Hesitation Kane was not a dodo, for nobody could deny that the trembling and snorting creature standing on the other side of this open hole was the beautiful wild stallion that had followed the range horses down from the hills more than a week before.
But such a pitiful looking creature as he was now! The girls expressed their pity for him without stint. Not that he was marred, or seriously injured in any way. But he was so weak from hunger that he could scarcely stand.
It was plain that a few shrubs and some bunch grass had grown in the bottom of this hole. He had eaten them down to the very roots, and then dug the roots up with his hoofs and chewed them.
Tom Collins' story of how he had chased the stallion and the creature had so suddenly disappeared, was now explained. The horse had slipped into the hole in the gulch above, just as the pack horse had. Only the wild horse had slid clear to the bottom of the funnel-shaped hole.
The outcropping ledge hid this opening which was at the level of the caves. Nobody could see the imprisoned horse from above. That, the searching party well knew.
"And to think that he might have starved to death here," murmuredGrace.
"Can you get him and tame him, Mr. Kane?" asked Bess Harley.
"But he should be Walter's horse," put in Nan Sherwood, earnestly. "Walter has felt all the time that he was here and that it was he that made the noise that scared us so."
"Of course this is the source of that cry we heard," Rhoda admitted. "When we led the ponies into the big cave that day, he heard them, and they knew he was here. I believe I haven't much sense, girls, after all. I should have known it was another horse squealing."
"I was sure of it last night," said Walter, "when he squealed afterFrank drove in the stock."
"Well, daddy is fair," Rhoda declared. "When he learns all about it he will decide who is to have the horse. Of course, he was originally the property of the Long Bow Ranch and that brand is on him now. But daddy will fix it right."
"Say!" suddenly cried Bess, "did this party start out from Rose Ranch to hunt wild horses? I—should—say—not! We are after treasure—"
"Oh, girls, see here!" interrupted Grace Mason suddenly. "What do you suppose this can be?"
While the horse wrangler went for a rope to use in holding and leading the wild horse, Grace had gone back a way into the tunnel. Here the floor of the cavity was not of rock. It was plain to be seen by the light of the lantern that the horse had stood in here and stamped and dug the dirt up with his sharp hoofs.
In a hole that he had thus excavated Grace had seen an object that glistened in the lamplight. "See here," she repeated. "What do you suppose this can be?"
Walter was too busy watching the horse to attend to her. But the other girls came. Nan dropped down on her knees beside the smaller girl. Almost immediately she cried out:
"It is! Oh! Look!"
"Good," said Bess, crowding closer. "I don't know what it is, but I am looking. Mercy me, Nan Sherwood! what is that?"
"A silver candlestick," said Nan in a hushed tone. "Girls, we have found the Mexican treasure!"
Breakfast was entirely forgotten after that. The coffee boiled over back in the big cave, and when Tom thought of it, there was only a little extract of Mocha in the bottom of the burned-black pot!
They brought the spades into play again. They unearthed a cavity in the floor of the passage into which had been heaped haphazard a mass of silver and gold ornaments, vases, bags of jewelry, church plate, and of money in quantity to make them all go half mad with delight. Such a treasure-trove none of them had really believed existed.
They were hours in becoming calm enough to decide what should be done. Then Frank was sent off on the swiftest pony to the ranch house to report to Rhoda's father, and to bring back a wagon in which to carry away the heavier ornaments and vessels that Lobarto had stolen from the churches in his own country. How the bandit had ever brought such a weight of treasure so far was a mystery.
"And there's another thing," Bess Harley said, later. "Why did he make that cross on the map which he sent to his relations, pointing to a cache on the hillside?"
"He didn't," Rhoda rejoined quickly. "He made the mark all right.He meant to show that it was under the hill."
"Of course!" agreed Nan.
The Mexican treasure was bound to make Mr. Hammond a lot of bother, as he said. For when news went abroad that it was found, dozens of people came to Rose Ranch trying to prove that some of it belonged to them.
Many of these claimants were impostors, and the ranchman referred them to the courts which, under the circumstances, could do very little toward straightening out the tangle of ownership.
In the first place, the cavern where the wealth was found chanced to be on land to which Mr. Hammond held the title. Mr. Hammond tried to return the church treasure and vestments; but two of the churches Lobarto had wrecked had never been rebuilt, and the priests were scattered.
The same way with the coined money. The robber had gathered such coin as he had stolen and put it in sacks. Unless a claimant could prove how much money, and just what form of money, was stolen from him, Mr. Hammond saw no reason for handing out the recovered treasure.
Juanita O'Harra and her mother were treated as generously as it was possible. And they were satisfied with Mr. Hammond's judgment. In fact, most of those who really had lost property were too thankful to have a generous amount returned to quarrel about the ranchman's decision.
Mr. Hammond claimed that the party searching and finding the cache had certain rights. The girls, Walter, and the three employees of the ranch on the spot when the find was made, all shared in the treasure-trove.
There was one person who had been hungry for the treasure who did not get a dollar of it. That was the young Mexican, Juan Sivello, Lobarto's nephew. As Mr. Hammond said, chuckling:
"All that chap took away from Rose Ranch was a flea in his ear!"
The letters that went back East after the finding of the Mexican treasure—both to the home folks and to girl chums—were so long and so exciting that one might have doubted if the four girls from Lakeview Hall were quite sane. The visitors to Rose Ranch enjoyed many adventures before they started East again, and they had at the end much more to tell their friends. But nothing so exciting as the result of the treasure hunt.
Walter Mason, too, had an additional prize. Mr. Hammond did not think that the recovered black horse was a fit mount for a boy; but he shipped to Chicago two ponies, for Walter's and his sister's use, in exchange for any rights the boy might think he had in the outlaw.
Nan and Bess had no means of keeping horses at home if they owned them; so when they left Rose Ranch they bade their pretty steeds good-by—perhaps with a few secret tears. For the little beasts had carried them for many miles, and safely, over the ranges.
Life at Rose Ranch never lacked variety, it seemed. Never again would the Eastern girls pity Rhoda Hammond because of her home life, and wonder if she did not miss much that they considered necessary to their happiness and comfort.
"I guess everything has its compensations," said Nan, using a rather long word for her. "I thought my uncle and aunt and cousins up in the Michigan woods must be awfully lonely, and all that. But I found it wasn't so."
"And down here nobody has a minute to spare. You can't even feel lazy yourself," agreed Bess. "I feel right on edge all the time, expecting something new and wonderful to happen."
"And doesn't it?" asked Nan, laughing.
"I should say it did! Why, I never realized so much could happen in a month as happens on Rose Ranch in a single day," agreed her enthusiastic chum. "I wish I had been brought up on a ranch like Rhoda."
"Oh," said Nan Sherwood, "I don't wish that. There is only one place in which to be born and brought up. That's in the little cottage in amity, and with Momsey and Papa Sherwood."
End of Project Gutenberg's Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch, by Annie Roe Carr