CHAPTER XVII

THE BIRD OF FREEDOM

The more the unfortunate victim of Oriole's skill struggled, the harder the pony dragged back upon the rope. And for a few moments the girl did not know what to do.

"Aw, let up! Yow--yowie!" yelled the person caught with the stump within the noose of Oriole's lariat. "What do you think you're doin'? Aw, quit it! Let up!"

It could not be doubted that the victim was being most unmercifully squeezed. With his last yelp his breath seemed to be quite expelled from his lungs. Oriole was frightened. She started Molly forward and thus loosened the strain on the lariat.

"My goodness! who can it be?" the girl cried.

"Ugh! oh!" came from behind the stump. "Do you want to choke me to death?"

A tousled head appeared around the side of the stump. Oriole drew Molly to a halt. She stared at the brown face--although it was red with anger as well as tanned. The eyes framed by the hair sparkled with wrath. Nor could she blame the victim for being thus excited.

But what amazed Oriole the most and held her at that spot on her pony was the wonder which rose through her recognition of the victim of her skill with the lariat.

"My goodness!" she exclaimed again, but faintly, "if it isn't--it _is_--Teddy Ford! What were you doing behind that stump?"

"Hullo!" ejaculated the boy, and he struggled out of the noose of the rope and appeared from behind the target of Oriole's attempt at "roping."

"Hullo!" he exclaimed again, his face finally broadening into that unforgetable grin which Oriole had thought, at her first meeting with him, so very attractive. "It's never the bird-girl--what's your name?--Oriole, is it?"

"I should think you'd remember me," pouted Oriole. "I'm Oriole Putnam. I sha'n't tell you again."

"Don't get mad," said the boy. "It's _me_ should be sore. You near about strangled me with that rope. Gee! Oh! you don't like that word, do you?" he added, showing that he remembered Oriole more clearly than he had at first admitted. "Then I'll cut it out. But I never looked for _you_ to come along and rope me when I was just eating my lunch. And, g--Well! Anyway, that lunch is scattered all over the shop."

"I'm so sorry," Oriole hastened to say. "But if you will come back with me to the camp, I know you can get something to eat."

"H'm--yes? What camp?"

"The branding camp. You know."

"Are they at it already? I hoped I would get here soon enough to help. They are always short-handed at round-up time."

"And, dear me, Teddy! you could do so much around the ranch if you would only stay here."

"Huh!" said the boy, but his eyes twinkled, "didn't I tell you Harvey Langdon ran me off?"

"He wouldn't now."

"How do you know he wouldn't?"

"Well, I think he feels differently toward you. I--I have tried to speak about you often to Mr. Langdon, and I know he wants to thank you----"

"Aw, shucks! What's thanks? I don't want to be thanked. I want a fair deal."

"Now you know very well, Teddy, that you would not have come back here if you did not expect him to treat you differently."

"Say! I haven't got to work for him," growled Ted.

But Oriole smiled at him understandingly.

"I am so glad you have come, Teddy," she told him. "You mean to work for Mr. Langdon again, don't you?"

"I don't know. I am not so fond of him as you 'pear to be," the boy said. "Ain't you found out his mean traits yet?"

"I don't want you to speak like that of Mr. Langdon. You give him a chance and he will treat you well."

"Just because I helped you get his young ones out of the water that time? That ain't all I want of him," said the boy, somewhat sullenly.

"Oh, dear me! I wish you wouldn't be so contrary," cried the girl. "I am sure Mr. Langdon would give you every chance----"

"You don't know as much about Harvey Langdon as I do," grumbled Teddy. "But I mean to see him. I'll work for him if he will give me a job. But I mean to do something else, too. It is what I came back for."

"Oh, I know!" she cried. "You believe you can find that stolen silver?"

"I don't know about that. But I'd like to. If those fellers--Say! are Shaffer and his side partners around here yet?"

"You mean those three bad men you told me about?"

"Yes. Ridley and Mudd and Shaffer. Hard nuts, they were. Bet if they had anything to do with that robbery they got away from here with the loot long ago."

"Oh! Maybe they didn't, after all!" Oriole cried.

"Didn't what?" he demanded.

"Maybe they didn't steal Mr. Langdon's silver plate. For they are here now. They are helping right now at the branding pens."

"You don't say?" and Teddy Ford's voice revealed his disappointment too. "Well! Maybe I thought all wrong. I didn't think of them much anyway till I got run off the ranch that time by Harvey Langdon. Probably they weren't any more guilty than I was."

"Oh, Teddy," murmured Oriole, frankly disappointed, "who _could_ have stolen the silver then?"

"Don't know. If Langdon hasn't found out anything about it----"

"But he hasn't!"

"I give it up then. If Ridley and his chums had got the stuff they would have split the wind away from here long ago. Why, the stuff must be melted down and sold long ago."

