“I—I dare not. I no explain. Hush!” whispered the girl. “You take care at beeg house. Bad mans about.”
This was anything but lucid, but try as she might Dorothy could get nothing more explicit from Flores. The latter seemed not only unable to explain herself in English, but she was afraid to speak at all!
Flores hurried back to the Ledger domicile and lent Dorothy a mandolin of her own. Tavia could play the mandolin, and the young folk at the big house had a nice “sing” that evening.
When Dorothy and her chum went to bed the former told Tavia about Flores’ strange speech and actions.
“More mystery, Rudolpho!” cried Tavia. “What can she mean? ‘Bad mans,’ eh? Sounds awfully interesting. Almost any male man with intelligence would be a delightful change from these ignorant Mexican herdsmen.”
“Even a villain like Philo Marsh?”
“Oh! he is a disappointment, despite his mustache,” admitted Tavia. “Even as a villain he proved second rate.”
“Perhaps we haven’t seen the last of his villainy,” said Dorothy, darkly.
Tavia, her hearing momentarily impaired by a big yawn, did not catch the drift of Dorothy’s prophecy. The next day there was more than the usual stir about the Hardin ranch. Philo Marsh and a low-browed, greasy looking man, whom the lawyer introduced as “Jedge Biggs”—a Justice of the Peace and Notary Public—arrived early in the day.
The girls were by now deeply interested in the matter of the water-rights. The boys had ridden away as usual, right after breakfast. Dorothy had told Tavia enough about Aunt Winnie’s difficulties to arouse the black-eyed girl’s interest and to excite her over this morning visit of Marsh.
The chums remained on the veranda, within hearing of the discussion in the office, when Aunt Winnie appeared to meet the two men from Dugonne.
“Mawnin’, Mrs. White,” said Philo Marsh, in his unctuous way. “We’re all prepared this mawnin’ for business—loaded tuh the muzzle, as yuh might say.”
“I have sent for Mr. Jermyn,” said Aunt Winnie, quietly. “I prefer to have him here before I sign anything, Mr. Marsh.”
“Sufferin’ snakes, Ma’am! this ain’t another hold-up, I hope? Why, ye agreed tuh sign——”
“Quite so. When Mr. Jermyn comes, if he does not advise against it, I will sign.”
“But, Mrs. White! I have reason to know Jermyn is not in Dugonne at present.”
“That is too bad,” said Mrs. White, with real disappointment. “I thought it strange that he returned no reply to the note I sent him last evening.”
It was not strange to Philo Marsh, but he gave no sign that he had ever heard of the message.
“It seems a pity to hold the matter up again, Mr. Marsh,” said Aunt Winnie, calmly. “But I feel that my lawyer should have an opportunity to advise.”
“Mrs. White!” cried Philo Marsh, his wrath getting the better of his judgment, “this is childish. It’s a joke for you, perhaps, but not for me. You promised——”
“Mr. Marsh!” exclaimed Aunt Winnie. “I am not in the habit of being spoken to in such a tone.”
She rose and passed to the door, leaving the two men standing, scowling at each other.
“I am sorry for your disappointment, Mr. Marsh,” proceeded the lady, “but I can no longer discuss this matter—or go on with it at all—until I secure the advice of Mr. Jermyn. Good morning.”
“Bully for Aunt Winnie!” whispered Tavia, on the porch, squeezing Dorothy’s arm.
“But I am afraid of what Philo Marsh will do,” returned Dorothy, in a similar tone. “He looks like a thunder-cloud.”
Mrs. White had swept from the office, and the two men finally came out. They did not notice the girls, and went off whispering together. A little later they rode away from the ranch sheds, but did not take the trail to Dugonne.
Ned and Nat had told the girls that some yearlings were to be branded that morning, down in the far corral, and Dorothy and Tavia wanted to see the work done—although they shrank from the idea of giving pain to the helpless cattle.
“But I suppose that is the only way to keep run of the stock,” Dorothy said, wisely.
“They couldn’t very well paste numbers on their horns,” rejoined Tavia, whimsically.
