“What are ’nesters’?” asked
Amelia.
“I guess you’d call ’em ‘squatters’
farther East. We don’t like them on the
ranges. They are small farmers who come and take
up quarter sections of the open lands and fence them
in.”
“But is there really a treasure buried on Rose
Ranch?” asked Nan, much more interested in this
than she wished the others to observe.
“Why, I suppose so. They all say so.
Lobarto and his gang were run off so quick that he
had to cache almost everything but the hard cash he
had with him. He had raided two churches in Mexico
and plundered several haciendas before coming up from
the Border, so people say.”
“Why don’t you ranch folks go and dig
up his loot?” demanded Bess, wide-eyed.
“Well,” laughed Rhoda, “we don’t
know where it is cached. It sounds rather preposterous,
too—a wagon-load of gold and silver plate,
altar ornaments, candlesticks, jeweled cloths, and
all that. It does sound sort of romantic, doesn’t
it?”
“I should say it did!” the girls chorused.
Nan did not say another word in comment at the time.
She was enormously curious about what she had overheard
the Mexican girl say in the shop at Adminster.
And how strangely she had stared at Rhoda Hammond!
Not always “Butterfingers”
Following that afternoon tea matters changed for Rhoda
Hammond at Lakeview Hall. Nor did she overlook
Nan’s part in bringing her into the social life
of the girls whom she met in classes and at the table.
At her books Rhoda was neither brilliant nor dull.
She was just a good, ordinary student who stood well
enough in her classes to satisfy Dr. Prescott.
In athletics, however, Rhoda did not reach a high
mark.
In the first place she could not see the value of
all the gymnasium exercises; and the indoor games
did not interest her much. She was an outdoors
girl herself, and had stored up such immense vitality
and was so muscular and wiry that she possibly did
not need the exercises that Mrs. Gleason insisted
upon.
They tried Rhoda at basketball, and she proved to
be a regular “butterfingers.” Laura,
who captained one of the scrub teams, tried to make
something of her, but gave it up in exasperation.
Nan, Bess, and Amelia took Rhoda to the basement tennis
court and did their best to teach her tennis.
She learned the game quickly enough; but to her it
was only “play.”
“She hasn’t a drop of sporting blood in
her,” groaned Bess. “It seems just
silly to her. It is something to pass away the
time. Batting a little ball about with a snowshoe,
she calls it! And if she misses a stroke, why,
she lumbers after the ball like that bear we saw in
the Chicago Zoo, Nan, that chased snowballs. ’Member?”
“Well, I never!” laughed Nan. “Rhoda’s
no bear.”
“But she surely is a ‘butterfingers,’”
Amelia said. “No fun in her at all.”
