Rhoda, "are you sure this is the spot? A flea
+couldn't hide down there."
+
+"Honest to pickles! I ain't fooling, Miss Rhody," said the
+cowpuncher earnestly. "When me and my roan come up this fur and
+seen we didn't see nothin', I was plumb twisted. Says I to me:
+'Here, Tom Collins, is where you got to go an' see a spectacles man
+'cause you got optical delusions' And I sure thought I had."
+
+"I'd say nothing could get out of that hole, 'cept by the way it
+run in, 'ceptin' it had wings," said the other cowpuncher.
+
+"Or get down into it, either," Nan Sherwood observed.
+
+"Oh, yes. We can get down there. We'll make a path and do that
+little thing," Tom rejoined, getting out of his saddle.
+
+The banks all around the sink and as far as they could see along
+the gully that led into it, were thirty feet or more high, and
+quite unbroken. At no place could they see where the edge of the
+bank had been disturbed.
+
+Tom got a spade from the pack horse, and Frank got a bar. They
+attacked the edge of the bank where, half way down, there was a
+little slope to the wall. The gravelly soil yielded rather easily
+to their digging, and they soon had the beginning of a path, down
+which the hardy ponies would venture.
+
+Hesitation Kane went first, and then the other cowboys. The girls
+from the East were a bit timid; but every pony that descended made
+the path more easy. The animals were so well trained that all the
+riders had to do was to cling on and let their mounts have their
+own way.
+
+"Now, you see, we're down here," said Tom. "But there ain't a pony
+in this bunch could climb up to the top, even by this path we made
+comin' down--no, sir! And yet that outlaw done it--or something."
+
+They started down the gulch, looking for a good place to camp for
+the noon meal. Hesitation still led the pack horse, her line being
+hitched to his saddle-ring. They all kept a bright lookout on
+either hand for some possible path to the top of the bank by which
+the outlaw horse might have tried to get out of the gulch.
+
+Suddenly Hesitation and his mount and the pack horse disappeared.
+The silent horse wrangler had taken to one side of a huge boulder
+while the others had passed on the other side. Had the pack horse
+not vented a frightened squeal the rest of the party might not have
+noticed so quickly the absence of the two beasts and Mr. Kane, for
+the latter did not utter a sound at first.
+
+Walter jumped his horse for the place, and then shouted to the
+others to come. Behind the boulder was only a narrow path between
+it and a hole--a hole at least twenty feet across.
+
+The sides of this hole were of loose gravel. The pack horse had
+made a misstep and had started to slide backwards down the gravel
+bank. The line snubbed to Kane's saddle was all that saved her from
+going to the bottom.
+
+The horse wrangler could hold her, but that was about all. Frank
+arrived almost immediately and took a cast of his rope around the
+pack saddle. Then the two ponies--his own and Kane's--dragged the
+pack horse on to firm ground.
+
+"'Nuther slip like that and that old pack mare would been in
+Kingdom Come," said Tom, peering down the funnel-shaped hole. "I
+say! you can't see the bottom of this here place."
+
+"No. That out-thrust of rock hides whatever lies at the bottom,"
+Walter agreed, likewise peering down. "Say! couldn't your outlaw
+horse have tumbled down that place?"
+
+"Criminy! do you reckon so?" asked Tom. "He might! Looks probable,
+don't it?"
+
+He slid out of his saddle and seized a big chunk of rock--all he
+could lift. He started this sliding down the gravelly bank. In a
+minute it had slid to the point where the ledge of rock hid from
+their view the bottom of this sink. Beyond that it disappeared--and
+there was no sound of its landing.
+
+"Goodness!" cried Nan, who had ridden up to look, too. "Is that a
+bottomless pit?"
+
+"Might be, Miss," said Collins. "Anyway, I reckon that's where that
+ol' black Satan of an outlaw went to. Too bad! He must be deader'n
+a doornail down there."
+
+The mystery seemed to be explained. But Walter was still thoughtful
+and curious.
+
+"What's over this way?" he asked, pointing to the hill east of the
+gulch.
+
+"More gullies," Rhoda said. "And somewhere is the bear den we're
+going to."
+
+"Is it far?" Walter asked.
+
+"It's in the gulch right next beyond this one," said Tom Collins,
+with confidence.
+
+Walter evidently had something on his mind, but he said nothing
+more. Only Nan noticed his brown study. But when she asked him what
+it was about, he only shook his head.