When they told Aunt Winnie they were going, they found her looking very grave, and she confessed to a headache. She suffered severely from that affliction at times and she said the glare of the sun outside oppressed her.
Dorothy knew that nervousness, enhanced by the argument with Philo Marsh, was the real cause of her aunt’s illness. She offered to remain at the house, but Aunt Winnie sent her out with Tavia.
“Go along and have a good time, child,” she said. “I shall be all right alone here.”
For at this time of day there was not a soul else about the big house. Mrs. Ledger and Flores were busy at their own quarters.
It was an hour later—after retiring in bad order because of the odor of burning hair and flesh in their nostrils, and the sound of piteous bawling in their ears—that the two girls approached the ranch-house. The branding operations had been too much for their courage.
“I don’t want to be a ‘cattle queen,’” Tavia declared, with a shudder. “One of those poor calves had blue eyes and he looked at me so pitiful!”
“Yet you have no tender feeling for the poor humans you plague—like Lance Petterby,” chuckled Dorothy.
“Oh! they are fair game!” said Tavia, shaking her braids and running on before.
Suddenly—right at the corner of the house—she halted, and wildly beckoned Dorothy forward.
“Look! oh, look, Doro!” she gasped, as her friend came running.
Tavia, breathless, pointed off toward the west. A party of at least six horsemen were riding at a gallop away from the front of the ranch-house.
“Philo Marsh!” cried Dorothy. “I see him.”
“There is a woman with them—she is riding in the middle of the crowd,” screamed Tavia. “Oh, Doro! she’s a prisoner! He’s carried her off.”
“Who’s carried whom off?” demanded the startled Dorothy, as the cavalcade disappeared into a coulie.
“Your aunt! Philo Marsh has her. He’s kidnapped her—to make her sign those papers—I know he has,” cried Tavia, weakly sitting down on the steps.
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Dorothy, and ran into the house to find her aunt.
But she could not find her. She called, and there came no answer. With fast beating heart and trembling limbs Dorothy Dale returned to the veranda. Tavia was talking to a man on horseback who had just arrived. It was Lance Petterby.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CHASE
“I tell you they’ve run away with her! Whatever shall we do?”
Tavia was quite familiar in her excitement. She had seized Lance Petterby’s free hand and shook it with emphasis. But even at this tragic moment Dorothy noticed the way the cowpuncher looked down at her chum, and she was sorry that Tavia was not more dignified.
“Jerusha Juniper! do yuh mean it?” Lance said.
“We saw them riding away,” declared Tavia. “You didn’t find your aunt, did you, Doro?”
“She’s gone,” admitted Dorothy, feeling a little ill and faint.
“Jerusha Juniper! yuh don’t mean it?” repeated Lance. “’Tain’t possible that she’s been run off against her will?”
“It’s that awful Philo Marsh,” said Tavia. “You don’t understand. She had promised to sign the papers for him this morning, and then she heard something, so she wouldn’t. He was here with a man named Biggs——”
“I know the scamp,” growled Lance.
“Well! they were just as mad!” pursued Tavia.
“So Philo has shown his hand, has he?” said Lance Petterby, slowly. “The ornery cur! I come over here to tell yuh aunt more thet I heard last night. Philo’s been workin’ for the mining company all the time.”
“Don’t stop here talking!” urged Tavia. “We mus
t go after them. Doro and I will get our ponies.”
“Ain’t Hank here?” demanded Lance.
“Mr. Ledger has gone to see about something at the other end of the range,” Dorothy said, in answer to this question.
“But there’s some of the Greasers here—and them boys?”
“Oh, yes!” cried Dorothy, and she told him where they were at work down in the branding pen.
“We’d better go,” admitted the cowboy. “I understand there is going to be something doing up in the hills this very day.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Lance?” cried Dorothy.
“Them minin’ people have got a gang to put in a few dynamite ca’tridges where they’ll do the most good—for them. They intend to blow out enough rock at the head of that gorge you seen the surveyors working in, to drain the current of Lost River out of its bed.”
“Oh! the wicked things!” gasped Tavia.
“You don’t mean it?” was Dorothy’s comment.
