When the ponies were halted and the sound of their hoofs was stilled, the young people could hear a moaning noise that seemed to be approaching from the direction toward which they were facing at that moment—the west.

"Oh!" cried Nan, "what is that?"

"Have you seen it before?" demanded Rhoda, shutting the glasses and putting them in the case.

"Yes."

"I wish I had," Rhoda said. "Hurry up, Walter, and sling that antelope across your saddle. Look out that the pony doesn't get away from you. Maybe he won't like the smell of blood. Quick!"

"What is the matter?" cried Bess, while Grace began to flush and then pale, as she always did when she was startled.

"It is a storm coming," answered Rhoda shortly.

"But, Rhoda," said Bess, "the wind is blowing the wrong way to bring that cloud toward us."

"You will find that the wind will change in a minute. And it's going to blow some, too."

"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed Nan, under her breath, "is it what your father warned us about?"

"A tornado?" cried Walter, from the ground where he was picking up the dead antelope.

"I never saw a cloud like that that did not bring a big wind," Rhoda told them. "We've got to hurry."

"Can we reach home?" asked Bess.

"Not ahead of that. But we'll find some safe place."

"What's that coming?" cried Nan, standing up in her stirrups to look toward the rolling cloud.

"The wagons," said Rhoda. "See! The boys have got the mules on the gallop. Their only chance is to reach the ranch."

"But can't we reach the house?" demanded Grace, trembling.

"I won't risk it—There! See that?"

The slate-colored cloud seemed to shut out everything behind the flying wagons like a curtain. The breeze about the little cavalcade had died away. But Rhoda's cry called attention to something that sprang up from the site of the mule-drawn chuck wagons, and flew high in the air.

"A balloon!" gasped Bess.

"A balloon your granny!" exclaimed Walter, tying the legs of the antelope to his saddle pommel. "Go ahead, girls. I'll be right after you."

"It was a wagon-top," explained Rhoda, twitching her already nervous pony around. "They did not get it tied down soon enough."

"Then a big wind is coming!" Nan agreed.

"Come on!" shouted Rhoda, setting spurs to her mount.

"Oh, Walter!" shrieked Grace, her own pony following the others, while Walter and his mount remained behind.

But the boy leaped into the saddle. He waved his hand to his sister. They saw his mouth open and knew he shouted a cheery word. But they could not hear a sound for the roaring of the tornado.

In a second, it seemed, the tempest burst about them. Rhoda had headed her pony for the hills. The mounts of the other girls were close beside Rhoda's pony. But Walter was instantly blotted out of sight.

Whether he followed their trail or not the four girls could not be sure.



CHAPTER XXI

IN THE OLD BEAR DEN

"Girls! Oh, girls!" shrieked Grace. "Walter is lost!"

She might have been foolish enough to try to draw in her pony; but Rhoda, riding close beside her, snatched the reins out of Grace's hand.

"More likely he thinks we are lost!" Rhoda exclaimed so that Grace, at least, heard her. Then she shouted to the others: "This way! This way!"

"Wha-at wa-ay?" demanded Bess Harley. "I—I'm going every-which-way, right now!"

But, in a very few minutes, it appeared that this sudden tempest was nothing to make fun over. The four girls, keeping close together, entered suddenly a gulch, the side of which broke the velocity of the wind. They stood there, the four ponies huddled together, in a whirl of dust and flying debris.

"Shout for him!" commanded Rhoda. "Don't cry, Grace. Walter is quite smart enough to look out for himself."

"Don't be a baby, dear," Nan said, leaning forward to pat Grace's arm. "He will be all right. And so shall we."

"But not standing here!" exclaimed Rhoda, after they had almost split their throats, as Bess declared, shrieking for the missing boy. "We must go farther up the gulch. I know a place—"

"There goes my hat!" wailed Bess.

"You'll probably never see it again," said Rhoda. "Come on! Maybe Walter will find us."

"But he doesn't know this country as you do, Rhoda," objected Nan.

"He'll know what to do just the same," Rhoda said practically.

"He will if he remembers what your father told us," said Bess.

"What's that?" demanded her chum.

"Mr. Ham-Hammond said to lie do-own and hang on to the grass-roots," stammered the almost breathless Bess. "And I guess we'd better do that, too."

"Come on. I'll get you out of the wind," said Rhoda, jerking her horse's head around.

The other animals followed. Whether the three Eastern girls were willing to be led away by Rhoda or not, their mounts would instinctively keep together.

Around them the wind still shrieked, coming in gusts now and then that utterly drowned the voices of the girls. Rhoda seemed to have great confidence, but her friends felt that their situation was quite desperate.

The deeper they went into the gulch, however, the more they became sheltered from the wind. This was merely a slash in the hillside; it was not a canyon. Rhoda told them there was no farther exit to the place; it was merely a pocket in the hill.

"It has been used more than once as a corral for horses," she explained. "But there's an old bears' den up here—"

"Oh, mercy!" screamed Grace. "A bear!"

"Hasn't been one seen about here since I was born," declared Rhoda quickly. "But that old den is just the place for us."

Within ten minutes they reached a huge boulder that had broken away from the west side of the gulch. Behind it was an opening among other rocks. Indeed, this whole rift in the hillside was a mass of broken rock. It was hard for the ponies to pick a path between the stones. And it had grown very dark, too.

The other girls would never have dared venture into the dark pocket behind that boulder had Rhoda not led them. She dismounted, and, seizing her pony's bridle, started around the huge rock and into the cavity.

"Must we take in the horses, too?" cried Bess. "I never!"

"I won't balk at a stable, if we can get out of this wind," Nan declared. "Go ahead, Gracie, dear. Don't cry. Walter will be all right."

"But do you think we shall be all right?" asked Bess of her chum, when Grace had started in behind Rhoda.

"I guess we'll have to take Rhoda's word for it," admitted Nan. "This is no place to stop and argue the question, my dear."

She made Bess go before, and she brought up the rear of the procession. It was as dark as pitch in that cavern. The entrance was just about wide enough for the horses to get through, and not much higher than a stable door.

"Here we are!" shouted the Western girl, and by the echoing of her voice Nan knew that Rhoda must be in a much larger cavern than this passage.

The others pressed on. The ponies' hoofs rang upon solid rock. The roaring of the tornado changed to a lower key as they went on. From somewhere light enough entered for Nan to begin to distinguish objects in the cave.

The horses stamped and whinnied to each other. Nan's pinto snuggled his nose into her palm. The animal's satisfaction in having got into this refuge encouraged the girl.

"Well, I guess we're all right in here," she said aloud. "The ponies seem to like it."

"Cheerful Grigg!" scoffed Bess. "My! I never thought I'd live to see the time that I should be glad to take refuge in a bears' den."

"O-o-oh, don't!" begged Grace.

"Don't be a goosie," said Bess. "The bear won't hear us. He must be dead a long time now, if he hasn't been heard of since Rhoda was born."

"Well, you know, bears hibernate," ventured Grace Mason. "They go to sleep and don't wake up, sometimes, for ever and ever so long."

"Not for fifteen years," laughed Rhoda.

Just then, to their surprise, not to say their fright, there came to their ears a most startling sound out of the darkness of the cave!

It was a more uncanny noise than any of the young people had ever in their lives heard before. Rising higher, and higher, shriller and yet more shrill, the sound seemed to shudder through the cavern as though caused by some supernatural source. There was nothing human in a single note of it!

"Oh!" whispered the shaking Grace, "is that a bear?"

"Never in this world!" exclaimed Nan.

"I don't know what it is," asserted Bess. "But if it is a bear, or not, I hope it doesn't do it again."

"Rhoda, what do you think?" demanded Nan, in an awed undertone.

"Hush!" returned the Western girl. "Listen."

"I don't want to listen—not to that thing," declared Bess, with conviction. "It's worse than a banshee. Worse than the black ghost at the Lakeview Hall boathouse."

Once more the noise reached them; and if at first it had startled the four girls, it now did more. For the ponies whose bridles they held, showed disturbance. Grace's mount lifted his head and answered the strange cry with a whinny that startled the echoes of the cavern like bats about their ears.

"Oh, don't, Do Fuss!" commanded Grace. "Don't be such a bad little horse. You make it worse."

"He surely would not have neighed if that was a bear shouting at us," declared Bess.

"Bear, nonsense!" scoffed Rhoda.

"Well, put a better name to it," challenged Bess.

For a third time the eerie cry rang out. The noise completely silenced Rhoda for the moment. Nan said, with more apparent confidence than she really felt:

"One thing, it doesn't seem to come nearer. But it gives me the shakes."

"It can't be that terrible wind blowing into the cavern by some hole, can it?" queried Bess.

"You are more inventive than practical, Bess," said her chum. "That is not the wind, I guarantee."

"But what is it, then?"

"I wish I could tell you, girls. But I really cannot guess," admitted the girl of Rose Ranch, at last.

"You never heard it before?" queried Grace.

"I certainly never did!"

"Say! I ho-ope I'll never hear it again," declared Bess.

But her hope did not come true. Almost immediately the prolonged subterranean murmur echoed and reechoed through the cavern, dying away at last in a choking sound that frightened the quartette of girls deplorably.

Grace began to sob. Nan and Bess were really frightened dumb for the time. Rhoda Hammond felt that she should keep up their courage.

"Don't, Gracie. Don't get all worked up. There must be some sensible explanation of the sound. It is nothing that is going to hurt us—"

"How do you know?" demanded Grace.

"Because, if it was any animal that might attack us, it surely would have come nearer. And it hasn't. Besides, if it were a dangerous beast, the ponies would have shown signs of uneasiness long since."

In fact, this was a very sensible statement, and Nan Sherwood, for one, quite appreciated the fact.

"Of course you are right, Rhoda. We are in no danger."

"You don't know that," grumbled Bess.

"Yes, I do. Unless the sound is made by some human being. And that seems impossible. There is no wild man about, of course, Rhoda?"

"Not that I ever heard of," said the girl of Rose Ranch. "Nobody wilder than our cowboys," and she tried to laugh.

"Well, then, we must not pay any attention to the noise," said Nan, the practical.

"Come on, now," said Rhoda, starting to one side with the pony she led. "Bring them all over here and I will hobble them. Then we can find some place to sit down and wait for the storm to pass. It will rain terribly after the wind. It always does."

