CHAPTER XXII

SOMETHING GOING ON

Oriole did not suspect that Mr. Langdon's anxiety of mind was caused by her own affairs. She never forgot the uncertainty of her mother's and father's fate; but the matter was of such long standing now that it was in the background of her thought. The trouble was not, in fact, so keen as it at first had been.

This does not reflect upon the girl's love for her parents. Life was full of interest for her and she was surrounded by those who loved her.

She often climbed into Mr. Langdon's lap after the twins had been put to bed and snuggled against him and hugged him tight about the neck. The ranchman had promised to be a father to her, now that it was almost sure that her own father had been drowned; and he seemed to like very much to have Oriole show a daughterly affection for him.

"And why shouldn't I love him?" Oriole said to Nurse Brown. "He is so kind to me, and so thoughtful. I guess if my own father had lived he couldn't have done more for me than Myron and Marian's papa does.

"Of course, when my mother comes back to me I don't know that she will want to stay here at the Three-bar Ranch. But Mr. Langdon is so kind maybe he will let her stay. Then I can stay too, and he can still be my father."

"Humph! I guess so," admitted the nurse, reflectively.

She refrained from hinting at the possibility of Mrs. Putnam having been lost at sea with her husband. But like Mr. Langdon, the nurse worried about Oriole and the effect upon her finally if the death of her mother was proved beyond any doubt. The girl had loved her mother very dearly.

With so much of interest in and about the ranch house, however, Oriole could not actually be morose or despondent even about her dear, dear mother. And the very day after the party had returned from the fishing trip something happened that gave Oriole and Teddy, as well as others on the Three-bar Ranch, much food for reflection.

Rather, the happening was that night--the very night on which Mr. Langdon had seemed so despondent after his return from town and the children from the fishing excursion. Early in the morning there was a great noise and excitement about the ranch house when Oriole came out of doors. Sol Perkins, the ranch manager, was excitedly questioning the chief wrangler and one of the punchers who had been in charge of the horse herd at a place called Freeman's Sink.

"What sort of doings do you-all call this?" demanded the manager, who had originally come from Louisiana and had a Southern drawl to his speech. "You ain't babies, as I know of. Mean to tell me you-all let them horses drift away from here and you can't find 'em?"

"They didn't drift. They was stole," declared the horse wrangler with emphasis.

"What was you doing?" demanded Sol Perkins, pointing a finger at the abashed puncher.

"We herded 'em into a pocket in the hills there by the Sink, and run a couple of ropes across the mouth of it to hold 'em. Didn't need no watchin'----"

"Oh! they didn't? _This_ looks like it," scoffed the manager.

"Well, anyhow, we made camp right there at the mouth of the pocket. But this morning there wasn't a head of 'em in the pocket."

"They flew out, I s'pose?"

"Now, listen. We didn't suppose they could climb out. And they wouldn't of, if they'd been left to themselves. But they was drove out."

"Drove out? Who by?"

"We don't know. I left Charley and Big Ike to trail 'em if they could. There was a trail up the steep end of the pocket and then it come to a sure-'nough path through the hills we didn't know was there. She's aimin' toward the Three Sisters."

"Take it from me," remarked the foreman with vast disdain, "you fellers take the sugar-coated bun for being the most useless two-legged human beings that ever wore boots and pants. My mercy! I wonder you've lived to grow up as far as you have. I could run this ranch better with two-year-old kids."

"_You_ run this ranch?" flashed back the wrangler in a rage. "You couldn't run nothin'. I thank my stars that Harvey Langdon pays me my money."

"He don't pay you none," sighed the foreman. "He gives it to you 'cause he pities you. That's flat!"

The alarm over the lost herd of riding stock spread swiftly about the ranch. And nobody was more interested in the matter than Teddy and Oriole. For they felt that their guess as to the identity of the horse thieves was as good as anybody's.

"Shaffer hasn't shown up," whispered the boy to Oriole eagerly, when they met after breakfast. "Nobody knows where he went to. Didn't even get his pay. But Hank Ridley and Mudd got their pay last night of Sol Perkins and beat it away from the ranch--riding south. But did they ride south far?"

"Oh, Teddy! what shall we do?" cried Oriole. "Tell Mr. Langdon?"

"What have we got to tell him? The men are going to follow the stolen horses in any case. They didn't drift away, that is sure. I don't believe Shaffer and his old friends are working together, either. Bet Ridley and Mudd have got the horses, and are going up there to the Three Sisters with 'em, looking for Shaffer on the way."

"And maybe they are going to recover the stolen silver plate and carry it off with them," whispered Oriole.