+
+They stopped for lunch, and then went on down the gulch. They were
+less than a mile, Tom said, from the open plain, when the head of
+the cavalcade rounded a turn in the gulch and a figure suddenly
+leaped up from a shady nook--the figure of a man who had evidently
+been asleep there and had not heard the cavalcade coming.
+
+Rhoda, who was ahead, reached for the rifle under her knee. Nan was
+amazed at the action of the girl of Rose Ranch, for the fellow
+standing before them seemed harmless.
+
+He was a Mexican. He wore an enormous straw sombrero, and there was
+a good deal of silver cord and bangles upon it. He had a sash wound
+around his waist, and into this was thrust a pair of silver-mounted
+pistols. But he did not offer to draw them.
+
+Perhaps he instantly apprehended the fact that the girls were well
+guarded. The cowpunchers and Hesitation clattered forward. The
+Mexican swept off his sombrero with much politeness, and bowed
+before the surprised girls.
+
+"Good-day, Thenoritas," he said in Spanish. "Have I startled you,
+eh?"
+
+As he stood up again his left hand rested on the butt of one of his
+pistols. Somehow--he did it so quickly that it was startling to Nan
+and her friends--Hesitation Kane drew his own pistol and thrust it
+forward.
+
+"Put 'em up!" he commanded.
+
+The Mexican seemed to understand just what the horse wrangler
+meant. He slowly, and with a deep scowl marring his face, raised
+his empty hands above his head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+A PRISONER
+
+
+"It was just like one of those Western photoplays that sometimes
+come to the Freeling movie palace, and which Mrs. Cupp, the ogress
+of Lake-view Hall, does not approve of, and never will let us girls
+attend if she can help it," sighed Bess ecstatically, later on.
+
+Bess Harley was especially fond of such dramas. And Walter, too,
+took delight in the imaginative if rather crude pictures of the
+West as it used to be.
+
+But here was the real thing. Even Nan was held breathless by the
+tense drama. Rhoda's hints and tales of adventure had not
+altogether prepared her visitors for anything like this.
+
+Hess Kane must have thought that the situation called for the
+sudden and stern action he had taken. Of course, Nan Sherwood
+thought, that snaky-looking Mexican was not wearing those two
+silver-mounted pistols in his sash just for ornament.
+
+Tom Collins slid out of his saddle at a slight gesture from Kane
+and went behind the Mexican to disarm him.
+
+"Keep your hands up," he said to the fellow. "Our wrangler ain't
+gifted much with speech, but he's sure a good shot. Where's the
+rest of your gang?"
+
+"No understand," said the fellow sullenly.
+
+"Mean to say you are alone?" Tom demanded.
+
+"Si, Senor."
+
+"Where's your horse?"
+
+"I am afoot, Senor."
+
+"Stop it! Don't try any of your Mex. jokes. You afoot, and with
+them spurs on your shanks?" and the cowboy pointed to the enormous
+silver spurs on the man's boots.
+
+"That's one of the fellows that stampeded them steers last night,"
+said Frank, with conviction.
+
+The Mexican looked startled. His black eyes shot glances around the
+group which faced him.
+
+"Look out that we're not ambushed," said Rhoda in a low voice.
+"There may be others around."
+
+"We'll keep our eyes open," said Tom easily. "Guess I'll tie this
+fellow's wrists, just the same."
+
+He removed his neckerchief as he spoke. He twisted it into a
+string, and suddenly snatched the Mexican's hands behind him. The
+fellow exploded some objection in his own language, and would have
+fought Tom, but Kane thrust the weapon he held forward again and
+the prisoner subsided.
+
+Meanwhile Bess excitedly whispered to the other girls:
+
+"Do you know who I believe he is? I feel sure of it!"
+
+"Who?" Nan and Grace chorused.
+
+"That Juan Sivello that Mexican girl wrote to Rhoda about."
+
+"I had thought of that," said Rhoda, nodding. "It may be."
+
+"And if it is," whispered Bess, thrilling at the thought, "he's got
+the diagram of the hiding place where his uncle put all that
+treasure."
+
+"Goodness me!" sighed Grace, "how rich we should all be if we found
+it."
+
+"It surely would be great," her brother said.
+
+"And that poor Juanita and her mother would get their money back,"
+Nan added.
+
+"Risk our Nan for remembering the poor and needy," laughed Bess.
