Books: Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch
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Annie Roe Carr >> Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch
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12 Produced by Robert Prince, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
NAN SHERWOOD AT ROSE RANCH
OR
THE OLD MEXICAN'S TREASURE
BY
ANNIE ROE CARR
CONTENTS
I. SCHOOL REOPENS
II. INTRODUCTIONS
III. "CURFEW SHALL NOT RING TO-NIGHT"
IV. WALKING THE PLANK
V. RHODA IS UNPOPULAR
VI. THE MEXICAN GIRL
VII. DOWN THE SLOPE
VIII. AFTERNOON TEA
IX. NOT ALWAYS "BUTTERFINGERS"
X. THE TREASURE OF ROSE RANCH
XI. JUANITA
XII. ROSE RANCH AT LAST
XIII. OPEN SPACES
XIV. THE POOR LITTLE CALF
XV. A TROPHY FOR ROOM EIGHT
XVI. EXPECTATIONS
XVII. THE ROUND-UP
XVIII. THE OUTLAW
XIX. A RAID
XX. THE ANTELOPE HUNT; AND MORE
XXI. IN THE OLD BEAR DEN
XXII. AFTER THE TEMPEST
XXIII. THE LETTER FROM JUANITA
XXIV. UNCERTAINTIES
XXV. THE STAMPEDE
XXVI. WHO ARE THEY?
XXVII. THE FUNNEL
XXVIII. A PRISONER
XXIX. A TAMED OUTLAW
XXX. TREASURE-TROVE
CHAPTER I
SCHOOL REOPENS
"And of course," drawled Laura Polk, she of the irrepressible
spirits and what Mrs. Cupp called "flamboyant" hair, "she will come
riding up to the Hall on her trusty pinto pony (whatever kind of
pony that is), with a gun at her belt and swinging a lariat. She
will yell for Dr. Beulah to come forth, and the minute the darling
appears this Rude Rhoda from the Rolling Prairie will proceed to
rope our dear preceptress and bear her off captive to her lair--"
"My--goodness--gracious--Agnes!" exclaimed Amelia Boggs, more
frequently addressed as 'Procrastination Boggs', "you are getting
your metaphors dreadfully mixed. It is a four-legged beast of prey
that bears its victim away to its 'lair.'"
"How do you know Rollicking Rhoda from Crimson Gulch hasn't four
legs?" demanded the red-haired girl earnestly. "You know very well
from what we see in the movies that there are more wonders in the
'Wild and Woolly West' than are dreamed of in your philosophy,
Horatio-Amelia."
"One thing I say," said a very much overdressed girl who had
evidently just arrived, for she had not removed her furs and coat,
and was warming herself before the open fire in the beautiful
reception hall where this conversation was going on, "I think
Lakeview Hall is getting to be dreadfully common, when all sorts
and conditions of girls are allowed to come here."
"Oh, I guess this Rhododendron-girl from Dead Man's Den has money
enough to suit even you, Linda," Laura Polk said carelessly.
"Money isn't everything, I hope," said the girl in furs, tossing
her head.
"Hear! Hear!" exclaimed Laura, and some of the other girls laughed.
"Linda's had a change of heart."
"Dear me!" sniffed Linda Riggs, "how smart you are, Polk. Just as
though I was not used to anything but money--"
"True. You are. But you have never talked about much of anything
else before this particular occasion," said the red-haired girl.
"What has happened to you, Linda mine, since you separated from us
all at the beginning of the winter holidays?"
Linda merely sniffed again and turned to speak to her particular
chum, Cora Courtney.
"You should have been with me in Chicago, Cora--at my cousin, Pearl
Graves', house. I tried to get Pearl--she's just about our age--to
come to Lakeview Hall; but she goes to a private school right in
her neighborhood--oh! a _very_ select place. No girl like this
wild Western person Polk is talking about, would be received there.
No, indeed!"
"Hi, Linda!" broke in the irrepressible red-haired girl, "why
didn't you try to enter that wonderful school?"
"I did ask to. But my father is _so_ old-fashioned," complained Linda.
