[Illustration:

  DOROTHY WAS AHEAD, LEADING HER HORSE UP THE NARROW TRAIL.

  “Dorothy Dale to the Rescue.”       Page 200
]




                              DOROTHY DALE
                             TO THE RESCUE


                                   BY
                            MARGARET PENROSE

   AUTHOR OF “DOROTHY DALE: A GIRL OF TO-DAY,” “DOROTHY DALE AND HER
  CHUMS,” “DOROTHY DALE’S ENGAGEMENT,” “THE MOTOR GIRLS SERIES,” ETC.


                              ILLUSTRATED


                                NEW YORK
                         CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY




                       BOOKS BY MARGARET PENROSE


                    _12mo._  _Cloth._  _Illustrated_


                        THE DOROTHY DALE SERIES

  DOROTHY DALE: A GIRL OF TO-DAY
  DOROTHY DALE AT GLENWOOD SCHOOL
  DOROTHY DALE’S GREAT SECRET
  DOROTHY DALE AND HER CHUMS
  DOROTHY DALE’S QUEER HOLIDAYS
  DOROTHY DALE’S CAMPING DAYS
  DOROTHY DALE’S SCHOOL RIVALS
  DOROTHY DALE IN THE CITY
  DOROTHY DALE’S PROMISE
  DOROTHY DALE IN THE WEST
  DOROTHY DALE’S STRANGE DISCOVERY
  DOROTHY DALE’S ENGAGEMENT
  DOROTHY DALE TO THE RESCUE


                         THE MOTOR GIRLS SERIES

  THE MOTOR GIRLS
  THE MOTOR GIRLS ON A TOUR
  THE MOTOR GIRLS AT LOOKOUT BEACH
  THE MOTOR GIRLS THROUGH NEW ENGLAND
  THE MOTOR GIRLS ON CEDAR LAKE
  THE MOTOR GIRLS ON THE COAST
  THE MOTOR GIRLS ON CRYSTAL BAY
  THE MOTOR GIRLS ON WATERS BLUE
  THE MOTOR GIRLS AT CAMP SURPRISE
  THE MOTOR GIRLS IN THE MOUNTAINS

               _Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York_


                          COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY
                         CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

                       DOROTHY DALE TO THE RESCUE

                        Printed in the U. S. A.




                                CONTENTS


                CHAPTER                            PAGE
                     I. BAD NEWS                      1
                    II. JOE DISAPPEARS                8
                   III. CALLED HOME                  16
                    IV. ON THE TRAIL                 24
                     V. CAPTURED                     32
                    VI. MORE TROUBLE                 38
                   VII. A LETTER FROM GARRY          47
                  VIII. THE SEARCH                   55
                    IX. IN THE TREE                  62
                     X. A CLUE                       71
                    XI. DOROTHY REACHES A DECISION   78
                   XII. A GUESS                      84
                  XIII. DERAILED                     90
                   XIV. THE WARNING                 104
                    XV. DISAPPOINTMENT              109
                   XVI. DOROTHY HOPES AGAIN         116
                  XVII. SOME RASCALS REAPPEAR       123
                 XVIII. PLAYING A PART              133
                   XIX. AN OLD FRIEND               140
                    XX. REAL NEWS AT LAST           146
                   XXI. TWO SCOUNDRELS              154
                  XXII. A SURPRISE                  163
                 XXIII. GONE AGAIN                  185
                  XXIV. A WASTED BULLET             194
                   XXV. THE STORM                   202
                  XXVI. A GENTLEMAN                 209
                 XXVII. WHAT WAS THAT?              215
                XXVIII. A VOICE IN THE MOUNTAIN     221
                  XXIX. THE DASTARDLY PLOT          229
                   XXX. CAPTURED                    237




                              DOROTHY DALE
                             TO THE RESCUE




                               CHAPTER I
                                BAD NEWS


“Everything about the old _Bugle_ office seems so changed,” said Dorothy
Dale slowly. “I feel sort of——”

“Homesick?” giggled her chum, Tavia Travers.

“Exactly,” retorted Dorothy. “That gorgeous big printing press which has
taken the place of the one we used to have——”

“The old one-lunger Ralph had charge of?” Tavia again interrupted
airily. “It was funny, wasn’t it?”

“I think it was a dear,” declared Dorothy loyally. “It used to print the
old _Bugle_ in pretty good shape, anyway.”

“Good gracious, Doro, any one would think you were in mourning for the
old _Bugle_ office,” cried Tavia, exasperated. “If you want the old
one-lunger back, I am sure you can get it, provided it has not gone to
adorn an ash heap somewhere.”

Dorothy smiled, but her eyes were wistful. The two girls had returned to
Dalton and were now staying at Tavia’s home. They had just visited the
offices of the _Bugle_, the paper formerly owned by Major Dale and
which, for a number of years, had been the chief source of income of the
Dale family.

The girls were impressed by the great changes that had taken place in
the newspaper office. A fine new printing press had been installed, the
offices renovated and modernized until all trace of the rather dingy and
shabby quarters of the old _Bugle_ had been lost.

Small wonder that Dorothy Dale, for whom the paper had always held a
peculiar fascination, felt taken aback by the great change that had
taken place during her absence. It was like losing an old and dear
though shabby friend and finding a prosperous but unfamiliar stranger in
his place.

“Do you remember that first assignment of my journalistic career?” said
Tavia, with a giggle. “I thought I was cut out for a star reporter that
time, for sure.”

“That was the obituary assignment Ralph Willoby gave you, wasn’t it?”
returned Dorothy, with a reminiscent chuckle. “My gracious, how many
ages off that time seems, Tavia!”

“Yes, we are growing old and gray,” agreed the flyaway sadly. “I wonder
you haven’t taken to cap and spectacles long ere this, Doro, my dear. I
am sure I can see white hairs gleaming in the sunlight.”

“I hope not. I don’t think Garry likes white hair,” said Dorothy
demurely.

“Speaking of snowy locks, hasn’t Mr. Grant a stunning head of them?”
said the irrepressible girl. “I simply adore that pepper and salt
effect, don’t you, Doro?”

“I guess so,” said Dorothy absently. Her mind was still busy with the
_Bugle_ offices and the changes made there.

“I wish the Major had not sold the _Bugle_, Tavia,” she said wistfully.
“I can’t forget how I used to help get out the old paper and—I would
like to do it again.”

“Good gracious, hear the child!” cried Tavia, making big eyes at her
chum. “Not hungering for a career at this late date, are you, Doro? What
do you suppose Garry would say to your making a reporteress of
yourself?”

Dorothy dimpled and her eyes began to shine as they always did at
mention of Garry Knapp.

“I suppose he wouldn’t approve,” she admitted. “He is just old-fashioned
enough to think that the man ought to be the only moneymaker in the
family.”

“Well, why not, as long as he can make enough?” demanded Tavia airily.
“That is really the important thing.”

“Tavia, how you talk!” Dorothy rebuked her. “You know very well you
would marry Nat White if he lost every cent he had in the world.”

“Just the same, I hope he doesn’t,” replied Tavia, making a face at her
more serious friend. “I like him very well just the way he is. But it
will be nice when he gets white hair and whiskers like Mr. Grant,” she
added pensively.

Dorothy frowned, then laughed. There was no use taking Tavia seriously,
and, besides, she very rarely meant any of the flippant things she said.

The Mr. Grant whose hair and whiskers Tavia so openly admired was the
new owner of the _Bugle_ and a dignified old gentleman whom Major Dale
held in great esteem. To hear Tavia refer to him so flippantly rather
shocked Dorothy. But then, Tavia was Tavia, and there was no use trying
to change her.

“I wish the Major had not sold the _Bugle_,” Dorothy repeated, with a
sigh. “It seems, somehow, like turning against an old friend.”

The two girls walked on in silence through the lovely spring sunshine,
each busy with her own thoughts. They were very happy thoughts, for both
Dorothy and Tavia had every reason to be happy.

During the past winter the chums had become engaged to the “two dearest
fellows in the world.” Nat White, Dorothy’s cousin and Tavia’s “bright
particular star,” to use the latter’s own phrase, was expected in Dalton
that afternoon. At the thought that Nat might even reach her home before
Dorothy and herself, Tavia quickened her pace, eagerly urging the
thoughtful Dorothy along with her.

Garry Knapp, Dorothy’s wild and woolly Westerner—again Tavia’s
description—had returned to his beloved West to cultivate his land and
raise the “best wheat crop anywhere near Desert City.” Dorothy was fully
in sympathy with this ambition. The only part of it she did not like was
the long miles that separated her from Garry and Garry from her. It was
not so very long since she had seen him, yet it seemed to her like an
interminable space of time.

“I bet I can guess what you are thinking about,” said Tavia, reading
Dorothy’s wistful expression. “Are you on?”

“I never bet,” replied Dorothy primly, and Tavia hugged her.

“You blessed Puritan! Just for that I’ll tell you, anyway.”

“You needn’t bother,” said Dorothy hastily, for she was sometimes afraid
of her friend’s intuitions.

“Oh, but I will! You were wishing like all possessed that you could be
in my shoes for one little hour.”

Dorothy flushed and took refuge in an admonishing:

“How you do put things, Octavia Travers!”

“You were thinking that if your darling Garry were coming instead of
Nat, you would be fox-trotting madly along this road instead of pursuing
your course with every evidence of decorum,” persisted the outrageous
Tavia. “Now ’fess up. Ain’t I right?”

“Maybe—all except the fox-trot,” agreed Dorothy, with a laugh. “I prefer
the waltz myself.”

“Um—dreamy stuff, lights low, soft music,” drawled Tavia. “I imagine
that would just suit you, Doro dear. As for myself, give me jazz every
time!”

“When do you expect Nat?” asked Dorothy, jolted out of her dreamy
abstraction.

“Right now, any minute. We are liable to bump into him at any corner,”
replied Tavia vigorously. “My goodness, Doro, my heart is palpitating
frightfully. I wonder if one ever dies of such things.”

“You won’t, that one thing is sure,” said Dorothy, looking with
admiration at her chum’s flushed face and dancing eyes. “Just now you
look like nothing so much as an advertisement for health food.”

“How unromantic,” Tavia reproached her. “And just when I was pining
gracefully for poor Nat, too.”

“Here he comes now!” cried Dorothy, and Tavia whirled around to see a
tall figure coming swiftly toward them. Nat waved his hat boyishly and
broke into a run. He reached them just as they turned the corner of the
street on which Tavia lived.

“Hello there, coz!” he said, pinching Dorothy’s pretty cheek, then
turned to Tavia.

“Not here in the street, you silly boy,” Tavia said, as the young man
bent over her. “We are almost home. Can’t you wait?”

“Not long!” returned Nat ardently. Then, as they slowly approached
Tavia’s house, he turned to Dorothy, his manner serious.

“I am afraid I have bad news for you, Dot,” he said, reluctantly adding,
in response to Dorothy’s startled glance: “It’s about Joe.”




                               CHAPTER II
                             JOE DISAPPEARS


Dorothy’s face went white and she gripped Nat fiercely by the arm.

“Tell me what it is!” she gasped. “Nat, don’t try to keep anything from
me!”

“I couldn’t if I wanted to, Dot, old girl,” said her cousin gravely.
“That’s why the Major wanted me to break the news to you.”

“Oh, Nat,” wailed Dorothy, “don’t keep me waiting! Tell me what you
mean! What is the matter with Joe?”

They reached Tavia’s house. Nat pulled the two girls down beside him in
the porch swing, an arm about Tavia and his hand gripping Dorothy’s
reassuringly.

“He has disappeared, Dot,” said the young fellow gravely. “But you
mustn’t——”

“Disappeared!” cried Dorothy, interrupting him. “How could he, Nat?
Where would he go?”

“Why, the whole thing is preposterous, Nat!” cried Tavia. “A boy like
Joe wouldn’t do such a thing—in earnest. He must just be playing a
prank.”

“A rather serious prank,” replied Nat soberly. “And one I wouldn’t
recommend any youngster to try.”

Dorothy felt dazed. That Joe, her young and mischievous though dearly
beloved brother, should disappear!

“Nat, did he—did he—run away, do you suppose? Was there a quarrel or
anything?”

“Not a thing, as far as I can find out,” returned Nat. Then he paused,
but finally added slowly, as though he were reluctant to cause his
cousin any further pain: “But there was a rather curious coincidence.”

“Nat, you are so provoking!” cried Tavia impatiently. “Do come to the
point! Can’t you see Doro is ready to collapse with fright?”

“There has been a fire in Haskell’s store——”

“Good gracious, listen to the boy!” cried the flyaway scathingly. “As
though that could have anything to do with Joe!”

“It may have a good deal to do with Joe; or with his disappearance, at
any rate,” said Nat quietly. Once more Dorothy reached her hand out
pleadingly toward him.

“What has this to do with Joe?” she asked faintly.

“We don’t know, Dot. And, of course, it may not have a thing to do with
him. It seemed rather an odd coincidence that Joe should disappear on
the very day that Haskell’s toy and stationery store burned down.”

“It was the largest store of its kind in North Birchlands,” murmured
Dorothy, hardly knowing what she said. “And you say Joe disappeared at
about the same time? Oh, Joe, foolish boy, where are you now? What have
you done?”

Dorothy buried her face in her hands and Tavia rose from her place
beside Nat and encircled Dorothy in a strangling embrace.

“Never you mind, Doro Doodlekins,” she cried stoutly. “We’ll find that
young brother of yours or know the reason why!”

But Dorothy was not to be so easily consoled. For years, since the death
of her mother, Dorothy Dale, young as she was, had taken the place of
their mother to her two younger brothers, Joe and Roger. The boys were
good boys, but mischievous, and Dorothy had spent many anxious moments
over them.

The adventures of Dorothy, Tavia and their friends begin with the first
volume of this series, entitled “Dorothy Dale: A Girl of To-Day.” At
that time the Dale family lived in Dalton, a small town in New York
State. Major Dale owned and edited _The Dalton Bugle_ and upon the
success of this journal depended the welfare of his family. Stricken
desperately ill in the midst of a campaign to “clean up” Dalton, the
existence of the _Bugle_ was threatened, as well as the efforts of the
better element in town to establish prohibition.

Dorothy, a mere girl at that time, came gallantly to the rescue, getting
out the paper when her father was unable to do so, and in other ways
doing much toward saving the day.

Tavia Travers, her most intimate girl chum and as different from Dorothy
as night from day, had helped and encouraged the latter in her great
undertaking. Since then the two girls had been inseparable.

Later Major Dale had come into a considerable fortune so that he was no
longer compelled to depend upon the _Bugle_ for his livelihood. As a
result, the Dale family moved to The Cedars, a handsome estate at North
Birchlands, where already lived the Major’s widowed sister and her two
sons, Ned and Nat White, both older than Dorothy.

At Glenwood School Dorothy started on a different life. Her school
adventures were many and interesting, and in these Dorothy and Tavia
never failed to take a leading part.

In the volume directly preceding this, entitled “Dorothy Dale’s
Engagement,” Dorothy met romance in the person of handsome Garry Knapp,
a young Westerner who dreamed of raising wheat on his ranch near Desert
City. True love followed its proverbially rocky course with the two
young people, but the death of Garry’s Uncle Terry and the legacy of a
considerable fortune left him by the old man magically smoothed the path
for them.

Now we find Dorothy again in Dalton with Tavia, looking forward to her
next meeting with Garry Knapp and, despite all her common sense and will
power, missing him desperately in the meantime.

And to her here had come Nat with this terrifying news about Joe.

What was she going to do? How was she going to find her brother?

She turned to Nat again pleadingly.

“Tell me all about it, Nat; every little thing. Perhaps that will help
me think what I should do.”

“I’ve told you all I know about Joe——”

“But about the fire?” Dorothy interrupted him impatiently. “How did it
start? What made it?”

“An explosion in the back room, I believe,” returned Nat, his usually
merry face clouded with anxiety. “Nobody seems to know what made it, but
there is a general impression that there was some sort of explosion.
People in the neighborhood say they heard a loud noise and a few moments
later saw smoke coming out of the store windows.”

“About time somebody sent in an alarm, I should think,” began Tavia, but
Nat silenced her.

“You would think somebody sent in an alarm if you could have glimpsed
the number of engines rushing to the rescue,” he retorted. “I don’t
think there was a firehouse in North Birchlands, even the smallest and
humblest that was neglected.”

“Yet they failed to save the store,” murmured Dorothy.

“It was a fierce fire and by the time the firemen turned a working
stream on it, the whole place was gutted.”

“Was anybody hurt?” inquired Tavia, and Dorothy turned startled eyes on
Nat. It was the first time she had thought of that possibility.

“Mr. Haskell was pretty badly burned,” replied Nat reluctantly. “The old
codger would dodge back into the flames in a crazy attempt to save his
account books. They were burned up, of course, and he came very near
following in their footsteps.”

“They haven’t got any, as you know very well, Nat White,” said Tavia
flippantly, but instantly her face sobered as she looked at Dorothy. Her
chum was white and there was a strained expression about her mouth that
made her suddenly look years older.

“You shouldn’t have told her that about Mr. Haskell,” Tavia reproached
Nat. “It wasn’t necessary to go into all the gruesome details.”

“She asked me,” Nat defended himself, adding in a more cheerful tone:
“Anyway, there isn’t anything gruesome about it. Nobody was seriously
hurt, not even Mr. Haskell. They took him to the hospital to dress his
burns, and the old fellow will probably be up and around as chipper as
ever in a few days.”

But Dorothy shook her head.

“If they took him to the hospital he must be pretty seriously hurt,” she
said, and Tavia gave an impatient flounce in the swing.

“Good gracious, Doro Doodlekins, there’s no use looking on the worst
side of the thing!” she cried. “Let’s presume that Mr. Haskell is all
right and that Joe will turn up, right side up with care, in a few
days.”

But Dorothy was not listening to her. She turned her white face to Nat
who was watching her anxiously.

“Nat,” she said slowly, “you don’t suppose Joe’s disappearance really
has anything to do with the fire, do you? I mean,” she said quickly as
she saw the frown of quick denial on Nat’s brow, “you don’t think
that—by accident—he might have—you know he always is getting into all
sorts of scrapes.”

“It is merely a coincidence, Dot,” repeated Nat, hoping that the words
sounded more reassuring to his cousin than they did to him. He knew that
they had not when Dorothy caught up his words, turning toward him with
an angry light in her eyes.

“Then it is a very unfortunate coincidence,” she cried. “You know as
well as I do, Nat, that when a thing like this happens and then some one
runs away, his name is always connected——”

“Hush, Doro!” cautioned Tavia, for Dorothy had unconsciously raised her
voice. “A stranger approaches on foot. Methinks he is a messenger lad.”

The “messenger lad” handed Dorothy a yellow envelope for which she
signed tremulously.

“A telegram!” she whispered, looking from Tavia to Nat. “I—oh, Tavia, I
am almost afraid to open it!”




                              CHAPTER III
                              CALLED HOME


“Let me do it, Doro,” cried Tavia. “It won’t do any good for you to sit
there trembling like a leaf!”

She held out her hand for the telegram, but for answer Dorothy quickly
tore open the envelope.

“It is from Ned,” she cried, as Tavia looked over her shoulder. “He says
Joe has not been found and there has been no word from him. Oh, I can’t
bear it any longer,” she cried desperately. “What _shall_ I do?”

Tavia put an arm about her chum again, but, as though the contact had
galvanized her to action, Dorothy rose swiftly to her feet.

“I must go home at once,” she cried, turning toward the front door. “I
will go in and pack my bag if you will ’phone for a taxi, Nat.”

Tavia caught hold of her skirt, holding her back.

“But what good will it do you to go to North Birchlands, Doro?” pleaded
the latter, unwilling to have Dorothy’s visit so rudely interrupted.
“You can keep in constant touch with North Birchlands by telephone and
telegraph.”

“But—don’t you see—I must be there, right on the spot!” cried Dorothy,
shaking off Tavia’s detaining hand. “Please don’t stop me, Tavia. I hate
to go, but it isn’t my fault. Will you tell that taxi man to hurry,
Nat?”

Nat promised, and in a few minutes Dorothy, hatted and cloaked and bag
in hand, returned to the porch, ready to go. What was her surprise then,
to find Tavia there before her. And Tavia also carried a bag!

“Wh-where are you going?” stammered Dorothy, and Tavia chuckled.

“With you, you ridiculous Doro,” she said. “Do you suppose for a moment
I would let you go without me?”

“But your mother——”

“Oh, Ma will let me do anything I want to,” retorted Tavia, with a
careless shrug of her shoulders. “She is lying down, so I didn’t even
ask her. Just left a note pinned to the pincushion. When she sees that
she will think for sure I have eloped.”

Dorothy hesitated, a tiny frown on her forehead. She could never become
quite accustomed to the queerness of the Travers household. Everything
in her own home had always been so orderly and comfortable and normal.

But with Tavia it was different, had always been different, and probably
always would be different. For Tavia’s mother was extravagant, lazy, and
often actually untidy. Tavia, left to the guidance of her mother, might
have had a hard time of it.

But Mr. Travers was different, and though he had never made a great
success of himself financially, he was genial, good-tempered and
lovable. In fact, Dorothy had often, without wishing to be unfair in the
least, attributed Tavia’s good traits to her father.

But now this action of Tavia’s leaving home at a moment’s notice to
return for an indefinite stay at North Birchlands with only a scrawled
note pinned hastily to a pincushion to announce her intention, seemed
all wrong.

“But I want to say good-bye to your mother and tell her how sorry I am
that I have to cut my visit short,” she protested.

Tavia shot her a laughing glance that was still shrewd and far-seeing.

“She wouldn’t thank you for it, Doro, my dear,” she said, with a hint of
sadness underlying the light words. “Ma never allows any one to
interrupt her afternoon siesta. Anyway,” she added, dismissing the
subject as a taxicab rolled up to the door, “I left word about you in
the note—said you left regrets and all that sort of thing. Come on,
Doro, make it snappy.”

Dorothy sighed as she handed her grip to Nat and slowly followed the
flyaway Tavia to the cab. There were times when she wished Tavia would
not use so much slang and always be in such a tremendous hurry. It wore
on one’s nerves occasionally.

Once in the cab Dorothy sank back in a corner while Nat and Tavia
conversed in low tones. She was thinking of Joe and what must be her
first action upon reaching The Cedars.

She would go down town, of course, to inspect Haskell’s store, or what
remained of it. She would talk to people in the neighborhood and find
out if any one had seen Joe in that vicinity at the time of the fire.

But surely no one could have seen him! Joe could have had nothing to do
with that catastrophe! Dorothy thrust the horrid thought from her mind,
only to have it return again with the question: Then how explain Joe’s
mysterious disappearance, and just at that time, too?

Perhaps the boy had been hurt. Perhaps they had taken him to a hospital
where they had been unable to identify him.

She spoke this thought aloud, and Nat immediately put her fears to rest,
on that score at least.

“The first thing the Major did was to ’phone the North Birchlands
Hospital and two or three others in the vicinity,” he said. “They had
brought in no one remotely answering Joe’s description.”

“Then where is he?” cried Dorothy desperately.

It was just as well that they reached the station at that moment and
that they were forced to run for the train. The hustle and excitement
served temporarily to divert Dorothy’s mind from her trouble.

Tavia kept up a lively chatter for the major part of the train trip to
North Birchlands so that Dorothy had little time to indulge her unhappy
thoughts.

It was only when they entered the living room of The Cedars and faced
the Major and Mrs. White that Dorothy felt the full gravity of the
situation.

She kissed her Aunt Winnie on the cheek and then went over to her
father, kneeled down beside him and took his hand between her own.

Tavia’s eyes softened as she took in the tableau, and with a significant
gesture she turned to Nat. The two left the room and Mrs. White softly
followed them. Father and daughter were left alone.

“You haven’t heard anything, Daddy?” asked Dorothy, anxious eyes upon
her father’s face. It seemed to her that the Major looked strangely old
and haggard.

Major Dale shook his head. He had brightened at sight of his daughter,
but at the mention of Joe his face clouded heavily again.

“I don’t understand it, Dot,” he replied. “Joe was always such a
straightforward, dependable lad, despite the little pranks he was always
playing. Wouldn’t be a boy if he didn’t have some mischief in him. But a
good boy at that—a good boy——” His voice trailed off and his eyes sought
the window restlessly.

Dorothy became truly alarmed. Her father was ill, she could see
that—although the Major would be the last man to admit such a thing. His
health had not been robust for some time and now the shock of this thing
had been too much for him.

With an effort Dorothy pulled herself together and spoke encouragingly.

