DOROTHY DALE
IN THE WEST

SHE WALKED RIGHT UP TO THE PONY’S HEAD.
Dorothy Dale in the West Page [61]

DOROTHY DALE
IN THE WEST

BY
MARGARET PENROSE

AUTHOR OF “DOROTHY DALE: A GIRL OF TO-DAY,” “DOROTHY
DALE AT GLENWOOD SCHOOL,” “THE MOTOR
GIRLS SERIES,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

BOOKS BY MARGARET PENROSE

THE DOROTHY DALE SERIES

• DOROTHY DALE: A GIRL OF TO-DAY
• DOROTHY DALE AT GLENWOOD SCHOOL
• DOROTHY DALE’S GREAT SECRET
• DOROTHY DALE AND HER CHUMS
• DOROTHY DALE’S QUEER HOLIDAYS
• DOROTHY DALE’S CAMPING DAYS
• DOROTHY DALE’S SCHOOL RIVALS
• DOROTHY DALE IN THE CITY
• DOROTHY DALE’S PROMISE
• DOROTHY DALE IN THE WEST

THE MOTOR GIRLS SERIES

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

Price per volume, 60 cents, postpaid.

• THE MOTOR GIRLS
• THE MOTOR GIRLS ON A TOUR
• THE MOTOR GIRLS AT LOOKOUT BEACH
• THE MOTOR GIRLS THROUGH NEW ENGLAND
• THE MOTOR GIRLS ON CEDAR LAKE
• THE MOTOR GIRLS ON THE COAST
• THE MOTOR GIRLS ON CRYSTAL BAY
• THE MOTOR GIRLS ON WATERS BLUE

Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York

Copyright, 1915, by
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

DOROTHY DALE IN THE WEST

CONTENTS

DOROTHY DALE IN THE WEST

CHAPTER I
A SURPRISE IS COMING

“He, he, he!” giggled Tavia.

“What is the matter now, child?” demanded Dorothy Dale, haughtily. “There are no ‘hes’ in this lane. The road is empty before us——”

“And the world would be, too, if it wasn’t for the possible ‘hes’ that are to come into our lives,” quoth Tavia, with shocking frankness.

“You talk like a cave girl,” declared her chum. “Is there nothing on your mind but boys?”

“Yes’m! More boys!” chuckled Tavia. “It is June. The bridal-wreath is in bloom. If ‘In spring the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,’ can’t our girls’ fancies turn in June to thoughts of white lace veils, shoes that pinch your feet horribly—and can’t we dream of hobbling up to the altar to the sound of Mendelssohn’s march?”

“Hobble to the haltar, you mean,” sniffed Dorothy, with her best suffragette air.

“How smart!” crowed her chum. “But you mustn’t blame me for giggling this morning—you mustn’t!”

“Why not? What particular excuse have you?”

“That shad we had for breakfast. Shad is as full of bones as Cologne’s shoes are of feet. I always manage to swallow some of them—the bones, I mean, not dear Florida Water—Rosemary’s tootsies—and those said bones are tickling me right now.”

“How absurd,” said Dorothy Dale, as Tavia went off in another “spasm.” “Do you realize that you are growing up, Tavia—or, pretty near?”

“‘Pretty near,’ or ‘near pretty’?” asked Tavia, making a little face at her.

“Baiting your hook for a compliment, I see,” laughed Dorothy. “Well, you get none, Miss. I want you to behave. Think!”

Tavia immediately struck an attitude that seemed possible for only a jointed doll to get into. “Business of thinking,” she said.

“Suppose anybody should see you?” pursued Dorothy, admonishingly.

“Then you do expect the boys to motor in by this road?” cried Tavia. “Sly Puss!”

“No, Ma’am. I am not thinking of Ned and Nat—or even of Bob Niles.”

Tavia made another little face at mention of Bob’s name. “Poor Bob!” she sighed. “No fun for him this summer. His father says he must go to work and begin to learn the business—whatever that may mean. Bob wrote me a dreadfully mournful letter. It almost tempted me to go to the same town and get a job in his father’s office, and so alleviate the poor boy’s misery.”

“You wouldn’t!” gasped Dorothy.

“Got to go to work somewhere,” decided Tavia. “And I hate housework and cleaning up after a lot of children.”

“But just think! how proud your father will be to have you at the head of the household. And remember, too, how much your brothers and sisters need you.”

“Goodness, Doro! You talk like the back end of the spelling-book—where all the hard words are. And the hardest word in the whole vocabulary is ‘duty.’ Don’t remind me of it while I am here with you at North Birchlands.”

“And think!” cried Dorothy, giving a little skip as they walked on. “Think! we are not a week away from dear old Glenwood School yet, and to-day Aunt Winnie’s surprise is coming. Gracious, Tavia! I can scarcely wait for ten o’clock.”

“I know—I know,” said Tavia. “If your Aunt Winnie wasn’t the very dearest little gray-haired, pink-cheeked woman who ever lived, I’d have shaken the secret out of her long ago. I just would! And we can’t even guess what the surprise is going to be like.”

“Goodness! No!” gasped Dorothy. “I’ve given up guessing. I know it is something perfectly scrumptious, but nothing like anything we ever had before.”

“I hope, whatever it is, that I’ll be in it,” groaned Tavia.

“I am sure you will be, or Aunt Winnie wouldn’t have invited you here to her home at just this time,” declared Dorothy.

They were walking down the shady road toward the railroad station “killing time,” before the family conference which had been called for ten o’clock.

Nat and Ned White, Dorothy’s cousins, had gone off in their auto, the Fire Bird, on an errand, and the girls had an idea they might come home by this route, and so pick them up.

“Hush!” cried Tavia, suddenly. “Methinks I hear footsteps approaching on horseback.”

“That’s no horse you hear,” Dorothy said. “It is somebody walking on the bridge over the brook.”

There was a turn in the road just ahead and the girls could not see the bridge. But in a moment they could descry the figure of a man striding toward them.

“This must have been what you were he-heing for,” whispered Dorothy.

“How romantic!” was Tavia’s utterance.

“What is romantic about a man coming up from the station?”

“Don’t you see his long, silky black mustache? And his long hair and broad hat? Goodness! he’s a picture.”

“Yes. The stage picture of a villain—Simon Legree type,” scoffed Dorothy. “That red silk handkerchief sticking out of his pocket—and the big diamond in his shirt front—and another flashing on his finger——”

“My!” gasped Tavia, clasping her hands. “He might have stepped right out of Bret Harte. Ah-ha! ah-ha! Jack Dalton! unhand me!”

“Hush, Tavia!” begged her chum. “He will hear you.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Tavia, suddenly disturbed. “He’s looking at us—and he’s crossing over to this side of the road.”

“Well, don’t you look at him any more and—we’ll cross the road, too.”

“Do you suppose he eats little girls?” queried Tavia, with a most ridiculous air.

Dorothy felt as though she wanted to shake her chum. But then, she frequently felt that desire. The man was too near for her to speak again, but the girls crossed the road suddenly.

The man stopped, half turned as though to approach them, and leered at Dorothy and Tavia. He was not a large man, but he was remarkably dressed. His black suit was rather wrinkled, as though he had been traveling some time in it. The broad-brimmed hat gave him the air of a Westerner, or Southerner. And his flashy appearance made him very distasteful to Dorothy.

She made Tavia hurry on, and soon they reached the bridge themselves. Tavia was “raving” again:

“Those wonderful eyes! Did you see them? Deep brown pools of light—only one was green? Did you notice it, Doro?”

“No, I didn’t. I told you not to look at him again. You might have encouraged him to follow us.”

“I wonder how it would feel to be a gambler’s bride. I just feel that he’s from the West and is a gambler, or a cowpuncher—or a maverick—or——”

“You don’t even know what a maverick is,” scoffed Dorothy.

“Yes, I do! A maverick steals cattle,” declared Tavia, quite soberly.

“You ridiculous thing! It’s ‘rustlers’ that steal cattle—or used to. A ‘maverick’ is a stray calf without a brand.”

“Well! he looked as though he had strayed—— Oh, Doro!” gasped Tavia, suddenly. “He’s coming back.”

The girls had reached the bridge and had stopped upon it. The brown water was gurgling over the stones, the birds were twittering in the bushes, and the scent of the wild roses was wafted to them as they leaned upon the bridge-rail.

It was a lovely picture, and Dorothy and Tavia fitted right into it. But the picture did not suit Dorothy and Tavia at all when they saw the black-hatted man round the turn in the road.

They felt just as though the picture needed some action. An automobile with Ned and Nat in it, would have furnished just the life the girls thought would improve the scene.

“Come on!” whispered Dorothy. “Don’t let him speak.”

But it was too late to escape that. “Little ladies!” exclaimed the man. “You’re not going to run away from me, are you?”

Tavia would have run; only, as she confessed to Dorothy later, her skirt “was not built that way.” Now, however, Dorothy had to face the man.

“What do you want?” she asked, just as sternly as she could speak.

“Oh, now, little lady,” began the fellow, “you mustn’t be angry.”

Dorothy turned her back and seized Tavia’s arm. “Come on,” she said, with much more confidence in her voice than she actually felt.

“Ned and Nat will soon be along. Come!”

The girls began walking briskly. “Is—is he going to follow us?” whispered Tavia.

“Don’t you dare look back to see,” commanded Dorothy, fiercely.

Either the black-hatted man was not very bold and bad, after all, or Dorothy’s remark about expecting the boys fulfilled its duty. He did not follow them beyond the bridge.

“Oh, Doro! You can’t blame me this time,” urged Tavia, as they hurried on.

“I do not believe the fellow would have dared speak to us if you had not rolled your big eyes at him,” declared Dorothy, rather sharply.

“Oh, Doro! I didn’t!” Then she began giggling again. “It is your fatal beauty that gets us into such scrapes—you know it is.”

It was little use scolding Tavia. Dorothy was well aware of that. She had “summered and wintered” her chum too long not to know how incorrigible she was.

For fear the man might still follow them, Dorothy insisted upon taking the first side road and so walking back to Aunt Winnie White’s home, the Cedars, by another way. When they arrived the boys were there before them.

“Hi, girls! where were you?” shouted Nat. “We looked for you along the station road.”

“Did you come right up from the station?” demanded Tavia, eagerly.

“Sure!”

“Did you see a black-mustached pirate down there by the bridge, with a yellow diamond in his bosom——”

“In the bridge’s bosom?” demanded Nat.

“Of the pirate’s shirt,” finished Tavia. “Such a mustache! He looked deliciously villainous.”

“Another conquest?” grunted Nat, who never liked to see any fellow “tagging about after Tavia,” as he expressed it, unless it was a gallant of his own choosing.

“He followed Dorothy—and spoke to her,” declared Tavia, with effrontery. “And she spoke to him.”

“Soft pedal! soft pedal, there, Tavia!” urged Ned, who had overheard. “We know Dorothy.”

“And we know you,” added his brother. “You’ll have to unwind a better string than that, Tavia. There’s a ‘knot’ in it—Dorothy did not.”

“Ask her!” snapped Tavia, quite offended, and marched away toward the house.

Dorothy at that moment appeared on the side porch. “Come in, boys, do,” she urged. “It’s ten o’clock and everybody else is in the library. Your mother is all ready to unveil the Great Surprise.”

CHAPTER II
“HOORAY FOR THE WILD WEST!”

The family gathered in the library. Major Dale, Dorothy’s father, sat forward in his armchair, leaning his crossed hands and chin upon his cane. Joe and Roger, Dorothy’s brothers, fidgetted side by side upon the leather couch.

Mrs. Winnie White, Major Dale’s sister, and her two big sons, Ned and Nat, occupied chairs at the table. Dorothy and Tavia, their arms about each others’ waists, were on a narrow settee in the fireplace, that was banked with green, odorous Balsam boughs.

“Now, children, I have a great announcement to make—two, in fact,” said Aunt Winnie, playing with her lorgnette and smiling about at the expectant faces. “The Major tells me to ‘go ahead,’ and I am going to do so.

“First of all, the Dale and White families have come in for a considerable increase in this world’s goods. In other words, the Major and I have been left in partnership, the great Hardin Ranch and game park, in Colorado.”

“Game! Shooting! Wow!” ejaculated Nat.

“Ranch! Cattle! Ah!” added his brother.

“Sounds like a new college yell,” muttered Tavia in Dorothy’s ear.

“I was well aware,” continued Aunt Winnie, “that old Colonel Hardin contemplated making the Major a beneficiary of his will. The Colonel was my brother’s companion in arms during the war——”

“And a right good fellow, too,” interposed Dorothy’s father, heartily.

“When Colonel Hardin came East several years ago, he spoke to me about this intended disposition of his estate. He knew he could not live for long. The doctors had already pronounced upon his case, and he had no family, you will remember,” Aunt Winnie said. “I had no idea he proposed making me a legatee, as well. But he has done so. The Hardin property is a great estate—one of the largest in Colorado.”

“Hooray for the Wild West!” murmured Tavia, waving a handkerchief, yet evidently suffering under some emotion beside extravagant joy!

“The Hardin property was first of all a quarter section of Government land—one hundred and sixty acres—that the Colonel took up and proved upon when he obtained his discharge from the army. Then he bought up neighboring sections and finally obtained control of a vast, wild park in the foothills adjoining his cattle range.

“Of late years cattle have gone out and farming has come in. All between the Hardin land and Desert City are farms. They need irrigation for their developement.

“Colonel Hardin told me he held the water supply for the whole region in his hands. It would cost a large sum, he said, to make the water available for Desert City and the dry farming lands.”

“How is that, mother?” asked Ned, interested.

“I do not just know?”

“Can’t they dig wells and get water?” demanded Roger Dale.

“It strikes me,” said the Major, chuckling, “that in some of those desert lands, they say it is easier to pipe it in fifty miles than to dig for it. It’s just as far under the surface, or overhead, as it is latitudinally!”

“I suppose it must be something like that,” agreed Aunt Winnie. “I only know that Colonel Hardin said when the City and the farmers could raise the money necessary he stood ready to lease the water rights to them. Such lease would add vastly to the income from his property.

“Now, his lawyers have informed us that the will giving all this great estate to the Major and me, has been probated, and that somebody must come out there and look over the property and meet the people who want the water, and all that.”

“And somebody means us, mother?” cried Nat, joyfully.

“Us young folks—yes,” said Mrs. White, smiling. “That is my second announcement—and the larger part of the surprise, I warrant. We are going to celebrate Dorothy’s graduation by taking a trip West.

