Luck was with the Outdoor Girls that day—or fate—call it what you will. In the side of the mountain close to where they were, had been drilled a hole forming a large, artificial cave—probably the work of some miner who had abandoned operations almost at the beginning either from lack of funds or ambition.
Into this hole the girls dashed, driven on by their frightful peril. Amy was the last to enter, and she had barely urged her nervous little filly into the opening when, with a terrific rumbling and rattling, the mass of earth and stones fell, covering the mouth of the cave and leaving them in such absolute darkness that it seemed as if they must suddenly have been stricken blind.
"Oh! oh!" moaned Amy, her trembling hand striving vainly to quiet the frightened animal under her. "We're buried alive, girls, we're buried alive! We'll never get out of this—never!"
"Please stop that, Amy," Betty's voice came out of the darkness, harsh, unnatural, like the crack of a whip. "The only danger we're in is the danger of losing our heads. Whoa, there, Nigger, old boy. Take it easy, beauty—there's nothing to be frightened about—there—there——" and she crooned to the big beast soothingly.
Someway, the other girls managed to follow her example, enough at least to quiet their restless mounts. Grace was sobbing, more from nervousness than fright, but she managed to say with a catch in her breath, "Stand still, Nabob—don't be such a s-silly. Isn't your Auntie Grace here with you?"
But it was Mollie who had the real problem. For while "Old Nick's" skittishness was more amusing than dangerous in the open, here, in this small place, with the other horses already difficult to manage, any real panic on his part would be more than likely to precipitate a real tragedy.
In the dark, unable to see a foot before their faces, only the power of their wills to prevent a stampede of their panicky horses which would mean death to them all and, worst of all, the possibility of smothering or starving to death in this walled-in cave! This was the appalling situation which confronted the four Outdoor Girls.
Mollie, her teeth grimly set, her knees dug into Old Nick's sides, was doing her best to keep him from trying to climb on the back of one of the other horses.
"Oh, Mollie, make him stop it," cried Amy frantically. "He'll kill poor Lady. Make him stop!"
"What do you suppose I'm trying to do," gritted Mollie between clenched teeth. "Do you think I like riding the side of a wall? Get down there, Old Nick, you wicked beast. Just wait till I get you outside."
Although this threat was uttered sternly, Mollie had never been nearer to crying in her life. Luckily, a cruel dig of her spurs in the horse's side brought the big beast to his senses. He dropped to the ground and stood there, quivering in every muscle and nickering plaintively.
"Good work, Mollie, old girl," cried Betty's voice encouragingly, and Mollie, wiping a tell-tale drop from the corner of her nose, answered in a voice that held never a quiver: "I couldn't fail you, Little Captain. Not at a time like this," and then she felt very brave and heroic.
The horses were quiet, huddled together at the farther end of the cave as though they found comfort in company, and thus one great danger waspassed. But the girls had still the other and greater one to face.
"We'd better dismount," said Betty's voice, surprisingly calm and matter-of-fact. It was this ability of Betty Nelson's to keep her nerve and her head in any difficulty, to see almost at a glance the best thing to do and the best way to do it, that had led the girls to call her their Little Captain. And now as they listened to her cool voice, directing them as always in an emergency, some of her self-control communicated itself to them and they followed her leadership without question.
"The horses will stand quietly now, I think," she said, and swung herself cautiously from Nigger's tall back and felt her way slowly past the horses, out to the small open space between them and what had once been the mouth of the cave.
The girls followed her example, the horses making no protest, save to whinny anxiously and crowd a little closer together.
"Where are you, Betty?" cried Grace plaintively, stubbing her toe on a stone and emitting an injured "ouch."
"I'm over here," responded Betty reassuringly. "Stretch out your hand and I'll grab it."
"Oh, for a match, my kingdom for a match!" said Mollie, brushing her hand across her eyesas though to relieve them of the weight of that terrific darkness. "Why aren't we men so we could carry 'em in our pockets—the matches I mean, not the men," she added with a chuckle that ended in a sob.
"Well, here we are," said Grace, when they had found each other in the inky blackness. "Now you've got us, Betty, what are you going to do with us?"
"I don't know—yet," responded Betty honestly. "I guess we've got to talk it over and decide what it is best to do."
Amy groaned.
"Meanwhile we smother," she said.
"Nonsense," retorted Betty briskly. "There's enough air in this place to keep us alive for twenty-four hours at least."
"Twenty-four hours," protested Amy, the panic she had felt at the first threatening to overwhelm her again. "But, Betty, there isn't a chance in the world that anybody will come along here in the next twenty-four hours."
"That's right, too," agreed Mollie, a prickly sensation of pure fright tickling the roots of her hair. "Dan Higgins said this trail was practically never used because of the danger from the mountain. This is a pretty pickle, this is!"
"And even if anybody should come along,"Grace pointed out gloomily, "they couldn't be expected to guess that there are four girls and four horses buried in this hole in the wall."
"And I don't believe we could ever in the world make ourselves heard through that mass of rocks and dirt," added Mollie. "Looks as though we had just about come to the end of our rope, I should say."
Amy began to cry again softly, and Betty, who had been listening with increasing irritation to this conversation, burst forth indignantly:
"Of all the silly things I ever heard!" she denounced them hotly, "I think you girls are the worst. You seem to forget that you are Outdoor Girls and that we have been in a good many tight places that were almost as bad as this. Why, we can't expect to have good times and adventures without once in a while getting the worst of it. If this is the way you are going to take a little bad luck," she finished her tirade in a fury that whipped the girls like a lash, "then I'm through, that's all. I refuse to be one of four Outdoor Girls that don't deserve the name."
