The Ranch Girls' Pot of Gold. Vandercook Margaret

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СКАЧАТЬ they catch their legs in the traps and nearly pull them off." Jack flushed, but neither Jean nor Olive smiled at her; they knew that she was like a boy in many ways and was too good a sportsman to want anything to suffer unnecessarily.

      The girls crossed the creek at a spot where the water was lowest; the spring rains had fallen and it was quite deep in many places. They rode in silence along the familiar path that followed the creek bed, each, in her own way, yielding her senses to the influence of the enchantment that the rare summer morning had created.

      Click! click! A curious noise came from somewhere farther down the bed of the creek; it seemed to sound from behind a huge rock that rose up alongside the stream and split into a small ravine. Click! click! The sound was repeated.

      Jack reined in her pony so suddenly that Jean almost ran into her. "What was that?" Jack asked quickly, but Jean put her finger cautiously to her lips and signaled for silence.

      Click! click! click! The echo was louder and more puzzling, and Jack slid softly off her horse, threw the reins to Olive and crept along the path until she came to the far side of the great rock. The noise was more distinct, but still she could see nothing; then she clambered up the rock and peered over. A man stood with a little hammer in his hand, chipping out small pieces of stone; a big pan filled with sand and gravel and water from Rainbow Creek was resting on the ground by his side.

      A little murmur of surprise escaped Jack, and the intruder glanced up at her; he had been so intent on his work and so sure of not being discovered at that hour of the morning that he had not been disturbed by Jack's approach.

      "So it is you, is it?" he said calmly. "I hope you don't mind my having a few pieces of these rocks as a souvenir of my visit to your ranch. I know you and your overseer objected to my prospecting for gold about here. That is the reason I pretended to drive away last night."

      Jack at once recognized the speaker as the driver of the gypsy caravan of the day before. "I don't see how I am going to prevent your having the stones and pebbles now that you have already taken possession of them," she answered indifferently. "But please don't let our overseer find you lurking about, or he will be dreadfully angry."

      The stranger laughed and shrugged his shoulders carelessly, and Jack noticed that he seemed very sure of himself. "Oh, don't you worry about John, Jim Colter I mean," he returned coolly. "I am not afraid of him, though I won't trouble you any more than I can help."

      "Did you ask the man if he found any signs of gold in our creek, Jack?" Jean demanded eagerly, as the three girls rode off together again.

      Jack shook her head. "No, silly, of course I didn't," she replied. "There are lots of people out west who are crazy about finding gold. Don't you suppose if there had been any gold on our ranch father would have made the discovery years ago?"

      "I don't know," Jean returned quietly. "But you might have asked just the same."

      Jim had set his animal trap in some thick underbrush and covered it with twigs and evergreens, but Jack remembered the exact spot, and the girls now rode directly toward it. Jack carried her rifle with her, for if they found an animal that had been caught and not killed she intended to put it out of its misery.

      Within a short distance of the trap, but before the girls could see it, they heard a queer moaning that made them turn pale. The cry was not like a child's and not like an animal's; it was a queer combination of both.

      Jean stopped her pony instantly. "I sha'n't go on any farther with you, Jack," she declared resolutely. "Jim has caught something in that wretched trap of his and it is suffering horribly. It won't do any good for me to see it. Olive, please you go on with Jack; I simply can't, I am such a wretched coward."

      Olive and Jack both looked rather miserable at the prospect ahead of them, but Jack would not turn back and Olive would not desert her. By this time the strange sobbing had ceased and there was no further sound of movement or struggle in the neighborhood of the snare until the two girls rode up in plain sight of it.

      "Good gracious, Olive, what is that?" Jack called quickly, almost falling from her horse in her amazement.

      Instead of discovering a wild animal staring at them with ferocious, frightened eyes, the riders spied a small, brown figure crouched on the ground in front of the wicked steel cage, as mute and motionless as a hare when first startled by a hunter. The boy's back was turned to Olive and Jack and he would not condescend even to look around at his captors.

      Jack guessed at once what had happened. The child must have been starving, for he had thrust his arm inside the opening of the trap for the bait that had been put inside, and the spring had closed on his arm. Both girls ran toward him, but Jack did not hear Olive's quick exclamation. Fortunately she knew the trick of opening the trap, for the moment the wires released their cruel hold on the boy, he fainted quietly in Olive's outstretched arms. He was about ten or twelve years old, incredibly thin, with coal-black hair that fell in straight lines to his shoulders, strange, dark eyes with the look of far places in them, and a skin the color of burnished copper.

      "It is Carlos, little Carlos!" Olive exclaimed wonderingly. "Jack, don't you remember my telling you about the Indian boy who helped me to come home to you when I was stolen by old Laska? I wonder how in the world he has managed to find us."

      Jack did not wait to answer Olive. Running at once to the creek for water, she signaled Jean to join them, and together the girls bathed the boy's face until he returned to consciousness.

      Then Carlos calmly explained to Olive that he always had meant to find her some day. With her image ever before him and the names of the Ralston girls and the Rainbow Ranch ever sounding in his ears, the lad had remained quietly in the desert with his own people until the coming of spring. When the nomad tribe started south, Carlos had journeyed with them until they again struck camp, then he had traveled on alone, asking hundreds of questions and covering more miles than he was able to count. Unconscious of the fact he had come at length within the limits of Rainbow Ranch, and when he most needed her, Olive, like a good angel, had appeared to him. Yet Carlos took her coming calmly. Miracles are every-day occurrences to the Indian. Wiser than the wisest of us, he knows that, in spite of all the explanations of science, the rising and the setting of the sun, the life of a flower, most of the things he sees in his world, are nature's miracles. So the miracle of Olive's discovery seemed to Carlos only another mysterious gift from the unknown Father.

      Scorning to have his wounded arm bandaged, the boy soon started homeward with the girls. Jim and Frieda were waiting in front of the Lodge for them to return to breakfast. Jim laughed and Frieda stared when they beheld four figures on horseback instead of three.

      "Well, Jack, who is your latest find?" Jim called out cheerfully, waving his hand to Jack in token of peace and good fellowship.

      The horses stopped, and the Indian boy slid off from behind Olive's saddle and stood erect, facing Jim squarely. "I am Carlos, of the tribe of the Blackfeet," he answered proudly. "Are you the Big Chief of this ranch?"

      Jim Colter shook his head gravely, although his eyes were smiling. "No, I am Big Chief of nothing, sonnie," he replied kindly. "But you had better come into the house with me; that is an uncommonly ugly wound you have on your arm, and I've an idea you might be persuaded to eat a little something."

       CHAPTER IV

      THE WAY TO ARCADY

      "IT can't be, Jim, that you think maybe we will be able to carry out our scheme," Jean murmured, her voice hushed almost into a whisper from sheer surprise. She held her fork in the air, hovering between her mouth and her plate, while the other three girls leaned back limply in their chairs at the breakfast table. To win СКАЧАТЬ