CHAPTER XXV

NATURE'S WONDERS

Teddy Ford did not stop to answer Oriole. He was running to head off the mustang that had thrown Miss Brown. It was left to the latter to explain to the excited girl what had happened.

"The twins?" gasped Oriole. "They've stolen Myron and Marian?"

"Those fellows will wish they had been hung before they did it," groaned Nurse Brown, limping to the phaeton to sit down. "And now I can't ride--nor anything!" she added with much emphasis.

Oriole was horrified. She saw the two men in the distance, and the thought that they were carrying off the Langdon twins almost overpowered her. What had already happened to the twins in the East when Sadie Brown was taking them to visit their grandparents had made Mr. Langdon very fearful for their safety. With these two scoundrels deliberately running off with Myron and Marian, the girl knew that their father would be alarmed to the point of desperation.

There was no use in saying Hank Ridley and his mate would not dare injure the children. No knowing what two such thorough-going villains would do. They were using the twins as a means to keep Langdon and his punchers out of the hills for a certain time. And Oriole instantly realized what that was for.

In four days Ridley hoped to get to the old prospect-hole, so often mentioned, bring up from its depths whatever was hidden there, and then make his escape, with Mudd, out of the country. Just what had become of Shaffer was a matter for supposition. But Oriole had heard Ridley's speech about the third "bad man," and she believed that Shaffer would be unable to get possession of the chest of silver alone--if that really was what the men had hidden up there near the Three Sisters.

"My dear!" cried Oriole at last, "we can't let them run away with the children. Poor Marian and Myron! They----"

"How you going to stop them, you foolish girl?" snapped Sadie Brown, nursing her ankle that now pained her exceedingly. "_I_ can't go after them."

"But I can," Oriole cried.

"I think not! They'd shoot you or something."

"Oh, no! I'm sure they would only try to frighten me. And maybe they will only frighten Marian and Myron."

"That boy's caught that little rascal of a horse. But I can't ride him now," groaned Miss Brown.

Oriole turned to see Teddy scrambling into the saddle, and at once he urged the pony toward the phaeton. Oriole shouted to him as he approached:

"What are you going to do, Teddy?"

"I'm going after Hank Ridley. The scoundrel! Maybe he will hurt those poor little kids."

"Never, Teddy! You don't believe that?" cried Oriole, and started Molly at a canter to keep up with the horse Teddy rode.

"Don't know what they'll do. We want to know where they go, anyway, so as to tell Harvey Langdon."

"I'm--I'm afraid of what they may do to us if they know we are chasing them," gasped Oriole.

"Huh! So'm I," rejoined Teddy with his usual grin. "Don't think you've got all the fright in the world inside you. I'm just as scared of those fellows as I can be. But I've got to know what they do with the twins."

"You are braver than I am," confessed Oriole.

"Not much I ain't. But Harvey Langdon will want to know--and the twins were with me in that cart when Hank and Mudd grabbed them."

"That doesn't make you to blame," declared the girl. "Brownie, of course, was in charge."

"She is only a woman," said Teddy, with some scorn. "Grown-up women often have hysterics or something when anything like this happens. I'm glad you're not grown up, Oriole."

"What would you do if I were?" she asked curiously.

"I'd send you back, quick enough," replied Teddy with conviction. "Girls aren't as bad as women--at least, you are not, Oriole. But don't you squeal and take on if anything happens."

"I'll try not," she returned meekly. "But you are not going to come to close quarters with those bad men, are you?"

"How can I tell what we'll have to do? Anyway, you keep back. If they grab me, you turn around and beat it back to the ranch and tell all about it--and where we followed them to. You understand?"

"Oh, yes, Teddy. But I hope you won't get into any danger--not right up close to those men."

"You needn't fret. I'm not looking for trouble," he declared. "And as you ride keep your eyes peeled for them."

Oriole was too excited to take him to task for his slang on this occasion. The situation was fraught with too much peril for the girl to think of anything but the twins' abduction and their own attempt to follow the kidnapers. All the time Molly was carrying her over the plain she was imagining the most awful accidents happening to little Myron and Marian.

They might easily be dropped by the kidnapers--maybe fall under the hoofs of the men's horses! That Ridley and Mudd would actually beat the children or maltreat them, did not seem so probable. It would do the outlaws no good to be cruel to the children. But an accident to one or both of the twins would be quite possible while the men were riding away so recklessly.

Ridley and his mate were long since out of sight. But Teddy had taken careful note of the direction the abductors had followed. Nor could the trail of their mounts be easily missed. He and Oriole did not swerve from the direct course to that gap in the foothills beyond which the two men had urged their wearied steeds.

