THE MYSTERIES SOLVED.
Pierre, finding himself uninjured by Mr. Winters's shot, suddenly became very courageous, and stopped to say a parting word to that gentleman.
"Try it again," said he, with a taunting laugh. "You are a poor shot for an old frontiersman! I will bid you good-by, now," he added, shaking his knife at Uncle James, "but you have not seen the last of me. You will have reason to remember"—
The Ranchero did not say what Mr. Winters would have reason to remember, for he happened to look toward the opposite side of the court, and saw something that brought from him an ejaculation of alarm, and caused him to turn and take to his heels. An instant afterward, a dark object bounded through the court, and, before the robber had taken half a dozen steps, Marmion sprang upon his back, and threw him to the ground.
"Hurrah!" shouted Frank. "You are not gone yet, it seems. You're caught now, easy enough; for that dog never lets go, if he once gets a good hold. Hang on to him, old fellow!"
But Marmion seemed to be utterly unable to manage the Ranchero. He had placed his fore-feet upon Pierre's breast, and appeared to be holding him by the throat; but the latter, with one blow of his arm, knocked him off, and, regaining his feet, fled through the grove with the speed of the wind—the piece of the lasso, which was still around his neck, streaming straight out behind him.
"Take him, Marmion!" yelled Frank, astonished to see his dog so easily defeated. "Take him! Hi! hi!"
The animal evidently did his best to obey; but there seemed to be something the matter with him. He ran as if he were dragging a heavy weight behind him, or as if his feet were tied together, and it was all he could do to keep up with the robber; and, when he tried to seize him, Pierre would shake him off without even slackening his pace.
Mr. Winters, in the meantime, had run to his horse—which, during the struggle, had stood perfectly still in the middle of the court—after his pistols; but, before he could get an opportunity to use them, both Pierre and the dog had disappeared among the trees. A moment afterward, a horse was heard going at full speed through the grove, indicating that the robber was leaving the ranch as fast as possible.
All this while, Frank has been almost overwhelmed with astonishment. The ease with which the desperado had vanquished his uncle and the strange behavior of the hitherto infallible Marmion, were things beyond his comprehension. He stood gazing, in stupid wonder, toward the trees among which Pierre had disappeared, while the sound of the horse's hoofs grew fainter and fainter, and finally died away altogether. Then he seemed to wake up, and to realize the fact that the Ranchero had made good his escape, in spite of all their efforts to capture him.
"Let's follow him, uncle!" he exclaimed, in an excited voice. "I can soon overtake him on Roderick."
"I could not ride a hundred yards to save my life!" replied Mr. Winters, seating himself on the porch, and resting his head on his hands. "Bring me some water, Frank."
These words alarmed the boy, who now, for the first time, saw that his uncle's face was deadly pale, and that his hair was matted with blood, which was trickling down over his collar.
"O, uncle!" cried Frank, in dismay.
"Don't be uneasy," said Mr. Winters, quietly. "Bring me some water."
Without stopping to make any inquiries, Frank ran into the kitchen and aroused the housekeeper, giving her a very hasty and disconnected account of what had happened, and then he hurried to the quarters to awaken Felix.
"Go to Fort Yuma for the doctor, at once!" shouted Frank, pounding loudly upon the door.
"What's up?" inquired Felix, from the inside.
"No matter what's up—go for the doctor! Take Roderick; he's the swiftest horse on the ranch. Uncle's badly wounded."
"Wounded!" repeated Felix, jerking open the door, and appearing upon the threshold, with a revolver in each hand. "Who did it? Where is he?"
"I can't stop to tell you who did it, or where he is. Hurry up, Felix, and don't stand there looking at me! We've just had the hardest kind of a fight with Pierre. Marmion was there, but he didn't do any good. He threw the villain down, and then wouldn't hold him. I've a good notion to shoot that dog if he ever comes back. Make haste, Felix! I can't stop to tell you any more."
But, after all, Frank did stop to tell a great deal more; and, by the time the Ranchero was dressed, he had given him a complete history of all that had happened in the house since sunset. Felix, astonished and enraged at the treachery of his companion, examined his pistols very carefully before he put them into his holsters, and Frank knew, by the expression in his eye, that if he should happen to meet Pierre, during his ride to the Fort, the latter would fall into dangerous hands.
As soon as Frank had seen Roderick saddled, he ran back to the house, and found Uncle James lying on a sofa, and the housekeeper engaged in dressing a long, ragged cut on the back of his head. Being weak from the loss of blood, he sank into a deep slumber before the operation was completed, and Frank, finding nothing to do, and being too nervous, after the exciting events of the evening, to keep still, went out to watch for the doctor, who, seeing that the Fort was sixteen miles from the ranch, could not reasonably be expected before daylight. For a long time he paced restlessly up and down the porch, his mind busy with the three questions that had so astonished and perplexed him: What had happened to bring his uncle home that night? How had he been so easily overpowered by Pierre? and, What was the matter with Marmion? The longer he pondered upon them, the more bewildered he became; and, finally dismissing them from his mind altogether, he went out to attend to his uncle's horse, which, all this while, had been running back and forth between the house and barn, now and then neighing shrilly, as if impatient at being so long neglected.