"Suppose--suppose," murmured Oriole, thoughtfully, "that it was only hidden? Suppose it hadn't been taken far away from the ranch house?"

"But they would have had the chance to get it away off before this," scoffed Teddy.

"Well, I suppose so," admitted the girl. "But I really wish the silver plate could be found. Just like Mrs. Joy's silver casket was found. I told you about that, Teddy Ford."

"Well," the boy said rather gloomily, "you don't wish Harvey Langdon's plate could be found any more than I do. That's sure. Where are you going, Oriole?"

"I'm going back to the branding camp with you," she declared. "Want to ride?"

"No. I'll walk the rest of the way--I've stuck it out so far. But does seem as though my feet were near about worn down to stubs, tramping it from Timmins."

"It is not so far now," she said, still eyeing him with frank admiration. "How _did_ you find your way clear out West again?"

"G--Shucks! that wasn't hard. I went to Bowling Green with those horses. That's in Kentucky, you know. From there I got to the river and worked my way down around Cairo and up to St. Louis. I helped a candy-butcher on a train running to Kansas City. There I found some fellers from the Tumbling B Ranch up north of here, and they eased me along with them in a car and I didn't have to pay any fare. So--I got here."

"My! you are quite wonderful, _I_ think," murmured Oriole. "I never could have made my way alone clear across this continent."

"Didn't you tell me you came all the way from Bahia to near Boston, there? That's lots farther."

"But that is boat-sailing. It's different. I just went where the boat went. But you worked this out all by yourself."

"G--Shucks, I mean! Don't seem much to me. Guess I take after my father. He was always traveling around--hunting pockets and the like. And mostly alone. The Fords come of pioneer stock."

"This is a very wonderful country, and you are all wonderful people," sighed Oriole. "How you all learn to ride so well--and throw lariats----"

"We haven't anything on you in that," chuckled Teddy, coiling up Oriole's rope as he moved toward her. "Do you ride round roping every stump you see?"

Oriole began to giggle at that. She told him of her misadventure with the maverick, and Teddy proceeded to give her a few additional lessons in rope throwing, for the boy was really a master of that art.

"You see," he explained, "I began when I was about the size of that little shaver of Harvey Langdon's."

"Oh! Myron?"

"Yes. We kids all made ropes out of our mothers' clotheslines between washdays, and practiced on every dog in town. Take it from me," and he grinned, "every time a dog saw a boy with a rope he skun out o' town in a hurry!"

"The poor dogs!"

"And, oh, say, Oriole, I 'most forgot to tell you something you'll be mighty glad to know," burst out Teddy suddenly.

"What is that?"

"It's about Billy, that cabin boy of the ship you sailed on--the fellow you thought was drowned."

"Oh, was Billy saved? Don't tell me he was--was drowned!" and Oriole gave a gasp.

"He wasn't drowned. I met a sailor on the very day I started westward. He was from the _Adrian Marple_--that was the name of the ship, you know--and he told me that Billy Bragg was saved sure."

"Oh, good! good!" cried the girl and her face showed her satisfaction.

"The sailor said Billy Bragg had gone to Boston. That was all he could tell about him. But he was sure he was saved. I asked him twice, because I knew you would want to know."

"Billy was a nice boy. I wanted so much to hear what became of him. He didn't say----"

Oriole broke off short, as Teddy Ford suddenly threw up a hand.

"Look at that, will you!" he shrilled.

They had proceeded toward the hidden camp along the faint trail Oriole had followed out. But what Teddy called her attention to was in the sky. It was distant--very high up. But with the sun behind it, the body and outspread wings of the bird could clearly be seen.

"That's not a buzzard," cried Oriole.

"Guess not! Buzzard! Don't have 'em up here in Montana."

"But it's a big bird," said the puzzled Oriole.

"Just so. It's a big eagle--the bird of freedom. Real American eagle, Oriole. Look at him sail!"

"I never saw an eagle before. It must be very big."

"Seven or eight feet across his wings, I bet," declared the boy. "Now look at him! He's spotted game."

The eagle spiraled down for some distance--like an aeroplane. Then suddenly it slanted and shot down with terrific speed.

Oriole and Teddy were vastly excited. The girl hastened Molly's pace, and, tired as he was, Teddy began to run. They came to the top of the ridge they had been mounting. Here they saw a small valley, treeless, grass-covered, and with a spring of water at its lower part.

Oriole uttered a cry of dismay. Here was the basket phaeton that had been brought up from the ranch house. Nurse Brown was with it, and Marian sat in the seat beside her. But Myron, the boy twin, was some rods away from his companions, picking flowers.

The shadow of the plunging eagle covered Myron Langdon as Oriole and Teddy Ford came into sight.