She paused, and the girls were silent for a moment, feeling a little dazed. The tongue-lashing had been just what they needed, as Betty very well knew. It made them angry.
"Oh well," said Mollie sullenly, "if you are somuch better than the rest of us, Betty, perhaps you can tell us what to do. I'm sure we would be just as glad to get out of this as you."
"Then help me think of some way to do it," Betty retorted, more quietly. "Surely we can't accomplish it by making up our minds ahead of time that we are doomed."
"Suppose you suggest something, yourself," said Grace resentfully.
"All right," said Betty, whose quick mind had been working busily. "I am as sure as you girls are that the possibility of rescue from anybody outside is slight. Of course," she added breathlessly, "when we don't come home dad and mother would become worried and start a search party."
"They wouldn't miss us before night though," said Grace.
"Exactly," Betty caught her up. "And at night they wouldn't be as apt to discover the landslide as they would in the daylight. They would naturally think of the woods first. But the next day, anybody familiar with the trail would be sure to notice that there had been a landslide and they would be almost sure to connect it with us——"
"But Betty," wailed Grace, forgetting that a moment before she had been angry with the Little Captain, "all that is just supposition, and youknow as well as we do that we are likely not to be discovered until—until——"
"It's too late," finished Mollie. "Why don't you say it? It's the truth."
"And since it is the truth," Betty took her up briskly, "there is all the more reason why we should take things in our own hands and work out our own salvation."
Betty impatiently cut short Amy's discouraged "How?"
"Now listen," she said. "There are plenty of stones in this cave——"
"My toes cry aloud that they know it," interjected Grace, but no one laughed—they were too intent upon Betty. They were beginning to realize what she had in mind, and the realization brought a thrill of hope.
"If we could find any sharp enough—stones I mean," Betty went on, "we might use them as a sort of shovel and try to dig our way out. Of course," she added, as the girls began to grope eagerly among the dirt and débris at their feet for stones sharp enough to answer the purpose, "the mouth of the cave may be choked up too solidly with dirt and underbrush and things for us to get through. But in that case we'd just have to think up some other way, that's all."
"I've got a peach," cried Mollie slangily, asher hand struck a big stone sharp enough to serve her purpose. "I ought to be able to dig my way through the side of a house with this fellow."
"And here's the very one that got too familiar with my toe," said Grace, as she picked up another serviceable stone. "I'm going to get even with it now. I shall make it work as it never worked before."
After much groping and knocking of heads together, Betty and Amy also armed themselves with imitation shovels, and so the work began.
And it was work indeed. For what seemed hours to the anxious girls they toiled, digging sometimes with the stones, sometimes in desperation with their hands until it seemed to them they must have dug their way half through the mountainside. And still that blank wall of dirt, that impenetrable darkness, that stubborn barrier between them and the blessed sunshine. Amy was the first to give way.
She sank back on the dank floor of the cave and buried her face in her dirt-stained hands.
"We'll never get out of here!" she sobbed. "And I'm st-starving to d-death!"
Now the girls had been hungry before the accident occurred and, it being several hours since then, they were, by this time, as any one could readily see, in a rather bad state. Therefore, Amy's complaint was very unfortunate and, had it not been for Betty, it might have ruined the morale of the girls completely.
"Good gracious, Amy, don't talk about starving to death," cried Mollie, dismayed. "That's coming too near the truth for comfort. Oh, this miserable stone. It's cutting clear through my hand!"
"And my back is nearly broken," said Grace, adding, as she turned ferociously upon the still-sobbing Amy: "Stop that crying, Amy Blackford. Don't you know it is catching?" and a suspicious break at the end of her sentence, proved the truth of the assertion.
"Girls, please don't," begged Betty, still digging automatically at the stubborn wall of stonesand dirt. "If you all begin to cry, then we might just as well throw up our hands and say we are beaten."
It was not long after that that the girls found what they called their "second wind." They forgot that they were ravenous, that their backs ached and that their hands were scratched and torn. They worked furiously in the darkness, their goal the out-of-doors they loved so well.
For a long time they did not notice that the air was becoming very close and oppressive and that the perspiration that bothered them so was caused not alone by their exertion. And when the realization did come it had the effect of goading them on to more furious effort.
That the horses also felt the change in the atmosphere, was attested to by their increased nervousness. The trampling of their hoofs sounded ominous to the girls—they made queer little puffing noises as if they were getting their breath with greater and greater difficulty.
In one terrible instant the girls realized what might happen when what was discomfort to the animals now, should become torture. Maddened by pain and fright, it would be no longer possible to quiet them. And then—and then——
"Don't you think we'd better stop and try to quiet the horses?" asked Mollie once, as thechamping and snorting in the blackness behind them became more marked.
"I don't think it would do any good," Betty answered between clenched teeth as she scooped and dug, scooped and dug. "Better keep on working, girls. It's the one chance we have."
Oh, the horror of it, the nightmare of it! The heavy air, the hideous dark, the nervous trampling of those death-bearing hoofs—— The girls spoke no longer. They were beyond speech. Almost maddened by terror themselves, they scooped and dug, scooped and dug——
Once they thought they heard voices outside, and shrilly they cried to their imaginary rescuers. No answering "hallo" reached them, and the only effect of their cries seemed to be to add to the fright of their horses and so endanger themselves still more.
On, on, on—while their aching muscles seemed to grow numb with the strain and their lungs nearly burst with the pressure upon them.
At last they gave in—it seemed that they had to give in. All except Betty, who kept on desperately, doggedly, her muscles barely able to respond to the last call she was making upon them.
