CHAPTER VI

TEDDY FORD'S STORY

"You ain't got no call to bother about me," said Teddy Ford rather sheepishly and backing away from the pressure of Oriole's hands on his chest. "I won't ever see you folks again."

"Oh, Teddy Ford! don't say that," murmured Oriole, almost weeping.

"Gee! it wouldn't bother you, would it?"

"Of course it would. We're your friends," declared the girl. "Uncle Nat admires you--and so does Ma Stafford. And when Mr. Langdon hears about Myron and Marian and what you did for them----"

"Oh, stop it!" exclaimed the boy. "You don't know Harvey Langdon."

"I do so too!" cried Oriole indignantly.

"How long have you known him?"

"Why--why, ever since he came East. You know he came to find his children. And now, when their nurse is well again, he is going to take them back to Montana."

"Huh! I know all about that. We didn't hear nothing else but those lost kids out on the ranch all last summer."

"Teddy Ford, did you come from away out there?"

"Yes. I came on with a carload of cattle. Several carloads. Export steers. And I'd have gone across to England with them, only they wouldn't take me on the cattle boat. Said I was too young."

"What a traveler you are," sighed Oriole. "So am I. _I_ came from South America--from Brazil."

"That so? Well, I reckon you ain't been up against it like me," said the boy ruefully.

"I don't know about that," observed Oriole. "I have been wrecked twice." She said it with a little pride in her voice. "I don't know what you can call hard luck if _that_ isn't."

"I say!" he said earnestly, "that sounds as though you _had_ been through something. But I ain't afraid of being wrecked, or anything like that. When folks say you are a thief----"

"Oh, Teddy Ford!" gasped Oriole.

"Yes. I thought you'd change your tune when you heard they called me a thief," muttered the boy.

"Why, Teddy!" murmured the girl, tears in her eyes now, "I guess I ought to know what _that_ means. Folks said I was a thief, too!"

"Gee! They never?" cried the boy. "Not a nice little thing like you?"

His face turned very red again and his eyes sparkled. Oriole thought that when he was indignant he was even better looking than before.

"Yes, they did. They said I stole that casket from Mrs. Joy. But she hid it herself when she was asleep."

"Look here!" demanded Ted. "Who said you did it? I bet I know! That Harvey Langdon."

"Oh, he never! He never, neither!" gasped the emphatic Oriole.

"Well, it would be just like him," grumbled Teddy.

"Teddy Ford! I don't believe you know Mr. Langdon at all."

"I ought to. I worked on his ranch. I worked there three months. And he said I stole the family silver--a whole chest full of it. Why! I couldn't have lifted it," choked the boy. "He is an awful mean man."

"How terrible! I am sure there must be some mistake," murmured Oriole.

"You bet there was a mistake," growled the boy again. "I never stole that plate. I told 'em so. But because I was seen around the ranch house when there was nobody else supposed to be there, Harvey Langdon hopped on me and said I knew all about it."

"And you didn't know a thing?" asked Oriole.

"No, I didn't. But I don't expect anybody to believe me," and the boy hung his head again.

"I do. I believe you," whispered Oriole, coming close to him again and putting her hand upon his sleeve. "Oh, Teddy! there must have been somebody out there on Mr. Langdon's ranch who believed in you."

"If they did they didn't mention it," said Teddy with scorn. "The only fellow out there that didn't think I was a thief was the fellow that stole that silver plate himself. Believe me!"

"Oh, Teddy! I can't imagine Mr. Langdon not being kind," sighed Oriole.

"That so? Well, you haven't much of an imagination then," scoffed the Western boy.

"How did you come to be working for Mr. Langdon?"

"'Cause he wanted hands and would take anybody that came along. I'd been working all through that region. You see, my mother died when I was a kid. Dad was a pocket hunter----"

"What is that?" demanded Oriole. "Why did he hunt pockets? Did--didn't he have any pockets of his own?"

"Gee! ain't you green?" ejaculated the boy. "I mean my father was a prospector. A gold miner."

"Oh! Then you must be very rich. Of course you wouldn't need to steal that silver from Mr. Langdon."

"How do you figure that?" the boy demanded. "Pocket hunters don't often get rich. They are just lone prospectors who wander about the hills trying to find gold. Dad never struck it rich--nor ever will!" declared Teddy Ford, with much emphasis.

"Anyway, he wandered off the last time in search of an old Indian mine somebody told him of, and he never came in again. So I had to leave school in Helena and hustle for myself. I ain't got any folks now at all."

"No more than I have--till my mother and father come back," murmured Oriole. "I understand."

"Well, that's how I wandered out to the Langdon ranges. I got a job around the corrals. He's got a big ranch and is worth oodles of money. He spent a fortune with detectives, so they say, trying to find the twins."

"He loves them dearly," said the girl. "And he loves them so much that no matter what he _thinks_ you have done, if you will let him he will treat you right because you saved the twins from drowning."

"Gee!" scoffed Ted, "you're sure of him, aren't you? Maybe he treats girls different from what he does men. But believe me, he is a hard boss and a hard man.

"I don't want him to give me anything for saving his kids--if I saved them. And he never will give me a fair deal."

