“He’s nice,” agreed Helen. “But he never ought to have named his niece ‘Jane Ann.’ That was a mean trick to play on a defenseless baby.”

“He’s going to make it up to her now,” chuckled Tom, who heard this, being on the front seat with the two chums. “I know the ‘pinanner’ has gone on ahead, as he promised Nita. And carpets and curtains, too. I reckon this ranch we’re coming to is going to ‘blossom like the rose.’”

When they came in sight of Silver Ranch, just before evening, the guests from the East were bound to express their appreciation of the beauty of its surroundings. It was a low, broad verandahed house, covering a good deal of ground, with cookhouses and other outbuildings in the rear, and a big corral for the stock, and bunkhouses for the men. It lay in a beautiful little valley – a “coulie,” Jane Ann, or Nita, called it – with green, sloping sides to the saucer-like depression, and a pretty, winding stream breaking out of the hollow at one side.

“I should think it would be damp down there,” said Madge Steele, to the ranchman. “Why didn’t you build your house on a knoll?”

“Them sidehills sort o’ break the winds, Miss,” explained Mr. Hicks. “We sometimes git some wind out yere – yes, ma’am! You’d be surprised.”

They rode down to the big house and found a wide-smiling Mexican woman waiting for them on the porch. Jane Ann greeted her as “Maria” and Hicks sent her back to the kitchen to hurry supper. But everybody about the place, even Maria’s husband, the “horse wrangler,” a sleek looking Mexican with rings in his ears and a broken nose, found a chance to welcome the returned runaway.

“My! it’s great to be a female prodigal, isn’t it?” demanded Heavy, poking Jane Ann with her forefinger. “Aren’t you glad you ran away East?”

The Western girl took it good-naturedly. “I’m glad I came back, anyway,” she acknowledged. “And I’m awfully glad Ruth and Helen and you-all could come with me.”

“Well, we’re here, and I’m delighted,” cried Helen Cameron. “But I didn’t really expect either Ruth or Mary Cox would come. Mary’s got such trouble at home; and Ruth’s uncle is just as cross as he can be.”

Ruth heard that and shook her head, for all the girls were sitting on the wide veranda of the ranch-house after removing the traces of travel and getting into the comfortable “hack-about” frocks that Jane Ann had advised them to bring with them.

“Uncle Jabez is in great trouble, sure,” Ruth said. “Losing money – and a whole lot of money, too, as he has – is a serious matter. Uncle Jabez could lose lots of things better than he can money, for he loves money so!”

“My gracious, Ruth,” exclaimed Helen, with a sniff, “you’d find an excuse for a dog’s running mad, I do believe! You are bound to see the best side of anybody.”

“What you say isn’t very clear,” laughed her chum, good-humoredly; “but I guess I know what you mean, and thank you for the compliment. I only hope that uncle’s investment in the Tintacker Mine will come out all right in the end.”

Mary Cox, “The Fox,” sat next to Ruth, and at this she turned to listen to the chums. Her sharp eyes sparkled and her face suddenly grew pale, as Ruth went on:

“I expect Uncle Jabez allowed me to come out here partly because that mine he invested in is supposed to be somewhere in this district.”

“Oh!” said Helen. “A real mine?”

“That is what is puzzling Uncle Jabez, as I understand it,” said Ruth soberly. “He isn’t sure whether it is a real mine, or not. You see, he is very close mouthed, as well as close in money matters. He never said much to me about it. But old Aunt Alvirah told me all she knew.

“You see, that young man came to the mill as an agent for a vacuum cleaner, and he talked Uncle Jabez into buying one for Aunt Alvirah. Now, you must know he was pretty smart to talk money right out of Uncle’s pocket for any such thing as that,” and Ruth laughed; but she became grave in a moment, and continued:

“Not that he isn’t as kind as he knows how to be to Aunt Alvirah; but the fact that the young man made his sale so quickly gave Uncle Jabez a very good opinion of his ability. So they got to talking, and the young man told uncle about the Tintacker Mine.”

“Gold or silver?” asked Helen.

“Silver. The young fellow was very enthusiastic. He knew something about mines, and he had been out here to see this one. It had been the only legacy, so he said, that his father had left his family. He was the oldest, and the only boy, and his mother and the girls depended upon him. Their circumstances were cramped, and if he could not work this Tintacker Mine he did not know how he should support the family. There was money needed to develop the mine and – I am not sure – but I believe there was some other man had a share in it and must be bought out. At least, uncle furnished a large sum of money.”

“And then?” demanded Helen Cameron.

“Why, then the young man came out this way. Aunt Alvirah said that Uncle Jabez got one letter from Denver and another from a place called Butte, Montana. Then nothing more came. Uncle’s letters have been unanswered. That’s ever since some time last winter. You see, uncle hates to spend more money, I suppose. He maybe doesn’t know how to have the mine searched for. But he told me that the young man said something about going to Bullhide, and I am going to try to find out if anybody knows anything about the Tintacker Mine the first time we drive over to town.”