"That is all right, Rhoda. I had forgotten about the tornado," said Bess. "What I want to know is: Have you got your rifle safe?"

"Of course. And it is loaded."

"Then I feel better," Bess declared. "For if that dreadful thing—whatever it is—comes near us, you can shoot it."

"I can see plainly," laughed Nan, "that you do not believe the noise is supernatural, Bess."

"Humph! maybe you could shoot a ghost. Who knows?"



CHAPTER XXII

AFTER THE TEMPEST

The party had not got away from the scene of the round-up so very early in the morning; and the detour to reach the herd of antelopes had taken considerable time. It was therefore well past noon when the tornado had sent the four schoolgirls scurrying for the old bears' den.

But by that time it was almost pitch dark outside as well as inside the cavern. The tornado had quenched the sunlight and made it seem more like midnight than mid-afternoon.

The situation of the girls in the cavity in the west side of the gulch might not have been so awe-inspiring had it not been for the mysterious noise that had echoed and reechoed through the hollow rock.

Rhoda hobbled the horses in the dark at one side of the cave, and did it just as skillfully as though she could see. It seemed to the other girls as though fooling around the ponies' heels was a dangerous piece of work; but the ranch girl laughed at them when they mentioned it.

"These ponies don't kick, except each other when they are playing. I wouldn't hobble them at all, only I don't know where they might stray in the dark. There may be holes in here—we don't know. I don't want any of you to separate from the others while we are in here."

"Don't you be afraid of that, Rhoda," said Grace Mason earnestly. "I am clinging to Nan Sherwood's hand, and I wouldn't let go for a farm!"

"As it happens, Gracie," said Bess Harley's voice, "you chance to be hanging to my hand. But it is all right. I am just as good a hanger as you are. I don't love the dark, either."

Nan herself felt that she would not be fearful in this place if it had not been for the queer sound from the depths of the cave. Whatever it was, when it was repeated, and the horses stamped and whinnied as though in answer, Nan felt a fear of the unknown that she could scarcely control.

"What do you think it is, Rhoda?" she whispered in the ranch girl's ear. "It is so mournful and uncanny!"

"It's got me guessing," admitted the ranch girl. "I never heard that there was anything up here in the hills to be afraid of. And I don't believe it is anything that threatens us now. But I admit it gives me the creeps every time I hear it."

On the other hand the roaring of the tornado was heard for more than an hour after they entered the cave. They had come so far from the mouth of the old bears' den that the sound of the elements was muffled.

But by and by they knew that sound was changed. Instead of the roaring of the wind, torrents of rain dashed upon the rocks outside the cave. The girls ventured through the tunnel again, for Rhoda assured them that very heavy rain usually followed the big wind.

"Daddy says the wind goes before to blow a man's roof off, so that the rain that comes after can soak him through and through. Oh, girls!" exclaimed their hostess, who was ahead, "it certainly is raining."

"I—should—say!" gasped Bess.

The moisture blew into the cavern's mouth; but that was not much. What startled them was that they were slopping about in several inches of water, and this water seemed to be rising.

"There's been a cloudburst back in the hills," declared Rhoda. "This gulch runs a stream."

"Oh, poor Walter!" cried Grace, sobbing again. "He'll be drowned."

"Of course not, goosie!" said Bess. "He's on horseback."

"But if this gulley is full of water—"

"It isn't full," said Nan. "If it were running that deep, we'd be drowned in here ourselves."

"We are pretty well bottled up," admitted Rhoda, coming back from the entrance, out of which she had tried to peer. She was wet, too. "The water is a roaring torrent in the bottom of the gully. You can see it has risen to the mouth of this cave, and is still rising.

"But we need not worry about that. The floor of the cavern inside is even higher than where we stand. It would take an awfully hard and an awfully long rain to fill this cavern. And I don't imagine this will be a second deluge."

Her light laugh cheered them. But it was an experience that none of them was likely to forget. Rhoda's courage was augmented by the actions of the ponies. Those intelligent brutes showed no signs of fear—not even when the mysterious sound was repeated; therefore the ranch girl was quite sure no harm menaced them.

Time and again the girls ventured through the tunnel. The water did not rise much higher; but it did not decrease. Nightfall must be approaching. Bess and Grace both wore wrist watches; but they had no matches and it was too dark to see the faces of the timepieces.

The girls were growing very hungry; but that was no criterion, for they had eaten no lunch. Time is bound to drag by very slowly when people are thrust into such a position as this; it might not be near supper time after all.

"I do hope we shan't have to stay here over night. Can't we wade out through the gully, Rhoda?" Grace asked.

"As near as I could judge, the mouth of this cave was about ten feet higher than the bottom of the gulch," returned the ranch girl. "The water seems still to fill the gulch as high as the entrance. Can you wade through ten feet of water?"

"Oh!" murmured Grace.

"Wish I had a pair of Billy's stilts," said Bess. "It might be done."

"Do you suppose they will come hunting for us?" Nan asked.

"Who?" asked Rhoda practically. "Let me tell you, every boy on the place will be having his hands full right now. I don't think the main line of the tornado struck across toward the house. At least, I hope not. But I bet it has done damage enough.

"If it hit the herds of horses—those wild ones—good-by! They will all have to be rounded up again. And the cattle! Well, make up your minds the boys are going to have their hands full with the herds for a couple of days after this. They won't have time to come hunting for a crowd of scared girls."

"Oh!" said Grace again.

"And why should they?" laughed the ranch girl. "We are all intact—arms and legs and horses in good shape. I guess we will find our way home in time."

"But Walter?" asked Walter's sister.

"He may be home already. Anyway, I don't believe he drifted into this gulch behind us. He missed us somehow."

Just the same she kept going to the mouth of the tunnel to try to look out. And it was for more than merely to discover if the rain had ceased. Secretly she, too, was worried about Walter.

Gradually the rain ceased falling. Nor did the water rise any farther in the tunnel's mouth. But the heavens must still be overcast, for it continued as dark outside the cave as in.

Finally Nan had an idea that was put into immediate practice. She broke the crystal of Bess's watch and by feeling the hands carefully made out that the time was half past six.

"That's half past six at night, not in the morning, I suppose," said Bess lugubriously. "But, oh, my! I am as hungry as though it were day-after-to-morrow's breakfast time."

"Oh, we'll get out of here after a while," said Rhoda cheerfully. "We shall not have to kill and eat the horses—"

"Or each other," sighed Bess. "Isn't that nice!"

Again they ventured out to the mouth of the tunnel. The strange screaming back in the cave had begun again, and all four of the girls secretly wished to get as far away from the sound as possible. The water had fallen, and the rain had entirely ceased. There was only a puddle in a little hollow at the mouth of the cave. The roaring of the stream through the gorge was not so loud.

"It will all soon be over—What's that?"

Nan's cry was echoed by Grace: "Is it Walter? Walter!" she cried.

A figure loomed up from around the corner of the boulder that half masked the entrance to the old bears' den. But the figure made no answer to the challenge. Surely it could not be Grace's brother!

"Who's that?" demanded Nan again.

Meanwhile Rhoda had darted back into the cave. Dark as it was, she found her pony and drew the rifle from its case. With this weapon in her hand she came running to the entrance again, and advanced the muzzle of the rifle toward the figure that had remained silent and motionless before the frightened girls.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE LETTER FROM JUANITA

"You'd better speak up pronto!" exclaimed the girl from Rose Ranch in an unshaken tone. "I'm going to fire if you don't."

"Oh, Rhoda!" shrieked Bess.

"It isn't Walter!" exclaimed Grace.

"Speak! What do you want? Who are you?" demanded the courageous Rhoda.

"No shoot, Thenorita!" gasped a frightened voice from the looming figure. "I go!"

In a moment he was gone. He had disappeared around the corner of the boulder.

"For mercy's sake!" gasped Bess, "what does that mean?"

"Who was it?" asked Nan again.

"A Mexican. But he wasn't one of our boys," said Rhoda. "I never heard his voice before. Besides, if he had been from the ranch he would not have acted so queerly. I don't like it."

"Do you think he means us harm?" queried Nan.

"I don't know what he means; but I mean him harm if he comes fooling around us again," declared Rhoda. "I never heard of such actions. Why! nine times out of ten he would have been shot first and the matter of who he was decided afterward."

"Why, Rhoda! how awfully wicked that sounds. You surely would not shoot a man!" Bess Harley's tone showed her horror.

"I don't know what I would do if I had to. There was something wrong with that fellow. Let me tell you, people do not creep up on you in the dark as he did—not out here in the open country—unless they mean mischief. If a man approaches a campfire or a cabin, he hails. And that Mexican—"

She did not finish the sentence; but her earnestness served to take Grace's mind off the disappearance of Walter. She had something else to be frightened about!

Rhoda was not trying to frighten her friends, however. That would be both needless and wicked. But she remembered the fact that there were supposedly strangers in the neighborhood, and she did not know who this Mexican lurking about the mouth of the bears' den might be.

The girls went back into the cave and sat down again. Rhoda held the rifle across her lap, and they all listened for sounds from the entrance to the cave. But all they heard was the stamping of the horses and now and then the shrill and eerie cry from the depths of the cavern.

When they made another trip to the mouth of the tunnel, it seemed to be lighter outside, late in the evening as it was, and the torrent in the gulch had receded greatly.

"I believe we can get out now," said Rhoda. "You take the rifle, Grace. You are the best shot. And I will go after our ponies."

"Oh, no! I would be afraid," gasped the girl. "Give the gun to Nan."

So Nan took Rhoda's weapon while the ranch girl went to unhobble the ponies and lead her own to the cave's mouth. The other three followed docilely enough.

Nan did not expect to fire the rifle if the Mexican—or anybody else—should appear. But she thought she could frighten the intruder just as much as Rhoda had.

When the latter and the ponies arrived, Bess uttered a sigh of relief.

"I certainly am glad to get out of that old hole in the ground. It's haunted," she declared. "And I want to get away from this place and keep away from it as long as we are at Rose Ranch. This has been one experience!"

"And you wouldn't have missed it for a farm," Nan said to her. "I know how you'll talk when we get back to Lakeview Hall."

