Before he or Nat could descend, the driver did so. He thrust the reins into the hands of old John Dempsey, and went over the wheel in a flash. Smiling and bowing he put out his hand for the basket, and turned swiftly to hand it up before aiding the old lady herself.
It was at this very moment that the sensitive Ophelia decided to make a break for liberty. She squawked, pushed up one of the basket lids, and flopped right out over the Mexican’s head.
“Oh! stop her!” cried Mrs. Petterby.
But there was no stopping Ophelia just then. She struck the nearest mustang and he plunged ahead, snorting. On the instant all four of the beasts were off at a gallop, leaving the Mexican, Mrs. Petterby, and Ophelia herself, behind.
CHAPTER XIII
AT THE RANCH HOUSE
“I thought I was in an airship!” Tavia declared.
That was after the excitement was all over, however. At the moment the mustangs started, all she did was to scream!
The four half-wild little beasts leaped forward with one accord when the frightened pullet flew squawking over them. The coach lurched horribly; but the wheels remained in the ruts.
Old John Dempsey held the ribbons, and held them firmly; but he was not on the driver’s side of the seat. There was both a foot-break and a half-lever-break; but he was unable to reach either. And in his old arms was no longer the strength to pull the beasts in.
Ned and Nat were shut off from the front seat by their mother and the two girls. Tavia, beside screaming, seized the railing of the seat. Aunt Winnie clung to her, and would have seized Dorothy as well, but the latter flung off her aunt’s hand and plunged over the back of the driver’s seat.
Frightened as she was, brave Dorothy knew that it was her chance, and her chance only. As the mustangs gathered their feet under them and whipped the tottering old coach up the side of the arroyo, Dorothy slid into the place the Mexican had deserted.
Fortunately she had watched him manipulate the brakes. And the mustangs had the drag of the coach behind them going up hill. Going down it might have been a very different story. True it was, that when the panting, straining horses came out upon the level at the top of the rise, they were glad to stop to breathe. With Dorothy giving them the brakes and the old Grand Army Veteran on the lines, the four rascals were glad to stop.
Up came José Morale, having left the excited old lady, and the excited hen, at the bottom of the hill. What he said in his own language to the horses was a plenty! But in the next breath he praised Dorothy for her pluck in most extravagant terms.
As for that matter, they all praised her; but Dorothy would not listen.
“Somebody had to do it—why not me?” she demanded. “Now, Ned and Nat, you run back there and help Mrs. Petterby catch that hen, and then bring them both on. We’ll wait here for you.”
It was then that Tavia had a slight attack of hysterics. “That hen will be the death of me! she will! she will!” gasped the girl. “Did you ever hear of anything so ridiculous in all your life?”
“Now, don’t laugh and make Mrs. Petterby feel as though you were laughing at her,” admonished Dorothy.
“But if we take her to ride with us, and Ophelia lays an egg in this stage, and the egg hatches out a chicken,” gasped Tavia, “that chicken will be a nervous wreck from the start. At least, it will be afflicted with St. Vitus Dance.”
“Do be reasonable!” exclaimed Dorothy. “There! the boys have caught Ophelia.” She was standing up on the stage roof, looking back at the little group below. Suddenly a man on pony-back appeared over the last rise the coach had crossed, and headed down into the hollow.
“Who’s that coming?” demanded Tavia, from whose bright eyes little escaped.
“Why—why——”
“It’s our knight of the lariat!” exclaimed Tavia, excitedly. “It’s Mr. Lance.”
“I believe you are right. That is Gaby he is riding.”
“Of course it is Gaby,” said Tavia. “Now we can introduce him to your aunt. And oh! Mrs. White! he is just the loveliest thing!”
“How recklessly you talk about the young men, Octavia,” said Mrs. White. “I believe he was very kind to you girls, however. I shall be glad to thank him.”
Ned was helping Mrs. Petterby along on his arm, while Nat carried the basket, with Ophelia safely fastened within, when Lance overtook them.
The cowboy raised his hat in salute and would have ridden on, but Mrs. Petterby suddenly manifested much excitement. She screamed aloud and even Dorothy, on top of the hill, heard her:
“Lance Petterby! for the good land’s sake! if it ain’t my baby!”
