MOLLY
The day after Oriole had arrived at the Three-bar Ranch she was
introduced to Molly. Molly was what Harvey Langdon called a "blue"
pony--almost the color of a Maltese cat--and she was a "dear" as
Oriole immediately declared. The girl from the East had seen plenty of
bucking, snapping, ugly-looking half-broken ponies; but Molly was as
kind looking and affectionate of disposition as a cocker spaniel.
"Oh!" gasped Oriole, "I am just going to _love_ that pony."
"You'd best learn to ride her first," was the comment of the practical
Sadie Brown.
That was not hard work, for Oriole took to the saddle famously. And
Molly was as gentle as a horse could be. Yet she was spirited, too,
and could cover a deal of trail in an hour. In a fortnight Oriole was
riding about the ranch as though born to the saddle.
And how much there was to see! The girl from the East began to realize
that she had come to a very, very busy country. No room for drones on
this ranch. Shedder Crabbe, for instance, would have been given short
shrift here. But Oriole thought that a boy like Teddy Ford must have
been quite in his element at the Three-bar Ranch.
She spent, of course, much of her time with the twins. Sadie Brown was
actually Mr. Langdon's housekeeper as well as the twins' nurse. Oriole
relieved the woman of many small duties, and Myron and Marian were
perfectly contented when the visitor was with them, giving Nurse Brown
time for other duties.
Aside from Ching Foo, the cook, there were several houseboys--all
Mexicans. Not many ranches in this country were as well governed and
the houses as luxuriously furnished as Mr. Langdon's. There was a fine
player-piano and a talking machine in the great living room; and it was
plain that the owner possessed good taste as well as much wealth, or
the house would not have been so comfortable and beautiful.
The twins were well supplied with playthings; but they lived out of
doors most of the time, early as was the season. The middle of the day
was warm, although from the veranda great patches of snow could still
be seen upon the sides of the mountains, and the nights were still
cold.
But the spring had no set-back. The grass flourished and the distant
forest line was as green as green could be. Oriole often rode Molly
out to where one of the herds grazed, and she met most of the
punchers employed on the Three-bar in this way. So she was bound,
before long, to see the three men in whom she had become so deeply
interested--Ridley, Shaffer and Mudd.
Both Harvey Langdon and Nurse Brown believed that there was little to
hurt Oriole when she scampered over the plain on Molly. That is, by
daylight. Even the coyotes slunk into hiding at sight of a mounted
person during the daytime. And unless one penetrated the cañons or
gulches of the foothills, a bear or mountain lion was not to be found.
The girl herself soon gained the impression that no man was to be
feared on the Three-bar Ranch. Sometimes a bunch of Indians passed the
house and corrals; but they were as simple and kindly people as Oriole
had ever seen. And she _did_ love the copper-colored babies!
She wrote Flossy and Minnie Payne--as well as Nat Jardin and Ma, and
Mrs. Joy and her housekeeper, Lyddy Ann--all about her new life and the
strange sights she saw. First of all in interest, she thought, were
the "papoose babies" belonging to the nomadic Indians--some of them
strapped to a board in the old style, for all the Indians were not
modern in their ways.
She scampered away from the house one afternoon on the blue pony and
finally fell upon a trail that she had never traced before. She had
been warned not to venture into the hills at any distance from the
grazing herds; and usually when she rode she could go to the top of any
little ridge and see some of the punchers riding herd. This trail she
chanced to find was only a narrow path, but cut deep in the sod. It was
an ancient water-trail; but of course Oriole could not read signs.
Molly cantered along the path easily, twisting and turning as the path
did, and finally plunged down into a deep coulee and through a patch of
high sage. Instead of coming up directly out of the shallow hollow, the
path followed a gully that at one time must have been a water-course,
and in a few moments the girl was riding through a scrub oak patch and
in as wild a ravine as she had ever seen.
"Oh, my!" murmured Oriole, and drew Molly to a sudden stop. "I must go
back. This is a wild country and I may get lost."
Just then Molly raised her head, stretched forth her nose and gave
every indication of being about to whinny. Oriole had seen the blue
pony do this before, and she knew how to stop her. The girl leaned
forward in the saddle and seized the pony's nose, shutting her nostrils
firmly.
"Be still, you naughty girl!" commanded Oriole. "I don't want you to
call like that. Suppose--suppose somebody we don't like hears you?"
For she was suddenly smitten with the thought that in this unknown
and wild ravine there might lurk some danger--some enemy, although
she could not imagine what kind of enemy there could be here on the
Three-bar Ranch.
But as she whispered to Molly to keep still Oriole suddenly heard a
gruff voice say:
"Do as you like, you two. I'm going to get my time from Harvey Langdon
and beat it out of here. And, be-lieve me! when I split the breeze away
from the Three-bar I aim to visit that old prospect hole first, no
matter what you fellers say."
"You'd better keep away from there, Tom Mudd, unless you're aiming to
peeve me and Shaffer a pile. You know what the agreement was," said a
still gruffer voice.
