"What do you mean, confronting me like this? I do not know you. You are crazy!"

"Maybe I am cr-r-razy!" cried the second voice, its owner rolling her "r's" magnificently. "But I am not a thief. You, Senorita Ham-mon', are that! You and all your fam-i-lee are the thiefs—yes!"

Nan's thought flashed instantly to the Mexican girl in the shop in Adminster. She had spoken in just this way. And she had given at that time every indication of hating Rhoda.

The girl from Tillbury pushed into the thicket from which the voices sounded. Rhoda replied to the castigation of the other's tongue only by an ejaculation of amazement. The harsher voice went on:

"The tr-r-reasure of the Ranchio Rose—that ees what you have stolen. You and your fam-i-lee. Those reeches pay for your dress—for your ring there on your han'—for all your good times, and to make you a la-dee. But me—I am poor that you and yours may be reech, Senorita Ham-mon'. The treasure of the Ranchio Rose belong to me and to my modder—not to you. Thiefs, I say!"

Nan burst through the bushes at this juncture. Rhoda had uttered another cry. She was backing away from a girl with flushed countenance and uplifted, clenched hand—a girl that Nan Sherwood very well remembered.



CHAPTER XI

JUANITA

"STOP that! Don't you dare strike her!" cried Nan, and rushed forward bravely to the rescue of Rhoda Hammond.

Rhoda was bigger and stronger than Nan; but the latter lacked no courage, and she believed that her friend was so much surprised and taken aback by the Mexican girl's accusation that she was not entirely ready to meet the personal assault which the stranger evidently intended.

"Stop that!" repeated Nan, and she dashed between the two girls. She laid her hand upon the Mexican's chest and pushed her back. "You have no right to do this. Don't you know we can have you arrested by the police?"

"Ha! eet ees the odder Senorita," gasped the Mexican girl. "By gracious! I see you are fr-r-riends—heh? You know about the tr-r-reas-ure of the Ranchio Rose—heh?"

"Why, she doesn't know any more what you are talking about than I do," replied Rhoda Hammond, in wonder.

"This girl," said Nan, "must mean the gold and silver and other things you said, Rhoda, that the Mexican bandit hid on your father's ranch somewhere."

"Lobarto!" murmured Rhoda.

"Dhat ees eet!" cried the Mexican girl. "Lobarto, dhe r-r-robber. Lobarto, dhe slayer of women and chil'ren! Ah! The fiend!" and the excited girl's eyes blazed again.

"But what has that to do with Rhoda and her father? I am sure you know very well that Mr. Hammond could not help that bad Mexican bandit's coming up into the vicinity of Rose Ranch and hiding his plunder," said Nan confidently. "And what has it all to do with you, anyway?"

"She!" exclaimed the Mexican girl, pointing to Rhoda. "She ees reech because I am poor. Oh, yes! I know."

"You don't know anything of the kind," said Nan flatly. "Does she, Rhoda?"

"I—I don't know what she means," stammered the girl from Rose Ranch.

"I guess I understand something about it," said the quicker-witted Nan. "She has been robbed by Lobarto, and she thinks your father has found the hidden treasure—the plunder Lobarto left behind at Rose Ranch when he was driven off six years ago."

"You know!" exclaimed the Mexican girl confidently. "How you know?"

"I know what you think. But that doesn't make it so," returned Nan promptly.

"I am sure she is not right in her mind," Rhoda sighed. "What could she have to do with all that treasure they say Lobarto stole in Mexico and hid on our ranch?"

"Come over here and sit down—both of you," commanded Nan, seeing that she had got the Mexican girl quieted for the time being. There was a log in the shade, and they took seats upon it. Nan said kindly to the Mexican: "Now, please, tell us quietly and calmly what you mean."

"Dhat Senorita Ham-mon'—"

"No, no! Begin at the beginning. Don't accuse Rhoda any more. Let us hear all about how you came to know about the treasure, and why you think it is yours."

"Dhat I tell you soon," said the girl quickly. "My modder an' me—"

"Who are you? What is your name?" asked Nan.

"Juanita O'Harra."

"Why! that's both Mexican and Irish," gasped Nan.

"My fader a gre't, big Irisher-man—yes!" said Juanita. "He marry my modder in Honoragas. She have fine hacienda from her papa—yes. She—"

But to put it in more understandable English, as Nan and Rhoda did later when they talked it over with Bess and Grace Mason, Juanita O'Harra told a very interesting—indeed, quite an exciting—story about Lobarto and the lost treasure the bandit chief had carried into the Rose Ranch region.

Juanita's mother had married the Irish contractor who had died when the girl was small. Six years and more before she told this tale to the interested Nan and Rhoda, Lobarto became a scourge of the country about Honoragas. He attacked haciendas, stealing and burning, even maltreating the helpless women and children after killing their defenders.

After robbing the churches, he took all the wealth he had gathered and, with the Mexican Federal troops on his trail, ran up into the United States. How he came to grief there and had to run again with United States troops and the Rose Ranch cowboys behind him, Rhoda had already told her friends.

But that Lobarto had left all the wealth he had stolen somewhere near Rose Ranch, the Mexicans knew as well as the Americans. When captured, members of Lobarto's gang had confessed. But they had been put to death by the Mexican authorities without telling just where the great cache of plunder was.

Juanita and her mother believed that the American owner of Rose Ranch had recovered the treasure and held their share from them. These Mexican people were both ignorant and suspicious. Juanita was very bitter against the Americanos, anyway. She had only come up into the States to work so as to support her mother, who remained still on the ruined plantation in Honoragas.

"I went to dhe Ranchio Rose," said Juanita, "and see thees senorita wit' her fader, dhe gre't Senyor Ham-mon'. He laugh at me—yes! He tell me he haf not found dhe tr-r-reasure. But I know better—"

"You do not know anything of the kind," Nan said promptly. "You just have a bad temper and want to hate somebody. Rhoda tells you that she knows nothing about the money and jewels your mother lost. If they are ever found you and your mother shall have them."

"Of course," Rhoda added, "we would not want anything that was not strictly ours. No matter what the law might say about 'findings, keepings,' my father is not that kind, I'd have you know. We haven't found the treasure. If we ever do, I promise you we'll write to your mother at once."

"My modder cannot read the language you speak," said Juanita, sullenly.

"We will have the letter written in Spanish," promised Rhoda.

"Write it to me," said the Mexican girl eagerly. "I must do all business for my modder. Yes. She do not know. She ees ver' poor. But if what Lobarto stole from us is r-recover-red, we shall be reech again. By goodness, yes!"

"In the end," Nan explained to Bess and Grace afterward, "I think we more than half convinced that Mexican girl that it was not her mother's money that dressed Rhoda so nicely."

"How you talk!" exclaimed Rhoda. "I am sorry for that Mex. But, goodness! how mad she was. Just as mad as a lion!"

"'Lion'!" sniffed Bess. "What do you know about lions?"

"We have them about Rose Ranch," said Rhoda, smiling wickedly.

"Oh, never!" squealed Grace.

"Why, lions grow in Africa," said Bess, doubtfully.

"More properly they are pumas, I suppose. But the boys call 'em lions," laughed Rhoda. "Oh, there are a lot of things about Rose Ranch that will surprise you."

"Don't say a word! I guess that is so. Something besides the roses," murmured Bess.

"I shall be afraid to go out of sight of the house," complained Grace, who was timid in any environment. "Don't tell me anything more, Rhoda."

Nevertheless they were all—and all the time—thinking of the trip West. It did not interfere with their standing in classes, but outside of study hours and the time they spent in sleep, the three girls who had been invited by Rhoda to visit Rose Ranch talked of little else. And, of course, Rhoda herself was always willing to talk of her home down near the Mexican Border.

"I am just as sorry for that Mexican girl and her mother as I can be," Rhoda said on one occasion. "I've written daddy about it. I expect he doesn't remember Mrs. O'Harra's coming to Rose Ranch with her daughter about the treasure. You know, that old treasure has made us a lot of trouble."

"I suppose people keep coming up from Mexico looking for it?" suggested Grace.

"Most of them think we have benefited by Lobarto's stealings," sighed Rhoda. "You see, there is much hard feeling on the side of the Mexicans against the Americans. Even the Mexicans born on our side of the Border are not really Americans. They never learn to speak much English, and it makes them clannish and suspicious of English speaking people."

"And how fierce they are!" murmured Nan.

"Juanita would have struck you. Scratched your face, maybe."

"Well, that is only their excitable way. Perhaps she did not really intend to strike me," Rhoda said. "I do wish we could help her and her mother. Somehow, I am sorry for the poor thing."

"Let's get up a searching party when we get to Rose Ranch," said Bess excitedly, "and find that old treasure."

"Wouldn't that be great!" Nan agreed. "But I am afraid if after six years all that plunder hasn't been found, we shouldn't be likely to find it."

"Oh, it's been searched for," Rhoda assured them. "Time and time again. There have been as many men who believed they could find it as ever hunted for the old Pegleg Mine—and that is famous."

"Never say die!" said Bess, nodding her curly head. "I'm going to hunt for it myself."

This raised a laugh; yet every member of the little party, including Walter when he heard the particulars about Juanita, was eagerly interested in the mystery of the treasure of Rose Ranch.



CHAPTER XII

ROSE RANCH AT LAST

The closing of school came at length. Bess had said frankly that she feared it never would come, the time seemed to pass so slowly; but Nan only laughed at her.

"Do you think something has happened to the 'wheels of Time' we read about in class the other day?" she asked her chum.

"Well, it does seem," said merry Bess, "as though somebody must have stuck a stick in the cogs of those wheels, and stopped 'em!"

Both Tillbury girls stood well in their classes; and they were liked by all the instructors—even by Professor Krenner, who some of the girls declared wickedly was the school's "self-starter, Lakeview Hall being altogether too modern to have a crank."

In association with their fellow pupils, Nan and Bess had never any real difficulty, save with Linda Riggs and her clique. But this term Linda had not behaved as she had during the fall and winter semester. This change was partly because of her chum, Cora Courtney. Cora would not shut herself away from the other girls just to please Linda.

Linda had even begun to try to cultivate the acquaintance of Rhoda Hammond—especially when she had heard more about Rose Ranch. But Rhoda refused to yield to the blandishments of the railroad magnate's daughter.