"He would not hear of it. Said it would not be treating Dr. Beulah
right."
"Oh, oh!" groaned Laura. "How the dear doctor would have suffered,
Linda, if you had not come back to her sheltering arms."
The laugh this raised among the party made Linda's cheeks flame
more hotly than before. She would not look at the laughing group
again. A flaxen-haired girl with pink cheeks and blue eyes--one of
the smallest though not the youngest in the party--came timidly to
Linda Riggs' elbow.
"Did you spend all your vacation in Chicago?" she asked gently. "I
was to go to visit Grace; but there was sickness at home, and so I
couldn't. Didn't the Masons come back with you, Linda?"
"And Nan Sherwood and Bess Harley?" questioned Amelia Boggs, the
homely girl. "They went to the Masons' to visit, didn't they?"
"I'm sure I could not tell you much about _them_," Linda said,
shrugging her shoulders. "I had something else to do, I can assure
you, than to look up Sherwood and Harley."
"Why!" gasped the fair-haired girl, "Grace wrote me that you were
at her house, and went to the theater with them, and that--that--"
"Well, what of it, Lillie Nevins?" demanded the other sharply.
"In her letter she said you had a dreadful accident. That you were
run away with in a sleigh and that Nan Sherwood and Walter saved
your life."
"That sounds interesting!" cried Laura Polk. "So Our Nan has been
playing the he-ro-wine again? How did it happen?"
"She has been putting herself forward the same as usual," snapped
Linda Riggs. "I suppose that is what you mean. And Grace is crazy.
Walter did help me when Madam Graves' horses ran away; but Nan
Sherwood had nothing to do with it. Or, nothing much, at least."
"Keep on," said Laura Polk, dryly, "and I guess we'll get the facts
of the case."
"If you think I am going to join this crew that praises Nan
Sherwood to the skies, you are mistaken," cried Linda.
"All right. We'll hear all about it when Bess Harley comes," said
Laura, laughing. She did like to plague Linda Riggs.
"Where are Nan and Bess, to say nothing of Gracie?" Amelia Boggs
wanted to know. "You came on the last train, didn't you, Linda?"
"Oh, I did not pay much attention to those on the train," said
Linda airily. "Father had his private car put on for me, and I rode
in that."
Mr. Riggs was president of the railroad, and by no chance did his
daughter ever let her mates lose sight of that fact.
"My goodness!" exclaimed Cora, "didn't you have anybody with you?"
"Well, no. You see, I invited Walter and Grace Mason, but they had
people in the chair car they thought they must entertain," and she
sniffed again.
"Oh, you Linda!" laughed Laura. "I bet I know who they were
entertaining."
"Here comes the bus!" cried Amelia suddenly.
A rush of more than half the girls gathered about the open hearth
for the great main entrance door of Lakeview Hall followed the
announcement. This hall was almost like a castle set upon a high
cliff overlooking Lake Huron on one side and the straggling town of
Freeling, and Freeling Inlet, on the other.
The girls flung open the door. The school bus had just stopped
before the wide veranda. Girls were fairly "boiling out of it," as
Laura declared. Short, tall, thin, stout girls and girls of all
ages between ten and seventeen tramped merrily up the steps with
their handbags. Such a hullabaloo of greeting as there was!
"Come on, Cora," said Linda, haughtily. "Let us go up to our room.
They are positively vulgar."
"Oh, no, Linda!" Cora cried. "I want to stay and see the fun."
"Fun!" gasped the disdainful Linda.
"Yes," said Cora, who was a terrible toady, but who showed some
spirit on this occasion. "I want to have fun with the other girls.
I don't want to be left out of everything just because of you. Even
if you are going to flock by yourself this term, as you did most of
last, because you are all the time quarreling with the girls that
have the nicest times, I'm going to get into the fun."
This, according to Linda Riggs' opinion, was crass ingratitude and
treachery. Besides, she and Cora had the nicest room in the Hall,
for it had been fixed up especially for his daughter by Mr. Riggs;
and Cora, who was poor, was allowed to be Linda's roommate without
extra charge.
