no one here to take care of it, I came home; but I should have lost the
money after all, if it hadn't been for you, Frank, and I might have lost
my life with it; for I believe the villain was in earnest."

"I am quite sure he was," said Frank, feeling of his neck, which still
bore the marks of the lasso in the shape of a bright red streak. "If you
had stayed away five minutes longer, I should have been hanged. O, it's
a fact!" he added, earnestly, noticing that the doctor looked at him
incredulously. "I came very near dancing on nothing, now I tell you; and
if you only knew all that has happened in this house since dark, you
wouldn't say that there was no one here to take care of that money. But,
uncle, how came you by that wound?"

"Pierre gave it to me," was the reply. "He slipped up behind me when I
was dismounting, and struck me with something. But what did he do to
you?"

"He pulled me up by the neck with my own lasso," replied Frank; "that's
what he did to me."

"The scoundrel!" exclaimed the doctor. "Tell us all about it."

Thus encouraged, Frank began and related his story, to which his
auditors listened with breathless attention. He told what he had done
with the twelve thousand dollars, where he had hidden the keys, how he
had detected Pierre watching him through the window, and how the
Ranchero had told him that Marmion was off hunting rabbits, when he was
lying bound and muzzled in some out-of-the-way place. Then he explained
how the robber had overpowered him while he was reading, how he had
searched his pockets for the keys, and pulled him up by the neck because