+
+"There are others to think of besides that Mexican girl and her
+mother," said Rhoda seriously. "According to the tales we have
+heard about Lobarto's treasure, at least half a dozen families had
+been robbed by him along the Border. And churches, too.
+
+"Some of the haciendas he burned and destroyed the people in them.
+They could claim nothing, of course. And he had a lot of other
+plunder that nobody knew who its actual owners were, so the story
+goes."
+
+"Poor people!" sighed Nan.
+
+"Say! give us a chance to divide a few millions among us," said the
+reckless Bess. "Who ever heard of treasure-seekers who were not
+made rich beyond the dreams of avarice when they found the hoard?"
+
+She had spoken rather loudly. The Mexican glanced up at them
+suddenly and his eyes flashed. He muttered something under his
+little, stringy, black mustache.
+
+"Look out, Bess," warned Nan. "He heard you then."
+
+"Well, what of it?" demanded the reckless one. "Aren't the boys
+going to search him' and find that map Lobarto made?"
+
+"My! but you are a high-handed young lady," chuckled Walter.
+
+"What we going to do with him, now we've got him?" asked Tom
+Collins suddenly.
+
+"Daddy ought to see him, don't you think?" said Rhoda confidently.
+
+"Yep," agreed Hess Kane, returning his pistol to its holster.
+
+"Well, now, I reckon that would be the proper caper," said Tom
+Collins. "Say, _hombre,_" he added, nudging the Mexican, "where's your
+horse?"
+
+"I am afoot, I tell you," was the reply.
+
+"I can see you are--now," admitted the puncher. "But you'll have a
+fine walk in those boots to Rose Ranch."
+
+"I will not walk to the Ranchio Rose!"
+
+"Then you'll be dragged," Tom said coolly. "I reckon my little roan
+can do it."
+
+"No," said Kane. "Put him on the pack mare."
+
+They were all eager to get the young Mexican to Mr. Hammond and see
+what the shrewd old ranchman could make out of him. The saddle and
+goods were removed from the pack animal, and cached. For the girls
+did not intend to give up their treasure-hunting trip--by no means!
+It was only postponed.
+
+"I'd give a good deal to know what became of the rest of this
+Greaser's gang," said Frank, the other cowpuncher.
+
+"After they stampeded them steers, maybe they run away," Tom
+observed.
+
+They put the prisoner astride the saddleless horse and made their
+way slowly to the ranch house. It was almost bedtime when they
+arrived, and the family was much surprised to see them at that
+hour.
+
+"Well, I swanny!" ejaculated Mr. Hammond, "is this the best you
+girls could pick up-a Greaser? Do you call him a treasure?"
+
+The prisoner's eyes flashed again as he heard this. He stood by
+sourly enough while the girls explained more fully to the ranchman.
+
+"All right! All right!" growled Mr. Hammond. "If he is one of those
+that stampeded the steers, he'll see the inside of the jail. I'd
+like to catch 'em all."
+
+The visitors made their way to bed as soon as they had eaten their
+late supper; but Rhoda remained with her father when he questioned
+the Mexican.
+
+At first the prisoner refused to give any information about himself
+or his business near Rose Ranch. But being an old hand at that
+game, Mr. Hammond finally made him see that it would be wiser for
+him to reply. If he did not wish to get others into trouble, he
+would better try to save himself.
+
+And it soon appeared that the young Mexican did not feel altogether
+kindly toward the men who had come over the Border with
+him--whoever they were. There had been some quarrel, and the others
+had abandoned him, taking even his horse with them when they did so.
+
+"Were you with them when they ran off the Long Bow stock?" asked
+Mr. Hammond.
+
+"That was not done by us. We separated from those thieves of
+horse-stealers when they would put their necks in jeopardy," the
+Mexican said in his own tongue, which both Mr. Hammond and Rhoda
+understood.
+
+"So you kept out of that, heh? Then you rode up this way?"
+
+"Into the hills," said the other sullenly. "The country is free."
+
+"Not to such as you unless you can give a mighty good reason for
+being over there. You and your friends have cost me more'n a
+hundred steers."
+
+"Not me!" ejaculated the prisoner, shaking his head.
+
+"No?"
+
+"I tell you they abandoned me. I do not know where they go."
+
+"And what were you hanging about that place over there in the hills
+for?" demanded Mr. Hammond. "Come, now! Didn't you give your
+friends the slip because you wanted to hunt for that old hidden
+treasure?"