All this time Mary Cox had been deeply interested in what Ruth said. It was not often that The Fox paid much attention to Ruth Fielding, for she held a grudge against the girl of the Red Mill, and had, on several occasions, been very mean to Ruth. On the other hand, Ruth had twice aided in saving The Fox from drowning, and had the latter not been a very mean-spirited girl she would have been grateful to Ruth.

About the time that Ruth had completed her story of the Tintacker Mine and the utter disappearance of the young man who had interested her Uncle Jabez in that mysterious silver horde, Jane Ann called them all to supper. A long, low-ceiled, cool apartment was the dining-room at Silver Ranch. Through a long gallery the Mexican woman shuffled in with the hot viands from the kitchen. Two little dark-skinned boys helped her; they were Maria’s children.

At supper Mr. Hicks took the head of the long table and Jane Ann did the honors at the other end. There were the Cameron twins, and Madge and Bob, and Jennie Stone and Mary Cox, beside Ruth Fielding herself. It was a merry party and they sat long over the meal; before they arose from the table, indeed, much shuffling and low voices and laughter, together with tobacco smoke, announced the presence of some of the cowboys outside.

“The boys is up yere to hear that pinanner,” said Mr. Hicks. “Jib’s got it ready to slip out o’ the box and we’ll lift it into the other room – there’s enough of us huskies to do it – and then you young folks can start something.”

Jane Ann was delighted with the handsome upright instrument. She had picked it out herself in New York, and it had been shipped clear across the continent ahead of the private car that had brought the party to Bullhide. The jarring it had undergone had not improved its tone; but Helen sat down to it and played a pretty little medley that pleased the boys at the windows.

“Now, let Ruth sing,” urged Jane Ann. “The boys like singing; give ’em something they can join in on the chorus like – that’ll tickle ’em into fits!”

So Ruth sang such familiar songs as she could remember. And then Helen got her violin and Madge took her place at the piano, and they played for Ruth some of the more difficult pieces that the latter had learned at Briarwood – for Ruth Fielding possessed a very sweet and strong voice and had “made the Glee Club” during the first half of her attendance at Briarwood Hall.

The boys applauded from the veranda. There was at least a dozen of the ranchman’s employes at the home corral just then. Altogether Mr. Hicks paid wages to about sixty punchers and horse wranglers. They were coming and going between the home ranch and the ranges all the time.

The girls from the East gave the Silver Ranch cowboys a nice little concert, and then Jane Ann urged Jib Pottoway to come to the piano. The half-breed was on the veranda in the dusk, with the other fellows, but he needed urging.

“Here, you Jibbeway!” exclaimed Mr. Hicks. “You hike yourself in yere and tickle these ivories a whole lot. These young ladies ain’t snakes; an’ they won’t bite ye.”

The backward puncher was urged on by his mates, too, and finally he came in, stepping through the long window and sliding onto the piano bench that had been deserted by Madge. He was a tall, straight, big-boned young man, with dark, keen face, and the moment Tom Cameron saw him he seized Bob by the shoulder and whispered eagerly:

“I know that fellow! He played fullback with Carlisle when they met Cornell three years ago. Why, he’s an educated man – he must be! And punching cattle out on this ranch!”

“Guess you forget that Theodore Roosevelt punched cattle for a while,” chuckled Bob. “Listen to that fellow play, will you?”

And the Indian could – as Mr. Hicks remarked – “tickle the ivories.” He played by ear, but he played well. Most of the tunes he knew were popular ditties and by and by he warmed the punchers up so that they began to hum their favorite melodies as Jib played them.

“Come on, there, Ike!” said the Indian, suddenly. “Give us that ‘Prayer’ you’re so fond of. Come on, now, Ike!”

Bashful Ike evidently balked a little, but Jib played the accompaniment and the melody through, and finally the foreman of Silver Ranch broke in with a baritone roar and gave them “The Cowboy’s Prayer.” Ike possessed a mellow voice and the boys hummed in chorus in the dusk, and it all sounded fine until suddenly Jib Pottoway broke off with a sudden discordant crash on the piano keys.

“Hel-lo!” exclaimed Bill Hicks, who had lain back in his wicker lounging chair, with his big feet in wool socks on another chair, enjoying all the music. “What’s happened the pinanner, Jib? You busted it? By jings! that cost me six hundred dollars at the Bullhide station.”

But then his voice fell and there was silence both in the room and on the veranda. The sound of galloping hoofs had shut the ranchman up. A pony was approaching on a dead run, and the next moment a long, loud “Ye-ow! ye-ow!” announced the rider’s excitement as something extraordinary.

“Who’s that, Ike?” cried Hicks, leaping from his chair.

“Scrub Weston,” said the foreman as he clumped down the veranda steps.

Jib slipped through the window. Hicks followed him on the jump, and Jane Ann led the exodus of the visitors. There was plainly something of an exciting nature at hand. A pony flashed out of the darkness and slid to a perilous halt right at the steps.

“Hi, Boss!” yelled the cowboy who bestrode the pony. “Fire’s sweeping up from Tintacker way! I bet it’s that Bughouse Johnny the boys have chased two or three times. He’s plumb loco, that feller is – oughtn’t to be left at large. The whole chapparel down that a-way is blazin’ and, if the wind rises, more’n ha’f of your grazin’ll be swept away.”