The cowboy swung in his saddle, pulled the pony up short, and instantly leaped to the ground.
“Jerusha Juniper!” he yelled. “MOTHER!”
The little old lady ran straight into his arms. The big cowpuncher caught her up and hugged her tightly. Even at that distance Dorothy could see the surprise and delight depicted upon his countenance.
“And we never dreamed,” murmured Tavia, “that ‘Lance’ was his first name.”
“She has found him; isn’t it delightful?” cried Dorothy, and she insisted upon climbing down and running to meet the little old lady from Rand’s Falls, Massachusetts, and her stalwart son.
“Mr. Lance!” she cried, “I am so delighted to see you. And to think we know your mother, and were just about to give her a ride when those horrid ponies ran away!”
“Jerusha Juniper, Miss!” said the cowboy. “However this old lady got clean out yere, I dunno. But maybe I ain’t glad to see her!”
He caught her up again in his arms, and Mrs. Petterby laughed and flushed like a girl. “Stop your silliness, Lance Petterby,” she ordered. “Set me down. Miss Dale will think ye ain’t got the sense ye was born with. And don’t let that boy drop Ophelia.”
It took some minutes to explain to the cowboy the present situation—and especially how his mother came to be on this lonely trail, afoot.
It seemed that he was often at the squatter—Nicholson’s—house and that was why people in Dugonne had advised Mrs. Petterby to look for Lance there.
They got the old lady into the coach and seated her with the chicken’s basket in her lap, and Mrs. White elected to get down and ride with her. The mustangs started on; Lance Petterby rode beside the stage. Dorothy noticed that the cowboy kept close to Tavia’s side.
Tavia was talking “nineteen to the dozen,” as Nat disgustedly said; “and the use she’s making of her eyes is a shame!” he added, in an aside, to Dorothy. But Dorothy could not stop her chum. The reckless girl had “taken the bit in her teeth.”
Lance was fairly bowled over by the batteries of Tavia’s speech and glances. After all, to the unsophisticated cowboy, Tavia was quite a grown-up young lady. Dorothy knew that if he lost his head it would not be his fault, but her chum’s.
“I’m ashamed of you, Tavia Travers,” she whispered, fiercely, in the black-eyed girl’s ear. “How dare you? If Aunt Winnie was up here with us now she’d put a stop to this, young lady.”
“Oh, Doro! you’re just killing!” cried Tavia, wickedly, and giggled, and bridled, just as though her friend had said something very funny to her. After that Dorothy held her peace grimly.
She was glad that Lance was going no further with them than Nicholson’s place. There he and Mrs. Petterby were to stay for a day or two before going on to the headquarters of the Double Chain Outfit, where Lance worked.
Mrs. White invited them both to come over to Hardin’s, where she decided that she and the young folk would remain for six weeks, at least. She was especially gracious to Lance, and thanked him again for his kindness to the two girls when they had been left behind by the train; she might not have asked him so cordially to visit Hardin’s had she known how Tavia had been acting.
“We sartain sure’ll come to see ye,” Mrs. Petterby said, briskly, “pervidin’ Lance kin find something a mite more steady for me to ride in. I shall want to see ye all again befo
re I start back East.”
“Oh, yuh won’t want tuh start back yet awhile, mother,” drawled Lance.
“I dunno,” said Mrs. Petterby. “I ain’t seen nothin’ yet in Colorado the ekal of Rand’s Falls, Massachusetts.”
“We’ll fix that,” grunted Lance, waving his hat again, as the old coach lumbered away along the track.
The sun was sinking when the now wearied mustangs drew the coach up the round flank of the hill on which the Hardin ranch house was set. Like most dwellings in the cattle country, the house was sprawling, one story only in height, and rather picturesque.
“I just love the look of it,” Dorothy declared, standing up to see it better. “Don’t you, Tavia?”
“I would if I could think of the scene long enough,” admitted her chum. “But, oh, me! oh, my! I am wondering if there will be anything in the line of supper forthcoming? I’m so hungry it takes my mind off the scenery.”
