The Ranch Girls' Pot of Gold Part 8

"It's a pretty dismal place, isn't it, Jim?" Jack said quickly. "I am awfully glad to have seen it of course, but I don't wonder you ran away.

I am sure no gold could be discovered here." And the girl heaved a sigh of fatigue and disappointment. She was sure she had made the trip simply from idle curiosity, yet the chance of their finding a gold mine had been lurking in the back of her mind.

Jim was stalking about the deserted mine like a hound that had been given a scent. He had seen, not far from one of the hills, a piled-up heap of ashes, which showed that a fire had been built there within the past few days, and the rank gra.s.s in the vicinity pressed down by human bodies. Jack had picked up a tool from the earth immediately in front of the mine, and the tool had been lately used.

"Wait here for me, Jack," Jim suggested finally. "I know you are tired and need a rest before we start back. Carlos, look after Miss Jack and don't go out of sight. I want to explore the neighborhood a bit. I will not be long. Nothing will happen, but if you want me call out."

Jack paid no special attention to Jim's departure. She found a comfortable place, sat down and closed her eyes. How soon she fell asleep she did not know, but she heard no sound from Carlos when he slipped away into the woods back of them. Tempted by the possession of a new gun, the boy disobeyed a second time that day.

CHAPTER IX

"MINER'S FOLLY"

Jack sat up with a start. She had dozed only a few minutes, and felt indignant with Carlos when she found he also had deserted her. It was time they were starting back for camp. "Jim! Jim! Carlos!" she halloed, in half-hearted fashion; then she hugged her sweater closer about her, glad that Ruth had insisted on her wearing it, for as evening approached it was growing strangely cooler.

There seemed nothing to do that was interesting before her companions returned. Jack wandered idly to the edge of the pine woods behind the hills, but saw and heard nothing of Carlos; then she examined the small stream along one of the hillsides, knelt and scooped up a handful of water, putting it to her lips. It was salt as the Dead Sea, and must have made life doubly hard for the men who worked in "Miner's Folly,"

for they could hear its soft trickle by day and night and yet never quench their thirst in its waters.

All this time Jack was thinking, not of what she was doing, but of the queer big hole in the side of the hill, that was like a wound.

Irresistibly she was drawn toward it by an impulse of curiosity and dread. Jim had told her of no tragedies except disappointed hopes that were buried in the deserted mine, yet she felt that if the cavern could suddenly change into an open mouth it would have many strange stories to tell of lives and fortunes lost by its false lure.

Jack stared so hard into the entrance of the tunnel that it no longer seemed dark to her. She went into it a few feet and peered about her.

Curiosity was one of the strongest traits of Jacqueline Ralston's character, not a girl's idle desire so much as a boy's firm determination to find out what things are like, and how they are accomplished. Jack had never seen a gold mine before, and she did not wish to tell the girls nothing except that it was a big hole in the earth. The mouth of the cave was uninteresting, so Jack lit a match and walked a few feet further in. On the ground were bits of broken stone which she stuffed in her pocket for Frieda, thinking she spied an odd glimmer in them. Although the main entrance to the mine was through a single opening, by the aid of her flickering light Jack saw that miners had pursued many dead lodes in the sides of the hill. This means they had dug tunnels wherever they hoped to follow a vein of gold, until the whole inside of the hill looked like a network of black pa.s.sages.

It now occurred to Jack that Jim and Carlos must have returned and surely they would think the earth had opened and swallowed her, so out she crept into the daylight again. The place was still solitary and gloomy. "Jim! Jim! Carlos!" Jack cried aloud. There was no answer. If only she had waited five or ten minutes more before she started back into that gruesome cave. And yet, perhaps, the spirits of other adventurous natures were summoning her to follow them.

One pa.s.sage was larger than the others. Jack certainly thought she saw stones that shone like gold lying near its mouth. It was separated from the main tunnel by a gully, across which some planks had been laid. With a lighted match in her hand and gazing upward, Jack stepped on the forward end of a plank. In a flash her light went out and she fell back with a heavy thud. Her weight on the loose plank had caused it to rise up, striking her in the forehead with terrific force. Fortunately, she had fallen clear of the gully, but her body lay in the shadow out of the reach of any light that might come from the mouth of the cave. She suffered no pain; the blow had been too swift and sure, stunning her into silence and complete unconsciousness.