"Oh! won't I?" and Bess really could chuckle. "Won't Laura turn green with envy?"

They mounted their ponies after pulling up the cinches a little, and Rhoda again went ahead. The ponies splashed down into the running stream; but they were sure-footed and did not seem to be much frightened by the river that had so suddenly risen in the bottom of the gulch.

They were only a few minutes in wading out of the gully. When the party came out on the plain the ponies were still hock deep in water. The whole land seemed to have become saturated and overflowed by the cloudburst.

"When we do get a rain here it is usually what the boys call a humdinger," said Rhoda. "Now, let's hurry home."

Just as she spoke there sounded a shout behind them. The girls, startled, drew in their horses. The latter began to whinny, and Rhoda said, with satisfaction:

"I reckon that's Walter now. The ponies know that horse, anyway."

The splash of approaching hoofs was heard after the girls had shouted in unison. Then they recognized the voice of the missing boy:

"Hi! Grace! Nan! Are you there?"

"Oh, Walter!" shrieked his sister, starting her pony in his direction. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm mighty wet," declared Walter, riding up. "Are you all here?"

"Most of us. What hasn't been scared off us," said Bess. "And, of course, we are starved."

"Well, I hung on to the antelope. Want some, raw?" laughed the boy. "Cracky! what a storm this was."

"It was pretty bad," said Nan.

"What happened to you?" asked Rhoda.

"I missed you, somehow. I don't know how it was," said the boy.

"You must have tried to guide your pony," Rhoda said.

"Yes."

"That is where you were wrong. He would probably have found us if you had let him have his head."

"Well, I got under the shelter of a rock out of the wind," the boy said. "But when it began to rain—blooey!"

"Well, thank goodness," said Nan, "it is all over and nobody is hurt."

"But, oh, Walter!" cried his sister, "we got into a haunted cave, and Mexicans came to shoot us, and Rhoda threatened to shoot them, so they went away, and—"

"Whew! what's all this?" he demanded. "You are crazy, Sis."

"Not altogether," laughed Nan. "We did have some adventure, didn't we, girls?"

And when Walter heard the particulars he agreed that the experience must have been exciting. He rode along beside Nan in the rear of the others, as they cantered toward the ranch house, and he put a number of questions to her regarding the mysterious sound in the cavern.

"It must have been the wind," said Nan. "Though it didn't sound like it."

"What did it sound like?" asked her friend.

"I don't know that I can tell you, Walter. It seemed so strange—shrill, and sort of stifled. Why! it was as uncanny as the neigh of that big horse we saw calling to the herd the other morning."

"The outlaw?" asked Walter.

"Yes."

"Maybe it was another horse," he said doubtfully.

"How could that be? In that cave? Why didn't it come nearer, then? Oh, it couldn't have been another horse."

"I don't know," ruminated Walter. "You saw that Mexican, too. There may have been some connection between him and that sound."

"How could that be possible?" asked Nan, in wonder.

"Well, if he had a horse, say? And he had hidden it deeper in the cave? And had hitched it so it could not run away? How does that sound?"

"Awfully ingenious, Walter," admitted Nan, with a laugh. "But, somehow, it is not convincing."

"Oh, all right, my lady. Then we will accept Grace's statement that the cave is haunted," and he laughed likewise.

They arrived at the ranch house within the next two hours. They found everything about headquarters quite intact, for the tornado had swept past this spot without doing any damage. Mrs. Hammond met them in a manner that showed she had not become very anxious, and Rhoda had warned her friends to say little in her mother's hearing about their strange experience.

Nor was anything said to Mrs. Hammond regarding the raid by the Mexican horse thieves. She supposed her husband was absent from the house because of the tornado. That, of course, had scattered the cattle tremendously.

The girls themselves did not think much just then of the stolen horses and the posse that had started on the trail of the thieves. But another incident held their keen interest, and that connected with renegade Mexicans.

There was a letter waiting for Rhoda when she arrived—a letter addressed in a cramped and unfamiliar hand. But when she opened it she called her friends about her with:

"Do see here! What do you suppose this is? It's from that funny girl, Juanita O'Harra."

"From Juanita?" asked Nan. "More about the treasure?"

"Oh! The treasure!" added Bess, in delight. "I had almost forgotten about that."

"Listen!" exclaimed the ranch girl. "She writes better English than she speaks. I should not wonder if there were an English school down in Honoragas."

"Is she home again, then?" demanded Nan.

"So it seems. Listen, I say," and Rhoda began to read:

"'Miss R. HAMMOND,

"'ROSE RANCH.

"'Dear Miss:—

"'I have arrived to my mother at Honoragas, and I take this pen in hand to let you know that Juan Sivello, Lobarto's nephew, who has come from the South—he is one of those who lisp—'"

"What does she mean by that?" interrupted Bess, in curiosity.

"The Mexicans of the southern provinces—many of the—do not pronounce the letter 's' clearly. They lisp," explained Rhoda. "Now let me read her letter." Then she pursued:

"'—one of those who lisp—and it is said of him that he has of his uncle's hand a map, or the like, which shows where the treasure lies buried at Rose Ranch. This news comes to my mother's ears by round-about. We do not know for sure. But Juan Sivello is one bad man like his uncle, Lobarto. It is the truth I write with this pen. Juan has collected together, it is said round-about, some men who once rode the ranges with Lobarto, and they go up into your country. For what? It is too easy, Miss. It is—'"

"Oh! Oh!" giggled Bess. "What delicious slang!"

"I guess foreigners learn American slang before they learn the grammar," laughed Rhoda.

"What else, Rhoda?" cried Grace.

"It is to search out the treasure buried so long ago by Lobarto. If the map Juan has is true, he will find it. Then my mother will lose forever what Lobarto stole from our hacienda. Is it not possible that the Senor Hammond, thy father, should get soldiers of the Americano army, and round up those bad Mexicanos and Juan Sivello, take from him the map and find the treasure? My mother will pay much dinero for reward.

"'Believe me, Senorita R. Hammond, your much good friend,

"'JUANITA O'HARRA.'

"She doesn't sound at all as she talked that day she caught me in the woods, Nan," added Rhoda with a laugh.

"The poor girl!" commented Nan. "I wish we could find her mother's money."

"Say! I wish we could find all that treasure for ourselves," cried Bess. "No use giving it all to your Juanita."

"Do you suppose, girls," said Rhoda thoughtfully, "that those men we saw coming through the gap in the Blue Buttes were this Sivello and his gang?"

"Are they horse thieves?" cried Bess.

"Why not?"

"And how about that fellow you were going to shoot over at the bears' den?" asked Grace suddenly. "Why, Rhoda, that fellow lisped. He said 'Theniorita.' I heard him."

The other girls all acclaimed Grace Mason's good memory. Spurred by her words they all recalled now that the strange man who had so frightened them at the mouth of the bears' den had used in his speech "th" for "s."



CHAPTER XXIV

UNCERTAINTIES

The quartette of girl chums from Lakeview Hall and Walter Mason, to whom the girls at once revealed the contents of Juanita's letter, were greatly excited over the Mexican treasure and the seekers therefor.

Without doubt the Mexican girl at Honoragas had written the truth, as she knew it, to Rhoda. Lobarto, the bandit, had met his death five or six years before. It seemed quite probable that he should have sent word to his relatives in the South of the existence of his plunder and the place where he had been forced to cache it. When he was chased out of American territory, the treasure he had left behind would become a legacy for his relatives if they could find it and were as inclined to dishonesty as Lobarto himself.

This nephew of the old bandit chief, Juan Sivello, seemed eager to find the hidden treasure; and if he was really supplied with a diagram indicating the location of the cache, Juan would probably make a serious attempt to uncover it.

The question was, as Walter Mason very sensibly pointed out, having come up to Rose Ranch for this particular purpose, would the Mexicans endanger their plans by making a raid on the horses, and so be chased away without securing the buried riches of Lobarto?

"Doesn't seem reasonable, after all, to me," said Walter, "that the Mexicans your father and the cowboys set out in chase of are the same crowd that Juanita says started up here to find the treasure. There are two gangs of 'em."

"You may be right, Walter," said Rhoda.

"It sounds very reasonable," agreed Nan.

"You are a very smart boy, Walter," said Bess. "I don't see how you do it."

Walter gave the last saucy Miss a grin as he pursued the topic: "That fellow who scared you girls out of your seven wits at the bears' den did not belong to the gang of horse thieves. That's a cinch. They were a hundred miles to the southwest of that place, for sure, and heading back to Mexico."

"Reckon you are right, Walter," again agreed Rhoda.

"Why, if that Mexican we saw—the man who lisped—was looking for the buried treasure, perhaps it is right around that den. Maybe Lobarto hid it in that hole."

"I told you that cave was haunted!" Grace cried.

"They say when the old pirates buried their loot they used to leave a dead pirate to watch it," chuckled Bess.

"Believe me!" said Nan, with emphasis, "if that was a dead bandit we heard shrieking in that cave, he must still be suffering a great deal. But I scorn such superstitions. And I should like to go back there with torches or lanterns and look for the treasure-trove myself."

"Fine!" cried Bess. "I'll go."

"Not while that Mexican is around there," objected Grace.

"Why, he was much more afraid of Rhoda's gun than we were of him," Bess told her.

"I don't know how badly he was scared; but I know very well how much I was frightened. Nothing would lead me back there—not even a certainty of riches—unless we have a big crowd with us."

"I don't know that any harm is to be feared from that fellow," Rhoda said. "But until daddy returns and I talk with him, I won't agree to any search. We want to know what these fellows are after, it is true. But daddy will want a finger in the pie," and she smiled.

So they had to possess their souls with patience while they awaited the return of the ranchman. When Mr. Hammond came back on the following day he confessed that the Mexican thieves had got away and over the Border with the band of horses from the Long Bow outfit.

"That big wind comin' up, and the rain followin', spoiled the trail for us," the ranchman said. "Guess you believe now, children, what I told you about our tornadoes, eh?"

"Including the poor pigs' tails being twisted the wrong way—yes, sir," said Bess with gravity. "Oh, it's all true."

When Mr. Hammond heard of their adventures at the bears' den he became serious at once. But it was not the strange noise they heard that disturbed his serenity. It was regarding the unknown Mexican lurking about the gulch.