“Of course he’s a good boy, the best in the world,” she said. “Wherever
he has gone, we can be sure it isn’t very far. We will have him back in
a day or two. You just watch and see!”

The Major smiled and rested his hand for a moment on Dorothy’s bright
hair.

“I hope so, Dorothy,” he said, adding with an unconscious wistfulness
that touched Dorothy deeply: “Everything seems more hopeful now that we
have you back, my dear. I can’t seem to do without my little daughter
any more.”

“You won’t have to do without me ever, Daddy dear,” said Dorothy, and
there were tears in her eyes and in her voice. Then, fearing that she
had betrayed her anxiety over his changed appearance, she went on in her
ordinary tone: “Don’t you think you could snatch a little rest, dear? I
imagine you haven’t been sleeping very well lately.”

Major Dale stirred impatiently and again his restless glance sought the
window.

“I don’t want to sleep,” he said on a querulous note that Dorothy had
never heard before. “I won’t close my eyes again until we have found
that boy.”

With a heavy heart Dorothy left the room and went in search of Roger,
the youngest of the family and Joe’s shadow. The two boys were almost
always together, for Roger worshiped his older brother and followed
unquestioningly wherever he led.

Roger was in Joe’s abandoned room staring moodily out the window, and
when he saw Dorothy he flung his arms about her neck and wept wildly
despite a manful effort to control his grief.

Dorothy patted his small shoulder and waited until he shamefacedly wiped
away the tears with a grubby hand, leaving a track of dirt from the
corner of one blue eye to the opposite corner of his still-tremulous
mouth.

Then she drew the lad down on Joe’s bed and gently questioned him.

“Joe wouldn’t let me go downtown with him that last day,” said the
little lad, his lip trembling as if with an old grievance. “He said he
was going to meet Jack Popella——”

“Jack Popella! That boy!” cried Dorothy, springing to her feet. “Oh,
Roger, are you sure?”




                               CHAPTER IV
                              ON THE TRAIL


Roger looked chagrined and more than a little frightened. The fright was
caused by his sister’s vehemence, the chagrin because he had unwittingly
“told on” Joe. In the code of Roger no crime was as bad as that of
“telling tales” on one’s mates. He had spoken before he thought. It is
so hard for a small boy not to speak before he thinks!

But Dorothy was on her feet now, her cheeks blazing, and he knew he
would have to tell her the truth, not keeping back any of the story.
Roger gave a resigned sigh and braced himself to answer questions. But
Dorothy asked only one of him. That was a reiterated and breathless:

“Roger, are you sure?”

Roger nodded miserably, and to his surprise Dorothy turned suddenly and
left the room. Roger stared after her wide-eyed. He was still miserable,
but he was intensely curious as well.

“I wouldn’t be in Joe’s shoes, not for anything!” he assured himself, as
he returned to the window. “And I suppose he’ll just about murder me
when he finds out I went and told on him. It was his fault, anyway,” he
added, in an effort at self-justification. “I told him he oughtn’t to go
with that fresh Popella kid, and so did Dorothy. My, but I—I wish Joe
would come back!”

Meantime Dorothy rushed upstairs. Meeting Tavia outside the door of her
room, she brushed past her almost rudely. If it had not been so late she
would have gone downtown immediately.

The fact that Joe had been with Jack Popella on the day of the fire
augmented her fears immeasurably. Popella was a young Italian lad with a
not very savory reputation, and Dorothy had been alarmed when, on
several occasions, she had seen Joe with him.

She had tried reasoning with the boy, had pointed out the fact that one
is very often judged by the company one keeps, but Joe had refused to
take her admonitions seriously.

“You talk as if I never went with anybody else, Dot,” he had said on one
of these occasions. “And I never have anything to do with him except
just when I happen to meet him. I can’t help saying hello when he talks
to me.”

This argument had silenced Dorothy, and it had also almost convinced her
that she had nothing to fear in that direction. Almost, but not quite,
for Joe still was seen quite often in the company of Jack Popella.

To see this lad and question him was Dorothy’s one, all-absorbing desire
just now. But to do this she must wait till the next day, and the hours
stretched interminably between.

She flung herself into a chair, her chin cupped in her hand, staring
moodily at the floor. Tavia came in and perched on the edge of the bed
and regarded her chum curiously.

“Yes, I am human,” she said at last, in a mechanical tone. “I speak, I
walk. If you were to pinch me I might shriek.”

Dorothy looked up with a frown. It was the first time she had noticed
her chum’s presence in the room.

“What _are_ you raving about?” she asked.

“I was merely trying to call your attention to the fact that I am
human,” said Tavia patiently. “By the way you brushed past me in the
hall, I assumed that you thought I was a chair, a bedstead, or even a
humble hatrack.”

“Never a hatrack, Tavia dear,” replied Dorothy, smiling despite herself.
“You are far too plump and pretty.”

“I admit the latter but deny the former allegation,” said Tavia calmly.
“Why do you think I follow the dictates of Lovely Lucy Larriper so
faithfully if not for the purpose of keeping my figure intact?”

Dorothy did not answer. She had lapsed into her former mood and Tavia
regarded her chum thoughtfully. Then she deserted the foot of the bed
for the arm of Dorothy’s chair.

“Come on, Doro, snap out of it!” she urged. “Nothing ever has been
gained by surrendering to the doleful dumps. Suppose Napoleon had been
discouraged!”

“Perhaps he was—at Waterloo,” returned Dorothy. But she added quickly in
response to Tavia’s impatient gesture: “Now don’t you go lecturing me,
Tavia Travers. I will have the doleful dumps or any other kind if I feel
like it.”

Tavia felt that her chum was keeping something to herself, but though
she questioned her discreetly—and otherwise—she could gain no
information from her other than the fact that she expected to go
downtown early the following morning.

“Well, buck up, anyway, Doro, and get ready for dinner,” Tavia said
finally, as Nat’s voice was heard below calling to the two girls to
“join the family in the dining room.” “It won’t help Joe any for you to
starve yourself to death.”

“Listen!” cried Dorothy, suddenly jumping to her feet. “Isn’t that Ned
talking to Nat? Maybe he has news of Joe.”

Dorothy was out of the room and rushing down the stairs before Tavia had
time to more than blink her eyes. She followed her chum in time to see
the latter pounce upon Ned with desperate eagerness.

“It isn’t any use, Dot, I’m afraid,” she heard Ned say reluctantly. “I
have followed up every possible clue—there were not very many, at
that—and none of them seems to lead to Joe. He has disappeared as
completely as though the earth had opened and swallowed him up.”

They went in to dinner after that, but they made very poor business of
eating; all except Tavia, that is, who never allowed anything to
interfere with her appetite.

Once, looking across at the Major, she did stop long enough to say in an
undertone to Nat:

“Major Dale looks dreadfully, doesn’t he, Nat—like a ghost at a feast?”

“If you call this a feast,” Nat grumbled. “Seems more like a funeral to
me.”

After dinner Dorothy sought out her Aunt Winnie and, drawing her into a
corner, spoke to her about her father. Mrs. White patted the girl’s hand
gently and sought to evade Dorothy’s questions.

“Your father’s general health seems unimpaired my dear,” she said. “But
of course he is frightfully worried about Joe.”

“It is more than worry that makes him act as he did at dinner,”
persisted Dorothy. “He hardly touched a thing. Aunt Winnie, he is on the
verge of a breakdown, and you know it as well as I!”

“Perhaps I do, my dear,” sighed Mrs. White. “But I don’t see what we can
do about it.”

“Except find Joe,” replied Dorothy softly. “We _must_ find Joe!”

Early the next morning Dorothy dressed herself in her street things and
slipped out of the house without awakening Tavia. What she had to do she
wanted to do alone, and she feared her chum’s persistent curiosity. No
one should know that Joe had been with Jack Popella on the day Haskell’s
store burned down and the day when Joe himself had disappeared if it was
possible for her to keep the knowledge to herself!

She did not even stop to have breakfast at home, for fear her Aunt
Winnie would question her concerning her errand downtown.

Feeling absurdly guilty, she slipped into a small restaurant in the
downtown district in the vicinity of Haskell’s store. She questioned the
yawning waitress as adroitly as she could about the fire, but the woman
could give her no particulars.

Mechanically Dorothy gulped down the overfried egg and underdone bacon,
thinking longingly of home as she did so. How different the morning meal
would be at The Cedars.

She had started on the second piece of bacon when the door opened and—in
walked Tavia Travers!

Dorothy gasped and nearly upset the cup of coffee at her elbow. She
stared at though she were seeing a ghost.

Tavia came straight up to her table, color bright and eyes dancing.

“So you hoped to escape me, fair one?” she said, sinking into a chair
and motioning to the waitress. “You should have known better by this
time, Doro, my dear. Were you not aware that I always sleep with one eye
open?”

“You must have had them both open wide if you saw me leave The Cedars
this morning,” replied Dorothy crossly. “I didn’t want to have even you
with me this morning, Tavia.”

“Business of my becoming horribly offended and leaving the place in a
huff,” drawled Tavia, as she ordered a ham omelet from the indifferent
waitress. “But I am going to disappoint you, Doro darling, for the
reason that you will be very glad of my company before you get through.
I intend to befriend you at all costs, even at the expense of my honest
pride.”

“Oh, Tavia, you are too ridiculous!” sighed Dorothy. “I can’t be angry
with you, no matter how hard I try. Only, if you are coming with me you
will have to hurry with your breakfast.”

“Have a heart, Doro. The ravening wolves have nothing on me!”

But under Dorothy’s insistence Tavia finished her breakfast in a very
short time, and after Dorothy had paid the check the two girls left the
place and turned in the direction of Haskell’s store.

Half way down the block it loomed before them, a charred and gutted
ruin. Dorothy uttered an exclamation and grasped Tavia’s arm.

From the wrecked store a skulking figure emerged, turned, and, at sight
of Dorothy and Tavia, darted down the street.

“Jack Popella!” gasped Dorothy. “What is he doing here?”




                               CHAPTER V
                                CAPTURED


“Gracious goodness, what ails the child!”

The exclamation was Tavia’s, for at sight of the young Italian Dorothy
had left her side with startling abruptness. Now as Tavia gaped,
open-mouthed, she saw Dorothy overtake the boy and put out a hand as
though to stop him.

What was her surprise to see Jack Popella make another of his quick
dodges, evading Dorothy’s outstretched hand and dart across the street.

There were two automobiles approaching from opposite directions, but
this fact served to stop neither Popella nor his pursuer. Tavia
screamed, for it looked as though both the reckless ones would be
instantly killed.

“Dorothy, stop! Come back! Have you lost your mind?” she shrieked, and
herself started in pursuit.

The boy had dodged in front of the first automobile with Dorothy close
at his heels. It seemed to the excited Tavia as though the car missed
her chum by a fraction of an inch and she was equally certain that the
second car would not miss her at all!

“Dorothy!” she shrieked again, and without thinking of her own danger
dashed out into the street.

She fully expected to see Dorothy stretched beneath the wheels of the
second car. Instead she beheld the amazing sight of her chum standing in
the middle of the road breathing heavily, but triumphant, her hand
gripping the collar of the squirming Popella lad.

Tavia was not sure whether she wanted to laugh at the spectacle or burst
into tears of relief and reaction. She did neither. Instead, she took
Dorothy by the arm and led her, still clutching Popella, back to the
safety of the sidewalk.

“Now maybe you will explain yourself, Dorothy Dale,” she gasped. “Do you
know you very nearly gave me heart failure, flinging yourself at those
automobiles? Tried your best to get killed, didn’t you?”

“Hush, Tavia! Let’s move on,” said Dorothy, looking uneasily about her.
“We don’t want to attract attention.” And she started down the street,
dragging with her her unwilling prisoner.

“Does this go with us?” asked Tavia in a stage whisper, indicating the
young Italian. “If you are so anxious not to attract attention, Doro
darling, I might suggest that you set your prisoner free.”

“Not until he answers a few questions!” returned Dorothy. Her eyes were
hard and bright and her grip tightened on the young Italian’s collar as
he tried once more to wriggle free.

“Well, I suppose you know your own business best,” sighed Tavia. “But I
do wish you wouldn’t be so mysterious about it.”

They had reached a side street and Dorothy paused and addressed her
scowling captive.

“If you promise not to run away before I have a chance to talk with you,
Jack, I’ll let you go,” she said.

Popella muttered something she took for assent, and Dorothy released her
hold upon his collar. The youngster hitched his coat up and stood
sullenly with his eyes upon the ground.

“A pleasant specimen of the male species,” Tavia whispered, but her chum
frowned and motioned her to be quiet.

“Why did you run away when you saw us coming this morning?” asked
Dorothy quietly. “Why should you think we would want to hurt you?”

Jack Popella glanced up quickly, then down at the ground again.
Evidently he was surprised at her gentle tone and somewhat disarmed by
it.

“I wasn’t scared. I just didn’t want to talk to no one.”

“Why?” Dorothy continued her inquisition, and the boy shuffled uneasily.

“Aw, how does a guy know that?” he protested. “I just didn’t, that’s
all.”

“Now listen, Jack!” Dorothy’s voice altered suddenly, became crisp and
determined. “I have a few questions I want to ask you and I want you to
answer them truthfully. If you don’t, I may be able to get you into a
great deal of trouble.”

This kind of talk was more what Jack Popella was used to, and he looked
at Dorothy again, a sullen, unpleasant light smoldering in his eyes.
Dorothy shuddered to think that her brother Joe had ever come in contact
with a lad like this.

“You ain’t got nothin’ on me,” growled the Popella lad. “Go ahead and
ask your questions. I ain’t afraid of you.”

“Keep a civil tongue in your head, my lad,” commanded Tavia sharply. “Or
you may find you have a good deal to be afraid of.”

Dorothy made another slight gesture as though pleading for silence.

“You surely haven’t anything to be afraid of if you tell me what I want
to know,” she said patiently, for she had come to the conclusion that
the best way to handle the sullen lad was by kindness, not threats.
“Jack, my brother Joe has disappeared and we have no idea where to look
for him. Can’t you help us?”

Tavia started and looked sharply at Dorothy. So that was what her chum
had been keeping from her the night before! She had suspected Popella
and had not wanted her, Tavia, to know that Popella was intimate enough
with Joe to come under suspicion. Poor Doro, she certainly had her hands
full of trouble!

As for the young Italian, at the mention of Joe’s name his behavior
became very strange indeed. He squirmed and once more glanced up and
down the block as though contemplating escape.

Dorothy took a step or two closer and he evidently changed his mind. He
shuffled to the other foot and said, without raising his eyes:

“I don’t know nothin’ about Joe, honest I don’t, Miss Dale. If he’s
disappeared I’m sure sorry, but I don’t know nothin’ about him.”

For a moment Dorothy was nonplused. The Italian’s protestations seemed
sincere enough, and yet——

“Don’t believe him,” whispered Tavia in her ear. “He has a shuffling
foot and a shifty eye. A wicked combination—take it from one who knows!”

[Illustration:

  THE BOY DODGED IN FRONT OF THE AUTOMOBILE WITH DOROTHY AT HIS HEELS.

  “Dorothy Dale to the Rescue.”       Page 32
]

Dorothy had an absurd desire to giggle, but Tavia’s words had been
enough to turn uncertainty into active distrust. Still she held herself
in check, not speaking with the severity she thought the unpleasant lad
deserved.

“I have reason to know you were with Joe on the morning that Haskell’s
store burned down,” she said, and Tavia gave a surprised exclamation
which, while instantly stifled, caused the swift rush of color to
Dorothy’s face.

“Aw, who tol’ you that? It ain’t so!” muttered Popella.

With these words something seemed to snap in Dorothy’s brain. Her
horrible anxiety of the past few hours fanned the indignation she felt
against this lad. She reached out and gripped him fiercely by the
shoulders.

“It is so, and you know it,” she said in a tone that terrified the
cowardly boy. “And if you don’t tell me the truth now, Jack Popella, I
will turn you over to some one who will make you. Maybe they will be
able to find out then, who really set Jud Haskell’s store on fire!”

It was a chance shot, but it went home. Popella writhed and wriggled in
Dorothy’s grip, sputtering and protesting.

“I didn’t set his store on fire, I tell you!” he cried. “It was Joe that
did it!”




                               CHAPTER VI
                              MORE TROUBLE


Dorothy started back as though Jack Popella had struck her.

It was not true! It could not be true! Joe never, never would do such a
thing! Her face turned very white and she trembled violently. Even Jack
Popella seemed alarmed at what he had done and stood regarding her with
a strange mixture of bravado and sheepishness.

Tavia sprang forward, putting her arm about Dorothy and fixing blazing
eyes upon the young Italian.

“How dare you say such a thing!” she gasped. “You know it is a horrible,
an awful——”

But Dorothy rallied and pressed a hand close upon Tavia’s lips.

“Don’t, dear,” she pleaded faintly. “I am not quite through with him
yet. Jack Popella,” she turned to the swarthy lad and her tone was
strangely quiet and subdued, “tell me all you know. Won’t you, please?”

“I don’t know nothin’ much,” protested the Italian, abashed and sullen
again. “I know that Joe set fire to the store and when the explosion
came he got scared and run away. That’s all.”

“Enough to scare anybody, I should say,” murmured Tavia, but Dorothy
took no notice of her.

“Why should Joe do a thing like that?” asked Dorothy, still in that
strangely gentle tone. “He never was a bad boy, Jack. He must have had
some reason.”

Popella was silent, but again his glance darted up and down the block as
though seeking escape.

“Won’t you tell me what reason Joe had for doing such a thing—if he did
it?” Dorothy persisted, repeating: “He must have had some reason.”

“Aw, I dunno,” returned the lad uneasily. “He had a fight with ole man
Haskell, that’s all.”

“What about?” asked Dorothy patiently. “You must know what it was about,
Jack.”

“The ole man short-changed him, if you want to know,” the lad burst out
as though her persistence irritated him past bearing. “We was buyin’
some toys with a two-dollar bill Joe had an’ the ole man wouldn’t give
him the right change. Joe tole him about it an’ the ole man got mad.
Then Joe got mad an’ they had a reg’lar fight.”

“Must have been an unequal struggle,” murmured Tavia. “I imagine Joe got
the worst of it.”

“Aw, it wasn’t that kind of a scrap,” retorted the Italian lad, favoring
Tavia with a pitying glance that caused her to choke and search
frantically for her handkerchief. “Joe knows better than to pitch into a
big feller like ole man Haskell. They just yelled at each other, that’s
all.”

“And Joe set fire to a store because of a little thing like that!” said
Dorothy, in a dazed tone, as though she were repeating something she had
heard in a dream. “I don’t believe it!”

“Believe it or not, lady,” retorted Jack Popella, with a return of his
insolent air now that suspicion had been shifted from him. “It’s the
trut’. So long!” And with another of his eel-like movements he dodged
past Dorothy and disappeared around the corner.

Dorothy watched him go apathetically. What did it matter to her what
happened to Jack Popella now?

“The slimy little toad!” cried Tavia, disgustedly. “Ugh! I should think
you would want to wash your hands, Doro. They must feel greasy.”

“They don’t feel at all,” admitted Dorothy wearily. “Just now I don’t
believe there is a bit of sensation in any part of me, Tavia.”

“Poor little Doro!” said Tavia gently. “Having a pretty hard time of it,
aren’t you, honey? But of course you don’t believe a word that little
toad told you?”

Dorothy was silent and Tavia looked at her sharply.

“You don’t, do you?” she repeated, with increased emphasis.

“Oh, I am trying hard not to, Tavia,” cried Dorothy desperately. “But
there—there is the circumstantial evidence.”

“Circumstantial evidence—pah!” cried Tavia vehemently. “Any real
criminal lawyer will tell you it isn’t worth powder to blow it up with.
Proof, that’s the thing! And what proof have you? Not a bit. Only the
word of that slimy little toad—who, by the way, will bear considerable
watching, if you will listen to me,” she added significantly.

“But Jack Popella didn’t run away and Joe did!” Dorothy pointed out to
her miserably.

“Oh-ho, so that’s what’s worrying you! Well, I wouldn’t let it, if I
were you. Don’t you know that the smartest criminals believe that the
safest place in the world for them is right in the vicinity of their
crime?”

“Good gracious, Tavia, I wish you wouldn’t speak of criminals so much,”
interrupted Dorothy unhappily. “It makes me feel uncomfortable.”

Tavia wanted to laugh but, after a glance at Dorothy’s face, forbore.
There were times when the careless Tavia could be very tactful,
especially with the people she loved.

They returned to The Cedars to find Mrs. White considerably worried over
their unexplained absence. But when Dorothy explained where she had been
and what she had found out Mrs. White readily forgave her. She was as
alarmed and distressed as Dorothy over the revelations of young Jack
Popella and she agreed with rather significant readiness that at present
nothing should be said to the Major concerning this new turn in events.

“Where is Dad?” asked Dorothy, as she turned to go upstairs. Mrs. White
looked still further distressed.

“You must not be alarmed, Dorothy dear,” she said. “But your father
preferred to stay in bed this morning——”

“In bed!” Dorothy interrupted swiftly. “Then he is ill!”

“He says he is just tired, dear. And, indeed, he has not slept for
several nights,” the Major’s sister explained, adding, as Dorothy once
more turned to leave the room: “He has been asking for you.”

“Asking for you, asking for you,” hammered in Dorothy’s head as she ran
up the stairs to see for herself why it was the Major had “preferred to
stay in bed.”

At the top of the stairs she ran into Ned, who caught her arm and held
on to it, laughingly.

“Whither away so fast, fair cousin?” he queried. “You should never rush
like that so soon after breakfast. Any doctor’s book will tell you as
much.”

“Let me go, Ned,” Dorothy pleaded. “Dad is ill.”

“Not ill—just tired,” corrected Ned, the while Dorothy wondered at his
denseness. “No wonder,” he added grumblingly. “I would be tired too, in
his place. That young brother of yours needs a sound thrashing, Dot.”

“Ned, how dare you say such a thing!” Dorothy turned upon him with
flashing eyes. “Poor Joe needs his family just now—and that’s all he
needs.”

She was gone before her cousin could speak, and Ned was left to whistle
his surprise and admiration.

“Poor, loyal kid,” he muttered, as he went on down the stairs. “Has a
lot on her mind, too. Guess Nat and I had better get busy if we don’t
want to lose our reputations as rivals of the great detectives.”

Meantime Dorothy had rapped upon her father’s door and, receiving no
answer, pushed it gently open.

So still and quiet was the Major’s face upon the pillow that she thought
for a moment he was asleep. But as she turned to creep silently away he
opened his eyes and called to her.

“I have been waiting to see you, daughter,” he said, and again Dorothy
detected that unusual wistfulness in his tone. “Where have you been?”

Dorothy evaded the question, feeling miserable as she did so. Never
before had she refused to answer any query put to her by the Major and
now it was almost impossible not to give him a straightforward reply.
Yet how could she tell him, in his weakened condition, that Joe was
suspected of having set fire to Haskell’s store?

Instead, she gave some explanation of her absence that seemed to satisfy
him well enough. When she came and knelt beside his bed he spoke in his
old cheerful vein of his indisposition, insisting that it was sheer
laziness on his part and that he would surely be downstairs for
luncheon.

But Dorothy, looking at his worn and weary face, was not so optimistic.
Although she succeeded in hiding her anxiety beneath her usual practical
and cheerful manner, she was inwardly deciding to call up the family
physician as soon as she left her father’s room.

She knew that when the Major kept his bed there was something seriously
wrong with him.

A few moments later, carefully muffling her voice so that her father
might not hear her, Dorothy called up the doctor and was told that the
physician would call at The Cedars as soon as possible, probably about
eleven o’clock.

She went down to the living room and found Tavia and Nat quite evidently
absorbed in each other’s company. She was about to retreat and leave
them to themselves when Tavia spied her and called out merrily.

“No reserved seats in here,” she told Dorothy gravely, as the latter
slowly returned and sank down into one of the big, comfortable chairs.
“Everybody invited, free of charge. Why the long face, Doro darling? Any
new and dreadful thing happened?”

“I have called Doctor Paugh to see Dad,” returned Dorothy wearily. “He
will be here soon, I think.”

“Why, Doro, is it as bad as that?” asked Tavia, with quick sympathy. “I
had no idea he was really ill.”

“Have you ever known the Major to stay in bed when he didn’t have to?”
retorted Dorothy, and something in her tone and manner convinced both
Tavia and Nat that there was more to the Major’s indisposition than they
had imagined.

They were silent for a few moments, then Nat spoke softly to Dorothy.

