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 theMexicans your father and the cowboys set out in chase of are thesame 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!"
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 asMrs. 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," declaredRhoda, 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 hecalls'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 hearsthat—"
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.
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.
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.
"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 TomCollins 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 thisGreaser'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?" askedMr. 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."
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 TomCollins, 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!"