"Got to look him up. Maybe nobody but some harmless critter. Can't always tell. But there is one sure thing," added Mr. Hammond slowly. "We crossed the trail of that gang of horse thieves where they broke up into two parties. One party skirted the range, going north. We followed the others because they were driving the stolen critters.

"That's the upshot of it—the rats! If what this Mexican girl friend of yours, Rhoda, says is so, that Sivello and his party made a clean-up of the Long Bow horses, and the bulk of them started back for the Border. Maybe their leader and his personal friends came up this way, thinking to make another search for old Lobarto's plunder.

"I swanny! I wish they'd find the stuff and get away with it. Every once in a while a bunch of them comes up here and makes us trouble; and the excuse is always that old Mex. treasure. My idea, they always have their eyes on our cattle and horses. If they don't find the gold, they pick up a few strays, and it always pays 'em for makin' the trip up here."

"But can't you keep the Mexicans from coming here?" asked Walter.

"If they'd keep their thievin' hands off things, I wouldn't care if they hunted the treasure all the time," said Mr. Hammond. "They'll never find it."

"Oh, Daddy!" exclaimed Rhoda, "we were just thinking of hunting for it ourselves. Can't we? Don't you believe—"

"No law against your huntin' for it all you want to," said her father, laughing. "Go ahead. I didn't say you couldn't hunt for it; I only said I did not think it would be found. Lobarto hid it too well."

"But, Daddy! you don't encourage us," cried Rhoda. "And we are all so interested. We want really to find the money so that Juanita and her mother need not be poor."

"Well, well!" exclaimed the ranchman, "do you want me to go out and bury some money, so you can find it?"

"No. But we want some of the boys to go with us. I want to search that old bears' den, and the gulch there, and all about."

"Go to it, Honey-bird," he said, patting her shoulder. "You shall have Hess and any other two boys you want. That's enough to handle any little tad of Mexicans that may be hanging about up there. I'll speak to Hess. Want to go to-morrow?"

This plan was agreed to. Of course the girls and Walter did not want to rest after their exciting experiences at the round-up and afterward.

"All you young people want to do," Mr. Hammond declared, "is to keep moving!"

Walter made certain preparations for a search of the bears' den. One of the cowpunchers chosen to accompany the party was a good cook. Hesitation Kane took a pack horse with more of a camping outfit than would have been the case had there not been four girls in the party.

"I don't see," drawled Mr. Hammond, "how you girls manage to travel at all without a Saratoga trunk apiece. Got your curlin'-tongs, Rhoda? And be sure and take a lookin' glass and white gloves."

"Now, Daddy! you know you malign me," laughed his daughter. "And as for these other girls, they fuss less than any girls you ever saw from the East."

"I don't know. I'm kind of sorry for that pack horse," chuckled her father, who delighted to plague them.

They might have made the trip to the gulch where the girls had taken refuge from the tornado and returned the next day; but they proposed to trail around the foothills for several days. Indeed, even the cowboys in the party had become interested once more in the buried treasure.

"It strikes us about once in so often," said the cook, as they started away from the corrals, "and some of us git bit regular with this treasure-hunting bug. Long's we know the treasure is somewhere hid and there is a chance of finding it, we are bound to feel that way. Then we waste the boss's time and wear ourselves out hunting Lobarto's cache. Course, we won't never find it; but it is loads of fun."

"I declare!" cried Rhoda, tossing her head, "you are just as encouraging, Tom Collins, as daddy is. I never heard the like!"



CHAPTER XXV

THE STAMPEDE

The enthusiasm of the girls and Walter Mason did not falter, however, no matter how much the older people scoffed at the idea of the treasure hidden by the Mexican bandit being found near Rose Ranch. They went forth from the ranch house with some little expectation of returning with the plunder.

Hesitation Kane, of course, did not try to discourage them. Even a buried treasure could not excite the horse wrangler, in the least.

"I guess an Apache raid would not ruffle Hesitation's soul," Rhoda observed. "He is quite the calmest person I ever saw."

Since the tornado the cattle of the main herd of Rose Ranch had been broken into small bunches and were feeding in the higher pastures. The swales and rich arroyos, in which the grass had been so lush, had been badly drowned out by the flood. It would be several weeks before the lowlands offered good pasturage again.

The visitors learned that where they had camped at the time of the round-up, the river had risen and washed away every trace of the encampment. Indeed, Rolling Spring Valley had been under water for miles on either flank of the main stream. A bunch of young horses belonging to Rose Ranch, having been confined in a small corral, were drowned at that time.

"There went several thousand dollars," Rhoda explained, when she told her friends of the tragedy. "The losses as well as the gains in the ranching and stock raising business are large. If daddy sells a big herd of cattle, or a fine bunch of horses, he takes in many thousands of dollars, it is true.

"But it is hard to compute the profit or loss on the sale. So many things are likely to happen. Perhaps some disease hits the herd. Thousands of cattle may die in some epidemic. Once wolves came down in the winter, when I was little—I remember it clearly—and killed more than a hundred steers within a mile of the house."

"Oh, dear me, Rhoda! don't tell us about any more wild animals," wailed Grace. "I think the West would be a much nicer place if they had tamed all the wild creatures before man ever moved into it."

"You are not much of a sport, Sis," said her brother, laughing. "It must have been really great around here when the buffaloes and Indians ran wild. You can't remember that, Rhoda, can you?"

"I should hope not!" gasped Rhoda. "Do you think I am as old as Mrs. Cupp?"

"Oh! Oh!" cried Bess. "Poor Cupp!"

"I never saw a buffalo," confessed Rhoda. "And I never heard the war whoop. And an Indian in war paint and other togs would scare me just as much as it would Gracie. But daddy remembers them all. He shot buffaloes for the army, scouted for General Pope, chased a part of Geronimo's band into Mexico, and was a Texas Ranger when the Border Ruffians were really in existence. He can tell you all about those times; only mother doesn't let him."

"There! I suppose she doesn't like to hear about savages and other awful things," Grace said, with satisfaction.

"No-o; it isn't that," Rhoda returned with twinkling eyes. "But mother does not let him talk about those times because it makes daddy out so much older than she is!"

Tom Collins, the cook, was a talkative man, if Hesitation Kane was not. Tom reined his pony into the group of young people and began spinning yarns, some of which perhaps had but a thin warp of truth. He thought it was his privilege to "string along the tenderfoots" a little. One thing he told the girls and Walter, however, interested them immensely.

"You know, I came pretty near roping that black outlaw the day of the tornado. Criminy, if I'd got him!"

"Now, Tom, don't tell us that," commanded Rhoda. "You know there isn't a horse on the ranch that can come anywhere near him in speed."

"That's right," admitted Tom. "But I come on him sudden and unexpected."

"How did it happen?" asked Walter.

"Did you know the boss sent me home ahead of you folks from the rodeo? That's how come I didn't get to ride after those raiders with the other boys. I never do have no luck," said Tom. "If it rained soup I wouldn't have no spoon, and a hole in my hat.

"Well, it was this-a-way: I was riding right along yonder, making for the ranch house, and not thinking of nothing—not a thing! Crossing the mouth of one of them gulches—'twasn't far beyond the one where you gals took refuge from the big wind—all of a sudden my pony throwed up his head and nickered, and out of the slot in the hill come trottin' that big, handsome black critter!

"My soul and body!" exclaimed the cowboy earnestly, "if I'd had my rope handy I could have put the noose right over his head! It certainly did give me a shock."

"Humph!" said Rhoda, "it's always the biggest fishes, daddy says, that get away."

"I guess the Big Boss is right," agreed Tom Collins. "That black feller, he swung around on his hind laigs, and he skedaddled up that gulch. I knowed the place. It's just a pocket, and not very deep; but the sides couldn't be clumb by a goat, let alone a hawse.

"So I turns my pony into that hole and I got my rope ready, and says I to me: 'Tom Collins, you're going to either get an awful fall, or you'll be the proudest man on the old Rose Ranch!'"

"And what happened?" asked Walter.

"Well, I dunno. Either I'd been seeing things, or else that blame black outlaw is bad medicine. He seemed to e-vap-o-rate."

"Now, Tom!" admonished Rhoda.

"Honest to pickles, Miss Rhody! I wouldn't fool you 'bout a serious matter. And this is it."

"You mean you lost the horse?" asked Nan.

"In a blind pocket. Yes, ma'am! Criminy! I couldn't believe it myself. I says to me: 'Tom Collins! your cinches is slipped. That's what is the matter.'

"But you know, Miss Rhody," he added to the ranchman's daughter, "your pa don't allow nothing stronger than spring water on the ranch. I was as sober as a Greaser judge trying his brother-in-law for hawse stealin'. That's what!

"That old black capering Satan went flying up that gulch; and me, I pulled my little roan in after him and got my rope coiled. I says to me: 'You ain't astride nothin' but a little roan goat that only knows cows; but you got the chancet of your life, Tom Collins, to make a killin'. That's right!'

"That is a twisty gulch—I'll show it to you while we're up here prospectin'—and all I could hear was old Blackie's hoofs clattering, and once in a while he'd whistle. He's got a neigh like a steam whistle.

"Well," pursued the cowboy, "all of a sudden the noise stopped. I couldn't hear his hoofs nor his voice. And when I got around the next turn that give me a sight of the complete gulch, clear to the pocket, there wasn't no hawse at all. He'd just gone up in smoke, or something. That's what!"

"What became of the horse?" cried Bess Harley.

"There's some joke in it," Rhoda said doubtfully.

"Honest to pickles!" said the cowpuncher earnestly, "I was scared blue myself. I ain't no more superstitious than the next feller. But that certainly got me.

"I rid back to the mouth of the gulch, lookin' all the way, and never seen a hoof print to show me where he'd lighted out for. He couldn't climb the sides of the gulch. And he didn't hide out on me and let me go back and then dodge out o' the gulch.

"No, sir! There he was one minute, then the next he wasn't there at all. I got back to the mouth of the gulch, and there I seen that old tornado a-comin'. You folks had passed me and 'scaped my attention.

"Me and the roan just squatted down under a bank till the wind was over; then we made tracks for the ranch house ahead of the rain. Get soaked? Well, I should say! But somehow I didn't care to stay around where that blame black Satan disappeared hisself so strange-like. No, sir."