“Tavia has just been telling me what you found out from Jack Popella.”

Dorothy glanced up and Nat added quickly:

“You can’t put too much stock in what that fellow tells you, Dot. His
word would be the last I’d trust.”

“I don’t know what to trust,” confessed Dorothy miserably. “Or which way
to turn——”

“Which reminds me,” interrupted Tavia with apparent irrelevance, “that a
letter came for you from the wild and woolly West a few moments ago,
Doro. I have a sneaking notion it’s from Garry.”




                              CHAPTER VII
                          A LETTER FROM GARRY


“Good gracious, why didn’t you tell me that hours ago?” cried Dorothy,
rising with an alacrity that made Tavia and Nat exchange amused and
sympathetic glances. “I haven’t had a letter from Garry since——”

“Yesterday!” finished Tavia with fine irony, and the corners of
Dorothy’s mouth dimpled in a brief smile.

“The day before!” she corrected demurely. “I was beginning to worry.”

She fetched the letter, a bulky, satisfactory-looking epistle from the
table in the hall and returned to the living room to read it in comfort.

“I needn’t ask you to excuse me while I examine my mail,” she remarked
to the absorbed couple in the window seat. “You are only too glad!”

“My, isn’t she the mean thing!” cried Tavia, not in the least abashed.
“Just wait till Garry Knapp comes East again, Doro. Make believe I won’t
get even!”

“When Garry comes East again you won’t have any chance to get even with
Dot, my dear Tavia,” laughed Nat. “She won’t even know that you and I
exist.”

“She doesn’t know it now,” retorted Tavia, with a meaning glance at her
chum who was completely absorbed in Garry’s letter.

“Well, can you blame her?” Nat’s voice had softened until it reached
only Tavia’s ears. “She’s got what we have and—it’s a pretty good thing
to have, isn’t it, girl?”

“Nat, I never knew I was living before,” confessed Tavia softly, and
after that it was very lucky for them that Dorothy was too absorbed in
her letter to notice them!

Garry was well. So much Dorothy learned from the letter, written in his
usually cheery vein. But, though he actually said little about it in
words, Dorothy could read between the lines well enough to see that
something was worrying him. He spoke lightly in one place of the “gang”
that was trying to “get fresh” with him and “put a spoke in his wheel.”

Although he spoke lightly of the whole affair, Dorothy sensed the fact
that he was worried and was correspondingly anxious. If she could only
see Garry for a few moments she would worm the whole thing out of
him—for she knew how.

If she could only see him for a few moments! The thought and wish formed
itself in her mind and became a longing so acute that it was almost
pain.

To see Garry, just for a little while. To lean upon his strength, to ask
his advice and follow it. She knew she could do that without question.
Garry’s advice was always sound.

To have him with her! And she could effect this desired result by a mere
gesture! There was something thrilling in that thought. A telegram to
far-off Desert City and Garry would be at her side as soon as trains
could get him there.

It was a tempting vision but, as she knew, a selfish one.

Garry was having his hands full attending to his own affairs. Why should
she trouble him with her worries?

And, besides, this mysterious “gang” of which he spoke so lightly would
undoubtedly take advantage of his absence from the ranch to “get fresh”
in earnest.

No, she must not ask his aid—not just now.

At the thought she sighed and it was such a deep and hearty sigh that
the irrepressible Tavia giggled.

Dorothy started and half rose from her chair in dismay, so completely
had she forgotten the presence of Tavia and Nat in the room. Meeting the
laughing gaze of the two in the window seat she relaxed again, smiling a
bit sheepishly, and gathered up the various pages of her letter.

“Was it so dreadfully sad, Doro?” teased Tavia. “Dare you to read me the
last page?”

“That isn’t a fair dare and not a bit sporting of you, Tavia Travers,”
retorted Dorothy, with mock primness. “Dare me something within the
bounds of possibility and I may take you up!”

“Is he coming on soon?” Tavia persisted, and Dorothy slowly shook her
head.

“He is very busy on the ranch,” she said, adding with an unsteady little
laugh: “I guess any one who wants to see Garry in the near future will
have to go out West.”

How little did she know that these words, spoken carelessly enough, were
to prove prophetic!

The doctor came as he had promised at eleven o’clock and, after a
thorough examination of the Major, talked gravely and seriously to Mrs.
White and Dorothy.

“His heart is not in as good condition as I should like to see it,” he
told them. “He has not been in vigorous health for some time, as you
know. And now the best medicine I can recommend—besides a tonic, for
which I will leave you a prescription—is absolute rest and quiet and a
mind free from worry.”

He noticed the quick look that passed between Dorothy and Mrs. White at
these last words and his eyes seemed to be boring into the former as he
asked quietly: “Has Major Dale been subjected to a severe shock during
the last two or three days?”

As simply as possible Dorothy told him the facts about Joe. The
physician listened with every evidence of sympathy and concern.

“Too bad, too bad!” he murmured at last. “There is no way, I suppose,
that word of his father’s condition might be sent to the lad?”

“No, doctor,” answered Dorothy despairingly. “We have not the slightest
idea where Joe is!”

The physician nodded soberly and rose to go, leaving behind him a final
admonition that, as far as it was possible, the Major’s mind was to be
kept free of worry.

“And he might just as well ask us,” remarked Dorothy, as from an
upstairs window they watched the doctor drive away, “to give him the
moon!”

Mrs. White came and put her arms about Dorothy, and the girl put her
head down on her aunt’s shoulder and wept a little.

“It all seems so strange and upside down and tragic, Aunt Winnie,” she
said, after a minute, wiping her eyes on a small square of handkerchief.
“Always before when anything dreadful like this happened, I have had
some idea what I ought to do, but now I am all at sea. Don’t you think,”
she added, holding her aunt off from her and looking at her seriously,
“that we ought to notify the police, set a detective on his trail, or
something?”

Mrs. White looked thoughtful for a moment, but she finally shook her
head.

“That would be publishing to the world Joe’s connection—if there is
one—with the Haskell store fire,” she said. “And, for Joe’s sake, that
is the last thing any of us wants to happen.”

“But meantime something dreadful may happen to the boy—he is only a boy,
after all, Aunt Winnie,” wailed Dorothy. “He may be in danger——”

“He hasn’t met with any accident, we are sure of that,” Mrs. White
interrupted reassuringly. “And if he has run away, thinking that he
might be connected in some way with the fire, he will return when he
thinks the alarm has died down.”

“But in the meantime he may be in danger,” reiterated Dorothy. “It seems
dreadful to have a boy of Joe’s age roaming around the world alone and
unprotected. Aunt Winnie, we must do something. We must!”

“We are doing something, dear,” Mrs. White reminded her soothingly. “Ned
and Nat are leaving no stone unturned to discover the whereabouts of the
lad and they are not going to stop hunting until they find him. And now
go back to your father, my dear,” she added. “You seem to be the only
one who can content him just now.”

“No one knows what may happen to Daddy if we don’t find Joe soon!”
muttered Dorothy, as she turned to leave the room.

It seemed that Dorothy Dale had her full share of trouble just then but,
as it happened, fate had still a little more in store for her. And,
indeed, it would probably have been the straw too much if Tavia, with
her native tact, had not kept the worry from her.

For Roger, the youngest of the family, had felt Joe’s disappearance more
keenly perhaps than any of the others, because he had less philosophy to
bear his sorrows.

And since his admission to Dorothy that his brother had been in the
company of Jack Popella on the day of the fire, his conscience had
troubled him rather badly and his one thought was to get Joe and beg his
pardon for his perfidy before some one else could tell him of it.

With this thought in mind, Roger started out bravely and manfully to
find his older brother. He left the house early in the afternoon,
presumably to play with some of the neighborhood children, and his
prolonged absence was not remarked till nearly dinner time.

Then it was Tavia who, looking up the boy for the purpose of herself
asking him some question concerning Joe, learned that he had been absent
for several hours.

“I may be an idiot to worry,” she said, taking her suspicions to Nat,
“but I do think that we ought to set out on the trail of that youngster
and bring him back before Doro has a chance to discover his absence.
What do you think?”

“That you are right, as usual,” returned Nat, with a fond glance at the
pretty Tavia. “We’ll be back in jig time with that young cousin of mine
by the collar.”




                              CHAPTER VIII
                               THE SEARCH


Nat and Tavia got out the old _Fire Bird_ machine that had seen them
through many adventures in order to cover the ground with “full speed
ahead,” to use Nat’s own phrase.

“Something tells me our young wanderer may have strayed far afield,”
remarked Nat, as he manipulated things in preparation for the start. “We
shall need all the gas and ingenuity we have if we are to return the
kidlet before Dot discovers his absence.”

“He may only be playing in perfectly harmless fashion with his mates,”
remarked Tavia, as she gloried in the sting of the wind against her
face. “I probably am just scaring up trouble.”

“I hope so!” said Nat dubiously, and Tavia looked at him quickly.

“But you think not!” she said. “Am I right?”

“As always!” He smiled and then added gravely: “Roger is an obedient
lad, you know, and he has been told always to be in the house by five
o’clock. The fact that it is now approaching six and Roger still at
large seems ominous to me.”

“Nat, do you think—” began Tavia slowly, “do you think that Roger may
have gone to find Joe?”

“That’s just what he would be apt to do, good little sport that he is,”
said Nat, troubled eyes on the road ahead. “Poor Dot! I hate to think
how she will feel if we fail to bring back the bacon, in the shape of my
young cousin.”

“Where are you going, Nat dear?” asked Tavia, after a moment of silence.
“You seem to have some definite objective.”

“I have,” declared Nat, as he slowed down before an imposing white
house. “I am going to visit the home of every kid in the neighborhood
that Roger plays with. Then, if I fail to gain a clue, I haven’t the
faintest idea what to do next.”

“Never give up till you try,” urged Tavia. “Hurry, Nat—do! I feel as
though I were on pins and needles.”

“Not very comfortable,” returned Nat, grinning, as he swung his long
legs over the car door without bothering to open it.

Tavia watched him swing up the drive, ring the bell of the imposing
white house, and, a moment later, hold converse with the owner of it.
She knew by the manner in which he came back to her that the interview
had been disappointing.

“Nothing doing,” he said in response to her tacit question. “The lady of
the house, backed by the kid in there, says they haven’t seen our
youngster to-day.”

“The plot thickens,” murmured Tavia. “Poor Doro. What shall we tell
her?”

“Hold your horses, young lady,” Nat advised her. “We have several other
places to visit before we begin to give up hope. We’ll find him yet.”

Although they made a thorough canvass of all the homes in the
neighborhood which contained familiars, or possible familiars, of the
missing Roger, their quest was unsuccessful. No one seemed to have seen
the missing youngster that day, and Nat and Tavia were forced to admit
that, so far, their mission had failed.

“You are not going to give up yet, Nat?” cried Tavia quickly, as Nat
started to turn the nose of the _Fire Bird_ toward home. “Why, we have
not even _begun_ to look!”

Nat shut off the power and regarded his companion in perplexity.

“It seems to me we have made not only a beginning, but an ending, as
well,” he protested. “I can’t think of another place where the boy might
be, and I thought perhaps we had better go back and see if they have
heard anything at The Cedars. If he is back there, safe and sound, we
are having all our trouble and worry for nothing.”

“Oh, please don’t go back yet,” begged Tavia. “I have an idea, Nat,” she
added, with sudden eagerness. “If Roger has the notion that Joe has
taken a train from the North Birchlands station, what would be more
natural than for him to head stationwards himself?”

“Brilliant mind!” ejaculated Nat, manipulating the car into another
right-about-face. “We will proceed to the station immediately.”

“But not by the main road, Nat,” urged Tavia. “Through the woods, by
that old wagon road, don’t you remember?”

Nat regarded her as though he thought she might have gone temporarily
insane.

“But, my dear girl, why——” he began, but Tavia impatiently interrupted
him.

“Oh, you men are so stupid!” she cried. “You never can think of anything
without a map to help you. Can’t you see that Roger, hoping to escape
attention, would take the path through the woods, rather than go by the
main thoroughfare?”

“Yes, I can,” replied Nat. “But I am very doubtful as to whether we
shall be able to guide the old _Fire Bird_ through that same path you
mention. The wagon road is almost entirely overgrown with rank grass and
weeds, you know. It would be a clever trick to navigate it in the day
time, and now, as you can see for yourself, the twilight approaches on
rapid feet.”

“Then we will park the car and walk,” said Tavia imperiously. “Nat,
won’t you do this much for me?”

“My dear, I would do far more than that for you,” Nat assured her, and
Tavia’s bright eyes softened at his tone.

They turned the _Fire Bird_ in the direction of the woods, found the old
wagon road, and drove along it as far as they were able.

Then Nat helped Tavia to the rough ground and they started on a walk
that was more nearly a run. Having come this far, Tavia found herself
obsessed by the belief that there was urgent need of haste.

She would have rushed blindly on through the shadow-filled woods had not
Nat, at her elbow, gently restrained her, urging that she take her time.

“Nothing will be gained if you stumble over a root and break your leg,”
he told her, and Tavia replied indignantly that she had no intention of
being so foolish.

“I feel as though Roger were in danger of some sort, Nat,” she said,
during one of those pauses when they had sent their combined voices
echoing and reechoing through the woods. “I feel as though we ought to
run every step of the way.”

“And probably Roger is at The Cedars, enjoying his dinner by this time,”
rejoined Nat, as they started on again. “Don’t let your imagination run
away with you, my dear.”

Her nerves already on edge, Tavia was about to retort sharply but closed
her lips just in time. Nothing would be gained by quarreling with Nat.
They would only waste time.

They hurried on until they came out of the woodland and found themselves
almost upon the North Birchlands station.

They inquired of the agent at the ticket office whether a small boy had
come that way and the man replied in the negative.

Discouraged, they turned to go back the way they had come. They walked
on in troubled silence, wondering how they could break this bad news to
Dorothy.

“He may have wandered off into the woods and been unable to find his way
out,” suggested Tavia, and Ned agreed with her that he might.

“Although Joe and Roger know these woods like a book,” he added. “Roger
probably couldn’t get lost in them if he tried.”

“Anyway, we had better look around a bit,” Tavia insisted. “I am
dreadfully worried, Nat.”

Nat took her hand, and, like two children, they started into the denser
part of the woodland, calling as they went.

“It’s like hunting for a needle in a haystack,” Nat said at last, as
they paused to rest. “We might do this all night and still not be any
nearer finding Roger.”

“But, anyway, we can try, Nat,” Tavia persisted. “I can’t bear to go
back to Doro emptyhanded. She will be crazy.”

So they went on again, calling as they went, until the woods began to
grow really dark and even Tavia was almost ready to give up the search
for the time being.

“My one hope is that while we have been looking for him he has found his
way back to The Cedars,” she said, as they started slowly back toward
the weed-choked wagon road. “If he isn’t there I don’t know what we can
do.”

“Listen! I thought I heard something!” Nat checked her, a hand on her
arm.

Tavia paused obediently and in the almost eerie silence of the woodland
she could hear her heart throbbing.

“What do you mean?” she gasped. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“There it is again—over this way,” cried Nat, and began to run, pulling
the girl with him.




                               CHAPTER IX
                              IN THE TREE


In a moment Tavia too heard it—a boyish cry in that vast, silent
woodland.

“Roger!” she panted, almost sobbing. “Oh, Nat, is it Roger?”

“Guess so,” said Nat grimly. “But I declare I don’t know where the boy
can be. Sounds as if he were hanging in the air somewhere over our
heads.”

“Listen a moment,” suggested Tavia.

They paused, and again they heard the faint cry. It was strangely like
and yet unlike Roger’s voice. It seemed, as Nat had said, to come from
the air above them. An eerie sensation at that hour in the
fast-darkening woods.

Tavia felt the hair beginning to creep on her scalp, yet it was she
urged Nat on again.

They knew they were coming nearer that voice, for it sounded continually
louder in their ears. Yet they still could not locate it.

At last, when they were about ready to give up in despair, Tavia was
startled to hear the voice again, and, this time, right over her head.

“I’m up here,” it said quaveringly. “And I can’t hold on much longer. If
you don’t give me a hand I’ll fall and break my neck!”

Tavia felt an hysterical desire to laugh. Roger was up in a tree. Of
course! How foolish of them not to have thought of that sooner.

Nat, after one eager glance up into the shadowy branches of the tree,
had already begun to scale its rough bark.

“Hold on for a minute, old man,” he shouted to the disembodied voice
aloft. “I’ll bring you down in a jiffy.”

“But my hand’s slipping,” wailed the voice again. “You’d better hurry,
Nat. Oo-oo—I’m gonna fall!”

Alarmed at this prohecy in spite of Nat’s rapid progress toward the
rescue, Tavia went close to the tree, straining her eyes to catch a
glimpse of the small form hidden among the branches.

“I’m here, Roger darling! It’s Tavia,” she called. “If you have to let
go I’ll catch you! I will if it kills us both!”

“He isn’t going to let go—he isn’t that kind of bad sport,” said Nat’s
voice above her head. “I’ll grab you in a minute, kid. Can you slide
along that branch a bit. That’s the idea. Take it easy, now.”

“I—I’ll try,” said Roger’s voice faintly, and Tavia heard a rustle among
the leaves that told her the boy was doing his best to aid his rescuer.

“Ow, I’m slipping!” he yelled suddenly. “Catch me, Nat!”

Tavia felt a cold chill run up and down her spine at that frantic cry,
but the next moment she was reassured.

“All right, old timer, I’ve got you,” said Nat’s voice. “Just grab hold
of me now and we’ll be down on _terra firma_ in a jiffy. That’s the kid!
Ready now?”

“Y-yes,” came Roger’s unsteady response, and Tavia knew he was fighting
off the tears of weariness and fright. “We ain’t very far from the
ground, though, are we, Nat?”

“Not very far, old boy,” responded Nat jocularly. “Not half as far as if
we were twice as far.”

Tavia heard Roger chuckle and blessed Nat for his quick tact. He had
saved the small boy the humiliation of tears.

There was the sound of scrambling and sliding and Tavia saw Nat, one arm
about Roger, hang from a sturdy lower branch, then drop to the ground.

He set his small cousin gently on the ground and carefully brushed the
leaves and twigs from his clothing.

“Now you’ll do, old man,” he announced, adding suddenly: “Pretty near
starved, aren’t you?”

“I—I—guess so,” returned Roger quaveringly, and Tavia longed to put her
arms about him and comfort him. She knew better, however, and merely
took his hand firmly in her own and led the way back to the old wagon
road and the waiting _Fire Bird_.

“We’ve got the car and we will have you home in a jiffy, Roger,” she
said cheerfully. “I reckon the folks there will be glad to see you.”

“Dorothy will be awful scared, I guess,” he remarked hesitantly. “It
must be awful late.”

“It is and she will,” Tavia retorted promptly, and at the hint of
reproach in her voice the small boy seemed once more on the verge of
tears.

“I couldn’t help it,” he cried, with a catch in his voice that he could
not control no matter how hard he tried. “I—I just had to find Joe an’
tell him—something,” he finished weakly.

“Well, did you?” asked Nat, with good-natured sarcasm.

“No,” admitted Roger dispiritedly. “I thought I might maybe take the
train because that must ’a’ been the way Joe went, but I just happened
to think that I didn’t have any money.”

“That is apt to be a slight drawback,” admitted Nat gravely, and
thereupon launched into a short lecture on the wickedness of small boys
who went anywhere without first gaining the consent of those at home.

“But Joe did it,” Roger interrupted once, wonderingly. “And Joe is not a
bad boy.”

“He is at least unwise,” murmured Tavia, and Nat was forced to explain
that Joe, though not in any sense wicked, had been foolish and
thoughtless to do the thing he had done.

“But I just had to go and find him,” Roger persisted. “And how could I
do it if I didn’t take the train?”

At the prospect of having to begin his lecture all over again, Nat gave
up in despair and changed the subject.

“Do you mind telling me, old lad,” he asked gravely, “how you happened
to be using that tree for a parking place——”

“And a rather insecure one at that,” murmured Tavia, with a chuckle.

“At an hour when, by all rights, you should have been at home and in
bed?” finished Nat.

Tavia felt the small boy’s hand tighten in hers and knew that he was
about to recall what had been, to him, a rather dreadful experience.

“I was walking around in the woods, thinking I might find Joe,” he
explained, “when I saw something funny and black coming through the
woods.”

“Oh,” shivered Tavia, in mock terror. “How terrible! What was it?”

“It was only a dog, but I thought it was a bear.” By the disgust in his
voice it was evident his mistake had chagrined the boy deeply.

“And you climbed a tree to get away from the bear?” suggested Nat. “Am I
right?”

“It was as easy as pie getting up,” Roger agreed.

“But when you tried to get down you found you had bitten off more than
you could chew, eh?” asked Tavia.

Roger was offended.

“Ah, you fellers won’t let a kid tell his own story!” he complained, and
Tavia had all she could do to keep from going off into fresh spasms of
laughter and thus offending the boy still more deeply.

Tavia could hear Nat chuckle in the darkness, though his voice was
tremendously grave as he apologized.

“Awfully sorry, old chap,” he said. “We will try to do better from now
on. What happened next?”

“Nothing—nothing much, anyway,” responded Roger, partially mollified.
“When I saw it was only a dog and he just sniffed and went away I tried
to get down again and I couldn’t. I had got away out near the end of the
branch, because bears can climb trees, you know——”

“But this wasn’t a bear,” Tavia reminded him gravely.

“Well, I didn’t know that when I was climbing out there, did I?”
demanded Roger peevishly, and Nat’s hand closed over Tavia’s with a
warning pressure.

“And when I tried to get back again,” Roger continued, “I couldn’t. I
tried and I tried and then I tried yelling. But nobody must uv heard me,
because nobody came,” he concluded dolefully.

“Except us! Don’t forget your old Uncle Nat, my boy,” Nat reminded him.

“Oh, you’re not my uncle; you’re just my cousin,” Roger retorted, and
Tavia giggled.

“How’s that for gratitude?” she crowed, and Nat chuckled.

“Anyway, you have to admit—uncle or cousin—that I turned the trick and
got you down,” he said to Roger.

“Yes,” the small boy admitted, adding reminiscently: “But you did pinch
my arm something awful!”

While this was happening, Dorothy, all unconscious of it, was having an
exciting adventure of her own.

Ned White had come to her soon after Tavia and Nat had left The Cedars
on their quest for the missing Roger and revealed excitedly that he
thought he had “raked up” a clue that might throw light on the
mysterious circumstances surrounding Joe’s disappearance.

“I met a fellow who lives at Scranting,” he said, mentioning a township
some miles further out than North Birchlands. “He says that he remembers
seeing a chap around the railroad station there who might answer Joe’s
description. It’s only a chance, Dorothy—the boy probably was not Joe at
all—but it seems to me the clue is worth following up.”

“Any clue is worth following up,” cried Dorothy, instantly aquiver with
hope. “Are you going to Scranting now? Because if you are, I am going
with you.”

Ned hesitated.

“It is almost dinner time,” he reminded her, but Dorothy broke in
impatiently.

“Oh, what difference does that make? We can snatch a bite in Scranting
if we have to. Ned, you mustn’t put me off.”

“But there’s another thing, Dot,” Ned demurred, troubled. “I went to get
out the _Fire Bird_ just now and she isn’t in the garage. Nat must have
beaten me to it. He and Tavia are among the missing. Joy riding,
probably.”

Dorothy’s brow clouded. If, as Ned suggested, her chum and Nat were joy
riding, such a procedure seemed heartless to her, in view of all the
trouble at The Cedars. Then, too, Tavia might have guessed that they
would need the car.

In the excitement of her father’s illness and this new announcement of
Ned’s, she had not yet remarked the absence of Roger.

Now she turned to Ned decisively.

“We will go by train then. There is one that leaves North Birchlands in
half an hour. Can we make it?”




                               CHAPTER X
                                 A CLUE


Ned opined that they could make the train and he and Dorothy began
immediately to get ready.

Dorothy stole one of the precious minutes to tell Major Dale where they
were going and why, for she knew that hope, even if only temporary,
would benefit him.

“I hate to leave him,” she told Ned, as they hurried down the stairs.
“He seems so much brighter when I am with him.”

“And no wonder!” said Ned gallantly. Then as he stole a glance at
Dorothy’s weary face, he went on: “Poor little Dot! If she could only
divide herself in about six pieces every one would be happy!”

“Except Dot, perhaps,” said Dorothy ruefully.

They made the train with time to spare and settled back to endure the
short trip to Scranting. Their minds were so filled with hopes and fears
and questionings that they found little to say to each other.