"You mean that you want to run with that Nan Sherwood and Bess
Harley crew!" exclaimed Linda.
"I want to get into some of the fun. And so do you, Linda! Don't
act offish," and Cora walked toward the open door to meet the new
arrivals.
It was a terrible shock to the railroad magnate's daughter--this.
The defection of her chief henchman and ally would rather break up
the little group which Laura Polk had unkindly dubbed "the School
of Snobs." With all her wealth Linda had but few retainers.
In the van of the newcomers were a rather comely, brown-eyed girl
with a bright and cheerful expression of countenance, a dark beauty
with curls and flashing eyes, and a demure but pretty girl to whom
Lillie Nevins ran with exclamations of joy. This last was Grace
Mason, the flaxen-haired girl's chum.
"Oh, Nancy! how well you look," cried Laura, hugging the brown-eyed
girl. And to the curly-haired one: "What mischief have you got
into, Bess? You look just as though you had done something."
"Don't say a word!" gasped Bess Harley in the red-haired girl's
ear. "It's what we are going to do. Some sawneys have arrived.
We'll have a procession."
"Oh, say!" exclaimed Amelia Boggs, "there is one special sawney
expected. Did she come on this train with you other girls?"
"Oh, that's so! Who has seen Roistering Rhoda of the Staked Plains?
Mrs. Cupp said she was due tonight," cried Laura.
"For goodness' sake!" exclaimed Bess, "who is that?"
"A sawney!" cried one of the other girls.
"They say she is Rhoda Hammond, from the very farthest West there
is," Laura said gravely. "Of course she will ride in on a mustang,
or something like that."
"What! with the snow two feet deep?" laughed the brown-eyed girl,
tossing off her furs and smiling at the group of her schoolmates
with happy mien.
"Say not so!" begged Laura. "No pony? What is the use of having a
cow-girl fresh from the wildest West come to Lakeview Hall unless
she comes in proper character?"
Nan Sherwood, having swept her old friends with her quick glance,
now looked back at the group that had followed her into the hall.
The bus had been so crowded and so dark that she had not known half
of those who had been with her coming up from the Freeling railroad
station.
"How nice it is to get back, isn't it?" she murmured to her special
chum, Bess Harley.
"I should say!" agreed Elizabeth, warmly and emphatically.
Laura Polk, as an older girl and, after all, one of the most
thoughtful, suddenly noticed a stranger in brown who still stood
just inside the door that somebody had thoughtfully closed.
She made quite a charming, not to say striking, figure, as she
stood there alone, just the faintest smile upon her lips, yet
looking quite as neglected and lonely as any novice could possibly
look.
This stranger wore brown furs and a brown coat, with a hat to match
on which was a really wonderful brown plume. She wore bronze shoes
and hose. Even Linda Riggs was dressed no more richly than this
girl; only the latter was dressed in better taste than Linda.
Laura, leaving the gay company, went quickly toward the girl in
brown and held out her hand.
"I am sure you are a stranger here," she said. "And I am a member
of the Welcoming Committee. I am Laura Polk. And you--?"
"I am Rhoda Hammond," said the demure girl quietly.
"What!" almost shouted the startled Laura. "You're never! You can't
be! Not Rollicking Rhoda from Rustlers' Roost, the wild Western
adventuress we've heard so much about?"
"No," said the girl in brown, still placidly. "I am Rhoda Hammond
from Rose Ranch."
CHAPTER II
INTRODUCTIONS
"Oh, my auntie!" murmured Amelia Boggs, using most uncommendable
slang. "Stung!"
But Laura Polk, if inclined to be boisterous and rather rude in her
jokes, was by no means petty. She burst into such a good-natured
and disarming laugh that the girl in brown was forced to join her.
"There, Laura," said Bess Harley, "the biter for once is the
bitten. I hope you are properly overcome."
Nan Sherwood likewise hastened to offer the new girl her hand.
"I am glad to greet you, Rhoda Hammond," she said sympathetically.
