As for old John Dempsey, he came out strong! He proved to be just the person needed about the Hardin ranch. He was general handy man, indoors and out, and was on this morning engaged in cleaning up the rooms that Colonel Hardin had used as his office. In the corner was a great heap of papers and rubbish that had been cleared out of the old Colonel’s desk after his death, and which the lawyers had examined.
As Dorothy came through the hall she peered in and saw the old man sorting this rubbish. He turned with a shining face and held out a yellowed paper towards her.
“Miss Dorothy! Miss Dorothy! see here, will ye? Be my eyes deceivin’ me? Shure, I feel like a fairy had led me by the hand into this place.”
Dorothy was both amazed and anxious at his earnestness. She ran forward and took the paper which he put reverently into her hand.
It was a letter, and written in a peculiarly long, angular hand. At the bottom was the unforgettable signature, “A. Lincoln.”
Dorothy gasped, looked back at the old man with shining eyes, and then devoured the letter:
“Executive Mansion,
“Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
“To Mrs. Bixby,
“Boston, Mass.
“Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
“I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which would attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that Our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
“Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
“A. Lincoln.”
“Oh, Mr. Dempsey! is it real?” cried Dorothy.
“It is that, Ma’am,” he said, confidently. “He that was President—and the finest gentleman that ever lived—wrote that letter to a poor widow. How it come in Colonel Hardin’s papers, I dunno——”
“And the lawyers threw it aside. How awful! They were looking only for stocks, and bonds, and wills, and such,” cried Dorothy, eagerly. “Yet that letter from President Lincoln, Mr. Dempsey, must be worth a lot of money, too. And you found it, Mr. Dempsey! It’s yours.”
“Oh, no, Ma’am. Your aunt——”
“Would never lay claim to it, I am sure. And if the letter is worth money——”
“What’s this that’s worth money, Miss?” asked a suave voice behind her. Dorothy Dale turned to see the smiling Mr. Philo Marsh in dusty riding clothes standing, hat in hand, behind her.
“Good morning, Miss!” he said, with a sweeping bow. “I chanced to overhear you. What’s the old fellow found?” and he stretched forth a bold hand and took the letter.
“It belongs to Mr. Dempsey,” said Dorothy, with chilling directness. “I shall tell Aunt Winnie you are here, sir.”
“Oh! don’t let me hurry her,” said the man.
His sharp eyes were fixed upon the letter as Dorothy turned away to go to her aunt’s room. When she returned a little later, Mr. Philo Marsh had settled himself in a chair on the veranda to await Mrs. White. John Dempsey beckoned her into the office and closed the door.
“Have a care of that fellow, Miss,” he whispered. “He’s a snake in the grass.”
“Why do you say so?” asked the girl.
“The rascal offered me fifty dollars for the letter from President Lincoln.”
“Oh, Mr. Dempsey! that is a lot of money.”
“Why, Miss Dale! if the letter was mine to sell, I wouldn’t part wi’ it for a fortune. Poor I may be,” said old John Dempsey, reverently, “but never poor enough to sell a scrap of writin’ in the hand of the greatest hearted and tenderest man this country ever seen—no, Ma’am!”
CHAPTER XV
EXPLORING
There was double excitement at the breakfast table that morning. Not only were the young folk eager to get away on the trip of exploration planned the day before; but old John Dempsey’s find among the discarded papers in the office excited them.
The letter written in Lincoln’s angular hand was passed from one to the other. Mrs. White of course agreed with Dorothy that the letter belonged to the Grand Army man.
“He shall certainly have it—to keep, or to sell,” she said.
“Your protégé is turning out pretty well, Dot,” said Ned. “And if he keeps on finding valuable letters like that, he’ll soon be as rich as the other ‘John D.’ Some collectors would give a round sum for this letter.”
“He’s already had one offer,” Dorothy said, hesitatingly.
“What!” cried Tavia. “You never offered to buy it?”