Ned was thinking for the most part of pretty Jennie Haygood, to whom he
had become engaged during her last visit to The Cedars, and wishing that
he might run down and “have a talk with her.” But with all the trouble
and worry at The Cedars, he felt, and rightly, that his first duty was
to those at home. He would help Dorothy to find Joe and then, he
declared grimly to himself, he would see Jennie every day for at least
three months!

Dorothy’s thoughts were of her father and of Joe and—of Garry. If Garry
were only here to help her!

The train stopped at Scranting with a jolt and Ned helped Dorothy to
alight.

“This fellow I spoke of who thought he saw Joe here works for the
railroad,” he hurriedly explained, as they started along the platform.
“He says the ticket agent here is an acquaintance of his and may be able
to give us valuable information.”

“Then let’s hurry,” urged Dorothy, soon adding in a voice only a little
above a whisper: “Oh, Ned, I am frightened!”

“What about?” asked her cousin wonderingly.

“Oh, I am so afraid he may not be able to tell us anything!”

They found the ticket agent an agreeable man, and, as this was not the
rush hour with him, he obligingly came forth from the small room at the
back of the station to answer their questions.

Ned explained to him about Geoffrey Hodgson, the man who thought he had
seen Joe in Scranting and who had referred Ned for further information
to the railroad man.

“From your description I am very sure I saw the lad,” the agent
returned, and Dorothy leaned forward scarcely breathing for fear of
losing his next words. “Perhaps it was his air of haste that
particularly impressed itself upon my mind.”

“Did this boy come here to board a train?” asked Dorothy, and the words,
the first she had spoken, sounded strange to her.

The man nodded and in his eyes were both sympathy and admiration. There
was no doubt that the young lady was extremely pretty and neither was
there any doubt that she was very much concerned with the actions of
this particular young runaway scamp. He had a sudden and very sincere
desire to help Dorothy Dale in whatever way he could.

“He took the four-fifteen for the West, Miss,” he said. “It was a flyer,
and I guess that suited the young gentleman all right for he certainly
seemed in a tremendous hurry.”

“The West!” murmured Dorothy, and a bright spot began to burn in each
cheek. For Dorothy was suddenly possessed of an idea.

“That reminds me, I have something to show you,” said their obliging
informant, rising suddenly to his feet. “If you will wait just a
minute——” and he returned hurriedly to his office.

Ned and Dorothy looked at each other and the young man shook his head
ruefully.

“Not much help,” he said. “Doesn’t do us over much good to know that Joe
took a train for the West.”

Dorothy pursed her lips and looked mysterious.

“I am not so sure!” she said.

Ned stared, but before he could open his lips to ask the question that
trembled on them the agent was back again, holding something in his
hand.

He sat down beside Dorothy and held something out to her which she found
on closer inspection to be a cap.

She gave a little cry and caught it in her hands, gazing at it with
misted eyes. For it was not just any cap. It was Joe’s cap!

“What’s the row?” asked Ned curiously. “What’s that you’ve got?”

Dorothy could not speak, but in silence handed the cap to him.

Ned gave a low whistle.

“Exhibit A,” he muttered. “There isn’t a doubt in the world but what
this is Joe’s head gear! What do you make of that, Dot?”

Dorothy shook her head and turned to the interested railroad man.

“Do you mind telling me where you got that cap?” she said unsteadily.

“The lad left it behind in his hurry,” he replied. “I saw it lying on
the bench and, thinking the boy might return for it, put it away in the
office.”

“Oh, that was awfully good of you,” said Dorothy. “You don’t know how
very much this means to me.”

The agent looked embarrassed, for he was one of those kind-hearted men
who cannot take thanks gracefully and, as several people entered the
station at that moment, he excused himself and took his place again at
the window.

Seeing that they had all the information they were likely to get from
this source, Ned pocketed the cap that Joe had left behind him and they
crossed the tracks to the opposite platform of the station, there to
take the return train to North Birchlands.

On the way back Ned was excited and talkative but Dorothy was very
quiet.

“Why is it that every kid who wants to run away immediately heads west?”
asked Ned of an inattentive and thoughtful Dorothy. “Sometimes they make
a break for the seacoast, but more often it is the wild and woolly that
tempts the youthful imagination. Say, Dot,” he added, struck by a sudden
thought, “why in the world didn’t we ask that fellow how far west Joe
was going?”

“Because we are a couple of idiots, I guess,” returned Dorothy.
“However, we can still ask him—by telephone.”

“How much money did the boy have?” asked Ned, with apparent irrelevance.

“Not much,” replied Dorothy sadly. “He couldn’t have got so very far,
Ned.”

It seemed only a moment before the train slowed to a stop at North
Birchlands. Dorothy and Ned walked rapidly homewards, eager to share
this new development with the family. But when they reached The Cedars
they found so much worry and excitement rampant there that they
temporarily forgot their own adventures.

Roger was gone, had disappeared as completely, it seemed, as Joe!

Dorothy sank down in a chair and covered her eyes with her hand.

“This is too much,” she said. “I don’t believe I can stand any more.”

Then she was on her feet in an instant again, her eyes bright, cheeks
hot.

“No one has told Dad this?” she asked, and her Aunt Winnie replied
quickly and soothingly in the negative.

“We would not have told him in any case until you returned, dear,” she
said, soon adding, with attempted reassurance: “I really don’t think
this is serious.”

“Serious!” repeated Dorothy. “Not serious that little Roger is lost, as
well as Joe?” Then she asked, looking about her as though she had missed
her chum for the first time: “Where is Tavia?”

“She and Nat have not come in yet,” replied Mrs. White, the worried
lines deepening in her forehead. “I can’t imagine what can be keeping
them.”

Then Dorothy remembered. Tavia and Nat had gone out in the _Fire Bird_.
Even her chum had deserted her. She felt suddenly very helpless and
forlorn.

There came the sound of an automobile on the drive without, the sharp
tooting of a motor horn—undeniably the _Fire Bird_.

They all dashed to the door and flung it open just as Tavia’s glad cry
rang through the darkness:

“Hello, everybody. We’ve got Roger!”




                               CHAPTER XI
                       DOROTHY REACHES A DECISION


Tavia made a rush for Dorothy and caught her in her arms, hugging her
hard.

“Darling Doro, see what we’ve brought you,” she cried, and drew forward
into the circle of light a sheepish and very much subdued Roger.

Dorothy sank to her knees before Roger and hugged him to her until he
grunted. This was purely physical, however, for the returned prodigal
was willing for once that his big sister should make as much fuss over
him as she wished. It was not much fun to be stuck up in a tree far away
from home and it was most awfully good to be with his family again.
Then, too, he had feared a scolding and Dorothy’s greeting was a welcome
substitute.

It was some time before they were calm enough to discuss the details of
the rescue. But when finally Nat and Tavia did describe the small boy’s
peril and rescue, Dorothy was ashamed to think how she had misjudged her
chum. She ought to have known by this time how right Tavia’s heart was
where her friends were concerned.

They had dinner then, a merry one in spite of the shadow of worry and
anxiety that still hung heavy on their minds. Despite his famished
state, Roger was so exhausted by the strenuous and exciting events of
the past few hours that he almost fell asleep in his chair and had to be
helped to bed before he had half finished his dinner.

Dorothy, looking down at his sleeping face, so dear and innocent on the
pillow, felt her eyes smart with fresh tears. Kneeling down beside the
bed, she pressed her cheek to his soft one.

“Don’t ever do a thing like that again,” she whispered. “What would Doro
do if anything happened to her Roger?”

One small arm twined about her neck and Roger half opened his eyes,
smiled sleepily.

“Roger—loves—Doro,” he murmured, and fell asleep.

On the way downstairs Dorothy stopped in the Major’s room to see how he
fared and found him also asleep. She would not disturb him now till
morning although she knew how eagerly he would grasp at the one small
item of news concerning Joe that she had to tell him.

If Joe were only there too, beneath the familiar roof, asleep—Dorothy
sighed, closed the door gently, and went on downstairs.

“Ned has just been telling us about Joe’s cap, Doro,” said Tavia, as she
entered the room. “Isn’t it marvelous? We have an honest-to-goodness
clue at last.”

“Although I can’t see where it leads us——”

“To the West, of course,” interrupted Tavia. “How dull you are, Nat.”

Nat grinned good-naturedly.

“The West is a large place, young lady,” he reminded her. “And one that
it is possible for a lad to get pretty completely lost in.”

“We will find to-morrow what town or city he bought his ticket to,” said
Dorothy. “And then we can act accordingly.”

“That sounds as if the fair Dorothy were about to get busy in earnest,”
said Tavia, with a shrewd glance at her chum. “Have you made any plans
yet, Doro?”

“Nothing definite,” Dorothy confessed. “I want to talk with Dad first.”

It was Major Dale himself who asked for Dorothy on the following
morning, and father and daughter were closeted together for the better
part of an hour.

When Dorothy at last emerged from the interview her cheeks were flushed
and her mouth determined.

Tavia, who had been eagerly awaiting an opportunity to talk to her chum,
was the first to notice this change in her.

“You look as though you were on the war path, Doro. What’s up?”

Dorothy held a finger to her lips as Ned’s voice at the telephone came
up to them.

“He’s calling Scranting,” Dorothy explained in a whisper. “Listen!”

They listened with breathless interest to Ned’s disjointed monologue.

“This Mr. Dougherty, Scranting station? Mr. Dougherty, Miss Dale and I
forgot to ask you a very important question last night—. Oh, you thought
of it too, did you?—Chicago! Where did the kid get all that
money?—Yes.—All right. Many thanks for the information.—Yes, I
will.—Thanks again. Good-bye!”

“Chicago!” repeated Tavia, whistling softly. “That city is a
considerable distance from this place, Doro. Why, what’s the matter?”
She broke off and stared at her chum wonderingly.

For, impossible as it seemed to her, Dorothy’s lips had curved suddenly
in such a smile as Tavia had not seen for days.

“Oh, nothing!” said this amazing Doro. “I was just thinking that
intuition is a wonderful thing sometimes!”

Even by persistent questioning Tavia was not able to discover the reason
for what she called Dorothy’s “Mona Lisa smile,” but she did succeed in
extracting other valuable information.

Dorothy was to follow the one clue they possessed, though it was a
slight one.

“But how on earth can you go out West all alone, Doro?” cried Tavia,
when her chum had announced her decision to the rather startled and
excited family group.

“I didn’t intend to,” returned Dorothy with assumed ingenuousness. “I
thought perhaps one, Tavia Travers, would like to go with me.”

“Good gracious, I was only scared to death for fear you wouldn’t ask
me,” Tavia confessed. “When do we start, Doro?”

“Hold your horses a minute, will you?” cried Nat. “You two girls aren’t
going on a journey like that all alone—not by a long shot!”

“O-ho! The cave man speaks!” gibed Tavia. “Who says we are not, Mr.
Smarty?”

“You really ought to stay here, Nat,” Dorothy interposed swiftly. “We
need both you and Ned here on the spot, both to take care of Dad and
follow up any new clue that may turn up.”

“Well, I like that!” exclaimed Nat, chagrined. “That’s being relegated
to the rocking chair for fair.”

“But you will do that for me, won’t you, Nat?” begged Dorothy. “Can’t
you see it’s the best way?”

“Well, no, I can’t say that I can,” confessed Nat. “But if you want it
that way, Dot, I can but oblige.”

“What are you going to do after you reach Chicago?” Mrs. White asked.
“Have you thought of that?”

“I suppose we shall have to leave our future conduct to chance,” said
Tavia flippantly, and Dorothy slowly nodded acquiescence.

“We may come up against a dead wall,” Dorothy admitted. “But there is
just a chance that we may pick up a clue there that will be useful.
Anyway, Dad thinks the chance is worth taking, and I do too.”

So it was decided that the two girls were to start for Chicago the
following day, “traveling light.”

After they had gone to their rooms that night and Tavia was brushing her
hair before the mirror, Dorothy stole in to her and whispered:

“Tavia, if I tell you a secret will you promise never to tell a soul?”




                              CHAPTER XII
                                A GUESS


“Cross my heart and hope to die,” said Tavia. “Tell me quickly ere I
pass away with suspense.”

“Well, I have a very good suspicion which way Joe headed.

“He headed West——”

“Exactly! And straight for the ranch of one young Westerner called Garry
Knapp.”

Tavia looked at her chum hard for a moment, then waved the hair brush
aloft in a jubilant gesture.

“I do believe you have struck it, Doro!” she cried. “Of course that is
the obvious thing for him to do.”

“He always loved Garry——”

“Seems to run in the family,” interrupted Tavia.

“And he would naturally go to him for help and advice at this time.”

“He hasn’t reached his objective yet, if Garry’s ranch is the
objective,” Tavia pointed out. “If he had, Garry would have
telegraphed.”

“I’ve thought of that, of course,” admitted Dorothy. “But then, if he
went directly he has hardly had time yet. Anyway, there is no use
guessing any longer,” and she rose abruptly from the bed and gave Tavia
a good-night hug. “To-morrow we begin to act.”

“For which, thanks be!” said Tavia fervently.

It was a very much disgruntled Nat who saw them off the following
morning. The waiting end of a game was never a pleasant one to him. And,
it meant losing Tavia for an indefinite time!

However, Tavia managed to tear herself away finally, and after Dorothy
also had been hugged and kissed the train moved off and the two girls
sank back in their seats with a feeling of relief that at last their
adventure was in motion.

Tavia brought forth the two-pound box of candy that the boys had
bestowed upon her and her chum and began contentedly to untie the ribbon
that bound it.

“Have one, Doro?” The latter shook her head. She was too full of anxiety
for Joe and the dear ones at home to think about anything else.

The Major had seemed very frail that morning when he had said good-bye,
but there had been an eager light in his eyes that she understood only
too well. He had been thinking that the next time he saw his daughter,
Joe might be with her.

And Joe would be with her! Dorothy’s chin went up and her eyes gleamed
in a manner curiously suggestive of the Major in the days when the
success of the _Bugle_ meant everything to him.

“Good gracious, Doro, don’t look like that!” cried Tavia, happening that
moment to glance at her chum. “You remind me of bulldogs and prize
fighters and other pugnacious animals.”

“How extremely complimentary you are,” laughed Dorothy. “I’ll have you
know that though I can’t get over the fact that I’m an animal, I’m not
pugnacious.”

“Far be it from me to contradict a lady,” retorted Tavia. “But if you
could have seen yourself at that moment, Doro, I am sure you wouldn’t
blame me.”

“Glad I didn’t then,” replied Dorothy a trifle crossly. “It must be an
awful bore to see yourselves as others see you.”

“Well, take off your hat, anyway,” advised Tavia irrelevantly. “We have
quite a little ride before us, you know.”

“As if I hadn’t lain awake all night thinking of that!” cried Dorothy.
“And every minute of the journey will seem like an hour.”

“Now who is being uncomplimentary?” chuckled Tavia. “You must expect to
enjoy your company.”

“I don’t expect to enjoy anything again until I get news of Joe,”
answered Dorothy morosely, and Tavia sighed gustily.

“Here’s where all my efforts at entertainment fall upon barren ground,”
she prophesied. “Like casting pearls before swine, you know.”

“Are you, by any chance, calling me names?” asked Dorothy, giggling in
spite of herself.

“I wouldn’t do such a thing,” protested Tavia virtuously. “I was
thinking of that cute little pig I just saw beside the road. Honestly,
he was awfully cute. His tail was all curled up and he had the pinkest
nose——”

“Goodness, Tavia, if you can’t be sensible I am going out and sit on the
observation platform by myself. I don’t want to hear about pigs.”

“I don’t know but what your suggestion about the observation platform is
a good one, at that,” remarked Tavia, unmoved. “Did you notice that
perfectly stunning man who passed through our car a few minutes ago? He
looked straight at you and you looked straight through him.”

“Was he a ghost?” giggled Dorothy.

“Far from it!” returned Tavia, with a reproving stare. “He was an
extremely substantial looking young man, and from the way he looked at
you I shouldn’t wonder but that your amazing beauty had quite bowled him
over, Doro, my dear.”

“Well, I hope he stays bowled,” returned Dorothy unfeelingly. “Something
tells me that’s where he belongs.”

“Pearls before—” began Tavia, but this time Dorothy rebelled.

“I won’t be called a pig again, Tavia Travers!”

“Such a cute little pig!”

Dorothy fumbled at the car window and looked back at Tavia suggestively.

“Will you stop, or shall I jump?”

“Better wait till the train slows down a bit,” replied Tavia calmly.
“Going at this rate of speed, you might skin your knuckles or
something.”

Dorothy sank back in her seat with a sigh of resignation.

“I think I shall go to the observation platform, after all,” she said,
but before she could rise Tavia seized her arm and cried excitedly:

“He is coming back!”

Dorothy shook her arm free and frowned.

“Well, what of it?”

“And he has a companion,” added Tavia. “Good gracious, if I ever saw a
desperado, Dorothy Dale, that man is it!”

Interested in spite of herself by Tavia’s description, Dorothy turned
her head and beheld two men approaching down the car aisle, lurching as
the train lurched.

One was the tall, dark, good-looking stranger who Tavia had vulgarly
declared was “bowled over” by Dorothy’s beauty. His companion could not
have been more completely his opposite. A short, squat fellow with a
flat face and sharp black eyes, he looked for all the world like a bird
of prey, ready to snatch at his victim.

Dorothy, as she shudderingly appraised the man, was glad she was not to
be his victim. The next moment she was laughing at her melodramatic
thoughts.

“Probably a traveling salesman or something equally innocuous,” she
whispered, as the two men passed close to them.

“He’s a desperado,” Tavia reiterated stubbornly. “You mark my words—that
fellow will come to no good end—”

At that moment it seemed as if they all were to come to a very bad end
indeed.

There came a deafening crash and the car in which Dorothy and Tavia sat
seemed to rear up in the middle, like a balky horse.

“Good gracious, hold on to me, Doro!” shrieked Tavia. “It’s the end of
the world!”




                              CHAPTER XIII
                                DERAILED


There was shrieking and confusion from one end of the train to the other
as the car righted itself again. With a horrid noise of scraping brakes
the cars ahead came to a jolting standstill.

Tavia was out of her seat bent on joining the general stampede for the
door, but Dorothy held her back firmly.

“You will be hurt in that rush!” she cried. “Wait a minute; do, Tavia.”

Tavia obeyed, and crouched down in the seat and covered her eyes with
her trembling hands.

“Oh, listen to those cries, Doro!” she wailed presently. “Somebody must
be horribly hurt.”

“Just hysterics, Miss.”

A man, one of those who had been the first to jump from the train,
returned and sank into a seat opposite the two girls. “The car ahead of
us jumped the track, and it’s a mercy the whole train wasn’t wrecked. As
it is, they ain’t nothing to worry about, except that we may be tied up
here for some considerable time.”

Tavia uncovered her eyes and looked at him. Dorothy had already done so
and had risen from her seat and started hastily for the door, because
this man who had undertaken to reassure them was none other than the
villainous looking companion of the tall dark stranger!

At her sudden motion the man put out his hand and made as though to
rise.

“Better not go out there just now, Miss,” he said, his beady black eyes
resting upon her admiringly. “The crowd is still mighty hysterical and
it’s possible you might get hurt.”

Dorothy might have retorted that she preferred the hysterical crowd to
the doubtful pleasure of his company, but she held her tongue.

Instead she smiled noncommittally and held out her hand to Tavia.

“Come along, dear,” she begged. “There may be something we can do out
there.”

“I tell you there ain’t nobody hurt,” again put in the small, squat man
in a faintly irritable voice. “Better stay right here—”

But the two girls were already half way to the door, Tavia accompanying
her chum grumblingly.

“Every time anything interesting happens, Doro, you have to come along
and spoil everything.”

“If you call that fellow interesting, then I am disappointed in your
common sense,” retorted Dorothy tartly. “Sometimes, Tavia, I really
think you need a nurse.”

“Well, any time that I feel like engaging one, I’ll tell you,” drawled
Tavia, angered in her turn, and there fell an uncomfortable silence
between the girls.

Mechanically they walked through the excited crowd on the platform to
the spot where the car had jumped the track. There it stood, its wheels
on the gravel bed of the roadside, tilted crazily and only held upright
by the cars in front and at the rear of it.

“The people in this car must have been jolted up for fair. Thought it
was an earthquake or something,” murmured Tavia, interest getting the
better of her anger at Dorothy. “It’s a wonder we didn’t have an
honest-to-goodness wreck out of this.”

“It was the quick wit of the engineer who saved us, I guess,” said a
musical voice behind her, and, astonished, the two girls turned about to
find behind them the tall good-looking stranger who had caught Tavia’s
particular attention.

The eyes of the irrepressible girl sparkled as she muttered in a tone
audible only to Dorothy:

“We can’t run amiss of ’em, no matter how hard we try.”

Dorothy flushed with annoyance and pretended she had not heard the man’s
observation. Not so Tavia! If for no other reason than to annoy her chum
she determined to see the adventure through.

“We should get up a vote of thanks and send it to the engineer,” she
said in her sweetest tones. “He really was quite heroic. Fancy saving
the lives of all the people on this train.”

“Just fancy!” mimicked Dorothy bitterly, but the young man was not to be
so easily discouraged.

He immediately ranged himself beside the two girls and launched into a
boringly detailed account of the accident. In the middle of it Dorothy
excused herself and hurried back to the car.

Her cheeks were hot and she felt unreasonably angry with Tavia. To her
mind her chum had always been far too easy-going and casual with men,
and this, Dorothy thought, was going a little too far.

It was not that Tavia had responded to the stranger—that might have been
excusable under the circumstances. It was the manner of her response.

She wondered if the offensive, squat man would still be occupying the
seat opposite her when she returned to the car. She was busy framing a
scathing speech as she ascended the car steps, but was immensely
relieved a moment later to find that there was no need of delivering it.

The fellow had evidently been discouraged by her manner—sufficiently,
that is, to slightly dampen his enthusiasm.

Yet he still lingered uncomfortably near. Dorothy was annoyed and more
than a little alarmed to find that he occupied a seat in the same car
with her and Tavia.

On the entire trip then, they would be forced to suffer the annoyance of
his presence, to ward off his offensive attentions.

Dorothy could see that he often glanced at her over the top of the paper
he pretended to be reading and knew that it needed only a word or a
glance from her to bring him instantly to her side.

She wished more than ever that Garry were with her. He would know how to
deal with offensive strangers who took advantage of the confusion and
excitement consequent upon a train accident to become familiar.

She thought of Tavia, still, presumably, busy fascinating the
good-looking stranger. This was always an interesting pastime with
Tavia, and it would probably be some time before she tired of it.

If she had the audacity to bring that man into their car—Dorothy gasped
for, out of the corner of her eye, she saw that was just what Tavia was
doing.

Her color high, she turned and looked steadily out of the window as
Tavia and her latest conquest approached. The latter seemed about to
take the seat his unpleasant friend had so recently vacated but a glance
at Dorothy’s averted profile warned Tavia that, for the time, she had
gone far enough.

“Thank you so much!” she said sweetly, sinking into the opposite seat
and adroitly placing a box of candy—the gift of her new friend—upon the
other half of the seat, so that there was no room left for him. “You are
in this car, too, and going through to Chicago? How nice! Ah, yes, thank
you,” as the young man handed her a magazine that had fallen to the
floor.

The latter lingered, indulging in inanities—or so Dorothy termed
them—with Tavia, but evidently interested in Dorothy’s stubbornly
averted profile.

At length, as his room was so patently desired to his company, he
reluctantly moved on, joining his unpleasant friend.

Tavia looked at Dorothy with a sparkle in her eye. Evidently she had
been enjoying herself immensely and was in a conciliatory mood.

“Don’t be mad with me, Doro, darling,” she coaxed. “I know I’m a perfect
simpleton. But I was born that way, you know. I really can’t help it.”

“You could help a good many things, Tavia, if you wanted to,” said
Dorothy, turning away from the window. “Sometimes I wonder how you can
be in love with Nat and still act the way you do.”

“Well, I am in love with Nat and that’s all that matters—to Nat and me,”
retorted Tavia, her voice suddenly hard and cold. “I think you are too
absurdly conventional for words, Dorothy Dale. If you insist on being a
spoil-sport, then you can be one by yourself. I don’t intend to help
you!”

And so began the quarrel—the first real one the girls had ever had, and
one that lasted all through that miserable journey to Chicago.

Tavia, through a perverse desire to torment her chum, was almost
constantly to be seen in the company of the young man whose name,
according to him, was Stanley Blake.