"I can't go on any more. I'm all in," said Mollie, a desperate quiet in her voice. "My arms are like lead and my hands are so numb I can'tfeel the stone. I guess this is the last adventure of the Outdoor Girls. We have just had one too many, that's all."
"Oh, Mollie!" Betty drew in a labored breath that caught on a sob. "Please don't give up—please! I've counted on you——" she paused, jerked her head up, her attention turned on the spot where her hand still automatically dug at the earth.
She sniffed, experimentally, sniffed again, stilling the wild throb of hope that was almost a pain at her heart.
"What is it, Betty, what is it?" cried Mollie, sensing something strange. Amy and Grace fought off the dizziness that was stealing over them and leaned forward.
But Betty had jumped to her feet, had dropped the stone and was tearing with her bare hands at that thin place—that thin place—— It gave under her mad onslaught, and suddenly her hand slipped through into the air—the air—— A breath of it swept into her tortured lungs, and she leaned there, laughing, crying, the tears of sheer weakness running down her dirt-stained face.
"Girls!" she babbled, "out there is the air—the good old air—enough of it for all of us! We're saved, do you hear? We're saved!"
Exhausted as they were, the girls tore at the tiny hole that Betty had made until there was an opening big enough for them to crawl through.
And oh! the indescribable ecstasy of it, the joy of it, just to lie there, trembling with weakness, and drink in great drafts of that life-giving air, thinking of nothing, caring for nothing but that they were alive there in their great out-of-doors. One never comes really to appreciate life until one has been close to death.
It was a long time before they ventured to go on. They had not realized how near exhaustion they had been until the tension had relaxed. When at last they did start for home, on foot, they were still trembling and they dared not glance down the canyon at their right for fear of becoming dizzy.
They had been long hours in the cave, and when they finally left the trail and cut across the plain toward the ranch it was nearly dark. They did not realize the startling sight they must present to any one who might not know of their plight until they met Andy Rawlinson and some other boys from the ranch starting out to search for them.
At sight of the mud-stained, blood-stained Outdoor Girls, Andy Rawlinson fairly tumbled fromhis pony and came running toward them while the other boys stood agape.
"What in the world——" began Andy, but Betty stopped him with a weary gesture. As briefly as she could she told him what had happened and asked him to go back and get their horses.
"It's getting pretty dark now, you know," she reminded him, when he seemed inclined to linger and ask questions. "Soon you won't be able to see what you're doing. Won't you please hurry?"
"Surest thing you know," responded the boy quickly, his nice eyes full of sympathy for them. "Some of the boys will see you home—your folks are getting awfully worried about you, you know—and the rest of us will go on and dig out the poor bronchos. So long. We'll be back pronto."
"And now home," sighed Betty, as she looked at the ranch house just visible in the distance. "And a bath—and something to eat. What does that sound like, girls?"
"Heaven!" they answered.
The task of releasing the imprisoned horses was not such an easy task as the girls and even Andy Rawlinson had thought it would be.
In the first place, it took Andy and his company some time to discover the place along the trail where the landslide had occurred, for Betty's account had been hasty and excited and she had overlooked several details that might have helped them in their work.
And when they did reach the scene of what might have been a tragedy the ranch hands were appalled by the immensity of the landslide. There had been several small ones in that vicinity, but this was what Andy termed a "humdinger."
There was a stamping and snorting from inside that dirt-choked cavern that, there in that lonely spot on the very edge of night, seemed positively uncanny to the men who stood and listened.
"Better get busy, boys," said Andy suddenly. "Those hosses ain't goin' to get any easier inthey minds an' it's about time we dug 'em out of there. Back to Gold Run as fast as we can get there for the right kind of tools from the miners. We may need some more men, too. Gosh, but I didn't know it was as bad as that," he added with a glance over his shoulder as he turned his pony and dashed back down the trail in the direction of Gold Run. "Reckon 'twas just plain grit that got those girls out."
Back in Gold Run they found several miners who were willing to offer both themselves and their tools toward the work of liberation, and soon the cowboys returned, accompanied by men with lanterns, and fell to work with a will.
Two hours later, Andy Rawlinson ventured into the blackness of the cave, swinging his lantern before him, and led forth the first of the frightened horses.
Meanwhile the girls had bathed away the stains of their adventure, and after a hearty meal cooked by an over solicitous "Miz Cummins" and served by a frankly envious and inquisitive Lizzie, they felt considerably more like their old self-confident selves.
However, they begged not to have to go to bed, as Mrs. Nelson anxiously suggested, until the boys had returned with their horses.
"I'm beginning to get dreadfully worried,"Betty confessed after an interval of staring out into the darkness. They were on the biggest of the many porches boasted by the quaint old ranch house, waiting eagerly for the first sound that would announce the return of Andy and the others with their horses.
"I'd never get over it if anything happened to Old Nick," said Mollie, taking up Betty's theme. "Maybe we'd better borrow some other horses from the corral and follow them."
"You'll do nothing of the kind," said Mr. Nelson, his voice sounding unusually stern there in the darkness. "I am going to keep my eye on you for the rest of to-day, at least!"
And so they contented themselves as well as they could with waiting and finally were rewarded by the regular beat of galloping horses in the distance.
"They're coming!" cried Betty, springing to her feet, then turned to her father pleadingly: "You won't mind if we go down to meet them, will you, Dad?" she asked. "They are our chums, you know—the horses, I mean."
Mr. Nelson nodded, and down the steps the girls sprang, racing out to meet that sound of galloping hoofs which was coming ever nearer. A few minutes later they were caressing the nervous animals that had gone with them into thevery shadow of death, rubbing their noses, laughing and crying over them and calling them endearing names till it's a wonder the cowboys, who stood by, grinning sympathetically, did not turn green with envy.