"I suppose it might be good fun to take a trip across the continent to your part of the country," Linda said to the Western girl on one occasion. "You get up such a party, Rhoda, and I'll tease father for his private car, and we will go across in style."

"Thank you," said Rhoda simply. "I prefer to pay my own way."

"No use for Linda to try to 'horn in'—isn't that the Westernism—to our crowd," laughed Bess, when she heard of this. "The 'Riggs Disease' is not going to afflict us this summer, I should hope!"

Cora Courtney, too, had tried to cultivate an acquaintance with Rhoda. But the girl from Rose Ranch made friends slowly. Too many of the girls had ignored her when she first came to Lakeview Hall for Rhoda easily to forget, if she did forgive.

The good-bys on the broad veranda of Lakeview Hall were far more lingering than they had been at Christmas time. The girls were separating for nearly three months—and they scattered like sparks from a bonfire, in all directions.

A goodly company started with the Tillbury chums from the Freeling station; but at each junction there were further separations until, when the time came for the porter to make up the berths, there were only Nan, Bess and Rhoda of all their crowd in the Pullman car. Even Grace and Walter had changed for a more direct route to Chicago.

They awoke in the morning to find their coach sidetracked at Tillbury and everybody hurrying to get into the washrooms. Nan could scarcely wait to tidy herself and properly dress, for there was Papa Sherwood in a great, new, beautiful touring car—one of those, in fact, that he kept for demonstration purposes.

Nan dragged Rhoda with her, while Bess ran merrily to meet what she called "a whole nest of Harley larks" in another car on the other side of the station. It had been determined that Rhoda should go home with Nan.

"Here she is, Papa Sherwood!" cried Nan, leaping into the front of the big car to "get a strangle hold" around her father's neck. "This is our girl from Rose Ranch, Rhoda Hammond. Isn't she nice?"

"I—I can't see her, Nan," said her father. "Whew! let me get my breath and my eyesight back."

Then he welcomed Rhoda, and both girls got into the tonneau to ride to the Sherwood cottage. "Such richness!" Nan sighed.

The little cottage in amity looked just as cozy and homelike as ever. Nothing had been changed there save that the house had been newly painted. As the car came to a halt, the front door opened with a bang and a tiny figure shot out of it, down the walk, and through the gateway to meet Nan Sherwood as she stepped down from the automobile.

"My Nan! My Nan!" shrieked Inez, and the half wild little creature flung herself into the bigger girl's arms. "Come in and see how nice I've kept your mamma. I've learned to brush her hair just as you used to brush it. I'm going to be every bit like you when I get big. Come on in!"

With this sort of welcome Nan Sherwood could scarcely do less than enjoy herself during the week they remained in Tillbury. Inez, the waif, had become Inez, the home-body. She was the dearest little maid, so Momsey said, that ever was. And how happy she appeared to be!

Her old worry of mind about the possibility of "three square meals" a day and somebody who did not beat her too much, seemed to have been forgotten by little Inez. The kindly oversight of Mrs. Sherwood was making a loving, well-bred little girl of the odd creature whom Nan and Bess had first met selling flowers on the wintry streets of Chicago. Of course, during that week at home, the three girls from Lakeview Hall did not sit down and fold their hands. No, indeed! Bess Harley gave a big party at her house; and there were automobile rides, and boating parties, and a picnic. It was a very busy time.

"We scarcely know whether we have had you with us or not, Nan dear," said her mother. "But I suppose Rhoda wants to get home and see her folks, too; so we must not delay your journey. When you come back, however, mother wants her daughter to herself for a little while. We have been separated so much that I am not sure the fairies have not sent a changeling to me!" and she laughed.

At that, for it was not a hearty laugh and Momsey's eyes glistened, if Nan had not given her promise, "black and blue," to Rhoda, she would have excused herself and not gone to Rose Ranch at all. She knew that Momsey was lonely.

But Mrs. Sherwood did not mean to spoil her daughter's enjoyment. And the opportunity to see this distant part of the country was too good to be neglected. Nan might never again have such a chance to go West.

So the three girls were sent off without any tears for the rendezvous with the Masons and Mrs. Janeway at Chicago.

They found Grace and Walter all right; but as the Masons had no idea what Mrs. Janeway looked like, and that lady had no description of the Masons, they had not met. Rhoda had to look up her mother's friend.

"What are you going to do, Rhoda?" asked the bubbling Bess. "Track her down as you would an Indian? Look for signs—?"

"I don't believe in signs," responded Rhoda. "I am going to look for the best dressed woman in Chicago. Such lovely clothes as she wears!"

"I guess that must be so," said Grace as Rhoda walked out of ear-shot, "for Mrs. Janeway chose Rhoda's own outfit, and you know there wasn't a better dressed girl at Lakeview."

"Wow!" murmured her brother. "What a long tale about dress! Don't you girls ever think of anything but what you put on?"

"Oh, yes, sir," declared Bess smartly. "And you know that Rhoda thinks less about what she wears than most. It's lucky her mother had somebody she could trust to dress her daughter before she appeared at the Hall."

"All on the surface! All on the surface!" grumbled Walter.

"Goodness, Walter," said his sister, "would you want us to swallow our dresses? Of course they are on the surface."

"It certainly is a fact," grinned Walter impudently, "that the curriculum of Lakeview Hall makes its pupils wondrous sharp. Hullo! here comes Rhoda towing a very nice looking lady, I must admit."

In fact, at first sight the three other girls fell in love with Mrs. Janeway. She was a childless and wealthy widow, who, as she asserted, "just doted on girls." She met them all warmly.

"I hope," said Walter, with gravity, as she shook hands with him, "that a mere boy may find favor in your eyes, too. Really, we're not all savages. Some of us are more or less civilized."

"Well," Mrs. Janeway sighed, but with twinkling eyes, "I shall see how well you behave. Now, for our tickets."

"I have the reservations," Walter said quietly. "A stateroom for you four ladies and a berth for me in the same car. In half an hour we pull out. And, girls!"

"Say it," returned Bess.

"Is it something nice, Walter?" asked his sister.

"There is an observation platform on our car—the end car on the train. It goes all the way through to Osaka, where we are going. I think we are fixed just right."

This proved to be the case. The young people pretty nearly lived on that rear platform, for the weather remained pleasant all through the journey. Mrs. Janeway sometimes found it hard work to get them in to go to bed.

The route this tourist car took was rather roundabout; but as Walter said, it landed them at the Osaka station, the nearest railroad point to Rose Ranch, in something like five days.

By this time they were getting a little weary of traveling by rail. Walter declared he was "saddle-sore" from sitting so much. When long lines of corrals and cattle-pens came in sight, Rhoda told them they were nearing Osaka.

"Why, there are miles and miles of those corrals!" cried Bess, in wonder. "You don't mean to say they are all for your father's cattle?"

"Oh, no, my dear. Several ranchers ship from Osaka," explained Rhoda. "And as we all ship at about the same season, there must be plenty of pens and cattle-chutes. Hurry, now. Get your things together."

Bess scrabbled her baggage together, as usual leaving a good deal of it for somebody else to bring. This time it was Walter who gathered up her belongings rather than Nan.

"I never do know what I do with things," sighed Bess. "When I start on a journey I have so few; and when I arrive at my destination it does seem as though I am always in possession of much more than my share. Thank you, Walter," she concluded demurely. "I think boys are awfully nice to have around."

"In that case," said Rhoda, leading the way out of the car as the train slowed down, "you are going to have plenty of boys to wait on you when you get to Rose Ranch. Those punchers are just dying for feminine 'scenery.' I know Ike Bemis once said that he often felt like draping a blanket on an old cow and asking her for a dance."

"The idea!" gasped Mrs. Janeway, who was likewise making her first visit to the ranges.

At that moment Rhoda cried:

"There he is! There's Hess with the ponies."

"Hess who?" asked Grace.

"Hess what?" demanded Nan, as the train stopped and the colored porter quickly set his stool at the foot of the car steps.

"Hesitation Kane," explained Rhoda, hurrying ahead. "Come on, folks! Oh, I am glad to get home!"

Bess, who was last, save Walter, to reach the station platform, gave one comprehensive glance around the barren place.

"Well!" she said. "If this is home—"

"'Home was never like this,'" chuckled Walter.

A few board shacks, the station itself unpainted, sagebrush and patches of alkali here and there, and an endless trail leading out across a vista of flat land that seemed horizonless. The train steamed away, having halted but a moment. To all but Rhoda the scene was like something unreal. "My goodness!" murmured Grace, "even the moving pictures didn't show anything like this."

"They say the desert scenes made by some of the movie companies are photographed at Coney Island. And I guess it's true," said Walter.

Rhoda had run across the tracks toward where a two-seated buckboard, drawn by a pair of eager ponies, was standing. Beside it stood two saddle horses, their heads drooping and their reins trailing before them in the dust. The man who drove the ponies wore a huge straw sombrero of Mexican manufacture. When he turned to look at his employer's daughter the others saw a very solemn and sunburned visage.

"Oh, Hess!" cried Rhoda. "How are you? Is mother all right?"

The man stared unblinkingly at her and his facial muscles never moved. He was thin-lipped, and his hawk nose made a high barrier between his eyes. He did not seem unpleasant, only naturally grim. And silent! Well, that word scarcely indicated the character of Mr. Hesitation Kane.

"Come on!" shouted Rhoda, looking back at her friends, and evidently not at all surprised that the driver of the buckboard did not at once reply to her questions. "Mrs. Janeway, and Nan, and Bess, and Gracie—you all crowd into the buckboard. Walter and I are going to ride. Got my duds here, Hess?"

It was lucky Mr. Kane did not have to answer verbally. He thrust forward a bundle. Rhoda seized it and started for the station where there was a room in which she could change her clothes. Before she quite reached the platform the driver spoke his first word:

"Thanky, Miss Rhody. I'm fine."

Rhoda nodded over her shoulder, laughing at the surprise and amusement of her friends, and disappeared. Walter helped the girls and Mrs. Janeway into the odd though comfortable vehicle. In a few moments Rhoda reappeared in a rough costume that even Mrs. Janeway had to admit did not make the Western girl any the less attractive.