Chicago came at last, and with it an immense relief to Dorothy Dale. Her
relief vanished immediately, however, when she found that Stanley Blake
had taken the place of a porter and was to carry their bags.

“He shan’t carry mine,” she said, in a sudden fury, to Tavia. “If you
want to go on being an—an——”

“Idiot. You might as well say it,” Tavia finished for her. “You can do
as you please, Doro. If you want to make a scene over such a foolish
little thing—— Come on, be a sport,” she added, suddenly conciliatory
again. “What’s your awful objection to saving a porter’s tip?”

Dorothy bit her lips to keep back a flood of angry words. She could not
very well make a scene by refusing the attentions of this man when Tavia
so casually accepted them. She would, she decided, put up with Tavia’s
folly once more, but, after that— She was fortified by the knowledge
that they were now at their journey’s end and so would automatically
dispense with the company of Stanley Blake and his fox-eyed friend.

They were in their room in the Blenheim Hotel at last. Tavia and she
were alone.

“Thank goodness, we’re rid of them,” thought Dorothy, as she removed her
hat and sank wearily upon the edge of the hard, hotel bed. “I hope I
never have to see either of them again.”

But she did, and that in a way that was not only unpleasant but
exceedingly startling.

Descending with Tavia to the hotel dining room, Dorothy saw at a table
near the door the very two persons whom she had so recently and
fervently wished never to see again! Tavia had not seen them yet, and
Dorothy prayed fervently that she might not.

The head waiter coming toward them and beaming benignly seemed like a
rescuing angel to Dorothy. She must get Tavia seated somewhere,
anywhere, before she became aware of the presence of Blake and his
friend. To have again their company thrust upon her was unthinkable.

Even at that last moment she would have turned away, urged Tavia to go
with her to some quiet, small restaurant outside. But it was too late.
The head waiter already was guiding them toward a table.

The table was next to the one at which Blake and his friend sat, at the
side and a little to the rear of it. Dorothy gasped, would have
protested could she have done so without rousing the suspicion of her
friend.

For Tavia was still blissfully unaware of anything unusual in the
atmosphere. And the head waiter, with a beaming smile, had motioned one
of the waiters to take their order.

Well, it couldn’t be helped, thought Dorothy resignedly. If Tavia saw
them she would have to. Lucky the two men were sitting with their backs
toward the table where the chums were ensconced, and, by skillful
maneuvering on Dorothy’s part, Tavia also had her back turned to them.

Dorothy turned sideways so that only her profile would be exposed to
view, if either of the men chanced to glance over his shoulder.

Suddenly she stiffened, for, coming to her with a startling distinctness
above the noise and chatter all about her, she heard a familiar name.

It was a very familiar name. The two men were talking about Garry Knapp!

“What is the matter, Doro?” asked Tavia, looking at her curiously. “You
resemble a storybook detective on the eve of a startling discovery.”

Dorothy motioned her sharply to be still.

“They are talking of Garry,” she explained, in a tense whisper.

“Who? When? Where?” cried Tavia, screwing her head about most absurdly
in a vain effort to bring the entire dining room within her range of
vision at the same time. “What do you mean, Doro?”

Dorothy gestured toward the two men at the table next to them, at the
same moment making an imploring gesture pleading silence.

“Why, Stanley Blake and his dear little friend!” exclaimed Tavia in a
tone of pleased surprise. “Always turning up like the proverbial bad
penny, aren’t they, Doro? Do you mind if I ask them to join us?”

She half rose from the table as if about to carry out her preposterous
threat, but Dorothy seized her fiercely by the arm and forced her back
into her seat.

“If you move or say a word, I never will speak to you again!” she said,
and at the vehemence of the usually gentle Dorothy, Tavia looked
surprised. However, she obeyed and remained curiously quiet.

Dorothy had missed something of what the men had said. She realized this
with a sharp annoyance. But the next moment a wave of rage and fear
swept over her, blotting out every other sensation.

They were not only speaking of Garry, these two men, but they were
threatening him as well. She held her breath so that she might not miss
one word of what was to follow.

“He is a kind of simple guy, this Dimples Knapp,” the beady-eyed man was
saying with a half-satisfied smirk. “Thinks this old world is made up of
goody-goody stiffs who believe in the Golden Rule and go to church
regular twice on Sundays. A cute little lamb to fleece!”

“And a nice fat, succulent one,” added Stanley Blake, in a voice neither
of the girls recognized. It had a cold, mean quality that made Dorothy
shiver, though the dining room was hot.

She glanced at Tavia and saw the look of bewilderment and horror on her
face. Tavia had “caught on” at last. She was beginning to find that
Dorothy’s aversion to these two men had been founded on something very
much more real than a whim.

[Illustration:

  “THEY ARE TALKING OF GARRY,” SHE EXPLAINED, IN A TENSE WHISPER.

  “Dorothy Dale to the Rescue.”       Page 99
]

“What does it all mean, Doro?” she whispered, but once more Dorothy held
up her hand for silence.

“Wait, and perhaps we shall hear,” she said tensely.

“The fellow thinks he’s goin’ to have the best l’il wheat ranch in the
West,” went on Stanley’s companion, pushing back his plate and lighting
a cigar. “He’s got the cash to do it and—I feel forced out o’ the
kindness of my heart to say it, Cal—he’s got the brains. If it wasn’t
for that trustin’ little disposition of his—” he did not finish the
sentence, but ended with a chuckle, a thin, mean alien sound in that
convivial atmosphere.

Dorothy was the victim of a chill fear. The man was like a snake, a
mean, poisonous snake that would lie treacherously still in a crevice of
rock awaiting the moment to strike at an unsuspecting prey.

She thought of that horrible moment during her first trip to Desert
City, seemingly ages ago, when she had flung the rock that had snuffed
out the life of the rattlesnake that had threatened the life of her
chum. She had acted then swiftly, unerringly, not thinking of herself,
but of Tavia’s peril.

But this was another, a more venomous kind of reptile, and something
told her he would be infinitely harder to deal with.

Stanley Blake was speaking now, and both she and Tavia listened
breathlessly.

“You may think this fellow Dimples Knapp is easy game, Gibbons, but I
know better,” drawled the hero of Tavia’s gay moments. “He may be as
trusting as you say he is, but I tell you he’s got friends that were not
born yesterday. And they weren’t born blind, either.”

“I s’pose you mean that snoopin’ Lance Petterby an’ his gang,” snarled
the little man, and the girls started nervously. “Well, I’m goin’ on
record now to the effect that if he tries any funny business, it’ll be
the last time, that’s all. You hear me, Cal, it’ll be the last time!”

“Say, you poor little shrimp, will you cut out calling me by my first
name? This is the second time you’ve done it in the last five minutes.
Getting childish or something, aren’t you?”

The man whose name quite obviously was not Stanley Blake glanced hastily
about the room as he gave vent to these irritable remarks, and Dorothy
turned hastily aside lest he should recognize her profile, and so put an
end to his remarkable discourse.

However, though the men continued talking and, presumably, on the same
subject, it did not take Dorothy long to realize that she would hear
nothing further of importance that day.

The two men, evidently beset by an excess of caution, had lowered their
voices so that it was impossible to catch a word of their discourse.

Although the girls strained their ears, the conversation at the next
table became only a confused mumbling and soon afterward the two men
rose and left the dining room.

Although she had scarcely tasted her lunch, Dorothy rose too.

“Where are you going, Doro?” asked Tavia.

“To the office,” said Dorothy. “I must send a telegram to Garry at
once!”




                              CHAPTER XIV
                              THE WARNING


It was characteristic of Dorothy Dale that she did not once say to
Tavia, “I told you so!” She might so easily have done so, considering
her own distrust of these two men and Tavia’s acceptance of them; of one
of them, at least.

As for the latter, she was filled with chagrin to find that her handsome
stranger was nothing but a cheap trickster after all—if indeed, he was
not worse—and longed fervently to punish “Cal,” _alias_ Stanley Blake.

“Oh, you just watch me snub him the next time we meet,” she cried, with
relish. “I will make him feel about as little as the toy chameleon on
his watch fob. Did you ever notice that chameleon, Dorothy? It was the
most fascinating thing I ever saw, fairly hypnotized me.”

“Something certainly did!” Dorothy retorted dryly, which was as near as
she ever came to saying, “I told you so.”

“That’s mean, considering that I am so frightfully penitent and all
that,” Tavia reproached her. “Can’t you let bygones be bygones?”

“I am not worrying about what has already happened,” Dorothy returned.
“It’s the future that troubles me.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about Garry, if I were you,” advised her chum.
“Our friend Gibbons may think he is as innocent as a babe and all that,
but you and I know better. If there is any funny business going on, you
can bet Garry isn’t blind to it.”

“But this fellow spoke as if there were others plotting against him,
too,” said Dorothy, adding bitterly: “It isn’t fair, so many against
one.”

“Garry has friends, too, you know,” Tavia reminded her. “Even Stanley
Blake admits that. You can make sure Lance Petterby isn’t the only one,
either. Garry’s the kind that makes friends. Imagine hearing Lance’s
name here in the dining room of the Blenheim Hotel!” she added with a
chuckle, as Dorothy’s thoughtful silence still continued. “The world is
certainly a small place.”

“As I believe countless thousands have remarked before you,” sighed
Dorothy. “Oh, Tavia, I wish you could say something original—think what
we ought to do next.”

“Why, if you mean about Garry, it seems to me you have already done
about all you can do,” returned Tavia. “That telegram will warn him to
be on his guard.”

“If only they had gone on talking for a little while longer,” sighed
Dorothy. “I have a feeling that they were about to reveal something that
might have been enlightening.”

“Well, no use crying about spilled milk,” said Tavia, stretching herself
out luxuriously on the bed. “If you will excuse me, I think I will take
a wink or two of sleep. You would be wise to do the same. We have had,
as I need not tell you, a long and tiresome journey.”

But Dorothy had no intention of taking her friend’s advice. In the first
place she was so excited that she could not have slept had she tried. In
the second, there was the feeling that she could not afford to waste a
precious minute that might bring her nearer to finding Joe or to the
discovery of just what danger it was that threatened Garry.

So, while Tavia took her beauty sleep, Dorothy brushed her hair, pulled
her hat down tight over the soft mass of it and sallied forth to do a
little sleuthing on her own account.

Joe had bought a ticket for Chicago. On such slender information Dorothy
undertook the great task of finding him.

She went first to the railroad station and there met her first big
disappointment.

If her surmise that Joe had gone to Garry was founded on fact, she
realized that his first action after reaching Chicago would be to buy a
ticket for Dugonne, the railroad station nearest to Garry’s ranch.

If she could find any of the ticket agents at the station who remembered
seeing a lad answering Joe’s description—it was a slight enough hope,
but all she had—then she and Tavia might carry on the search.

But after a weary round she decided that even this one small hope must
perish. No one had noticed a lad of Joe’s description and one or two
were rather short about saying so, intimating that they were far too
busy to be troubled with trivial things.

Turning away, weary and discouraged, deciding to give up the search for
that time at least, Dorothy was startled by a touch upon her shoulder
and turned quickly to see a young Italian standing beside her.

“Excuse me, Miss,” he said, with a boyish eagerness that at once
disarmed any annoyance Dorothy might have felt at his presumption. “I
heard you talk to the man over there and maybe I can tell you
something—not much, but something.”

Dorothy’s weary face lit up and she regarded the youth pleadingly. She
did not speak, but her very silence questioned him.

“I work over there, sell the magazines,” he explained, making a graceful
gesture toward the piled-up counter of periodicals near them. “Another
man work with me. He tell me one day two, t’ree days ago he saw young
feller like young feller you speak about. But I don’ know no more nor
that.”

“Oh, where is he? Let me speak to him!” begged Dorothy frantically, but
the young Latin made a gesture eloquent of resignation.

“That feller seeck,” he said. “No come to work—must be seeck.”

“But tell me his address. I will go to him,” cried Dorothy in a fever of
impatience.

Again the Italian shrugged resignedly.

“No can do that either,” he answered regretfully. “I don’ know where he
live!”




                               CHAPTER XV
                             DISAPPOINTMENT


Dorothy felt for a moment in the intensity of her disappointment that
she could have shaken the smiling Italian. He could look so smug, so
resigned, in the face of her own awful anxiety!

This mood lasted for only a moment, however, for she remembered that the
lad had at least tried to do her a favor. She even forced a smile to her
lips as she thanked him for his meager information.

“Have you any idea when this friend of yours will be back?” she heard
herself asking in an unnaturally calm tone.

Again the Italian shook his head helplessly, shrugged.

“I don’ know—he don’ send no word. He be back mos’ any day, though,” he
continued, brightening. “You stop around here again, eh? Maybe get
chance to see him then.”

Dorothy nodded and, after thanking him again, continued wearily on her
way.

She and Tavia must wait around then for days perhaps until an unknown
Italian recovered from some mysterious sickness—and this when every
moment was precious!

Even when this man returned to occupy his place behind the news stand
what guarantee had she that the information he had to give was worth
anything?

Probably only another false clue, leading them to a dead wall.

And meantime Joe was out in the great world somewhere, miserable and
forlorn, almost certainly at the end of his resources financially.

She groaned and was conscious that one or two passersby turned to look
at her curiously. At this she came to herself with a start and found
that she had been wandering aimlessly outside the station—was in a
section utterly strange to her.

She would have felt a trifle panicky had she not remembered that
taxicabs were plentiful and that one of them could be counted upon to
take her safely to her destination.

She hailed a cab and gave the name of her hotel. It was only a few
minutes before she was back there, had paid the taxicab driver and was
entering the crowded lobby.

She was crossing swiftly toward the elevator when a familiar figure came
within her line of vision and she saw that it was Tavia. A very much
disgruntled Tavia, she saw at second glance.

“Well, where have you been, Dorothy Dale?” asked her chum, with
asperity. “It seems that every time I turn my back you take that chance
to run off and do something exciting.”

“There was nothing exciting about my excursion this afternoon,” sighed
Dorothy. “I spent a lot of time and trouble and found out—nothing,
absolutely nothing.”

“Poor Doro,” sympathized Tavia, her manner suddenly changing to a more
gentle one. “You do look done up. Let’s have some tea and you can tell
me all about it.”

“I should go and fix up a little,” protested Dorothy. “I must look a
fright.”

“You look as sweet as the proverbial summer rose,” Tavia reassured her.
“Besides, I refuse to be cheated out of my tea. My gracious!” she
exclaimed, stopping suddenly before one of the huge pillars in the
lounge. “Look who’s here!”

On her face was a peculiar expression and Dorothy followed with interest
the direction of her gaze. Then she stiffened suddenly and her eyes
began to blaze.

Stanley Blake and Gibbons were crossing the lobby, and they were coming
directly toward the two girls.

“I don’t believe they have seen us,” whispered Tavia, who, for once,
could see the wisdom of running away. “Can’t we slip off toward the
elevators?”

“No, stay where you are!” Dorothy’s hand closed nervously on her arm.
“They have seen us. And—listen Tavia—we must try to be nice to them.”

If her chum had gone suddenly mad Tavia could not have looked any more
startled. As a matter of fact, she feared for the moment that such was
indeed the case.

Dorothy advocating that they “be nice” to a couple of cheap tricksters
who were even then conspiring against the success of the man she loved.
Impossible! Incredible!

But, impossible and incredible though it seemed, it was undoubtedly
true. The two men had come up and addressed the girls with their most
ingratiating smiles.

Dorothy, to Tavia’s intense wonder and disbelief, coaxed an answering,
and utterly adorable, smile to the corners of her mouth.

She chatted with them for several minutes while Tavia gasped inwardly
and attempted to hide her intense wonderment from the public gaze.

It was an incredulous, much mystified Tavia, who faced her chum over the
teacups a few minutes later.

“For goodness’ sake, Doro,” she cried, no longer to be restrained. “Have
you taken complete leave of your wits?”

“I hope not,” returned Dorothy, evidently enjoying her chum’s
bewilderment as she poured a cup of tea and sugared it liberally. “It
even seems that I might, with more justice, ask that question of you.”

“Well, if that isn’t adding insult to injury I’d like to know what is!”
cried Tavia indignantly. “For two cents I’d shake you soundly, Dorothy
Dale, even if this is a public place.”

“Don’t be foolish, Tavia.”

Dorothy Dale leaned forward suddenly, her eyes intent upon her chum’s
face.

“I should think it would be easy for you to guess the reason of my
apparent friendliness for those two scoundrels.”

“Easy, old thing,” warned Tavia, looking about uneasily at the crowded
tables. “’Tisn’t quite safe to call names in a crowded place. But go on
with your explanation,” she urged. “I begin to see light!”

“I wish I did,” sighed Dorothy. The momentary animation died out of her
face and the old expression of anxiety returned. “I am being decent to
those two men in the hope that I may find out something that will be of
use to Garry. All’s fair in love and war, you see. And this certainly
looks like war for Garry.”

“Well, you are a great little conspirator!” cried Tavia admiringly.
“This promises to be better than many mystery stories I have read. I can
see where we don’t have a dull minute from now on.”

“I wish I could share your optimism,” said Dorothy, and the extreme
weariness of her voice prompted Tavia to ask again where she had been
and what she had done that afternoon.

Dorothy explained. Tavia was not in the least inclined to take her
chum’s gloomy view of the situation.

“I should think you would be tickled to death to have turned up any sort
of clue, even a half dead one,” she said. “Cheer up, Doro, we’ll find
out the truth at last. Unless,” she added, with a ghost of a chuckle,
“our friend of the news stand dies of his mysterious ailment, when we
may assume that our poor little clue dies with him.”

“But meantime, while we are cooling our heels and waiting around for
this Italian to turn up, what do you suppose will be happening to Joe?”
cried Joe’s sister, with anguish in her eyes and voice. “I don’t think
of it very much, for if I did I’m afraid I couldn’t go on.”

“Well, you will go on to the end, Dorothy Dale. You always do. And I’ll
be with you,” said Tavia cheerfully. “I will even go so far as to be
nice to that villainous looking Gibbons, if you ask me to.”

“That would be a test of friendship,” protested Dorothy, with a wan
little smile. “I wouldn’t ask it of you, Tavia dear. Now, if you are
through, suppose we pay for this and go upstairs? I am very tired.”

There was nothing more to do that day, but early on the following
morning, refreshed by a delicious breakfast in the dining room, the two
girls started for the railroad station.

Dorothy had scant hope that her unknown informant would be present, but
she could afford to overlook no possible chance.

She was terribly nervous and on edge and once or twice Tavia scolded her
sharply for it. A person in Dorothy’s condition could not be handled
gently, Tavia knew, and again her treatment proved a tonic for her
friend.

Inside the station they hurried to the news stand and Dorothy’s heart
beat wildly as she saw that her young Italian was not alone behind the
counter.

At that moment the boy saw Dorothy and Tavia and his eyes brightened.

“I hope you come to-day,” he said to Dorothy. “I have news for you,
maybe.”




                              CHAPTER XVI
                          DOROTHY HOPES AGAIN


Dorothy tried vainly to hold in check the wild hope that leaped within
her.

“What news?” she repeated as steadily as she could. Then she turned
pleadingly to the strange man who stood behind the news stand. “Oh, if
you have anything to tell me about my brother, please, please, do!” she
cried.

The man looked puzzled till the young Italian explained in his own
tongue. Then his face brightened.

“’Bout the boy you want to know, eh?” he asked in broken English. “I
tell you all I know—but it is not very much.”

“Yes?” pleaded Dorothy in an agony of impatience. She had yet to learn
that the Italian could not be hurried in his broken speech and that
interruption only impeded his naturally slow progress.

“He seem strange to me, dat boy,” he continued, squinting his eyes in a
dreamy fashion. “He did not act like a boy his age should act——”

“What was he like—this boy?” interrupted Dorothy again.

Her informant regarded her in pained surprise and, after some difficulty
and more interpretation by his young countryman, he made out the meaning
of her question.

Then, in his maddeningly deliberate way, he described the lad who had
caught his interest—described him down to the very suit of clothes he
had been wearing. Dorothy’s excitement and impatience increased almost
past bearing as she realized that this lad could have been none other
than her beloved runaway brother.

“Don’t hurry him, Doro,” whispered Tavia in her ear, as excited as
Dorothy herself. “Can’t you see it only confuses him? Let him tell it
his own way.”

Dorothy nodded and leaned eagerly across the counter toward her
informant.

“Did he—did you—speak to this boy?”

The face of the man lit up and he nodded eagerly.

“I feel sorry for him,” he explained. “He look so scared and—lonesome.”

A little sob broke from Dorothy but she immediately checked it.

“Oh, go on, please go on!” she begged. “What did you say to him?”

“I ask him if he is all alone,” the Italian responded, more readily than
he had yet done. “He say, yes, all alone an’ he want to go to Desert
City.”

The two girls started and stared at each other.

“What did I tell you?” cried Dorothy radiantly, then immediately turned
back to the man. “What did he do then? Please tell me quickly,” she
begged.

“I tol’ him nearest station to Desert City, Dugonne,” he paused and
regarded the girls beamingly as though proud of his knowledge, and in
spite of Tavia’s warning pressure on her arm Dorothy could not stand the
delay.

“Of course we know that,” she said. “Please go on!”

“He say he no have money to buy ticket——”

Tavia gave a little exclamation of pity and this time it was Dorothy who
held up her hand for silence.

“I say I lend him ten cents——”

“Ten cents!” repeated Tavia hysterically. “But ten cents wouldn’t take
him ten miles——”

“But he have all the rest himself,” explained the Italian, with the air
of one who has told the answer to a clever riddle. “All he need more
than he got, ten cents. I give him.”

“It was more than kind of you,” cried Dorothy gratefully. “I can give
you the ten cents, but I can never repay your kindness.”

With the words she got out her purse and from it took some money which
she extended toward Joe’s benefactor. He seemed reluctant at first to
take it, but, upon Dorothy’s insistence, overcame his scruples.

They had turned away after repeated expressions of thanks when suddenly
Dorothy broke away from Tavia and ran back again.

“There is just one more thing I should like to ask you,” she said
breathlessly. “Do you know whether my brother actually bought a ticket
to Dugonne as he intended to?”

The Italian shook his head and shrugged his shoulders in that
exaggerated gesture of regret.

“I cannot tell, Miss. He went off in the crowd. I never see him again.”

So Dorothy had to be content with the information she had. As a matter
of fact, she was more than satisfied. She was jubilant.

Not only had her suspicions concerning Joe’s intention proved correct,
but now she had some definite clue to work on. No more suspense, no more
delay. They would take the very next train to Dugonne.

Dorothy’s heart bounded with relief—and another feeling. For at Desert
City she would see Garry again. And it would be good to see Garry!

“Well, you have gone and done it this time,” Tavia greeted her
jubilantly. “I am here to tell the world you are some sleuth, Dorothy
Dale. You certainly have brought home the bacon.”

“Tavia, such slang!” cried Dorothy, but she almost sang the words. “I
wish you could sing my praises in more ladylike terms.”

“You should worry as long as they get sung!” retorted the light-hearted
Tavia. “I suppose Dugonne is our next stop,” she added, looking at
Dorothy with dancing eyes.

“The Blenheim,” corrected Dorothy, with a shake of her head. “We must at
least take time to get our grips and pay the hotel bill.”

“Thus is adventure always spoiled by such sordid things,” sighed Tavia.
“But if we must we must.”

Upon reaching the hotel they checked out immediately and, by consulting
a time-table, found that they could get a train for Dugonne in half an
hour.

“Here’s luck,” said Tavia. “No painful waiting around while you wonder
what to do.”

“We do seem to be running in luck to-day,” replied Dorothy. “I have an
absurd desire to knock wood every few minutes for fear it will desert
us,” she admitted.

“The wood?” giggled Tavia.

“The luck, you silly,” retorted Dorothy, adding with a significant
glance at Tavia’s head under the saucy small hat: “And I wouldn’t have
to look very far for the wood at that!”

“You can be cruel when you wish, Doro. Though no one would guess it to
look at you.”

The train started on time and they found to their further joy that it
was possible even at this last moment to engage berths in the Pullman.

They found themselves comfortably settled, their baggage stowed away,
and the train on its way in a miraculously short time.

“Thank goodness we managed to avoid saying a fond farewell to your
friend Stanley Blake and his companion.”

“My friend, indeed!” Dorothy retorted indignantly. “I’d like to know how
you get that way, Tavia Travers!”

“Such terrible slang,” murmured Tavia incorrigibly.

“Who was it, I would like to know, who encouraged those two, anyway—I
mean at first?”

