“Well, nothing much ever does happen to us,”
agreed Bess. “But suppose something should
happen to Rhoda?”
“Shall we set a bodyguard about her?”
asked Nan, her eyes twinkling. “Do you
think of any particular danger she may be in?
I fancy she is quite capable of taking care of herself.”
“Now, Nan!” cried Bess, “don’t
poke fun. It would be awful if anything should
happen so that we couldn’t go to Rose Ranch with
her.”
Perhaps this was rather a selfish thought on Bess
Harley’s part. Still, Bess was not notably
unselfish, although she had improved a good deal during
the months she had been at Lakeview Hall.
But Nan had occasion to remember her chum’s
words very clearly not long thereafter, for she did
find Rhoda Hammond in trouble. It was one Friday
afternoon when Nan was returning from her architectural
drawing lesson at Professor Krenner’s cabin,
up the lake shore. Amelia had not gone that day,
being otherwise engaged; so Nan was alone on the path
through the spruce wood that here clothed the face
of the high bluff on which Lakeview Hall was set.
A company of jays squalling in a thicket had been
the only disturbing sounds in the sun-bathed woods,
when of a sudden Nan heard somebody speak—a
high and angry voice. Then in Rhoda’s deeper
tones, she heard:
“What do you mean, confronting me like this?
I do not know you. You are crazy!”
“Maybe I am cr-r-razy!” cried the second
voice, its owner rolling her “r’s”
magnificently. “But I am not a thief.
You, Senorita Ham-mon’, are that! You and
all your fam-i-lee are the thiefs—yes!”
Nan’s thought flashed instantly to the Mexican
girl in the shop in Adminster. She had spoken
in just this way. And she had given at that time
every indication of hating Rhoda.
The girl from Tillbury pushed into the thicket from
which the voices sounded. Rhoda replied to the
castigation of the other’s tongue only by an
ejaculation of amazement. The harsher voice went
on:
“The tr-r-reasure of the Ranchio Rose—that
ees what you have stolen. You and your fam-i-lee.
Those reeches pay for your dress—for your
ring there on your han’—for all your
good times, and to make you a la-dee. But me—I
am poor that you and yours may be reech, Senorita
Ham-mon’. The treasure of the Ranchio Rose
belong to me and to my modder—not to you.
Thiefs, I say!”
Nan burst through the bushes at this juncture.
Rhoda had uttered another cry. She was backing
away from a girl with flushed countenance and uplifted,
clenched hand—a girl that Nan Sherwood
very well remembered.
JUANITA
“STOP that! Don’t you dare strike
her!” cried Nan, and rushed forward bravely
to the rescue of Rhoda Hammond.
Rhoda was bigger and stronger than Nan; but the latter
lacked no courage, and she believed that her friend
was so much surprised and taken aback by the Mexican
girl’s accusation that she was not entirely
ready to meet the personal assault which the stranger
evidently intended.