"I don't know. I'm all mixed up about those fellers--fellows," admitted Teddy. "Anyway, I'm for waiting until we've got more evidence before we say anything to Harvey Langdon. There's been enough false accusing already. Much as I hate Ridley and his crew, I wouldn't wish my worst enemy to be up against what I've been unfairly accused of."

"Oh, Teddy!"

"That's right. So wait a while. The boys will chase those horse thieves, whoever they are, to a fare-ye-well. I wish I could go with the posse."

"Couldn't we ride up that canyon again and see if we could overtake them?" urged Oriole.

"Shucks! they didn't go that way. And I couldn't go. I wouldn't be let. I have to stay here at the corrals and 'tend to business. I never do have any chance to do anything," complained the boy.

Oriole was not held in leash as Teddy seemed to be. She was of so independent a character, and so courageous, that she did not fear to ride alone anywhere. Her life on Harbor Light Island had been so free and untrammeled that she did not realize that, under certain circumstances, she might be in peril riding alone about the wild country to the north of the ranch house.

Besides, had not Mr. Langdon insisted that the West was much safer than the seacoast? She had accepted this statement at its face value. Even the bear she had caught on a fishline had not much frightened her. And surely it had been much more in fear of her than Oriole was of it!

So, while everybody about the ranch house was so excited over the stealing of twenty-two of the choicest riding stock of the Three-bar brand, little attention was paid to Oriole, who saddled Molly at the gate of the home corral and rode calmly away on the trail which she knew led to Squaw Canyon.

Of course she did not expect to meet and have trouble with Hank Ridley and his gang. She was just curious about the person (she felt sure it was a human being) whom she had seen at dusk in the branch canyon from which the mountain torrent poured.

She rode to the canyon without seeing any one. As Teddy had prophesied, the posse of searchers after the horse thieves had gone another way into the hills. But what puzzled Oriole was the mystery lying up the branch canyon. She rode Molly directly past the hut where she and the others had spent the night and pursued the rough path Teddy had pointed out along the edge of the brawling stream.

Had a horse been ridden this way before her, she could scarcely have distinguished the marks of its hoofs, the path was so like adamant. Molly's shoes rang on the stones so loudly that it annoyed Oriole. She feared that if anybody--the man, Shaffer, for instance--were hidden here he would be warned of her approach.

Bad as Ridley and his mates were supposed to be, the girl from the East had no thought of danger. Even if the three "bad men" were thieves, she did not presume they would hurt her. And of course, so she considered, they would not know that she was looking for them--or for the silver stolen from the Langdon house.

However, were it human being or wild animal that she had seen two nights before in this locality, Molly made so much noise that the unknown got out of the way. At the big bowlder, beside which she had seen the shadowy figure, Oriole saw that a scant patch of grass had been torn up--and that recently. But it might have been done by the bear they had later killed or by some other creature rather than by man.

She pursued the rough path for some distance farther. The boisterous voice of the cataract drowned Molly's hoof-beats at last--and drowned, as well, all other sounds. Oriole was very alert. She had brought her quirt on this occasion and believed that she would see nothing that could not be beaten off with the whip.

In fact she saw nothing but birds in this branch canyon; but she finally found the unmistakable trace of a human being. It consisted of the ashes of a campfire between two stones.

"He was here!" cried Oriole confidently, speaking aloud because of the noise of the falling waters. "It _was_ that Mr. Shaffer, I do believe."

She began to feel a little doubtful when she found that without any question a man had recently been along this way--had even camped here. If it were one of the three "bad men" he might not care to be spied upon. And Oriole was doing just that.

Yet she wanted to know more. Where did the gulch lead to? Teddy said it extended right to the basin between the Three Sisters. It might be that a little search would reveal the prospect-hole the three men had once talked about in Oriole's hearing.

"And if they did steal Mr. Langdon's silver plate," she thought, "I am sure they have hidden it in that hole. And Shaffer wants to steal it from the other two. That is just what I believe."

In her simplicity she did not realize that were this so Shaffer would scarcely welcome the presence of anybody in the vicinity--even a young girl.

She urged Molly on and cheerfully pursued a course that an older person would certainly have considered very carefully before venturing upon. Curiosity--and something else--urged the girl on. She wanted to free her friend Teddy from the stigma that rested on his name. Because she had gone through the bitter waters of suspicion herself when equally innocent, Oriole was all the more eager to help her friend.

"I don't really believe Mr. Harvey Langdon believes now that Teddy helped steal the plate chest. Just the same, it must be proved that he didn't," thought Oriole. "He will never be satisfied otherwise--and perhaps Mr. Langdon won't be sure, either, that Teddy is innocent.

"Oh, dear me, if I could only find that prospect-hole and whatever those three men have got hidden in it!"