"You must not mind our animal spirits. We just do slop over at this
time, my dear. Wait till you see how gentle and decorous we have to
be after the semester really begins. This is only letting off
steam, you know."
"Do you meet all newcomers with the same grade of hospitality?"
asked Rhoda Hammond, with more than a little sarcasm in both her
words and tone.
"Only more so," Bess Harley assured her. "Oh, Nan! consider what
they did to us when we came here for the first time last September.
'Member?"
Nan nodded with sudden gravity in her pretty face. She was not
likely to forget that trying time. She had been on a very different
footing with her schoolmates for the first few weeks of her life at
Lakeview Hall than she was now.
Rhoda Hammond, the new girl, seemed to apprehend something of this
change, for she said quickly and with much good sense:
"Well, if you two could stand it, and are evidently so much thought
of now, I'll grin and bear it, too. Though it isn't just as we are
taught to treat strangers out home. At Rose Ranch if a person is a
tenderfoot we try to make it particularly easy for him."
"Oh, my dear," drawled Bess, her eyes dancing, "it works just the
opposite at a girls' boarding school, believe me!"
Her chum, Nan, was for the moment not in a laughing mood. She could
scarcely realize now that she was the same Nan Sherwood who had
come so wonderingly and timidly to Lakeview Hall.
Of the Sherwoods there were only Nan and her father and mother.
They were an especially warmly attached trio and probably, if a
most wonderful and startling thing had not happened, Nan and Momsey
and Papa Sherwood would never have been separated, or been fairly
shaken out of their family existence, as they had been just about a
year before this present story opens.
The Sherwoods lived in a little cottage on Amity Street in
Tillbury. Bess Harley lived with her parents and brothers and
sisters in the same town; but they were much better off financially
than the Sherwoods. Mr. Sherwood was a foreman in the Atwater
Mills, and when that company abruptly closed down, Nan's father was
thrown out of work and the prospect of real poverty stared the
Sherwoods in the face.
Then the unexpected happened. A distant relative of Mrs. Sherwood's
died, leaving her some property in Scotland. But it was necessary
for her to appear personally before the Scotch courts to obtain
Hughie Blake's fortune.
Circumstances were such, however, that her parents could not take
Nan with them. It was a hard blow to the girl; but she was plucky
and ready to accept the determination of Momsey and Papa Sherwood.
When they started for Scotland, Nan started for Pine Camp with her
Uncle Henry, and the first book of this series relates for the most
part Nan's exciting adventures in the lumber region of the Michigan
Peninsula, under the title of: "Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp; Or, the
Old Lumberman's Secret."
As has been mentioned, Nan and her chum, Bess Harley, had come to
Lakeview Hall the previous September. The matter of Momsey's
fortune had not then been settled in the Scotch courts; but enough
money had been advanced to make it possible for Nan to accompany
her chum to the very good boarding school on the shore of Lake
Huron.
In "Nan Sherwood at Lakeview Hall; Or, the Mystery of the Haunted
Boathouse," the two friends are first introduced to boarding-school
life, and to this very merry, if somewhat thoughtless, company of
girls that have already been brought to the attention of the reader
in our present volume.
They were for the most part nice girls and, at heart, kindly
intentioned; but Nan had gone through some harsh experiences, as
well as exciting times, during the fall and winter semester at
Lakeview Hall. She had made friends, as she always did; and the
Masons, Grace and Walter, determined to have her with them in
Chicago over the holidays. Therefore, in the third volume of the
series, "Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays; Or, Rescuing the
Runaways," we find Nan and her chum with their friends in the great
city of the Lakes.
During those two weeks of absence from school Nan certainly had
experienced some exciting times. Included in her adventures were
her experiences in rescuing two foolish country girls who had run
away to be motion picture actresses. In addition Nan Sherwood had
saved little Inez, a street child, and had taken her back to "the
little dwelling in amity," as Papa Sherwood called their Tillbury
home. For Nan's parents had returned from across the seas, and she
was beginning this second semester at Lakeview Hall in a much
happier state of mind in every way than she had begun the first
one.