“Certainly not. And Mr. Dempsey says he wouldn’t sell.” Then she related what the old man had said regarding Philo Marsh.
“‘Snake in the grass!’” exclaimed Tavia. “That’s just what he is.”
“Hush,” said Aunt Winnie. “The man is really bothering me a good deal. He has gone off with Mr. Ledger to breakfast. I did not care to invite him in here——”
“I should hope not!” exclaimed Ned.
“Well, I am free to confess,” said his mother, thoughtfully, “that I do not know just how to treat Mr. Marsh. He tried to have me invite him to ride with us to-day; but I do not want him.”
“You say the word, mother,” said Nat, belligerently, “and Ned and I will send him to the right-about-face.”
Mrs. White laughed. “Oh, I fancy he is not very dangerous, my boy.”
“Then, if that’s the case,” added Nat, grinning, “why not sick Tavia onto him?”
“Nathaniel!”
“You horrid thing!” exclaimed Tavia, perfectly able to fight her own battles with the boys. “You talk as though I might be a bulldog.”
“You’re a sight more dangerous,” chuckled Nat. “If you once rolled those big eyes of yours at Philo—as you did at that cowboy, Lance, for instance——”
“Nathaniel!” exclaimed his mother again. “I am ashamed of you.”
“You’d have been ashamed of Tavia if you’d seen her,” grunted the young fellow.
That was the beginning of a tiff between Tavia and Nat. “You wait, Mr. Smartie!” she whispered, giving him a vicious pinch as he passed her chair. “I’ll get square with you for saying that.”
But afterward, when she and Dorothy were together, the latter spoke seriously to her chum.
“You must have a care, my dear. Aunt Winnie would be horrified if she knew you were in the least flirtatious with these men——”
“What men?” demanded Tavia, with some anger.
“Lance Petterby, we’ll say. If he comes here with his mother, you behave.”
“Oh, you’re a regular Grandmother Grunt. And I’ll fix Nat for saying that to his mother, see if I don’t.”
Tavia was, indeed, quite vexed, and they were several miles from the ranch house that forenoon before she became her jolly irresponsible self.
Before noon the exploring party had seen much of the range and pasturage. Hank Ledger said even after this drouth the pasture could well support ten thousand steers.
“But we ain’t had that many critters on the ranch for ten year. Cattle ain’t what they was—no sir! We’ve got a couple of thousand, and that’s full and plenty. I reckon, Miz White, you won’t want to increase the number much?”
“We shall talk about that later,” said the lady. “At present I want to see about this water privilege.”
“All right, Ma’am. I’ll take you right up there, and we can eat our snack beside Lost River.”
“That sounds very romantic,” said Tavia.
“Especially the eating part,” laughed Dorothy. “Riding does give one such an appetite.”
Ledge
r escorted them into the low hills. Soon they were riding up a sharply inclined gully, and reached higher land. The woods grew denser. Ahead the murmur of falling water soon rose to a steady volume of sound which, although it did not deafen them, made a background for all other noises.
Huge boulders cropped out of the thin soil. The trees were not tall, but were standing in very thick groups. In some places the ponies pushed through thickets that seemed to be almost impassable.
At last a plateau was reached—several hundred feet higher than the knoll upon which the ranch-house stood—and at once, when they came into the clear, Dorothy and Tavia broke into a simultaneous cry of surprise and delight.
Sweeping across this level plain, directly toward them, came a broad, silver stream. Small groves of soft-barked trees fringed its banks. Here and there a boulder intruded, around the base of which the otherwise peaceful river boiled and sprayed the rock with foam.
All the surface of the stream was sparkling as though the banks actually brimmed with molten silver. Such a refreshing looking mountain stream Dorothy had never before seen—or one-half so beautiful.
Just in front of the cavalcade a veil of mist rose some twenty feet into the air. In this mist the sunshine played delightfully, lending itself to a dozen different rainbows.