"Oo! Ooo! Oooo!" Jim whistled through his fingers nearly a quarter of a mile away. "Cheer up, Jack, I'm coming at last," he shouted, a few yards farther on. His conscience had begun to trouble him, and he was quite prepared to find Jack cross at having been forced to wait for him more than half an hour. Jim had not consulted his watch at the moment of his departure, but he was fairly certain that he had been gone some time, and that they must hurry off at once if they were to be with Ruth and the girls by an early bedtime.

Jim whistled and called all the way to the three pine cone hills. He presumed he would have to make his peace with his companion by telling her that he had discovered other visitors to the old mine within a very short time. There were evidences of their presence everywhere in the vicinity, and they had not been idle curiosity seekers, but men with a mission. Whether they had given up the hunt for gold and gone away from the neighborhood of the mine for good, Jim could not tell. This was one of the reasons why he had prowled around so long. He had gone to all the likely spots near by, where a party of miners might be camping, thinking he might run across them, but not one of them had turned up.

Pretty soon, Jim discovered that Jack and Carlos were not in the spot where he left them, but he did not yet feel uneasiness. He circled around the three hills; he went a short distance into the thicket of pine trees, making as much racket as possible; he gave the long cowboy call of the Rainbow Ranch. And then Jim's blue eyes turned black with anger and his sun-tanned skin grew red. He was exceedingly angry with Jack and Carlos, he was frightened, and an inner voice reminded him that if anything had happened to them he was to blame for leaving them so long alone.

But what could have happened?--for no one else had come near the place.

Jim saw Jack's footprints leading to the entrance of the cave, but his own and the Indian boy's were alongside them, and as they had rushed to look in the mine the first moment of their arrival he did not think to search for fresh tracks. And yet, for an instant, Jim had an odd premonition urging him toward the deserted mine.

The wind was now blowing hard across the plains; and the sun was slipping down to the line of the far horizon, not in a crimson glow, but in a piled-up ma.s.s of smoke--gray clouds lit with flame-colored sparks.

Jim watched it uneasily. A summer storm was coming up after their week of perfect weather, and Jack, who knew the signs of the weather as well as any backwoodsman, had probably set off with Carlos for their camp, expecting him to overtake them. There was no other explanation for their disappearance. Once Jim walked irresolutely toward the mouth of the mine; then he turned, quickly moving off along the trail, wondering how far his companions would be able to travel before he reached them.

Within twenty yards he halted, swung himself about and, in spite of his worry and haste, strode back to the open mine, where he had once vainly tried to find his fortune. Jim did not know exactly why he returned; he never dreamed that either Jack or Carlos could be inside, but he had to obey the impulse that first prompted him.

The great hole in the hillside was blacker than ever, and Jim felt a shudder of repulsion as he gazed into it. He had always hated his old subterranean existence of digging into the earth for her treasures, when everywhere on her broad plains the fruit and flowers and gra.s.ses offered an equal opportunity and a fuller and higher meaning to life.

"Jack! Jack!" Jim called weakly, down on his knees at the gaping mouth of the tunnel, trying to grow more accustomed to the darkness and crying Jack's name, not because he thought her near, but because he was filled with a vague foreboding.

There was no answer out of the grim darkness. Jack could give no sign of her presence, and the black shadow into which she had fallen hid the outline of her prostrate body.

Suddenly a boom of distant thunder sounded from the far side of the world, and Jim Colter sprang quickly to his feet, for he knew how swiftly storms travel across the western plains, and he feared Jack and Carlos might wait for him in the dangerous shelter of the trees. Faster than he had run in many a long day he left the neighborhood of the unlucky mine.

A little later Carlos appeared at the opening of the pine woods, his brown face scratched, his breath coming unevenly, with his gun on his square, lean shoulder, and a little bunch of a feathery or furry something tucked under his arm. He did not linger as Jim had; he believed at once that his companions had given him up, and sped on as fast as his weary brown legs could carry him along the path which had brought them to the place of the pine cone hills. Carlos had wandered too far into the woods and had lost his way, but now he hoped to overtake the other adventurers and in some way to make his peace.

