“I—don’t—see—how—Aunt—ie—can ride so fast!” stammered Dorothy.
“She never did before,” repeated Nat.
The pursuers had not lost hope. The trail over the plateau was twisted, but almost level. Their horses seemed quite as willing as when they had started from the ranch-house.
They dashed up the little rise beside the noisy rapids and then the prospect opened before them for some two miles. Philo Marsh and his crowd were just ahead. The pursuers could see them quite plainly.
Lance began to yell and beat his pony with his hat. The Mexicans’ yelps were as shrill as a dog’s howl. The boys and Tavia were caught up by the excitement, and they shouted, too, but Dorothy remained silent.
She searched the cavalcade ahead for a glimpse of her aunt’s figure. There was a female in the crowd; but, was it Aunt Winnie?
Surely, that good lady could never have ridden with such abandon—not even if she had been lashed to her saddle! And this person ahead wore garments of much more brilliant color than Aunt Winnie had ever been known to put on.
“That never in the world is Auntie!” cried Dorothy, at last.
Tavia heard her, and flashed her chum a broad smile. Then Tavia urged her horse on, shouting as the boys shouted.
“You knew it all the time, Tavia Travers!” screamed Dorothy, in anger.
She crowded her own pony close to Tavia’s mount and shook that irrepressible young person by the arm. Tavia would pay no attention to her. The end of the race promised to be exciting, and Tavia’s attention would not be coaxed aside.
They were in sight of the head of the gorge. The men in the lead began to yell. Evidently they expected to find some of their own kind here.
One of the Mexicans in the party of pursuit whipped a long-barreled revolver into sight. The herdsmen of Hardin Ranch were not supposed to carry weapons save at night when riding herd. Lance Petterby saw the gun and yelled at his follower:
“Put away that gat.! I’ll natcher’ly manhandle any feller that fires a gun.”
The next moment Ned White uttered a shout. “Hi! that’s not mother with those fellows. It’s—it’s that Mexican girl, Flores!”
Only a hundred yards separated the two parties. The girl who had ridden in the midst of the leading crew, suddenly swung her pony to one side, wheeled him about, and dashed back toward Dorothy and her friends.
“Flores! Flores!” cried Dorothy.
“They blow up! They blow up! Dynamite!” shrieked Flores, waving her arms excitedly and letting her pony take his course.
Some of the Mexicans held in their ponies. At the warning more than one desired to keep out of the danger zone. But Lance Petterby drove on, yelling:
“Not much they won’t set off no dynamite. They ain’t gwine tuh be let.”
Without doubt he would have flung himself the next minute, single handed, upon the half dozen scoundrels had there not occurred something quite unexpected. Philo Marsh and his henchmen had leaped from their horses. They were almost at the head of the gorge. The rock between where the ground fell away into the chasm, and the brink of the rushing river, was narrow. It was plain to be seen that a properly set blast must open a gap into the bank of the river and turn the latter’s course.
Once changed into this gorge which led to the north, it would be very difficult to shut off the flow of water from the new channel.
Just as Lance was about to throw himself upon the men working for the mining company, a figure lounged into view before the party. It was that of a tall, slouching man, and he was heavily and prominently armed, having a brace of pistols slung about his body outside his coat. He was smoking a pipe.
“Hank Ledger!” ejaculated Philo Marsh.
“Yep,” drawled the foreman of the Hardin Ranch. “I run off your two friends this mawnin’. They’d got them holes drilled and the dynamite sticks set. All they waited for was that ’lectric battery you got thar in that thar leetle box, Philo.
“But it ain’t no go. I’ve extracted them dynamite sticks an’ they air soakin’ in the river right now. I tol’ yuh tuh let Miz White erlone. She’s er mighty able lady and I don’t kalkerlate tuh let no squirrel-faced, bald-headed feller, with a dyed mustache, interfere with her consarns. D’ye get me?”
Lance Petterby led the cheering as the party from the Hardin Ranch reached the scene and heard the foreman’s words. Lance rode right up to Philo’s pony and knocked the electric battery off the saddle-bow, and the box was smashed on the ground.
“What you doin’, Petterby?” yelled Marsh.
