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
End of Project Gutenberg's Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch, by Annie Roe Carr