+
+"Senor!"
+
+"Never mind denying it," said the ranchman sternly. "And I reckon I
+can make another guess. You are Lobarto's nephew. Your name is Juan
+Sivello. I bet there's a warrant out for you in the sheriff's
+office at Osaka right now, my boy."
+
+The young Mexican jumped up, startled. Mr. Hammond reached out a
+hand and pushed him back into his seat.
+
+"Sit down, boy. You'd better make a clean breast of it. I want to
+know all you know about that old bandit's hoard, or you'll go to
+the sheriffs office with me in the morning. Take your choice."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+A TAMED OUTLAW
+
+
+Rhoda had a great deal to tell her girl friends the next morning.
+She came into their room before even Nan was up, and curled down on
+one of the beds to relate to an enormously interested trio all the
+particulars of her father's interrogation of the Mexican prisoner.
+
+"And is he that Juan What-you-may-call-him?" asked Bess.
+"Truly-ruly?"
+
+"He is. Daddy made him admit it. And more."
+
+"Go on, dear," said Nan. "You know we are just as curious as we can
+be."
+
+"Well, I tell you, girls, it was no easy matter to get the truth
+out of that fellow. But he is scared. He fears being handed over to
+the American sheriff. He knows that the men he brought up here have
+got into trouble. They quarreled about the treasure's hiding place.
+Some of the men had ridden with Lobarto himself, and they thought
+they knew more about the treasure than this Juan does."
+
+"But the map?" cried Grace.
+
+"Yes. He's got it. But it isn't much of a map. Because daddy knows
+the country so well, he says he recognizes the places marked on the
+diagram."
+
+"Oh, bully!" exclaimed Bess Harley.
+
+"Don't be so quick," advised Rhoda. "It is not very clear at the
+best."
+
+"Oh! Oh!" groaned the too exuberant Bess.
+
+"There are certain places marked on the diagram. Daddy says the
+cross Lobarto made where the location of the hidden treasure is
+supposed to be, is on a bare hill. It is the hill between that
+gulch where we took refuge from the storm that day, and the gully
+up which Tom Collins says he chased that black horse."
+
+"On the hill, then? Not in a hole at all?" asked Nan.
+
+"That is what makes daddy doubtful. He says to have dug a hole out
+in the open, on the side or the top of that hill, would have been
+ridiculous. So he says he doesn't believe in it any more than he
+did before."
+
+"But can't we go to look?" pleaded Grace.
+
+"Of course we can," agreed Rhoda.
+
+"Let's, then," Bess said, eagerly.
+
+"That's what we will do, Bessie. Daddy says we can have the boys
+again and a pack horse, and can grub around all we like. Meanwhile
+he is going to hold on to the Mex. to see what turns up."
+
+"And the others? What of them?" asked Nan.
+
+"Why, we know that a part of his gang went back into Mexico with
+the stolen horses. Daddy has a posse of our own boys hunting the
+hills for those scoundrels that scared Steve's steers the other
+night. He says--daddy does--that he believes those Mexicans started
+that stampede just to get the outfit away from there. Evidently the
+gang believed the treasure is buried up that way. They haven't got
+the diagram, you see."
+
+"That young Mexican must have been looking for the treasure when he
+came to the mouth of the bear den that time and scared us so," said
+Nan thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes," Rhoda agreed. "He says he has been scouring the locality."
+
+"And no luck?"
+
+"So he says. But he believes his uncle's map is all right, when
+once he can understand it."
+
+"I declare!" Nan observed, "I don't see why we can't find the
+treasure, then, if it is somewhere about the hill."
+
+"We'll dig all over it," said Bess eagerly. "Come on, girls! Let's
+go to-day," and she hopped out of bed.
+
+Walter was eager for the second treasure-hunting trip, as well. The
+party got away before mid-forenoon and took their dinner at the
+mouth of the gulch in which the bear den was located.
+
+"I tell you what," Walter said to Nan privately, while they were
+eating. "That cross on the old bandit's map is between this gulch
+and that other where Tom lost the outlaw."
+
+"Yes. So they say, Walter," Nan replied.
+
+"Do you know, Nan, I've an idea there is a hole right through this
+hill?" said the boy.
+
+"A hole? You mean that the cavern goes clear through?"
+
+"Clear through to that funnel-shaped place where our pack horse
+fell down."
+
+"Walter! That's an idea!" admitted Nan.
