The Ranch Girls' Pot of Gold

by Margaret Vandercook

"Oo! Ooo! Oooo!" Jim whistled through his fingers nearly a quarter of a mile away. "Cheer up, Jack, I'm coming at last," he shouted, a few yards farther on. His conscience had begun to trouble him, and he was quite prepared to find Jack cross at having been forced to wait for him more than half an hour. Jim had not consulted his watch at the moment of his departure, but he was fairly certain that he had been gone some time, and that they must hurry off at once if they were to be with Ruth and the girls by an early bedtime.

Jim whistled and called all the way to the three pine cone hills. He presumed he would have to make his peace with his companion by telling her that he had discovered other visitors to the old mine within a very short time. There were evidences of their presence everywhere in the vicinity, and they had not been idle curiosity seekers, but men with a mission. Whether they had given up the hunt for gold and gone away from the neighborhood of the mine for good, Jim could not tell. This was one of the reasons why he had prowled around so long. He had gone to all the likely spots near by, where a party of miners might be camping, thinking he might run across them, but not one of them had turned up.

Pretty soon, Jim discovered that Jack and Carlos were not in the spot where he left them, but he did not yet feel uneasiness. He circled around the three hills; he went a short distance into the thicket of pine trees, making as much racket as possible; he gave the long cowboy call of the Rainbow Ranch. And then Jim's blue eyes turned black with anger and his sun-tanned skin grew red. He was exceedingly angry with Jack and Carlos, he was frightened, and an inner voice reminded him that if anything had happened to them he was to blame for leaving them so long alone.

But what could have happened?—for no one else had come near the place.

Jim saw Jack's footprints leading to the entrance of the cave, but his own and the Indian boy's were alongside them, and as they had rushed to look in the mine the first moment of their arrival he did not think to search for fresh tracks. And yet, for an instant, Jim had an odd premonition urging him toward the deserted mine.

The wind was now blowing hard across the plains; and the sun was slipping down to the line of the far horizon, not in a crimson glow, but in a piled-up mass of smoke—gray clouds lit with flame-colored sparks. Jim watched it uneasily. A summer storm was coming up after their week of perfect weather, and Jack, who knew the signs of the weather as well as any backwoodsman, had probably set off with Carlos for their camp, expecting him to overtake them. There was no other explanation for their disappearance. Once Jim walked irresolutely toward the mouth of the mine; then he turned, quickly moving off along the trail, wondering how far his companions would be able to travel before he reached them. Within twenty yards he halted, swung himself about and, in spite of his worry and haste, strode back to the open mine, where he had once vainly tried to find his fortune. Jim did not know exactly why he returned; he never dreamed that either Jack or Carlos could be inside, but he had to obey the impulse that first prompted him.

The great hole in the hillside was blacker than ever, and Jim felt a shudder of repulsion as he gazed into it. He had always hated his old subterranean existence of digging into the earth for her treasures, when everywhere on her broad plains the fruit and flowers and grasses offered an equal opportunity and a fuller and higher meaning to life.

"Jack! Jack!" Jim called weakly, down on his knees at the gaping mouth of the tunnel, trying to grow more accustomed to the darkness and crying Jack's name, not because he thought her near, but because he was filled with a vague foreboding.

There was no answer out of the grim darkness. Jack could give no sign of her presence, and the black shadow into which she had fallen hid the outline of her prostrate body.

Suddenly a boom of distant thunder sounded from the far side of the world, and Jim Colter sprang quickly to his feet, for he knew how swiftly storms travel across the western plains, and he feared Jack and Carlos might wait for him in the dangerous shelter of the trees. Faster than he had run in many a long day he left the neighborhood of the unlucky mine.