* * * *
A mile back Doris saw Kitty advancing toward her at an easy lope, Wags panting far in the rear.
“D-Doris!” gasped that young woman. “I— never—saw anybody ride—like you did! I couldn’t—begin to keep up with—you! Whew!”
“I hoped to see where those scoundrels were going,” Doris replied soberly. “But I failed. Kitty, we are in for trouble. I had planned to ask Uncle Wardell to come out as quickly as he could, but we can’t wait. We just have to get back those stolen deeds!”
CHAPTER XV
Oil!
“Let’s get off and rest,” Kitty begged. “Then we can plan, too.”
Doris led the way to a grove of pinons, scrubby evergreens which bear an edible nut.
“I’m glad to lie down,” she sighed, as she flung herself on the fragrant needles that covered the ground.
Side by side in the shade on top of the knoll the girls silently watched the ponies grazing on the coarse grass.
“Kitty,” said Doris at last, “you remember the time we had the blow-out on the way to the airport, the day we started for Raven Rock?”
“Indeed I do,” Kitty replied. “I skinned a knuckle helping Marshmallow take off the spare.”
“I went to a road-stand to telephone, you remember,” Doris went on. “Well, in an adjoining booth a man was telephoning in a mixture of Spanish and English. He was telling somebody over long distance that he was starting out with the deed at once.”
“Why did you keep it a secret?” Kitty asked, a little hurt.
“I told Dave, and he telephoned to the police,” Doris explained. “I thought it best to say no more because it would do no good and only worry the rest of you.”
“Well, go on,” Kitty urged. “What about him?”
“I saw the man when he left the booth, and he had a scar over his nose, just like the man who visited the Gates twins, and who attacked Uncle Wardell.”
“Doris! Why, I should have screamed!”
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Doris laughed. “Anyhow, that is the man who got off the train a moment ago. I recognized him then and made sure of it when he passed me in the automobile again!”
“Oh, what will you do?” Kitty cried.
“That’s just what I don’t know,” Doris admitted. “One thing is certain. He and his pal brought the stolen papers with them, and Moon is the master mind behind the whole crooked piece of business.”
“Doris! Then they can prove ownership of the land between the Saylor’s ranch and Miss Bedelle’s!” Kitty exclaimed. “There must be some way to stop them.”
“I don’t trust the man in the court-house,” Doris continued. “He doesn’t know his business at all, and I think if it came to a showdown between three men with lots of money—and the deeds—and a girl who hadn’t anything to prove her story, there is no doubt who would win.”
“Let’s ride back to the ranch, find out where the boys are and consult them,” Kitty suggested.
“I guess four heads are better than two in a mixup like this,” Doris agreed, rising.
The ponies, trained not to stray when the reins were flung over their heads, were mounted. Doris, first in the saddle, instinctively let her eyes stray over the circumference of the horizon. The strange scenery would never grow wearisome to her, she thought. It was like being on the moon or some other distant world.
Then, suddenly, a volcano seemed to leap into life just a few miles away.
“Kitty!” cried Doris. “Look!”
“D-Doris! What is it? An explosion?”
A tall black plume that mushroomed at the top into a whirling smudge of ugly brown mounted into the sky.
“I don’t know—it looks like a geyser,” Doris marveled. “But geysers aren’t black. Let’s go see.”
“Look down there,” Kitty pointed back toward the town. “Others are coming to look, too.”
A string of horsemen could be seen galloping up the road, lashing their mounts. A couple of automobiles, loaded beyond capacity, cut through the riders and hid them in dust.
“Come on, Kitty!” Doris shouted, wheeling her pony. “We’ll beat them all!”
They did not. The ponies, still winded from the first gallop, were passed by some of the riders on fresher horses. That was just as well, for the leaders soon left the road and cut across lots, and the girls followed.
Both automobiles, forced to stick to the road, lost their first-won advantage.
“Oil, oil, oil!” was shouted by everyone.
It was a five-mile run that exhausted horses and riders, but weariness was forgotten when the girls caught sight of the wild scene.
The spurt of crude oil shot into the air in a column as thick as a man’s body. Straight up it surged for a hundred feet or more before the wind caught it and whipped the high-pressure fluid into yellow spume.
“I’m glad the wind is blowing the other way from us,” Kitty said.
The bowl-like valley from whose center the oil spouted was littered with lumber, shattered remains of the drill rigging, and dotted with what seemed to be the entire population of the county.
“There is Moon’s car,” Doris pointed.
“How do they catch the oil?” Kitty wondered. “It will all be wasted, it seems to me,”
Her curiosity was shortly satisfied. Under the bellowed orders of a straw-boss, scarcely heard above the roar of the spouting oil, a gang of men dragged gigantic mats toward the gusher. Others advanced with what seemed to be the world’s biggest wrenches. It was all very confusing to the two girls, and to most of the other spectators, too.
All that they knew was that a fascinating battle was being fought between puny men and one of Nature’s greatest forces, unleashed.
Time and again the men advanced, only to have their tools whirled high into the air.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, the oil ceased to spout.
A cheer arose from the workers and spectators alike.
“They capped itl Hooray!?’
Another gang was busy throwing up walls of earth to conserve the oil flooding the ground.
“Well, that was thrilling,” Doris said. “Even if it just means another setback for us. Oil! That is really why they want the land.”
“Why, Doris! Would you believe it,” Kitty exclaimed, “it is way after three o’clock. We’ve been here hours and hours.”
“I guess we had better go back to the ranch,” Doris said.
They were halted by a “hello” from the milling crowd around the capped well.
“Hi, Doris! Kitty!”
“It sounds like Dave and Marshmallow,” Doris exclaimed. “But I don’t see them. Oh, can that be they?”
Two inky-faced figures on black ponies were spurring up the slope toward the girls.
“What is this, an Uncle Tom’s Cabin show or a minstrel?” Doris laughed, as Dave and Marshmallow, bathed in oil, galloped up on oil-soaked ponies.
“Boy, what a bath!” Dave shouted. “We