“The Major does not feel equal to the journey, because of his lameness; I am to take over the property jointly in our names. I shall need you four young people, of course, to advise me,” and she laughed.

“Say! Say! what four young people?” demanded Roger and Joe in chorus.

“Why,” said their Aunt, “you know somebody must remain to look after the Major. That duty, Joe, devolves upon you and Roger. Ned and Nat are going with me, and of course Dorothy can’t go without Tavia.”

“Hold me, somebody!” begged Tavia. “I am going to faint with joy,” and she fell weakly into Dorothy’s arms. “I was afraid I was going to be left out,” she muttered.

Nat ran with an ink bottle in lieu of smelling salts, but Tavia waved him away.

“Keep your distance, sir!” she cried. “This is a brand new frock—and they don’t grow on bushes; at least, they don’t in Dalton.”

“You bet they don’t,” commented Ned. “If the present-day girl’s frocks grew in the woods all the wild animals certainly would run wild. The bite of a chipmunk would give one hydrophobia.”

“Every knock’s a boost,” sniffed Tavia, who was very proud indeed of her narrow skirt. “I notice the boys are just as much interested in us as ever, no matter what we wear. Why! Dorothy and I had a perfectly scandalous adventure this morning——”

The maid appeared in the doorway at that moment and looked at Mrs. White. “What is it, Marie?” asked the lady.

“A—a gentleman, Madam,” said the maid. “At least, it’s a man, Mrs. White. And he wants to see you particular, so he says. He says he’s come all the way from Colorado about getting some water. I don’t understand what he means.”

“Crickey!” exclaimed the irreverent Nat. “What a long way to come for a drink.”

“It must be about this very thing we are speaking of,” said the Major, starting.

The two girls had risen and gone to a window. They could see out upon the porch.

“Goodness, Doro!” gasped Tavia, grabbing her chum tightly. “That’s the very man we met on the road this morning.”

We began to get acquainted with Dorothy Dale, and Tavia Travers, and their friends in the first volume of this series, entitled “Dorothy Dale: A Girl of To-day.” At that time Dorothy was more than three years younger than she is to-day. Nevertheless, when her father was taken ill, she undertook the regular publication of his weekly paper, The Dalton Bugle, which was the family’s main dependence at that time.

Later the family received an uplift in the world and went to live at the Cedars, Aunt Winnie’s beautiful home, while Dorothy and Tavia went to Glenwood School where, through “Dorothy Dale at Glenwood School,” “Dorothy Dale’s Great Secret,” “Dorothy Dale and Her Chums,” “Dorothy Dale’s Queer Holidays,” “Dorothy Dale’s Camping Days” and “Dorothy Dale’s School Rivals” our heroine and her friends enjoyed many pleasures, had adventures galore, worked hard at their studies, had many schoolgirl rivalries, troubles, secrets, and learned many things besides what was contained in their textbooks.

In the eighth volume of the series, entitled, “Dorothy Dale in the City,” Dorothy and Tavia spent the holidays with Aunt Winnie and her sons, in New York. Aunt Winnie had taken an apartment in the city, on Riverside Drive, and the girls had many gay times, likewise helping Mrs. White very materially in the untangling of a business matter that had troubled her.

“Dorothy Dale’s Promise,” the volume preceding our present story, deals with Dorothy’s last semester at Glenwood School, and her graduation. Tavia, who is a perfect flyaway, but one with a heart of gold, is close to her chum all the time, and the two inseparables had now, but the week before, bidden the beautiful old school good-bye.

Dorothy Dale was a bright and quick-witted girl; the impulsive Tavia was apt to get them both into little scrapes of which Dorothy was usually obliged to find the door of escape.

Now, when the maid announced the black-mustached man, and the boys departed by another door, Tavia drew Dorothy into the embrasure of a curtained window, whispering:

“Let’s wait. I’m crazy to know what has brought such a brigandish looking fellow here.”

“But it is not nice to listen,” objected Dorothy.

“But your aunt doesn’t mind.”

Mrs. White smiled at the two girls as she saw them pop behind the draperies. There was nothing private about the proposed interview.

The Major sat back in his chair while Aunt Winnie arose to meet the stranger as the maid ushered him into the library.

CHAPTER III
THE “TWO-FACED” MAN

The boys were discussing the extent of Colonel Hardin’s great estate when Dorothy and Tavia joined them at the garage an hour later. The possibilities of the vast cattle pastures and game preserves, walled in by the natural boundary of the higher Rockies, appealed strongly to Ned and Nat, and even to Dorothy’s younger brothers.

“And it was all begun by Colonel Hardin taking advantage of the Homestead Law when he came out of the army. Too bad your father didn’t do that, Dorothy,” said Ned.

“What is the Homestead Law?” asked Dorothy.

“I can tell you,” interposed Nat, quickly. “Not just in the wording of the law—the legal phraseology, you know,” he added, his eyes twinkling. “But the upshot of it is, that the Government is willing to bet you one hundred and sixty acres of land against fourteen dollars that you can’t live on it five years without starving to death!”

“How ridiculous!” scoffed Dorothy.

“What is the use of asking these boys anything?” demanded Tavia, her nose in the air. “They’re like all other college freshmen.”

“Don’t say that, Miss,” urged Ned, easily. “Remember that we’re freshmen no longer, but sophs. Or, we will be so rated next fall.”

“Then perhaps you’ll know a little less than you have appeared to know this past year,” said the sharp-tongued Tavia. “As juniors you will know a little less. And when you’re seniors, you’ll probably be still more human—less like Olympic Joves, you know.”

“Compliments fly when quality meets,” quoth Dorothy. “Don’t let’s scrap, children. We can tell the boys something they don’t know. We’ve got to get a hustle on, to quote the provincialism of the locality for which we are bound—the wild and woolly West. A telegram has been already sent to Tavia’s folks. We start West to-morrow.”

“To-morrow!” cried Ned and Nat, in surprise.

“The Mater must have changed her mind mighty sudden,” added Ned.

“She did,” said Tavia, nodding. “Or, rather, we changed it for her.”

“How was that?” asked Nat. “And say! what did the fellow want who came so far for a drink?” and he grinned. “What’s his name?”

“Mr. Philo Marsh,” said Dorothy, gravely. “And a very shrewd, if not an out-and-out bad man.”

“Hul-lo!” exclaimed Ned. “What’s happened? Let’s hear about it.”

“You should have stayed and seen the visitor,” said Dorothy.

“He’s a two-faced scamp!” declared Tavia, with emphasis.

“Right out of Barnum & Bailey’s—eh?” asked Nat. “One of the greatest freaks of the age. Two faces, no less!”

But Ned saw that something serious had happened. “What is it, Dorothy?” he asked.

“I wish you had remained and seen that Philo Marsh,” said Dorothy Dale. “I—I think he is a bad man. I do not trust him at all.”

“And good reason!” broke in Tavia, forgetting that she had first exclaimed over the romantic appearance of the man with the silky black mustache and the yellow diamond.

Then, eagerly, she went on to tell the boys of what had happened to her and Dorothy on the road that morning.

“Why! the scamp!” ejaculated Nat, quite savagely.

“But that isn’t all the story?” queried Ned, turning to Dorothy. “What were you going to say about Philo Marsh?”

Dorothy at once told them how she and Tavia had hidden behind the window draperies when Mr. Philo Marsh was announced, having recognized him as he stood waiting on the porch.

“And you should have heard him talk!” interrupted Tavia.

“He is a very smooth talking man,” went on Dorothy, seriously, “and we could see father and Aunt Winnie were impressed.”

“But what did he want?” Ned demanded.

“He says he represents a committee of citizens of Desert City and the farmers on that side of the Hardin estate. He had papers all drawn up, ready to sign, leasing to him and his fellow-committeemen the water rights on the Hardin place, and he wants father and Aunt Winnie to sign up right now.”

“But they didn’t?” cried Ned and Nat.

“He urged them to. He claims haste is necessary.”

“Why?” asked the older cousin.

“He wasn’t just clear about that. I guess that is what made father doubtful. But he was very persuasive.”

“Say!” interrupted Nat. “What about this water? If there is so much of it on the Hardin place, doesn’t it flow somewhere?”

“That’s a curious thing,” Dorothy said, quickly. “It seems this water-supply is a stream called Lost River.”

“Lost River?” ejaculated Ned.

“Yes. There’s more than one like it out there, too. I guess this particular Lost River has its rise on the estate somewhere. And without flowing beyond the boundaries of the land Colonel Hardin has left to us, it dives right down into a crack in the earth again.”

“Crickey!” exclaimed Nat. “Some river! I want to see that.”

“I’ve read of such things,” said his brother.

“It must be wonderful,” Dorothy said. “You see, they want father and Aunt Winnie to let them turn the water into another channel. From that channel they will pipe water to Desert City, while the surplus will be carried by open ditches to the irrigated farms.”

“And how about the water supply for the cattle pastures?” demanded Ned, who, from the first, had shown a deep interest in the cattle end of the business in hand.

“Oh, they say there is water in abundance,” Dorothy answered.

“Well,” asked Ned, “did that fellow get mother to sign up? That’s the important question.”

“Do you think we would let her, after what we know about the fellow?” retorted Tavia, indignantly.

“I don’t see how you girls knew much about him,” chuckled Nat. “You simply did not like the cut of his jib, as the sailors say.”

“What did you do to stop them?” asked Joe Dale, round-eyed. “Walk right in and give him away?”

“That would have been melodramatic, wouldn’t it?” laughed Dorothy.

“But what did you do?” insisted Joe.

“Why,” said Tavia, “we climbed out of the window—and I ripped my skirt, of course!—and we ran around to the hall and sent the maid in to call Mrs. White out. Then we told her about Philo Marsh—the two-faced scamp! Why, to hear and see him in that library, you’d think butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth!”

“Well, wouldn’t it?” grunted Nat.

“I guess the Major was suspicious, anyway,” chuckled Tavia, ignoring Master Nat. “And Mrs. White declared she would have to look over the ground personally before she could make any decision.”

“He was in an awful hurry,” said Dorothy.

“Who’s in a hurry?” asked Ned, quickly.

“That Philo Marsh, as he calls himself. So we are going to start for the West to-morrow, instead of next week.”

“And what is this fellow who’s come East here going to do?” asked Ned.

“Going back. Says he’ll meet us at Dugonne. That is where we leave the train. Oh, Aunt Winnie has already looked up our route, and the time-tables, and all that,” Dorothy said.

“Well, we’ll be on hand to look out for Little Mum, and see that this fellow doesn’t ‘double cross’ her in any way,” said Nat, with assurance.

“We girls shall watch him, too,” Tavia declared. “I believe he’s a regular ‘bad man’—like you read about.”

“Shouldn’t read about such things,” advised Dorothy, laughing.

“I guess we four can hedge Little Mum about so that no wild and woolly Westerner will trouble her,” Ned said, with gravity.

But only time could prove whether that was so, or not.

CHAPTER IV
TO CATCH THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS

The Fire Bird looked like an express truck—or so Nat said. They had loaded up the boys’ auto with more than a fair share of the baggage.

“But just the same, you girls have got to find room in here,” declared Ned. “Nat and I must have somebody to chin to while we’re driving over Hominy Ridge. They say there are ‘ha’nts’ in the woods, and we’d be afraid to go alone.”

“Poor ’ittle sing!” crooned Tavia. “Doro and I know just how scared you are. But we’ll go with you—providing you can find us room.”

“We’ll make room,” said Nat. “Mother will have to carry some of the baggage in her car. There is no use in putting the last camel on the straw’s back!”

“Joe and Roger have begged to go along,” Dorothy said.

“Well, they’re excess baggage, too,” answered Nat. “They’ll have to go in the other car.”

It was the evening following the June day on which Aunt Winnie had divulged her Great Surprise. The intervening hours had been very, very busy for the girls.

It was arranged that the party should go by auto to Portersburg to catch the midnight express on the P. B. & O.

Dorothy and Tavia—as well as Mrs. White—had made exceedingly swift preparations for this journey. Of course, Ned and Nat did not have much to get ready.

“Wish I were a boy,” groaned Tavia.

“I’ve heard you express that wish a thousand times,” declared Dorothy.

“This is the thousand-and-wunth time then! Look at how easy they have it, Doro! All they have to do is put a clean collar and a toothbrush in their pockets, and start for a tour of Europe!”

It was a long journey over the forest-covered ridge to Portersburg. They started at nine o’clock so as to be sure to be on time at the railway station. The chauffeur who drove Mrs. White’s machine would chain the cars together and bring them—with Joe and Roger—back to the Cedars, after seeing the tourists off for the West.

Dorothy kissed the Major good-bye. “My little Captain” he still called her. Major Dale was very proud of his daughter.

They got away at last, the Fire Bird in the lead. There would be no moon until after midnight, so they had to depend entirely upon the headlights for the discovery of any obstruction in the road.

Nat was under the wheel and he had insisted upon Tavia sitting beside him. Naturally Ned was glad to get Dorothy to himself in the tonneau. It was a tight squeeze for the latter couple, for the motor car was overburdened with baggage.

“Are you comfortable, Doro?” shouted Tavia, turning to look at her chum.

“Just as comfortable as I can be with the end of Nat’s dress-suit case poking me in the back, and a bundle of umbrellas right across my poor shins. Oh! I did not dream it would be so uncomfortable.”

“Our dreams seldom come true,” declared Tavia, sentimentally.

“Don’t know about that,” said Nat. “You know, a couple of tramps were talking about the same thing. One says: ‘Isn’t it strange how few of our youthful dreams come true?’ And the other fellow answers back: ‘Oh, I dunno. I remember when I used to dream of wearing long pants, and now I guess I wear ’em longer than anybody else in the country.’”

“Better ’tend to your business, boy, and stop cracking jokes,” advised Ned.

“I’ll see that he doesn’t run us up a tree,” promised Tavia, confidently.

The Fire Bird swiftly passed out of the neighborhood with which the young people were familiar and struck into the road leading to Portersburg. It was a fairly good auto track, but had never been oiled. Therefore, there were “hills and hummocks,” as Tavia said, “in great profusion.”

“Oh! oh! OH!” she gasped, in crescendo, as the car bounced and jarred over some of these “thank-you-ma’ams.” “Did you ever see such a hubbly road, Doro?”

“I don’t see much of this one,” confessed Dorothy.

The forest shut the road about so thickly that beyond the headlights’ glare the way looked like a tunnel. Occasionally, some small, night wandering animal, scurried across the track.

“There’s a rabbit!” ejaculated Tavia. “I wonder what he thinks this auto is?”