Lance leaned from his saddle and wagged a finger under the villain’s nose. “Gimme another word and I’ll smash you like I done your play-toy yonder. I’m achin’ tuh leave my mark on yuh,” whispered Lance, so that the girls could not hear him—or, he thought they could not.
“Isn’t he splendid?” cried Tavia to Dorothy. “Lance is a regular story-book hero.”
But Dorothy wanted to hear Flores’ story. “How did you come to be with those men, Flores?” she asked the Mexican girl.
“Oh, Señorita! I know—I see—I no can sp’ak da Inglese well, you know, Señorita. I know dey come here to blow up de river. I run to de beeg house to tell. Dey ketch me—mak’ me ride wit’ dhem——”
“We get you, Flores,” said Lance, quickly. Then he said something to the Mexicans in their own tongue and the fellows exchanged fierce glances and scowled at Philo Marsh, who sneaked away from their vicinity in quick retreat.
Flores was in tears; but Tavia was still widely smiling. “Oh, dear!” she sighed. “Wasn’t it fun, Doro—as long as it lasted? I never do expect to have such a ride again. It was just like one of those moving picture chases we used to see.”
“Tavia Travers!” exclaimed Dorothy. “I believe you knew all the time that it wasn’t Aunt Winnie these men had carried off.”
“Well! you might have seen all the colors of the rainbow in her frock, too, before they first rode out of sight,” said Tavia, her eyes wickedly dancing. “I never saw Mrs. White sporting very gay colors, my dear.”
“But where is Auntie? ”
“She went to lie down, you remember, before ever we went down to see them burn those poor little calves,” Tavia replied. “She had a headache. Like enough she fell asleep and did not hear us when we came back. You called only once for her.”
If never before, Dorothy Dale felt a measure of exasperation at Tavia which came near causing a falling-out between them. And yet, when Dorothy stopped to think, she realized that she was at fault in that she had not searched properly for Aunt Winnie before starting upon this wild-goose chase.
Then she heard what Nat was saying to Tavia. Nat could always find something to praise in the latter young person’s conduct, no matter what she did:
“Say, Tavia! if you hadn’t started this riot about mother being kidnapped, Hank would have had to face this gang alone. Maybe they would have got him. You’re all right, Tavia!”
“Thanks, Monsieur!” responded the elfish Tavia, bowing.
“And no knowing what Philo Marsh would have done, had his crowd been in the majority,” growled Ned, from the other side of the girls. “He looks ugly enough right now to chew nails.”
But Mr. Marsh had come to the end of his rope. He and his friends conferred together for only a few moments and then rode slowly away.
“But they may be back with more dynamite, if this place isn’t watched,” said Ned. “How about it, Mr. Ledger?”
“The boy’s right,” said Lance. “Philo is a regular snake in the grass.”
“That’s what John Dempsey calls him,” said Tavia to Dorothy; but Dorothy would not speak to her chum just then, for she still felt aggrieved.
“What yuh want,” said Lance to Hank Ledger, “is somebody tuh patrol this here river till them Desert City people sign up an’ take charge of things—if Miz White is goin’ tuh let ’em have the water.”
“Them’s the fellers that’s goin’ to git it,” agreed H
ank. “She told me so. And you air right, Lance—you bein’ the man for the job. I’ll speak to Miz White about it—if yuh’ll sign on. Sixty a month an’ found—better’n you’re gittin’ now, old boy.”
“I’m on,” agreed the cowpuncher, looking at the two girls slily. But Dorothy saw the glance, and she was again disturbed. “I got tired of eatin’ that Chink’s cookin’ over at the Double Chain Outfit, anyhow. B’sides, I believe I kin git my old lady tuh stay out yere with me for a spell, an’ I’ll need a raise in wages, Hank.”
They left him there on guard and rode back to the ranch-house. Aunt Winnie was placidly knitting on the veranda, for Mrs. Ledger had assured her that her sons and the two girls had ridden off in company with Lance Petterby and the Mexicans.
But she was excited when she received the report of what had been done over by Lost River. The way Philo Marsh and his henchmen had treated Flores could not be overlooked.