“Well, you ought to be grateful to me,” returned Tavia, opening her big
eyes. “If I hadn’t encouraged them, as you call it, we might never have
found out their deep dark secret. Then where would your precious Garry
be, I’d like to know?”

Dorothy threw up her hands and gave in.

“No use. You are absolutely hopeless,” she cried, and Tavia grinned
wickedly.

“Have some candy?” she asked, extending the box she had been thoughtful
enough to buy at the station, hoping thus to change the subject. And she
was successful, for who can find fault with a person when benefiting by
her generosity?

“I feel as though I should have sent a telegram to Garry, warning him of
Joe’s descent upon him,” Dorothy said, after awhile. “It would be rather
a shock if Joe walked in on him unannounced.”

“But then if Joe doesn’t appear per schedule Garry would be worried and
so would you,” Tavia pointed out. “No, Doro dear, I think you have done
wisely to let well enough alone. It seems to me we have done all we can
do for the present.”

Almost before they knew it came the second call for lunch, and the girls
rose to go to the dining car.

They had to pass through several cars to reach the diner, and at the
next to the last Tavia stopped short, almost upsetting Dorothy, who
followed close behind her.

“Dorothy!” she said in a queer voice. “Do you see what I see?”




                              CHAPTER XVII
                         SOME RASCALS REAPPEAR


Dorothy’s eyes followed the direction of Tavia’s momentarily petrified
stare and she suddenly and sharply drew in her breath. There seated side
by side with their heads close together were Stanley Blake and the small
black-eyed man whom he had called Gibbons.

Dorothy felt extremely uncomfortable, but she retained her presence of
mind sufficiently to urge Tavia to go on as quickly as possible.

Tavia was quick to take the hint and, pretending they did not see the
two men and hoping that the latter would not notice them, they hurried
by. With relief they found themselves a moment later safe and
unrecognized in the dining car.

There was a short line of passengers awaiting admission to the tables
and Dorothy was greatly relieved when she and Tavia were finally
beckoned to places at the front of the car.

Facing each other across the table, their eyes spoke volumes but their
tongues were tied by the fact that they were not alone at the table, at
which were already eating two men in loud, checked suits and flashy
neckties.

Dorothy, facing the door of the dining car, watched it constantly in
apprehension lest the two men appear. Tavia, watching the direction of
her glance, understood her thought and spoke reassuringly.

“I don’t imagine there is any danger of meeting them here now, Doro,”
she said. “You remember they were always the first in the dining car on
the way out and probably their habits haven’t changed much since then.”

Dorothy nodded.

“Lucky for us we waited until the second call,” she said.

After that they spoke only of trivial things until the two men at their
table, traveling salesmen, by their conversation, got up and lumbered
fatly off.

Tavia found herself wondering with an inward chuckle why men who
indulged a passion for checked suits almost invariably were fat.

An anxious question from Dorothy brought her back to consideration of
the immediate problem confronting them.

“Do you think they are going to Desert City?” asked Dorothy in a voice
so low it could hardly be heard above the pounding of the train.

“I shouldn’t wonder if that were their destination, Doro mia,” agreed
Tavia reluctantly. “Having mentioned Garry’s ranch and being now bound
in the general direction of Colorado and Desert City, it seems only fair
to assume that their destination is more or less identical with ours.”

“If I could only find out what they are up to!” cried Dorothy, adding,
as her pretty mouth set itself firmly: “And I intend to find out, too,
before I get through with those rascals.”

“I have a shorter and uglier word for them,” said Tavia. Then she leaned
across the table toward her chum and asked with interest: “This begins
to sound thrilling, Doro, do you mind telling an old friend—if not a
trusted one—when and how you intend to start in the business of mind
reading?”

“I am sure I don’t know!” admitted Dorothy, as she stared absently at
her practically untouched plate. “It is one thing to determine on an
action and quite another to carry it out.”

“There speaks great wisdom,” gibed Tavia, in good-natured raillery,
adding with genuine concern as her eyes also focused upon Dorothy’s
plate of untouched food: “But why don’t you eat, Doro? One must, you
know, to live——”

Quite suddenly Dorothy’s eyes filled with tears and her lip quivered.
Tavia looked astonished and alarmed.

“Now what have I done?” she cried. “If I said anything——”

“Oh, it isn’t you,” Dorothy interrupted. “I was thinking of Joe.” She
stared across at her chum with tragic eyes. “Tavia, have you stopped to
think how Joe is going to—to—eat?”

“Why, with his mouth I—” Tavia began in her usual flippant tone, then
stopped short, staring at her chum.

“One doesn’t eat these days unless he pays for what he gets,” said
Dorothy bitterly.

“And Joe spent his last cent for railroad fare,” Tavia said, in a small
voice.

“Exactly,” retorted Dorothy. She gave a comprehensive sweep of her hand
toward the tempting contents of her plate. “Then with that thought in
mind, do you wonder that food chokes me?”

“Poor Doro!” said Tavia softly. “You surely have more than your share of
trouble just now. But you had better eat, dear,” she added very gently.
“It won’t do Joe any good for you to starve yourself, you know. You are
going to need all your strength for the business of finding the poor
foolish lad.”

Dorothy, practical and sensible as always, saw the wisdom of this and
forced down about half of her lunch and hastily swallowed a glass of
milk.

“I hate to go through that car again,” she confided to her chum, when
there was no further excuse for lingering.

“So do I,” confessed Tavia. “However, I think the waiter is of a
mercenary turn of mind. He hovereth over the check like a hungry hawk.”

“Your description is picturesque, if a trifle strained,” murmured
Dorothy, as she motioned to the waiter and took out her pocketbook.
“Your imagination does terrible things to you, Tavia.”

But in her heart she was mutely grateful that Tavia had been created as
she was with an unquenchable sense of humor and scant reverence for
solemn things. To her, trouble was merely a cloud before the sun that
would presently pass and leave the day brighter than ever. And one had
the feeling that if the sun did not come out quickly enough to suit her,
Tavia would find a way to hurry it!

On the way through their car Tavia was quick to notice that Dorothy made
no attempt to avoid the gaze of the two men; in fact, seemed rather to
court it. Tavia had a moment of intense admiration for her chum’s
ability as an actress. She would never have suspected it of Dorothy, the
sensible, practical and straightforward.

The handsome eyes of Stanley Blake discovered them immediately and he
rose with what should have been flattering alacrity.

Tavia noticed that his pleasure was for Dorothy and knew what she had
suspected from the beginning, that her chum had been the real object of
his admiration.

Gibbons did not seem quite so pleased to see them. Tavia noticed that
his eyes had narrowed in a surly and suspicious manner.

Dorothy answered quite sweetly and pleasantly Blake’s interested
questions concerning the number of their reservation, and after a moment
of light and amiable conversation, the two girls passed on, leaving the
men to stare after them, one with admiration, the other with suspicion.

“Well, now you’ve gone and done it,” said Tavia, looking at her chum
with dancing eyes when they regained their seat. “You couldn’t possibly
snub our gay fellow travelers after that lusciously friendly greeting.”

“I don’t want to—just yet,” returned Dorothy significantly.

At the next station the train stopped for a few minutes to take on coal
and water and Dorothy took this opportunity to send a second telegram to
Garry.

In this she told him of the presence of the two men on the same train
with her and Tavia and their probable destination.

She told him also of her anxiety concerning Joe and begged him to watch
out for the lad, saying that he had undoubtedly gone out to join him,
Garry, at Desert City by way of Dugonne.

Somehow, after sending this telegram, she felt easier in her mind
concerning Joe. Provided that the lad reached Dugonne in safety Garry
could be depended upon to _keep_ him in safety until she could get to
him.

As the train moved on again, Tavia settled back in her seat contentedly
and regarded the flying landscape with dreamy anticipation.

In her own mind Tavia had decided that Joe was either already safe with
Garry or soon would be, and she was preparing to enjoy the rest of the
trip.

“It will be great to see Desert City and a ranch again,” she said,
putting some of her thoughts into words for Dorothy’s benefit. “I wonder
if it will all look the same as it did when we left it, Doro.”

“A great deal better, probably,” said Dorothy, rousing herself from a
troubled reverie. “With Lost River to solve the irrigation problem all
the ranchland in the vicinity of our ranch and Garry’s should have
benefited a great deal. I shouldn’t wonder if we should see some
wonderful changes, Tavia.”

“I reckon that mining gang were sore when they couldn’t get Lost River
for their own schemes,” chuckled Tavia. “Do you remember Philo Marsh?”

“Do I remember him!” repeated Dorothy, with a shiver. “You might better
ask me if I can ever forget him!”

“Oh, well, he wasn’t so bad,” said Tavia, still chuckling. “He certainly
kept our vacation from being a dull one.”

The girls were recalling incidents of their first memorable trip to
Desert City and the Hardin ranch. The ranch had been willed jointly to
Major Dale and Dorothy’s Aunt Winnie White by Colonel Hardin, an old
friend of the Major’s.

It had been Colonel Hardin’s wish that Lost River, a stream which had
its origin on the Hardin ranch and which, after flowing for a short
distance above ground, disappeared abruptly into the earth and continued
for some distance underground, be diverted for the good of the farm- and
ranchlands in the vicinity.

An influential group of miners represented secretly by a lawyer of shady
reputation, the Philo Marsh spoken of by Tavia, had nursed quite
different plans in connection with Lost River. They needed the stream in
their mining operations and were determined to get it.

The Major and Mrs. White, however, were quite as determined to act
according to the wishes of Colonel Hardin. They successfully combated
more than one attempt by the mine owners to get possession of the river,
but it remained for the young folks, Dorothy, Tavia and the two White
boys and a young Mexican girl on the ranch, to outwit the final plot of
the unscrupulous men.

Lost River had consequently gone to the ranchlands in the vicinity as
Colonel Hardin had wished and there had followed a period of rare
contentment and prosperity for the farmers.

Garry Knapp’s land adjoined the Hardin estate and had been left to the
young Westerner by the will of his uncle, Terry Knapp.

The latter was an irascible, though kind-hearted, old fellow who had
quarreled with his nephew on a point of ethics and had promptly
disinherited him. Consequently, Garry was very much surprised and
affected to find that his Uncle Terry had repented of his harshness and
on his death bed had left the old Knapp ranch to him.

Naturally, Garry had benefited, as had his neighbors, by the diversion
of Lost River and there had seemed until lately nothing in the path of
his ambition to raise the finest wheat crop in all that productive
country.

Of course Garry had had enemies, Dorothy knew that. There were those who
envied him his good fortune and who would willingly have taken the Knapp
ranch away from him.

With the help of Bob Douglas, Terry’s foreman while he lived and now as
devotedly Garry’s, the young ranchman had been able to laugh at these
attempts.

But now it looked to Dorothy as though something more serious than ever
was afoot to rob Garry of the fruits of victory, and she was anxious.

“Wake up, Doro darling,” she heard Tavia hiss excitedly. “The villains
approach. Now is your opportunity to prove yourself a great melodramatic
actress if not worse.”




                             CHAPTER XVIII
                             PLAYING A PART


Dorothy braced up mentally and prepared for the encounter.

Stanley Blake was coming toward them down the aisle with Gibbons
following close at his heels like a squat little tug in the wake of a
graceful steamboat.

Tavia’s eyes danced as she watched them. She was evidently prepared to
enjoy herself thoroughly. To see her outspoken Dorothy Dale play a part
was a novelty and a most amusing one.

“Like going to a play, only lots better,” was her unspoken thought. “For
this, Tavia Travers, is real drama. True to life, if not truer.”

But Dorothy was in quite a different mood. It was hard for her to act a
part and she hated it. If she were forced to do such a thing for any one
but Garry——

She closed here eyes for a moment and thought hard of Garry. When she
opened them she looked straight into the handsome eyes of “Cal,” _alias_
Stanley Blake, and smiled sweetly.

The latter was armed with two huge candy boxes and Dorothy accepted one
of these while she longed to throw it to the floor. She decided hastily
that she would get rid of it as soon as the men had returned to their
own car.

It was easy to see that Tavia had no such scruples. She had already
untied the violet ribbon that surrounded a box of an equally
violet—Tavia afterwards pronounced it “violent”—hue, and, with smiling
hospitality, was passing it around.

They talked for a while about impersonal things until Dorothy managed
deftly and with apparent inadvertence to insert the information that she
and her chum were bound for Desert City.

Stanley Blake immediately showed great pleasure, imparting the
information that, by a strange coincidence, his destination also was
Desert City.

It was the unpleasant-faced Gibbons that inquired with apparent
guilelessness whether they had friends at Desert City, and it was here
also that Dorothy displayed tact and discretion.

She responded with the truth about her pursuit of Joe and went into
details with such candor—as, indeed, why should she not, seeing that she
was telling the truth, even if it was not all the truth?—that even the
inclined-to-be-skeptical Gibbons seemed impressed.

It ended in their assuring her of their personal aid in the search for
her lost brother. Dorothy thanked them and in a few minutes they took
their leave, Blake being fairly dragged along by the insistent Gibbons.

Tavia guessed that the mind of the last-named gentleman was concentrated
upon the dining car from which could momentarily be expected the first
call to dinner, and in this guess she came very near the truth.

“Well done, Doro!” Tavia exclaimed as her chum leaned back wearily in a
corner of her seat. “You pulled the wool over their eyes with rare
skill. The next thing you know our handsome Cal will be baring his
secret thoughts to you.”

“Not while that other fellow, Gibbons, is around,” said Dorothy
ruefully. “He hasn’t much brains, but he has more than Stanley Blake, or
whatever his real name is. Didn’t you notice once or twice how Gibbons
caught Blake up when he was about to divulge some secret?”

“Did I notice?” repeated Tavia reproachfully. “My dear, do you think I
was born yesterday? And now,” she added gleefully, “you have given me an
inkling why I was thrust into this cruel world, Doro Dale. I believe I
was born for this moment!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Impossible to avoid it, my dear,” retorted Tavia. “Now listen while I
unfold to you my part in this drama.”

And so it came to pass that an ugly-faced individual named Gibbons came
to the conclusion that he was irresistible to the fair sex, or at least
to one representative member of it named Tavia Travers.

He was bewildered and fascinated, albeit still faintly suspicious. But
his vanity was touched, and that is fatal to a man—especially to a man
of the Gibbons stamp. Before they arrived at Dugonne the next day he was
completely enslaved and suspicion had been almost completely lulled to
rest.

As Tavia herself later confided to Dorothy, she had seldom, if ever,
worked so hard in her life, for Gibbons was not the type of man a girl
naturally takes to, especially a girl of discrimination like Tavia.

“Now, your part was the easy one,” she added, at which Dorothy looked at
her pityingly.

“If you think so, you should have tried it!” was all she said. However,
the fact remains that, in spite of all their efforts, the girls found
out very little concerning the plot involving Garry at which in the
hotel dining room these men had hinted.

Dorothy, though spending many hours in the society of Stanley Blake,
never dared to lead directly up to the subject and the man avoided all
reference to his present business in Desert City with a skill that was
baffling.

Only once under the stimulus of a good meal and Dorothy’s smiles did he
become talkative.

“There are some young fellows out here in the West who expect to make a
fortune when they really haven’t got the least idea how to go about it,”
he began, and paused, looking over at Dorothy.

The girl said nothing, but evidently he found her silence encouraging
for his mood became more expansive as he warmed up to his discourse.

“They expect to strike gold the first thing, or raise a spanking crop of
wheat without having, you might say, a bit of experience. Serves their
conceit right when some of them get left.”

“Do many of them get left?” asked Dorothy softly, hoping that her face
expressed the right degree of indifference.

“A right smart lot of them do, I reckon,” he responded, with a chuckle.
“I know one young fellow right now who’s due for a large, hard fall if
he don’t keep his eyes pretty spry about him.”

Dorothy started nervously and covered her slip by reaching for a
chocolate from Tavia’s candy box. Tavia, by the way, was at that moment
sparkling for the benefit of a bewildered but appreciative Gibbons on
the observation platform.

Dorothy hoped Tavia would continue to sparkle for a few moments more.
She felt that she was on the verge of a real discovery.

So she asked, disguising her eagerness behind a yawn of apparently
complete boredom:

“Is this young fellow you speak of a miner or is he trying to get rich
raising wheat?”

“Trying! Trying is right!” snorted the other, and Dorothy surprised an
extremely ugly look in his eyes. “Why, he isn’t sure he even owns the
land for his wheat to grow on!”

“The title not clear?” asked the girl, in a quiet voice.

“Sometimes titles have flaws in ’em, sometimes it’s old men’s wills that
are not clear,” answered the fellow absently.

Dorothy uttered a startled exclamation and the man glanced at her
swiftly. Perhaps it was the look in her eyes or some latent stirrings of
caution, but at any rate he changed the subject, speaking aimlessly of
the weather.

“Looks like we are running into a rain storm,” he remarked, adding,
idly: “Good thing for wheat, anyway.”

Dorothy knew that there was no chance of learning anything further
concerning Garry and, as they were rapidly reaching Dugonne, the nearest
station to the Hardin ranch, she felt that her opportunity was almost at
an end.

At any rate, she had found out one thing.

“I wonder,” she thought wearily as Blake left her and sauntered in the
direction of the smoking car, “if there can be any truth in what he
hinted. But of course there can’t be. Garry ought to know whether he
owns his ranch or not. Oh, how I hate that Stanley Blake!”




                              CHAPTER XIX
                             AN OLD FRIEND


Later Dorothy related the details of this conversation to Tavia, and
even that sanguine one could find little of use in it.

“It seems to leave us just about where we were before,” she commented.
“Never mind, honey, we shall soon be in Desert City, and, once on the
ground, I reckon we’ll find ourselves in possession of more unpleasant
facts than we need or want.”

“How comforting you are,” complained Dorothy, as she turned restlessly
in the velvet-covered seat. “I am horribly nervous, Tavia. Suppose Joe
hasn’t reached Desert City! Suppose he took the wrong train or
something! So many things may happen to a boy traveling all alone.
Remember, he didn’t even have money to buy himself food!”

“Now you stop worrying, Doro Doodlekins.” Tavia’s arms had circled her
chum in a comforting embrace. “If that telegram has reached Garry, as of
course it has, I’ll guarantee he has Joe as safe as a bug in a rug by
this time.”

A little sound broke from Dorothy that was more sob than laugh, but she
tried to turn it into a laugh as she answered Tavia’s reassurance with a
wistful:

“That does sound wonderful, Tavia. If it is only true!”

“Of course it’s true. Did you ever know me to tell a fib?” retorted
Tavia, and wished in her heart that she was as certain as her words
sounded.

Then came their arrival at Dugonne and the embarrassment and indecision
of the two girls as to just how they were to get rid of their two
acquaintances now that they had reached their destination.

“I imagine we won’t have to worry about it much,” Dorothy remarked
shrewdly. “When they find that our destination is the Hardin ranch and
that I am engaged to Garry Knapp whose property adjoins the Hardin
ranch, they probably will keep their distance from us.”

“That’s all right after they learn,” assented Tavia. “What I was
worrying about was the meantime.”

As it happened, they were spared the embarrassment of sending Blake and
Gibbons about their business by the sudden and unexpected appearance at
the station of an old friend of theirs, or rather, of Tavia’s.

The girls had descended to the platform hoping that, since Blake and
Gibbons were almost at the other end of the train, they would be able to
get away before the men came up to them.

Dorothy searched with eager eyes the faces of those who had gathered to
meet the train, expecting confidently to see Garry.

Had she not wired him of her impending arrival and of the very time of
her arrival? And of course Garry would be there, eagerly looking for
her, as she was for him.

But Garry was not there. Dorothy realized this with incredulity. Garry
was not there!

Then suddenly her incredulity was engulfed by a terrible apprehension.
If Garry was not there, there could be only one reason. Garry could not
come! Something had happened to him!

“Well, that young Knapp fellow seems to be conspicuous by his absence,”
Tavia observed flippantly. “Guess we’d better get a bus, Doro, and ride
up to the Hardin ranch in style. Horrors, here come those awful men!”

Dorothy gave a quick glance up the platform and saw that Blake and
Gibbons were bearing rapidly down upon them. Something must be done
right away. They couldn’t stand there gaping like Eastern “tenderfoots.”

It was at this critical moment that Tavia discovered her old friend.

“Lance! Lance Petterby!” she called, literally dragging Dorothy along by
the hand to the far end of the station where stood a dilapidated Ford
car. “Well, if this isn’t the greatest luck ever!”

The broad-hatted young fellow behind the wheel of the battered car
looked bewildered for a moment. Then he smiled broadly and, with a
sweeping gesture, removed his sombrero.

The next moment he had leaped to the ground, his tanned, good-looking
face alight with smiles.

“Well, if it ain’t Miss Tavia and Miss Dorothy!” he cried. “Jerusha
Juniper, but it’s good to see you both!”

The familiar exclamation brought a smile from both the girls, for it was
the phrase with which Lance greeted every emergency of his life.

“What can I do for you?” asked Lance, as he looked about at the
fast-diminishing throng around the station. “No one to meet you, eh?” He
was surprised, for he had heard of Garry Knapp’s engagement to Dorothy.

“Not a soul,” agreed Tavia. Lance stepped aside and she saw with
embarrassment that he was not alone in his ancient equipage. “Oh,” she
cried, “we didn’t know you had any one with you.”

“’Tain’t no one, only my wife,” said Lance, with a fond possessive
smile. “Ladies, meet Mrs. Petterby, and a finer, prettier wife you
wouldn’t meet nowheres.”

The plump young person thus described smiled genially and the girls saw
that she was very pretty indeed and of the type generally described as
“wholesome.”

“Lance is always ridiculous, but most so when describin’ me,” she said,
in a pleasant drawl. “Do be still, Octavia Susan!”

Tavia started, and was very much taken aback until she saw that this
remark was not addressed to her but to the small infant in the arms of
Susan Petterby.

Lance immediately captured the infant, bringing it forward for closer
inspection by the laughing girls.

Octavia Susan Petterby was a pretty little thing, resembling closely her
blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked mother.

“My godchild!” exclaimed Tavia dramatically. She stretched out her arms,
intending to clasp the baby in a warm embrace, that seeming the right
and proper thing to do with one’s godchild. But she got no further than
the gesture, for Octavia Susan suddenly shut her eyes and opened her
mouth and let out a wail that would have daunted a more phlegmatic
person than Tavia.

Even Lance seemed to be slightly apprehensive, for he restored the
infant to its mother’s arms with marked alacrity.

“She doesn’t like me!” cried Tavia, in mock chagrin, adding, with a
chuckle: “I don’t believe she even knows I’m her godmother.”

“There’s a heap she’s got to learn yet, Miss Tavia,” Lance agreed, with
a grin. “And probably that’s one of them. But say, Miss Dale,” he added,
turning to Dorothy, “I suppose you are hankerin’ to get out to the
Hardin ranch. If you don’t mind hittin’ the high spots in the old
flivver, me and the wife will have you out there in a jiffy. Funny
nobody came to meet you,” he added, as the girls accepted with thanks
and climbed into the tonneau of the car.

The reiteration irritated Dorothy and she was about to reply rather
sharply when she thought suddenly of the two men, Blake and Gibbons, who
had been hurrying to meet them when Tavia spied Lance Petterby and his
car.

Her quick glance scanned the platform, but she saw they had gone. Seeing
her and Tavia with Lance, they had probably thought it advisable to go
away quickly.

“By the way, Miss Dale,” Lance asked in his drawling tones, “I meant to
ask you when I first saw you. Was you lookin’ for your brother Joe?”




                               CHAPTER XX
                           REAL NEWS AT LAST


“Was you lookin’ for your brother Joe?”

For the moment the casualness of that question robbed Dorothy of her
power of speech. It was Tavia who answered for her.

“Looking for him!” she repeated. “I should say we were! Half across the
continent, and no luck yet.”

“Have you seen him, Lance?” Dorothy’s voice was breathless and pleading
and Lance had turned in his seat to look at her as he drove the Ford
over the bumpy road.

“I certainly did! And he wasn’t keepin’ no good company, either.” There
was hearty disapproval in the last part of this observation, but Dorothy
was too interested in the first part to notice.

“Did he look well, Lance?” she cried.

“Well, as to that, I can’t hardly say,” returned the cowboy, with
maddening deliberation. “Seein’ as I didn’t see him ’cept in passin’, as
you might say.”

“Where was he going?” cried Dorothy, almost frantic with suspense. “At
least you can tell me that, can’t you?”

“Don’t be so slow and palaverin’,” Susan Petterby adjured her husband.
“You can be the most aggravatin’ person when you wants to, Lance
Petterby. Takin’ so long to think and puttin’ a body off so. Can’t you
see the young lady is worried nigh to death?”