“How ridiculous! of course there will be something to eat.”
“But will there be enough?” cried Tavia.
Mrs. White assured her there would be supper. The lawyers at Dugonne had told her that there were Colonel Hardin’s foreman and his family on the place, as well as several herdsmen.
Dorothy continued to gaze wonderingly at the rolling green and brown pastures, wire-fenced and evidently carefully kept up, rising in high terraces from beyond the ranch house into the wooded and rugged foothills to the west.
“I expect,” said Aunt Winnie, “up in that rugged country yonder lies the wonderful Lost River they tell me about—the water supply. It may increase the value of the great estate enormously, as the lawyers say, but I fear it is going to make me a lot of trouble.”
“Do you think so, Aunt Winnie?” asked Dorothy, earnestly.
“Yes. I spoke of the matter to Mr. Jermyn, and he advised me to go slowly. There are other people after the water beside Desert City and some farmers to whom Colonel Hardin promised it.”
“Who else?”
“Some big mining syndicate.”
“That must be the Consolidated Ackron Company,” Ned broke in. “But what do they want of water?”
“Hydraulic mining, I understand,” said his mother. “It would greatly cheapen their process of extracting gold from the soil. I do not understand much about it, I must admit.”
“Maybe the mining syndicate would give you more for the water than the desert people?” suggested Nat.
“That would make no difference to us,” said his mother, firmly. “If Colonel Hardin promised Desert City and the farmers, that Lost River would flow south, south it shall flow, if they keep their part of the bargain, and the thing can be done.”
“But,” cried Dorothy, “can it be made to flow either way? How wonderful! It must have a natural channel, mustn’t it?”
“So I suppose,” replied Aunt Winnie. “There seems to be more to the matter than we know about—yet. Mr. Philo Marsh gave us very few particulars.”
“I am sure that he is not a very trustworthy informant,” declared Dorothy, obstinately, to Tavia. “We must watch Mr. Philo Marsh.”
“And you objected before because I just looked at him!” breathed Tavia, making very big eyes at her chum.
While they were indulging in these surmises the rattling old stagecoach had been mounting the rise toward the Hardin ranch-house. Finally José shouted to the mustangs again and they sprang forward in what Nat called “a grandstand finish,” stopping with a flourish before the front of the house.
There was nobody on the wide veranda to greet them, but beyond was a group of less important buildings, and from these came running several people.
First came Hank Ledger, the foreman of the ranch, to whom Mrs. White had a letter of introduction from the lawyers. With him was his wife—a handsome, buxom woman, who came with floury arms and an apron on, being in the midst of preparations for supper for her husband and the hands.
Two Mexicans appeared, too, who greeted José Morale, the stage driver, in his own language. Last of all came a very pretty, dark and rosy girl, younger than Dorothy and Tavia in years, yet with something indefinably “grown-up” about her. The girl cast alternately shy looks at the visitors and at José Morale, with whom, later, Dorothy saw her talking very intimately in a secluded corner.
Just then, however, Dorothy was more interested in seeing the interior of the ranch-house that was to be their home for the next few weeks. The door was open and with Tavia she entered, while Mrs. White talked with Mr. and Mrs. Ledger on the veranda.
CHAPTER XIV
“THE SNAKE IN THE GRASS”
“Goodness me, Doro! did you ever see so much out-of-doors before in all your life? Isn’t the world awfully big?”
Tavia was at the window of the large room in which the girls slept, on the second morning of their stay at the ranch-house and she had not begun to dress. This big world that she was looking out at, seemed just now deserted.
There were miles upon miles of rolling country to north, east, and south. In the early light this vast expanse of out-of-doors was colored in many hues—and the hues were ever changing. The wall of mountains to the west, which shut off their view seemed so near that Tavia declared she could run over to them before breakfast!
“You might before breakfast, but not before breakfast time!” laughed Dorothy. “Mr. Ledger says it’s two days’ ride on a good pony to that huge rock that we see standing up there so clearly.”
“I suppose so. Lost River is over that way, too. The foreman says that most of this rolling country we see belongs to the Hardin estate.”
