Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch Part 13

"And--when I do--I'll take yours!" gasped Grace. She held up a letter. "From mother. She--she says we can go--Walter and I--both of us!"

"Well, for mercy's sake!" exclaimed Bess, "where are you going?

Though I should say _you_, Grace, had already gone. Crazy, you know."

"To Rose Ranch!" almost shouted Grace.

In astounded repet.i.tion, Nan and Bess fairly shrieked: "_To Rose Ranch?_"

"My goodness, yes! Haven't you heard about it? My letter says Rhoda's invited both of you girls, too, and that Walter is going.

Is--it a hoax?"

Nan and Bess stared at each other in amazement for a single moment; then, like a flash, they tore open their own letters, both being those prized "mother letters" so dear to every boarding-school girl's heart, and unfolded the missives the envelopes contained. It was Bess who found it first.

"It's here! It's here! Just think of Rhoda Hammond keeping this secret from us! She wrote her folks and they wrote to mine--and to yours, Nan--and Gracie's. Oh! Oh! We're going, going, going!"

"Isn't it fine?" cried Grace, dancing up and down in her delight.

"Delightsome! Just delightsome!" agreed Bess, coining a new word to express her own joy. "Three cheers and a tiger! And a wildcat! And a panther! And--and--Well! all the other tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs that may go with three cheers," she concluded because she was out of both breath and inspiration.

"And Rhoda's folks must be awfully nice people," Grace said warmly.

"And her mamma--"

But Nan was deep in her own letter from Momsey, and here follows the part of it dealing with this wonderful news which had so excited all three of the girls:

"Your new friend, Rhoda, must be a very lovely girl, and I want you to bring her home to Tillbury the day school closes. I know she must be a nice girl by the way her mother writes me. Her mother is blind, but she has had somebody write me that she wants very much to 'see' Nan Sherwood, who has been so kind to her Rhoda during the latter's first term at Lakeview.

"This makes me very happy and proud, Nan dear; for if your schoolmates love you so much that they write home about you, I am sure you are doing as well at school as Papa Sherwood and I could wish you to. And this Mrs. Hammond is very insistent that you shall visit Rose Ranch this summer. Mrs. Harley came to see me about it, and we have decided that you and Elizabeth can go home with Rhoda, if the Masons likewise agree to let Grace and Walter go. There is a lady going West to Rose Ranch at the same time--a Mrs. Janeway--who is a friend of Mrs. Hammond's. She will look after you young folk en route, and will return with you.

"But we must have you a little while first, my Nan; and you must bring Rhoda here to the little cottage in amity for a few days, at least, before the party starts West. And--"

But this much of the letter was all Nan would let the other girls hear. She was quite as happy as either Grace or Bess. And all three of them tripped away at once to find Rhoda and try to tell her just how delighted they were over this plan.

"It never seemed as though _I_ should see Rose Ranch," Nan sighed ecstatically when they had talked it all over. "It is too good to be true."

As the term lengthened the girls were pushed harder and harder by the instructors, and Bess and others like her complained a good deal.

"The only thing that keeps me going is a mirage of Rose Ranch ahead of me," declared Nan's chum, shaking her head over the text books piled upon their study table. "Oh, dear me, Nan! if anything should happen to make it impossible for us to go with Rhoda, I certainly should fall--down--and--die!"

"Oh, nothing will happen as bad as that," laughed Nan.

"Well, nothing much ever does happen to us," agreed Bess. "But suppose something should happen to Rhoda?"

"Shall we set a bodyguard about her?" asked Nan, her eyes twinkling. "Do you think of any particular danger she may be in? I fancy she is quite capable of taking care of herself."

"Now, Nan!" cried Bess, "don't poke fun. It would be awful if anything should happen so that we couldn't go to Rose Ranch with her."

Perhaps this was rather a selfish thought on Bess Harley's part.

Still, Bess was not notably unselfish, although she had improved a good deal during the months she had been at Lakeview Hall.

But Nan had occasion to remember her chum's words very clearly not long thereafter, for she did find Rhoda Hammond in trouble. It was one Friday afternoon when Nan was returning from her architectural drawing lesson at Professor Krenner's cabin, up the lake sh.o.r.e.

Amelia had not gone that day, being otherwise engaged; so Nan was alone on the path through the spruce wood that here clothed the face of the high bluff on which Lakeview Hall was set.

A company of jays squalling in a thicket had been the only disturbing sounds in the sun-bathed woods, when of a sudden Nan heard somebody speak--a high and angry voice. Then in Rhoda's deeper tones, she heard:

"What do you mean, confronting me like this? I do not know you. You are crazy!"

"Maybe I am cr-r-razy!" cried the second voice, its owner rolling her "r's" magnificently. "But I am not a thief. You, Senorita Ham-mon', are that! You and all your fam-i-lee are the thiefs--yes!"

Nan's thought flashed instantly to the Mexican girl in the shop in Adminster. She had spoken in just this way. And she had given at that time every indication of hating Rhoda.

The girl from Tillbury pushed into the thicket from which the voices sounded. Rhoda replied to the castigation of the other's tongue only by an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of amazement. The harsher voice went on:

"The tr-r-reasure of the Ranchio Rose--that ees what you have stolen. You and your fam-i-lee. Those reeches pay for your dress--for your ring there on your han'--for all your good times, and to make you a la-dee. But _me_--I am poor that you and yours may be reech, Senorita Ham-mon'. The treasure of the Ranchio Rose belong to me and to my modder--not to you. Thiefs, I say!"

Nan burst through the bushes at this juncture. Rhoda had uttered another cry. She was backing away from a girl with flushed countenance and uplifted, clenched hand--a girl that Nan Sherwood very well remembered.

CHAPTER XI

JUANITA

"STOP that! Don't you dare strike her!" cried Nan, and rushed forward bravely to the rescue of Rhoda Hammond.

Rhoda was bigger and stronger than Nan; but the latter lacked no courage, and she believed that her friend was so much surprised and taken aback by the Mexican girl's accusation that she was not entirely ready to meet the personal a.s.sault which the stranger evidently intended.

"Stop that!" repeated Nan, and she dashed between the two girls.

She laid her hand upon the Mexican's chest and pushed her back.

"You have no right to do this. Don't you know we can have you arrested by the police?"

"Ha! eet ees the odder Senorita," gasped the Mexican girl. "By gracious! I see you are fr-r-riends--heh? You know about the tr-r-reas-ure of the Ranchio Rose--heh?"

"Why, she doesn't know any more what you are talking about than I do," replied Rhoda Hammond, in wonder.

"This girl," said Nan, "must mean the gold and silver and other things you said, Rhoda, that the Mexican bandit hid on your father's ranch somewhere."

"Lobarto!" murmured Rhoda.

"Dhat ees eet!" cried the Mexican girl. "Lobarto, dhe r-r-robber.

Lobarto, dhe slayer of women and chil'ren! Ah! The fiend!" and the excited girl's eyes blazed again.

"But what has that to do with Rhoda and her father? I am sure you know very well that Mr. Hammond could not help that bad Mexican bandit's coming up into the vicinity of Rose Ranch and hiding his plunder," said Nan confidently. "And what has it all to do with you, anyway?"

"She!" exclaimed the Mexican girl, pointing to Rhoda. "She ees reech because I am poor. Oh, yes! I know."

"You don't know anything of the kind," said Nan flatly. "Does she, Rhoda?"