When Jack opened her eyes it was nearly dark outside the mine as well as in. She lay quite still, feeling a dull pain in her head and an aching numbness in her body. "Olive! Jean! Ruth!" she called fretfully. "I'm ill. Why don't somebody come to me?" She thought she had wakened in the middle of the night in her bed at Rainbow Lodge. Poor Jack put out her hand to touch Jean, who usually slept with her, and her fingers closed on some loose mud and gravel. She held it for a moment and struggled to sit up, but her head ached harder than ever, and she reached back to find her lost pillow. There was only the earth to touch again, and slowly her consciousness returned. Jack stumbled to her feet and made for the faint light at the tunnel entrance. She took a few uncertain steps and sank down in a little heap on the outside at the foot of one of the hills. Drops of rain were falling, and the wind whistled through the tops of the tallest pine trees and swirled around the crests of the lonely hills. "Jim! Jim! surely you haven't left me!" Jack cried aloud.

She was not usually timid or nervous, but the deserted place had alarmed her when she came to it early in the afternoon. Now she was alone in it, and about to face a fierce summer storm. Dulled by the pain in her head and by hunger and thirst, for Jim had carried the food and water bottle away in his pockets, she was uncertain as to how she had come to the mine and whether she would ever be able to keep to the return trail.

Jack's face was white and her expression unusual, while just over her temple there was an ugly bruise, and she did not feel able to think clearly. Once she put her hand to her head and was surprised to find her hair damp with wisps of wet curls streaking her forehead. Then she wondered what had become of her hat. An instant later she knew she had dropped it off her head when she fell inside the mine, but nothing would have induced her to go in again to find it. If Jim came back, perhaps he or Carlos would get it for her. Sometimes she was not certain of whether Jim and Carlos had just gone away for a few minutes or whether she had been waiting for them a great many hours. Then she pictured them back at their tent in the green place by the quiet stream, and wondered what they would do when she did not come.

It began to rain harder and faster in big pelting drops; lumps of hail beat down on Jack's shoulders and unprotected head. She ran to the woods to hide, but the place was so sodden and wet and ghostly in the twilight that she would not enter it. There was nothing to do but to try to find her way back to camp alone. Jack thought her head ached less and her decision a wise one. She did not realize that her friends could return to the old mine for her, but once missing the trail back to them she would be utterly lost in the wilderness. Jack recalled that several miles ahead there was a deep gorge with high walls on either side of it, and that she and Jim and Carlos had followed a path at the side of this ravine for a part of their journey. She would strike out across the open country, feeling sure that its high walls could soon be seen rising like a wall of mist beyond the rain.

Flying along on feet unconscious of fatigue, fighting through the storm and darkness and calling aloud when she had the strength, in about an hour Jack reached the ravine. No actual sight of the trail had guided her, but an instinctive feeling for the right direction. Now she sat down for a few minutes in the shelter of an overhanging rock, hoping the storm would blow over or that Jim would find her. But the thunder crashed on, and the wind in the jagged rocks of the ravine moaned and sighed like lost souls wandering in the walled chambers of the canyons, crying for release. Had she ever been rash enough to say she loved the splendid western storms? Jack asked herself. Yes, even in her terror and loneliness she realized there was something magnificent and awe-inspiring in their sudden fury and abandon, as though nature, yielding to a burst of elemental pa.s.sion, poured forth her anger on the earth in the sweeping rain and furious charges of electricity.

When half an hour pa.s.sed, the young girl crept out of her hiding place.

Perhaps the storm was less severe; anyhow, she would rather face any fate than remain in the gorge all night. It was now too dark to see anything except the vague outlines of rocks and bunches of low shrubs.

For a moment Jack stood still, trying to remember whether she should turn to the right or left, and straining her eyes to catch sight of a familiar object that might help her to decide. Then she moved off in exactly the wrong direction, with each step getting farther and farther away from her friends and shelter.

