it was no vacation that she was spending at Raven Rock. Serious work had to be done.
“Perhaps I had better wire Uncle Wardell,” she thought. “But the news may leak out in town what, we are here for, if I do.”
The one interruption in the afternoon occurred when a picturesque figure rode into the yard.
It was that of a man in conventional Western garb astride a sturdy mount, and leading a white mule bearing a loaded pack-saddle.
The man, tall and sun-bronzed, was met by Mrs. Saylor in a manner that showed he was no stranger to the neighborhood. He dismounted, and Bostock, the horse-wrangler, took charge of the animals.
“Looks as if we have another boarder,” Dave commented, surveying the arrival from beneath lowered lids.
At the supper table, an hour later, Mrs. Saylor introduced the stranger as a “Mr. Alan Plum, the surveyor.”
“You must know all the nooks and corners of this territory,” Doris commented to Plum.
“I could find my way through the country blindfold,” Plum smiled. “It’s mighty interesting country, though, and I don’t tire of it.”
“What’s to it but sand and cactus and cows and crooked hills?” Marshmallow asked, listening to the conversation.
“That is all, if you look at it one way,” Plum answered. “On the other hand, it is beautiful and fascinating. I could show you the ruins of some cliff dwellings that were ancient before Columbus was born, or fossil footprints of a dinosaur that must have been fifty feet long.”
“Near here?” Kitty asked.
“An hour’s ride will take you to either,” the surveyor said. “Would you like to see them?”
Even Marshmallow expressed great desire to see the relics of bygone ages.
“Well, I’ll be busy tomorrow checking over the bench-marks on some land near here,” Plum said. “There are three sections of land between here and the village that some Easterners are interested in, if they can get title to them.”
Doris almost choked on a slice of bread. “What—why should they be interested?” she managed to ask, trying to make her query appear casual.
Plum shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m only an amateur geologist,” he said, “but I suspect there may be oil in these parts.”
A great light dawned on Doris.
No wonder the deeds for the Raven Rock property were worth committing assault and battery and theft for!
“May we ride with you?” she asked. “We’d love to explore the country with someone who knows about it. We won’t be in your way.”
“Delighted to have company,” Plum responded heartily. “Are you early risers?”
“Up with the larks,” Marshmallow said.
“Then it’s a party,” Plum smiled. “But be prepared for a stiff ride. Each section is six hundred and forty acres, a square mile, and I have to locate the boundary lines on all three.”
No one had any trouble going to sleep that night, and in expectation of the cross-country ride they had no trouble in rising early the next morning.
Mrs. Mallow, whose suspicion of horses was even greater than that of airplanes, decided to remain at the ranch.
Eight o’clock found the four young friends mounted and ready. Plum took the lead and they trotted off over the road which they had covered in the automobile the preceding afternoon, Wags loping along behind.
“Title to this property isn’t very clear,” Plum explained as they jogged along. “It isn’t public land, because it was all bought up twenty-five or thirty years ago when the government put it on sale. But some folks never developed their property, and these three sections aren’t even recorded.”
Doris thought hard.
Everything that Plum said fitted in with her mission.
“This property,” she told herself, “is certainly Uncle John’s and the Gates sisters’. And—the crooks have the deeds!”
Plum chatted about geological formations, tossing off remarks about millions of years as if he had lived them all.
The four young people liked the surveyor more every minute. He was cultured, with an easy humor and a rich baritone laugh, and physically truly handsome.
He told them a little about himself.
“I was a civil engineer once,” he said. “But two years in the Paraguay jungles affected my lungs and I came here for my health. That was fifteen years ago. The climate cured me in two, but I fell in love with the country and stayed.
“It is romantic and—whoops! Hold tight!”
Doris’s horse had suddenly risen on its hind legs, snorting and pawing the air. Then it wheeled and would have bolted had not the girl held it in check.
Dave leaped from his horse, which had begun to lunge and kick, to hasten to Doris’s aid.
“Get on that horse!” thundered Plum, a stem note of command in his voice.
All of the horses were backing and filing, their nostrils quivering, and Wags was sprinting book toward the ranch.
“Listen!” Plum said, lifting one hand.
To all ears came a buzzing, menacing sound.
“Wasps!” Marshmallow cried, looking all around him.
“No, look there,” Plum directed, pointing at the ground.
Doris’s skin pricked with loathing as she followed the surveyor’s outstretched finger and saw two ugly, brown-blotched coils on the trail, from which rose two swaying heads with gaping mouths.
“Rattlesnakes!” Doris exclaimed.
“And big ones,” Plum said, pulling out a revolver.
His weapon cracked twice, and the venomous heads seemed to dissolve into thin air.
The writhing coils twisted and stretched beneath the horrified gaze of the four “tenderfeet.”
As the convulsive motions of the dying reptiles grew less, Plum leaped from his horse and picked up the bodies by the tails.
“Six-footers,” he exclaimed. “Do you want the rattles for souvenirs?”
He twisted the links from the tails of the snakes and gave one each to Dave and Marshmallow.
“The first and foremost rule in this country is, ‘Watch your step!’” Plum advised. “That goes all ways, literally and figuratively.”
Wags, suddenly reappearing, barked his approval.
The
