“I don’t want to be a ‘cattle queen,’” Tavia declared, with a shudder. “One of those poor calves had blue eyes and he looked at me so pitiful!”
“Yet you have no tender feeling for the poor humans you plague—like Lance Petterby,” chuckled Dorothy.
“Oh! they are fair game!” said Tavia, shaking her braids and running on before.
Suddenly—right at the corner of the house—she halted, and wildly beckoned Dorothy forward.
“Look! oh, look, Doro!” she gasped, as her friend came running.
Tavia, breathless, pointed off toward the west. A party of at least six horsemen were riding at a gallop away from the front of the ranch-house.
“Philo Marsh!” cried Dorothy. “I see him.”
“There is a woman with them—she is riding in the middle of the crowd,” screamed Tavia. “Oh, Doro! she’s a prisoner! He’s carried her off.”
“Who’s carried whom off?” demanded the startled Dorothy, as the cavalcade disappeared into a coulie.
“Your aunt! Philo Marsh has her. He’s kidnapped her—to make her sign those papers—I know he has,” cried Tavia, weakly sitting down on the steps.