"Some anymiles do have all the luck," said one of them.
After that the girls and their horses were almost inseparable. If left to themselves, the latter would follow the girls around like dogs. Even "Old Nick," who had been the most difficult to understand and win, now was devoted to Mollie. She was the only one who could quiet him, and though there were some who did not care to ride him because of his skittishness, he was never anything but gentle and docile with her.
As the days passed the girls became more and more interested in Meggy Higgins until the longing to give her one good time, in spite of her pride, became almost an obsession with them.
One day Betty begged so hard that the girl finally consented to take a holiday and go out with them for a day's fun. But Meggy surrendered reluctantly, in spite of the fact that this invitation of the girls had been like a glimpse of wonderland to her.
"I reckon dad can get along one day without me, specially as the hermit can do part of mywork. Pa's broke him in so he can be real helpful now——"
But she got no farther, for Betty threw her arms around the surprised girl and hugged her happily.
"I'm awfully glad!" she cried, adding with eyes that sparkled: "I tell you what I'll do. I'll let you ride Nigger. There's a darling little brown colt over at the ranch that I've been just dying to try out."
Sudden tears sprang to Meggy's eyes, and with the disgust of all mountain folk for the expression of sentiment, she turned away impatiently to hide this tell-tale sign of weakness. But Betty had glimpsed the tears and she was satisfied.
The day was all that even Meggy Higgins' starved imagination could have expected of it. The miner's daughter was so beatifically happy that the girls found a new and most satisfying thrill in her enjoyment.
All her short, work-driven life Meggy Higgins had wanted a horse, a beautiful, sleek animal with supple limbs and shining coat like the one that she was riding now—Betty's Nigger. Many have desired a fortune, some political fame, others social position, but Meggy merely desired a horse. And even this had been denied her because her father had been dazzled by the lure of gold,a fortune always just before his eyes, but never to be grasped.
The girls were sorry for old Dan Higgins and his thwarted hopes. But they were infinitely more sorry for this girl of his to whom hardship was a daily reality and pleasure a golden vision to be indulged in only by girls whose fathers did not own a worthless claim.
"Sometimes," spoke up Mollie, as she reined Old Nick into a walk, "I wish I had the courage to rob somebody else's mine, Meggy, and plant the gold in yours. It doesn't seem fair for you to work all the time and get nothing for it."
The girl smiled sadly.
"I'm used to that," she said, with a grim philosophy far beyond her years. Then she added, with a quick loyalty that made the girls' hearts warm to her: "I don't mind. I'd do anything for dad an' I guess if he thought I was gettin' discouraged he'd jest plum up an' quit. He's gittin' old, he is, an' he ain't that spry like he used to be. All he has is his hope in that mine—an' me. Ef you killed that you might as well kill him."
After a while they stopped in the shade of some stunted trees and had lunch. The girls could tell from Meggy's popping eyes that the delicacies they drew forth from Miz Cummins'lunch basket had never been dreamed of in all her hum-drum, joyless life.
Tongue sandwiches, buttered corn-bread, fried chicken that you were at perfect liberty to take up in your fingers and nibble to your heart's content, jelly and olives and hot cocoa in the thermos bottle with rich cream already in it—truly a feast even worthy of the Outdoor Girls!
After lunch the girls strolled around a bit, leaving their mounts to graze lazily. They talked of many things, the adventures they had had, the curious people they had met in their adventuring, while Meggy listened to it all, drinking it in thirstily.
"To think of all the things you've seen," she breathed at last. "An' I've spent all my time sence I was able to toddle, I reckon, betwixt our cabin an' the mine—back an' forth, back an' forth——"
After that they rode on again and it was quite late in the day when they decided it was time to be going back.
"I don't see," said Grace, as they neared the ranch, "why we don't lay out some claims and start digging ourselves, girls. The north end of this ranch is quite near the other mines. We might strike gold."
The words were spoken laughingly, but Meggy took them seriously.
"Mebbe there's some truth in that," she said soberly. "Dad allus reckoned they might be gold on Gold Run Ranch."
A short time later they left her at the mine and Betty mounted Nigger, leading the brown colt by the reins. Meggy had tried to stammer some words of thanks, but the girls would have none of it. They waved to her gayly and started for home.
After an unusually long and thoughtful silence, Amy spoke up softly.
"Betty," she said, "if Meggy is right about the ranch, there being gold here, I mean, then what your mother had thought all along may turn out to be the truth."
"Well," said Betty, a joyous lilt to her voice that the girls knew well, "Allen will be here in a few days and then we'll start our gold hunt. Gold!" she repeated softly. "There is something romantic in the very sound of it!"
Up to this time the weather had been remarkably fine, but on this particular morning the Outdoor Girls woke to find that the sky was overcast and there was every indication of a stormy day.
"Oh bother," grumbled Mollie, as after their breakfast she gloomily surveyed the landscape from the cretonne-curtained window. "Just as I was about to suggest a real adventure, too!"
"What do you mean—'real adventure?'" queried Grace, lazily. The day before she had bought a new box of candy and a magazine, and so it happened that she was the only one of the four of them who really did not care whether it rained or not.
Mollie turned from the window and regarded them resentfully. Then she looked more hopeful as her eyes rested on Betty, who was sorting the contents of a too-crowded dresser drawer.
"You are with me, anyway, aren't you, Betty?"she asked, almost wistfully. "We'll leave these other two at home, and you and I will go on our adventure."
