The same way with the coined money. The robber had gathered such coin as he had stolen and put it in sacks. Unless a claimant could prove how much money, and just what form of money, was stolen from him, Mr. Hammond saw no reason for handing out the recovered treasure.
Juanita O'Harra and her mother were treated as generously as it was possible. And they were satisfied with Mr. Hammond's judgment. In fact, most of those who really had lost property were too thankful to have a generous amount returned to quarrel about the ranchman's decision.
Mr. Hammond claimed that the party searching and finding the cache had certain rights. The girls, Walter, and the three employees of the ranch on the spot when the find was made, all shared in the treasure-trove.
There was one person who had been hungry for the treasure who did not get a dollar of it. That was the young Mexican, Juan Sivello, Lobarto's nephew. As Mr. Hammond said, chuckling:
"All that chap took away from Rose Ranch was a flea in his ear!"
The letters that went back East after the finding of the Mexican treasure—both to the home folks and to girl chums—were so long and so exciting that one might have doubted if the four girls from Lakeview Hall were quite sane. The visitors to Rose Ranch enjoyed many adventures before they started East again, and they had at the end much more to tell their friends. But nothing so exciting as the result of the treasure hunt.
Walter Mason, too, had an additional prize. Mr. Hammond did not think that the recovered black horse was a fit mount for a boy; but he shipped to Chicago two ponies, for Walter's and his sister's use, in exchange for any rights the boy might think he had in the outlaw.
Nan and Bess had no means of keeping horses at home if they owned them; so when they left Rose Ranch they bade their pretty steeds good-by—perhaps with a few secret tears. For the little beasts had carried them for many miles, and safely, over the ranges.
Life at Rose Ranch never lacked variety, it seemed. Never again would the Eastern girls pity Rhoda Hammond because of her home life, and wonder if she did not miss much that they considered necessary to their happiness and comfort.
"I guess everything has its compensations," said Nan, using a rather long word for her. "I thought my uncle and aunt and cousins up in the Michigan woods must be awfully lonely, and all that. But I found it wasn't so."