The full breeches and long coat and leggings gave her every freedom of action, and she had put on a wide-brimmed hat. Meanwhile Walter had brought forth from one of his bags a pair of leather riding leggings and buckled on small spurs. He had been forewarned of this ride by Rhoda before they left Chicago.

They mounted the two ponies, and the driver of the buckboard lifted his reins. Then he pulled the eager ponies to a stop again and turned toward Rhoda, answering her second question.

"Yes, ma'am, your mother's fine. She's fine," he announced.

"Don't that beat all!" exclaimed Walter, exploding with laughter as he cantered by Rhoda's side. "That is why we call him 'Hesitation, '" Rhoda said.

"Somebody taught him to count more than ten before speaking, didn't they?" commented Walter.

The trail was not wide enough for the pony riders to keep their mounts beside the buckboard; besides, the dust would have smothered Rhoda and Walter. The light breeze carried the dust off the trail, however; so the two riders could keep within shouting distance of the others.

In two hours or a little more they were out of the barren lands completely. Swerving down an arroyo, all green and lush at the bottom, they cantered up into the mouth of a broad gulch, the walls of which later became so steep that it might well be called a canyon.

The ponies never walked—up grade, or down. They cantered or galloped. Hesitation Kane never spoke to them; but they seemed to know just what he wanted them to do by the way he used the reins—and they did it.

"I don't see how he does it," said Walter to Rhoda. "It doesn't seem really possible that one could make a horse understand without speech."

"Oh, he can speak to them if it is necessary. But he says it isn't often necessary to speak to a horse. The less you talk to them the better trained they are. And Hess is daddy's boss wrangler."

"'Wrangler'?"

"Horse wrangler. Horse trainer, that means."

"But, my goodness!" chuckled Walter, "'to wrangle' certainly means quarreling in speech. I should think it was almost like a Quaker meeting when this Mr. Kane trains a pony."

"It is a fact," laughed Rhoda, "that the ponies make much more noise than Hesitation does."

As they entered this deeper gulch, the girls cried out in delight. The trail was narrow and grassy. Growing right up to the path—so that they could stretch out their hands and pick them—were acres and acres of wild roses. They scented the air and charmed the eye for miles and miles along the trail.

They rode on and on. Finally the little cavalcade wound out of the gap, down a slope, crossed a tumbling river that was yards broad but not very deep, and the ponies quickened their pace as they mounted again to a higher plain.

"There it is!" shouted Rhoda, and, waving her hat, she spurred her pony ahead and passed the buckboard at full speed.

On a knoll the others saw a low-roofed, but wide-spreading, bungalow sort of structure, with corrals and sheds beyond. The latter were bare and ugly enough; but the ranch house was almost covered to the eaves with climbing roses in luxurious bloom.



CHAPTER XIII

OPEN SPACES

"On, Nan!" cried Bess, squeezing her chum's arm, "what do you think of it?"

"It is more beautiful than I had any idea of! And Rhoda had to come away from all this just to go to school," answered the equally excited Nan.

Here Grace Mason's usual timidity showed itself, as she said:

"But there is so much of it! We must have come twenty miles from the railroad station."

"More than that," put in her brother, from his seat in the saddle.

"I don't care!" cried Bess. "It's wonderful."

"Oh, it is wonderful, I grant you," said Grace. "But—but everything is so big—and open—and lonesome."

"Cheer up, Sis," said Walter. "We are all here to keep you company, to say nothing of the cows and the horses," and he laughed.

Mrs. Janeway's opinion was practical to say the least, for her first words were, as the buckboard reached the house: "I certainly shall be glad to get a bath."

Rhoda had thrown herself from her pony and rushed up the steps of the veranda to greet two persons who, later, the visitors found were Mr. and Mrs. Hammond. The former was a rather heavily built, shaggy-bearded man, his face burned to a brick-red and such part as the beard did not hide covered with fine lines like a veil. His wife was a tall and graceful woman who showed nothing in her clear, wide-open eyes of her blindness which for so many years had set her apart from other people.

The blind woman stepped with assurance to the edge of the veranda to greet the visitors, and it was Mrs. Janeway she first met and embraced.

"Marian Janeway! How I wish I could see you, to know if you have really changed!" cried Mrs. Hammond in the heartiest and most cheerful voice imaginable. It was easy to see from whom Rhoda had got her voice.

"I've grown fat—I can tell you that," sighed the Chicago woman. "And you—why, you are still as graceful as you were when you were a girl."

"Flatterer!" exclaimed Rhoda's mother, laughing. Then she seized upon Nan who chanced to come up the steps directly behind Mrs. Janeway.

"Who is this?" she cried. "Wait!" Her fingers ran quickly but lightly over Nan's countenance. She even felt her ears, and the hair where it fluffed over her brow, and traced the line of her well marked eyebrows. "Why!" she added with decision, "this is Nan Sherwood that I have heard so much about."

"Oh, Mrs. Hammond," gasped the girl, "how did you know?"

She looked up into the shining face of the blind woman and could scarcely believe that she was so afflicted. Mrs. Hammond's laugh was deep-throated and hearty, like Rhoda's own.

"I know you, my dear, because Rhoda has told me so much about you. She has explained your character, I see, very truthfully. Your features bear out all she has said. You see, my dear, I am a witch!" and she kissed Nan warmly.

She welcomed the others with grace and that wide hospitality which is only found, perhaps, in the West and among people of the great outdoors. It arises from old times, when the wanderer, seeing a campfire, was sure of a welcome if he approached, and a welcome without questioning.

Mr. Hammond was equally glad to see the young folk. He spoke with a pleasant drawl, and aside from his gray hair and beard revealed few marks of age. His vigorous frame carried too much flesh, perhaps; but that was, he said, "because he took it easy and let the boys run things to suit themselves."

This last statement, however, Nan, who was observant, took with the proverbial pinch of salt. The expression of his countenance was kindly, but his character was firm and he spoke at times with a decision that made the servants, for instance, hurry to obey him. He was, indeed, a very forceful man; but Nan Sherwood liked him immensely.

The rambling ranch house covered a deal of ground and was two stories high. The rooms were low-ceilinged, the upper rooms especially so. The girls who had come to visit Rhoda had a big, plainly furnished, airy room on the upper floor, beside Rhoda's own chamber. Walter had his choice of a bed or a hammock in a room across the hall. The adults of the household were disposed below, while the servants occupied quarters away from the main dwelling.

There was a water system which afforded plenty of baths, the clank of the pump being heard in a steady murmur from somewhere behind the house. It was too late, when they were freshened after the ride, for any exploration outside the house on this evening. All the visitors were ready for dinner when the Mexican waiter announced it.

The servants included a Chinese cook, Mexican houseboys, and negroes for the outside work. The life at Rose Ranch was evidently a rather free and easy existence. The standards of etiquette were not just the same as at the Mason house in Chicago; but the Hammonds knew well how to make their guests feel at home. The quality of the hospitality of the ranchman and his wife was not strained.

The party lingered long at dinner, under the glow of a hanging lamp that illuminated the table but left the corners and sides of the great room in shadow. Now and then somebody would lounge in at the doorway and speak to Mr. Hammond.

"Ah say, Boss, where'd you say Dan's outfit was goin'? I plumb forgot."

"You'd forget your head, Carey, if it wasn't screwed on tight," declared the ranchman, without glancing at the big figure slouching in the doorway. "Dan and his bunch light out for Beller's Gulch come mornin'."

A little later it was a lighter step, and the jingle of spurs on the veranda floor.

"Tumbleweed done sprung his knee, Mist' Ham-mon'. Kyan't use him nohow fo' a while."

"My lawsy!" ejaculated Rhoda's father, "seems to me most of you fellers ain't fitted to take care of a saw horse, let alone a sure enough pony. Some of you will have to ride mules if you don't stop ruinin' my horseflesh."

"Wal, Tumbleweed is right fidgety," complained the cowboy.

"What do you want to ride—somethin' broke to a side-saddle?" demanded the ranchman in disgust. "Go rope a new pony out of that band Hesitation's just brought up. And be mighty careful not to get an outlaw. Hess says there's two or three in that band that are fresh out of the hills."

These side remarks excited Walter. The girls, too, were interested. Grace said she hoped there was not any horse as bad as the pony that ran away at Lakeview, and which Rhoda had stopped so dexterously.

"My dear!" laughed Rhoda, "that wasn't a bad pony. She was only frisky. But Hess shall find you a perfectly safe mount."

"I hope you will extend that promise to me," said Nan, laughing. "If I am to ride I want something I can stay on."

"No bucking broncos for me, either," cried Bess. "At least, not until I have learned to ride better than I do at present."

They went to bed that night wearied after traveling so far, but much excited as to what the next day would bring forth.



CHAPTER XIV

THE POOR LITTLE CALF

Nan awoke when it was still utterly dark. Nothing had frightened her, and yet she felt that something really important was about to happen—something wonderful! What it could be, she had no idea. Her imagination was not at all spurring her mind. She only knew that she was on the verge of a new and surprising experience.

There were three beds in the big room, and she could hear Bess and Grace breathing calmly in their own cots. But she was wide awake.

Without speaking, or making any more sound than she could help, Nan Sherwood crept out of bed. The air from the open windows was chill, so she knew it must be near dawn.

She slipped her feet into slippers and shrugged her robe about her. Then she crept to the nearest casement. She had to kneel to see out, for the window, which looked to the east, was under the eaves of the ranch house. The sill was only a foot above the floor.

Nan folded her arms on this sill and looked out into the velvety darkness. A great silence seemed to brood over the country which she could not see. She remembered how lonely the ranch house seemed to be when she had first seen it the previous afternoon. Even the bunk houses where the help slept were at some distance, and not in this easterly direction.

Blackness seemed to have shut down all about the great dwelling, like a curtain. The roses weighted the air with their delicious scent. She even had to reach forth and separate the prickly vines carefully so as to make an opening through which she hoped soon to see.

For she knew now what it was that had awakened her—what it was that was about to happen. Dawn was coming! The sun would soon appear! A new day was in the making just below the horizon which she could not see.

A haze had been drawn over the stars; therefore there was absolutely no light in the world. Not yet. But—

There it was! A pale gray streak was drawn along the very edge of the world, far, far away. It was just as though a brushful of gray paint had been dashed along that line where the earth and the sky met.