"All right," said Betty, with a lack of enthusiasm that fell with a dampening effect upon Mollie's ears. The disastrous quality of their last adventure had had a dampening effect on the girls' enthusiasm for this form of entertainment, and for the present they preferred the safety of the ranch to the lure of the great unknown, as it were. However, this condition of mind was only temporary. They would soon be as eager as ever for new experiences. "I'm game for anything, Mollie dear, as long as you keep away from land-slides and wild animals."
"Just hear the child!" said Mollie disgustedly. "As if an adventure would be an adventure without a little danger mixed in!"
"Just what is your great idea, Mollie?" asked Betty mildly. Mollie was beginning to glower. And if somebody did not stop her at the beginning, there was sure to be a fracas. Betty knew this from experience. "Suppose you tell us about it and get it out of your system. As I said before, I'm willing to do anything if it isn't hunting lions and tigers."
Mollie grunted disgustedly.
"Well, there isn't a thing really exciting aboutit, if that's what you mean," she said. "I just thought that since we had nothing special to do to-day we might visit the Hermit of Gold Run again. We might be able to solve the mystery about him in some way," she added as a special inducement, since the girls still seemed unenthusiastic.
Grace laughed indulgently.
"Just how do you expect to solve this mystery?" she asked, with a giggle. "You certainly can't do it by looking at him."
"Oh well, if that's the way you feel," retorted Mollie, feeling very much abused, "I'm sorry I spoke about it. Only I thought we had already decided to pay him a visit."
"And so we had," said Betty, closing the dresserdrawerwith a bang and coming unexpectedly to her aid. "And I, for one, am with you in that, Mollie. I have felt from the first," she went on earnestly, while Mollie regarded her with growing hope, "that I had not only heard the selection that that man played but that I had seen him somewhere before—quite a long time ago."
Impressed by Betty's earnestness, Grace had laid down her magazine and Amy was becoming interested.
"I know it's ridiculous," Betty continued, asthough to justify herself, "but I can't help feeling that way, just the same."
"That thing he played sounded familiar to me, too," Grace admitted, now entirely abandoning her magazine and sitting up. "It has been haunting me ever since we heard him playing that day, and yet I can't think of the name of it."
Softly Amy began to hum a popular song, but Mollie interrupted her impatiently.
"Well then, since you all feel that way about it," she said eagerly, "I don't see why it wouldn't be fun to scout around his cabin a little bit and see if we can't pick up some information. I'm really curious about him."
"All right, let's," said Betty, with the decision for which she was famed. "Get your riding togs on, girls, and we'll play detective."
This time it was Mollie who held back.
"How about the weather?" she demurred. "Looks as if we were likely to get wet."
"Who cares?" said Betty airily, adding, as she stopped at the door to make them a little bow: "It would give us an excuse to see His Highness again."
Half an hour later they had saddled their ponies and were cantering off briskly to visit the Hermit of Gold Run.
"Aren't you a little bit afraid to go in there?"asked Amy, reining in as they reached the narrow trail through the woods that led near the musician's cabin. "We might run into some wolves, as we did that other time."
"We were much further in the woods than the Hermit's cabin," said Mollie impatiently. "And it was in an entirely different direction, too. Go ahead, silly, or I'll ride right over you," and as she was urging Old Nick forward until he crowded uncomfortably against the little white filly, Amy had no other course but to do as she was bid.
Nevertheless, she was not the only one who was uneasy, and it might have been observed that the girls glanced often into the shadows of the underbrush on either side of the narrow trail.
There were wild animals in that forest, as they had good reason to know, and though they seldom ventured this close to civilization, still there was no use in tempting fate!
"I didn't know it was as far in as this," said Grace, after they had ridden some distance in silence. "Are you sure we haven't passed the cabin, Betty?"
"Why, we aren't nearly there yet," was Betty's discomforting reply. "It's quite a way beyond that next turn in the trail."
Grace said nothing, but she gripped the reinsharder in her hands. She had made up her mind that at the first sign of danger she would turn Nabob and make a dash back down the trail for safety.
After that the silence became so pronounced that Mollie noticed it and laughed nervously.
"Why all the noise?" she asked jocosely. "It nearly breaks my ear drums."
"Hush," cried Amy warningly. "I thought I heard something."
"That was your own heart hammering against the tree trunks," retorted Mollie dryly, at which the girls giggled and the tension relaxed.
"Let's talk about something nice," Betty suggested. "Gold, for instance."
"Or Allen," teased Grace. "I reckon you won't be glad or anything when he gets here."
"I guess mother will be gladder than any of us," replied Betty promptly, trying to shift the spotlight from herself. "She was so excited when I told her what Dan Higgins said about the possibility of there being gold on the ranch that she hardly closed her eyes all night. I told her she was getting to be a regular adventuress."
"Like her daughter," said Mollie, with a chuckle.
"Just think of the story we can tell the boys when we get home," said Amy rapturously, adding apologetically as the girls glanced at her: "If we find the gold, I mean."
"Listen to the child!" cried Betty gayly, while the other girls laughed. "And we haven't begun to dig yet. Hold your horses, Amy dear, hold your horses."
They did this very thing literally the next moment, for they came in sight of the queer little cabin of the man whom the natives called the Hermit of Gold Run.
Quickly they jumped down, tethered the horses as they had done before on the day when they had first made the acquaintance of this remarkable man, and started rather hesitantly down the path toward the house.
As they came nearer the haunting strains of the music that had puzzled them before once more floated out through the open windows and they paused, lost once again in the spell of it.