“Guess that’s so, though you’re always the one for seein’ things, Sue,”
said Lance penitently. “Your brother Joe was going to Garry Knapp’s
ranch when I saw him, Miss Dale.”

“Oh, then everything is all right,” cried Dorothy, with a great sigh of
relief. “Once he gets to Garry all my worries will be over.”

“Yes, if we was only sure he got where he was goin’,” said Lance
gloomily, adding hastily in response to his wife’s sharp nudge in the
ribs: “Though it’s more than likely he got there all right, anyway.”

In spite of his clumsy attempt to cover a slip of the tongue, the
mischief had been done. Fear leaped into Dorothy’s heart again as she
said quietly:

“Please tell me what you meant by that, Lance. Please don’t try to keep
anything from me.”

“Well,” complied Lance reluctantly, always keeping an eye on his plump
and pretty wife, “I sure don’t mean to scare you, Miss Dorothy, because,
as I said before, everything is probably all right. But the lad was in
company with a fellow that ain’t no friend of Garry’s, nor yet of any
decent man’s in these parts. You may be sure I didn’t trust him, and
when I heard who the lad was I did my best to get him to go with me.”

“And he wouldn’t?” interposed Dorothy swiftly and in surprise.

Lance shook his head.

“Larrimer—that’s the man he was with—didn’t give him much chance.
Whisked him off almost before I had finished speakin’. Ain’t got no
manners, that guy ain’t.” He chuckled reminiscently, but Dorothy was
very far from seeing any joke in what he had said.

“But I don’t understand, Lance,” she said, bewildered. “Why was my
brother—why was Joe in the company of this man?”

“Picked him up, probably, Miss Dale,” returned Lance, his voice
softening to a tone of sympathy. “The boy was probably hungry——”

“Probably he was!” Dorothy interrupted, with a half sob.

“When I first saw them they was comin’ out of Hicks’ chop house and the
lad was wipin’ his mouth on his handkerchief. After that your brother
Joe probably thought Larrimer was a mighty slick feller—which he is,”
the cowboy added, with another of his slow chuckles.

“Who is Larrimer, if you don’t mind relieving our curiosity?” asked
Tavia who, up to this time, had been too interested in the conversation
to join it. “You needn’t keep all your jokes to yourself, Lance.”

“He ain’t no joke, Larrimer ain’t,” retorted Lance, suddenly grim. “He’s
the meanest guy that ever busted an honest broncho. Yes, ma’am, Larrimer
is worse than the plague, him and his swell pals, Stiffbold and
Lightly.”

“Stiffbold and Lightly,” repeated Dorothy thoughtfully, then added, with
another swift rush of apprehension. “Oh, those are the two men who have
been making so much trouble for Garry. After his land—and everything.”

“You said it, Miss Dale. His land and everything,” returned Lance, his
tone still grim. “First they was all for tryin’ to prove that Garry
ain’t got no land—which was about the same as tellin’ Garry he ain’t
been born. Then, when all the law sharpers they got on their string
couldn’t prove nothin’ to nobody’s satisfaction—’ceptin’ maybe
Larrimer’s—they tried drivin’ Garry to sell.”

“Oh!” gasped Dorothy. “As if he would!”

“That’s just it, Miss Dale,” agreed Lance Petterby approvingly. “Garry
would just as likely sell his right arm off’n him as to part with any of
his land. And after that they tried different tactics, and I must say
for them that they’ve been pretty thorough—haven’t left one little stone
unturned, as you might say.”

Susan Petterby again nudged her husband as though to tell him he had
gone far enough. But Dorothy’s insistence was not to be denied.

“What did they do, Lance? Please tell me. I will find out from Garry,
anyway, when I see him. So you might as well.”

“Well, I ain’t no diplomat,” said Lance ruefully. “What with Sue here
cavin’ in my ribs every time I open my mouth and with Miss Dale
clamorin’ for information——”

“Please let him tell me, Mrs. Petterby,” coaxed Dorothy, while Tavia
giggled delightedly. “I’ve known all along that Garry was having a good
deal of trouble—he told me that himself. So really, you see, Lance is
only filling in the details.”

“Well, when he gets to talkin’ there generally ain’t no stoppin’ him,”
the young wife warned amiably. “But as long as you don’t mind——”

Lance took advantage of this permission to launch immediately into a
rambling account of the unremitting persecution Garry Knapp had suffered
ever since he came into possession of his Uncle Terry Knapp’s property.

When he had finished Dorothy’s cheeks were hot and in her heart was a
tremendous indignation. And the thought of Joe in company with the
despicable Larrimer was maddening.

“How did you know Joe was going to Garry’s ranch when you met him with
Larrimer?” she asked suddenly.

“The lad told me himself,” said Lance. “And when he did, Larrimer gave
him a look that was as full of p’ison as a rattlesnake’s bite. Only he
took great care the boy didn’t see it.”

“But if you knew Joe was in danger, why didn’t you take him away—why
didn’t you make that horrible man give him up?” cried Dorothy, half wild
with anxiety. “Then you could have taken him to Garry yourself.”

“I didn’t know he was in danger, Miss Dale. I was only guessin’,” the
Westerner reminded her gently. “And probably my guess was dead wrong at
that. Probably Larrimer didn’t have no intention to do nothin’ but what
he said. It’s dollars to doughnuts your brother Joe is safe and snug at
the Knapp ranch this minute.”

“And that’s the reason I didn’t want you to go fillin’ her head with
unpleasant thoughts, Lance Petterby,” said Sue, with a vehemence that
was rather startling coming from so placid and amiable a person. “I do
believe you like to be scarin’ people.”

“Now, you ain’t got no call to talk thataway, little hon,” Lance
complained gently. “I ain’t never scared you none, have I? Always been
kind and gentle, ain’t I?”

“That all depends on what you call kind and gentle,” retorted young Mrs.
Petterby, but the girls saw that her eyes were very soft as she looked
at Lance.

Tavia’s young namesake chose that moment to let out a pathetic wail and
Tavia reached out her arms impulsively.

“Do let me take her,” she begged. “You must be tired carrying her so
far, and I really don’t believe she will hate me so much if she takes a
longer look.”

The young woman surrendered her burden with obvious relief.

“She’s a right bouncin’ young un,” she sighed, but there was a world of
pride beneath the complaint. “You would think she was nigh on a year old
instead of only a few months.”

The infant almost immediately surrendered to her godmother’s
blandishments and in no time at all the two were the best of chums.

Dorothy tried to take an interest in the baby, but she could not keep
her anxious thoughts from Garry and Joe.

Had Joe reached the Knapp ranch in safety? Why had not Garry come to
meet the train? What influence had that man Larrimer over Joe?

“Lance,” she said, suddenly, “did you see those two men at the
station—the two who got off the train at the same time Tavia and I did?”

“The tall guy and the little feller?” queried Lance. “You just better
believe I did. Those two was what me and Sue was lookin’ for. We had
advance information that they was due on this train, but we had a
hankerin’ to make sure.”

“Who are they?” asked Dorothy, while Tavia stopped playing with Octavia
Susan to listen.




                              CHAPTER XXI
                             TWO SCOUNDRELS


“Who? Them?” asked Lance, in apparent surprise at the question. “Why,
the names of those two rogues is mighty unpopular words round this
section. Reckoned you knew who they was. They was the two I been tellin’
you about—pals of Larrimer’s.”

“Not——” began Dorothy.

Lance nodded, jerking the little car to the middle of the road as they
bounced over a particularly uneven spot in the trail that threatened to
send them into a ditch by the roadside.

“Stiffbold and Lightly. You got them right the first time, ma’am.”

“Oh, isn’t this perfectly thrilling?” cried Tavia delightedly. “At every
turn in the road the plot thickens!”

“But they told us their names were Blake and Gibbons!” cried Dorothy,
leaning forward in her seat while Lance, crouched behind the wheel,
turned half-way around the better to hear her.

This position undoubtedly imperiled the safety of the car and its
passengers. It also greatly alarmed the plump and rosy Mrs. Petterby,
who had not yet outgrown her fear of the car nor developed the absolute
faith in her husband’s ability to “drive with one hand and the other
tied behind him” that Lance declared he deserved.

However, she kept silent, merely gripping the edge of the seat with two
plump hands and praying for the best.

“Very likely they did, Miss Dorothy,” returned Lance, in response to
Dorothy’s declaration that, aboard the train, the names of her traveling
companions had been given as Blake and Gibbons. “Reckon they have a
different set of names for every town they stay in. I imagine their
moves are many and devious and they are not always keen on havin’ them
followed up.”

“I wonder what they were doing in Chicago,” said Dorothy, speaking her
thought aloud. At her words Lance immediately, as Tavia described it,
“pricked up his ears.”

“Oh, then they was in Chicago?” he said, whistling softly. “Kind of glad
to know that, all things considered. Ain’t no other information you’d
like to give me, is there, ma’am?”

Whereupon Dorothy immediately launched into a detailed account of their
meeting with the two men and of the startling, though unsatisfactory,
conversation which she and Tavia had accidentally overheard in the
dining room of the Chicago hotel.

Lance evinced great interest, especially in the fact that Garry’s name
had been mentioned.

“Why should these scoundrels especially pick on Garry?” asked Tavia
suddenly. “Isn’t there anybody besides Garry around here that has
something they want?”

“There ain’t nobody around here that has something that they don’t want
to get it away from them, Miss Tavia,” rejoined Lance, with his grim
chuckle.

“Then why must they pick on Garry? More than the rest, I mean?”
persisted Tavia.

Lance shrugged his shoulders eloquently.

“Because Garry Knapp happens to have the largest and most succulent
wheat land anywhere around here,” he said. “Lightly and Stiffbold and
those fellers believe in hookin’ the big fish first. Then they can come
after us little ones.”

“Do you think Garry is in any real danger?” asked Dorothy slowly. “Any
personal danger, I mean?”

Lance shook his head emphatically.

“Now don’t you go worryin’ about that, at all, Miss Dorothy,” he said.
“These fellers are sneakin’ and mean. But that’s just it—they ain’t
out-an’-outers. They always tries to play just within the law, or as
near to the edge of it as they can. That’s why they haven’t been caught
long ago and sent to jail like they deserve. There ain’t never been
anything that you could really hang on them—any proof, if you get what I
mean.

“No, they wouldn’t dare do nothin’ to Garry except pester the life out
of the lad in hopes he’ll be glad to sell. If they try any dirty
work—well, Garry Knapp has plenty of friends to punish the offenders!”

“I know that,” said Dorothy softly. Then she added, in a sudden rush of
feeling for this crude and ingenuous young ranchman with the big heart
and devoted attachment to Garry: “And Garry—and I—Lance, appreciate your
friendship.”

“Oh, I ain’t the only friend he’s got, not by a long shot,” protested
the young fellow, embarrassed, as always in the presence of any genuine
emotion. “We’re watching those sharpers, you can bet.”

“With the eyes of a hawk,” murmured Tavia, and Lance Petterby grinned.

“You always was great at expressin’ things, Miss Tavia,” he said.

“But what I can’t understand,” said Dorothy, as though thinking her
thoughts aloud, “is why Garry did not come to the station.”

She caught the quick glance that Lance flung at her over his shoulder
and could have bitten her tongue out for the admission. Only then did
she realize the extent of the hurt Garry had inflicted by his neglect.

“I was wonderin’ that same thing myself, ma’am,” Lance remarked in his
gentle drawl. “Reckoned you might have forgot to let Garry know which
train you was comin’ on.”

“Maybe he didn’t get your telegram, Doro,” Tavia suggested, shifting the
burden of Miss Octavia Susan Petterby to the other arm. “They do
sometimes do that, you know, in spite of all beliefs to the contrary.
Look at this darling child, Doro,” drawing the white knitted coverlet
down from the dimpled chin of Octavia Susan. “Did you ever see anything
so adorable in your life? She loves her Aunt Tavia, so she do!” she
crooned in baby talk improvised to suit the occasion. “Went to sleep
just like a kitty cat, all curled up in a cunnin’ little ball. Oh, look,
Doro, she’s smiling in her sleep!”

“That means she has the stomach ache,” said the baby’s mother
prosaically. “I’ll have to give her some hot water when I get her home.”

Tavia giggled.

“And I thought she was talking to the angels!” she mourned.

“She won’t talk to no one, let alone angels, for some time to come,”
retorted the severely practical Sue. “And I’d just as lief she wouldn’t,
anyways. Because Ma Petterby says as soon as they begin talkin’ they
begin getting into mischief, too.”

“Oh, how is your mother, Lance?” asked Dorothy, suddenly remembering. “I
have meant to ask you all along but there has been so much to talk
about.”

“She’s fine, thank you, ma’am,” responded Lance, his eyes lighting up as
he spoke of his little old mother. “Ma thinks there ain’t no place like
Colorado now, and she thinks they ain’t no gal like Sue here. Ma just
dotes on Sue.”

“Go long with you,” protested Sue, blushing beneath the fond regard of
her young husband. “You don’t have to tell all the family secrets, do
you?”

“As long as they’s happy ones I don’t see where we got any call to hide
’em,” replied Lance mildly. “Anyways, my two women folks sure do get
along fine.”

“Two women folks,” echoed Tavia, adding, with a wicked glance at
Dorothy: “But how about the third, Lance? I am surprised you haven’t
mentioned her.”

The simple Lance looked mystified.

“Third?” he repeated. “I don’t seem to catch your drift, Miss Tavia.”

“Why, Ophelia. You don’t mean to say you have forgotten Ophelia?” cried
Tavia, and her voice was quite properly shocked.

“Sure enough, I nearly did forget to mention Ophelia,” he drawled. “She
is well and lively, thank you, ma’am, and I know she will be downright
pleased when I tell her you asked about her.”

“I am sure she will,” returned Tavia, her face still grave. “I suppose
she has a place of honor in the Petterby household, and a high chair at
the table?”

“Oh, Tavia, hush,” cried Dorothy in an undertone, thinking that the
flyaway had gone far enough. But both Lance and Sue took the joking in
good part, Sue even objecting energetically that Ma had that little hen
clear spoilt to death; that it would be allowed to sit on the parlor
sofa if it didn’t like best to stay in the barnyard with the other
chickens.

For Ophelia, despite her high-sounding name, was merely a humble fowl
which Ma Petterby had brought up from a motherless chick and had carried
with her from New York to Colorado in a basket made particularly for the
purpose when she had come seeking her “baby,” Lance Petterby.

“Ma would be plumb tickled out of her wits to see you,” said Lance as
the little car bounced into the last stretch of road that separated them
from the Hardin ranch. “Couldn’t we go on a little ways further now
we’re about it and give the little old lady the surprise of her life?”

Although Susan Petterby added her hospitable invitation to his, Dorothy
reluctantly refused, urging as a reason that she dared not delay her
search for her brother.

“Now, don’t you worry, ma’am,” Lance urged as, a few minutes later, the
light car came to a sputtering standstill before the rambling old
structure that had once belonged to Colonel Hardin. “You will find the
lad all right,” he added diffidently, opening the car door for them. “I
could take a canter over to Garry Knapp’s ranch and see if everything’s
all right.”

Dorothy assented gratefully and Tavia reluctantly handed the little warm
bundle that was Octavia Susan over to her mother.

“I’m crazy about her and I am going to see her often,” said Tavia to the
parents of her namesake. “That is,” she added, with the bright smile
that seldom failed to get her what she wanted, “if you won’t mind having
me hanging around a lot.”

The answer of Lance Petterby was prompt and flattering and that of Sue
was hardly less so. For the heart of a mother is very tender where her
offspring are concerned and Tavia had shown a gratifying interest in
Octavia Susan.

“Ma will be tickled to see you,” Lance repeated as he drove off in the
rattly car. “Come over as soon as you can.”

Lance Petterby’s car had hardly disappeared around a turn in the road
when a large, handsome woman appeared at the kitchen door of the house
and, after one hasty glance at the newcomers, wiped her hands on a
kitchen apron and bore down upon them.

“Land sakes!” she cried. “Miss Dorothy Dale and Miss Tavia! You did give
me the surprise of my life, but I’m that glad to see you. Where is Major
Dale, Miss Dorothy?”




                              CHAPTER XXII
                               A SURPRISE


Dorothy had great difficulty in explaining to the kindly woman that her
father not only had not accompanied her and Tavia to Desert City, but
had no intention of doing so.

“But two young girls like you havin’ the courage to travel all this ways
alone!” the woman ejaculated, staring at them as though, in Tavia’s
words, they were “twin animals out of the zoo.” “If that don’t beat
all!”

On the way to the house, and as briefly as possible, Dorothy explained
to the woman—who was Mrs. Hank Ledger, wife of the foreman of the Hardin
ranch—what had brought her to Colorado so unexpectedly.

The woman listened, her handsome head cocked to one side, and
occasionally put in a pertinent question.

“Land sakes! I declare, that’s too bad,” she said, at the conclusion of
Dorothy’s brief recital. “I can’t think what could have possessed the
boy to have done such a thing. But there, that isn’t my business, I
guess. Guess I’d better stir you up a bite to eat. Near starved, ain’t
you?”

The girls were grateful for her good-hearted tact that spared them the
embarrassment of further questioning.

They saw nothing of the little Mexican girl who had formerly helped the
foreman’s wife around the ranch house. In her stead was a rather stolid
country girl who responded to the name of Merry.

“I wonder where Flores is,” said Tavia, when they were in their room for
a quick wash and a change into their riding clothes which they had very
thoughtfully packed in their grips. “It doesn’t seem like the same old
ranch with her missing.”

“We must ask Mrs. Ledger about her when we go down,” said Dorothy
absently, and Tavia, noting her tone, turned thoughtful eyes in her
direction.

“Worrying about Joe, Doro?”

“Do I ever do anything else lately?” retorted Dorothy, with a sigh. “But
I am dreadfully worried about Garry too, Tavia. What Lance told us about
this gang that is out to ‘get him’ is anything but comforting.”

“Suppose you will be stepping over to Garry’s ranch as soon as we get a
bite to eat,” suggested Tavia, and Dorothy nodded.

“If we can be said to step on horseback,” she added.

“Well, the horse steps, doesn’t it?” retorted Tavia, but Dorothy was
again so absorbed in her unhappy thoughts that she did not hear this
weak attempt at humor.

“Tavia,” she cried, at last facing her chum, “why do you suppose Garry
didn’t come to meet the train to-day? I don’t know whether to be
dreadfully angry at him or terribly frightened for him.”

“I don’t believe I would be either until we find out more about him than
we know at present, Doro,” said Tavia gravely. “One thing is certain, we
know Garry well enough to be sure he had a good reason for what he did.”

“The kind of reason we won’t enjoy finding out, maybe,” muttered Dorothy
so softly that Tavia asked for a repetition.

But instead of answering, Dorothy turned toward the door and opened it.

“I am going downstairs and get a piece of bread and butter if there is
nothing else,” she cried. “I can’t stand the suspense any longer. I must
know what has happened to Garry and Joe.”

She was out of the room and down the stairs before Tavia had finished
brushing her hair.

The latter, following more slowly, found her chum seated before a repast
of cold sliced chicken, current jelly, apple pie and milk.

“Make believe this doesn’t look good to me,” said Tavia, and she, too,
sat down to prove her appreciation. Long before she had finished Dorothy
rose and ran outside, calling to one of the Mexican boys to saddle two
fast ponies.

She saw Hank Ledger, who shook hands with her formally, and hastily told
him the story she had told his wife.

When she questioned him eagerly, asking him if he had seen Joe in the
vicinity, he answered in the negative.

“Wherever he’s been, he ain’t come here,” he assured her. “Hurry up with
them ponies, lad,” he called to the swarthy, grinning Mexican boy.
“These here ladies are in a hurry.”

Like his wife, Hank Ledger evidently believed in showing his sympathy in
action rather than in words, and again Dorothy was grateful.

The Mexican appeared presently, leading two splendid ponies from the
corrals which he presented to Dorothy with a white-toothed, cheerful
grin.

“Fastest ponies we got,” he assured her, and Dorothy recognized him as
one of the lads who had been on the ranch during the eventful vacation
she and her chum had spent there. “Nice ones, too. No bite, no kick.
Gentle like kittens.”

Dorothy thanked him with a smile and swung herself to the back of the
little mustang, leading the other toward the house.

“I can send some of the boys over to the Knapp ranch with you, if you
say so, Miss Dale,” Hank Ledger called after her. In surprise Dorothy
checked the pony and looked around at him. His voice had sounded anxious
and his face, now that she saw it, matched his voice.

But anxious about what?

She asked this question aloud, and Hank Ledger’s frown relaxed into a
sheepish grin.

“Folks say that those as look for trouble generally git it,” he answered
enigmatically. “There ain’t no reason for me orderin’ a bodyguard for
you, Miss Dale. Only I’d be mighty glad if you would let one of the boys
go along with you. Your father not bein’ here, I feel sort of
responsible-like.”

Still puzzled, Dorothy thanked him, but refused the bodyguard.

She wondered still more as she approached the house why the phlegmatic
foreman had thought it necessary even to suggest such a thing.

Surely, bandits did not roam the roads in broad daylight!

Was it Stiffbold and Lightly and Larrimer he feared? But what danger was
there to her and Tavia from any of these men?

She thought of Stanley Blake and the little man, Gibbons, who were in
reality Stiffbold and Lightly. They would know soon—probably did
already, for they had seen her and Tavia in conversation with Lance
Petterby—that she and her chum had other interests in Desert City than
the pursuit of a runaway boy.

Stiffbold had even confided in her to some extent concerning his plans.
Would it not be natural then, when he learned, as he must, that she was
engaged to Garry Knapp, for him to include her in any villainous schemes
he might be hatching?

Dorothy felt a thrill of foreboding. She had been so busy worrying about
others that she had never given a thought to her own safety.

But what did it matter? As long as she could feel that Garry and Joe
were safe she would not very much care what happened to herself.

But she must get to Garry. In spite of all the Stiffbolds and Lightlys,
she must get to Garry!

She saw Tavia coming from the house and beckoned to her impatiently.

“You never give a fellow half a chance to eat, Dorothy Dale,” grumbled
Tavia, as she came up to her. “I wanted another piece of apple pie and I
went without it for your sweet sake. You ought to appreciate it—you
really ought.”

“Which I don’t in the least,” snapped Dorothy, at the limit of her
patience. “Are you going to get on this pony’s back or must I go to the
Knapp ranch alone?”

“Well, if I must,” sighed Tavia, and threw her leg over the pony’s
shining back.

Something must have frightened the animal at that particular moment, for
in a flash he flung up his head and dashed off across the fields in the
direction of the corrals, with Tavia clinging wildly to his mane.

Dorothy gasped, touched her pony with her spur, and was off like a flash
in pursuit.

Anything might have happened, but fortunately nothing very serious did.

The young Mexican who had saddled the animals saw the pony coming, swung
to the back of another, and caught the bridle of the running pony as it
passed, dragging it to a quivering standstill.

Tavia shifted to a more secure position in the saddle, felt her hair to
see how greatly it had been disarranged, and, when Dorothy came up, was
smiling winningly at the Mexican.

The latter whispered something in the runaway’s ear, slapped it
chidingly on the flank and turned it gently about till it was headed
toward the roadway once more.

The pony seemed entirely tractable after that, and the two girls
cantered slowly toward the road.

Suddenly Dorothy checked her mount and looked ahead with eager eyes.

“Look Tavia!” she cried. “Some one is coming!”

The rider proved to be Lance Petterby.

He drew up at sight of the two girls and waved his big sombrero at them.

“Been up to Garry’s,” he shouted, as the girls spurred up to him. “Been
away all day. With most of his boys, too. Only an old, fat, half-deaf
feller in charge, and he says Garry don’t aim to be back much before
nightfall.”

The two girls exchanged glances and Dorothy’s face fell.

“You didn’t see anything of my brother Joe about the place, did you,
Lance?” she asked, and the cowboy reluctantly shook his head.

“He warn’t nowheres where I could get a sight of him, Miss Dorothy,” he
said, adding with an obvious attempt at reassurance: “But most likely if
Garry aimed to be away all day he has took the lad with him for safe
keeping.”

“Then, I suppose, there is no use going to Garry’s ranch if no one is at
home,” sighed Dorothy. “I don’t understand it at all. Oh, Lance, what
would you do if you were in my place?”

“I tell you what I’d do, ma’am,” replied Lance Petterby cheerfully. “I’d
come right along home with me, you and Miss Tavia, and see Ma. She’s
mighty much offended that you ain’t looked her up already. It might sort
o’ take your mind off things till Garry gets back.”