“What a huge, huge place it is!” sighed Dorothy. “And what will we ever do with it all?”
“Ned wants to raise cattle on it,” chuckled Tavia, “but I believe Nat would rather raise mischief.”
Dorothy did not pay attention to this. She was gazing afar, and said very quietly:
“Mr. Ledger says the land is rich enough to raise anything.”
“Don’t you believe all your hear—and not more than half of what you see,” said her chum, philosophically. “Appearances are deceitful. That’s like the little girl who lost her penny.”
“What little girl?” demanded Dorothy, dreamily.
“Oh! it might have been any little girl—who was sharp,” chuckled Tavia. “At any rate a fine, handsome, benevolent old party comes along the street and finds the ragged little girl crying, and asked in that benevolent tone that goes with a white vest and gold-headed cane:
“‘What’s the matter, my little dear? What are you crying for?’
“‘I’ve lost my penny,’ says the kid.
“‘Never mind! never mind!’ says the old gentleman, reaching into his pocket. ‘Here is a penny,’ and he hands her one. The kid looks up at him and sees right through the game. Says she:
“‘Why! you horrid man! you had it all the time, didn’t you?’ And the next time,” chuckled Tavia, “he will go right along about his business and not try to play Santa Claus to young ladies to whom he has not been introduced.”
Dorothy laughed at her chum’s little story, and said: “I guess most appearances are deceitful. At least, Aunt Winnie says you mustn’t form an opinion upon mere looks—so that gives me a chance to point a moral, and adorn a tale.”
“There was Pat, who was a coal heaver, coming home and finding that the children had been using his Ancient Order of Hibernian regalia-hat to bring home coals in. ‘Mary Ann! Mary Ann! Phy do youse let thim kids do that?’ holding up the maltreated high hat. ‘I’ve told youse before—I don’t like it!’
“‘Shure, Pat,’ says she, ‘phat harm does it be doin’? A little more coaldust won’t hurt yez.’
“‘That may be thrue, woman,’ says Pat, ‘but yez don’t see the point. When I wear the hat out, shure, an’ take it off, it laves a black mar-r-k around me forehead. An’ wot’s th’ consekences?’ demands Pat, warmly. ‘Shure it gits me accused of washin’ me face with me hat on!’”
; Tavia ran out of the room. Both girls were well acquainted with the house now. It had most modern improvements and Colonel Hardin, although he was a man of no family, had entertained largely and believed in having all the comforts attainable. A huge windmill pumped water for the house and stables, for this was not the desert, and a vein of water could be tapped something like a hundred and fifty feet below the surface.
Hank Ledger had told the girls when they inquired that this vein of water was supposed to be a branch of Lost River, which plunged into the earth so many miles away in the low hills to the west.
“Tell yuh what!” croaked the foreman, who seemed to be a bird of ill-omen, “ef that thar river is ever turned out onto the desert, as I tol’ the old Kern” (Colonel) “when he was alive, ye air goin’ tuh shut off yuh own water supply right yere. Now! yuh hear me shoutin’!”
“Do you suppose that is so?” asked Tavia of Dorothy.
“Mrs. Ledger says Hank doesn’t know. She’s a real jolly woman, and declares that Hank can’t see anything but worry and trouble ahead of him. She says he’d prophesy another Deluge if there was a summer shower, and a seven-year drouth if the sun shone two days in succession!”
“But we’re going to know something about Lost River to-day—hooray!” cried Tavia.
It had been decided that the party would explore the wilder part of the estate—some of it, at least—on this day. Hank was to be their leader, and the young folk and Mrs. White were to mount ponies and see all that there was to be seen between an early breakfast and suppertime.
The boys were already—early as was the hour—down in the corral picking out the ponies they were to ride. Neither Nat nor Ned wanted “hobby horses”; but as big Hank let them have their own choice in the matter, the boys got several falls before they selected ponies that were both spirited and well trained. Naturally the foreman selected the mounts for the girls and Mrs. White, himself.
Mrs. Ledger had undertaken the cooking for the party at the big house, for it was hard to get even Mexican women at short notice. The girls dusted and ridded up the house every morning, early.
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