“You see, dear folks, it was just this way: Aunt Sally and I were on the porch, and we found Elsa’s ring, all crooked. We couldn’t guess how it came there, and I’d just been made pretty angry about the way you felt toward ‘Forty-niner.’ Oh! it was dreadful, dreadful of you all, and I never was so ashamed of my ‘boys,’ not in all my life.”
“Go on with the story, captain. Never mind us,” cried somebody.
“And a little way farther I found a piece of Elsa’s knitted bag. That made me think a lot. Then the tackers came, all paint, and with Mr. Hale’s horse, that had been on the mesa ever since he was here. That made me think some more, and I told auntie if she wouldn’t scold the little ones I’d try to find their clothes. I didn’t find them, though, Aunt Sally.”
“Go on! Go on! What next?” demanded an impatient listener.
“Then I saw Ferd. Oh, mother! If I tell I’m afraid they’ll hurt him.”
“He shall be protected, daughter, and you must tell,” said the mother, though she now shrank from the hearing.
“I asked him about the horse and the children, and he said ‘yes,’ he had fixed them. He had driven Prince down from the mesa, when Pedro didn’t see him, and had ‘showed that old carpenter’ something to pay for kicks and hard words. He knew something I’d like to know. So I asked him what, and he said it was Elsa’s money. But if I didn’t go with him without saying anything to anybody he wouldn’t tell me how to find it. I begged to tell my mother, but he said her least of all. It wouldn’t take long, only a few rods up the canyon; so, of course, I went. I thought I should be back long before dinner-time, and that mother would tell me to do anything which would clear old Ephraim’s name from your cruel suspicions. And, oh, boys! You were wrong, you were wrong! He never took a cent that wasn’t his own, and Elsa’s money is found!”
Absolute silence followed this announcement, then Samson’s great voice started the wild “Hurrahs” which made the wide valley ring. The cheers were long and lusty, but when they subsided at last, Mrs. Trent bade her daughter finish the tale.
“It wasn’t a little, but a long way up the canyon; yet I was so eager to right Ephraim’s wrong that I didn’t feel afraid, though I never have liked Ferd. He can’t help being queer, maybe, with his queer body to keep his half mind in–”
The hisses that interrupted her were almost as loud as the cheers had been, and it would have fared ill with the dwarf had he at that moment been visible. Fortunately, he was still under the surveillance of the grim shepherd, in the locked office, and the majority of those present were ignorant of his whereabouts.
“Quit hindering the captain. Her story is what we want!” cried “Marty.” “The dwarf can wait.”
“So we went on and on, and into a strange, dark tunnel, that scared me a little, yet made me more curious than ever to see the end of it all. The tunnel led to a cave, and in the cave there was a deep hole; and before I knew what he was doing, Ferd had slung a lariat about me and dropped me into it.”
Again an interruption of groans and howls, that were promptly suppressed by a wave of the mistress’ white hand; then Jessica continued:
“As soon as he had put me there, he told me he would keep me till my mother paid him great money to let me up. Yet he wouldn’t even go to her and ask for it. He said I must promise, and that she would do anything I said. He told about a boy in ’Frisco, he’d heard the men say, was taken from his folks and kept till they paid lots for his release–even thousands of dollars! Antonio had taught him that money was the best thing to have. He believed it. He took it whenever he could find it. That’s what made him take Elsa’s, and blame it upon Ephraim. And I wouldn’t promise. How could I? My dear has no money to give wicked men, and I knew the dear God would take me back to her when He saw fit. As He did, indeed. For it must have been He who put it into Pedro’s heart to seek the cave just when I needed him most. Only the Lord could see through all that darkness and lead the shepherd by that crooked way.”
She paused, and, turning to her mother, laid her sunny head upon the shoulder that was shaken by such sobs as moved her faithful ranchmen to thoughts of deep revenge. Eyes that had not wept for years grew dim, and out of that circle of listening men rose a low and ominous sound. Some, remembering their own idle talk of kidnaping and the like, shuddered at the practical application the dwarf’s dim mind had made of their words; and various plans for punishment were forming when the captain clapped her hands for fresh attention.
“Hear me, ‘boys.’Do you belong to me?”
“Ay, ay! Heart and soul!”
“Then you must mind me. You must let Ferd alone. You must do even more to please me–and teach him to be good, not bad.”
None answered these clear, commanding sentences, which, as the strangers present thought, came so oddly from such childish lips, and they wondered at the effect produced upon the Sobrante men. These glanced at one another in doubt, each questioning the decision of his neighbor; and then again at the lovely girl who had never before seemed so wholly angelic.
“Will you do this?”
“Hold on, little one. Let the ‘admiral’ speak. Has she forgiven that human coyote?”
The unexpected question startled Mrs. Trent. She was a strictly truthful woman, and found her answer difficult. She had never liked the wretched creature who had just brought such misery to her, and she now loathed him. She had already resolved that, while she would protect Ferd from personal injury, she would see to it that he was put where he could never again injure her or hers. Her momentary hesitation told. The whole assemblage waited for her next word amid a silence that could be felt, when, suddenly, there burst upon that silence a series of ear-splitting shrieks which effectually diverted attention from the perplexed ranch mistress.
CHAPTER VI.
BEHIND LOCKED DOORS
The shrieks were uttered by Elsa Winkler, who frantically rushed to the horse block, demanding: “Where? Where?”
Mrs. Trent gave one glance at the rough, unkempt woman, and sternly remarked:
“Elsa, you forget yourself! Go back indoors, at once.”
The unhappy creature shivered at this unfamiliar tone, yet abated nothing of her outcry:
“My money! My money! My money!”
She had come to the ranch thinking only of Jessica’s mysterious absence, and meaning to do something, anything, which might help or comfort the child’s mother; but the long walk, for one so heavy and unaccustomed to exercise, had made her physically ill by the time she reached Sobrante. Which state of things was wholly satisfactory to Aunt Sally, who, having received the visitor with dismay, now promptly suggested bed and rest, saying:
“You poor creatur’! You’re clean beat out! If you don’t take care, you’ll have a dreadful fit of sickness, and I don’t know who’d wait on you if you did. Not with all this trouble on hand. You go right straight up into one them back chambers, where the bed is all made up ready, and put yourself to bed, and–stay there! Don’t you dast get up again till I say so; else I won’t answer for the consequences. You’re as yeller as saffron, and as red as a beet. Them two colors mixed on a human countenance means–somethin’! To bed, Elsa Winkler; to bed right away. I’ll fetch you up a cup of tea and a bite of victuals. Don’t tarry.”
“But–the mistress!” Elsa had panted. “I come so long for to speak her good cheer. I must see the mistress, then I rest.”
“The mistress isn’t seeing anybody just now, except me and–a few others. You do as I say, or you’ll never knit another wool shawl.”
“No, no. I knit no more, forever, is it? Not I. Why the reason? The more one earns the more one may lose. Yes, yes, indeed. Yes.”
“That’s the true word,” Mrs. Benton had replied; “and so being you’ve no yarn to worry you, nor no mistress to see, off to