“So it was give to me, Miss Dale,” said Lance. “Them surveyors was workin’ for the Consolidated Ackron Company. I got it from the feller that kerried the chain.”
“We saw him,” interrupted Tavia. “A bushy whiskered man.”
“Gil Patrick. That’s him,” said Lance, with emphasis. “When I got the straight tip I reckoned you folks oughter know it. For once let them mining people turn the river their way (they kin get it to their works a sight easier than the Desert City folks kin handle it) and yuh aunt would have a stiff fight on her hands in the courts. Possession is all of nine p’ints of the law—specially in water-rights,” added Lance, nodding vigorously.
“They must be very wicked men,” said Dorothy, “to wish to rob the poor farmers down there in the desert of water. And they will be robbing us, too.”
“I expect they’ll settle at a fair price—only yuh aunt won’t git Lost River back intuh its banks—no, sir!”
THEY KEPT UP WITH THE WILD RIDING MEXICANS.
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“It must not be,” declared Dorothy Dale, vigorously. “And if they have made auntie ride over to that place with them——”
“They have kidnapped her, I tell you!” cried Tavia, her excitement growing.
“I kyan’t believe it, gals,” said Lance Petterby. “But I’ll rout out yuh hands.”
“And we’ll get our ponies. Come, Doro,” added Tavia, starting on a run for the horse corral.
“Sorry Hank ain’t here,” said Lance, as he gave Gaby the rein. “But I’ll git the hull bunch yuh say is down there to the brandin’ pen.”
“Oh, come on, Doro! Come on!” shouted Tavia, over her shoulder. “We must go with them. It will be a regular cowboy chase—just like we see in the movies.”
“Oh, Tavia! do be sensible.”
“How can I be? Your auntie is kidnapped. They’ll try to make her sign the paper——”
Somehow Dorothy felt that this sounded awfully melodramatic. And Tavia was bubbling over with excitement. It did not seem to Dorothy as though Aunt Winnie could really have been carried off by a band of outlaws in the employ of the big mining corporation. It “didn’t sound sensible.”
But the story that men in the employ of the corporation were to blow out the bank of the river and turn the water into a new channel toward the north, instead of toward the south, impressed the girl as being eminently practical. And this dastardly scheme must be stopped.
Flores was not on hand to help the girls catch and saddle their ponies, but by this time Dorothy and Tavia had made such friends and pets of their mounts that the ponies trotted right up to the corral gate the moment they saw the girls.
“Hurry! hurry!” gasped Tavia, pulling up the cinch with trembling fingers. “Do stand still Baby! I am so excited—Doro! isn’t it romantic——”
“Stop!” commanded her friend. “You’ve worked that phrase to death, Tavia Travers, since you started West. If you say it again before Auntie is found I’ll—I’ll spank you.”
Lance came sweeping up from the distant corral as soon as the girls were ready, bringing with him Ned and Nat White and all the Mexicans on the job. There was one fellow missing who should have been there. That was the man who had carried the message to Dugonne the night before for Mrs. White.
But the pursuing party knew nothing of his treachery at this time. It was merely remarked by the boys that the fellow had slipped away from the work at the branding pen just before the girls themselves started back to the ranch-house.
Naturally Ned and Nat were quite as excited over the report of their mother’s disappearance as Tavia herself had been. The girls pointed out the way in which the cavalcade they had seen disappeared, and without going near the big house again the party, all mounted on fresh ponies, drove straight away across the range toward the hills.
“We ain’t goin’ tuh do no trailin’,” said Lance, as they started. “We kin pretty nigh guess whar they air aimin’ for. That’s the place where they mean to blow up the river bank, and we’ll take a crow-line for it.”
There was not much said after they started—not for the first ten miles, at least. The horses were eager, the Mexicans excited, Lance grim, and Ned and Nat both mad and worried. Tavia was really the only rider who thoroughly enjoyed the race.
Her eyes were brighter than ever; her hair was flying; she was hatless, of course; and altogether she appeared to be in the spirit of the chase.
Up hill and down they dashed, the tireless ponies skimming the ground, it seemed. Had the girls not been in the saddle so much during the weeks they had been at Hardin, they certainly would have been shaken off the ponies’ backs now.