+
+"Guess it is," he returned, smiling. "Let's get them to search the
+cavern first. We've got lanterns and a big electric torch. There is
+one thing I want to assure myself about, too," he added.
+
+"The treasure, of course."
+
+"Something more. I want to know what made that noise that
+frightened you girls so."
+
+"Oh, Walter! I had forgotten about that. Why remind me?" cried Nan.
+
+"Well, don't remind the others, then," laughed Walter.
+
+Rhoda was quite willing to go to the bear den first of all, and the
+other girls seemed to have forgotten the noise that had so
+disturbed them when they took shelter there from the tornado.
+
+This time they left the ponies outside, with Frank to watch them.
+Tom and Hess Kane entered the cave with the party of young people.
+
+The place was utterly dark and utterly silent. But they soon lit
+the lanterns, and Walter went in advance with the electric torch.
+
+The main cavern in which the girls had waited for the storm to blow
+over was of considerable size, as they had thought at that time;
+and the domed roof was very high. The hill really was a great
+hollow.
+
+There were passages into several smaller caves; but these were mere
+pockets beside the larger apartment. Wherever there was any
+appearance of the floor of the cavern having been disturbed, the
+men used the spade and bar. But they found no hidden treasure. In
+fact, the floor was mostly of solid rock. The old bandit would have
+found it difficult to have buried anything under such flooring.
+
+It seemed as though they had searched the place thoroughly, and all
+the little chambers, too, when Walter's torch revealed to him a
+crack in the wall at the far end of the cavity, and almost as high
+as his head. He soon called the others to come and examine this
+place.
+
+"A big boulder has been rolled into an opening. That is what it
+is," said Nan.
+
+"Just what I was saying to myself," Walter confessed. "And I
+believe nature did not roll the rock here, either."
+
+"Think somebody shut the door on a passage, do you?" asked Tom
+Collins, curiously. "Bring along the bar, Hess, and let's see."
+
+"If nature did not wedge that rock into the opening, then whoever
+did it did an excellent job!" growled Walter, after working on the
+boulder for a couple of hours.
+
+"It's started. Yes, it's started," said Tom complainingly. "But you
+can't say much more about it and speak the truth. If that old
+Mexican's treasure ain't behind that rock, then it ought to be,
+that's sure!"
+
+Supper time came, and they were still working at the boulder. It
+was agreed to camp in the cavern for the night, and continue
+working at the wedged rock until bedtime.
+
+"And might as well bring the ponies in and hobble 'em, eh?"
+suggested Tom Collins. "No use standing watch on 'em outside.
+They've grazed themselves full this afternoon."
+
+It was so agreed. Hess went out and helped Frank bring in the
+animals and wood for the cooking fire.
+
+But here was a surprise. Almost as soon as the horses clattered in
+on the hard floor of the cavern one of them whinnied. Seemingly in
+response, the reechoing sound that had previously so startled the
+girls rang faintly through the cavern. But from much farther away,
+it seemed, than before.
+
+"The haunt!" gasped Bess. "There it is again."
+
+The men and Walter looked inquiringly at each other. Tom Collins
+shook his head: "Can it be the echo of that little roan of mine
+squealing?"
+
+"Never!" cried Rhoda. "That doesn't sound like any horse I ever
+heard. Why, it's queer!"
+
+"Queer's the word; but horse queer," muttered Tom.
+
+Walter looked eagerly at Nan in the lamplight.
+
+"Do you believe that black horse is somewhere here?" she whispered.
+
+"I most certainly do, Nan," he said with confidence.
+
+They worked all the evening on that stone. Occasionally the faint
+and mysterious sound floated to them. The men would not give their
+opinion about this, but they were warmly expressive of what they
+thought about the boulder that had to be moved.
+
+They rolled up in their blankets and sleeping bags finally, and
+left the rest of the job until morning. Without proper tools to
+attack the boulder it was a slow and back-breaking task.
+
+In the morning, however, while Tom Collins was getting breakfast
+and Frank drove the ponies out to graze, Walter and Hess tackled
+the boulder again. It seemed that at night, when they left the
+work, they had been just on the verge of prying it loose.
+
+Suddenly it heaved over. It was rounded on the front, so once
+having turned it, it was an easy matter to get it out of the way.
+The lantern light showed that there was a passage behind the fallen
+barrier.
