Somehow Dorothy felt that this sounded awfully melodramatic. And Tavia was bubbling over with excitement. It did not seem to Dorothy as though Aunt Winnie could really have been carried off by a band of outlaws in the employ of the big mining corporation. It “didn’t sound sensible.”
But the story that men in the employ of the corporation were to blow out the bank of the river and turn the water into a new channel toward the north, instead of toward the south, impressed the girl as being eminently practical. And this dastardly scheme must be stopped.
Flores was not on hand to help the girls catch and saddle their ponies, but by this time Dorothy and Tavia had made such friends and pets of their mounts that the ponies trotted right up to the corral gate the moment they saw the girls.
“Hurry! hurry!” gasped Tavia, pulling up the cinch with trembling fingers. “Do stand still Baby! I am so excited—Doro! isn’t it romantic——”
“Stop!” commanded her friend. “You’ve worked that phrase to death, Tavia Travers, since you started West. If you say it again before Auntie is found I’ll—I’ll spank you.”
Lance came sweeping up from the distant corral as soon as the girls were ready, bringing with him Ned and Nat White and all the Mexicans on the job. There was one fellow missing who should have been there. That was the man who had carried the message to Dugonne the night before for Mrs. White.
But the pursuing party knew nothing of his treachery at this time. It was merely remarked by the boys that the fellow had slipped away from the work at the branding pen just before the girls themselves started back to the ranch-house.
Naturally Ned and Nat were quite as excited over the report of their mother’s disappearance as Tavia herself had been. The girls pointed out the way in which the cavalcade they had seen disappeared, and without going near the big house again the party, all mounted on fresh ponies, drove straight away across the range toward the hills.
“We ain’t goin’ tuh do no trailin’,” said Lance, as they started. “We kin pretty nigh guess whar they air aimin’ for. That’s the place where they mean to blow up the river bank, and we’ll take a crow-line for it.”
There was not much said after they started—not for the first ten miles, at least. The horses were eager, the Mexicans excited, Lance grim, and Ned and Nat both mad and worried. Tavia was really the only rider who thoroughly enjoyed the race.