"Tom, I think you have been stringing the long bow," declared Rhoda, shaking her head.

"Honest to pickles!" reiterated the cowboy. "Why—why, I'll show you the very hole in the hill where it happened."

They laughed at that; but the Eastern girls and Walter were inclined to believe that the cowboy had told the truth—as far as he knew it. In some way the outlaw had managed to elude him.

"Goodness!" murmured Walter to Nan, "wouldn't it be great to catch that black horse?"

"He's handsomer than your Prince," agreed Nan.

"He is that. I wonder where he went when Tom lost him?"

The treasure-hunting party did not go directly to the gulch in which the girls had had their adventure at the time of the tornado. A part of what Hesitation Kane had on his pack horse was to be delivered to an outfit herding a bunch of steers back in the hills a long distance.

The girls and Walter had agreed to ride that way, stop over night with Steve's outfit, and then work down to the old bear den from the other direction—that is, from the north.

They entered the foothills through a pleasant, winding valley which, had it not been for the marks of the recent cloudburst, would have been a beautiful trail. But it was considerably torn up by the water that had swept through it, a raging torrent.

They found Steve's outfit with the cattle—nearly a thousand head of them—feeding in two cup-shaped hollows chained by a narrow path. The hills were steep and rocky all around these hollows, and a dozen steers abreast would have choked the path between the two pastures. About half of the cattle were grazing in one hollow, and the other half in the second cup.

The outfit gave the party a noisy welcome. These herders of cattle, working sometimes for weeks at a stretch without getting to the ranch house, and seeing only each other's faces, certainly get lonely. A newcomer is hailed with joy. And of course the daughter of the Rose Ranch owner and her friends were doubly welcome to this outfit.

The tent was set up for the girls; but, as before, Walter roughed it with the cowpunchers. He was enjoying every minute of his experience on the ranch, whether his timid sister did or not!

A soft, balmy evening dropped down about the camp, which was established in the further cup between the hills. As evening approached the cattle from the outside cup were driven into this inner enclosure. They could be cared for at night much more easily in one herd.

Tom Collins and the outfit's cook outvied each other in making supper. Then there followed two long hours of songs and stories and chaff. The boys badgered each other, but were very polite to the girls.

Walter wanted to ride herd with the first watch, and this was agreed to.

"That is, young fellow, you can ride if you can sing," said Steve, the boss of the outfit, gravely.

"Sing? Well, I don't know. What kind of singing? I'm not famous for my voice," admitted the boy.

"Just so's you can sing something the cows like, it'll be all right," Steve told him. "If anything should happen, you have to sing. It keeps the cows from getting nervous."

"Maybe if I sing it will make them nervous," suggested Walter, not so easily jollied.

"You'd better learn Henery's song, here," said Steve. "Henery has one he calls 'My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean' an' he sings it in seven different keys and there's forty stanzas to it. And when a cow hears that—"

One of "Henery's" boots sailed through the air just then, and Steve had to dodge it. Henry was not on the first watch.

Walter went out with the first crew. Somebody lent him a slicker, for rain was prophesied. Steve said, drawlingly:

"If it keeps on like this so wet, we might's well be in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's rained twice in ten weeks."

Walter's instructions were to keep just in sight of the man riding around the herd ahead of him, to take it easy, and not to do anything to disturb the quiet herd. Some of the cattle were lying down chewing their cud; others were moving slowly while they cropped the grass, all headed west. Riding herd seemed, after an hour or two, to be the dreariest kind of work to the Eastern boy.

Then he noticed that there was a chill in the air and that distant lightning played on the clouds to the north. The cattle all got upon their feet. It did not appear that they were really unquiet; yet there was a certain tension in the air that they must have felt, as well as the herders.

Suddenly there was a near-by flash of lightning followed by a peal of thunder. The camp remained quiet; but the cattle began to snort and paw the earth. Each flash showed Walter that the animals were crowding closer and closer together. They were still heading west.

In the light of another dazzling bolt the boy beheld several horsemen riding down the other side of the cup shaped valley—the west side. They were not of this Rose Ranch outfit. Indeed, in that single glance he realized that they were not dressed like the cowpunchers.

Who could these strangers be? He was about to ride faster and overtake one of the other herders and ask, when the thunder seemed to split the firmament right over the valley. A vivid blue flash lit up the whole arena.

Walter saw one of the group of strange horsemen dash down toward the cattle, flying a slicker high over his head. This horseman made a frightful object charging along the front of the already uneasy steers.

The latter wheeled. With loud bellowings and a thunder of hoofs, the herd started east—started full pelt for the narrow opening between the two hollows.

It was a stampede! Walter had heard of such catastrophes; but he had never dreamed that a charging herd of cattle could make so fearful an appearance. His own horse snorted, jumped about, and started to run away with him; and pull at the bit as Walter did, he could not at once gain control of the terrified little beast.



CHAPTER XXVI

WHO ARE THEY?

The encampment of Steve's outfit, and therefore the tent in which the four girls were sheltered, was on the side of the hill to the south of the narrow path connecting the twin valleys. It seemed as though the chuck wagon and tent, as well as the horse corral, were well out of the path of the charging cattle.

But when Nan Sherwood and her companions, awakened by the louder peal of thunder, gazed out of the tent opening and gained, by aid of the lightning, their initial glimpse of the stampede, it seemed as though a thousand bellowing throats and twice that number of tossing horns threatened the encampment.

"Grab your things and get out this way!" shouted Rhoda, leading the retreat through the rear of the tent.

Fortunately the girls had not taken off more than their outer clothing and their boots. They had no cots during this outing, but used sleeping-bags instead. Seizing such of their possessions as they could find in the dark, they followed Rhoda out at the rear and up the hillside.

From below the pandemonium of sound of the enraged and terrified cattle was all but deafening. At the corral the men who had been off watch were mounting their ponies. The girls heard Steve's stentorian voice shouting to Hesitation Kane:

"Can we swing 'em before they clog that cut into the other hollow, Hess?"

"Nope!" and to the girls' surprise the horse wrangler snapped out the answer. "Shoot the leaders and pile 'em up in the gap. Then swing 'em."

"Oh, I don't want to do that," yelled Steve. "The boss will have a fit. Who started this thing, anyway? That fool boy?"

"Oh! where is Walter?" gasped Grace.

But another cowboy from down below shouted:

"It's a put up job. I saw somebody start 'em. They've been stampeded, Steve."

The next moment the hullabaloo of the cattle themselves made human voices unbearable. A flash of lightning showed the front of the herd as it charged up the slight rise to the mouth of the cut.

Ahead of them, riding like mad and using his coiled rope to urge his pony, came a single rider. Another flash of lightning revealed his identity to the girls.

"Walter! Oh, Walter! He will be killed!" shrieked Grace.

Nan Sherwood leaped a pace in advance as though she would go, afoot as she was, to his rescue. Bess covered her face with her hands. Rhoda shouted in so ear-piercing a tone that the men at the corral heard her:

"Save him! Don't let him go under, boys! Daddy will never forgive you if Walter is hurt."

But before she spoke a single rider had left the encampment like a missile from a gun. It was Hesitation Kane, riding low along his horse's neck, and swinging his big pistol in his left hand. He had taken it upon himself to go against Steve's orders.

A fusillade of shots met the forefront of the stampeded cattle just as it seemed Walter Mason must be overwhelmed. It was in the narrow cut between the two valleys. The leaders went down in a heap, and against the ridge made by their bodies the steers directly behind them crashed with an impact like two colliding trains!

The lightning revealed from moment to moment the awful sight. The cattle behind pressed against those ahead. The bellowing beasts were smothered—were crushed—by the score! It seemed to the girls and to Walter, who now had gained control of his pony and came riding back, as though half that herd of mad beasts must be sacrificed.

But Steve and the other herders saw their chance. They swept down on the flank of the herd. The well trained ponies made a living wall against the cattle. The latter began to mill—that is, turn and travel on the herd's own center.

Of course, many dropped and were trampled. It was a situation that took every ounce of pluck in a man's body to go up against that maddened herd. But Steve and his crew did it.

A rider appeared madly from the west. "Get your guns, boys!" he yelled. "It is a raid! Greasers! I seen 'em start the cattle stampeding!"

"You are bringing us stale news, boy," shouted the outfit's cook. "We're going after them Greasers."

He and Tom Collins were already astride their ponies. Rhoda had got into her boots and now she ran and noosed her pony out of the herd, making the cast by the light of the electric flashes. She saddled, mounted, and was away after the two cooks. Walter joined her, followed quickly by Nan. Bess had to stay behind with Grace, who would never have ventured on such an expedition.

They charged down the swale toward the west. Walter shouted to the others what he had seen at the start of the stampede.

"That is it," cried Rhoda. "Mexicans! When daddy hears about this he will be just about wild."

When the little party had swept to the far end of the hollow there were no signs of the Mexicans who had ridden down into the place to stampede the steers. The rain began to fall; but there was not much of that. It was mostly a tempest of thunder and lightning.

The circling cattle swung west finally and came down the valley at a less dangerous pace. The two cooks, with Rhoda, Nan and Walter, remained to meet and turn their front again. By the time the cattle had circled the valley twice, they were leg-weary and their fears were quenched.

It was a hard night that followed for all. Half the gang had to ride herd until daybreak to make sure that the nervous creatures did not start again. The other men and ponies dragged the dead beasts out of the throat of that gap between the two hollows.

More than a hundred were either dead or had to be shot. The bodies had to be dragged out of the way on the hillsides. Otherwise the steers remaining could not have been got out of the pasture.

Rhoda cried. Every carcass dragged out of the way meant a decided loss for Rose Ranch. And the pity of it!

One puncher was sent to the ranch house to report and ask for a beef wagon to come up. But not more than two carcasses could be used by the whole ranch force at this time of year. The weather was too hot.

By morning the path was cleared. Steve said:

"Get 'em out! Get 'em out as soon as possible. Before night the heavens will be black with buzzards and the hills yellow with coyotes. There will be some singing around this place for a day or two."

They drove the exhausted cattle slowly into the outer pasture, and from there headed them deeper into the hills to a larger valley where the herbage was known to be good.