Oriole listened with more than curiosity. The names she heard spoken
were of two of those very "bad men" of whom Teddy Ford had first told
her. She removed her hand from Molly's nose, but the pony only sneezed
softly. It evidently was not heard by the men in conference beyond the
clump of scrubby trees.
"Be-lieve me!" said the man called Mudd, "I never ought to have agreed
to any such fool idea. And I break the bargain right now! We ought to
have gone to that old pit and made our getaway while Harvey Langdon
was East. Now he is home again and the worry about the kids is off his
mind, he is a-goin' to keep his eyes open. If he sees us pirootin' up
that-a-way toward the Three Sisters, he'll mebbe smell a rat."
"He'll smell a heap more than one rat if you try to double-cross us,
Tom, and go up there to the old pit alone," said a third voice, which
the sharp-eared girl believed must be that of Shaffer.
"Don't you fellers think I'm afraid none of you!" exclaimed Mudd. "You
and Hank can't put nothing over on me----"
"Aw! who is trying to hurt you, Tom?" broke in the second speaker. "It
is you that seems to be wantin' to bust up this here triumvirate, as
the feller said. Hold your horses."
"Well!" grumbled Mudd.
"Well, yourself! If we had left when Harvey Langdon was away, he'd have
been leary of us, sure! Now we better stay till the spring rodeo. After
that we can light out 'most any time. It will be the dark of the moon,
too."
"Golly!" exclaimed the third man, "I couldn't find that pit in the
dark. The trail is as blind as a maze."
"I'll _smell_ it out," said Mudd confidently. "If Hank and you
can't----"
"Don't you go to smellin' too sudden, Tom," advised the voice that
Oriole knew must belong to Hank Ridley. "We agreed to share and share
alike--and that stuff can't be shared in the shape it is."
"Laws, no!" agreed Shaffer. "And we'll have a nice time carting it----"
"Leave that to me," broke in Hank Ridley.
Oriole had finally got Molly turned about and her nose headed for the
direction of the ranch house. She stopped to listen to no more. For
some reason she felt that these men would not be at all friendly to her
if they knew she had overheard this conversation.
Yet she did not understand it at all! There was nothing about an old
"prospect hole" and "the Three Sisters" in the story she had been told
of the robbery of the Langdon Ranch.
Once out upon the open prairie again Oriole drew Molly in. She
hesitated. She had never as yet observed Hank Ridley and his two mates,
and she wanted very much to do so.
She believed the trio--"the triumvirate" as Ridley called them--would
soon appear out of the brush-grown ravine. They might be hunting stray
cattle; but Oriole felt that they must soon return to the open plain.
Nor was she mistaken. From the very path which she had followed
appeared three riders. Molly was bearing the girl by this time well
away from the coulee which was the entrance to the scrub-oak patch.
Oriole circled around and came up to the three men from the rear.
"Hullo!" shouted one of them--a dark-faced, mustached man whom she knew
to be Tom Mudd from his voice. "Here's the gal Harvey Langdon brought
from the East with him and Sade Brown. Hullo, Sissy! How do you like it
out here?"
"Oh, I think it is very pleasant, sir," Oriole replied demurely.
"That's that there blue horse we brought up from the bottoms last horse
round-up," said another of the three. "Likely critter."
"And right gentled, she is," observed the third.
They paid no further attention to Oriole, who rode slowly by. But the
girl scrutinized them all keenly, photographing the three upon her mind
indelibly. So these three rough looking fellows were Ridley, Shaffer
and Mudd! She was quite ready to believe that they were untrustworthy
and that perhaps, as Teddy Ford had intimated, they knew more than
they were willing to tell about the disappearance of the chest of
silver plate from the ranch house.
To George Belden Oriole went again with her questions the next time he
came to make one of his calls upon Sadie Brown. Why he continued to
call upon the twins' nurse Oriole could not imagine, for Miss Brown
showed plainly that she scorned the foreman's attentions.
However, as Sadie Brown treated the man so unkindly, Oriole found
all the more time to talk with him. And she wanted to know now about
certain matters that had assumed importance in her mind since she had
overheard the snatches of conversation between the three "bad men."
"What is a 'prospect hole?'" repeated George Belden. "Why, it's a
prospect hole--that's all," and he chuckled. "The pocket hunters and
prospectors that searched those hills yonder for gold and silver ore
sunk many shafts and the like, hunting for color, or following a vein
of ore that usually petered out before they got very deep. There's
dozens of 'em over there," and he pointed with a flourish toward the
dim, blue hills to the north and west of the ranch house.
Oriole pointed, too. She had suddenly made out three nice, rounded
hilltops quite close together--just as though the trio must encircle a
half-hidden glen.
"What are those?" asked the girl.
"What are what?" drawled Belden, squinting up his eyes in his funny way.
"Those three--hills, are they? They seem taller than the other bumps I
see over there."
"Why, sure, they are," said the foreman, carelessly. "Those are the
Three Sisters."