It was only to be expected that Nan would try to make the coming of
the girl in brown, Rhoda Hammond, more pleasant than her own first
appearance at school had been.
But the girls who had remained at the Hall over the holidays were
fairly wild. At least, Mrs. Cupp said so, and Mrs. Cupp, Doctor
Beulah Prescott's housekeeper, ought to know for she had had
complete charge of the crowd during the intermission of studies.
"And, believe me," sighed Laura Polk, "we've led the dear some
dance."
Mrs. Cupp looked very stern now as she suddenly appeared from her
office at the end of the big hall. She scarcely responded to the
greetings of the girls who had returned--not even to Nan's--but
asked in a most forbidding tone:
"Who is there new? Girls who have for the first time arrived, come
into my office at once. There is time for the usual formalities
before supper."
"Oh, my dear," murmured Bess Harley wickedly, and loud enough for
the girl in brown to hear her, "she is in a dreadful temper. She
certainly will put these poor sawneys through the wringer tonight."
Rhoda Hammond evidently took this "with a grain of salt." She
asked, before going to the office:
"What sort of instrument of torture is the 'wringer,' please?"
"I am speaking in metaphor," explained Bess. "But you wait! She
will wring tears from your eyes before she gets through with you.
As the little girls say, you can see her 'mad is up.'"
"Oh, now, Elizabeth," warned Nan, "don't scare her."
Rhoda walked away without another word. Bess looked after her with
an admiring light in her eyes.
"Oh, Nan! isn't she beautifully dressed?"
"Richly dressed, I agree," said Nan. "But Mrs. Cupp will have
something to say about that."
"I know," giggled the wicked and slangy Bess. "She'll give her an
earful about dressing 'out of order.' She is worse than Linda."
"No. Better," said Nan confidently. "Whoever chose that girl's
outfit showed beautiful taste, even if she is dressed much too
richly for the standard of Lakeview Hall."
Linking arms a little later, when the supper gong sounded, the two
friends from Tillbury sought the pleasant dining-room where the
whole school--"primes" as well as the four upper divisions--ate at
long tables, with an instructor in charge of each division.
But discipline was relaxed to-night, as it was always at such
times. Even Mrs. Cupp, who, all through the meal, marched up and
down the room with a hawk eye on everything and everybody, was less
strict than ordinarily.
The moment Nan Sherwood appeared the little girls hailed her as
their chum and "Big Sister." Nothing would do but she must sit at
their table and share their food for this one meal.
"Oh, dear, Nan!" cried one little miss, "did you bring back
Beautiful Beulah all safe and sound with you? Shall we have her to
play with again this term?"
"Why, bless you, honey!" returned the bigger girl, "I did not even
take the doll away. Mrs. Cupp has charge of it, and if she lets me,
we will take it up into Room Seven, Corridor Four, to-morrow."
"Oh, won't that be nice?" acclaimed the little girls, for Nan's big
doll was an institution at Lakeview Hall among more than the
children in the primary department.
But at the end of the meal Nan was dragged away by the older girls.
They were an excited and hilarious crowd.
"There's something doing!" whispered Bess in Nan's ear. "That new
girl is on our corridor. You know the room that was shut up all
last term?"
"Number eight?"
"That is the one. Rhoda has got it. And what do you think?"
"Almost any mischief," replied Nan, with dancing eyes.
"Oh, now, Nan! Well, Laura has told her that the room is haunted.
Says a girl died there two years ago and it's never been used
since. And so now her ghost will be sure to haunt it--"
"I think that is both mean and silly of Laura," interrupted Nan,
with vigor. "She will have some of these little girls, who will be
bound to hear the tale, scared half to death. Is that poor girl
going to live in Number Eight alone?"
"She is until somebody else comes to mate with her," said Bess
carelessly. "Come on, old Poky. We're going to have some fun with
that wild Westerner."
"I'll go along," agreed Nan, smiling again, "if only to make sure
that you crazy ones do not go too far in your hazing."