“The Car of Juggernaut,” said Dorothy. “Lucky he escaped.”

They were going down a hill. Suddenly Nat threw out the clutch and braked hard. The horn likewise uttered a stuttering warning.

A ray of light flickered upon some object directly in the path of the flying car. It was impossible to stop and the road was too narrow for Nat to swerve aside and in this way escape the collision.

“Low Bridge!” he shouted, and they all crouched down. The next instant the car struck the creature standing in its path.

“A deer!” yelled Ned, as the car came to a jarring stop, some yards beyond the point of collision.

He hopped out and ran back to see if the poor animal was really dead. His mother’s car meanwhile halted where the deer lay beside the road. The Fire Bird had thrown the creature some distance away, and it was quite dead, its neck being broken.

“Killing game out of season is a misdemeanor, Nat,” said his brother, returning to the automobile. “Lucky you are going to get out of the state to-night. The game warden might be after you.”

“I don’t think it is a thing to laugh over,” said Tavia. “The poor deer!”

“Thank you,” Nat said. “I never expected to hear you call me by such a tender name.——”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Mr. Nat!” snapped Tavia, scrambling out of the front seat and joining Dorothy in the tonneau. “I don’t want to risk being in front if you are going to run down all the livestock in the country.”

“It’s too bad to leave perfectly good venison behind,” Ned said. “I suppose he was dazzled by the lights. You must have a care how you drive, Nathaniel. Mother says so.”

“Huh! I couldn’t see the deer until we were right on top of it.”

“I know Nat didn’t mean to,” said Dorothy, the peacemaker. “It is awfully dark.”

Nat only grunted, but he drove more slowly. The deer had been actually hypnotized by the lamps; Nat did not want to play the same rough joke on another.

“Huh!” he muttered to his brother. “If the law had been off and we’d come up this way hunting deer, we wouldn’t have gotten within a mile of one!”

“Life is full of disappointments—just like that,” chuckled Ned, turning so that the two girls could hear him. “There was the old farmer who saw something in the clothing store window that kept him marching up and down before it for an hour, looking frequently at his watch.

“Finally he went inside and demanded of a salesman: ‘What’s your time?’ ‘Twenty minutes past five,’ says the salesman. ‘That’s what I make it,’ says the farmer, ‘and I’ll take them pants,’ and he pointed to a ticket in the window which read: ‘Given Away at 5.20.’ But he was disappointed, too.” concluded Ned.

“How ridiculous,” said Dorothy. “Oh! here’s the end of the woods. I’m so glad.”

“It’s the end of this piece,” said Ned. “But there’s more ahead.”

It was much lighter when they came out into the farming lands, and Nat could speed up his engine a little. Behind the Fire Bird coughed the other car. They met nobody, nor overtook any vehicle. This was a lonely road by night. They were still a long distance from Portersburg, and it was after eleven o’clock.

“You’d better get a wiggle on, boy,” declared Ned. “We don’t want to miss that train.”

“And I do want to miss any other deer that may be loafing about this right of way,” grumbled his brother.

They flew past a farmhouse where a dog tugged at his chain and almost barked his head off at the two automobiles. A wall of forest loomed up before them again. It was fortunate that the darkness beyond the lamplight made Nat reduce speed.

Up heaved a disturbing figure beside the road. Nat applied the brakes in a hurry once more. The beast stepped right into the radiance of the lamplight and then—the automobile struck it!

Everybody screamed—including the object battle-rammed! “Another deer!” shrieked Tavia. But the bellow that replied made her realize at once that she was wrong. No deer ever bawled like that!

“It’s a cow,” said Ned. “Crickey, boy! you’ll slaughter all the animals in the state.”

“That cow isn’t hurt,” growled Nat, “or she wouldn’t bawl so.”

The other automobile stopped in the rear and Aunt Winnie was anxious to know what had happened. Ned was already out of the Fire Bird, trying to discover the whereabouts of the cow and the extent of her injuries.

“Something doing back there at the farmhouse,” warned the chauffeur of Mrs. White’s car. “You boys will be deep in trouble in a minute.”

They could see lights in the windows, and now heard a banging of doors. A harsh voice began to shout commands, and a waggling lantern approached across the fields.

Ned had found the cow. She was leaning up against the roadside fence, and one horn was hanging by a thread of tissue, in a drunken looking manner over her eye. Otherwise she seemed to be unhurt—only surprised. The varnish of the car had suffered more than the cow.

When the farmer arrived he was very angry.

“I’ll fix you city fellers fer this. I’m a constable. Ye air all arrested!”

His dress was haphazard. Over his coarse nightshirt he had drawn his trousers, and he was barefooted. But he had not forgotten his star of office, and he carried a locust club as well as the lantern. He fixed himself in the road directly in front of the Fire Bird and demanded fifty dollars.

“I could buy cows like that skinny old thing for fifty dollars a dozen,” grumbled Ned.

“You’ll pay me fifty for this here caow, or th’ whole on ye will march ter jail at Hacktown.”

“Your cow is perfectly good,” suggested Tavia, “all except one horn. And that horn serves no good purpose on a domestic animal. Most farmers dehorn their cattle anyway. I think this man owes us about fifty cents.”

Nat began to chuckle at that, and the farmer was not at all pleased.

“Ye gotter fork over fifty dollars, or go to Hacktown an’ see the Jestice of the Peace.”

“But we’re in a hurry,” said Ned.

“That’s what they all say,” chuckled the farmer.

“You had no business to allow your cattle to run loose in the road,” cried Ned.

“Think not, eh, young man?” retorted the man. “You’d better read aour county ord’nance on cattle. Don’t hafter fence aour farms no more.”

“I bet,” growled Ned to the girls, “that the old scoundrel just set this crow-bait of a cow like a trap for any automobilist who might come by. Goodness! I hate to pay that fifty dollars.”

CHAPTER V
THE OLD LADY WITH THE BASKET

Time was flying and Mrs. White was becoming anxious. “Do pay the man, Ned, and let us go on. Of course, the cow is not worth so much——”

“Why, mother, it’s a miserable little thing,” began Nat; but the farmer burst in with a lot of threats as to what he would do if the money was not immediately forthcoming, and Nat subsided.

“It is an imposition, Mrs. White,” warned her chauffeur. “I’ll go with him, if he likes, and tell the judge about it.”

“I’ll pull you all,” threatened the farmer, boisterously, “if you don’t fork over the money for my caow—yes, I will, by Jo!”

“If he talks fresh to mother,” growled Nat to Ned, “we ought to take away his tin star and club and throw him into the ditch.”

“No use making a bad matter worse,” said Ned.

“It is unfair,” Dorothy said, warmly. “Fifty dollars is a lot of money. Can’t we postpone our trip and go to court with this man?”

“Goodness, Dot!” exclaimed her aunt, who heard this. “Our berths are engaged upon that train. We positively cannot wait here. Of course the cow isn’t worth so much as this man asks——”

At that moment a dilapidated figure shuffled into the radiance of the automobile lights. It was an ancient darkey, with kinky gray wool, and he took off his ragged hat as he asked:

“Ebenin’, genmen an’ ladies. Is yo’ seed anythin’ ob my cow? She done strayed erway ag’in, an’ I’s powerful anxious ter recover her—ya-as, suh!”

“Another cow!” groaned Nat. “The owner of that pet deer will be around next.”

“What kind of a cow was it?” asked Tavia, giggling.

“Jes’ a cow, Ma’am,” said the old darkey. “Jes’ a ord’nary ornery cow, Ma’am. Ebenin’, Mars’ Judson,” he added, seeing the farmer for the first time. “Has you seed my cow?”

“Naw, I ain’t,” snapped the farmer.

Here Dorothy Dale suddenly broke into the inquiry meeting. “Did your cow have a big white patch on her left shoulder, and is she otherwise a red cow?” asked the girl.

“Ya-as’m. That suah is my cow.”

“Turn your light on that one against the fence, Ned,” commanded Dorothy. “Now look, sir,” she added, to the old negro. “Is that your cow?”

“Suah is!” declared the darkey, gladly. “Das my Sookey-cow. Law-see! She done broke her horn. I wisht she bruk two on ’em; den she couldn’t hook herself t’rough de parstur fence no mo’.”

“Well! what do you know about that?” demanded Tavia.

“This constable ought to have his badge taken away,” grumbled Nat.

Aunt Winnie was a most timid lady, but she was angry now. “You shall be reported for this, sir, just as soon as I get back from the West,” she promised the farmer. “Give the colored man five dollars, Ned. He deserves something for showing us what this other man is.”

The old darkey was tickled enough to accept a five dollar note for the loss of the cow’s horn. The creature was not really hurt, and everybody was satisfied save the constable-farmer who had over-reached himself. He dared say nothing more about arresting the automobile party, and the two cars soon got under way again and shot off along the road to Portersburg station.

There was no further adventure on the way. They arrived at the station with five good minutes to spare. The town was asleep, but the agent was in his office with the tickets for Mrs. White’s party and the coupons for the Pullman berths.

They were to have a section to themselves, and an extra berth besides. Dorothy was to occupy this extra berth, which proved to be an upper.

Everybody else aboard the car was asleep and the porter made up their berths at once. “I do so hate to half undress in the corridor of a car,” grumbled Tavia. “It’s as bad as camping out.”

“But we pay good money for the privilege,” said Dorothy. “I wonder why we are always so easy—we Americans?”

“Our fatal good nature. That’s it!” cried Tavia.

Dorothy had a hazy idea that somebody in the berth beneath her was restless. Then she fell asleep, roused only now and then by the stopping and starting of the train. At seven she was wide awake, however, and as the train was still going at full speed, she crept down from her high perch and started for the ladies’ room at the end of the car.

But suddenly a hand was stretched out for her and the person in the lower berth whispered:

“I say, Miss! I say!”

Dorothy turned to see a little old lady, in a close, black bonnet with the strings untied, but otherwise fully dressed. It was plain she had gone to bed in all her clothing the night before.

“Can a body git up, Miss?” whispered the worried old creature. “My goodness me! I been useter gittin’ up when the fust rooster crows; this has been the longest night I ever remember.”

“Why, you poor dear!” returned Dorothy, warmly. “Of course you can get up. Come with me and I’ll help you tidy yourself for the day. You must feel all mussed up.”

“I do,” admitted the old lady, feelingly.

She came after Dorothy, but the latter saw that she bore with her a covered basket, the cover being tied close with bits of string.

“You need not be afraid of leaving your lunch basket in the berth. Nobody will take it,” Dorothy said.

“I—I guess I’ll keep it by me,” said the old lady, with a timid smile.

Dorothy was able to make the old lady comfortable, and she found out several things about her while the porter arranged their berths. She was a Mrs. Petterby, and had lived all her life long (she was over sixty) in the little mill town of Rand’s Falls, in Massachusetts.

This was the very first time the old lady had ever been ten miles from the house where she was born. She had lived alone in her own house for the last few years, her husband and all her children but one being dead.

“My baby, he’s out West. I’m a-going to see him,” declared Mrs. Petterby. “He sent me money for ticket and all, long ago; he told me to put it in the bottom of the old teapot, where I’d be sure to know where it was, and then I could start for Colorado any time the fit tuk me.

“Did seem day b’fore yisterday, as though I’d got to see my baby again. He was dif’rent from the other children—sort o’ wild and hard to manage. He had a flare-up with his dad and went West.

“But there ain’t a mite o’ harm in my baby—no, Ma’am! An’ so I tell ’em. His father said so himself b’fore he died. He warn’t like the rest o’ the children, so his father didn’t understand him.

“He’s doin’ well, he writes. Gets his forty-five dollars ev’ry month, and sends me part. Of course, I don’t need it; I got it all in the Rand’s Falls Bank. But I kep’ out this ticket money, like he said; and—here I be!” and she cackled a soft little laugh, and smiled a transfiguring smile as she thought of the surprise she was going to give “her baby.”

She was going to Dugonne, the very town where Dorothy and her friends were to leave the train. So the girls sort of adopted the little old lady. But they could not find out what was in her basket.

Tavia was enormously curious. “I saw her dropping something through a crack into the basket,” she whispered to Dorothy. “She was feeding it.”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed her chum.

“You see. It’s no lunch basket. It’s something alive.”

“A dog?” suggested Dorothy.

“Maybe a cat.”

“Or a parrot?” again said Dorothy.

“Or a rabbit.”

“It couldn’t be a canary, I s’pose?” asked Dorothy.

“Or a pet goldfish?” giggled Tavia.

“How ridiculous!” returned the other girl.

Everybody went to breakfast when it was announced, save Mrs. White. She had a “railroad headache,” and lay back in her seat with closed eyes and an ice-pack upon her forehead. But Dorothy thought she ought to have something to “stay her stomach.”

“You know,” she said to Tavia, “this car will be taken off and we will not be able to get even a glass of milk for her before noon.”

Mrs. Petterby overheard this, and she blushed and whispered: “I got one o’ them bottles that keeps things hot or cold, as you want ’em. You get some milk off the ice, and then it will be all ready to have the egg broke into and shaken up when your auntie wants it, by and by.”

“That’s nice of you!” cried Dorothy, and proceeded to call the waiter and order the cold milk.

“But where’ll you get an egg—a real fresh egg, I mean?” sniffed Tavia. “Not on a dining-car.”

“That’s so!” groaned Dorothy. “And Aunt Winnie is so particular about her eggs. She can always tell if an egg is the least bit stale.”

The old lady leaned forward again, and once more the pretty pink flush suffused her withered cheek. She was a keen-eyed, birdlike person, and her manner was timid like a bird’s.

“If—if you don’t mind waiting about an hour, I shouldn’t be surprised if I—I could supply the fresh egg,” she said.

“You?” gasped Tavia, amazed.

“You know where we can buy one, you mean?” queried Dorothy.

“Oh, you won’t have to buy one,” declared Mrs. Petterby. “I’d be glad enough to give it to you.”

“But who has fresh eggs on this train?” demanded Tavia.

“I guess nobody has them to sell, dearie,” said the little old lady, smiling. “But in about an hour I can get one.”

“Do—do you think she’s just right, Doro?” whispered Tavia, on the sly.

Dorothy did not know. It sounded very peculiar to her. But the little old lady seemed quite in her right mind, and she went back to the Pullman, still clinging to her basket.

That mystery furnished the girls and Ned and Nat with subject matter for an endless discussion. They guessed at its contents as everything from a white rat to a jewel-box, or a root of horseradish that Nat declared he believed she was taking with her from her garden, to transplant on her son’s ranch. “His horses will like it, you know,” said Nat, seriously.