The almost impalpable moisture drifted across a stretch of grass, as green as it could be—a veritable fairy lawn. The curtain of mist hid from them what appeared to be the abrupt ending of the river.
“What a marvel!” gasped Dorothy. “Why! Mr. Ledger! where does the water go?”
Ledger grinned and wheeled his horse aside, following a distinct path which approached the nearer bank of the stream. The spray swept over them for a moment, and then they came out above it, and upon the steep bank.
Right beside them was a narrow chasm in the rock—a yawning gulf the full width of the stream which was here all of twenty yards across. Into this opening in the earth the river plunged.
“Lost River, indeed!” cried Dorothy, looking back at the others, with shining eyes. “Did you ever see anything so wonderful, Aunt Winnie?”
A deep, thunderous murmur, like the bass notes of a great organ, came up from the depths. The perfectly clear water advanced to the lip of rock over which it flowed, falling into the chasm with scarcely a ripple. But the spray rising in so thick a cloud showed that the volume of water must strike some ledge not far below the surface of the plain, from which it caromed against the wall of the crevice.
“Say! this is some river,” said Nat, in awe.
“How beautiful!” repeated Dorothy.
The foreman told them that the stream was fed above by numberless mountain springs, and had never been known to go dry.
“Such a waste of good water!” exclaimed Tavia. “No wonder those people in the desert want it. Why, it ought to make the desert blossom like the rose! That’s poetry, I want you to notice. But goodness! I won’t do a thing to those sandwiches and the coffee—when Mr. Ledger gets it made.”
CHAPTER XVI
IN THE GORGE
They went up the bank of the river afoot after luncheon. Ledger walked with Aunt Winnie, explaining as they went the scheme of changing the river’s course. The young folk ran on ahead.
They came to a narrow reef of rock which hemmed in the river on this westerly side. On the left hand they looked down into a deep gorge. Here, by blowing out the rock-wall which was not more than ten yards across, the river would plunge into the gorge which cut through the plateau toward the south.
This was the natural channel that had been spoken of. At the mouth of the gorge, the foreman said, a dam could be built at a comparatively small expense, which would hold an enormous amount of water in reserve.
The tentative agreement between Colonel Hardin and the Desert people included the building of this dam at the expense of the subscribers for the water. The intention was to dig a great ditch from the mouth of the gorge across the plain, with branch ditches and gates for the farmers, the main ditch carrying the water to the outskirts of Desert City.
There a pumping station was to be established and the water piped into the town. The irrigation work and all would occupy at least two years, and cost a good deal of money, but the result, as Tavia had suggested, would be to “make the desert blossom like the rose.”
Mrs. White would travel no farther than this reef at the head of the gorge, but the young folk were bent upon a real exploring expedition. She gave her consent for them to go on, and Ned and Nat found a path which led down the nigh bank of the deep hollow.
The trees that had struck root into this rocky soil were scrubby looking things and there were not many of them, but there was a deal of brush and briers.
“Suppose this was an old Indian path?” proposed Nat to his brother, when they were at the bottom of the steep descent.
“More likely made by wild animals,” was the reply.
“Whew!” exclaimed Nat, his eyes twinkling. “Maybe it leads to a bear’s den.”
“Now stop, Nat White!” commanded Tavia. “You are trying to scare us.”
OUT OF THE CREVICE PROTRUDED THE UPPER LENGTH OF A RATTLESNAKE.
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“Don’t listen to him, Tavia,” said Dorothy. “There are no wild animals near here. Mr. Ledger didn’t even bring a gun.”
“It’s supposed to be a game preserve, isn’t it?” demanded Nat. “And aren’t bears game?”
“If you should see one you’d be the bear’s game,” sniffed Dorothy. “You’d run.”
“Sure I would,” admitted Nat. “I’d rather a good deal folks would say of me, ‘See him run!’ than ‘Here he lies.’”
“I suppose there are some wild beasts deeper in these hills—and on Colonel Hardin’s property,” Ned said, thoughtfully.