"I cannot believe that, Teddy Ford," whispered Oriole, shaking her head. "He is so good to me----"

"I don't care. I'm going back there to the Langdon ranch when I've got me a lot of money, and I'll make him own up that he was wrong. I never stole that silver," declared Teddy stolidly.

"But won't it be a long time, then, before you go back?"

"Huh?"

"You know, you can't make your fortune in a little while."

"Gee! that's so," admitted the boy. "Well, _when_ I am rich----"

"But money won't help you prove your innocence, will it?" asked the girl quite sensibly.

"Money will do 'most anything," said Teddy with cheerful optimism.

"I don't know. There are _some_ things--Anyway," said Oriole briskly, "you can't very well do anything toward proving that you never stole those things when you are away here in the East."

"Huh!"

"I should think you would want to be right there where it happened, and hunt for the real thief. I stayed with Mrs. Joy when they all said I stole her old casket. And finally the truth came out," said Oriole with satisfaction.

"How's the truth coming out about Harvey Langdon's silver?" demanded the boy.

"I--I don't know. But of course everything always _does_ come out all right. Of course it does!"

"Gee! you believe a lot of old-fashioned stuff, don't you?" gruffly commented Teddy Ford.

"Why, Teddy Ford!" gasped Oriole. "I hope you are not a _bad_ boy. Don't you believe in Providence?"

"I guess you are real religious, ain't you?" returned the boy. "I don't know much about it. But I know that a fellow gets a lot of hard knocks when he is alone in the world. My dad was pretty good to me; but he went off and left me all alone. Maybe he just had to. Those old prospectors have just got to keep traveling and looking for 'color,' like they say, until they drop. But it was pretty hard to be left alone."

Teddy kicked the toe of one shoe against the heel of the other and looked down.

"Then that Harvey Langdon treating me so mean----"

"Oh, Teddy!" cried Oriole, softly, "do let me talk to Mr. Langdon. I know he will listen after all you did, saving the twins."

"And just because I did save them," returned the boy, "he wouldn't believe I was innocent of that robbery. He'd just give in 'cause you asked him. No! I came over here to get my clothes and get away so that none of you folks could tell Harvey Langdon where I was."

"But--but, you won't run away!" cried Oriole, her lips quivering.

"Ain't got to run away. Nobody's got any hold on me. I'm just moving on."

"Oh, Teddy Ford!"

"Why, you ain't got any call to take on about it," declared the boy, looking at her wonderingly.

"Of course I have!" cried Oriole, half angrily. "Aren't you my friend? I feel just as bad for you, about that stolen silver, as though it was me that was being accused again."

"Gee!" murmured Teddy Ford.

"And you _stop_ saying that word!" commanded the girl. "I won't have it. And I won't have you keep running away--first from one place and then another."

"G--Well!" murmured the boy.

"They will of course think you stole Mr. Langdon's silver if you hide away like a regular burglar," declared Oriole.

"Who's hid away like a burglar?" repeated Teddy Ford indignantly.

"Aren't you? You left Mr. Langdon's ranch----"

"He bounced me," interrupted Teddy, glumly enough.

"But you didn't have to leave that neighborhood, did you?"

"'Neighborhood'! What do you think? The nearest ranch to Langdon's is forty miles away. And Hempdell, the shipping town, is seventy-five miles. He takes two weeks to herd a shipment of steers to the railroad, or they'll lose so much weight they aren't worth shipping. Gee! there ain't any neighbors."

"Oh, dear me! won't you ever learn to stop saying that word?"

"G--Huh! I forgot," admitted Teddy Ford with real remorse. "You are an awful nice girl--the nicest girl I ever saw. But you can't change me. I'm too tough."

"What nonsense you talk!" ejaculated Oriole in her most grown-up way. "I know you _can't_ be so bad a boy as Shedder Crabbe. And he's changed a lot--since he almost got drowned and I saved him."

"Mebbe I'd better jump into that hole in the ice down there again, and you pull me out," said Teddy, grinning.

"Now, don't try to be funny," Oriole told him seriously. "I want you to give Mr. Langdon a chance to get acquainted with you----"

"Not much! He kicked me off his ranch. That's enough--too much."

"I can't understand it," sighed Oriole. "He is so nice to me and so loving to the twins."

"You ain't ever got him mad," grumbled Teddy. "He's what they call out where I come from a regular rip-snorter when he gets mad."

"Oh, dear!"

"Why, Ching Foo, the ranch cook, told me Harvey Langdon ran one puncher clear off the ranch once--followed him thirty miles. Only the fellow had the best horse, Harvey would have got him."

Fortunately Oriole did not understand all the terms Ted used. But she was troubled. She loved Mr. Langdon, and she liked this very good looking boy from the West. She could not understand the ranchman being harsh without cause; yet she did not believe that Teddy was dishonest.

Indeed, her very shrewd young mind instantly evolved this question: "If Teddy Ford was guilty of stealing silver plate why was he dressed so poorly and why did he want to work on a cattle-boat?" It seemed to Oriole that he would be living on the proceeds of the robbery if he were a thief.

But he seemed so hopeless--so desperate! What could she say to him to make him do what she believed to be the right thing?

On the other hand, how could she influence the ranchman to give the boy a fair and square deal? Convinced as Mr. Langdon must be that Teddy Ford was a thief, Oriole Putnam wondered what _she_ could do or say to change the man's belief.