The music stopped, and they went on, hardly knowing what their next move was to be, yet drawn irresistibly by their curiosity. Then once more they heard the violin, but evidently the mood of the player had changed. The melody fraught with pathos, wailing, pleading, no longer reached them. The theme had changed—light, airy, sparkling, it reminded the girls of fairies dancing on the grass in the moonlight.
Mollie grasped Betty's arm.
"I know that!" she cried excitedly. "It's something of Chopin's, a nocturne, I think. Girls, I know where I heard that selection played just that way before."
They gazed at her, their eyes asking the question before their lips could form it.
"At the Hostess House!" cried Mollie. "Don't you remember that concert we gave with some of the great artists?"
"That big benefit!" cried Betty excitedly. "You've got it, Mollie! That's what I was trying to think of!"
"Sh-h," said Grace, a finger to her lips. "He has stopped playing. He may hear us."
"All right," said Betty. "Let's get back to the trail where we can talk this thing over."
They did not stop at the trail, however, for some memory of the danger lurking in the woods drove them out on to the main road where they might talk in peace.
"Now then," said Betty eagerly, as they reached the road, crowding their horses close together and reining them in to a walk. "What do you make of this, girls? If this man is really one of those artists that played at that big concert, then he is famous and there is something more than strange in his hiding up here in the woods."
"Goodness, we don't need anybody to tell us that," said Grace. "He certainly must be in hiding for something he's done—unless he has been disappointed in love," she added sentimentally.
"I don't believe he was ever in love with anything but his violin," said Mollie.
"Can't somebody think of the name of the violinist that played at the benefit?" asked Betty, who had been trying for some minutes past to accomplish that very thing.
"It was something like Croup, I think," said Mollie, wrinkling her forehead.
"Goodness, how romantic," said Grace, with a laugh.
"I tell you how we can find out the name," said Amy suddenly.
"How?" they questioned.
"I think I have a program, and I can send home for it," said Amy.
"Good girl!" cried Mollie, slapping her on the back with a violence that nearly threw her from Lady's back and caused that gentle little animal to turn her head inquiringly. "We little thought we had a genius in our midst!"
Amy was delighted with the praise she received from the girls and the first thing she did after they returned to the ranch was to write home to her guardian for the concert program she had so luckily saved.
Naturally the girls were more curious than ever after this second trip to his little cabin in the woods and longed to find out about this strange musician who hid himself so persistently from the world.
"Of course," Grace said, during one of the many times when they talked the matter over, "we're not at all sure that the Hermit is the same man who played at our benefit."
"Of course we're not," Mollie agreed with her. "There must be a great many musicians who can play those same selections that we heard him play."
"That's all very true," said Betty argumentatively. "But if he is really this same musicianthat played at our benefit, then that explains the queer hunch I've had of having seen him somewhere before."
"Well," said Mollie resignedly, "I guess all we can do for the present is to wait until Amy gets her program. When we find out the name of the violinist that played for us then we can decide what to do next about the Hermit."
Reluctantly they admitted that what she said was true, and for the time being let the discussion rest there.
Then came the day when Betty received a letter from Allen announcing that he would reach Gold Run the following afternoon on the four-thirty-five train. The letter ended by begging her to meet the train herself and please not to send any one else, for no one else would do!
Betty's pretty face flushed a deeper pink and her eyes shone brighter as she read this passage—and two or three others—several times over. Then she went to find the girls and tell them the good news.
They also had received mail from the other boys and some of the folks at home, and she found them all together on the eastern porch having the time of their lives. Mollie and Amy were perched on the railing while Grace and a box of candy reposed in a hammock.
"Well, have you finished reading yours already?" Mollie greeted the Little Captain as she swung up the steps. "It was such a fat one I thought it would take you till lunch time at least to get through with it."
"Speak for yourself," retorted Betty, too happy to mind being teased. "Guess what, girls!" she added, unable to keep the news to herself for another minute, "Allen arrives via the Western Limited at four-thirty or thereabouts to-morrow afternoon."
"Hooray!" cried the girls, and momentarily forgot their own letters in very real delight. Allen Washburn was a favorite with all of them.
"Will you let us all go to meet him, Betty dear?" asked Grace, with a twinkling smile. "Or does he insist on seeing you alone?"
"Don't be silly," retorted Betty good-naturedly. "I know he would take it as a personal slight if you weren't all there to welcome him."
"Well, I don't know," Mollie commented ruefully. "Something tells me he would manage to live through it even if we weren't there. But go on, Betty," she added. "Tell us what else he has to say."
"That's pretty nearly all," said Betty truthfully. "He said he would save all the news until he saw me—us. One thing he did say," sheadded, dimpling: "The boys are simply wild with jealousy. They say it is all a deep dark scheme on Allen's part to get out here with us."
"Us!" repeated Grace, with a giggle. "Much he cares about the rest of us."
Be that as it may, they certainly all turned out that following afternoon to meet the Western Limited which was bearing Allen swiftly toward them.
There was the usual gathering of picturesquely garbed miners and cow-punchers on the platform, and for most of these the girls had a smile and a nod.
"Seems funny to think how strange everything looked to us when we first came," remarked Grace, as they waited for the train. "Now we feel as much at home as if we had lived here all our lives."
"The people are all so nice and friendly, too," said Amy. "It's wonderful how soon you come to know them."
"It is a nice atmosphere," Betty agreed. "At home in the East we want to know pretty much all there is to know about people we make our friends. But out here they take you for granted. Nobody seems to care where you came from or who your relatives are——"
"Huh," grunted Mollie. "I guess in a goodmany cases it wouldn't do to be too curious," she said cynically. "If you believe the stories you read and the movies you see everybody who has committed a crime anywhere from petty larceny to murder skips out West to escape just punishment."
