"I bought this old shack and was to have had it moved onto my claims to-day, if the movers had showed up," exclaimed the irate man, his voice thick with anger. "But along come these jades and fasten me in----"
"We thought he was the bank robber," Tabitha murmured faintly, sick at heart over the mistake. "He was acting so--so suspiciously."
"Bank robber!" echoed the speaker from the crowd. "Why, Jeremiah Weller is owner of the biggest placer mines in the country. He made a fortune in Alaska. He"s a millionaire! Bank robber! Ha--ha! That"s rich!"
The crowd roared appreciatively, but the victim of the mistake quite unexpectedly lost his glowering look, and gruffly declared, "Well, you needn"t laugh at her. She"s pluck to the backbone. Show me another girl who would have undertook to corral a bank robber as she did. I don"t wonder she thought that was my occupation. I certainly look rough enough--" Suddenly his roving eyes fell upon the timid, shrinking Gloriana, so depressed at the way matters had turned out that she could scarcely keep back the scalding tears. If it had not been for her, Tabitha would never have gone on such a wild-goose chase. Why hadn"t she kept her suspicions to herself?
"What"s your name?" demanded the stranger so abruptly that he seemed positively rude.
"Gloriana Holliday," she managed to articulate.
"Did you ever have an Uncle Jerry?"
"If I did, he never came near us that I can remember," she candidly replied.
The purple of his face deepened. "That"s right, too," he muttered.
"But your mother ran away to get married."
"And her folks told her never to let them see her face again,"
supplemented Gloriana bitterly.
"Was her name Weller at one time? But of course it was. There couldn"t be two people on earth look as much alike as she and you unless they were mother and daughter; and besides, she married a Holliday,--Jack Holliday."
Gloriana nodded.
"Then, my girl, I"m your Uncle Jerry, and if you didn"t catch your bank robber, you made a pretty good haul anyway. Your mother--she--she"s--dead, isn"t she? And your father? You"re an orphan----"
"She"s not any longer!" Tabitha broke in savagely. "We"ve adopted her and she"s my sister."
"Oh! Well, that simplifies matters, too, for I"m a bachelor and have no _home_ to offer, but-- Say, I want to talk with you. Where"s your adopted father? Not in town now? Well, isn"t there some place we can go where we won"t be gawked at by all these hoodlums? Bring your black-haired sister,--my jailer. I certainly do admire pluck."
At this broad hint, the curious crowd reluctantly withdrew, and left the trio alone at the pesthouse threshold. Standing there bare-headed with the waning sunlight glinting through the heavy, red locks, Gloriana told what she could remember of the pitiful struggle of her parents, their deaths, and her unhappy lot until the scholarship at Ivy Hall had opened the way to better things.
So affected was the bluff stranger by the sad tale that he made no effort to check the tears which filled his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. "Well, the past is pa.s.sed," he said when the story was done, "and we can"t do anything now to change it. I"ve been downright sorry at the way we treated your mother, but she effaced herself pretty well.
We never got a trace of her whereabouts, though years afterwards we heard that she was dead. We never knew there was a child, but never mind, you shall not want again as long as I live. Being a rover and unmarried, I have no home to offer, as I said before; so I am glad to find you settled with such good friends. But I"ve got all kinds of money, and insist upon paying for your education from now on. Here"s a check for pin money."
Drawing a check-book from his pocket, he rapidly scribbled a few lines, tore out the slip and handed it to Gloriana. Mechanically she took it, and her gray eyes grew round with wonder as she read. "One hundred dollars! Oh, you must have made a mistake, Mr.----"
"Uncle Jerry," he corrected her.
"Uncle Jerry," she dutifully repeated.
"Not a bit of it! And what"s more, there will be one of those ready for you every quarter."
"Oh, that"s too much!" she protested. "Whatever would a girl do with four hundred dollars a year spending money?" The sum appalled her, and well it might, for never before had she possessed more than five dollars at one time.
He laughed at her dismay. "Why, I often spend that much in a day. You can lay in a stock of jimcracks like the other girls have. You"ll find plenty of ways to dispose of every cent, I know."
"Maybe," she half whispered. "You see, I never had so much as a dollar all my own that I can remember until I came to live with Tabitha, but perhaps when I get used to knowing it"s really mine and--genuine, I"ll find ways to spend it. I--I thank you. It"s nice to have an Uncle Jerry."
"It"s nice to have a Niece Gloriana, too," he answered gruffly, clearing his throat with much gusto; and as there seemed to be nothing further to say, the trio turned from the lonely pesthouse, and silently climbed the hill toward town.
CHAPTER XIII
THE ROBBERS AND THE HAUNTED HOUSE
"Billiard, did you ever see a ghost?"
It was almost a week since the bank robbery had occurred, and still no clue as to the ident.i.ty of the robbers had been found, although posses were still searching the country, determined to catch them if such a thing were possible. But the excitement of the event had already died down in the youthful minds of Silver Bow, and other topics of conversation absorbed their attention.
"Naw," answered Billiard contemptuously, without looking up from the stick he was whittling. "What"s eating you, Toady? There ain"t any ghosts, and you know it."
"What about that haunted house in the east end of town?"
""Tain"t haunted."
"Susie says it is."
"And Tabitha has lived alone near it for six or seven years and she has never seen anything stirring there."
"But ghosts walk only at midnight. She"s never been there at night."
"Aw, you softy----"
"Susie says the Gates boy declares he saw a ghost in the graveyard one night."
"Well, that"s different. I don"t blame a ghost for walking there."
"Why, Billiard McKittrick, what do you mean?"
"Did you ever see a lonesomer place on earth than the Silver Bow graveyard?" demanded Billiard. "Why, it"s the worst looking cemetery in the country, I believe,--just heaps of rocks and wooden sticks to show where folks are buried. Tabitha says they _blast_ out the graves with dynamite, six at a time, and fill them up with people as fast as they die. Would you rest easy if you were planted in that style?
Wouldn"t your ghost want to get out and walk?"
"_Billiard McKittrick_!" Toady looked positively shocked. Then after a moment, as the older boy made no reply, the younger one continued thoughtfully, "Maybe that"s what is the matter with the ghost in the haunted house."
"Oh, pshaw, Toady, I tell you there ain"t such a thing as a ghost!"
"I"ll stump you to go down to the haunted house some time and find out."
"All right, come along!"
"Not during daylight. It must be after dark. Midnight is the best time, Susie says."
"Bother Susie! Why don"t you get her to go with you?"
"You are afraid to go!" jeered Toady.