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."
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," giggledNan. "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 followedthe 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 horseI 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."
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.
"Youyoungfolks 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," saidGrace 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.
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.
"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! MaybeWalter 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," saidBess. "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?"
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 tenfeet 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.
"You'd better speak uppronto!" exclaimed the girl from RoseRanch in an unshaken tone. "I'm going to fire if you don't."
"Oh, Rhoda!" shrieked Bess.
"Itisn'tWalter!" exclaimed Grace.
"Speak! What do you want? Who are you?" demanded the courageousRhoda.
"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 toNan."
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,
"'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,
"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," criedBess. "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."