"I don't know who them Mexicans were. I don't believe it was the same outfit that the boss and the Long Bow crowd chased. They got over the Border, I understand," said Steve.

Walter and the girls talked this mystery over by themselves. It puzzled them vastly.

They had come up here to hunt for the Mexican bandit's treasure; and here they had run into a gang of outlaws just as bad as the old Lobarto gang that had been such a scourge to the country six years before.

"I believe the single Mexican you girls saw at the bears' den belonged to this gang that started the cattle stampeding," Walter declared.

"It must be true," agreed Rhoda.

"Then what shall we do? Don't you think you girls had better go back to the ranch house and postpone treasure hunting until the Mexicans are rounded up?"

"And let them find Lobarto's treasure?" demanded Bess. "Maybe that is what they are after."

"Bess says something sensible, that is sure," Rhoda broke in. "I hate to think of any of those mean Mexicans getting the hidden wealth."

"Just think of poor Juanita and her mother," Nan said, agreeing with her girl friends. "These bad Mexicans will never give back any of the money Lobarto stole."

"Scarcely!" exclaimed Rhoda.

"I suppose Walter is speaking for me," said his sister simply. "I know I am timid. But I will stick if you other girls do."

"Hoorah!" shouted Bess, hugging her. "Why! you are getting to be a regular sport. We've got Tom and Mr. Kane with us, besides Frank, the other cowboy. I am not afraid of the Mexicans—not much, that is—whether they are Juan Sivello and his gang or not."

"Hear! Hear!" agreed Nan. "And having done so much harm in this neighborhood, perhaps they have run away a good many miles to escape pursuit. Let us go and take a look in the bears' den, anyway."

And so it was agreed.



CHAPTER XXVII

THE FUNNEL

It was not until the last of the cattle had disappeared through the gap between the hollows, and the chuck wagon likewise had trundled out of sight, that the girls and their party left the encampment which had been the scene of the night's excitement.

It was not impossible—and even Rhoda mentioned it—that they would none of them ever experience again so strenuous an eight hours as that since the beginning of the stampede.

The disaster was one that would be long remembered by the Rose Ranch cowpunchers, as well as by the ranch owner himself. A more disastrous stampede had seldom been known in that vicinity.

Already the coyotes were appearing—slip-footed and sneaking! They began to gorge on the more distant carcasses of the dead cattle before the chuck wagon was out of sight. And around and around overhead the buzzards circled, dropping at last to the ground and pecking at the stiffened carcasses. Bald-headed these vultures, with scrofulous looking necks and unwinking eyes. There was something vile looking about these carrion-crows.

Having no wagon to bother with, Rhoda and her party could take almost any direction they wished out of the valley. Their tent and camp utensils were borne by the pack horse, so they struck into a narrow bridle path over the hills to the southward.

The three men with the girls and Walter were in rather a gloomy mood when they started off. Even Tom Collins seemed to have lost his spirits. To tell the truth, they were all deeply enough interested in the welfare of the ranch to feel depressed because of the money loss to Mr. Hammond.

Rhoda, however, would not allow her visitors to be overshadowed by this trouble for long. She possessed a good share of her father's cheerfulness and dry humor. She began to tell semi-humorous tales of her own experiences about the ranch and on the ranges, and this started Tom and Frank to swapping tales—some of them altogether too ridiculous to be wholly true.

Only Hesitation Kane remained silent; but that made him no different from usual. He even grinned cheerfully under the sallies of his companions.

About midday the little cavalcade wound around a knob of a hill and arrived at the brink of a sheer bank, below which was a pocket in the hillside. Tom Collins had been guiding them for more than an hour, and now he announced this was the place.

"This here's it," he said with confidence. "I run that black outlaw right up into this here pocket and—there he wasn't!"

"Oh, Tom!" demanded Rhoda, "are you sure this is the spot? A flea couldn't hide down there."

"Honest to pickles! I ain't fooling, Miss Rhody," said the cowpuncher earnestly. "When me and my roan come up this fur and seen we didn't see nothin', I was plumb twisted. Says I to me: 'Here, Tom Collins, is where you got to go an' see a spectacles man 'cause you got optical delusions' And I sure thought I had."

"I'd say nothing could get out of that hole, 'cept by the way it run in, 'ceptin' it had wings," said the other cowpuncher.

"Or get down into it, either," Nan Sherwood observed.

"Oh, yes. We can get down there. We'll make a path and do that little thing," Tom rejoined, getting out of his saddle.

The banks all around the sink and as far as they could see along the gully that led into it, were thirty feet or more high, and quite unbroken. At no place could they see where the edge of the bank had been disturbed.

Tom got a spade from the pack horse, and Frank got a bar. They attacked the edge of the bank where, half way down, there was a little slope to the wall. The gravelly soil yielded rather easily to their digging, and they soon had the beginning of a path, down which the hardy ponies would venture.

Hesitation Kane went first, and then the other cowboys. The girls from the East were a bit timid; but every pony that descended made the path more easy. The animals were so well trained that all the riders had to do was to cling on and let their mounts have their own way.

"Now, you see, we're down here," said Tom. "But there ain't a pony in this bunch could climb up to the top, even by this path we made comin' down—no, sir! And yet that outlaw done it—or something."

They started down the gulch, looking for a good place to camp for the noon meal. Hesitation still led the pack horse, her line being hitched to his saddle-ring. They all kept a bright lookout on either hand for some possible path to the top of the bank by which the outlaw horse might have tried to get out of the gulch.

Suddenly Hesitation and his mount and the pack horse disappeared. The silent horse wrangler had taken to one side of a huge boulder while the others had passed on the other side. Had the pack horse not vented a frightened squeal the rest of the party might not have noticed so quickly the absence of the two beasts and Mr. Kane, for the latter did not utter a sound at first.

Walter jumped his horse for the place, and then shouted to the others to come. Behind the boulder was only a narrow path between it and a hole—a hole at least twenty feet across.

The sides of this hole were of loose gravel. The pack horse had made a misstep and had started to slide backwards down the gravel bank. The line snubbed to Kane's saddle was all that saved her from going to the bottom.

The horse wrangler could hold her, but that was about all. Frank arrived almost immediately and took a cast of his rope around the pack saddle. Then the two ponies—his own and Kane's—dragged the pack horse on to firm ground.

"'Nuther slip like that and that old pack mare would been in Kingdom Come," said Tom, peering down the funnel-shaped hole. "I say! you can't see the bottom of this here place."

"No. That out-thrust of rock hides whatever lies at the bottom," Walter agreed, likewise peering down. "Say! couldn't your outlaw horse have tumbled down that place?"

"Criminy! do you reckon so?" asked Tom. "He might! Looks probable, don't it?"

He slid out of his saddle and seized a big chunk of rock—all he could lift. He started this sliding down the gravelly bank. In a minute it had slid to the point where the ledge of rock hid from their view the bottom of this sink. Beyond that it disappeared—and there was no sound of its landing.

"Goodness!" cried Nan, who had ridden up to look, too. "Is that a bottomless pit?"

"Might be, Miss," said Collins. "Anyway, I reckon that's where that ol' black Satan of an outlaw went to. Too bad! He must be deader'n a doornail down there."

The mystery seemed to be explained. But Walter was still thoughtful and curious.

"What's over this way?" he asked, pointing to the hill east of the gulch.

"More gullies," Rhoda said. "And somewhere is the bear den we're going to."

"Is it far?" Walter asked.

"It's in the gulch right next beyond this one," said Tom Collins, with confidence.

Walter evidently had something on his mind, but he said nothing more. Only Nan noticed his brown study. But when she asked him what it was about, he only shook his head.

They stopped for lunch, and then went on down the gulch. They were less than a mile, Tom said, from the open plain, when the head of the cavalcade rounded a turn in the gulch and a figure suddenly leaped up from a shady nook—the figure of a man who had evidently been asleep there and had not heard the cavalcade coming.

Rhoda, who was ahead, reached for the rifle under her knee. Nan was amazed at the action of the girl of Rose Ranch, for the fellow standing before them seemed harmless.

He was a Mexican. He wore an enormous straw sombrero, and there was a good deal of silver cord and bangles upon it. He had a sash wound around his waist, and into this was thrust a pair of silver-mounted pistols. But he did not offer to draw them.

Perhaps he instantly apprehended the fact that the girls were well guarded. The cowpunchers and Hesitation clattered forward. The Mexican swept off his sombrero with much politeness, and bowed before the surprised girls.

"Good-day, Thenoritas," he said in Spanish. "Have I startled you, eh?"

As he stood up again his left hand rested on the butt of one of his pistols. Somehow—he did it so quickly that it was startling to Nan and her friends—Hesitation Kane drew his own pistol and thrust it forward.

"Put 'em up!" he commanded.

The Mexican seemed to understand just what the horse wrangler meant. He slowly, and with a deep scowl marring his face, raised his empty hands above his head.



CHAPTER XXVIII

A PRISONER

"It was just like one of those Western photoplays that sometimes come to the Freeling movie palace, and which Mrs. Cupp, the ogress of Lake-view Hall, does not approve of, and never will let us girls attend if she can help it," sighed Bess ecstatically, later on.

Bess Harley was especially fond of such dramas. And Walter, too, took delight in the imaginative if rather crude pictures of the West as it used to be.

But here was the real thing. Even Nan was held breathless by the tense drama. Rhoda's hints and tales of adventure had not altogether prepared her visitors for anything like this.

Hess Kane must have thought that the situation called for the sudden and stern action he had taken. Of course, Nan Sherwood thought, that snaky-looking Mexican was not wearing those two silver-mounted pistols in his sash just for ornament.

Tom Collins slid out of his saddle at a slight gesture from Kane and went behind the Mexican to disarm him.

"Keep your hands up," he said to the fellow. "Our wrangler ain't gifted much with speech, but he's sure a good shot. Where's the rest of your gang?"

"No understand," said the fellow sullenly.

"Mean to say you are alone?" Tom demanded.

"Si, Senor."

"Where's your horse?"

"I am afoot, Senor."

"Stop it! Don't try any of your Mex. jokes. You afoot, and with them spurs on your shanks?" and the cowboy pointed to the enormous silver spurs on the man's boots.