“Yes,” agreed his brother, “on their oysters. Horseradish is very good as a relish with raw oysters.”

“And of course they rake oysters right out of the streams and ponds in Colorado,” sniffed Tavia, with a superior air. “Was anything ever crazier?”

Dorothy went to sit beside Mrs. Petterby again. The old lady was smiling contentedly. “I guess I’ll stay as much as a week with my baby,” she declared to Dorothy. “I hope I won’t be homesick before the week’s up.”

“But it will take you almost a week to get there, and a week to return—and you intend to stay in Colorado only a week?”

“I declare, child! I don’t believe I could stand it longer. I don’t think I could stand furrin’ parts—not at all. Rand’s Falls, Massachusetts, is good enough for me.”

There was a movement in the basket. Dorothy was sure of it. And a sort of crooning noise. Dorothy looked her amazement and curiosity—she could not help it.

“There! there!” said the old lady, softly, and tapping the basket. Then she looked aside at the girl and whispered:

“Don’t you tell that conductor. They told me that I couldn’t take her with me unless I crated her and put her in the baggage car. But I’ll show ’em!”

“What is it?” breathed Dorothy. “Oh! I won’t tell.”

“There! your auntie can have her fresh egg in a minute or two now. I know Ophelia.”

“Ophelia?” gasped Dorothy.

“Yes. That’s her name. I gave it to her when she was a little bit of a chicken.”

“A hen!” exclaimed the amazed Dorothy.

“Yes. She’s a regular pet—and not much more than a year old. She was the only one left of a brood that my old Blackie brought off last May was a year ago,” said Mrs. Petterby.

“I couldn’t afford to have old Blackie nussin’ just one chicken,” she pursued, calmly. “So I brought Ophelia up by hand. She was just as cunning as she could be.

“She sat on my shoulder when I ate breakfast, and she’d eat her share of johnny-cake and sausages, too—yes, Ma’am! Then she’d take a nap sometimes, in my lap, when I sot down in my rocker by the kitchen window.

“And when she got to be a good sized pullet and I was lookin’ for her to begin to lay pretty quick, I declare if she didn’t hop up into my lap and lay her first egg.”

“My!” exclaimed Dorothy, in appreciative wonder.

“I left my flock in the care of my next door neighbor; but I knowed Ophelia would be lonesome for me.

“So,” concluded the little old lady, “I’m a-takin’ her through unbeknownst to the conductor. Don’t you tell! And now—there!”

She thrust her hand under one flap of the covered basket. There was a little rustling sound, a seemingly objecting croak, and out came the old lady’s hand with a white, clean and warm egg.

“I expect she’s gettin’ sort of broody,” said Mrs. Petterby, dropping the egg into Dorothy’s hand. “She’s beginnin’ to think of settin’ an’ tryin’ to raise a famb’ly. That’s all she knows about it—poor thing!

“Well, there’s your aunt’s egg, child.”

CHAPTER VI
“THE BREATH OF THE NIGHT”

The girls and Mrs. White’s sons were vastly amused by the egg incident. Aunt Winnie thankfully drank her egg and milk, but her boys joked about the production of “Ophelia” being so quickly “swallowed up.”

“And why didn’t the old lady bring along Hamlet?” demanded Nat. “The Prince of Denmark would have found life in a Pullman endurable, I fancy. He was a philosophical old shark.”

“Speaking of eggs,” Ned said, ignoring his brother’s irreverent observation about the Melancholy Dane, “speaking of eggs——”

“Well! speak, I prithee!” said Tavia.

“Why, there was a chap performing tricks of legerdermain one night, and he took eggs from a high hat, as usual. In his ‘patter’ he interpolated a remark to a wide-eyed small boy who sat down front.

“‘Say, sonny, your mother can’t get eggs without hens, can she?’ he said to the kid.

“‘Yes, she can,’ replied the boy.

“‘How does she do it?’ chuckles the conjurer.

“‘She keeps ducks,’ says the kid.”

“Good! good!” quoth Nat, applauding. “If you hadn’t told it, Ned, I would.”

“Ah-ha!” cried Tavia. “You boys have been reading the same joke-book, and have gotten your wires crossed.”

“Goodness, Tavia! Don’t. Such slang as you use!”

The train was bearing them rapidly and smoothly toward the West. The girls and Ned and Nat enjoyed this sort of traveling immensely. At the rear of the train was a fine observation platform, and the four young folk got more benefit of the chairs there than any of the travelers.

The prospect in part was lovely. They liked, too, to sit there as the train roared through the smaller towns where there was no stop. And it was nice when they swept over the rolling prairies and crossed the mid-western rivers on the long bridges.

The stops at the larger cities were never long; then the train would fly on again, reeling off the miles at top-speed. The second night they did not mind sleeping in the berths. And Dorothy helped Mrs. Petterby get ready for bed so that she felt more comfortable.

“But it does seem awful resky,” she sighed. “Suppose there should be a smash-up—an’ me without my skirt on!”

There was a smash-up the next day, but fortunately the train in which Dorothy Dale rode was not in the accident. Two freight trains went into each other some ways ahead of the express, and spread themselves all over the right of way. It would take some time to clear the mess up so that the express could pass; therefore the latter was stopped at a very pleasant Illinois town and the conductor told the young folk they would have at least two hours to wait.

“Goody-good!” exclaimed Tavia. “Let’s run and see if we can get some candy at a decent price, Doro. The candy-butcher aboard this train is a highway-robber.”

“I can beat that for a suggestion,” Nat said. “Why not find a place where we can get something beside this buffet stuff to eat. I haven’t the heart to eat all I want to in the dining-car.”

“Why not?” asked Dorothy.

“It costs so much.”

“Come on,” agreed Ned. “We’ll go foraging.”

“Be sure you get back in time, children,” ordered Aunt Winnie.

But she expected Dorothy to keep her wits about her, whether the rest of them did or not. Near the railroad station there was nothing that appealed to Dorothy and Tavia—no restaurant, at least. But up a clean, bright little side street from the public square they saw a small, white painted house, with green doors and green window frames. Over the one big window beside the open door was a sign that read:

ORIENTAL LUNCH ROOM

“That looks nice,” said Dorothy.

“And look at that dear, old, clean colored Mammy!” gasped Tavia.

On the platform before the little restaurant was a large colored woman with a crimson bandana on her head, a spotless dress and white apron, and her sleeves rolled up to her fat elbows.

“I bet she can cook,” quoth Ned, with assurance.

“We’ll give the Oriental a whirl,” agreed Nat.

But just as they were crossing the street to go to the place, Tavia suddenly exclaimed: “Oh! there’s somebody in there.”

“Well, what of it?” asked Ned.

“It’s hardly big enough for us. Let’s wait till that man comes out. I don’t like his looks, anyway. He has his hat on,” declared Tavia.

They all saw the man in question. He was a black-browed and broad-hatted stranger, and he sat at a table in the little eating place, staring out through the window with a frown on his brow. He was not an attractive looking man at all.

“I bet he has a bad conscience!” exclaimed Nat.

“Or indigestion,” chimed in his brother.

“He won’t eat us,” said Dorothy, doubtfully. “If we do go in——”

“I say, Mammy!” cried Tavia, to the smiling colored woman. “Do you do the cooking?”

“’Deed an’ I do, Missie,” declared the woman. “An’ I got de freshes’ catfish dat eber come out o’ de ribber. An’ light beaten’ biscuit—an’ co’npone, an’ all de odder fixin’s.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Nat, smacking his lips.

“But can’t we have the place to ourselves?” complained Tavia. “If that man was only gone!”

“Yo’ mean Cunnel Pike?” whispered the colored woman. “He comes yere befo’. He’s er-gwine out on dat train wot’s stalled down yander——”

“That’s the train we’re going out on,” Tavia declared. “Like enough he’ll stay here till it goes.”

“But we can eat in there if he is present,” said Dorothy, again. She knew just how stubborn Tavia was when she got an idea in her head.

“We’ll get him out! I’ll tell you,” gasped Tavia, suddenly.

“How?” demanded the others, in chorus.

“No, I won’t. Only Nat. I’ll tell him. You can order the meal, Ned, and while it is being cooked we’ll fix it so that horrid man will leave. Come on, Nat.”

Nat went off with her. The others were doubtful of her scheme, but they were hungry. So Ned instructed the colored woman as to the repast and then he and Dorothy sat down on the steps to wait for developments.

Meanwhile Tavia led Nat back to the main square of the village. “Run, get me a telegraph blank from the station,” she ordered, and Nat, without question, did as he was bade.

Tavia quickly wrote a message and addressed it to “Colonel Pike, Oriental Lunch Room,” with the name of the town appended. “Now,” she said to Nat, “I dare you to send this message,” and her eyes danced.

Nat read it through once, looked puzzled, and then read it twice and grinned—the grin expanding as the full significance of the joke penetrated his mind.

“Crickey-Jiminy!” he exclaimed. “But if they tell him?”

“Telegraph operators are not supposed to tell. Instruct this one not to do so, Nat. Now, I dare you!”

“You can’t dare me,” boasted Nat, and hurried back to the station. When he returned they strolled on to the Oriental Lunch Room once more and rejoined Ned and Dorothy.

“Now! whatever have you been doing, Tavia?” demanded Dorothy.

Tavia could not help giggling. “Just you wait and see,” she said.

“I hope you didn’t let her do anything very bad,” Dorothy said to Nat.

“I helped her do something mighty smart,” returned her cousin, looking with admiration at pretty Tavia.

Just then a boy with a Western Union cap came up and went into the little restaurant. “Say!” he demanded of the black-browed man. “Are you Pike?”

“Am I what?” asked the man, in a hoarse voice.

“Cunnel Pike’s the name,” said the boy. “And right at this restaurant.”

“Oh! a telegram?” demanded the man, in surprise. “Well, that’s my name,” and he put his hand out for the envelope.

“Sign here,” said the boy, and after he had gotten the signature in his book he gave up the message and went out.

“Look!” gasped Tavia, clinging to Dorothy’s hand.

All four of the young people watched covertly the man behind the window. They saw him tear open the envelope and read the message curiously. Then his heavy, dark face changed and curiosity was blended first with amazement and then with something very like fear.

He started to tear the message up. Then he got to his feet and his face began to pale. Dorothy and the others watched him in wonder and some alarm.

Finally the man grabbed his hat brim and pulled it down over his eyes. He strode out of the place and down the steps, without looking at the boys and girls, and started straight for the railroad station.

As he went his trembling fingers relaxed and the telegraph message dropped at Dorothy’s feet.

“What do you know about that?” whispered Nat. “We sent him that message.”

“What?” demanded Dorothy, and snatched it up.

She uncrumpled the sheet of yellow paper and read in the crooked letters of the old typewriter which the local operator used:

“Come home at once. All is forgiven.”

“Tavia Travers!” cried Dorothy. Then she burst into laughter, and so did Ned when he had read the slip of paper.

“I believe I have done a very good thing,” claimed Tavia, quite seriously. “No wonder that old Colonel Pike looked like a ‘grouch.’ He had trouble on his mind, and now we’ve sent him home to get it all straightened out.”

“Oh, Tavia!” groaned Dorothy again.

“I’d give a good bit to be at his home—if he goes there—and see what happens,” Ned said, when he had ceased laughing.

“Anyway,” grinned Nat, “the ‘bogey man’ is gone and we can take possession of the Oriental Lunch Room.”

Which they forthwith proceeded to do. The old colored woman served them a delicious meal, and added to their enjoyment of it by her comments upon many things, not the least of which was her wonder as to “what tuk Cunnel Pike out o’ yere so suddent like.”

The gay little party left the restaurant in good season and rejoined Aunt Winnie aboard the train. They saw nothing more of the man called “Cunnel” Pike. Another train had just gotten away for the East and Tavia said:

“I tell you he has gone home. We did a very good action—probably have changed the current of his whole life.”

“Like to peek over the shoulder of the Recording Angel, Tavia, and see what’s marked down against you for that telegram—eh?” chuckled Ned.

“Well!” declared Dorothy, “I hope when he gets home they will be as glad to see him as that message intimated.”

“Well, I shouldn’t worry and get wrinkled!” shrugged Tavia.

“I guess we’ll never know about that,” said Ned.

“It’s like one of those serial stories in the papers, ‘continued in our next’—and you always miss your copy of the next number,” said Nat. “I’ve a dozen different plots ‘hanging fire’ in my mind that I never will get to know how they finish up.”

“Learn to read books, then,” advised his brother, “and stop littering up your mind with such useless stuff.”

“Wow!” exclaimed Nat. “You talk like Professor Grubber. Oh, I say! Did you hear of that one they had on Old Grubs in class one day? He was discussing organic and inorganic kingdoms. Says he:

“‘Now, if I should shut my eyes—so—and drop my head—so—and remain perfectly still, you would say I was a clod. But I move. I leap. Then what do you call me?’

“And Poley Gray says, quite solemnly, ‘A clodhopper, sir.’ It got them all,” concluded the slangy Nat. “Even Old Grubs himself had to laugh.”

After that two-hour hold-up of their train the party found that the speed at which they traveled was greatly increased. Each engineer in turn tried to make up a bit of that handicap, and the travelers were tossed about in their berths that night in rather a disturbing manner.

Mrs. Petterby would not have gone to bed at all had it not been for Dorothy’s encouragement; she would have sat up with her pullet in her lap, and her bonnet firmly tied under her chin.

“I’m ever expectin’ to have this train crash right into another,” said the old lady. “And I want to be ready for it.”

“Do you think you’ll be any more ready sitting up than you will be lying down, dear Mrs. Petterby?” Dorothy asked.

“Seems as if I would,” returned the old lady. “I tell you what! I sha’n’t come out to see my baby no more. I shall tell him that. And I dread the going back.”

“Perhaps you will like Colorado so much that you will want to stay.”

“What? And never see Rand’s Falls, Massachusetts, again?” exclaimed Mrs. Petterby, in horror. “I—guess—not.”

“I hope we shall see her baby when she meets him,” Doro said, tenderly. “And I hope he’s all she expects him to be.”

“A cow-puncher at forty-five a month,” sniffed Nat.

“Oh! but cowboys are awfully romantic,” said Tavia, quickly.

“Look out for her, Dot,” begged Ned. “You’ll have to blindfold her to get her past any cow-punching outfit we may meet. I can see that.”

On the following day when the train crossed the first ranges and they beheld little bunches of five hundred or a thousand head of “longhorns,” Tavia went into raptures.