"Then at this moment," drawled Grace, glancing around at the rather harmless looking crowd on the station platform, "we are surrounded by thieves and murderers. Though I must say they are a pretty nice looking set," she added, and the girls giggled.
"Grace could forgive a man anything, if he was only good-looking enough," remarked Amy.
"Here comes the train!" cried Betty suddenly, as the Western Limited thundered around a curve in the distance and steamed toward them. Immediately she forgot everything but that Allen was on that train and that in a moment more she would see him——
Then Allen himself, handsome as ever, eagerly scanning the faces on the platform as he jumped from the train the instant the porter opened the door.
It took him barely a moment to discover the group of girls, and he came toward them, hand outstretched, eyes alight with greeting.
"Well, if this isn't great!" he cried in his heartyvoice, shaking hands with all of them but looking mostly at Betty. "Knew I could trust the Outdoor Girls to turn out for a rousing welcome. How's everything?"
"Just fine," they assured him, and then Betty took him in hand.
"We've brought a wagon along from the ranch to carry your luggage," she said, dragging him over to the wagon beside which two of the boys from the ranch were waiting bashfully. "Come over and meet a couple of our cow-punchers, and they will help you load your trunk on board."
All this accomplished, the cowboys and Allen having formed an immediate and staunch friendship, Betty introduced the latter to the horse she had brought for him to ride. The pony was a magnificent animal, dark brown in color with a curve to his graceful neck and a flash to his eye that proclaimed his thoroughbred ancestry.
"Say, you old peach of a horse," said Allen, fondly stroking the soft muzzle, "you're just about the most perfect thing of your kind I've ever seen. It seems almost a sacrilege to ride you."
"His name is Lightning," Amy volunteered. "The boys call him that because he can outrun almost any other horse on the ranch. Though," she added loyally, "I shouldn't wonder if Ladycould beat him if they should give her a head start."
This characteristic speech brought a laugh, and Allen regarded the four other beautiful horses in the group.
"You girls seemed to have picked winners yourselves," he said admiringly. He studied them a moment, then his eyes narrowed quizzically as he turned to Betty.
"I'll bet you a box of candy against a pair of gloves," he said, "that I can tell which horse belongs to which. Do you take me?"
"Of course," said Betty. "Go ahead."
He guessed them nearly right, except that he gave Nigger to Mollie and Old Nick to Betty.
"Almost does not avail," sang Betty gayly. "You owe me a box of candy, Allen Washburn."
He looked at her for a moment laughing, and suddenly her gaze faltered. There had been something new and forceful about Allen ever since he had come back from the war that had made Betty a little afraid of him. But she did not think any the less of him—oh, no indeed!
"I'll give you a dozen of them if you'll take them," he was saying ardently—evidently in reference to the candies.
"And if she won't take 'em, I will," said Grace, with a gusto that made them all laugh.
On the way home the girls, with what they thought was great consideration, cantered along in front, leaving Allen and Betty to bring up the rear. Allen blessed them for it, but Betty was furious and kept up such a running fire of comment and laughing narrative that Allen had no chance to say the things he had wanted to say.
Only once as they neared the ranch she paused a moment, pointing out over the dazzling plains to the purple tipped mountains in the distance.
"Isn't the country beautiful, Allen?" she asked breathlessly. "I've fallen dead in love with it."
"It looks too good to be true," Allen agreed seriously, then added boyishly, with a glance that took her in, as well as the scenery: "Just now, I don't care if I never go home!"
For the next few days the girls took possession of Allen, showing him the sights with a will and showering him with details of their adventures till the poor fellow's head was in a whirl and he could hardly tell whether it was the wolves or the landslide that had frightened the girls into the cave on that memorable afternoon.
"Seems to me," he said, as the girls showed him the cave—at a safe distance from the mountain, one may be sure—"that you young ladies need a chaperone pretty badly."
"Do you think you're it?" teased Mollie.
"Great guns! I should hope not," said Allen, with a flash of his white teeth. "I would rather face a dugout full of Boches than try to keep tabs on you girls. See here," he added, suddenly serious. "Do you mean to tell me that you were really caught in that cave with your horses and nothing to dig your way out with but your hands?"
"And a few sharp stones that we found," Betty nodded soberly.
Allen whistled softly.
"No, I should think not," he said slowly. "It's a wonder that with you and your horses, too, in that small space, you didn't smother before aid could reach you."
"We should have," spoke up Amy quickly, "if it hadn't been for Betty. She was the one who kept us at it when we were ready to give up."
"Yes, and she was the one that kept at it when the rest of ushadgiven up," Mollie reminded her. "She was the one who kept digging until she forced the hole through. If it hadn't been for her we would have all given up and just died there, I guess."
Betty, who had been getting redder and redder through this recital of her heroism, found it hard to meet Allen's eyes as he turned to her with all his heart in his own.
"The girls give me altogether too much credit," she protested. "Anybody will fight when he has his back against the wall. And now let's take Allen to see Dan Higgins' mine," she added lightly. "Dan Higgins and his daughter Meggy are great friends of ours, Allen, and I know you will love them as much as we do."
"Your friends will always be mine," Allen assured her gallantly, and they rode off gayly toward Gold Run.
On the way they told him a good deal of Dan Higgins and Meggy, and Allen listened with sympathetic interest.
"That surely is tough," he said boyishly. "But of course his case is no different from that of hundreds of others who have come out here to 'God's Country' in the hope of beating the daily grind and jumping to fortune at one fell swoop. That sounds rather Irish, doesn't it?" he added, with his contagious grin.