The gray line remained, though growing more distinct, while above it a band of faint pink rimmed the east as far as she could see. Nan drew her kimono about her shoulders and shivered ecstatically. This was the wonderful thing that she had awakened with in her mind.

Sunrise!

A gun could have shot the earth away out there across the rolling plain no more suddenly with yellow than now was done by the sun's reflection. It had not come into sight yet; but Nan could see the colors reaching upward toward the zenith. A riot of color hurried everywhere, over the earth and up in the sky; and then—

"There he is!" shouted Nan aloud, as the edge of a fiery red ball appeared.

"What is the matter with you, Nan Sherwood?" complained Bess, from her bed.

"Oh, what is it? Nan!" shrieked Grace, sitting straight up in bed and evidently expecting that the very worst had happened.

"It's morning, you lazy things," whispered Nan. "Sh! Get up and see the most wonderful sight you ever did see."

"I bet the sun is getting up in the west," gasped Bess, hopping out of bed at this announcement.

Already there was a stir about the place. Down at the bunk houses the dogs began to yap and some full-throated cow-puncher sent forth a "Yee! Yee! Yee! Yip!" that acted as rising call for all the hands. As the three girls from so much farther east gathered at the low window to peer out, there sounded another cowboy salute and there dashed by with the drumming of hoofs a little party of mounted men who rode just as the cowboys do in the moving pictures.

Rhoda burst into the room and ran to hug her three friends. She was already dressed.

"There goes Dan's bunch already," she said. "And see 'em turn and look back. They're just showing off; they know we sleep on this side of the house. Daddy will give them a wigging, for maybe Mrs. Janeway wants to sleep."

Breakfast was an early repast at Rose Ranch. Mrs. Hammond and Mrs. Janeway were served in their rooms; but the rest of the family were soon at the table. It was a bountiful repast, with Ah Foon, the Chinese cook, coming to the door every few minutes to see for himself if the flapjack plates did not need replenishing.

"We are going to get our ponies first of all," Rhoda announced. "Oh! I am so hungry for a ride—a good ride—again."

"But, goodness! don't we have to be fitted to them?" demanded Bess, the incorrigible. "I would not like to walk right up to a pony and say 'You're mine!'—just like that!"

"Hess will pick them out for us, won't he. Daddy?"

"I reckon so," said her father, without looking up from his mail that one of the Mexicans had brought in the minute before.

"Goodness!" exclaimed Grace. "We'll never be able to get the ponies to-day, then, that is sure. He won't be able to answer you so quickly."

"That's all right," laughed Rhoda. "I asked him about them last night"

They ran out to the corral as soon as the girls got into their new riding habits. They had had them made something like Rhoda's.

"You see," the latter had said, "our ponies are not often trained for side-saddles and skirts. And, then, they are dangerous."

The silent Hesitation was on hand. He had a bunch of ponies gathered in a particular corral, and pointed to them in answer to Rhoda when she asked if they were perfectly safe. About the time the girls and Walter had looked them over and chosen those they liked, the horse wrangler said:

"All broke for tenderfoots. You can trust any of 'em as long as you keep your eyes open."

"Well," murmured Bess, "I certainly do not intend to ride horseback when I am asleep."

Nan chose for herself a cunning little fat pony, with brown and white patches and a pink nose. In the East it would have been called a calico pony; but Rhoda called it a pinto.

The Eastern girls were just a little doubtful of their mounts, because their tails and ears were always twitching and they seemed quite unable to "make their feet behave."

"Mine is just as nervous as I am," confessed Bess, as she gathered up the reins. "If he starts as quick as Walter's does, I know I shall be thrown as high as the cow jumped—over the moon."

"Have no fear, Elizabeth," advised Nan. "Try to copy Rhoda, and you'll stick on all right."

"Oh, I'll be a regular copy-cat," promised her chum. "I don't wish to be carried back to Tillbury in pieces."

The little cavalcade started off from the corrals in good order. They went past the house and waved their hands to Mrs. Janeway and shouted a greeting to Rhoda's mother. Then the ranch girl led them at a fast canter toward the west.

When Walter saw the small rifle tucked into a case under Rhoda's knee he expressed the wish that he had brought his own rifle West.

"Do you know, I never thought of it! You're not expecting to shoot Indians, are you, Rhoda?" he said jokingly.

"You never can tell," she replied, smiling. "But they say I am a pretty good shot. I don't expect to shoot an Indian."

"I can shoot, too," said Grace quickly. "Walter taught me last year."

"Mercy! what did you shoot with, Grace?" demanded Bess. "A squirt-gun?"

"A pistol and Walter's rifle. I know I'm awfully scared of 'em, but I wanted to know which was the more dangerous end of a gun."

"Bravo!" cried Nan, laughing.

"Why, if you want, I can supply you all with firearms," said Rhoda. "There are plenty at the ranch. And the boys most always lug around a 'gat,' as they call 'em, because of the coyotes."

"Oh, dear me! are they dangerous?" demanded Grace.

"The coyotes? Only to stray calves and lame cattle. We seldom see anything more dangerous. And as long as you are on horseback you are perfectly safe, anyway, even from a lion."

"There she goes talking about lions again," murmured Bess. "I feel as though I were on the African veldt."

"Let's all learn how to use firearms," said Nan eagerly. "Why shouldn't we?"

"Why, Nan Sherwood! you have the instincts of a desperado," declared her chum. "I can see that."

"I want to do just as the Western girls do while I am here," said Nan.

"So I, I presume," Rhoda queried, "should wish to do just as the Eastern girls do when I am at Lakeview?"

"Well, you'd get along better," Nan argued, quite seriously.

Out of sight of the ranch house they very quickly found themselves in what seemed to the visitors a pathless plain. Off to the left a huge herd of red and white cattle was feeding. It was broken up into little groups and the creatures looked no more harmful than cows back home. There was not a herdsman in sight.

"Why," said Bess, "I expected to see cowboys riding around and around the cattle all the time, and hear them singing songs."

"They do do that at night. The riding, anyway. And most of the boys try to sing. It takes up time and keeps 'em from being lonely," replied Rhoda. "But I am not sure that the cows are fond of the singing. They are patient creatures, however, and endure a good deal."

"Now, Rhoda!" exclaimed Nan, "don't squash all our beliefs about the cowpunching industry which we have learned from nursery books and movies."

Rhoda headed away from the herd, and by and by they descended a steep but grassy slope into the mouth of a rock-walled canyon. It was a wild-looking place; but there were clumps of roses growing here and there. Rhoda leaped down and let her pony stand, with the reins trailing before him on the ground.

"Isn't he cunning!" observed Bess. "He thinks he's hitched."

"They are trained that way. You see, on the plains there are so few hitching posts," said Rhoda dryly.

The others dismounted, too. Rhoda was hunting among the great boulders that littered the grassy bottom. When they asked her what she was looking for, she called back that she would show them a boiling spring if she could find it.

Suddenly Nan lifted her head to listen. Then she started up the canon, which, in that direction, grew narrower between the walls.

"Don't you hear that calf bawling?" she demanded, when Bess asked her where she was going.

"Oh, I hear it," said Bess, keeping in the rear. "But how do you know it is a calf?"

"Then it is something imitating one very closely," sniffed Nan, and kept on. The next minute she shouted back: "It is! A little, cunning, red calf. And, oh, Bess! it has hurt its leg."

She ran forward. Bess followed with more caution. Suddenly there was a crash in the bushes, and out into the open, right beside the injured calf, came a red and white cow. This animal bawled loudly and charged for a few yards directly toward Nan Sherwood.

"Oh, goodness, Nan! Come away!" begged Bess, turning to run. "That old cow will bite you."

But it was not the anxious mother of the calf that had startled Nan. She knew she could dodge the cow. But above the place where the calf lay, on a great gray rock that gave it a commanding position, the girl saw a huge, cat-like creature with glaring eyes and a switching tail.

She had never seen a puma, not even in a menagerie. But she could not mistake the slate and fawn colored body, the cocked ears, the bristling whiskers, and the distended claws, the latter working just like a cat's when the latter is about to make a charge.

And it looked as though the savage beast could quite overleap the cow and calf and almost reach Nan Sherwood's feet.



CHAPTER XV

A TROPHY FOR ROOM EIGHT

Nan was badly frightened. But she had once faced a lynx up at Pine Camp, and had come off without a scratch. Now she realized that this mountain lion had much less reason for attacking her than had the lynx of the Michigan woods; for the latter had had kittens to defend.

The huge puma on the rock glared at her, flexed his shoulder muscles, and opening his red mouth, spit just like the great cat he was. Really, he was much more interested in the bleating red calf than he was in the girl who was transfixed for the moment in her tracks.

Bess, who could not see the puma, kept calling to Nan to look out for the cow. She was more in fun than anything else, for she did not believe the cow could catch her chum if the latter ran back.

What amazed Bess Harley was the fact that Nan stood so long by the clump of brush which hid the rock on which the puma crouched from Bess's eyes.

"What is the matter with you?" gasped Bess at last "You look like Lot's wife, though you are too sweet ever to turn to salt, my dear. Come on!"

Then, of a sudden, Bess heard the big cat spit! "My goodness!" she shrieked, "what is that?"

Her cry was heard by Rhoda, at a distance. The Western girl knew that something untoward was taking place. She ran for her pony and leaped into the saddle.

"What is it?" she shouted to Bess, whom she could see from horseback.

"Nan's found a red calf—and he makes the queerest noise," declared the amazed Bess. "I'm afraid of that calf."

Walter ran to mount his pony, too. But Rhoda spurred directly toward the spot where Bess stood. Being in the saddle, she was so much higher than Nan's chum that she could see right over the brush clump. Immediately she beheld Nan and the crouching lion.

"Come back, Nan!" she called quickly. "Stoop!"

She snatched the rifle from under her knee. It leaped to her shoulder, and, standing up in her stirrups while her pony stood quivering and snorting, for he had smelled the puma, the girl of Rose Ranch took quick but unerring aim at the crouching, slate-colored body on the boulder.

The beast was about to spring. Indeed, he did leap into the air. But that was the reflex of his muscles after the bullet from Rhoda's rifle struck him.