The four young folk from the East remained upon the observation platform most of the time. Even after supper the girls went back there to view the prairies in the gloaming.

There was a distant light here and there, like a low-hung star; but there were few towns, or even settlements. Suddenly the train slowed down and they saw several switch-targets. Then they passed the ghostly fence of a large corral, and they ran by a barn-like, darkened station and freight sheds.

The train stopped altogether. The girls saw the flagman seize his lantern and run back to set his signal. “Come on!” exclaimed Tavia. “He’s left the gate open.”

She gave Dorothy no time to decide, but ran lightly down the steps herself and sprang onto the cinder path. Dorothy followed.

“Listen!” whispered Tavia, seizing her chum’s hand, tightly. “Hear the night breathe.”

There did seem to be a vast, curious sound to the inhalation of breath.

Dorothy listened to the sound with a wonder that grew. It was not the engine exhaust. It was a sound like nothing she had ever heard before.

“See! there’s another big corral beyond the station,” Tavia said. “Come on!”

She led Dorothy down the platform, and out upon the softly giving earth.

The headstrong Tavia went directly toward the high fence. The regular, rhythmic breathing seemed to surround them.

Of a sudden, something scrambled against the fence before them. There was a bump against the bars, and two shining eyes transfixed them.

The engine gave a single long-drawn shriek. Instantly the car wheels began to turn, while from the creature inside the corral fence came a bellow.

“Goodness me!” shrieked Tavia. “It’s cattle—the corral’s full of cattle.”

“That isn’t the worst of it!” returned Dorothy, grabbing her hand and starting to run. “We’re being left behind, Tavia Travers!”

CHAPTER VII
A NIGHT WITH A KNIGHT

“Well! I wouldn’t talk as though it had never happened before to anybody,” said Tavia, at last. “Why! even we, Doro, have been left behind before.

“Still, I grant you, we were never left before behind a fast express, which was speeding your aunt and the boys away from us so rapidly that we will be miles and miles behind before they discover our absence.”

“If, however, they learn that we are behind before they reach——”

“Stop!” commanded Dorothy, dropping down beside the track and covering her ears. “If you say that again, I’ll certainly do something to you.”

They had followed the train down the long platform, screaming to the flagman to pull the signal cord. He had not heard them. He had merely closed the gate and gone into the car.

Here Dorothy Dale and Tavia Travers were, deserted at this un-named prairie station, where—to all appearances—there was not a soul.

“And if anyone is here, I expect I shall be scared to death,” admitted Tavia, sitting down beside her chum.

It was so dark that only the vastness of the earth and sky was made known to them—and that but vaguely. Stars twinkled above their heads, but seemingly so high that, as Tavia complained, they did not seem like “the stars at home, back East!”

Sitting facing the railroad tracks, they saw no lights but the switch targets. There was no tower here, nor did there seem to be any life at all about the railroad property. Why the express train had stopped here, to tempt them to disembark, the girls could not imagine.

They were sitting close up against the great corral fence. The deep breathing of the herd was like the distant, low notes of an organ; the girls were not now interested in the manifestation of the presence of such a great number of cattle. But the cattle were curious.

Another came and snorted behind them, and Dorothy and Tavia scrambled up in a hurry. “They sound just as savage as bears,” declared Tavia.

“I don’t see why they have all deserted the cattle,” murmured Dorothy. “I should think there would be a night watch.”

“And all the railroad people have deserted, too.”

“Oh, dear!” said Dorothy. “We can’t even send a telegram after the train to tell Aunt Winnie we are all right.”

“But that wouldn’t be true,” said Tavia, shivering. “We are not all right.”

“We-ell,” said her friend, slowly. “I don’t expect there is anything here to hurt us.”

“That’s all right. Maybe there isn’t. But I never did like to be alone in a strange place. I want to be introduced to folks.”

“Maybe there is a cowboy camp near——”

“Bully! let’s find it!” ejaculated Tavia.

“But you wouldn’t know the cowboys. They’d all be strange men.”

“Well! Cowboys are so romantic,” urged Tavia. “Let’s look.”

“You can use your eyes as well as I can,” sighed Dorothy. “But I must say the prospect for finding anybody in this half darkness is not very alluring.”

They started, following the line of the corral fence away from the station. Dorothy was convinced there was no telegraph operator there, and the barn-like building looked more dreary and threatening than did the open prairie. So they were glad to get away from it.

The fence seemed unending. Occasionally a beast faced them, glaring with eyes like hot coals, and pawing the earth. But the fence looked strong.

They were not booted for walking, however, and the ground was uneven. So they hobbled on very slowly.

Tavia seized Dorothy’s arm. “Oh! what’s that?”

“Now, don’t you begin scaring me,” commanded Dorothy. “Oh!”

“Didn’t I tell you?”

“A man on horseback.”

They could see him between them and the skyline. He was riding slowly, and riding toward them. The girls hugged close to the fence and their dark traveling frocks were not noticeable.

The horseman drew nearer. The girls, clinging together, saw that he wore a wide hat and sheepskin chaps that looked like a woman’s divided skirt, they were so wide.

His pony pranced and snorted, doubtless scenting the girls. But the man spoke a soothing word and did not even gather up the reins that lay loose on the animal’s neck.

His voice had a pleasant, drawling tone to it. “Easy, there, Gaby—yuh shore ain’t gettin’ no thousand plunks er night for dancing yere—no, Ma’am! Stan’ still a moment, Gaby.”

Then a spark flared up and the girls knew the cowboy had been rolling a cigarette and was now lighting it.

“Sh!” breathed Dorothy. “Watch his face.”

The match flared up, held in the hollow of his hand. The yellow glare of it fell full upon the cowboy’s face.

That was what Dorothy had waited for. She wanted to see what manner of face it was before she spoke—if she spoke at all.

It was a bronzed, beardless, rather reckless countenance; but there was nothing bad in its expression, and if the features were not strikingly handsome they were pleasant. The mouth and eyes laughed too easily, perhaps; but Dorothy risked it. She walked right up to the pony’s surprised head.

“Please!” she said.

The match went out. So did the spark of the cigarette, as it dropped from the man’s fingers.

“Jerusha Juniper!” gasped the man. “I got ’em!”

“Will you please listen?” asked Dorothy.

“A gal—and a gal from back East—shore! Why, yes, Ma’am! I’ll listen tuh yuh,” said the amazed cowboy.

Just then Tavia joined her chum and the man muttered: “There’s two on ’em—Jerusha Juniper!”

“Please help us, sir,” pleaded Dorothy again.

“I shore will, Miss,” declared the cowboy. “But yuh did tee-totally sup-prise me—yes, Ma’am!”

Tavia began to giggle. “I guess you’re not used to meeting ladies around here?” she questioned, saucily.

“Jerusha Juniper! I reckon we ain’t; not around here.”

“I didn’t know, for sure,” said the wicked Tavia; “hearing you take a lady’s name in vain so frequently, you know. Is she a friend of yours?”

“Who, Ma’am?” asked the puzzled cowboy, while Dorothy tugged at Tavia’s sleeve.

“‘Miss Jerusha Juniper’—or is she a ‘Mrs.’?”

The man laughed heartily at that and urged his pony nearer to the two girls.

“We see so few females out here we hafter talk about ’em, and name critters after ’em, and all that.”

“I see,” said Tavia, quite assured of herself now.

“Oh, dear!” interrupted Dorothy, anxiously. “All this isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Jeru—— Well!” said the man. “Where do yuh want tuh go?”

“Why, we’ve been left behind,” said Dorothy, and then she fully explained their predicament.

The cowboy, who was a young fellow, grasped the situation at once.

“You won’t git even a slow train out o’ yere before noon to-morrer,” he said. “And ’twixt now and then you’d be mighty uncomfortable, I reckon. There ain’t nawthin’ yere but a boardin’ shack, an’ there ain’t a woman ever stops thar only Miz’ Little, whose old man runs the shack and keeps the corral yere.”

“Goodness!” gasped Dorothy.

“Gracious!” gasped Tavia.

“Oh, they’re nice folks, but they ain’t fixed right to entertain ladies,” said the man.

“And we don’t want to be entertained,” wailed Dorothy. “We want to get on.”

“Shore you do,” granted the cowboy. “No other good train on this road, as I say. If you follered by slow trains you’d never catch that flyer—not in a dawg’s age.”

“What can we do, then?” demanded Dorothy. “Can’t we even telegraph?”

“Now, I’ll fix that for yuh, first of all,” declared the man. “The operator lives at Little’s shack. We’ll rout him out and make him tell your folks on that train that you’ll overtake ’em at Sessions.”

“But how can we?” asked Dorothy.

“Sessions is a junction of this line and the old D. & C. Yuh see, I know this country pretty well. I’m over yere for the Double Chain Outfit right now, shipping cows, and I was startin’ back to-morrer, anyway. I’ll git you ladies ponies, and we’ll start for Killock to-night.”

“Where’s Killock?” asked Dorothy, doubtfully.

The cowboy pointed vaguely across the prairie. “Right over thar—that-a-way,” he said. “It’s on the D. & C. There’s a fast train stops thar at five in the morning. If we make a pretty quick get-away we’ll easy make it in time, and you’ll ketch your folks at Sessions.”

“Oh, that will be jolly!” cried Tavia.

“But, Tavia!” gasped Dorothy. “How can we ride—in these frocks?”

“Side saddle?” queried her chum, doubtfully. “Why not?”

“We’d never be able to hang on,” groaned Dorothy, “without a proper riding habit!”

Here the cowboy interrupted. “There isn’t a lady’s saddle in this neck o’ woods. But I can find easy mounts and easy saddles for you. An’ Miz’ Little will let you have skirts. You can send them back with the ponies from Killock.”

“You think of everything!” exclaimed Tavia, gratefully.

Dorothy Dale was doubtful. She had trusted the man’s face and his manner, still——

“Come on, now, to Miz’ Little,” said the cowboy, frankly. “I’ll rout ’em out and we’ll be on the jog in half an hour, ladies.”

The man’s free and familiar way troubled Dorothy more than anything else. Yet, she knew that this was the West and that western ways were not eastern ways. And there was a woman they could talk to, at least!

So she and Tavia, hand in hand, followed behind the cowboy. He had dismounted, but the track would not allow of their walking abreast. And he made as slow progress in his high-heeled riding boots as the girls did, over the rough way.

Their eyes were more accustomed to the path now, or else it was not so dark. However, they could not have mistaken the bulk of the cowboy and that of the pony, before them.

It certainly was a strange experience. Two eastern girls thrown suddenly into a situation of this character! An unknown protector, an unknown locality, and unknown adventures before them.

“What an experience!” breathed the delighted Tavia. “And he’s a regular knight.”

“Is he?”

“A knight of the lariat,” whispered Tavia. “It’s so romantic.”

“I am glad you like it,” said Dorothy, grimly.

“Why! don’t you, Dorothy Dale?”

“I would give a good deal to be back aboard that train with Aunt Winnie.”

“Never!” cried Tavia.

“All right there, ladies?” threw back the “knight” over his shoulder. “There’s the light ahead.”

“Oh! we are perfectly all right,” said Tavia, with assurance.

Dorothy was not at all sure, so she said nothing.

In a few minutes they came to a long, low building. There was a dim light shining through a window in the end of the shack.

The cowboy dropped his pony’s bridle-rein upon the ground and the well-trained animal stood still. The “knight” knocked on the door and at once a fierce voice asked:

“Who’s thar?”

“Lance,” said the man.

“Well. I told you Number Eight was empty, Lance.”

“I ain’t goin’ to stay, Miz’ Little.”

“Aw-right,” pursued the same gruff voice, which the girls could scarcely believe was a woman’s. “I’ll let the nex’ pilgrim thet comes erlong have it.”

“I gotter see yuh,” said the cowboy. “Git up, will yuh?”

“What yuh want, Lance?”

“Come yere. Land’s sake! S’pose I’m talkin’ for pleasure?”

A couch squeaked. There was immediately a heavy footstep on the creaking plank floor. The girls were rather startled. They wondered if the savage sounding female was coming to the door just as she got out of bed?

But “Miz’ Little” had evidently been lying down dressed. When the door opened she was revealed in a shapeless dark gown. Only, her head and feet were bare.

She was a gigantic creature—a good deal bigger than the cowboy who had befriended the girls. Dorothy saw at once that she had a very kindly face, despite her masculine appearance.

“I vow!” she said, starting. “Ladies with you, Lance?”

“Yep. And they want to git on to Killock to-night. They’ll tell you all about it. I’m goin’ to rout out that thar key-pusher.”

“He’s in Number Six,” said Mrs. Little. Then to the girls: “Come in. Gals are yere erbout as often as angels—an’ I ain’t never hearn their wings yit.”

Dorothy and Tavia entered—yet not without some hesitancy. The room was large, and almost bare of furnishings. There was a broad bed, and on it Mrs. Little had been lying. But there was no other occupant of it, or of the room.

There was a small cookstove, a chest of drawers, a clock on the shelf, and a picture of Washington crossing the Delaware on the wall. One rocker had a tidy on the back of it, but the other plain deal chairs were entirely undecorated.

The woman herself, however, drew Dorothy Dale’s attention. She was very curious as to what manner of creature she could be—this masculine and gruff spoken female.

In the lamplight Dorothy had a better view of Mrs. Little’s face. Mrs. Little did not have a single pretty or attractive feature, but the girl from the East would have trusted her with anything she possessed!

Mrs. Little looked closely into the faces of both girls. She saw something shining in Dorothy’s eyes.

“Why, chile!” she gasped. “You ain’t re’lly afraid, be yuh?”

Dorothy seized the big, hard hand the woman put out to her. There was help in that hand—and comfort. Tavia appeared not to care, but Dorothy Dale knew that her chum was just as much disturbed in secret over the situation as she was herself.

In rather a breathless way Dorothy told Mrs. Little of the circumstances leading up to their predicament, and her new friend listened sympathetically. “Don’t that beat all?” was her comment. “And I expect your folks is scaret, too. But you do like Lance says——”

“Is Lance to be trusted, Mrs. Little?” asked Dorothy, eagerly.

“Lance? Shore! Ef you was both my darters I’d trust yuh with Lance. Men is tuh be trusted with gals out yere. They hafter be. Wimmen is scurce—homes air far apart—a lone woman has a claim on a man in the wild places that she don’t have in cities. Shore!

“That’s what it is, Miss. It takes an out an’ out vilyun to be mean to a woman or a gal w’en there ain’t a mite of protection for her otherwise. Shore! Most western men, I ’low, air to be trusted.”