"That's one of the fellows that stampeded them steers last night," said Frank, with conviction.

The Mexican looked startled. His black eyes shot glances around the group which faced him.

"Look out that we're not ambushed," said Rhoda in a low voice. "There may be others around."

"We'll keep our eyes open," said Tom easily. "Guess I'll tie this fellow's wrists, just the same."

He removed his neckerchief as he spoke. He twisted it into a string, and suddenly snatched the Mexican's hands behind him. The fellow exploded some objection in his own language, and would have fought Tom, but Kane thrust the weapon he held forward again and the prisoner subsided.

Meanwhile Bess excitedly whispered to the other girls:

"Do you know who I believe he is? I feel sure of it!"

"Who?" Nan and Grace chorused.

"That Juan Sivello that Mexican girl wrote to Rhoda about."

"I had thought of that," said Rhoda, nodding. "It may be."

"And if it is," whispered Bess, thrilling at the thought, "he's got the diagram of the hiding place where his uncle put all that treasure."

"Goodness me!" sighed Grace, "how rich we should all be if we found it."

"It surely would be great," her brother said.

"And that poor Juanita and her mother would get their money back," Nan added.

"Risk our Nan for remembering the poor and needy," laughed Bess.

"There are others to think of besides that Mexican girl and her mother," said Rhoda seriously. "According to the tales we have heard about Lobarto's treasure, at least half a dozen families had been robbed by him along the Border. And churches, too.

"Some of the haciendas he burned and destroyed the people in them. They could claim nothing, of course. And he had a lot of other plunder that nobody knew who its actual owners were, so the story goes."

"Poor people!" sighed Nan.

"Say! give us a chance to divide a few millions among us," said the reckless Bess. "Who ever heard of treasure-seekers who were not made rich beyond the dreams of avarice when they found the hoard?"

She had spoken rather loudly. The Mexican glanced up at them suddenly and his eyes flashed. He muttered something under his little, stringy, black mustache.

"Look out, Bess," warned Nan. "He heard you then."

"Well, what of it?" demanded the reckless one. "Aren't the boys going to search him' and find that map Lobarto made?"

"My! but you are a high-handed young lady," chuckled Walter.

"What we going to do with him, now we've got him?" asked Tom Collins suddenly.

"Daddy ought to see him, don't you think?" said Rhoda confidently.

"Yep," agreed Hess Kane, returning his pistol to its holster.

"Well, now, I reckon that would be the proper caper," said Tom Collins. "Say, hombre," he added, nudging the Mexican, "where's your horse?"

"I am afoot, I tell you," was the reply.

"I can see you are—now," admitted the puncher. "But you'll have a fine walk in those boots to Rose Ranch."

"I will not walk to the Ranchio Rose!"

"Then you'll be dragged," Tom said coolly. "I reckon my little roan can do it."

"No," said Kane. "Put him on the pack mare."

They were all eager to get the young Mexican to Mr. Hammond and see what the shrewd old ranchman could make out of him. The saddle and goods were removed from the pack animal, and cached. For the girls did not intend to give up their treasure-hunting trip—by no means! It was only postponed.

"I'd give a good deal to know what became of the rest of this Greaser's gang," said Frank, the other cowpuncher.

"After they stampeded them steers, maybe they run away," Tom observed.

They put the prisoner astride the saddleless horse and made their way slowly to the ranch house. It was almost bedtime when they arrived, and the family was much surprised to see them at that hour.

"Well, I swanny!" ejaculated Mr. Hammond, "is this the best you girls could pick up-a Greaser? Do you call him a treasure?"

The prisoner's eyes flashed again as he heard this. He stood by sourly enough while the girls explained more fully to the ranchman.

"All right! All right!" growled Mr. Hammond. "If he is one of those that stampeded the steers, he'll see the inside of the jail. I'd like to catch 'em all."

The visitors made their way to bed as soon as they had eaten their late supper; but Rhoda remained with her father when he questioned the Mexican.

At first the prisoner refused to give any information about himself or his business near Rose Ranch. But being an old hand at that game, Mr. Hammond finally made him see that it would be wiser for him to reply. If he did not wish to get others into trouble, he would better try to save himself.

And it soon appeared that the young Mexican did not feel altogether kindly toward the men who had come over the Border with him—whoever they were. There had been some quarrel, and the others had abandoned him, taking even his horse with them when they did so.

"Were you with them when they ran off the Long Bow stock?" asked Mr. Hammond.

"That was not done by us. We separated from those thieves of horse-stealers when they would put their necks in jeopardy," the Mexican said in his own tongue, which both Mr. Hammond and Rhoda understood.

"So you kept out of that, heh? Then you rode up this way?"

"Into the hills," said the other sullenly. "The country is free."

"Not to such as you unless you can give a mighty good reason for being over there. You and your friends have cost me more'n a hundred steers."

"Not me!" ejaculated the prisoner, shaking his head.

"No?"

"I tell you they abandoned me. I do not know where they go."

"And what were you hanging about that place over there in the hills for?" demanded Mr. Hammond. "Come, now! Didn't you give your friends the slip because you wanted to hunt for that old hidden treasure?"

"Senor!"

"Never mind denying it," said the ranchman sternly. "And I reckon I can make another guess. You are Lobarto's nephew. Your name is Juan Sivello. I bet there's a warrant out for you in the sheriff's office at Osaka right now, my boy."

The young Mexican jumped up, startled. Mr. Hammond reached out a hand and pushed him back into his seat.

"Sit down, boy. You'd better make a clean breast of it. I want to know all you know about that old bandit's hoard, or you'll go to the sheriffs office with me in the morning. Take your choice."



CHAPTER XXIX

A TAMED OUTLAW

Rhoda had a great deal to tell her girl friends the next morning. She came into their room before even Nan was up, and curled down on one of the beds to relate to an enormously interested trio all the particulars of her father's interrogation of the Mexican prisoner.

"And is he that Juan What-you-may-call-him?" asked Bess. "Truly-ruly?"

"He is. Daddy made him admit it. And more."

"Go on, dear," said Nan. "You know we are just as curious as we can be."

"Well, I tell you, girls, it was no easy matter to get the truth out of that fellow. But he is scared. He fears being handed over to the American sheriff. He knows that the men he brought up here have got into trouble. They quarreled about the treasure's hiding place. Some of the men had ridden with Lobarto himself, and they thought they knew more about the treasure than this Juan does."

"But the map?" cried Grace.

"Yes. He's got it. But it isn't much of a map. Because daddy knows the country so well, he says he recognizes the places marked on the diagram."

"Oh, bully!" exclaimed Bess Harley.

"Don't be so quick," advised Rhoda. "It is not very clear at the best."

"Oh! Oh!" groaned the too exuberant Bess.

"There are certain places marked on the diagram. Daddy says the cross Lobarto made where the location of the hidden treasure is supposed to be, is on a bare hill. It is the hill between that gulch where we took refuge from the storm that day, and the gully up which Tom Collins says he chased that black horse."

"On the hill, then? Not in a hole at all?" asked Nan.

"That is what makes daddy doubtful. He says to have dug a hole out in the open, on the side or the top of that hill, would have been ridiculous. So he says he doesn't believe in it any more than he did before."

"But can't we go to look?" pleaded Grace.

"Of course we can," agreed Rhoda.

"Let's, then," Bess said, eagerly.

"That's what we will do, Bessie. Daddy says we can have the boys again and a pack horse, and can grub around all we like. Meanwhile he is going to hold on to the Mex. to see what turns up."

"And the others? What of them?" asked Nan.

"Why, we know that a part of his gang went back into Mexico with the stolen horses. Daddy has a posse of our own boys hunting the hills for those scoundrels that scared Steve's steers the other night. He says—daddy does—that he believes those Mexicans started that stampede just to get the outfit away from there. Evidently the gang believed the treasure is buried up that way. They haven't got the diagram, you see."

"That young Mexican must have been looking for the treasure when he came to the mouth of the bear den that time and scared us so," said Nan thoughtfully.

"Yes," Rhoda agreed. "He says he has been scouring the locality."

"And no luck?"

"So he says. But he believes his uncle's map is all right, when once he can understand it."

"I declare!" Nan observed, "I don't see why we can't find the treasure, then, if it is somewhere about the hill."

"We'll dig all over it," said Bess eagerly. "Come on, girls! Let's go to-day," and she hopped out of bed.

Walter was eager for the second treasure-hunting trip, as well. The party got away before mid-forenoon and took their dinner at the mouth of the gulch in which the bear den was located.

"I tell you what," Walter said to Nan privately, while they were eating. "That cross on the old bandit's map is between this gulch and that other where Tom lost the outlaw."

"Yes. So they say, Walter," Nan replied.

"Do you know, Nan, I've an idea there is a hole right through this hill?" said the boy.

"A hole? You mean that the cavern goes clear through?"

"Clear through to that funnel-shaped place where our pack horse fell down."

"Walter! That's an idea!" admitted Nan.

"Guess it is," he returned, smiling. "Let's get them to search the cavern first. We've got lanterns and a big electric torch. There is one thing I want to assure myself about, too," he added.

"The treasure, of course."

"Something more. I want to know what made that noise that frightened you girls so."

"Oh, Walter! I had forgotten about that. Why remind me?" cried Nan.

"Well, don't remind the others, then," laughed Walter.

Rhoda was quite willing to go to the bear den first of all, and the other girls seemed to have forgotten the noise that had so disturbed them when they took shelter there from the tornado.

This time they left the ponies outside, with Frank to watch them. Tom and Hess Kane entered the cave with the party of young people.

The place was utterly dark and utterly silent. But they soon lit the lanterns, and Walter went in advance with the electric torch.

The main cavern in which the girls had waited for the storm to blow over was of considerable size, as they had thought at that time; and the domed roof was very high. The hill really was a great hollow.

There were passages into several smaller caves; but these were mere pockets beside the larger apartment. Wherever there was any appearance of the floor of the cavern having been disturbed, the men used the spade and bar. But they found no hidden treasure. In fact, the floor was mostly of solid rock. The old bandit would have found it difficult to have buried anything under such flooring.