She had come up so that her sight had been most deadly—right behind the fore shoulder. The ball entered there, split the beast's heart, and came out of his chest. He tumbled to the ground, kicking a bit, but quite dead before he landed.

"There!" exclaimed Rhoda, "I warrant that's the lion daddy was speaking to Steve about last night. He said it wasn't coyotes that killed all the strays. He had seen the tracks of this fellow in the hills."

"Rhoda!" shrieked Bess, "is that a lion?"

"Most certainly, my dear."

"Hold me, somebody! I want to faint," gasped Bess. "And he almost jumped right down our Nan's throat."

"No," said Nan. "Scared as I was, I knew enough to keep my mouth shut."

But none of them were really as careless as they sounded. Rhoda jumped down and hugged Nan. It was true that something might have happened to the latter if the lion had missed his intended prey.

"And we'll have to shoot the poor calf. It's broken its leg," the ranch girl said, after the congratulations were over.

The red and white cow still stood over the calf and bellowed. She would occasionally run to the dead puma and try to toss it; but she did not much like the near approach of human beings, either.

"I tell you what," Walter said, examining the dead puma with a boy's interest: "That was an awfully clean shot, Rhoda. The pelt won't be hurt. You should have this skin cured and made into a rug."

"Oh, yes!" cried Bess. "Take it back to Lake-view Hall with you, Rhoda, and decorate Room Eight, Corridor Four!"

"Come along, then," the Western girl said, smiling. "We'll ride over to the herd and send one of the boys back to skin the lion and butcher the veal, too. We might as well eat that calf as to leave him for the coyotes."

They hurried away from the vicinity of the dead puma, and, to tell the truth, for the rest of the ride the visitors from the East kept very close together.

"To think," sighed Bess, when they had dismounted at the house some time later and given the ponies over to the care of two Mexican boys who came up from the corrals for them, "that one is liable to run across lions and tigers and all kinds of wild beasts so near such a beautiful house as this. It must have been a dream."

"That puma skin doesn't look like a dream," said Walter, laughing and pointing to the pelt of the beast which hung from Rhoda's saddle and made all the ponies nervous.

"Well," said Bess, with determination, "I am willing to learn to shoot. And hereafter I won't go out of our bedroom without strapping a pistol to my waist."

They all laughed at this statement. But they spent that afternoon, with revolvers and light rifles, on what Rhoda called "the rifle range," down behind the bunk houses. Hesitation Kane, the horse wrangler, as silent almost as the sphinx, drifted out to the spot and showed them by gestures, if not by many words, how to hit the bull's-eye. Nan, as well as her chum, became much interested in this sport. The adventure with the big puma really had made Nan feel as though she should know how to use a gun.

Several days passed before the party rode far from Rose Ranch again. But every day the young folks were in the saddle for a few hours, and all became fair horsewomen—all but Walter, of course, who was already a horseman.

There was great fun inside the big ranch house, as well as in the open. In the evenings, especially, the young people's fun drew all the idle hands about the place, as well as the family itself.

There were a player-piano and a fine phonograph in the big drawing-room. The windows of this room opened down to the floor, and the cowboys from the bunk house, the Mexicans, and even Ah Foon, gathered on the side porch to hear the music.

When a dance record was put on the machine the clatter of boots on the piazza betrayed more than one pair of punchers solemnly dancing together.

"Though," complained Rhoda's father, "those spurs the boys wear will be the ruination of my hardwood floor. Where do they think they are? At a regular honky-tonk? None of 'em's got right good sense."

"Let them dance, daddy," said his wife, who usually called the ranch owner by the same pet name his daughter used. "They don't often get a chance up here at the big house to show off. You and I might better be out there, dancing with them."

"My glory, Ladybird!" gasped Mr. Hammond, in mock alarm. "I'm in my stockin' feet. I'd get 'em full of splinters, like enough."

"Then, Walter, you come and dance with me," the blind woman cried. "I'm bound to dance with somebody."

And to see her weaving in and out among the dancers in Walter's grasp, one would never guess her affliction.

That evening's entertainment was only an impromptu affair. A few nights later the house party was formally invited to a "ball" at the men's quarters. The big dining room next the bunk house was cleared out, two fiddles and an accordion obtained from Osaka, and the Rose Ranch outfit showed the visitors what a real cowboy dance was like.

Rhoda and her friends certainly had a fine time at this ball. Boys from neighboring outfits attended, some riding fifty and sixty miles to "shake a leg" as the local expression had it.

There were both Mexican and white girls from Osaka and from other ranches. Even a party of Indians attended, but the young squaws were in civilized costume and looked even more "American" than the Mexican girls. One young Indian, however, confided to Walter that he did not think the new dances were graceful or really worthy.

"Really, the square dances and the good old waltz are more to my taste," he said. "We never took up these one—and two-steps at Carlisle when I was there."

"Another of my cherished beliefs gone," confessed Walter, afterward, to Nan. "I bet that redskin doesn't know how to throw the tomahawk, and that he couldn't give the warhoop the proper pronunciation if he tried. Dear me! this Southwest is getting awfully civilized."

But Bess Harley was delighted with the evening's fun. Going to bed at midnight, she said:

"Dear me, Rhoda, what perfectly lovely times you can have out here in the wilderness. I never danced with so many nice boys before. I never would have believed Rose Ranch was like this."



CHAPTER XVI

EXPECTATIONS

After this Nan and Bess and Grace, as well as Walter, were well acquainted with the "boys" about Rose Ranch. At least, they knew all those employed within easy riding distance of the ranch house.

It was later that they learned they had met none of "Dan's bunch." That was the crowd that had ridden away the very morning after the visitors had arrived at the ranch. The outfit headed by Dan MacCormack had gone to round up a horse herd many miles from headquarters.

Mr. Hammond and several other ranchmen of the vicinity allowed their horses to run wild in the hills for a part of each year. The larger part, in fact.

"You see, they get their own living up there, on pasturage that they never could be driven to," Rhoda explained to the girls. "Besides, many of the finest mustangs in the country run wild and will never be caught. Daddy likes to have his herds crossed with that wild blood. It makes the colts more vigorous and handsomer. Oh, I just wish you girls could see some of the wild stallions. But they seldom come down with the herds to the rodeo. They go back into the wilder hills with the scrubs that the boys don't care to drive in.

"About this time of year the several bands belonging to Rose Ranch and our neighbors are driven down to the lowlands. The mares and yearlings are already branded, of course; so the various owners cut out their own animals, and the young colts, of course, run with their mothers.

"Each ranch outfit knows its own colts and brands accordingly. We call it a round-up. 'Rodeo' is Mexican for it. We drive them into the branding pens and mark the colts. Then we cut out the horses that are needed on the ranch, or to train for sale, and let the others drift again."

"And do all the poor horses have to be burned?" murmured Grace, with a shudder.

"And our cattle, too. How else would we know them from other people's cattle?" demanded Rhoda. "It's nowhere near so horrid as it sounds. The smart is soon over. And, really, how else could we tell the creatures apart?"

"Goodness! don't ask me" said Grace. "I am not in the cattle business."

But she confessed to Nan that she intended to shut her eyes tight when the poor little colts were to be burned, and stuff her fingers into her ears, too. However, she and the other girls were very eager to attend the round-up; and a messenger from Dan, the sub-foreman, had come in to headquarters with the announcement that the herdsmen from the combined ranches were driving down the biggest bunch of horses in a decade.

"You and your party, Rhoda, can start away in the morning, bright and early," said her father at dinner that night. "I've sent away a grub wagon and Ah Foon's right bower to cook for you. I know you'd cause a famine if you depended on the regular chuck wagon of Dan's outfit. There isn't but one sleeping tent; Walter will have to rough it."

"That will not bother me, Mr. Hammond," declared the boy. "I've camped out more than once."

"'Twon't be much of a punishment to sleep out-of-doors this weather," said the old ranchman. "All that may bother you is a tornado. We have 'em occasionally at this season."

"And what do you do when there is a tornado, Mr. Hammond?" asked Bess, interested.

"Only one thing to do—hold tight and keep your hair on," chuckled Mr. Hammond. "If you really do get in the path of one, lie down and cling to the grass-roots till it blows over."

"Oh! A cyclone!" cried Bess.

"Not exactly. A cyclone, I reckon, is some worse. A cyclone is a twister. They say if a cyclone hits a pig end to, and the wrong way, it twists his tail to the left instead of to the right and he's never the same pig again."

"Now, daddy!" complained Rhoda, "what do you want to tell such awful jokes for? Nothing like that ever happened to our pigs."

"Well," said her father, his eyes twinkling, "we never had a real cyclone down here. But tornadoes are bad enough."

It was barely daybreak the next morning when the sleepy peons brought the ponies to the house. Rhoda knew the trail well, and within the precincts of Rose Ranch, at least, her father did not consider it necessary for any guard to ride with her.

"I often ride to Osaka for the mail," explained Rhoda. "What should I be afraid of?"

"Aren't there any tramps?" murmured Grace.

"Well," laughed Rhoda, "not the kind you mean. Tramps afoot would not get far in this country. And how could a man on foot catch me? Your kind of tramps don't go far from the railroad lines. And if there are any other ne'er-do-wells in the neighborhood, they know daddy too well to molest me. You see, daddy used to be sheriff in the old days. And he has a reputation," laughed Rhoda.

This conversation occurred just after they left the house on this windy morning, with a red sun coming up behind them "as big as a cartwheel," Bess announced. The level rays of the sun shot far, far across the plains and gilded the line of buttes and mesas Rhoda had told them so much about while back at Lakeview Hall.

"Those are not the Blue Buttes this morning, Rhoda," declared Nan. "They are golden."

Rhoda's eyes swept the frontage of the eminences. She carried a pair of glasses in a case slung from her shoulder. Suddenly she seized these, uncased them, and clapped them to her eyes.

"Hi, cap'n!" cried Bess, "what do you spy?"

"See that flash between those two hills?" said Rhoda, reining in her mount.

They gathered about her, looking where she aimed the glasses. Walter exclaimed:

"I see the flash! It isn't the sun shining on guns, is it?"

"Nonsense!" cried Nan Sherwood.