But Dorothy and Tavia thought of Philo Marsh, and took this broad statement with a grain of salt. Or was it, that Mr. Marsh, even, would have been chivalrous under the present conditions?

Dorothy was satisfied that the cowboy called Lance was a man to be depended upon. She had really believed in him from the start; now she believed even more in Mrs. Little, who stood sponsor for him.

Almost at once Lance reappeared with a sleepy man whom he had evidently gotten out of bed.

“Write your message, Ma’am,” said the cowboy, “and this man will send it. Make it re’l strong. We’ll ketch ’em at Sessions by noon to-morrer. They kin stop over an’ wait a while for yuh.

“Their tickets will be good on the D. & C. I’ve often done it myself. And yuh’ll all be in Dugonne to-morrer night, anyway, so it won’t matter erbout your berth coupons.”

It was evident that Lance had traveled some and knew his way about. Now he hurried away for the horses while Dorothy wrote the message to be sent after the flying train. It was not yet an hour since Dorothy and Tavia had left the observation car.

Fortunately Dorothy had her handbag with her, and the purse in it was well supplied with money. She asked the operator to count the words of the message, and paid him for it on the spot.

Meanwhile Mrs. Little had made coffee and she insisted upon the girls having some and sampling her cake. When Lance came with the mounts he was likewise regaled, standing in the doorway.

A chill wind was blowing off the prairie, but not a cloud was to be seen. The sky was thickly speckled with stars.

“You’re going to have a right pleasant ride,” prophesied Mrs. Little, producing two of her own voluminous skirts for the girls.

She helped them tuck up their own frocks neatly and arranged the skirts about them after they were mounted.

“Everybody rides a-straddle out yere,” said the good lady, laughing. “An’ yuh kin cling on better. Yuh got some ridin’ tuh do b’fore yuh reach Killock. It’s fifty mile.

“Now, Lance, don’t yuh be reckless. Ef anythin’ happens tuh these gals I’ll be in yuh wool, an’ no mistake!”

“Huh! nawthin’s goin’ tuh happen to them,” laughed Lance. “How erbout me? I eat two slabs of that cake o’ yourn, Miz’ Little, an’ I expect Gaby will bog right down with me inside of a mile, I’ll be so heavy.”

“Git erlong with yuh!” retorted Mrs. Little, used to the cowboys’ rough jokes. “It’s better cake than that Chinaman makes you at the Double Chain Outfit, I vow!”

After that they rode off into the night, with the “knight of the lariat.”

CHAPTER VIII
THE NIGHT ADVENTURE CONTINUED

The little cavalcade had to cross the tracks and the crossing was beside the telegraph office.

“I wonder if he has caught Aunt Winnie’s train yet?” said Dorothy, aloud.

“We’ll see about that, Miss,” said Lance, the cowboy, and he pulled in and shouted for the operator:

“Hey, Bill!”

The window opened and the frowsy head of the telegraph man appeared.

“Ketch Number Seventy yet?” asked the cowboy.

“Just. At Massapeke. Your folks has got your message by this time, ladies.”

“Oh, thank you!” cried Dorothy.

“A thousand times,” added Tavia.

“Come on,” said Lance. “Goo’night, Bill!”

“Goo’night!” responded the operator, and slammed down the window.

They rattled over the crossing and then the ponies set into an easy trot, led by the cowboy’s Gaby.

Dorothy Dale and Tavia Travers had both learned to ride when they were much younger. Indeed, Tavia had learned to ride bareback upon the horses left out to pasture around Dalton, in the days when she was a regular tomboy.

The action of these cow ponies was easy, and the girls enjoyed the strange ride during the first few miles, at least. They had ridden with divided skirts at home; therefore their present position in the saddle was not as strange to them as it might have been.

But there were fifty miles to travel when they left Mrs. Little’s. “It looks like an awfully big contract,” admitted Tavia.

“Yuh ain’t got tuh look at it all tuh once, Miss,” said Lance, good-naturedly. “Yuh take it mile by mile, an’ it ain’t so far.”

“That’s so,” declared Tavia. “I never thought of that.” Then to Dorothy she whispered. “Isn’t he just splendid? And how sweetly he drawls his words?”

“Now, Tavia!” gasped Dorothy. “If you don’t behave yourself——”

“Why, I am!” cried Tavia. “I think you are too particular for anything, Doro. Didn’t that large Little lady tell us he was perfectly all right?”

Dorothy was being jounced around too much just then to make reply. But she saw that Tavia had recovered completely from her “scare” and was looking for mischief.

Out on the open prairie the stars gave light enough for the girls to see Lance better. The track was broader, too, and the trio continued on, side by side, the cowboy riding between the two girls.

Lance was not a bad looking young man at all. Dorothy began to realize, too, that he was nowhere near as old as she had at first supposed. His out of door life had given him that air of maturity.

So, it troubled Dorothy when she saw that Tavia was determined to “buzz” the cowboy.

“Are you a really, truly cowboy?” the irrepressible asked, demurely.

“Well, yuh might call me that, Ma’am, though I wasn’t borned to it like some of these old-timers yuh’ll meet out yere.”

“Then you are not a native of the West?”

“Now you’ve said something, Ma’am. I come from back East; but t’was quite some time ago—believe me!”

“You must have been very young when you came out here—to seek your fortune, I suppose?” pursued Tavia.

“Tuh git cl’ar of my old man’s strap,” chuckled Lance. “He and I didn’t hitch wuth a cent. But he was a good old feller at that.”

“And you never went back?” asked Dorothy, becoming interested herself.

“Never got the time for it. Yuh see, Miss, it does seem as though a man never gets caught up with his work. That’s so!”

“I should think you’d be homesick—want to see your folks,” the insistent Tavia said.

“Jerusha Juniper! My fam’bly was right glad to git shet of me, I reckon; all but my mother. But I reckon she’s too old to travel out yere, an’, as I say, it’s hard for a man like me to git time and money both together for a vacation. I ’low I’d like to see the ol’ lady right well,” he concluded.

Scarcely had he spoken when a rattle of ponies’ hoofs behind them startled their own spirited mounts. The ponies tried to “break” and run, too, as they heard the rat-tat-tat of the hoofs approaching.

“Whoa, thar, Gaby!” commanded Lance. “Ain’t yuh got a bit o’ sense?” Then to Dorothy and Tavia he shouted: “Pull hard on them bits, ladies. They got mouths like sheet-iron—an’ that ain’t no dream!”

The girls pulled their ponies in, as instructed. As they did so two other ponies appeared beside them in the trail. The girls from the East could identify the riders as a man and a girl.

“Jerusha Juniper!” yelled Lance, stopping Gaby from bolting with some difficulty and swinging her across the path of the eastern girls’ mounts, so as to halt them. “Jerusha Juniper! what yuh tryin’ tuh do? Comin’ cavortin’ along the trail this a-way?”

“Is that you, Lance?” asked the man.

“It shore is—an’ two ladies,” said the cow-puncher, proudly.

“Don’t tell ’em we come this way, Lance,” called a shriller voice, which Dorothy knew must belong to the girl, as the couple passed and urged their ponies to a gallop.

“Jerusha Juniper! is it you, Colt—and you, Molly Crater? I’ll be blessed! Tell on yuh? Reckon not—ef Colt’s fin’lly got up his spunk tuh take yuh right from under the ol’ man’s nose, Molly.”

“Oh! what is it?” cried Tavia.

Lance began to laugh—and he laughed loudly, sagging from side to side in his saddle.

“’Scuse me, Ma’am!” he finally got breath to say. “But ef that ain’t th’ beatenes’!”

“Maybe it is,” said Tavia, with sarcasm. “But until you are a little more explicit, Mr. Lance, I don’t see how we can join in your hilarity.”

“Ain’t it so?” drawled Lance, still bubbling over with laughter.

“Do be still, Tavia!” exclaimed Dorothy, admonishingly. “Give Mr. Lance a chance to tell us.”

“And that I shore will do,” chuckled the cowboy, as they jogged on again. “I plumb believe the whole county will laugh to-morrer—that is, if Colt carries it through.”

“Carries what through?” demanded Tavia, sharply.

“Did yuh see that feller an’ gal?” began Lance, in his slow drawl. “That thar is Jim Colt and Peleg Crater’s darter, Molly. Peleg’s a pizen critter as ever was; but Molly’s jest as sweet an’ purty as a May mawnin’—an’ that’s goin’ some.

“Wal, this here Jim Colt has been sparkin’ on Molly for a dawg’s age—yes, Ma’am! That pizen critter, Peleg, done drove him off his farm—Peleg’s a nestor—time an’ time ag’in. Ain’t a single livin’ thing the matter with the boy; but Peleg don’t wanter lose his housekeeper. Works that Molly gal like a reg’lar slave.

“Wal! the last time, I hear, Peleg chased Colt with a shotgun, and purt’ nigh blowed the boy as full of holes as a colander.”

“How awful!” gasped Dorothy.

“What larks!” was Tavia’s comment.

“Guess the smell o’ powder sort o’ put spunk intuh Colt. He’s got th’ gal tuh-night and they’re racin’ for a parson.”

“To get married?” cried Dorothy.

“An elopement?” was Tavia’s delighted cry.

“Shorest thing you know,” agreed Lance.

“My! I’d like to see them married,” cried Tavia.

“And is her father following them, do you suppose, Mr. Lance?” asked Dorothy Dale, anxiously.

“Ef he knows they’ve started you kin bet he’s after ’em—hot foot! Unless Colt throwed an’ tied him fust,” added Lance.

“Mercy! is that somebody coming behind us now?” asked Tavia, delighted at this entirely new source of interest.

But this was a false alarm. The three did ride faster, however, although Lance warned the girls that the distance to Killock was too far for them to hurry the ponies much.

“These yere cayuses air all tuh th’ good,” declared the cowboy. “But there ain’t no use in runnin’ their leetle legs off right now. Somebody else may wanter use ’em after we git through.”

“But that eloping couple were tearing away as fast as they could go,” complained Tavia.

“I ’low a shotgun in the rear will make a man ride fast,” chuckled Lance.

“Aren’t they going to the same town we are?” asked Tavia.

“Killock? No, Ma’am! There’s Parson Hedwith at Branch Coulie—Jerusha Juniper! I bet they ain’t even goin’ thar,” ejaculated Lance, with revived interest. “Hop erlong, Gaby! Push on, ladies. Ef yuh wanter see thet thar marriage, mebbe we kin make it, after all. I bet they air bound for Bill Whistler’s.”

“Who is he?” asked Tavia. “Somebody like the blacksmith at Gretna Green?”

“Never hearn tell of him, Ma’am; an’ a blacksmith ain’t qualified tuh marry in this state. But Bill Whistler is. He’s just been made a Justice of the Peace.”

“A ‘Squire’!” cried Tavia. “So’s my father.”

“Wal, then, Ma’am; you know he kin marry as slick as airy parson,” said Lance. “It’s for his house Colt and Molly air aimin’, I ’low.”

“Oh, Mr. Lance!” cried Dorothy Dale, enthusiastic herself now, “is Mr. Whistler’s house on this road?”

“It shore is.”

“Can’t we stop and see them married?”

“That’s what I was thinkin’ on,” declared the cowboy. “I was ’lowin’ to give the ponies a rest there, anyway. And we’ll need it ourselves.”

“Let’s hurry!” cried Tavia. “Maybe we can catch up with that girl.”

The trio hastened forward. The girls were somewhat tired of riding, for they had already been in the saddle two hours, but this new topic of interest made them forget their weariness for the time.

A light suddenly flashed up on the prairie ahead. “That’s in Bill’s winder,” declared Lance. “Colt and the gal have got thar.”

“Oh, do let’s hurry!” cried Tavia.

In their enthusiasm the girls urged on their little steeds. The ponies quite took the bits away from Dorothy and Tavia during the last half mile of the run, and they tore up to the low, slab-built house at a rattling pace.

There was some disturbance in the house, and the door opened but a crack. The window had already been shuttered.

“Who’s thar?” demanded a falsetto voice.

“It’s Lance, tell ’em, Bill,” called out the cowboy. “Hold back the ceremony a minute. These yere young ladies from the East wants ter stand up with Molly, and if Colt wants a best man, why, I reckon I kin fill the bill. That’ll make a grand, proper weddin’.”

“Come in,” said the falsetto voice. “And bar the door behind yuh. I un’erstan’ this yere is a hasty job. They say Peleg’s on the trail behind ’em.”

Lance was already helping Dorothy and Tavia to dismount. They were as excited as they could be.

“It’s just as though we were being chased by Indians, and this was a blockhouse,” whispered Tavia to her chum.

The cowboy hustled the three ponies around to the shed back of the house. Then he ran back and followed the girls into the open door, shutting it quickly and dropping the bar into place.

“Shoot, Bill!” exclaimed the cowboy. “We’re all ready, I reckon.”

The girls were amazed at the appearance of the Justice of the Peace. He was a huge man with bushy red whiskers which looked as though they would fill a half-bushel measure. And the tiny, shrill, falsetto voice that came from his mouth when he opened it, almost set Tavia into hysterics.

“Stand up yere—git in line,” said the Justice, fishing out a book from behind a littered couch. “I’ll marry yuh as tight and fast as airy parson in the county.”

At the very moment he was beginning there came from without the thunder of advancing hoofs. Everybody heard it. Molly Crater grabbed the bridegroom (who was a good-looking young fellow) by the arm, and sang out:

“It’s pap and the sheriff!”

The next moment the horses arrived, and there came a thunderous knock on the door of the slab house.

CHAPTER IX
WHAT FOLLOWED AN ELOPEMENT

“Take my gun, Lance, and stand at the door,” commanded the solemn, bewhiskered Justice. “Ain’t nobody gwine tuh disturb this court while in th’ puffawmance of its duty. No, sir!

“Git busy, folks! Ketch holt of han’s,” and he proceeded to read through the form made and provided for such occasions by the State Judiciary, while Mr. Peleg Crater continued to hammer at the door.

Dorothy and Tavia marveled at the courage of Molly Crater, who actually responded to the questions in unshaken voice while her angry father shouted threats outside.

“Now, by jinks!” exclaimed the Justice, throwing down the book and saluting the bride with a kiss like the crack of a bullwhip, “yuh air tied hard an’ fast. Le’s see ol’ Peleg untie yuh.”

“He’s got a gun,” said the cowpuncher warningly, at the door. “Ef he blows Colt’s head off the knot will be purty well busted—what?”