"You're right about that, I suppose," said Betty gravely. "As you say, Dan Higgins is just one of a hundred others in the same pitiful fix. But at least he has had his dreams and the excitement of gambling. He chose this sort of life, and so we don't feel so awfully sorry for him. But it is his daughter Meggy that we pity. She is really a wonderful girl, Allen, and to condemn her to a life of work and poverty is really a crime."
"Well, I didn't do it," said Allen plaintively, adding quickly as Betty's face clouded: "I beg your pardon, little girl, I didn't mean to be flippant. But, like her father, there are many othersin the position of this girl. A man can't choose to live a life like that without dragging his family into it too."
"Then he shouldn't have a family," said Mollie hotly. "He should make up his mind to be an old bachelor—though I don't think there is anything worse under the sun," she added, with such emphasis that the girls giggled.
"I agree with you there," said Allen, adding whimsically: "But what a man should do and what he does do are often very different things."
"But you speak of Dan Higgins and Meggy as if they were just ordinary people," Grace objected, as she flicked the reins gently on Nabob's arching neck. "You seem to forget that they saved our lives—probably."
"No, I don't forget that," said Allen gravely. "And I respect your wish to do something in return. I also owe them a debt of gratitude." His eyes unconsciously sought Betty's, and a quick glance passed between them that was more eloquent than words.
"Then you will help us to help him?" said Betty quickly.
"I'll do anything I can," Allen answered, adding, rather dubiously: "But I don't see what any one can do for them. If the old man hasn't struck gold yet and is short of funds to financefurther search, I don't see what any one can do for him. Do you?" he added, looking at her.
"No-o," admitted Betty reluctantly. "I haven't thought of a way yet. But I'm sure I shall," she added so bravely that the girls wanted to hug her.
They reached the Higgins' mine soon after this, and at the sound of their approach Meggy ran eagerly out to them, as she always did. But when she saw Allen, looking to her unsophisticated eyes like some hero out of a story book, handsome and city-bred, she halted and turned red with embarrassment.
However, Allen, by his own gracious and friendly manner, soon set her at ease, but her eyes continued to follow every movement of his as though in amazement that such a perfect creature could live.
"Better look out, Betty," Grace whispered to the Little Captain when nobody was looking. "Meggy thinks Allen is pretty nice. Just watch her, she's hypnotized."
But Betty only smiled. Somehow, she felt pretty sure of Allen.
The latter struck up a great friendship with old Dan Higgins right away—wonderful how everybody took to Allen, thought Betty proudly—and soon they were talking like old friends. In fiveminutes Allen had found out more about Dan Higgins' mine and his prospects than the girls would have learned in a year.
Toward the end Allen managed to put a few adroit questions concerning Gold Run Ranch and the possibility of there being gold upon it.
"Waal now," drawled Higgins, spitting upon the ground reflectively, "folks here'bouts used to wonder why old Jed Barcolm didn't get busy and find out if there was gold on thet property, but somehow th' old man never seemed to get interested. Conservative old fellow, Jed Barcolm, anyways—allus said he'd made enough raisin' cattle and didn't aim to do no prospectin' at his time o' life."
"But you think there is a good possibility of there being gold on the ranch?" insisted Allen, and the girls held their breath.
Dan Higgins gave him a shrewd look and spat once more.
"You thinkin' of doin' a little prospectin' on your own hook, Son?" he inquired.
"Heavens, no!" answered Allen with convincing sincerity, adding with a smile: "It is barely possible that my client might, though."
The old man started and stood upright, squaring his thin shoulders belligerently.
"You don't mean to tell me you're one o' thoseornery lawyer cusses," he said, with a disgusted emphasis that angered the girls but apparently left Allen unmoved.
"A lawyer—but not ornery, I hope," he said pleasantly. "And my client is Mrs. Nelson, the new owner of the ranch. Is there anything else you would like to know about me?"
But the old man's anger had departed and he regarded Allen with a shrewd twinkle in his kindly blue eyes.
"Sorry, Son," he said. "I reckon there are some honest lawyers, though I never ain't met one yet—not round here leastways."
"Thanks for a rather doubtful compliment," laughed Allen. It was evident that he was enjoying the old man extremely. "I assure you, though I am not always honest, there are times when I try very hard to be." Then he suddenly added: "By the way, do you happen to know a man around here—one of those ornery lawyers—by the name of Peter Levine?"
Again Dan Higgins spat disgustedly.
"Know him!" he answered with a wealth of scorn in his voice. "I reckon most everybody round here knows him—an' they's mighty few knows any good o' him. Take my advice, Son, an' keep away from him."
"Thanks," said Allen dryly. "But the problemseems to be to keep him away from us. He is representing a client who wants to buy Gold Run Ranch."
The old man started and a gleam of excitement shot into his eyes while Meggy, seeming to share his emotion, crept closer to him.
"Peter Levine wants you to sell," he repeated eagerly, then relaxed once more into his drawl, though his eyes reflected a strange inward turmoil. "Listen, Son," he said. "Ef you let that snake in the grass argy you into sellin', you're a bigger fool 'n I take you to be. An' what's more," his voice lowered and the girls leaned forward eagerly, "if Peter wants that there property of yourn there's gold on it, you can bet your last dollar onto it. Pete ain't no angel, an' he don't work for nothing."
Burning with excitement themselves, the girls marveled that Allen could take this statement so calmly.
"Thanks for the tip," he said, in his ordinary voice. "I had some such idea myself, but it certainly helps to have my judgment backed by somebody who knows the people in the case."