"No-o," said Rhoda. "People don't carry guns that way around here. Besides, the only part of a gun that the sun would flash on would be the bayonet; and we don't carry army rifles in this country," and she laughed.

"There it is again!" exclaimed Walter.

"I see it, too," said Nan. "Rhoda, what can it be? Something is surely moving this way on a road."

"That is the old Spanish Trail," said the Rose Ranch girl. "It is the trail I told you about, by which the old Conquistadors of Cortez reached this part of the country. And it is the most direct road into Mexico."

"It must be some kind of caravan coming through there," said Bess dryly.

"You are quite right," Rhoda declared. "A party of horsemen are riding this way. And they are Mexicans."

"Rhoda!" cried Nan, "you can't see that through those glasses."

"No; I cannot distinguish the horsemen. But I can see the little flashes moving across the saddle of the Gap and down into the valley on this side. And I know they are Mexicans because those flashes are the sun's rays shining on the silver trimming on their sombreros. Yes, they are Mexicans."

"Glory be!" exclaimed Bess. "Can you be sure of all that?"

"More. Poor Mexicans—the peons who come up here to find work—do not wear such sombreros. Nor do many Mexicans waste their money in such fashions nowadays. But there is a class that dress just that fancily."

"Who are they?"

"Men that the ranchers here will not want to see. I know that daddy will ride over to the rodeo behind us, or I would turn about now and run to tell him. There! they are gone. There must have been a dozen of them."

"But who are they?" demanded Nan, anxiously.

"Of course, I am not positive. But I think," said Rhoda, closing the glasses and putting them in the case again, "that they are a band of wanderers. Perhaps a raiding party led by one of the so-called 'liberators' of Mexico. You know, there are more 'liberators' in Mexico than you can shake a stick at," and the girl of Rose Ranch laughed.

"You mean bandits!" cried Nan.

"Well, that is a harsh word. They are political leaders for the most part. Sometimes they become important leaders. But when they come over on this side of the Border they need just as close watching as a pack of wolves."

"Are these men like that Lobarto you told us about?" said Walter.

"Perhaps. Of course, I do not really know. Let us ride along, and when daddy overtakes us, I will tell him."



CHAPTER XVII

THE ROUND-UP

Mr. Hammond, however, did not overtake the young people before they reached the mouth of the canyon through which Rhoda said the army of horses must be driven down to the branding pens.

"Of course, we could go on to the pens and wait there," she said to her friends. "Our personal outfit is there already. Daddy sent it over last night But then you would miss a sight that I want you all to take back East with you as a memory. It is something you will never forget."

"Go on, Rhoda," said Bess. "Show us. Of course, we haven't been seeing wonderful things right along ever since we arrived at Rose Ranch!"

"This is something special," said Rhoda, and led the way into the canyon at a quick canter.

The high-walled slash in the foothills narrowed rapidly, and five miles from the mouth of it the walls were so close together that Walter declared he could throw a stone from one to the other.

The way was becoming rocky, too; the patches of grass were meager and the brush grew more sparse.

The summit of the bare walls rose higher and higher. Far above the cut a vulture wheeled. The sun beat down into the canon, for it was now mid-forenoon, and, the breeze having died, the party of riders began to suffer from the heat.

"I'm melting," declared Bess. "But that's a small matter. I was getting too fat, anyway."

"Listen!" commanded Rhoda suddenly.

They heard then a growing sound like the rolling of many barrels at a distance. It was not thunder. The sky was as clear as a bell.

"Quick!" exclaimed Rhoda. "We must get up yonder in that cleft! See? And keep a tight rein on your ponies."

They rode quickly off the trail, while the strange sound grew in volume. It certainly was something coming down the canyon; but the huge boulders shut out all view of what lay thirty yards away from the party.

They reached a small cleared space against the foot of one cliff, but some yards above the bottom of the canyon. Now, as the growing sound came nearer, Nan shouted:

"I know what it is! It's the herd of horses."

Rhoda nodded. The clatter of the countless hoofs came nearer and nearer. The girls and Walter dismounted, and Rhoda warned them to stand in front of their mounts and keep the bridle-reins in their hands.

They could not yet see the head of the herd; but above the boulders they saw a cloud of dust rising. This dust rolled down the canyon and reached the observers first. Then appeared several horsemen riding at a sharp canter. The range horse almost never trots.

Rhoda had to shout to make her voice heard by her friends above the clatter of hoofs:

"Some of those are our men; others belong to the Long Bow, Gridiron, and Bar One outfits. They are leading the herd and will spread out at the mouth of the canyon and keep the flanks of the mob from drifting."

"Oh! The ponies!" shrieked Bess suddenly.

Out of the rolling dust cloud below them were thrust the bobbing heads, shaking manes, and plunging forefeet of the leaders of the herd. Black horses, red horses, gray, white, all shades of roan, pinto, and the coveted buckskin color, which always sells well in the West.

The tossing manes became like the surf of an angry sea. The thunder of hoofs was all but deafening. Above this noise sounded the shrill whistling of the male horses and the answering neighs of the half-mad herd.

There was reason for clinging to the bridles of the saddled ponies from Rose Ranch. They began to answer the cries of the wild mob below, and stamped their little hoofs upon the rock. Bess Harley's mount stood up on his hind legs, and if Walter had not caught the reins the brute might have got away.

"Why, you naughty boy!" cried Bess. "I never would have thought you'd do it. He seemed so tame, Rhoda!"

Rhoda could not hear her, but shook a warning head. While the herd was passing one could not trust even the best trained saddle pony. It was only a few months before that they had all been members of just such a mob of wild horses as this.

The dust was carried to the other side of the canyon by such air as was stirring; therefore Rhoda and her visitors obtained a better view of the horses as the herd flowed on. There seemed to be an endless stream of them. Hundreds—yes, thousands—plunged down the canon trail, sure footed as sheep over the rocky path.

The girls fairly squealed with delight when they saw the long-legged colts staggering along close to their mothers' flanks. There was no play among them, for without doubt the younger creatures were all much confused, and very tired.

Had there been any place where the mates could have turned out of the mob with their young, they would undoubtedly have done so; but the way was narrow and those behind pushed the others on. After all, Nan secretly thought, it was a cruel way to treat the animals.

She did not set herself in judgment upon the method of handling the horses, for she knew she was utterly ignorant of the conditions. Yet she was sorry for them, and especially pitied the mothers and their young.

The stream of horses was nearly an hour in passing the observation point Rhoda Hammond had selected. The creatures kept on at a swinging canter; never at a walk. Hurrying, snorting, sweating with fear of they knew not what! The odor and dust that rose from the seemingly endless stream of animals finally became rather unpleasant in the nostrils of the onlookers. But they were held there until all should have passed.

By and by the last clattering hoof of the herd was gone, the rear brought up by a bunch of the very young and their mothers, as well as some few lame ones. Then Dan MacCormack, red-bearded and black-eyed, rode by with the rest of the herdsmen, raising his sombrero to Rhoda and her friends.

At the extreme tail of the procession came the chuck wagons of the four outfits, each drawn by four mules with flopping ears and shaved tails, the drivers smoking corncob pipes, and the cooks lolling beside them on the seats, their arms folded.

"Now we'll go," said Rhoda, it being possible to speak in an ordinary tone once again and be heard. "When we get out of the canyon we'll circle around the herd and precede it to Rolling Spring Valley, where the branding pens are set up."

Grace rubbed her gloved hand tenderly over the scar on her pony's hip and said to him:

"Did it hurt you very much when they burned you with the nasty old iron?" He pricked his ears forward and whisked his tail, so Bess said, in a most knowing way, as though he remembered the indignity clearly. "I don't believe I want to see the branding done," she added. "That ugly 'XL' doesn't improve his appearance."

"That is 'Cross L' not 'XL'; and the brand is not so disfiguring as some," Rhoda said. "It helps sell a lot of horses for daddy. His brand is known all over the country."

"That fact doesn't make it any the less cruel," Grace said, with some spirit. "How would you like to be branded, Rhoda Hammond?"

"We-ell," drawled Rhoda, "you know, I'm not a horse."

They clattered out of the canon at last, well behind the train, and then swerved directly west to escape the dust-shrouded herd. Their ponies were still excited, and Rhoda warned her companions to keep them well in hand.

Skulking among the rocks at the edge of the plain, they saw several tawny creatures whose eyes were evidently fixed longingly on the herd of horses.

"Coyotes," said Rhoda. "They haven't a chance, unless a colt goes lame and loses its mother."

"Why don't we shoot them?" demanded Walter eagerly.

"They are not worth the powder we'd waste," declared Rhoda. "And then, they are sort of scavengers. We would not think of shooting a vulture; so why not let the coyotes live—out here? When they sneak around the poultry runs, that's another thing."

Two hours past noon the party rode down a broad green slope into a well-watered valley. A river ran through its length, and several small tributaries joined it. More than one grove of noble cottonwood trees graced the river's banks. The grass was lush, offering pasturage for thousands of cattle, although there was not a horned creature in sight The herd of horses would be contented here as soon as their alarm had passed.

There was a camp by the riverside, and a tent was set up beside the special chuck wagon Mr. Hammond had sent over from Rose Ranch. But Rhoda's father had not arrived at this rendezvous when the little cavalcade rode down to the encampment.

Ah Foon's assistant, a smiling Mexican lad, had prepared lunch, and the girls and Walter certainly were ready for it. It was fully two hours later before the other chuck wagons lumbered info view. (They had passed the herd which would be allowed to drift down into the valley during the evening, guarded by all the hands until daybreak the next day.)

Mr. Hammond appeared, and Rhoda told him at once about the cavalcade of horsemen that she and her friends had seen riding over the saddle of the old Spanish Trail so early in the morning. The ranchman betrayed considerable interest in the matter.

"Did you count 'em?" he asked his daughter.

"There must have been all of a dozen. I could not make out the number exactly," Rhoda said.

"Well," her father grumbled, shaking his shaggy head, "we've got our hands full just now, that's sure. But we don't need to worry about stranglers while there's so many of us down here. And there are plenty of the boys up at the house and with the cows. Reckon it's all right."

"Do you suppose," whispered Nan, "that those Mexicans have come over here for some bad purpose, Rhoda?"

"Maybe they are bandits, like that Lobarto you told us about," said Grace.