+
+The girls came running at the crash and at Walter's cry. The boy
+had grabbed up the torch and pressed the switch. He shot the round
+ray of the lamp into the dark passage.
+
+"Oh! There is no treasure there!" murmured Bess, in disappointment.
+
+Walter ventured in, the others crowding after him. The passage was
+long and crooked. They traveled at least a hundred yards, the roof
+of the tunnel being nowhere more than ten feet in height.
+
+Suddenly there was a sound in front. Something scrambled over the
+rocks. Walter shut off the lamp and they saw daylight ahead of
+them.
+
+"See here! Here he is!" shouted the boy, hurrying on. "What did I
+tell you?"
+
+There was more scrambling of hoofs, and then a shrill
+squeal--surely the noise made by a horse! Hess and the girls
+following, Walter came to the circular place to which the tunnel
+led. They all saw what Walter saw. For once Hesitation Kane was
+surprised into expressing himself suddenly:
+
+"It's the black outlaw or I'm a dodo!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+TREASURE-TROVE
+
+
+Hesitation Kane was not a dodo, for nobody could deny that the
+trembling and snorting creature standing on the other side of this
+open hole was the beautiful wild stallion that had followed the
+range horses down from the hills more than a week before.
+
+But such a pitiful looking creature as he was now! The girls
+expressed their pity for him without stint. Not that he was marred,
+or seriously injured in any way. But he was so weak from hunger
+that he could scarcely stand.
+
+It was plain that a few shrubs and some bunch grass had grown in
+the bottom of this hole. He had eaten them down to the very roots,
+and then dug the roots up with his hoofs and chewed them.
+
+Tom Collins' story of how he had chased the stallion and the
+creature had so suddenly disappeared, was now explained. The horse
+had slipped into the hole in the gulch above, just as the pack
+horse had. Only the wild horse had slid clear to the bottom of the
+funnel-shaped hole.
+
+The outcropping ledge hid this opening which was at the level of
+the caves. Nobody could see the imprisoned horse from above. That,
+the searching party well knew.
+
+"And to think that he might have starved to death here," murmured
+Grace.
+
+"Can you get him and tame him, Mr. Kane?" asked Bess Harley.
+
+"But he should be Walter's horse," put in Nan Sherwood, earnestly.
+"Walter has felt all the time that he was here and that it was he
+that made the noise that scared us so."
+
+"Of course this is the source of that cry we heard," Rhoda
+admitted. "When we led the ponies into the big cave that day, he
+heard them, and they knew he was here. I believe I haven't much
+sense, girls, after all. I should have known it was another horse
+squealing."
+
+"I was sure of it last night," said Walter, "when he squealed after
+Frank drove in the stock."
+
+"Well, daddy is fair," Rhoda declared. "When he learns all about it
+he will decide who is to have the horse. Of course, he was
+originally the property of the Long Bow Ranch and that brand is on
+him now. But daddy will fix it right."
+
+"Say!" suddenly cried Bess, "did this party start out from Rose
+Ranch to hunt wild horses? I--should--say--not! We are after
+treasure--"
+
+"Oh, girls, see here!" interrupted Grace Mason suddenly. "What do
+you suppose this can be?"
+
+While the horse wrangler went for a rope to use in holding and
+leading the wild horse, Grace had gone back a way into the tunnel.
+Here the floor of the cavity was not of rock. It was plain to be
+seen by the light of the lantern that the horse had stood in here
+and stamped and dug the dirt up with his sharp hoofs.
+
+In a hole that he had thus excavated Grace had seen an object that
+glistened in the lamplight. "See here," she repeated. "What do you
+suppose this can be?"
+
+Walter was too busy watching the horse to attend to her. But the
+other girls came. Nan dropped down on her knees beside the smaller
+girl. Almost immediately she cried out:
+
+"It is! Oh! Look!"
+
+"Good," said Bess, crowding closer. "I don't know what it is, but I
+am looking. Mercy me, Nan Sherwood! what is that?"
+
+"A silver candlestick," said Nan in a hushed tone. "Girls, we have
+found the Mexican treasure!"
+
+Breakfast was entirely forgotten after that. The coffee boiled over
+back in the big cave, and when Tom thought of it, there was only a
+little extract of Mocha in the bottom of the burned-black pot!
+
+They brought the spades into play again. They unearthed a cavity in
+the floor of the passage into which had been heaped haphazard a
+mass of silver and gold ornaments, vases, bags of jewelry, church
+plate, and of money in quantity to make them all go half mad with
+delight. Such a treasure-trove none of them had really believed
+existed.