Trained to a knowledge of animal life in the plains of the great West, Jacqueline knew the call of almost every wild beast that is still native to the uncivilized portions of the western states. After walking for another hour, a sound filled her with horror. It was the low cry of a cougar! A thicket of trees and underbrush bordered one side of her path; on the other, lay the deep hollow of the ravine. And it had just begun to dawn on Jack that she was going in the wrong direction; she had pa.s.sed by no such dense shrubbery in her morning journey. But this was not the time to turn back, nor must she show hesitation or fear, well knowing that the wild creature behind her would dog the footsteps of a solitary traveler, keeping only a short distance away, like a hungry wolf, and though a coward at heart, spring upon her if she showed weakness or defeat.

Digging her nails in the palms of her hands, Jacqueline crashed on, shouting when she could. A little while before, she had felt ill and deadly tired; now, forgetting both, her old courage revived. In the tragedies of the afternoon, her rifle had been forgotten and left outside the mine, but the big cat back of her would never dare attack her if she kept steadily on, frightening it by loud shouting and trampling.

How far Jack walked that night she never knew. There were times when the cougar kept back of her, then he seemed to be walking along by her side in the shelter of the thicket. Now and then Jack believed he slipped in front of her, crouching in a clump of underbrush, but she never once caught sight of the big furtive cat, though she was always conscious of the presence slinking near her. If it is necessary to prove that the modern American girl still has the nerve and fort.i.tude of her pioneer grandmother, Jacqueline Ralston proved it that night. Not for a moment did she falter in her long march in the darkness.

A few hours before daylight the rain suddenly ceased and the stars came out as though the storm had not interrupted the usual hour of their appearance. Now Jack could rest at last! Having come through the wooded place, her enemy no longer pursued her. There were no more rocks ahead.

She had reached the end of the gorge; the country beyond was a well-nigh unbroken plain.

A few yards farther on the young girl spied, like a dim sentinel, the outline of a solitary tree with its close, low branches sweeping the ground. Even in the darkness of night she knew a comfortable shelter could be found in it, for its beautiful boughs extended in a solid ma.s.s of foliage from its crown to its base, so the rain could scarcely have soaked through them. Jack crawled into the cradle-shaped branches and lay down to wait for the dawn and whatever the new day might bring forth, wondering if she were too tired to care what happened to her or if she had earned any shadow of right to the t.i.tle Carlos had once given her: "The Girl Who Was Never Afraid."

It never dawned on her that sleep could come; but before the lamps in the sky went out she had journeyed to that dim country where we find strength for the next day's need.

CHAPTER X

BY THE WAYSIDE TENT

Hardly had the three more adventurous members of the caravan party turned their backs on their wayside tent for their trip to the far-off gold mine, when Ruth, Jean, Olive and Frieda were seized with a furious attack of housewifely energy. Everything was routed out of the tent and wagon. A flapping line of blankets hung on Jim's best la.s.so, which was stretched from a tree to a tent pole. Then the girls collected their laundry and carried it down to the brook. The water of the stream was so clear that every pebble shone under it like a jewel, and the sand was as white as the sand of the sea. Over a shimmering pool a broad, flat rock formed a comfortable platform.

Jean and Ruth got down on their knees on this stone, swashing their clothes up and down and smearing them with big bars of soap, like the laundresses in Holland, until the clear water of the brook was a ma.s.s of iridescent soap bubbles.

Olive and Frieda rinsed and squeezed and spread the clothes out on the gra.s.s or hung them picturesquely over the low bushes. At the end of their labors, Frieda and Jean started a shadow dance with a big red tablecloth which Ruth had washed none too clean. Jean flapped it from one end, Frieda swirled it from the other; it flew up in the air like a red balloon and collapsed just as suddenly. Ruth and Olive rested in a patch of sunshine watching them. Suddenly Jean attempted to twist her unwieldy scarf into graceful curves about Frieda, but instead, tripped her up, and the little girl lay in a heap of helpless laughter on the gra.s.s. Straightway, Jean flung herself down beside her, beginning to unwind her long braids of hair.

"Ruth, make Frieda let me wash her hair," Jean urged. "She doesn't look like our pretty blond baby any more, but a poor, neglected 'orfling.' I am sure if she lies down flat on the rock, I can manage so she won't tumble into the brook."

Frieda crawled out of Jean's embrace, looking quite unresigned to the experience ahead of her. "You shan't do any such thing, Jean Bruce,"

she protested; "you'll get gallons of soap in my eyes and make me all sandy."