“Wal, I’ll lend Jim my gun,” said the philosophic Justice. “Then let ’em go to it.”

“No, sir-ree!” exclaimed the newly made Mrs. Colt. “I won’t have my husband and my father a-shooting at one another.”

“Peleg means business, Molly,” said Lance.

“So do I,” declared the bride. “I’d leave Jim right now ef he aimed a gun at pap. Just as I left pap ’cause he shot at Jim.”

Dorothy and Tavia were badly frightened. These people talked of the use of lethal weapons in a most barbarous way. Even Tavia began to think the West was more uncivilized than it was romantic.

“That’s a good, strong door,” squealed the bewhiskered Whistler. “And the window shutters are bullet-proof. We kin stand a siege. I got a cyclone cellar, too.”

“But we can’t stay here!” cried Dorothy, in great distress.

“That is so, Doro. We have to catch that train,” agreed Tavia.

“There’s more’n one train stops at Killock, Miss,” said Molly Colt, nee Crater, to Dorothy Dale. “And pap will git tired and go away.”

“Nop,” said Lance, the cowboy. “I promised to git these ladies to Killock in time for the mawnin’ train, an’ I’m goin’ ter do it, or bust er leg!”

“And it’s after midnight now,” said Dorothy, looking at her watch.

“Yuh’ll hafter slip out the back way, git yuh ponies, an’ scoot,” advised Whistler through his whiskers.

“We’ll all light out that way,” said young Colt.

“But we don’t wanter get these girls in any trouble,” said Mrs. Colt.

“We’ll leave ’em at once. Make for Branch Coulie. That’ll toll your pap off their trail,” said her husband of five minutes.

Dorothy Dale, although she was much frightened by the situation, did not lose her presence of mind. “Why don’t you and your husband stay here, Mrs. Colt?” she said, clinging to the older girl’s hand. “You remain in the house—or in this cellar Mr. Whistler speaks of, while Mr. Lance and Tavia and I slip out at the back and get away. Your father will think we are you.”

“That idea is as good as gold,” declared Lance, admiringly. “What the little lady says goes, Bill. You agreed, Jim?”

“And me, too,” said Molly Colt, when her husband nodded.

“Go to it,” squealed Whistler in his funny voice.

Tavia nudged Dorothy, and whispered: “You’re crazy! you’ll get us shot.”

“Not a bit,” said Lance, quickly, hearing her. “Our ponies are as fresh as can be now, while Peleg’s is clean tuckered out. He’s traveled already three times as fur as we have—and he ain’t been savin’ horseflesh, nuther, the state of mind he’s in. Believe me!”

“But the sheriff?” asked Tavia. “Won’t he arrest us?”

“If he wants my vote nex’ year,” shrilled Whistler, “he won’t interfere. He’s only along to see fair play, I reckon.”

“Come on, then,” cried Lance.

“I’ll keep Peleg at the door. Colt, you an’ Molly slip inter the cellar,” commanded the Justice of the Peace. “Peleg will hear Lance and these young ladies after they git started, and I’ll sick him ontuh yuh. He wouldn’t ketch yuh in a week o’ Sundays—an’ I never seed that week come around yit.”

The girls from the East had only time to kiss Molly Colt good-bye and wish her happiness, when Lance hurried them out of the back door of the slab house. They were both keyed up with excitement, but Lance did not realize how troubled they were as he lifted them onto their respective ponies, after cinching the saddles again.

“All ready?” whispered the cowboy. “Then we’ll start. I’ll ride behind. If the old goose does any shooting he’ll aim at me, anyway—and none o’ these nestors kin shoot wuth a hang. You can see the trail, ladies?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Dorothy.

They rode out quietly, skirting a group of sheds, and struck into the trail. The ponies were well under way before the angry farmer heard them.

“He’s fell for it!” cried the cowboy. “Jerusha Juniper! Here he comes. Let ’em out, ladies. The ponies is fresh as jackrabbits.”

For perhaps two miles they heard the farmer hooting and yelling behind them. But he did not shoot. Then the sounds of his pursuit abruptly ended. The ‘nestor’ had given up the chase.

“I hope he’ll not find his daughter and her husband until he gets over his mad fit,” said Dorothy, anxiously.

“That mean man would never be decent,” said Tavia. “But wasn’t it exciting?”

“Colt’s goin’ to take Molly a fur ways off,” said the cowboy. “Old Peleg will have plenty of time to simmer down afore he sees airy of ’em again.”

They rode on through the night and after a time Lance left the regular trail. Dorothy was a bit worried by this move and asked him why.

“Isn’t there a chance of our getting lost, Mr. Lance?”

“No, Ma’am. This trail goes a roundabout way, and we can cut off nigh ten miles by striking right ’cross country. If there was high water we couldn’t do it, but the streams are nigh dry.”

“It looks so dark,” said Tavia. “How can you ever find the way?”

Then he showed them the North Star and other planets and combinations of stars by which the plainsman casts his course at night, as the sailor does at sea.

They came to several water-courses, unbridged; the ponies splashed through the shallow water, and then broke into their easy gallop again.

Dawn came, tripping over the prairie behind them, soon catching and passing the three riders, and rushing on to lighten the deep shadows of the mountains far, far in advance. All night these mountains had masked the western horizon like a threatening cloud.

Dorothy had dreamed of sunrise on the prairie; but she had not supposed it half so wonderful as it was!

The hem of Dawn’s garment was tinged with opal light, which quickly changed to faint pink—then deep rose—then an angry saffron which spread like a prairie fire all along the eastern horizon.

She could not help looking back at it to the detriment of her riding. But her pony was surefooted, and she came to no harm.

The glow increased. They were bathed in the light, and quickly the first level rays of the sun chased their own elongated shadows over the ground. There sprang into view ahead, as they cantered over a small rise, several sharply sparkling objects.

“What are they?” cried Tavia.

“Them’s winders in Killock,” said Lance. “We’ll soon be there—and in plenty of time for your train, Miss.”

“Oh, Mr. Lance,” Dorothy said, gratefully, “I don’t know how we can thank you for your kindness.”

“Don’t say a word—don’t say a word,” urged their knight of the lariat. “We know how to treat ladies out yere, I reckon. An’ I ain’t done a thing tuh be thanked for.”

“Are you going on with us to Sessions?” Dorothy asked him.

“I can’t rightly do so,” said the cowboy. “I got to ’tend to some business for my boss here in Killock.”

“Oh! I am so sorry,” said Dorothy. “I want you to meet my Aunt Winnie and my cousins.”

“Mebbe I’ll see yuh at Dugonne—later,” said Lance, bashfully. “The Double Chain Outfit ain’t far from there.”

Dorothy had money enough left to buy tickets to Sessions for herself and Tavia. Lance refused to take anything for the use of the ponies. As the train hooted in the distance for its brief stop at Killock, the girls hugged the ponies, and Tavia kissed Gaby plumb upon her soft nose.

“She’s a dear, Mr. Lance!” she cried. “I hope I shall see her again.”

“You’ll see her if yuh see me,” declared the cowpuncher. “Where I go Gaby goes, too, you bet!”

They shook hands with the good-natured man and scurried aboard the cars. As they found a seat on the side away from the station, Dorothy clutched Tavia’s arm.

“Look at that man, Tavia!” she whispered, pointing through the window.

The person to whom Dorothy drew her chum’s attention was stealing out of the bushes beside the tracks. He was a gray-haired man, with a Grand Army hat, although the head-covering was battered and torn. He wore a ragged blue coat, too, and Dorothy had identified the button he wore on the lapel of the disreputable coat.

He was an unshaven and altogether unhappy looking object; but that button assured Major Dale’s bright eyed daughter, that the poor old creature was a Veteran.

“What do you suppose he is doing here?” gasped Dorothy. “Oh! the poor old man!”

The car wheels began to turn again. The train had halted for only a minute. They saw the man hobble across the tracks, and seize the railing as their car passed him. It was plain to the girls that he meant to steal a ride upon the fast train.

“Oh! he’ll be killed,” gasped Dorothy, half rising from her seat.

“Sit down, Doro Dale!” exclaimed Tavia. “If you tell anybody, he’ll be put off.”

Dorothy was greatly troubled. She never saw a Grand Army man without being interested in him. And she had never seen one before who so looked like a tramp.

“That worries me,” said Dorothy Dale, the tears standing in her beautiful eyes. “I fear that poor man will fall off the steps of the car.”

“I am afraid the brakeman will see him and put him off at the first stop,” retorted Tavia. “And we haven’t money enough to pay his fare.”

“Goodness! No!” cried Dorothy. “I have less than a dollar left in my purse.”

“And of course, I have no money at all. I never do have,” groaned the reckless Tavia.

“After the conductor goes through the car,” whispered Dorothy, seeing the man in question coming down the aisle, “I am going to steal back there and see if the poor old creature really did get upon the steps outside the vestibule door.”

CHAPTER X
THE MAN WHO WOULD HAVE DIED INDOORS

The conductor seemed a jolly man, and he took a fatherly interest in Dorothy and Tavia, having a daughter about their age at home, so he said. Yet Dorothy did not feel like telling him about the old tramp whom she and Tavia had seen attempting to board the train.

“You see, the conductor has his rules to go by,” explained Dorothy, “and we couldn’t expect him to break them for us. I wish we had money to pay the fare of the poor old creature.”

“You don’t really know, Dorothy Dale, whether the man is on the step, or not,” urged Tavia.

“I’m going to find out,” pronounced her chum, with decision.

She left her seat, following the conductor slowly to the end of the car. Ostensibly she went for a drink, but the moment the blue-coated official had passed through to the next car, Dorothy went out into the vestibule. The brakeman chanced to be out of sight at the moment.

The doors on the “off” side of the vestibule were locked, but Dorothy could peer through the glass. Directly beneath her she could see the broken top of the old army hat.

“He’s there!” gasped Dorothy, running back to Tavia. “Whatever shall we do about it?”

“I wish Lance was here,” said her friend. “He’d know what to do.”

“We can’t have men-folk around to help us out of all our troubles,” sniffed Dorothy.

“This isn’t trouble,” declared Tavia. “It’s really nothing to us——”

“But suppose the poor man should fall off?”

“We’re anxious for nothing, I wager,” said Tavia. “He is probably used to riding on car steps.”

“It’s such a narrow place,” groaned Dorothy. “He can’t more than cling to it. Oh! here’s a curve!”

They whirled around this corner and then over a long trestle that crossed a placid river. When the train did stop the girls did not see the tramp get off. All the stations chanced to be on the other side, as Killock had been.

The peril of the man whom Dorothy believed to be a fellow-soldier with her own father, Major Dale, was the uppermost topic in Dorothy’s mind and conversation. Tavia began to have another, and more personal, worry.

“I could eat a planked steak—plank and all!—right now,” said the flyaway. “Dear me, Doro! I wish your purse was like the widow’s cruse, and never gave out. There’s a buffet car on, too.”

They had to satisfy their appetites for the time being by buying some fruit from the train boy. But this was a poor substitute for planked steak—or any other hearty viand.

“I hope Aunt Winnie and Ned and Nat will wait for us at Sessions, as I asked them,” sighed Dorothy.

“If they don’t, we’ll have to steal a ride,” said Tavia, quickly. “Ned has our tickets, you know.”

But that was not a real worry. Dorothy was pretty sure her aunt and the boys would do just as she had asked them to do. What was happening outside that car, on the rear step, was a matter (so she thought) for real anxiety!

A dozen times she went back to peer through the window in the vestibule door and caught a glimpse of the top of the battered Grand Army hat.

Perhaps she went once too often—for the contentment of the old man who was cheating the railroad company of a fare. Or, it may have been in some other manner that the brakeman’s attention was called to the presence of the stowaway on the step. For he was discovered before the train reached the junction, at eleven o’clock, where Dorothy and Tavia were to leave the train.

The conductor had been through again and talked to them, and they had learned when and where to look for the station. Other passengers were already getting their baggage out of the racks, and putting on their light wraps.

Suddenly the two friends heard a disturbance at the end of the car. Tavia jumped up and looked back.

“Oh, Doro!” she cried, in a horrified tone, “they have him!”

Dorothy turned quickly and saw the brakeman drag the old tramp into the car and fling him into an end seat.

“How rough he is!” gasped Tavia, referring to the railroad employee.

Dorothy darted down the aisle. She would have interfered had the conductor not come at once and taken charge.

“On the step, eh? Well! he took his life in his hands,” grumbled the conductor. “Give him a drink of water, John. I expect he’s famished for it—chewing grit as he has been since we started.”

“Oh! what will you do with him?” cried Dorothy, clutching at the conductor’s sleeve.

“Nothing very bad, little lady,” assured the conductor, smiling at her. “We’ll hand him over to the railroad police at Sessions. They’ll take him to court.”

“Oh! must he be punished?”

“I am afraid so. The company’s pretty strict. He’s been stealing a ride and the magistrate will send him to the rockpile for that.”

“But he’s such an old man—and he’s a soldier,” whispered Dorothy, pointing to the button on the lapel of the old coat.

The conductor started and looked more closely. “It’s a Grand Army button—sure enough,” he muttered. Then he looked into the soot-lined face of the man and shook his head.

“Stole it, most likely,” was his comment, and went on through the car.

Dorothy did not believe that. The man’s eyes were dull, and it was evident that he was much exhausted. A traveling-man came up and offered him a drink from his pocket-flask. Dorothy was sorry to see how eagerly the trembling old hands went out for the spirits.

Soon color returned to the flabby cheeks, and a certain look of confidence to the old eyes, after the tramp had imbibed the liquor.

He was kept in the seat until the train stopped at the Sessions platform. Then, as the girls hurried out to find their friends, Dorothy saw the old man with the Grand Army button being taken off the car by two policemen in plain clothes.

“Dorothy Dale!”

“Tavia Travers!”

Two lusty shouts greeted the girls the moment they showed themselves upon the steps of the car. Ned and Nat White burst through the crowd outside and seized upon the two girls as they descended.

“Glory!” yelled Nat. “I could pound you girls, I’m so glad to see you. You had us scared stiff. And Little Mum will never get over it.”

“Not so bad as that,” rejoined his brother. “But you girls certainly managed to give us all a scare. I’d just as soon travel with two kids as with you graduates of Glenwood School.”

“Now, Neddie,” advised Tavia, “don’t put on airs.”

“We’re real sorry, boys,” admitted Dorothy. “But that old train went off and left us without saying one word!”

“I should think it did,” answered Ned. “And what business had you off of it?”

