Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point Part 22

said Mercy Curtis. "That's the 'why and wherefore' of it--believe me!"

"That sounds very reasonable," admitted Aunt Kate. "The Kirbys would only know our last name and would not know how to properly address either Jennie or me. Come, now! get in on the rubber mats in your rooms and rub down well. The suits will be collected and rinsed out and hung to dry before Mammy Laura goes to bed. If any of you feel the least chill, let me know."

But it was so warm and delightful a night that there was no danger of colds. The girls were so excited by the telegram and had so much to say about the mystery of Nita, the castaway, that it was midnight before any of them were asleep.

However, they had figured out that the writer of the telegram, leaving New York, from which it was sent at half after eight, would be able to take a train that would bring him to Sandtown very early in the morning; and so the excited young folks were all awake by five o'clock.

It was a hazy morning, but there was a good breeze from the land. Tom declared he heard the train whistle for the Sandtown station, and everybody dressed in a hurry, believing that "W. Hicks" would soon be at the bungalow.

There were no public carriages at the station to meet that early train, and Miss Kate had doubted about sending anybody to meet the person who had telegraphed. In something like an hour, however, they saw a tall man, all in black, striding along the sandy road toward the house.

As he came nearer he was seen to be a big-boned man, with broad shoulders, long arms, and a huge reddish mustache, the ends of which drooped almost to his collar. Such a mustache none of them had ever seen before. His black clothes would have fitted a man who weighed a good fifty pounds more than he did, and so the garments hung baggily upon him. He wore a huge, black slouched hat, with immensely broad brim.

He strode immediately to the back door--that being the nearest to the road by which he came--and the boys and girls in the breakfast room crowded to the windows to see him. He looked neither to right nor left, however, but walked right into the kitchen, where they at once heard a thunderous voice demand:

"Whar's my Jane Ann? Whar's my Jane Ann, I say?"

Mammy Laura evidently took his appearance and demand in no good part.

She began to sputter, but his heavy voice rode over hers and quenched it:

"Keep still, ol' woman! I want to see your betters. Whar's my Jane Ann?"

"Lawsy ma.s.sy! what kine ob a man is yo'?" squealed the fat old colored woman. "T' come combustucatin' inter a pusson's kitchen in disher way----"

"Be still, ol' woman!" roared the visitor again. "Whar's my Jane Ann?"

The butler appeared then and took the strange visitor in hand.

"Come this way, sir. Miss Kate will see you," he said, and led the big man into the front of the house.

"I don't want none o' your 'Miss Kates,'" growled the stranger.

"I want my Jane Ann."

Heavy's little Aunt looked very dainty indeed when she appeared before this gigantic Westerner. The moment he saw her, off came his big hat, displaying a red, freckled face, and a head as bald as an egg. He was a very ugly man, saving when he smiled; then innumerable humorous wrinkles appeared about his eyes and the pale blue eyes themselves twinkled confidingly.

"Your sarvent, ma'am," he said. "Your name Stone?"

"It is, sir. I presume you are 'W. Hicks'?" she said.

"That's me--Bill Hicks. Bill Hicks, of Bullhide, Montanny."

"I hope you have not come here, Mr. Hicks, to be disappointed. But I must tell you at the start," said Miss Kate, "that I never heard of you before _I_ received your very remarkable telegram."

"Huh! that can well be, ma'am--that can well be. But they got your letter at the ranch, and Jib, he took it into Colonel Penhampton, and the Colonel telegraphed me to New York, where I'd come a-hunting her----"

"Wait, wait, wait!" cried Miss Kate, eagerly. "I don't understand at all what you are talking about."

"Why--why, I'm aimin' to talk about my Jane Ann," exclaimed the cattle man.

"Jane Ann who?" she gasped.

"Jane Ann Hicks. My little gal what you've got her and what you wrote about----"

"You are misinformed, sir," declared Miss Kate. "I have never written to you--or to anybody else--about any person named Jane Ann Hicks."

"Oh, mebbe you don't know her by that name. She had some hifalutin'

idee before she vamoosed about not likin' her name--an' I give her that thar name myself!" added Bill Hicks, in an aggrieved tone.

"Nor have I written about any other little girl, or by any other name,"

rejoined Miss Kate. "I have written no letter at all."

"You didn't write to Silver Ranch to tell us that my little Jane Ann was found?" gasped the man.

"No, sir."

"Somebody else wrote, then?"

"I do not know it, if they did," Miss Kate declared.

"Then somebody's been a-stringin' of me?" he roared, punching his big hat with a clenched, freckled fist in a way that made Miss Kate jump.

"Oh!" she cried.

"Don't you be afeared, ma'am," said the big man, more gently. "But I'm mighty cast down--I sure am! Some miser'ble coyote has fooled me.

That letter said as how my little niece was wrecked on a boat here and that a party named Stone had taken her into their house at Lighthouse Point----"

"It's Nita!" cried Miss Kate.

"What's that?" he demanded.

"You're speaking of Nita, the castaway!"

"I'm talkin' of my niece, Jane Ann Hicks," declared the rancher.

"That's who I'm talking of."

"But she called herself Nita, and would not tell us anything about herself."

"It might be, ma'am. The little skeezicks!" chuckled the Westerner, his eyes twinkling suddenly. "That's a mighty fancy name--'Nita.'

And so she _is_ here with you, after all?"

"No."

"Not here?" he exclaimed, his big, bony face reddening again.

"No, sir. I believe she has been here--your niece."

"And where'd she go? What you done with her?" he demanded, his overhanging reddish eyebrows coming together in a threatening scowl.

"Hadn't you better sit down, Mr. Hicks, and let me tell you all about it?" suggested Miss Kate.