Part 11 (1/2)

”Why, I suppose so. They all say so. Lobarto and his gang were run off so quick that he had to cache almost everything but the hard cash he had with him. He had raided two churches in Mexico and plundered several haciendas before coming up from the Border, so people say.”

”Why don't you ranch folks go and dig up his loot?” demanded Bess, wide-eyed.

”Well,” laughed Rhoda, ”we don't know where it is cached. It sounds rather preposterous, too--a wagon-load of gold and silver plate, altar ornaments, candlesticks, jeweled cloths, and all that. It does sound sort of romantic, doesn't it?”

”I should say it did!” the girls chorused.

Nan did not say another word in comment at the time. She was enormously curious about what she had overheard the Mexican girl say in the shop at Adminster. And how strangely she had stared at Rhoda Hammond!

CHAPTER IX

NOT ALWAYS ”b.u.t.tERFINGERS”

Following that afternoon tea matters changed for Rhoda Hammond at Lakeview Hall. Nor did she overlook Nan's part in bringing her into the social life of the girls whom she met in cla.s.ses and at the table.

At her books Rhoda was neither brilliant nor dull. She was just a good, ordinary student who stood well enough in her cla.s.ses to satisfy Dr. Prescott. In athletics, however, Rhoda did not reach a high mark.

In the first place she could not see the value of all the gymnasium exercises; and the indoor games did not interest her much. She was an outdoors girl herself, and had stored up such immense vitality and was so muscular and wiry that she possibly did not need the exercises that Mrs. Gleason insisted upon.

They tried Rhoda at basketball, and she proved to be a regular ”b.u.t.terfingers.” Laura, who captained one of the scrub teams, tried to make something of her, but gave it up in exasperation.

Nan, Bess, and Amelia took Rhoda to the bas.e.m.e.nt tennis court and did their best to teach her tennis. She learned the game quickly enough; but to her it was only ”play.”

”She hasn't a drop of sporting blood in her,” groaned Bess. ”It seems just silly to her. It is something to pa.s.s away the time.

Batting a little ball about with a snowshoe, she calls it! And if she misses a stroke, why, she lumbers after the ball like that bear we saw in the Chicago Zoo, Nan, that chased s...o...b..a.l.l.s. 'Member?”

”Well, I never!” laughed Nan. ”Rhoda's no bear.”

”But she surely is a 'b.u.t.terfingers,'” Amelia said. ”No fun in her at all.”

”Says she doesn't see any reason for getting in a perspiration running down here, when she might be using her spare time upstairs reading a book, or knitting that sweater for Nan's Beautiful Beulah.”

So, after all, Rhoda Hammond did not become very popular with her schoolmates during those two long and dreary months, February and March, when outdoor exercise was almost impossible in the locality of Lakeview Hall.

Best of all, Rhoda liked to sit in Number Seven, Corridor Four, with Nan and Bess and others who might drop in and talk. If Rhoda herself talked, it was almost always about Rose Ranch. Sometimes about her mother, though she did not often speak of Mrs. Hammond's affliction.

To Nan, Rhoda had once said her mother had been a school-teacher who had gone from the East to the vicinity of the Mexican Border to conduct a school. Her eyes had been failing then; and the change of climate, of course, had not benefited her vision.

”Daddy Hammond,” said Rhoda, speaking lovingly of her father, ”is twenty years older than mother; but he was so kind and good to her, I guess, when she had to give up teaching, that she just fell in love with him. You know, I fell in love with him myself when I got big enough to know how good he was,” and she laughed softly.

”You see, he knows me a whole lot better than mother does, for she has never seen me.”

”Doesn't that sound funny!” gasped Nan. ”Fancy! Your own mother never having seen you, Rhoda!”

”Only with her fingers,” sighed Rhoda. ”But mother says she has ten eyes to our two apiece. She 'sees' with the end of every finger and thumb. It is quite wonderful how much she learns about things by just touching them. And she rides as bravely as though she had her sight.”

”My!” exclaimed Nan, with a little shudder. ”It would scare me to see her.”

”Oh, she rides a horse that is perfectly safe. Old Cherrypie seems to know she can't see and that he has to be extremely careful of her.”