CHAPTER III
"CURFEW SHALL NOT RING TONIGHT"
In Corridor Four had always been centered most of Lakeview Hall's
"high jinks," to quote Laura Polk. Although Procrastination Boggs,
Nan Sherwood, Bess Harley, and several other dwellers on this
corridor stood well up in their classes, Mrs. Cupp was inclined to
locate most infractions of the school rules in the confines of
Corridor Four.
"Our overflowing an-i-mile spirits, young ladies, are our bane,"
quoted Laura, talking through her nose. "Dr. Beulah has been
away--has not arrived home yet--and we unfortunate orphans have
been driven to bed with the chickens. I, for one, have revolted."
"You don't look very revolting, Laura," drawled Amelia Boggs, "even
with that red necktie on crooked."
"Just the same, I have anarchistic tendencies. I feel 'em,"
declared the red-haired girl.
"That is not anarchism you feel," scoffed Bess. "If I had eaten
what you did for supper--"
"Oh, say not so!" begged Laura. "Don't tell me that all this
disturbance within me is from merely what I ate. Why, I feel that I
might lead an assault on Cupp's office, take her by force, and
immure her in--"
"The old secret passage to the boathouse," put in Nan.
"Oh, goodness--gracious--Agnes!" said Amelia, looking at one of her
watches, "if we are going to do anything to that wild Western
mustang to-night--"
"Hush! Have no fear," interrupted Laura. "There is time enough."
"Procrastination should know that," giggled Bess, "with all the
watches and clocks she owns."
"While we gab here," went on Amelia, "curfew time approaches."
Laura struck an attitude. "Listen, girls!" she cried. "'Curfew
shall not ring to-night!'"
"Now, don't begin reciting old chestnuts like that," sniffed Bess.
"It is an announcement of revolt, not a recitation, I'd have you
know," declared the red-haired girl.
"What do you mean, Laura?" Nan asked, suddenly seeing that Laura
really had some meaning underneath her raillery.
"Hush, children!" crooned the red-haired girl. "What is our
greatest trial--our most implacable enemy--in this fair Garden of
Eves? Tell me!"
"Mrs. Cupp," sighed Nan.
"Nay, nay! She is but the slave of the lamp," responded Laura,
still in flowery fashion. "The _bete noire_ of the girls of Lakeview
Hall is the half-past nine o'clock curfew. And I vow it shall not ring
to-night!"
"Why won't it?" asked Nan, finally grown suspicious.
"Because," hissed Laura, her eyes dancing, "I climbed up into the
tower this forenoon and unhooked and hid the bell-clapper. They
won't find it for one while, now you mark my word!"
"Oh, Laura!" gasped Nan; but then she, too, had to join in the peal
of laughter that the other girls in Room Seven, Corridor Four,
emitted.
"What a joke!" exclaimed Bess.
"It's one of those jokes best kept secret," advised Amelia Boggs,
who, after all, possessed a fund of caution. "Mrs. Cupp will be
desperately moved when she finds it out."
"At least," Nan agreed, "Laura is right. Curfew will not ring
to-night. But Mrs. Cupp will find some other way of making it known
that retiring hour has arrived. We'd best get to work if we are
going to have a procession of the sawneys."
"Girls," suddenly asked Bess, "who ever started that lumberman's
slang of 'sawney' for 'greenhorn' up in this hall of acquired good
English?"
"Oh, come, Bess!" groaned Amelia, "the term hasn't really opened
yet. Don't make us delve into the past for the roots of our
language. It's us for the procession now!"
Nan Sherwood entered into the plan for the evening's hazing of
newcomers for a special reason. She had liked the girl from the
West, Rhoda Hammond, at first sight. Not for her beautiful
clothing, but for something Nan had seen in her countenance.
The former purposed to take an active part in whatever was done to
the newcomer because she believed she could influence the more
thoughtless girls to the extent that nothing very harsh would be
done to Rhoda.
"I'll stir up the animals," cried Bess, hopping off her bed, where
she had been perching. "We want a big crowd to help worry that
Hammond girl."
She was gone in a flash to get together the other girls of Corridor
Four. Laura yawned:
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