As Frank passed through the court, he picked up his rifle, which Mr. Winters had thrown down after taking that flying shot at Pierre. The stock felt damp in his grasp, and when he looked at his hand, he saw that it was red with blood.
"I understand one thing now, just as well as if I had stood here and witnessed it," said he, to himself. "When Pierre went out of my room, he ran in here to see who it was visiting the ranch at this late hour, and when he found that it was Uncle James, he thought he would get the safe key. He was too much of a coward to attack him openly, and so he slipped up and knocked him down with the butt of my rifle. That's what made the wound on uncle's head, and that's how it came that Pierre could hold him down with one hand. Didn't I know all the time that there was something up? Now, if Pierre had succeeded in getting the safe key, no doubt he would have renewed his attempts to make me tell where I had put the key of the office. Would I have been coward enough to do it? No, sir! I would have—Hallo!"
This exclamation was called forth by the sudden appearance of the dog, which crept slowly toward his master, looking altogether as if he had been guilty of something very mean.
"So you have got back, have you?" said Frank, sternly. "What do you mean by going off to hunt rabbits when you ought to stay at home? And what excuse have you to offer for allowing that robber to get up after you had pulled him down?"
Marmion stopped, and, laying his head close to the pavement, wagged his tail and whined piteously.
"I don't wonder that you feel ashamed of yourself," said his master. "Come here, you old coward."
The dog reluctantly obeyed, and, when he came nearer, another mystery was cleared up, and Frank knew why his favorite had behaved so strangely. One end of a rope was twisted about his jaws so tightly that he could scarcely move them, and the other, after being wound around his head and neck to keep the muzzle from slipping off, was fastened to both his fore feet, holding them so close together that it was a wonder that he could walk at all. Frank's anger vanished in an instant. He ran into his room after his knife, to release the dog from his bonds, and then he discovered that the animal had not come out of the fight unharmed. Two gaping wounds in his side bore evidence to the skill with which Pierre had handled his bowie.
At that moment, Frank felt a good deal as Llewellyn must have felt when he killed the hound which he imagined had devoured his child, but which had, in reality, defended him from the attacks of a wolf. He had scolded Marmion for his failure to hold the robber after he had thrown him down, and had been more than half inclined to give him a good beating; while the animal had, all the while, been doing his best, and, in spite of his wounds and bonds, had kept up the fight until Pierre mounted his horse and fled from the ranch.
The boy's first care, after he had removed the rope, was to bandage the wounds as well as he could, and to lead the dog to a comfortable bed on the porch, where he left him to await the arrival of the doctor; for Frank resolved that, as Marmion had received his injuries during the performance of his duty, he should have the very best of care.
Frank never closed his eyes that night. He passed the hours in pacing up and down the porch watching for the Ranchero, who made his appearance shortly after daylight, accompanied by the doctor. Mr. Winters's wound, although very painful, was not a dangerous one, and after it had been dressed by the skillful hands of the surgeon, he felt well enough to enter into conversation with those around him.
"Now," said Frank, who had been impatiently awaiting an opportunity to talk to his uncle, "I'd like to know what brought you back here last night?"
"I came after the twelve thousand dollars," replied Mr. Winters. "When I arrived in the city, I learned that Mr. Brown had left there early in the morning to pay us a visit, taking with him the money he owed me. I wanted to use it immediately, and as I did not know what might happen if it should become known that there was so much money in the house, and no one here to take care of it, I came home; but I should have lost the money after all, if it hadn't been for you, Frank, and I might have lost my life with it; for I believe the villain was in earnest."
"I am quite sure he was," said Frank, feeling of his neck, which still bore the marks of the lasso in the shape of a bright red streak. "If you had stayed away five minutes longer, I should have been hanged. O, it's a fact!" he added, earnestly, noticing that the doctor looked at him incredulously. "I came very near dancing on nothing, now I tell you; and if you only knew all that has happened in this house since dark, you wouldn't say that there was no one here to take care of that money. But, uncle, how came you by that wound?"
"Pierre gave it to me," was the reply. "He slipped up behind me when I was dismounting, and struck me with something. But what did he do to you?"
"He pulled me up by the neck with my own lasso," replied Frank; "that's what he did to me."
"The scoundrel!" exclaimed the doctor. "Tell us all about it."
Thus encouraged, Frank began and related his story, to which his auditors listened with breathless attention. He told what he had done with the twelve thousand dollars, where he had hidden the keys, how he had detected Pierre watching him through the window, and how the Ranchero had told him that Marmion was off hunting rabbits, when he was lying bound and muzzled in some out-of-the-way place. Then he explained how the robber had overpowered him while he was reading, how he had searched his pockets for the keys, and pulled him up by the neck because he refused to tell where he had hidden them, and how he was on the very point of hanging him in earnest when the arrival of Uncle James alarmed him. Mr. Winters was astonished, and so was the doctor, who patted Frank on the head, and said:
"You're a chip of the old block. And did you not tell him where you had put the key?"
"No, sir;" was the answer. "He choked me pretty hard, though, and my throat feels funny yet."
The boy having finished his story, Mr. Winters took it up where he left off, and told the doctor how Frank had rescued him from the robber, and how hard he had worked to effect his capture, and all who heard it declared that he was a hero.