Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch Part 12

"Then I shouldn't think Walter would leave them there alone beside the road," Nan said thoughtfully.

"Reckon he trusts that black horse to stand. He's looped the reins of the grey over the pommel of his own saddle. And that's not a smart trick," added Rhoda.

"Why don't you get a horse and ride with them, Rhoda?" asked Bess Harley. "I guess you just ache to get on that pony?"

"What! Side-saddle?" gasped the girl from Rose Ranch. "I wouldn't risk my neck that way."

Suddenly somebody batted a determined tennis ball from far down the nearest court. It whizzed over the back stop, and--bang!--hit the grey pony on the nose.

Rhoda had not been a bad prophet. The pony with the rolling eye leaped and snorted, all four feet in the air at once, and just as crazy in an instant as ever a horse could be.

But perhaps a much better trained and better-tempered animal would have done the same. She jerked the loop of her bridle-rein off Prince's saddlehorn in that first jump. Then she was away like the wind, her little hoofs spurning the gravel of the path that crossed the school's athletic field and led to the broad steps that led down the face of the cliff to the boathouse and cove.

Mad as the pony was, she might have cast herself down the steep flight. Frightened animals have done such things upon less provocation.

The girls screamed, and that only lent wings to the grey's flying hoofs. But the horror and wild despair of the group at the edge of the field were not caused by the mere running away of the grey pony.

The mad creature was headed for the brink of the cliff; but between the pony and that side of the field was a group of the smaller girls at play. There were almost thirty of the little girls of the Hall engaged in a game of tag, and utterly oblivious to the drumming hoofs of the pony!

The girls did not instantly see the pony coming. And when they did realize their peril they milled for a minute right in her track like a herd of frightened cattle.

Scarcely had the pony started from the road, however, and the peril of the girls become apparent, when Rhoda Hammond leaped into action, jumping to the back of Walter Mason's pawing black Prince.

The girl from Rose Ranch seemed to reach the saddle in a single spring. She was astride the snorting horse and her feet instinctively sought the stirrups, as Prince leaped away in the track of the grey pony.

The stirrup-leathers were longer than Rhoda was used to; for most Western riders use a shorter leather than was the custom about Lakeview Hall. But, almost standing erect as Prince thundered across the athletic field, Rhoda seemed perfectly poised both in body and mind. To see her, one would never suppose that it was possible to fall out of a saddle.

The big black horse seemed to know just what was expected of him.

He scarcely needed guiding. The girl's hair snapped out behind her in the wind; her set face, visible to a few of the spectators, gave them confidence. She was no "b.u.t.terfingers" now. She was going to do what she had set out to do--no doubt of that!

She rode slightly stooping forward from the waist, with left hand outstretched while Prince's reins were gathered loosely in her right hand. The shrieking children were huddled right before the grey pony. It did seem as though they could not possibly escape being trampled upon.

But the stride of the big black horse was almost twice the length of the pony's. And he answered the rein perfectly. Rhoda rode to the right of the grey, stretched forward her long arm, and swerved her own mount at the same moment.

A single jerk on the lines of the pony, dragging her sideways, and the runaway crossed her forefeet and crashed to the ground, almost throwing a somersault the fall was so abrupt.

But the grey was not much hurt. Rhoda had drawn Prince in, was out of the saddle, had run to seize the pony's bridle before the fallen animal could get to her feet and continue her mad race.

CHAPTER X

THE TREASURE OF ROSE RANCH

Walter Mason came running as hard as he could across the field; but he had only to seize Prince's reins and manage that excited animal.

Rhoda had the grey pony well in hand.

"Well, you're a wonder for a girl!" exclaimed Grace's brother.

"Humph!" said Rhoda in return, "I don't consider that a compliment--if you meant it as such. Look out, or that black horse will step on you."

"She was just as cool as a cuc.u.mber," Walter told Nan and his sister afterward. "Why! I never saw such a girl."

"I guess," Nan Sherwood said shrewdly, "that we don't know much about girls who are born and brought up in the far West. Rhoda Hammond is a friend to be proud of. She has such good sense."

"And pluck to beat the band!" cried Walter. "I'd like to see that country she comes from."

"And me, too," agreed Bess Harley, who overheard this statement.

"'Rose Ranch,'" murmured Grace. "Such a pretty name! After all, she has said just enough about it to be very tantalizing," and the smaller girl smiled.

"Maybe she does that purposely," Bess remarked. "Perhaps she thinks we have so many things she hasn't obtained yet, that she wants to make us jealous a bit."

"I really don't think that Rhoda worries about what she doesn't have," Nan put in. "Perhaps she doesn't even see that she lacks anything that we have."

"Well, she never will go in for athletics," Bess declared.

"Athletics!" burst out Walter. "Why, there isn't another girl at Lakeview Hall who could do what she did just now."

They were all agreed on that point. Even Dr. Prescott and the staff of instructors commented upon Rhoda's stopping the runaway.

Professor Krenner, the mathematics teacher, and with whom Nan and Amelia Boggs took architectural drawing, selected Rhoda to be one of a small party at his cabin up the lake one spring afternoon. And the professor's parties were famous and very much enjoyed by those girls who understood the queer and humorous old gentleman.

He played his key-bugle for them, showed them how to bark birches for the purpose of making canoes (he was building one for his own use) and finally gave them a supper of wild duck, served on birch-bark platters, and corn pone baked on a plank before the embers of a campfire and seasoned mildly with wood smoke.

This incident cheered Rhoda up. She had begun to be dreadfully homesick as the good weather came. She confessed to Nan that she was very much tempted to run away from school and return to the ranch. Only she knew her father and mother would be terribly disappointed in her if she did such a thing.

"And besides that," Rhoda said, with a quiet little smile, "I want company when I go back to Rose Ranch."

"Oh, yes," said the innocent Nan. "You do know people in Chicago, don't you?"

"Humph! Mamma's friend, Mrs. Janeway. Yes," said Rhoda, still secretly amused, "I don't want to go away out to Rose Ranch alone and come back alone next fall. For I've got to come back, I suppose."

"Why, Rhoda!" exclaimed Nan, "I can't see why you don't like Lakeview Hall."

"Wait till you see Rose Ranch. Then you'll know."

"But I don't expect ever to see that," sighed Nan; for she really had begun to think so much about Rhoda's home, and had listened so closely to the tales the Western girl related, that Nan felt herself drawn strongly toward an outdoor experience such as Rhoda enjoyed at home. It would be even more free and primitive, Nan thought, than her sojourn at Pine Camp.

"You are terribly pessimistic," laughed the Western girl in rejoinder to Nan's last observation. "How do you know you'll never see Rose Ranch?"

Even this remark did not make Nan suspect what was coming. Nor did Bess Harley or the Masons have any warning of the plan Rhoda Hammond had so carefully thought out. But the surprise "broke" one afternoon at mail time.

Both Nan and Bess received letters from home, and they ran at once to Room Seven, Corridor Four, to read them. Scarcely had they broken the seals of the two fat missives when the door was flung open and Grace Mason fairly catapulted herself into the room in such a state of excitement that she startled the Tillbury chums.

"What is the matter, Grace?" gasped Bess, as the smaller girl threw herself into Nan's arms.

"Why! she's only happy," said Nan, holding her off and viewing her flushed and animated countenance. "Do get your breath, Gracie."