"Maybe they will bury treasure somewhere around here," Bess put in eagerly. "And I say, Rhoda: When are we going to get up that party to hunt for Lobarto's treasure?"

"Not until after this round-up, that's sure," laughed the girl of Rose Ranch.

The young people went down to the corrals and branding pens and were told, in the course of time, by Hesitation Kane that the corrals would accommodate a thousand horses at once. It was believed that three days would be occupied in handling the great mob of stock that had been driven down from the hills.

Strange cowboys began to drift into the camp; but all seemed well behaved, and they were the easiest men in the world to get along with. They all put themselves out to give the visitors any information in their power.

"We're going to have a bully time here," Bess declared to Nan. "I do not really want to go to bed to-night. I'd rather hang about the campfires and listen to the boys who are off watch tell stories."

But Rhoda would not agree to this, and the four girls retired at a reasonable hour. Walter slept under one of the cook wagons, rolled up in a blanket like the cowboys themselves. Everything seemed peaceful when they went to bed, and there surely was no sign of one of the tornadoes Mr. Hammond had talked about. The girls, at least, slept just as soundly in their tent as they had in the beds at the ranch house.

The camp was aroused betimes the next morning. Breakfast was eaten by starlight. Immediately the first gang of horses, cut out of the main herd, was driven down.

Walter and the girls were in the saddle as early as anybody. Of course, none of the visitors could swing a rope; but Rhoda showed them how to ride on the flank of the herd and keep the young and wild horses from running free. They had all to be driven into the wide entrance to the corral.

It was inside this barrier that the cowboys rode among the frightened herd and roped those that were to be branded. Even Rhoda did a little of this before the day was over, and her friends thought it was quite wonderful that she showed no fear of the plunging and squealing horses.

But they were much interested, even if the smell of scorching flesh was not pleasant. Walter declared he was going to learn to throw a lariat. But his sister shook her head and shut her eyes tight every time she saw a glowing iron taken from one of the fires.

"Never mind," Nan said. "It is enormously interesting, and we shall likely never see the like again. Just think of growing up like Rhoda, among scenes of this kind. No wonder she seemed different from the rest of us girls when she came to Lakeview Hall."



CHAPTER XVIII

THE OUTLAW

The first day of the round-up was done, and well done, Mr. Hammond said. The girls had been in the saddle for more than twelve hours; and how they did sleep this second night under canvas!

Bess wanted to say something about plans for hunting the Mexican bandit's treasure before she fell asleep; but actually she dropped into slumber in the middle of the word "treas-ure" and never finished what she was going to say.

Nan, however, awoke long before dawn again. She felt lame and stiff, like an old person afflicted with rheumatism. The unusualness of the previous day's activities caused this stiffness of the joints and soreness of her muscles.

She heard the fires crackling and saw the reflection of firelight on the side of the tent, so she knew the cooks were astir. But nobody else seemed to be moving yet, and Nan might have turned over for another nap had it not been for a peculiar sound which suddenly smote upon her ear, and seemingly from a long way off.

After hearing this for a minute or two, she got up and crept to the tent entrance. The flap was laid back for the sake of ventilation, and with her kimono hunched about her shoulders, she crouched in the doorway and looked out across the open space before the grove in which the camp was pitched. It was just between dark and dawn when strange figures seem to move in the dimness of out-of-doors. Yet Nan knew there really was nothing stirring there on the plain. The herd was much farther away.

The sound that had disturbed her came to her ears again, a high, thin, crackling whistle—a most uncanny noise.

"What can it be?" murmured Nan aloud.

"Nan!" whispered a voice beyond her.

"Goodness! Is that you, Walter Mason?" she demanded, huddling her robe closer about her.

"Yes. Come on out. Do you hear that funny noise?"

"Yes. What is it? I can't come out. I'm not dressed."

"Well, get dressed," he said, chuckling. "I want to know what that—There! Hear it again?"

The high whistling sound rose once more. It seemed to be coming nearer, and was from the north, the direction of the hills.

"Isn't it funny?" gasped Nan. "Shall I ask Rhoda?"

"Come on out and we'll ask one of the men if he knows what it is. That horse wrangler is up. I just saw him going toward the pony corral."

"Hesitation Kane? Well, we'll never learn if we ask him," giggled Nan. "Wait, Walter. I'll come right out."

She went softly back to her cot and sat down on it to draw on her stockings. She dressed as quickly and as quietly as possible. Even Rhoda did not awake, and, knowing that all her girl friends were probably just as tired and stiff as she was, Nan got out of the tent without disturbing them in the slightest.

"Oh, Walter!" she murmured, seizing his hand in the dusk, "how strange everything seems. Such a wilderness! And I haven't washed my face."

"Come on down to the brook," said her boy friend. "They call it a river here. They ought to see the Drainage Canal!" and he laughed. "What do you suppose they would say to the Mississippi River?"

"Just what Rhoda said she thought of it when she first saw that noble stream: That it was an awful waste of land to put so much water on it! You know there are sections of this country down here where it rains only once in about eight years."

They reached the river's edge. It was light enough here to see what they were about. Both knelt down and laved their faces and hands and, as Nan said, "wiggled the winkers out of their eyes."

Walter produced a clean towel, for Nan had forgotten hers, and one on one end and one on the other, they dried their faces and hands. Nan's hair was in two firm plaits, and she would not dress it anew until later.

"I don't want to wake up the tribe. They are sleeping so soundly," she explained.

"There's that funny call again!" exclaimed Walter, stopping in a vigorous scrubbing of his face with the towel to listen.

"Come on!" cried Nan under her breath. "We must find out what that means."

They started for the campfire where the cooks were at work, and ran, clinging to each other's hand. Before they reached the cleared space about the Rose Ranch chuck wagon, a figure loomed up before them.

"Here's Mr. Kane now!" cried Nan, halting before the grim-visaged horseman. "Good-morning, Mr. Kane!"

The man's lips twisted into a smile, and he nodded. But no word came from him. Nan was not to be put off easily. She asked:

"Do you know what that sound is, Mr. Kane? Do listen to it!" as the high-pitched whistle again reached their ears.

Hesitation Kane struggled to answer—and it was a struggle. They could see that. He flushed, and paled, and finally blurted out a single word:

"Outlaw!"

With that he strode by and was lost in the shadows of the trees. Nan and Walter gazed at each other in both amazement and amusement.

"What do you know about that?" demanded the boy.

"Well, we got him to say something," sighed the girl.

"But—but it doesn't mean anything. 'Outlaw,' indeed! Does he mean to tell us that there is a Mexican bandit, for instance, out there whistling?"

"How foolish!" laughed Nan. "Of course not."

"Then, Miss Sherwood, please explain," commanded Walter.

"You'd better ask Mr. Hesitation Kane to explain."

"And get another cryptic answer? No, thanks! I want to know—There it is again!"

The sound was closer. Nan suddenly laughed.

"Why," she cried, "I know what it is. It's a horse—a wild horse. Of course!"

"But he said 'outlaw.' Oh!" added Walter suddenly, "I know now. Some of the wild stallions never can be tamed. I've read about them. Of course, it is a stallion. We heard them calling day-before-yesterday.

"Well, I never!" chuckled Walter. "That fellow had me fooled. I didn't know but we were about to be attacked by Mexican robbers."

"Oh, Walter! do you suppose they were desperadoes who came through the Gap day-before-yesterday morning?" Nan asked.

"I don't know. Maybe Rhoda and her father were fooling."

"But they take it so coolly."

"They take everything coolly," said the boy, with admiration. "I never saw such people! Why, these cowboys do the greatest stunts on horseback, and make no bones of it. No circus or Wild West show was ever the equal of it.

"Hullo, here's Rhoda now!"

The Rose Ranch girl appeared, smiling and wide awake. She did not appear to be lame from the previous day's riding.

"Hear that renegade calling out there?" she asked. "He's followed the herd down from the hills. Come on and let's catch our ponies. We'll take a ride out that way before breakfast. If it is the horse I think it is, you'll see something worth while."

They hurried down to the corral where the riding ponies were. With her rope Rhoda noosed first her own, then Nan's, and then Walter's mounts. The saddles hung along the fence, and they cinched them on tight to the round barrels of the ponies, and then mounted.

The horses were fresh again, and started off spiritedly. The sun was coming up now, and again the wonder of sunrise on the plains impressed the girl from Tillbury.

"It is just wonderful, Rhoda," she told her friend. "I shall never cease to marvel at it."

"It is worth getting up in the morning to see," agreed Rhoda, smiling. "There! See yonder?"

The level rays of the sun touched up the edge of the plain toward which they were headed. Here the broken rocks of the foothills joined the lush grass of the valley. On a boulder, outlined clearly against the background of the hill, stood a beautiful creature which, in the early light, seemed taller and far more noble looking than any ordinary horse.

"Oh!" gasped Nan, "is that the outlaw?"

The distant horse stretched his neck gracefully and blew another shrill call. He was headed toward the herd which was now being urged into the valley by the punchers. The horse whistled again and again.

"What a beautiful creature!" murmured Nan. "Oh, Rhoda! can't we catch him?"

"That's the fellow," said the Western girl. "They have been trying to rope him for three seasons. But nobody has ever been able to get near enough to him yet. He is not a native horse, either."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Walter curiously.

"You know, horses ran wild in this country when the Spanish first came in. These were of the mustang breed. The Indian pony—the cayuse—was found up in Utah and Idaho. Horse-breeders down here have bought Morgan sires and other blooded stock to run with the mustangs.

"That fellow yonder was bought by Mr. Duranger, an Englishman, who owned the Long Bow. The horse got away five years ago and ran off with the wild herd, and now he is the wildest of the bunch. And swift!"

"What a beauty!" exclaimed Walter.

The sunlight shone full on the handsome horse. He was black, save for his chest, forefeet, and a star on his forehead. Those spots gleamed as white as silver. His tail swept the ground. His coat shone as though it had just been curried. He stamped his hoofs upon the rock and called again to the herd that he had trailed down from the fastnesses of the hills.

"If we could only catch him!" murmured Nan.

Rhoda laughed. "You want to catch that outlaw; and Bess wants to find the Mexican treasure. I reckon you'll both have your work cut out for you."