+
+They were hours in becoming calm enough to decide what should be
+done. Then Frank was sent off on the swiftest pony to the ranch
+house to report to Rhoda's father, and to bring back a wagon in
+which to carry away the heavier ornaments and vessels that Lobarto
+had stolen from the churches in his own country. How the bandit had
+ever brought such a weight of treasure so far was a mystery.
+
+"And there's another thing," Bess Harley said, later. "Why did he
+make that cross on the map which he sent to his relations, pointing
+to a cache on the hillside?"
+
+"He didn't," Rhoda rejoined quickly. "He made the mark all right.
+He meant to show that it was under the hill."
+
+"Of course!" agreed Nan.
+
+The Mexican treasure was bound to make Mr. Hammond a lot of bother,
+as he said. For when news went abroad that it was found, dozens of
+people came to Rose Ranch trying to prove that some of it belonged
+to them.
+
+Many of these claimants were impostors, and the ranchman referred
+them to the courts which, under the circumstances, could do very
+little toward straightening out the tangle of ownership.
+
+In the first place, the cavern where the wealth was found chanced
+to be on land to which Mr. Hammond held the title. Mr. Hammond
+tried to return the church treasure and vestments; but two of the
+churches Lobarto had wrecked had never been rebuilt, and the
+priests were scattered.
+
+The same way with the coined money. The robber had gathered such
+coin as he had stolen and put it in sacks. Unless a claimant could
+prove how much money, and just what form of money, was stolen from
+him, Mr. Hammond saw no reason for handing out the recovered
+treasure.
+
+Juanita O'Harra and her mother were treated as generously as it was
+possible. And they were satisfied with Mr. Hammond's judgment. In
+fact, most of those who really had lost property were too thankful
+to have a generous amount returned to quarrel about the ranchman's
+decision.
+
+Mr. Hammond claimed that the party searching and finding the cache
+had certain rights. The girls, Walter, and the three employees of
+the ranch on the spot when the find was made, all shared in the
+treasure-trove.
+
+There was one person who had been hungry for the treasure who did
+not get a dollar of it. That was the young Mexican, Juan Sivello,
+Lobarto's nephew. As Mr. Hammond said, chuckling:
+
+"All that chap took away from Rose Ranch was a flea in his ear!"
+
+The letters that went back East after the finding of the Mexican
+treasure--both to the home folks and to girl chums--were so long
+and so exciting that one might have doubted if the four girls from
+Lakeview Hall were quite sane. The visitors to Rose Ranch enjoyed
+many adventures before they started East again, and they had at the
+end much more to tell their friends. But nothing so exciting as the
+result of the treasure hunt.
+
+Walter Mason, too, had an additional prize. Mr. Hammond did not
+think that the recovered black horse was a fit mount for a boy; but
+he shipped to Chicago two ponies, for Walter's and his sister's
+use, in exchange for any rights the boy might think he had in the
+outlaw.
+
+Nan and Bess had no means of keeping horses at home if they owned
+them; so when they left Rose Ranch they bade their pretty steeds
+good-by--perhaps with a few secret tears. For the little beasts had
+carried them for many miles, and safely, over the ranges.
+
+Life at Rose Ranch never lacked variety, it seemed. Never again
+would the Eastern girls pity Rhoda Hammond because of her home
+life, and wonder if she did not miss much that they considered
+necessary to their happiness and comfort.
+
+"I guess everything has its compensations," said Nan, using a
+rather long word for her. "I thought my uncle and aunt and cousins
+up in the Michigan woods must be awfully lonely, and all that. But
+I found it wasn't so."
+
+"And down here nobody has a minute to spare. You can't even feel
+lazy yourself," agreed Bess. "I feel right on edge all the time,
+expecting something new and wonderful to happen."
+
+"And doesn't it?" asked Nan, laughing.
+
+"I should say it did! Why, I never realized so much could happen in
+a month as happens on Rose Ranch in a single day," agreed her
+enthusiastic chum. "I wish I had been brought up on a ranch like
+Rhoda."
+
+"Oh," said Nan Sherwood, "I don't wish that. There is only one
+place in which to be born and brought up. That's in the little
+cottage in amity, and with Momsey and Papa Sherwood."
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch, by Annie Roe Carr
+
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