“It wasn’t we that went off,” declared Tavia. “It was the train that went off.”

“Where have you been all this time?” asked Nat. “How did you get here by an entirely different road? And who helped you?”

“Oh, there! now you’ve said something,” cried Tavia. “Just the very nicest young man. A cattle puncher by trade, and we rode fifty miles with him, and saw a Mrs. Little of gigantic size, and helped a young woman and her lover elope, and witnessed the ceremony while her father battered at the door and threatened to blow all our heads off—and were chased by the angry father thinking we were the elopers, and——”

“Stop her! stop her!” shouted Nat. “I know you girls can collect adventures as a magnet does steel filings, but you are going too far now. An elopement! and an angry father with a gun——”

“And our Grand Army man!” cried Dorothy, suddenly. “Where is he? We must do something to help him.”

“That’s so, Doro,” agreed Tavia. “We must find him.”

“Now they’re off again!” groaned Nat, looking helplessly at his brother.

“Where is Aunt Winnie?” demanded Dorothy, suddenly.

“She is at the hotel. And she’s gone to bed,” said Ned, gloomily. “You girls will give Little Mum the conniptions, if you’re not careful. She was awfully worried.”

“But you got our telegram?” cried Dorothy.

“Sure. But it read a good deal like the Irish foreman’s message to the widow of his fellow-countryman suddenly killed in the stone quarry: ‘Don’t worry about Pat. He’s only lost both legs and one arm; and if it wasn’t that his head was cut off, too, he’d be as good as ever.’ Your telegram gave just enough particulars to worry mother.”

“We’ll run and show her we are all right,” cried Tavia.

But Dorothy held back. Her eyes were fixed upon the ragged figure of the old tramp being led out of the station by the two policemen.

“Do you see that poor fellow, Ned?” she whispered. “He wears a Grand Army button—like father.”

“That tramp?” gasped Ned.

“Yes. But maybe he isn’t really a tramp. Only he stole a ride clear from Killock,” and she hastily told her cousins about the stowaway on the steps of the car. “And Ned!” added Dorothy Dale, “I want to save him from punishment. They are going to take him before the magistrate—and the conductor says the magistrate will send him to jail.”

“I expect so,” said Ned, slowly.

“Come, Ned!” exclaimed the girl, anxiously, shaking him by the sleeve. “Let Nat take Tavia to Aunt Winnie, and you come to court with me. Maybe we can help the poor old man. A Grand Army man, Ned!”

Ned White knew that there was no stopping his cousin when she had “taken the bit in her teeth.” And here was a case where she was greatly moved.

Nobody could gain Dorothy Dale’s sympathy like a Grand Army man. Ned merely shrugged his shoulders and went with her, while Nat and Tavia started in the other direction.

“Remember we go on the one o’clock train,” shouted Nat after them.

Dorothy and her cousin quickly caught up with the railroad police and their captive.

“Oh, please, sir!” cried Dorothy, to one of the officers, who had a very kind face, “where are you taking him?”

“Hello, Miss!” exclaimed the policeman, taking off his hat. “Are you interested in this old chap?”

Dorothy told him why, and how. “Oh!” said the railroad man, “I didn’t know but you knew him. He’s got to go to court, anyway.”

“Right away?” asked the girl, breathlessly.

“That’s where we are taking him, Miss,” said the other officer.

“May we go with you?”

“Of course you may. And if you want to say a good word for the old fellow to Judge Abbott, I’ll fix it so you can,” he added.

“That is so kind of you!” Dorothy said. “You see, he is a Grand Army man.”

“Mebbe he stole the button, Miss,” growled one of the police.

Dorothy turned swiftly to the prisoner. His old face was drawn and haggard. Dorothy put her finger upon the button on the frayed lapel of his coat.

“Where did you get that, sir?” she asked.

Almost instantly the dull eyes brightened. The sagging chin came up and the old shoulders were squared.

“It belongs to me, Miss,” he said, in a broken voice. “I am an army man—oh, yes! Thank you. I—I been in the Home; but I couldn’t stay indoor. So—so I ran away.”

“Ran away!” gasped Dorothy. “And where were you running to?”

“To the great out-of-doors,” whispered the old man. “I always lived in the open. I prospected, and I hunted, and I worked—all through these hills,” and he pointed westward.

“I suppose I did wrong in beating my way on the cars. But I’ve often done it,” confessed the old man. “I had no money for carfare. My pension’s turned over to the Home as is only right, I s’pose. But I got to get out into the open, or die!”

The two railroad police looked at each other, grimly. “What do you know about that?” one muttered. Dorothy was frankly crying.

“OUGHT HE TO BE A PRISONER WITH THAT BUTTON ON HIS COAT?” CRIED DOROTHY.
Dorothy Dale in the West Page [101]

CHAPTER XI
AT DUGONNE AT LAST

“You see, Miss,” said one of the officers, “we got to take him to court. It’s as much as our job’s worth to let him go.”

“We’ll all go along,” said Ned, firmly. “Maybe the judge will be kind to him.”

“But they’ve got a bad law in this town,” said the other officer, shaking his head.

“What kind of a law?” asked Ned, quickly.

“In regard to vagrants. It’s three months on the stone pile, or with ball and chain. No getting out of it, unless the prisoner has money enough to buy a ticket that will take him fifty miles away, on one road or the other.”

“Why! that is barbarous!” exclaimed Dorothy.

“Dunno about that, Ma’am; but it’s the municipal ordinance.”

“Oh! the judge of the court must have some power,” cried Dorothy. “Do let me talk to him.”

The magistrate’s court was not far distant. Ned felt rather peculiar as he climbed the stairs in company with the prisoner and officers, holding Dorothy’s hand in the crook of his arm. There were some pretty rough looking characters on the stairs and hanging about the door of the magistrate’s court. But Ned and Dorothy pushed on in the wake of the railroad police and their prisoner.

Dorothy sympathized so deeply with the old man who had escaped from the discipline and routine of the Soldiers’ Home, that she paid little attention to her surroundings.

The courtroom was long, and ugly, and bare. The man sitting at the high desk at the end of the room, Dorothy knew, must be the magistrate. He was a young, smoothly shaven man, dressed very fashionably, and with a flower in his buttonhole. That flower was the single bright spot in all the somber place.

The railroad policeman looked knowingly at Dorothy, and she went forward with Ned. They were both allowed inside the railing. One of the officers spoke in a low tone to the magistrate, and the latter glanced interestedly at Dorothy.

Although Dorothy Dale had been traveling night and day for some time, she was too attractive a girl to lose all her bonny appearance under any circumstances.

The magistrate listened to the railroad detective. Then he called the poor old man to the bar.

“What is your name?” asked the magistrate.

“John Dempsey, your honor.”

“Without a home in this county, and no visible means of support, the officer says—is that right?”

“I—I—Yes, your honor.”

“And found riding on the train without a ticket?”

“I was, your honor.”

“Why? Why did you do it?”

“Sure, your honor, they treat me well enough at the Home; but I want to get out in the open. It’s stifled I am become by four walls.”

“But that does not explain away the fact that you stole a ride upon the complainant’s train?” said the magistrate, sternly.

Dorothy looked up at him pleadingly. John Dempsey was silent; he could not plead his own cause in speech as eloquent as Dorothy’s eyes pleaded for him! Judge Abbott beckoned the young girl to step up beside him.

“I understand you wish to speak in the prisoner’s behalf?” said the magistrate.

“Oh, Judge! ought he to be a prisoner with that button on his coat?” cried Dorothy Dale, impulsively. “He is an old Veteran—a man who fought for our country. I am sure Mr. Dempsey is a good man. Don’t punish him, Judge!”

“But, my dear young lady, how can I help it? He has committed a misdemeanor. He must either be sent to jail, or he must produce his fare out of town—and fifty miles out of town, at that!”

“Oh, sir! can’t somebody else pay his fare?” asked Dorothy, anxiously.

“Surely, Miss. Are you prepared to do so?”

“No, sir, not now. But I will take him away on the one o’clock train—I will indeed.”

“Very well. Sentence suspended. Paroled in your care,” added the judge to one of the railroad officers. “You have him at the station in season for the train, and the young lady will be responsible for his fare.”

Dorothy thanked him, but went eagerly to the prisoner.

“Where do you want to go, sir?” she asked.

“I—I—Well, Miss, it don’t so much matter as long as I git to go. I want to reach the hills.”

“You shall go with us as far as Dugonne, at least,” said Dorothy, impulsively. “I’m sure we can find something for him to do at the Hardin place, Ned?” she added, turning to her cousin.

Ned was more than a little startled by this. Things were moving rather too fast for him. But he managed to say:

“You—you’ll have to settle that with the mater, Dot.” But then he whispered: “What can an old fellow like him do on a ranch?”

“That’s all right,” Dorothy returned. “We’ll make him think he can do something.”

“You do beat all!” gasped her cousin, with astonishment.

Dorothy shook hands with the judge, and with the railroad officers, and with John Dempsey. She scattered the sunshine of her smiles all about the dingy court room, and things seemed to brighten up for everybody.

Then she hurried with Ned to the hotel where Aunt Winnie was waiting.

“My dear girl!” said that good lady. “How you have worried me. And Tavia’s account of your adventures have not served to relieve our anxiety—much. Going to court with a tramp——”

“Not a tramp, Auntie!” interposed Dorothy Dale. “He is one of father’s old comrades. He is a Veteran.”

“I hope so. I hope you have not been imposed upon. But it will cost money——”

“You told me,” said Dorothy, earnestly, “that when we got to the Hardin place you’d buy a pony for my very own use. Take that money and pay John Dempsey’s fare. I don’t need a pony.”

Aunt Winnie kissed her. “My dear girl! I am afraid your sympathy will often lead you astray,” she said. “But you will stray in kindly paths. I do not believe there will be much serious harm for you that way.”

“What do you think of me?” broke in Tavia. “I am always going astray, too. At least, so they all tell me.”

“Your heart is all right, my dear Octavia,” said Mrs. White, smiling, “but it is your head that leads you astray,” she added, not unkindly.

They all went to the railroad station in good season, and there found the policeman and old John Dempsey waiting for them. The good-natured officer had improved the old man’s appearance considerably by having his clothing brushed and finding him the means for washing. Dempsey had likewise been fed.

He was a brown-faced, blue-eyed man of nearly seventy. The blue eyes had, perhaps, a wandering look, and the muscles about the old man’s mouth had weakened, but otherwise he was sturdy looking.

He saluted Dorothy when she hurried toward him, but took off his hat to Mrs. White.

“’Tis a pity, Ma’am,” he said, to the lady, “that you do be troubled by such as me. But I’m fair desp’rit! I’d take charity from anybody to git back into the open once more.

“They’ve hived me up in four walls till it’s fair mad they’ve made me. I might strike it rich yet, out in the hills, an’ pay ye for——”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that,” said Mrs. White, kindly. “I am sure we can find something for you to do out of doors on our big place that will make you self-supporting.”

“God bless ye for saying that, Ma’am,” said John Dempsey, gratefully, and followed on behind the party to the train, where the policeman bade them good-bye.

The boys took charge of John Dempsey and saw him comfortably seated in the day coach. It was a long run to Dugonne, where the party arrived at nine o’clock that evening.

Dorothy was so anxiously looking forward to the end of the train journey that she had quite forgotten some of the circumstances connected with this sudden trip. There, on the lighted platform, as the train rolled in, appeared the stocky, black mustached man for whom she and Tavia had taken such a dislike.

“Philo Marsh!” ejaculated Dorothy to her chum.

“He got here ahead of us.”

“He had no intention of letting Aunt Winnie get here first,” declared Dorothy. “Now, Tavia, we must watch that man; he means Aunt Winnie no good, I’m sure.”

Philo Marsh rushed forward to greet Mrs. White, with both hands extended, when the party from the East left the train.

“I certainly made good connections,” he said, with enthusiasm, insisting upon shaking hands with the two boys as well as the lady herself. The girls kept away from him, and it was evident that the man did not recognize them, but he swept off his hat and bowed deeply to Dorothy and Tavia, when Mrs. White presented them as “my niece, and her friend.”

“I’ve the best suite in the best hotel in Dugonne saved for you,” Philo Marsh declared. “I’ve ordered supper for you, too. They’ll serve it just as soon as you arrive, in your sitting room. Oh, we can do things in good style out yere if we put our minds to it,” and the man laughed heartily.

“And in the morning I’ll come and talk with you, Mrs. White. If you want to see some of the other men interested in this water-right business, I’ll bring them.”

“Oh, mercy, sir!” cried Aunt Winnie. “Let us get rested and look about a little before we rush into business. But I will let you call to-morrow afternoon, Mr. Marsh.”

With this, Philo Marsh had to be content. The party of tourists were driven away in a depot wagon for the Commonwealth Hotel.

CHAPTER XII
ON THE ROAD TO HARDIN’S

“Goodness gracious, grumpy gree!” yawned Tavia. “Isn’t a really-truly bed the greatest invention known to civilized man, Doro?”

“I don’t know about its being the first on the list; but it certainly is a delight after sleeping on a shelf in that car,” agreed Dorothy Dale, stretching luxuriously.

“I hate to get up.”

“You can stay here all day alone, then,” said her chum, briskly. “Aunt Winnie means to get to the Hardin ranch-house before night.”

“Then what about Philo Marsh?” cried Tavia.

“She confided to me,” chuckled Dorothy, “that that is why she told him not to come around until afternoon. She will see him just before we start for Hardin’s.”

“He’ll be mad as fury.”

“Let him be. Auntie says she is determined to look over the estate, and see the water supply herself, and survey the proposed new channel, before she signs a paper.”

“Bully for her!” cried the slangy Tavia. “I bet that pirate, Philo Marsh, has something up his sleeve beside his arm.”

Bang! bang! bang! A knock at the girls’ door.

“Oh! is the house afire?” shrieked Tavia, leaping out of bed. “Or is it Papa Crater again, trying to find Molly and her bridegroom?”

“What are you girls waiting for?” demanded Nat, on the other side of the door. “Come on! Ned and I have been up for hours, and have hired a four-horse stage-coach—a regular old timer out of a show, I bet—to cart us and the baggage to Hardin’s.”

“Oh!” cried Dorothy. “You’re not starting at once?”

“Guess you’ll have time to dress and eat breakfast first—if you hurry,” chuckled Nat, as he went off down the hotel corridor.

This was only Nat’s fun. He and Ned were lonely and wanted to show the girls the town. Not that the sprawling western metropolis was much of a sight, after all!