The mounts ridden by Teddy and Oriole were much fresher than those of Ridley and Mudd. Undoubtedly the latter had been in the saddle most of the night, and it was now past noon. The pony Sadie Brown had ridden was quite as spirited as Molly. The friends were surely making better time on the trail, and with less effort, than the outlaws.

In half an hour, or even less, they had lost sight of Sadie Brown and the pony phaeton. They knew the nurse was urging old Blooey toward the ranch house.

"And I'd lots rather have her driving the old beast than me," declared Teddy. "He'd out-try the patience of Job, that horse would."

They reached the gap in the hills. Neither Teddy nor Oriole had ever been so far in this direction before. It was all of five miles beyond the mouth of Squaw Canyon, and while that place was a familiar picnicking ground to the people of the Langdon Ranch, this valley into which Teddy and Oriole now ventured was quite out of their familiar ken.

"But it goes right up into the hills toward the Three Sisters, just like the Squaw," the boy declared. "I bet, as I said, Ridley and Mudd are going back to the basin. You don't know much about the territory up there----"

"Oh, yes, I do," Oriole interrupted. "I have been up to that place this very morning."

"You don't mean it?"

She told him in detail of her trip up the side-canyon and what she had seen in the upland plain. Teddy was deeply interested.

"Then we know just what to expect of Ridley and Mudd. They _are_ horse thieves."

"I guess they are worse than that. Stealing children is worse," said Oriole with vigor.

"I suppose so. And they are desperate. We want to look out," said Teddy, with caution. "I don't see what they are really after, stealing the twins. Why, the whole country will be aroused. They won't have a chance to get away."

"They will use little Myron and Marian to buy Mr. Langdon and the other ranchmen off."

"I suppose that's so. And Ridley hinted as much when he threw Brownie out of her saddle. I heard him tell her to tell Mr. Langdon that he would communicate with him about the twins at that cabin we were in the other night."

"It is plain enough that the man means to win a chance to get at that prospect-hole, where I am sure he has hidden the silver stolen from the ranch. Oh, Teddy, if we could only catch them at it!"

"Getting back those twins is the more important job," sighed Teddy. "Now take great care, Oriole. This is a covert we are riding through and maybe they are lying in wait for us. You keep back. Don't follow me too close. And if they grab me, _you_ run!"

Oriole promised with meekness. She felt that Teddy knew more about such ventures as this than she did, although she did not like the idea of running away to leave him to the mercy of the kidnapers. Still, he had not been caught as yet--which was a comfort.

She noticed at once that a deep stream flowed out of this valley into which they ventured. It did not flow in the direction of the ranch house, so she had never chanced to see it before. But Teddy said it was Byson's Creek and that it joined other streams to make the river they had crossed in coming from Timmins Station.

This creek was deep and strong, and as they advanced along its bank by a well cleared trail they began to hear the thunder of a heavy fall. By and by, looking up and ahead as the horses climbed, Oriole beheld the sun shining through a cloud of spray. Indeed, she exclaimed aloud that she saw a rainbow.

"Never mind. It won't bite you," growled Teddy. "You look out. Those fellows will hear you yet."

The way was rough and great trees bordered the stream. In half an hour they came in full sight of the falls. It was quite fifty feet high--a wide, foam-fretted stream of water flowing over the edge of a cliff and dropping sheer, and with a thunderous sound, into the pool beside which Oriole and Teddy stood.

"Gee!" ejaculated the boy suddenly, "where do we go from here?"

They had actually come to what appeared to be a wall, too steep and too rugged to be climbed either by man or beast. They must have passed the two men and the twins. Or, had they?

Above the sound of the falling water Oriole suddenly heard a faint scream. She looked across the creek, and upward. She knew it to be Myron Langdon who had called to her:

"Oriole! Oriole! Come!"

"Do you hear that?" demanded Teddy, greatly excited.

"Oh, see!" gasped the girl, pointing.

He understood her gesture although her voice was drowned by the waters. On the other side of the river, and far up toward the head of the falls, the two horsemen were climbing by a rocky and steep trail. Myron was reaching over Hank Ridley's shoulder and screaming at the top of his voice to his friends below--to Oriole in particular.

In another minute both of the kidnapers were out of sight and the boy and girl could no longer hear Myron's voice. They stared at each other in amazement and alarm.

"How did they get there?" demanded Oriole.

"I give it up. I never saw any chance to cross the creek--not even on horseback," Teddy declared. "And I've been watching for just such a place all the way up."

"My!" gasped Oriole in wonder, looking again across the deep and angry flood, "do you suppose they could have flown over?"