“What kind of beasts?” demanded Tavia, sharply.
“Oh—bears, and wolves, and panthers, and the like.”
“That’s enough!” declared Tavia, stopping short. “I’ve gone far enough. Let’s climb up again, Doro.”
“But I want to see what the gulch looks like,” objected Dorothy, who had little belief in Nat’s wild animal scare.
“’Fraid-cat!” sing-songed Nat, grinning.
“No. I’ve gone far enough. I’m tired,” said Tavia, decisively. “I’m going to sit right down here on this rock. I’ll wait for you if a wild bear doesn’t come along and chase me back up the hill.”
“Wild bear, your grandmother!” said Nat, with disgust.
“Come on, Dot,” Ned said to his cousin. “I’m glad you haven’t lost your pluck.”
“You’ll lose more than that if you see a bear,” advised Tavia.
“I don’t believe there’s a thing to hurt us in this place, and I want to see,” repeated Dorothy Dale.
The trio went on, but they did not really believe Tavia would remain far behind them. “She’s up to some trick,” Nat announced.
“I believe you’re right,” agreed Dorothy, but when they had gone at least half a mile down the gorge, and the irrepressible Tavia had not overtaken them, Dorothy began frequently to look back.
“What do you suppose she is doing?” she repeated, greatly puzzled.
“Oh, she is up to something. You know Tavia,” responded Ned, carelessly.
At last Dorothy said: “I’m going back. I am worried about Tavia.”
“Nonsense!” cried Nat. “She’s gone back to join mother, I bet you.”
“Betting never proved anything yet, little boy,” laughed Dorothy. “You boys can go on if you like. But it’s no fun without Tavia.”
She started back briskly; the boys started more slowly. “Huh!” grunted Nat, “Tavia isn’t often a ‘spoil sport.’ I don’t see what’s gotten into her to-day.”
Dorothy did not run, but she lost no time and was some distance ahead of her cousins when she came in sight of the rocks where Tavia had seated herself.
Her chum was still there. When Dorot
hy shouted to her Tavia did not look her way. The rock was a low, flat-topped boulder with a crack across the middle of it. Tavia seemed to be looking at something before her on the rock.
“What have you found there, Tavia?” cried Dorothy. “It must be something tremendously interesting.”
Still her chum did not move—nor make reply. As though she were posing for her picture, the young girl sat motionless. Dorothy could not see her face at the angle from which she was advancing. But something about Tavia’s attitude finally startled her.
“What is the matter?” screamed Dorothy Dale, suddenly bounding forward.
She could run as well as any boy. Her gymnasium work at Glenwood, and her vacations out-of-doors, had made Dorothy hardy and strong. She dashed forward over the rough way, crying out again and again as she saw that her chum still sat stonily.
Dorothy leaped up beside her and would have—the next moment—seized Tavia by the shoulder. But there, with her hand outstretched, she halted. The intake of her breath sounded harsh in her own ears. She saw what had paralyzed Tavia—and the horrid object nearly froze Dorothy, too, in her tracks.
Out of the crevice in the rock protruded the arrow-headed upper length of a rattlesnake. It was coiled less than two feet below the level of Tavia’s face, and its tail was a-quiver. The whir of the rattles is a dreaded sound that, once heard, is never to be forgotten.
There the reptile stretched itself, its eyes fairly holding Tavia charmed. Of course, it was the girl’s own nerves that held her motionless and speechless—her nerves affected by fear.
Tavia could neither rise to escape the threatened stroke of the rattler, nor do aught to defend herself from it. The immediate neck of the creature was curved back, and the pointed head, with the swiftly shooting tongue, threatened instant attack.
Dorothy felt a dreadful tightening about her heart—just as though a savage hand had gripped it. She felt as though she would faint—yet she knew she must not give way to such weakness.
On her depended her chum’s very life!
She glanced about for some weapon. There was no stick within her reach of sufficient weight to be of use. But there were pebbles and broken bits of rock scattered over the ground.
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