Mrs. White wrote to Mr. Jermyn again and this time the lawyer received the letter. He drove out the next day to the ranch, and after hearing the particulars of Philo’s attempted raid upon the Lost River water supply, he advised a settlement of the whole affair to be made at once.
It was discovered that Marsh had circulated the report in Desert City and among the dry-farmers that the new owners of Colonel Hardin’s property had already agreed to sell the water-rights to the Consolidated Ackron Company. As soon as it was made known to the city’s council that Mrs. White stood ready to carry out the dead Colonel’s tentative agreement, the city fathers and the farmers came forward with a proposition and a bond that Lawyer Jermyn advised Mrs. White to accept.
CHAPTER XXVI
SAYING GOOD-BYE ALL AROUND
“He must be dreadfully lonesome over there,” said Tavia, with a sigh, staring out of the window.
Dorothy was counting her handkerchiefs preparatory to storing away those she would not need on the return journey, in the tray of her trunk.
“Forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven——Tavia! I can’t find that forty-eighth handkerchief. I know I had four dozen when we started from North Birchlands. Where——”
“There were forty and seven that safely lay
In the shelter of the trunk,”
wailed Tavia. “Maybe even you, my dear Doro, could mislay a handkerchief.”
“No. I most always never do. You know that, Tavia.”
Tavia’s interest in the missing handkerchief failed. “I wonder if he’s thinking of us,” she said.
“I couldn’t have dropped it anywhere——”
“Why! if I had forty-seven handkerchiefs all at once—or even seven—I wouldn’t worry my head over a single, measly little one. Maybe one of the boys is keeping it for you, Doro.”
“Nonsense!”
“For a keepsake, you know. Lance borrowed one of mine and I’ll never see it again, I s’pose.”
“Why, Tavia! don’t let Aunt Winnie hear of it.”
“Oh, pooh!” said the irresponsible girl, shrugging her shoulders. “What’s a handkerchief?”
“But mine were all good ones,” complained Dorothy.
“Good or cheap, I wouldn’t trouble my head about them.”
“That’s why you have so few,” accused Dorothy.
“Oh, fudge!” quoth Tavia, turning to the window again. “It must be terrible wearisome to be alone in the wilderness.”
“Whatever are you talking about?” snapped Dorothy, at last awaking to the fact that Tavia’s mind was engaged in a mysterious line of thought.
“Why—poor Lance,” replied Tavia, in a most soulful tone of voice.
“Tavia Travers!” gasped Dorothy. “Won’t you ever let that poor fellow alone?”
“That’s exactly it,” said Tavia. “He is all, all alone, ’way up there in the woods, watching that river flow by. Isn’t it awful?”
“Do behave!” snapped Dorothy. “He’s well out of your way——”
“But he doesn’t think so, I am sure. Even his mother says I’m a ‘monstrous interesting gal.’”
For Mrs. Petterby had come over to the Hardin Ranch again by Mrs. White’s express invitation. The little old lady from Rand’s Falls, Massachusetts, was actually getting cured of her prejudices against the West.
“And Ophelia seems contented,” said she. “I got ter admit that there’s some things about Colorado I like. I never did eat sech melons. An’ the sky’s bluer than I ever see it before.
“My baby says I got ter stay out here and keep house for him—though he’s off in them hills now and his home might’s well be an Injun wigwam.”
Mrs. Petterby agreed, however, to be housekeeper and caretaker of the ranch-house. Lance was going to stay on with the Hardin outfit, and his mother was a spry old lady and was glad of the position Aunt Winnie offered her.
“For we shall be coming out here often,” declared Mrs. White. “I know my brother, Major Dale, will like it immensely, once he’s well enough to visit the ranch. And the young folk are quite crazy over it.”
Ned was determined to go into the cattle business and stock raising—when he was out of college.
“What’s the use of boning at books, then?” demanded Nat. “‘All Gaul is divided into three parts’ isn’t going to help you raise longhorns for the market.”
“How do you know?” asked his brother, coolly. “And the cattle business will be a sideline.”
When old Mrs. Petterby took hold of affairs at the big house Aunt Winnie began to have a better time. “Help” was hard to get in that region and Mrs. White and the girls had done all but the kitchen work since coming to the ranch.