It seemed as though they had searched the place thoroughly, and all the little chambers, too, when Walter's torch revealed to him a crack in the wall at the far end of the cavity, and almost as high as his head. He soon called the others to come and examine this place.

"A big boulder has been rolled into an opening. That is what it is," said Nan.

"Just what I was saying to myself," Walter confessed. "And I believe nature did not roll the rock here, either."

"Think somebody shut the door on a passage, do you?" asked Tom Collins, curiously. "Bring along the bar, Hess, and let's see."

"If nature did not wedge that rock into the opening, then whoever did it did an excellent job!" growled Walter, after working on the boulder for a couple of hours.

"It's started. Yes, it's started," said Tom complainingly. "But you can't say much more about it and speak the truth. If that old Mexican's treasure ain't behind that rock, then it ought to be, that's sure!"

Supper time came, and they were still working at the boulder. It was agreed to camp in the cavern for the night, and continue working at the wedged rock until bedtime.

"And might as well bring the ponies in and hobble 'em, eh?" suggested Tom Collins. "No use standing watch on 'em outside. They've grazed themselves full this afternoon."

It was so agreed. Hess went out and helped Frank bring in the animals and wood for the cooking fire.

But here was a surprise. Almost as soon as the horses clattered in on the hard floor of the cavern one of them whinnied. Seemingly in response, the reechoing sound that had previously so startled the girls rang faintly through the cavern. But from much farther away, it seemed, than before.

"The haunt!" gasped Bess. "There it is again."

The men and Walter looked inquiringly at each other. Tom Collins shook his head: "Can it be the echo of that little roan of mine squealing?"

"Never!" cried Rhoda. "That doesn't sound like any horse I ever heard. Why, it's queer!"

"Queer's the word; but horse queer," muttered Tom.

Walter looked eagerly at Nan in the lamplight.

"Do you believe that black horse is somewhere here?" she whispered.

"I most certainly do, Nan," he said with confidence.

They worked all the evening on that stone. Occasionally the faint and mysterious sound floated to them. The men would not give their opinion about this, but they were warmly expressive of what they thought about the boulder that had to be moved.

They rolled up in their blankets and sleeping bags finally, and left the rest of the job until morning. Without proper tools to attack the boulder it was a slow and back-breaking task.

In the morning, however, while Tom Collins was getting breakfast and Frank drove the ponies out to graze, Walter and Hess tackled the boulder again. It seemed that at night, when they left the work, they had been just on the verge of prying it loose.

Suddenly it heaved over. It was rounded on the front, so once having turned it, it was an easy matter to get it out of the way. The lantern light showed that there was a passage behind the fallen barrier.

The girls came running at the crash and at Walter's cry. The boy had grabbed up the torch and pressed the switch. He shot the round ray of the lamp into the dark passage.

"Oh! There is no treasure there!" murmured Bess, in disappointment.

Walter ventured in, the others crowding after him. The passage was long and crooked. They traveled at least a hundred yards, the roof of the tunnel being nowhere more than ten feet in height.

Suddenly there was a sound in front. Something scrambled over the rocks. Walter shut off the lamp and they saw daylight ahead of them.

"See here! Here he is!" shouted the boy, hurrying on. "What did I tell you?"

There was more scrambling of hoofs, and then a shrill squeal—surely the noise made by a horse! Hess and the girls following, Walter came to the circular place to which the tunnel led. They all saw what Walter saw. For once Hesitation Kane was surprised into expressing himself suddenly:

"It's the black outlaw or I'm a dodo!"



CHAPTER XXX

TREASURE-TROVE

Hesitation Kane was not a dodo, for nobody could deny that the trembling and snorting creature standing on the other side of this open hole was the beautiful wild stallion that had followed the range horses down from the hills more than a week before.

But such a pitiful looking creature as he was now! The girls expressed their pity for him without stint. Not that he was marred, or seriously injured in any way. But he was so weak from hunger that he could scarcely stand.

It was plain that a few shrubs and some bunch grass had grown in the bottom of this hole. He had eaten them down to the very roots, and then dug the roots up with his hoofs and chewed them.

Tom Collins' story of how he had chased the stallion and the creature had so suddenly disappeared, was now explained. The horse had slipped into the hole in the gulch above, just as the pack horse had. Only the wild horse had slid clear to the bottom of the funnel-shaped hole.

The outcropping ledge hid this opening which was at the level of the caves. Nobody could see the imprisoned horse from above. That, the searching party well knew.

"And to think that he might have starved to death here," murmured Grace.

"Can you get him and tame him, Mr. Kane?" asked Bess Harley.

"But he should be Walter's horse," put in Nan Sherwood, earnestly. "Walter has felt all the time that he was here and that it was he that made the noise that scared us so."

"Of course this is the source of that cry we heard," Rhoda admitted. "When we led the ponies into the big cave that day, he heard them, and they knew he was here. I believe I haven't much sense, girls, after all. I should have known it was another horse squealing."

"I was sure of it last night," said Walter, "when he squealed after Frank drove in the stock."

"Well, daddy is fair," Rhoda declared. "When he learns all about it he will decide who is to have the horse. Of course, he was originally the property of the Long Bow Ranch and that brand is on him now. But daddy will fix it right."

"Say!" suddenly cried Bess, "did this party start out from Rose Ranch to hunt wild horses? I—should—say—not! We are after treasure—"

"Oh, girls, see here!" interrupted Grace Mason suddenly. "What do you suppose this can be?"

While the horse wrangler went for a rope to use in holding and leading the wild horse, Grace had gone back a way into the tunnel. Here the floor of the cavity was not of rock. It was plain to be seen by the light of the lantern that the horse had stood in here and stamped and dug the dirt up with his sharp hoofs.

In a hole that he had thus excavated Grace had seen an object that glistened in the lamplight. "See here," she repeated. "What do you suppose this can be?"

Walter was too busy watching the horse to attend to her. But the other girls came. Nan dropped down on her knees beside the smaller girl. Almost immediately she cried out:

"It is! Oh! Look!"

"Good," said Bess, crowding closer. "I don't know what it is, but I am looking. Mercy me, Nan Sherwood! what is that?"

"A silver candlestick," said Nan in a hushed tone. "Girls, we have found the Mexican treasure!"

Breakfast was entirely forgotten after that. The coffee boiled over back in the big cave, and when Tom thought of it, there was only a little extract of Mocha in the bottom of the burned-black pot!

They brought the spades into play again. They unearthed a cavity in the floor of the passage into which had been heaped haphazard a mass of silver and gold ornaments, vases, bags of jewelry, church plate, and of money in quantity to make them all go half mad with delight. Such a treasure-trove none of them had really believed existed.

They were hours in becoming calm enough to decide what should be done. Then Frank was sent off on the swiftest pony to the ranch house to report to Rhoda's father, and to bring back a wagon in which to carry away the heavier ornaments and vessels that Lobarto had stolen from the churches in his own country. How the bandit had ever brought such a weight of treasure so far was a mystery.

"And there's another thing," Bess Harley said, later. "Why did he make that cross on the map which he sent to his relations, pointing to a cache on the hillside?"

"He didn't," Rhoda rejoined quickly. "He made the mark all right. He meant to show that it was under the hill."

"Of course!" agreed Nan.

The Mexican treasure was bound to make Mr. Hammond a lot of bother, as he said. For when news went abroad that it was found, dozens of people came to Rose Ranch trying to prove that some of it belonged to them.

Many of these claimants were impostors, and the ranchman referred them to the courts which, under the circumstances, could do very little toward straightening out the tangle of ownership.

In the first place, the cavern where the wealth was found chanced to be on land to which Mr. Hammond held the title. Mr. Hammond tried to return the church treasure and vestments; but two of the churches Lobarto had wrecked had never been rebuilt, and the priests were scattered.

The same way with the coined money. The robber had gathered such coin as he had stolen and put it in sacks. Unless a claimant could prove how much money, and just what form of money, was stolen from him, Mr. Hammond saw no reason for handing out the recovered treasure.

Juanita O'Harra and her mother were treated as generously as it was possible. And they were satisfied with Mr. Hammond's judgment. In fact, most of those who really had lost property were too thankful to have a generous amount returned to quarrel about the ranchman's decision.

Mr. Hammond claimed that the party searching and finding the cache had certain rights. The girls, Walter, and the three employees of the ranch on the spot when the find was made, all shared in the treasure-trove.

There was one person who had been hungry for the treasure who did not get a dollar of it. That was the young Mexican, Juan Sivello, Lobarto's nephew. As Mr. Hammond said, chuckling:

"All that chap took away from Rose Ranch was a flea in his ear!"

The letters that went back East after the finding of the Mexican treasure—both to the home folks and to girl chums—were so long and so exciting that one might have doubted if the four girls from Lakeview Hall were quite sane. The visitors to Rose Ranch enjoyed many adventures before they started East again, and they had at the end much more to tell their friends. But nothing so exciting as the result of the treasure hunt.

Walter Mason, too, had an additional prize. Mr. Hammond did not think that the recovered black horse was a fit mount for a boy; but he shipped to Chicago two ponies, for Walter's and his sister's use, in exchange for any rights the boy might think he had in the outlaw.

Nan and Bess had no means of keeping horses at home if they owned them; so when they left Rose Ranch they bade their pretty steeds good-by—perhaps with a few secret tears. For the little beasts had carried them for many miles, and safely, over the ranges.

Life at Rose Ranch never lacked variety, it seemed. Never again would the Eastern girls pity Rhoda Hammond because of her home life, and wonder if she did not miss much that they considered necessary to their happiness and comfort.

"I guess everything has its compensations," said Nan, using a rather long word for her. "I thought my uncle and aunt and cousins up in the Michigan woods must be awfully lonely, and all that. But I found it wasn't so."

"And down here nobody has a minute to spare. You can't even feel lazy yourself," agreed Bess. "I feel right on edge all the time, expecting something new and wonderful to happen."

"And doesn't it?" asked Nan, laughing.

"I should say it did! Why, I never realized so much could happen in a month as happens on Rose Ranch in a single day," agreed her enthusiastic chum. "I wish I had been brought up on a ranch like Rhoda."

"Oh," said Nan Sherwood, "I don't wish that. There is only one place in which to be born and brought up. That's in the little cottage in amity, and with Momsey and Papa Sherwood."

THE END