CHAPTER XIX

A RAID

The branding of the horses had drawn from ranches all about every man that could be spared. There were upward of a hundred men, including the camp workers and cooks, in the Rolling Spring Valley for those three days.

And how they did work! From early morning until dark the fires in the branding pens flamed. Roped horses and colts were being dragged in different directions all the time. Those already branded, and selected for training on the several ranches, were driven away in small bunches.

The whistling outlaw went away after a day. None of the boys had time to try to ride him down, although there was scarcely a man of the lot who did not covet the beautiful creature.

Rhoda and her friends did about as they pleased while the branding was going on; only they did not ride out of the valley. Nan began to suspect that the reason Rhoda would not lead them far from the riverside encampment could be traced to the appearance of the Mexican riders whom they had glimpsed coming over the old Spanish Trail in the Blue Buttes. Nothing more had been heard of those strangers; but Nan knew Mr. Hammond had warned his men all to keep a sharp lookout for them.

It was when everything was cleared up and the outfits were getting under way for their respective ranches, the last colt having been branded, that a cowboy riding from the south, and therefore from the direction of the Long Bow range, came tearing across the valley toward the encampment by the cottonwood trees.

"Something on that feller's mind besides his hair, I shouldn't wonder," observed Mr. Hammond, drawlingly, as he sat his horse beside the group of girls ready then to turn ranchward. "Hi! Bill Shaddock," he shouted to the Long Bow boss, "ain't that one of your punchers comin' yonder?"

"Yes, it is, Mr. Hammond," said Bill.

"Something's happened, I reckon," observed Mr. Hammond, and he rode down to the river's edge with the others to meet the excited courier.

The river was broad, but shallow. The lathered pony the cowpuncher rode splattered through the stream and staggered on to the low bank on their side. Bill Shaddock, who was a rather grimly speaking man, advised:

"Better get off an' shoot that little brown horse now, Tom. You've nigh about run him to death."

"He ain't dead yet—not by a long shot," pronounced the courier. "Give me a fresh mount, and all you fellows that can ride hike out behind me. You're wanted."

"What for?" asked Mr. Hammond.

"That last bunch of stock you started for our ranch, Bill," said the man, in explanation, "has been run off. Mex. thieves. That's what! Old Man's makin' up a posse now. Says to bring all the riders you can spare. There's more'n a dozen of the yaller thieves."

Further questioning elicited the information that, a day's march from the headquarters of the Long Bow outfit, just at evening, a troop of Mexican horsemen had swooped down upon the band of half-wild horses and their drivers, shot at the latter, and had driven off the stock. Two of the men had been seriously wounded.

"Oh! isn't that awful?" Grace Mason said. "Is it far from here?"

"Is what far from here?" demanded Rhoda.

"Where this battle took place," replied the startled girl. "Let us go back to the house—do!"

But the others were eager to go with the band of cowboys that were at once got together to follow the raiders. Mr. Hammond, however, would not hear to this proposal. He would not even let Walter go with the party.

"You young folks start along for the house," he advised. "Can't run the risk of letting you get all shot up by a party of rustlers. What would your folks ever say to me?" and he rode away laughing at the head of the cavalcade chosen to follow the Mexican horse thieves.

"No hope for us," said Walter, rather piqued by Mr. Hammond's refusal. "I would like to see what they do when they overtake that bunch of Mexicans."

"If they overtake them, you mean," said Bess. "Why, the thieves have nearly twenty hours' start."

"But they cannot travel anywhere near as fast as father and those others will," explained Rhoda. "Dear me! it does seem as though the Long Bow boys ought to have looked out for their own horses. I don't like to have daddy ride off on such errands. Sometimes there are accidents."

"I should think there would be!" exclaimed Nan Sherwood. "Why! two men already have been wounded."

"Just like the moving pictures!" said Bess eagerly. "A five-reel thriller."

"You wouldn't talk like that if Mr. Hammond should be hurt," said Grace admonishingly.

"Of course he won't be!" returned Bess. "What nonsense!"

But perhaps Rhoda did not feel so much assurance. At least she warned them all to say nothing about the raid by the Mexicans when they arrived at Rose Ranch.

"Mother will probably not ask where daddy has gone; and what she doesn't know will not alarm her," Rhoda explained.

All the bands of horses for the home corrals had been driven away before the lumbering chuck wagons started from the encampment. Rhoda and her friends soon were out of sight of the slower-moving mule teams.

They did not ride straight for Rose Ranch; but, having come out of the valley, they skirted the hills on the lookout for game. Rhoda and Walter both carried rifles now, and Nan was eager to get a shot at something besides a tin can.

The herd of horses had gone down into the valley, of course; therefore more timid creatures ventured out of the hills on to the plain. It was not an hour after high-noon when Rhoda descried through her glasses a group of grazing animals some distance ahead.

"Goodness! what are they?" demanded Bess, when her attention had been called to them. "Chickens?"

"The idea!"

"They don't look any bigger than chickens," said Bess, with confidence.

"Well," drawled Rhoda, handing her glass to the doubting one, "they've got four legs, and they haven't got feathers. So I don't see how you can make poultry out of them."

"Oh, the cunning little things!" cried Bess, having the glasses focused in a moment on the spot indicated. "They—they are deer!"

"Antelope. Only a small herd," said Rhoda. "Now, if we can only get near enough to them for a shot—"

"Oh, my! have we got to shoot them, Rhoda?" asked Grace. "Are they dangerous—like that puma?"

"Well, no," admitted the Western girl. "But they are good to eat. And you will be glad enough to eat roast antelope after it has hung for a couple of days. Ah Foon will prepare it deliciously."

"Come on, Nan," said Bess, "and take a squint through the glasses. But don't let Grace look. She will want to capture them all and keep them for pets."

But Nan was looking in another direction. Along the western horizon a dull, slate-colored cloud was slowly rising. Nan wondered if it was dust, and if it was caused by the hoofs of cattle or horses. It was a curious looking cloud.



CHAPTER XX

THE ANTELOPE HUNT; AND MORE

The little party approached with caution the spot where the antelopes were feeding. Rhoda was no amateur; and she advised her friends to ride quietly, to make no quick motions, and as far as possible to ride along the edge of the rising ground.

Of course, the wind was blowing from the antelopes; otherwise the party would never have got near them at all. The creatures were feeding so far out on the plain that it would, too, be unwise to try to creep up on them behind the rocks and bushes among which the cavalcade now rode.

"When we get somewhat nearer, we shall have to ride right out into plain sight and run them down," Rhoda said. "That is our best chance."

"The poor little things!" murmured Grace. "They won't have a chance with our ponies."

"Oh, won't they?" laughed Rhoda softly. "I guess you don't know that the antelope is almost the fastest thing that ever crossed these plains. Even the iron horse is no match for the antelope."

"Do you mean to say they can outrun a steam engine?" asked Bess in wonder.

"Surely."

"Then what chance have we to run them down?" demanded Nan.

"Well, there are two ways by which we may get near enough for a shot," Rhoda explained. "I have been out with the boys hunting antelope, and they certainly are the most curious creatures."

"Who are? The cowboys?" asked Bess.

"Yes. Sometimes," laughed Rhoda. "But in this case I mean that the antelopes are curious. I've seen Steve get into a clump of brush and stand on his head, waving his legs in the air. A bunch of antelopes would come right up around the waving legs, and as long as the wind blew toward him instead of toward the antelopes, they would not run. So all he had to do when he got them close enough was to turn end for end, pick up his gun, and shoot one."

"I don't suppose you girls would care to try that," Walter said, his eyes twinkling. "But I might do it."

"Only trouble is," said Rhoda, after the laugh at Walter's suggestion, "I don't see any brush clumps out there. Do you?"

"No-o," said Nan. "The plain is as bare as your palm."

"Exactly," Rhoda agreed. "So we must try running them down."

"But you say they are very speedy," objected

"Oh, yes. But there are ways of running them," said Rhoda. "We will ride on a little further and then let our ponies breathe. I'll show you how you must ride."

Nan was looking back again at the cloud on the horizon. "Isn't that a funny looking thing?" she said to Bess.

"What thing?" asked her chum, staring back also.

"It is a cloud of dust—perhaps?"

"Who ever saw the like!" exclaimed Bess. "Say, Rhoda!"

The Western girl looked around and made a quick gesture for silence. So neither of the Tillbury girls gave the cloud another thought.

They came at length to a piece of high brush which, with a pile of rocks, hid them completely from the herd of peacefully grazing animals. Peering through the barrier, the girls could see the beautiful creatures plainly.

"So pretty!" breathed Grace. "It seems a shame—"

"Now, don't be nonsensical," said Bess practically. "Just think how pretty a chicken is; and yet you do love chicken, Grade."

"Softly," warned Rhoda. "We do not know how far our voices may carry."

Then she gave the party the simple instructions necessary, and they pulled the ponies out from behind the brush and rocks.

"At a gallop!" commanded Rhoda, and at once the party made off across the plain.

Rhoda rode to the west of the little herd of antelopes; Walter and the other girls rode as hard as they could a little to the east of them. Almost at once the antelopes were startled. They stopped grazing, sprang to attention, and for a minute huddled together, seemingly uncertain of their next move.

The four riders encircling them to the north and east naturally disturbed the tranquillity of the deer more than that single figure easily cantering in a westerly direction. Swerving from the larger party, the wild creatures darted away.

And how they could run! The ponies would evidently be no match for them on a straight course. But as the larger number of pursuers pressed eastward, the antelopes began circling, and their course brought them in time much nearer to Rhoda. It was an old trick—making the frightened but fleet animals run in a half-circle. Rhoda was cutting across to get within rifle shot.

The breeze soon carried the scent of the pursuing party to the nostrils of the antelopes, too; but they did not notice Rhoda. She brought up her rifle, shook her pony's reins, and in half a minute stood up in her short stirrups and drew bead on the white spot behind the fore shoulder of one of the running antelopes.

The distance was almost the limit for that caliber of rifle; but the antelope turned a somersault and lay still, while its mates turned off at a tangent and tore away across the plain.

It was several minutes before Walter and the other girls rode up. Rhoda had not dismounted. She was not looking at the dead antelope. Instead, she had unslung her glasses again and was staring through them westward—toward the slate-colored cloud that was climbing steadily toward the zenith.