But their mounts were sound and eager, and they kept up with the wild riding Mexicans. There was no yelling, or whooping, as they rode; nevertheless the whole cavalcade was in earnest.
Dorothy was very anxious. She could not really believe that Aunt Winnie had been carried off against her will by Philo Marsh and his crew, yet she could not understand why the lady should have gone of her own free will, either! She surely would have let the girls know before starting. And she was not even riding one of the Hardin horses.
Ned and Nat threatened condign punishment for Philo Marsh when they caught him. When the pursuers overtook the party ahead there was likely to be trouble, and that thought increased Dorothy Dale’s anxiety.
On and on they rode, perhaps not following the same trail as the party which they pursued; but they were going quite as directly into the hills (and to the head of that gorge where the girls had seen the surveyors at work) as were Philo Marsh and his companions. Indeed, the Mexicans with Dorothy knew the way more definitely; so the pursuers might arrive at the goal first.
CHAPTER XXV
A LITTLE MORE EXCITEMENT
The party Dorothy Dale and her companions were following into the wilder section of the great Hardin Ranch, had almost an hour’s start of their pursuers. If they were ignorant of such pursuit they might not ride at top speed; therefore the pace set by Lance Petterby on his pony, Gaby, must bring the pursuers to the river at about the time Philo Marsh struck it. Only Dorothy and her friends were bound to strike the stream higher up and nearer the point where Lance believed the dynamite was to be used by the men working for the big mining corporation.
The puzzle was how Philo Marsh and his crowd could have traveled as fast as they did, with Mrs. White in the party. Aunt Winnie was a cautious rider and the boys and Dorothy were ever complaining of her slowness when they were all out on the range together.
But when the pursuers chanced to cross the trail of the cavalcade they pursued, the hoofmarks of the ponies showed that they were traveling fast.
“Goodness!” exclaimed Nat. “She never would ride with us faster than a toad funeral.”
“That shows she is forced to keep up with them,” Tavia declared, with conviction.
“Don’t talk about it!” groaned Dorothy. “I only hope those awful men can be punished for this.”
“Don’t you fret, Miss Dale,” broke in Lance Petterby, grimly. “If Philo has offered Mrs. White any indignity I dunno but he’ll be hung for it. The boys’ll be mighty sore—believe me!”
“That would be dreadful, too,” sighed Dorothy.
“Serve him just right, I say!” said Tavia, shortly.
This conversation had been carried on while they were mounting the steep rise to the plateau formerly described. In ten minutes they were at the river bank. The ground was of such a nature here that at a casual glance one could not tell whether horsemen had recently passed, going up stream, or not.
“Come on!” commanded Lance, waving his hat. “Whether them hombres is thar, or not, we’ll pull a hot finish.”
The ponies dashed on, following Gaby, as though perfectly fresh. They thundered on up the very narrow trail the girls had followed that day they had climbed to the mountain-top.
Suddenly, in a wide opening of the forest-clad plateau, they caught sight of a number of horsemen ahead. It was Marsh and his companions, but they got out of sight so quickly that Dorothy could not be sure that Aunt Winnie was with them.
The cowboys broke into yells of excitement. The ponies dashed forward, and whether the girls would, or no, they were borne at a desperate pace right up the trail after the other flying squadron of horses.
“Isn’t it great?” yelled Tavia, as she rode knee to knee with Dorothy.
“I think it is dreadful,” gasped Dorothy.
But Tavia seemed to be enjoying the race to the full. And it was a race now. Philo Marsh had seen them coming, and without doubt he would try to do what he had to do, and get it over with, before the pursuers overtook him.
If the dynamite was ready set, and he could explode it before the pursuers reached the spot, nothing could put Lost River back into its course again.
Again and again Dorothy and her companions came in sight of the party ahead, but the glimpses they obtained were for a moment only.
“They’ve got some hoss-flesh thar,” commented Lance Petterby. “And they warn’t as fresh in the beginnin’ as ourn—that’s sartain. They been punishin’ of ’em some, by Jerusha Juniper!”
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