Now she had time to ride with Dorothy and Tavia as far as Desert City, and meet the men who were going to make possible the great transformation scene in that part of the desert that was to be irrigated with the water from Lost River.
Dorothy and Tavia enjoyed these jaunts immensely, too, but in between they had found time to ride up into the hills occasionally to see the tall young cowpuncher who guarded the river. Tavia would go, and Dorothy did not propose to let her go alone.
That was what Tavia was hinting at on the morning of the trunk packing incident. The following afternoon they were to ride into Dugonne, taking train next morning for the East.
“Well, I’ll go,” said Dorothy, rather displeased it must be confessed. “But I wish we’d never seen Lance Petterby—that I do!”
“Why, Dorothy Doolittle Doodlebug! how you talk,” cried the innocent-eyed Tavia. “And he’s been such fun! Why, without Lance my trip out here to the ‘wild and woolly’ would have been without a particle of savor. And I’m going to send him a necktie for a Christmas present. Going to knit it myself.”
“If Nat heard you say that, he would observe, ‘Yes, you are— nit!’” chuckled Dorothy. “And Lance never wears a necktie. A red handkerchief around his neck, and tied behind, is his limit.”
A little later, in their chic riding habits, the girls ran down to the corrals. The Mexican girl appeared from the Ledger shack to attend them.
“Flores is such a nice little thing,” Tavia said to Dorothy as Flores caught and bridled the second pony. “Don’t you wish she was going back East with us?”
“Perhaps she wouldn’t be happy there,” replied Dorothy. “Mrs. Petterby is going to take her in hand and—so the old lady says—going to make a thorough New England housewife of her.”
“And I wager you put her up to it,” retorted Tavia. “Why is it, Doro, that you are forever thinking of other people, and doing things for them?”
“Nonsense!” said Dorothy, blushing. “Flores ought to have a better chance.”
“Oh, Mees!” cried the pretty, dark skinned girl, as she brought the second pony up to the gate. “I am so ver’ sorree dhat you go ’way. We shall be l-l-lonely here wit’out you. See! I soon dhe Ingleesh sp’ak nice—no?”
“It’s fine, Flores,” declared Tavia, laughing. “Who has taught you so much?”
The glowing eyes of the Me
xican girl rested on Dorothy’s face. “She teach me, Mees. She is so good!”
For some reason Tavia grew suddenly serious. At least, she did not tell a joke or say a whimsical thing till they had ridden more than ten miles over the now well-beaten trail to Lost River.
“Doro Doodledum!” exclaimed the irrepressible, suddenly. “Do you know what you are?”
“Yes, Ma’am. American; white; single; age—not stated; no political preferences, although leaning toward the suffragettes; attend the Congregational church——”
“How smart! But you are something else,” declared Tavia, still quite serious of countenance.
“Sure! A graduate of Glenwood School. Oh, Tavia! how I wish Ned Ebony, and Cologne, and half a dozen of the other girls, were here. Wouldn’t we have had fun?”
“Yes. But that is another story——”
“It’s the truth!”
“Ha! you do not know your Kipling,” cried Tavia. “But never mind. The point is, Doro, that I have come to the conclusion that you are something more than human.”
Dorothy looked at her in amazement. “How you talk! What is the joke?”
“It is no joke. Seriously,” said Tavia. “You see, Doro, I have been thinking, and more deeply than you would believe.”
“Don’t do it,” laughed Dorothy. “It might grow upon you. Then you would no longer be Terrible Tavia, thoughtlessly threading her way through the thistles of this terrestrial life.”
“Goodness!” exclaimed her chum. “That must have hurt you.”
“Not much, but it was a strain,” confessed Dorothy.
“Now! listen to me,” commanded her chum. “I have been thinking it out. You are forever helping people, Doro, while I go along having a good time myself, and never thinking of a living soul but myself.”
“Why, Tavia! that is not so,” Dorothy said, gravely.
“Oh, yes, it is. Don’t contradict. Look at this trip. You began helping people almost as soon as we started. There was old Lady Petterby.”
“For pity’s sake! what did I do for her?” demanded Dorothy, in honest amazement.
Dorothy Dale in the West Page 16