“Oh, Dorothy, let’s!” cried Tavia gleefully. “I do so want to see my
namesake, my darling Octavia Susan, again. She is such a perfect pet and
she loves her auntie, so she do.”

Lance grinned and Dorothy’s anxious expression relaxed into a smile.

“Very well,” she said. “Only we must not stay very long, Lance. Garry
may get back sooner than he expects.”

“You can fix that just to suit you, ma’am,” answered Lance obligingly.
“I know how you feel, but I can tell you that if your brother Joe is
with Garry Knapp his troubles and your’n are pretty nigh over.”

“Yes, if he only is with Garry,” Dorothy agreed wistfully.

They started down the dusty road away from the Knapp ranch and Desert
City beyond, heading in the general direction of Dugonne.

They had only gone a short way, however, when Lance turned away from the
road and led them down a trail that wound through the deepest part of
the woodland.

“Talk about the primeval forest!” cried Tavia, in glee. “If this isn’t
it I am a dumbbell. Oh, forgive me, Doro darling. I really didn’t mean
to say that dreadful word. I am about to join the nation-wide movement
for a purer, better English—”

“I feel sorry for the movement then,” said Dorothy wickedly, and Tavia
went through the motions of turning up the collar of her riding coat.

“That was unnecessarily cruel,” complained Tavia. “Before Lance, here,
too! Never mind, I am quite sure he enjoys my slang; don’t you, Lance?”

“You bet I do, Miss Tavia,” agreed Lance, his grin broader than ever. “I
never see you but what I add a few words to my vocabulary. Not that it
needs it none,” he added, with a chuckle.

They rode for a considerable distance through the woods, the ponies
doing excellent work over the rough trail, and presently came to a small
clearing in the center of which sat a tiny cabin that had “home” written
in every line and angle of it.

Lance gave a peculiar whistle that brought both his “women folks”
running to the door.

Yes, Ma Petterby ran, too, in spite of the fact that she was no longer
young and that her old joints were crippled with rheumatism.

She received the girls with literally opened arms and seemed so
genuinely overjoyed to see them that Dorothy was glad she had yielded to
Lance’s suggestion.

The little house was as homelike inside as out, and the girls were shown
through it all by the proud Sue, who had herself brightened and enriched
the unpretentious rooms with pretty needlework and bright cretonnes.

They came back at last to the living room and Octavia Susan, rescued
from a perilous position in her crib, was placed, cooing and gurgling,
in the delighted Tavia’s arms.

Ma Petterby regaled them with all the gossip of the countryside. Then,
when questioned concerning Ophelia, the hen, she told the story of the
little hen’s entry into farmyard society with so much dry humor that the
girls were thrown into gales of merriment.

It was Dorothy who finally suggested that they should be on their way
back to the Hardin ranch.

Lance, who had disappeared to give the “women folks a chance to git real
well acquainted,” was nowhere to be found when the girls were ready to
go, and both Ma Petterby and Sue urged the girls to “set and wait” till
Lance got back.

But Dorothy, driven always by her anxiety concerning Joe, felt that she
could not wait any longer. Garry would almost surely be back by this
time and she must get to him at the first possible moment!

Neither of the girls was the least afraid to go back alone. The trail,
though narrow, was clearly marked and they knew that it would be very
easy to return the way they had come.

“But it isn’t safe for two young girls to wander around these woods
alone,” Ma Petterby protested. “Lance would be terrible put out if he
was to think I’d permit it. He’ll most likely be back before you get
around that curve yonder.”

“What did you mean when you said it wasn’t safe in the woods?” asked
Tavia, in her eyes the joyful gleam that the prospect of danger and
excitement always brought to them. “Any lions or ‘tagers’ or such-like
beasts loose, do you suppose?”

But Ma Petterby did not return Tavia’s smile. She remained unusually
grave and the face of Sue reflected that gravity.

“No lions or tigers that I knows on,” she replied. “But they’s been a
panther hauntin’ these woods of late.”

“A panther! How gorgeous!” cried the irrepressible. “I have always
wanted to meet one, Mrs. Petterby.”

“Panthers aren’t likely to attack without provocation, are they?” asked
Dorothy, and this time it was Sue who answered.

“Most animals—wild animals, that is—would rather slink off without
making a fuss unless they’re cornered and have to fight,” she said. But
after a momentary pause she went on with a grim tightening of her mouth
that made her suddenly look like a man: “But there are some of ’em that
are just naturally mean an’ that likes to kill for the sake o’ killin’.
This panther’s one o’ that kind.”

“Better wait inside for Lance,” urged Ma Petterby again. “Under the
circumstances, he wouldn’t like for us to let you go.”

But the girls persisted, pointing out that it was better for them to go
then than to wait until evening should fill the woods with shadowy
lurking places.

For once Tavia agreed with Dorothy and seconded her. Not that she was
particularly anxious concerning Joe, for she had long since decided in
her own mind that he was safe with Garry, but that mention of the
panther had roused her curiosity and interest and made her doubly eager
to start on the trail again.

The two girls turned to wave to Susan Petterby with little Octavia Susan
in her arms and to Ma Petterby just before a sharp bend in the trail hid
the small cabin from view.

“Cute little place they have,” remarked Tavia, as she played idly with
her pony’s mane. “How happy they are and how comfortable, and how simple
that sort of life is, Doro. Just think, no bother about money, no worry
about what you are going to eat for the next meal—just go out and kill a
chicken if you are hungry——”

“Not Ophelia!” said Dorothy.

“Not Ophelia, of course,” returned Tavia gravely. “That would never do.
But, honestly, I think it must be fun to live that way.”

Dorothy gave her a curious glance.

“Yes, you do!” she gibed. “I can see you living in that atmosphere just
about one week, Tavia Travers, before you’d die from boredom. Excitement
is your meat, my dear. Without it, you must starve.”

“How well you have read my nature,” said Tavia, with a sigh. “However,
there is apt to be excitement enough if you can believe Ma Petterby and
Sue,” she added, with a giggle. “How about that man-eating panther they
were telling about?”

“That may not be so much of a joke as you seem to think it,” retorted
Dorothy, with a nervous glance over her shoulder. “I’ve heard Garry say
that panthers are often seen in this part of the world.”

“Maybe; but I bet I’d never have the luck to see one,” retorted Tavia
dubiously, and Dorothy added a fervent:

“I certainly hope not!”

They had gone some distance along the trail when Tavia announced that
she was a little stiff from riding and would rest herself by walking and
leading her pony a little way.

“Good idea!” returned Dorothy, also dismounting with relief. “It takes a
little time to become accustomed to horseback after you’ve been out of
the saddle for a while. Whoa, now! What’s the matter?”

This last remark was addressed to the horse, who had snorted and reared
suddenly. His ears lay flat against his head and his eyes were distended
with some nameless terror.

At the same moment Tavia’s pony showed symptoms of fright and danced
nervously off the trail, being brought back to it only by persistent
persuasion on Tavia’s part.

“Now, what on earth ails the beasts?” said Tavia, in exasperation.
“Stand still there, will you? Do you want me to think you have St.
Vitus’ dance?”

“Something scared them—” began Dorothy.

“Oh, you don’t say!” Tavia’s retort was sharp and sarcastic, for the
action of the ponies had alarmed her more than she cared to admit. “I
could almost believe that without being told.”

Dorothy took no notice of the acid in Tavia’s tone, but continued to
soothe her frightened pony.

After a moment of petting and coaxing he consented to go on again, but
his ears moved nervously and he walked daintily as though the rough
ground of the trail were a carpet of eggs.

Tavia conquered her pony also, but as they went on again she was
conscious of a nameless dread creeping over her.

Had she really heard something back there in the shadows of the woodland
or had it been only an oversensitive imagination?

It was ridiculous to connect Ma Petterby’s story of the panther with
this suspicion. That miserable little pony had given her nerves a jolt,
that was all.

She glanced at Dorothy to see if she shared her uneasiness, but aside
from a frown of concentration Dorothy displayed no anxiety. She was
still talking to her pony and stroking his shining coat.

“I won’t look back into those woods. I won’t!” declared Tavia, and
immediately did that very thing.

She shivered and started violently. Something had slunk behind the
trees—something that padded on stealthy feet!

Tavia had caught but a glimpse of that shadowy bulk, but it had been
enough to crystallize her fears. She wanted to cry out to Dorothy, to
shout her a warning of the danger that threatened them. But she was
afraid to raise her voice above a whisper, fearing that any sudden noise
might precipitate a tragedy.

Dorothy, leading her pony gingerly a few steps behind Tavia, was
blissfully unaware of any danger. And the worst of it was that Tavia
herself could not be sure.

What was it that she had sensed slinking among the trees? She had seen
something, but whether it was man or beast it was almost impossible to
say.

The panther? That prowling, sinister beast? But it could not be!
Panthers did not stalk their prey so long and patiently.

Again, against her will, she stole another glance into the shadows of
the woods and glimpsed again that lurking form keeping always within the
shelter of the trees.

There could be no doubt this time! This was no human being that followed
them, but some great beast of the forest.

Perhaps it was not stalking them with the desire to attack. Perhaps, as
she had read often of the wild inhabitants of the forest, it was
following them out of curiosity. Sometimes, she recollected, trappers
and hunters had been forced to endure this sinister, silent
companionship for considerable distances until the beast tired and left
them for more interesting company.

But she shuddered at the thought that the animal, with the instinct of
its kind, might soon realize that they were unprotected—had not even a
gun between them. Then——

If she had only dared to pause long enough to mount her pony—to urge
Dorothy to do so—they might still have a chance of escape. The ponies
were swift and used to the broken trail. They might outstrip their
pursuer or baffle it perhaps by the noise and confusion of their flight.

But she dared not pause, even for an instant. Dared call no warning to
Dorothy which would almost certainly precipitate an attack by that
lurking antagonist.

She cast another glance over her shoulder and felt her heart jump
sickeningly as she saw the panther had gained upon them.

It was a panther. She could see the long slim body, not so bulky as the
lion or tiger but almost as large, weaving its way, snake-like, through
the dense foliage, jewel-like eyes greedily sinister, tail fairly
touching the ground.

Dorothy intercepted that look of horror and cried out in fright.

“What is it, Tavia? Did you see something? Did you—” her voice trailed
off into silence, for she also had seen.

The face she turned back to the watching Tavia was drawn and white with
terror. She said nothing, but quickened her pace by slow degrees until
she was close behind Tavia on the narrow trail. The ponies now were
dancing in terror, trying to break away.

“What are we going to do?”

Tavia asked the question more by the motion of her lips than in spoken
words, for she, like Dorothy, felt it almost impossible to break that
intense, waiting stillness.

Dorothy made a gesture pleading for silence, at the same time it urged
Tavia to a little faster pace. It was plain that Dorothy, like her chum,
had decided that their one chance lay in their ability to ignore the
beast. By pretending not to notice him, they might gain time, might
baffle him temporarily. The road could not be far distant!

There was a sound, slight in itself, but breaking upon that silence with
a horrible significance, the sound of a cracking twig.

The creature was becoming bolder, was creeping up upon them!

The girls longed to cry out, to scream for help, yet could not utter a
sound.

It was like a nightmare, this steady approach of the implacable beast.
Their limbs felt suddenly paralyzed. They had a horrible sensation that
they could not have run had they wanted to.

They were going faster, however. Without realizing it they had increased
their pace till they were almost running. Probably it was that that gave
the stalking beast confidence. His victims were afraid! The two ponies
resisted the efforts of the girls to hold them and broke away, bolting
down the trail.

A swift, terrified glance behind her told Dorothy that the panther had
advanced to within twenty paces of them. In another moment he would be
crouching for the spring.

Dorothy called suddenly to her chum in a queer, high voice.

“Stop, Tavia! Stay where you are. I—I’m going to sing!”

“Sing!” For a moment Tavia could only stare in a paralysis of fright and
consternation. Dorothy must have gone mad! Terror had turned her mind!

Dorothy had taken a stand, had faced the crouching beast. She opened her
mouth and began to sing, tremulously, quaveringly, at first, in a
cracked, thin voice that chilled the very marrow of Tavia’s bones.

But the beast had halted, uncertain, baffled, had crouched close to the
ground, baleful eyes fixed suspiciously upon Dorothy, tail angrily
switching the ground.

Emboldened, Dorothy sang on, her voice gaining strength and confidence
as she saw the effect of her ruse. Tavia, standing still in the trail,
mouth agape, watched as though hypnotized.

But it was the panther that was really hypnotized. Here was something he
could not understand and which, consequently, disturbed and baffled him.
No one had ever sung to him before, and he was instinctively afraid of
the thing of which he had had no experience.

Gradually Dorothy and Tavia came to realize that the panther would not
attack while Dorothy continued to sing. But how long could she keep it
up? That was the question.

The cords of her throat were already aching with the strain, her voice
was becoming thin and weak. She could not sing on forever. And when she
stopped—what then?

Her voice broke, died away for a moment.

The great beast so close to them stirred, glared ferociously, moved
toward them.

Dorothy began to sing again, and Tavia, suddenly ashamed of her silent
part in the drama, began to sing too.

Her voice sounded queer to her and she had to labor over each note, but
with relief they noticed that the beast relaxed again, ceased the
nervous switching of its tail.

The two girls kept up the singing for what seemed to their overwrought
nerves an eternity of terror, and gradually they came to the realization
that their voices were failing.

The great beast realized it, too. He was becoming nervous, uneasy,
lustful. Inch by inch he was creeping forward, inch by inch!

Suddenly Tavia’s voice faltered—stopped.

“I can’t go on, Doro!” she whispered, hysterically. “I can’t—I can’t——”

With a snarl the great beast sprang forward, ears flat to his head,
great paws extended!

A shot rang out and the panther fell, clawed desperately at the air in a
curiously impotent gesture, lay still!

The two girls, clinging to each other, saw Lance Petterby come out of
the shadows, smoking gun in hand.




                             CHAPTER XXIII
                               GONE AGAIN


It was decided by the girls and Lance Petterby that they would tell no
one of their perilous adventure. Dorothy and Tavia were deeply grateful
to Lance, who had followed them as soon as he had learned that they had
left his cabin, and had, by so doing, undoubtedly saved their lives. At
the same time, they were very anxious that no one outside of their
little trio should know of the incident.

Lance, after catching and bringing back to them the two frightened
ponies, escaped bashfully from the repeated expressions of gratitude of
the girls, left them at the Hardin ranch with the declaration that he
would ride straight to Garry’s “diggings” and, provided that he had
returned, would send him directly to them.

It was only a short time after that that Dorothy, still astride her
little Mexican pony, espied a rider in the distance.

“Seems to be in a big hurry, too,” said Tavia, as her eyes followed the
direction of Dorothy’s pointing finger. “I wonder where the fire is.”

“Tavia!” Dorothy’s tone was sharp with excitement. “I think it is—why, I
believe it is Garry!”

“Looks like a cloud of dust to me,” scoffed Tavia. “In your case, I
think, the wish is father to the thought, Doro mia.”

“Well, let’s wait here and see who it is, anyway,” urged Dorothy. She
noted the fact that Tavia looked at her curiously. “At the rate he is
going I would hate to get in his way,” she added. Dorothy was of no mind
to tell her chum of Hank Ledger’s mysterious behavior or of her own
apprehension in regard to Stiffbold and Lightly.

They waited at the edge of the road for the horseman to come up. As the
dust cloud cleared away and they could see him more plainly, Dorothy
cried out with joy and urged her pony forward.

Tavia stared for a moment and then followed at a slow canter.

By the time she reached them, Garry’s gray, dust-covered mare and
Dorothy’s little pony were close together. As for the riders, Tavia
could not immediately tell which was which!

“Don’t mind me!” she laughed. “If I am too entirely out of the picture,
just let me know and I will take myself hence.”

Dorothy put aside the iron grip of Garry’s arms and her pony reared
uneasily. Garry caught its bridle, drew the little mustang up against
his gray mare, and looked at Dorothy as though he were ready to begin
all over again.

“Garry—don’t!” she gasped. “Don’t you—can’t you—see that Tavia is here?”

“He doesn’t,” sighed Tavia. “But I forgive him even that.”

Garry laughed and urged the gray mare across the road. He held out his
hand and Tavia grasped it forgivingly.

“Sorry I didn’t see you right away,” apologized Garry. “You see,” with
an ardent glance in Dorothy’s direction, “my vision was momentarily
obscured.”

“Not momentarily—perpetually when Dorothy is around, Garry, my lad,”
scoffed Tavia. “I’ve watched you when you weren’t looking.”

“Horrors! What spying wench is this?” cried Garry and, looking at
Dorothy, saw that her face had suddenly become grave.

“Garry,” she asked, “why weren’t you at the train to meet us?”

“Well, listen to that!” cried Garry looking at his fiancée helplessly.
“How could I meet a train when I hadn’t the remotest idea you had taken
one!”

“Then you didn’t know we were coming?” cried Dorothy. “You never got my
telegram saying when I was coming?”

“Of course not, dear girl,” said Garry gravely, as he took her pony’s
bridle and led it gently from the road and back up the graveled drive
that led to the Hardin ranch house. “Do you suppose for a minute that if
I had known you were coming out here I wouldn’t have been cooling my
heels at the station an hour ahead of time?”

“Of course, I supposed that,” admitted Dorothy, turning her eyes away
from the look in Garry’s. “But I can’t understand why my telegram didn’t
reach you.”

“I got one telegram from you,” said Garry. He looked around as though to
make sure that no one was near them and said in an instinctively lowered
tone: “You said something about overhearing some plot or other in which
the conspirators hoped to land me one with a good large brick. Such
plots as those are no novelty in my young life,” he added grimly. “But I
appreciate the warning, coming from a little brick.”

“But, Garry,” Dorothy’s voice was tremulous and in her eyes was a
haunting fear, “there is one thing I want to ask you. I’ve been hoping
you would tell, because I didn’t want to ask you. I was afraid to ask
you. Garry, have you seen Joe?”

Garry’s face darkened and he pulled his horse to a standstill before the
ranch house. Dorothy drew in her rein also and sat tensely watching him.

“I have seen Joe—yes,” replied Garry slowly, showing a sudden burst of
emotion. “And I wish to heaven I could let the story rest there!”

Dorothy grasped his arm wildly, imploring him.

“What do you mean, Garry? Tell me what do you mean! Oh, don’t you see
I’ve got to know?”

“There is so little I can tell you, dear girl,” said Garry gravely. “I
saw him. He came to me, half-starved and wild-eyed with an incoherent
story about breaking away from a man who was trying to take him off into
the mountains——”

“Larrimer!” gasped Dorothy, white-faced.

Garry nodded.

“Certainly Larrimer, judging from Joe’s description and Lance Petterby’s
story of having seen the lad in the company of that villain.”

“But, Garry—what next?” Dorothy was conscious that Garry was holding her
hand in a tight grip and she clung to him desperately. “There is
something else!”

“Yes,” said Garry simply. “This morning Joe disappeared.”

He put his arm about Dorothy, for she had reeled in her saddle and her
face was so white it frightened him.

“Let me take you into the house, Dorothy,” he urged. “Mrs. Ledger will
fix you up.”

But at the suggestion Dorothy seemed to gain strength.

“No, no!” she cried. “I am all right. Let me do what I must. Please,
please, Garry.”

“What is it you want to do, dear?” asked Garry gently.

“Go after Joe—now—this minute! He cannot have got far away if he only
disappeared this morning, Garry!” She paused and regarded him intently.
“Do you think it is possible Joe might have run away again of his own
accord?”

“I certainly do not,” returned Garry vehemently. “And if you had seen
the poor lad when he stumbled on to my preserves, you wouldn’t even have
to ask that question. Why, he was almost tearful in his gratitude at
being safe again, and I am quite sure nothing could have made him leave
the place of his own accord. He had no reason to fear me.”

“Then you think he was taken—kidnapped?” asked Dorothy slowly.

Garry nodded, his pitying eyes on her face.

“I wish I could have spared you all this, my dear,” he said. “My men and
I have been out scouring the hills ever since we discovered the lad’s
disappearance. I had just come back to the ranch to see if there had
been any developments there when Lance Petterby came along and told me
you girls were here on the ranch. Of course I then spurred right on
here.”

“But who would do such a thing?” cried Dorothy pitifully. “What motive
could any one possibly have in tormenting my poor Joe?”

“I don’t know,” replied the young Westerner grimly, “unless it was some
of Larrimer’s crowd hoping through him to get at me. If that’s their
scheme I will pretty quickly show them where they get off! Caught Philo
Marsh hanging around the place, and I pretty near kicked him over the
fence.”

“Philo Marsh!” cried Tavia, who had listened in silent sympathy to
Garry’s revelations concerning Joe. “Is he still around here?”

“He is!” said Garry shortly. “Wherever the smoke is thickest and the
trouble hottest, there you may expect to find Mr. Philo Marsh.”

“Same evil, old bird of prey, too, no doubt!” exclaimed Tavia.

“Do you think he was the one who kidnapped Joe?” asked Dorothy. She was
strangely quiet now. But in her burned a determination that grew
stronger with each moment. “Have you any reason to suspect him more than
the others?”

“None whatever except that I happened to see him just before Joe
disappeared. Philo Marsh is pretty closely connected with Larrimer and
those other arch-knaves, Stiffbold and Lightly, just now; but of course
it might have been any of the others.”

“What did you mean just now by saying that they might hope to strike at
you through Joe?” asked Dorothy slowly, as though she were painstakingly
trying to reason things out for herself. “I didn’t quite understand you,
Garry.”

“That is only because you do not know my enemies, dear,” returned Garry.
“Those fellows have done everything in their power to run me off my
land. The longer I thwart them, the more determined they get. They are
trying to force me to sell out for a song, sign my lands over to them.”

“But you won’t?” cried Dorothy.

“I guess not!” Garry’s eyes kindled and his fist clenched. “But it is
possible that in this move—this kidnapping of the boy—they may hope to
force me to something that they never could otherwise.”

“You mean,” said Dorothy slowly, “that if you agree to sign over your
land to them at a ridiculous price they will release Joe?”

Garry nodded.

“And if you don’t agree?”

Garry’s face paled. Then he turned to Dorothy, caught her hands in his,
gripping them fiercely.

“I promise you, Dorothy, that they shall never hurt Joe!”




                              CHAPTER XXIV
                            A WASTED BULLET


Then Dorothy did an astonishing thing—for her. She leaned over and
kissed Garry with such an air of faith and trust that Tavia turned away.
She had a horrible suspicion that she was going to cry.

But the sudden appearance of Hank Ledger and others of the ranch hands
saved Tavia from that fate.

After one long look at Dorothy, in which she could read many things,
Garry turned to the newcomers. He rapidly went over the details of Joe’s
disappearance and enlisted their aid in carrying out a more thorough
search than had yet been made.

Dorothy thrilled when she saw how ready they all were to back him up.
But Garry knew that it was not only for him or for Dorothy or for Joe
that they so readily promised their help, although he had reason to
believe that they were all friends of his, but because they one and all
hated Larrimer and his gang with a deadly hatred and welcomed the chance
to even up some old scores.

There was one young “broncho buster,” a strapping lad in his early
twenties, who testified to having seen a boy and two men riding toward
the mountains.

Garry whirled on him swiftly.

“Who were these two men?” he demanded.

The young fellow shook his head sadly.

“I sure would give a barrel of money to be able to honestly tell you
that, boss,” he answered. “I tried to get up to them, but they was goin’
all-fired fast and when they saw me they continued on the way they was
goin’, only about three times as fast.”

“Why didn’t you all try a bullet on him, Steve?” drawled one of his
mates as he slouched in the saddle, hat drawn low over a pair of fiery
blue eyes. “That there might have added an element of persuasion, so to
speak.”

“Yes, that there’s just what I did,” the youngster responded sadly. “And
wasted a good bullet on a couple o’ rattlesnakes. Even at that distance
I was middlin’ sure I recognized ’em.”

“Well, speak out, man,” commanded Garry sharply. “We’re in a hurry. Who
were they, to your thinking?”

“Near’s I could make out they was Philo Marsh and Stiffbold, boss,”
returned the lad, and a muttering like the rumble of thunder in the
distance came from the little knot of men. “Philo tries to ride his
horse’s head and bounces in the saddle like a tenderfoot. I couldn’t be
so sure about Stiffbold, but I was sure enough to waste a good bullet on
him.”

“Well, let’s go!” cried Garry, wheeling his horse so suddenly that it
reared and bucked alarmingly. “With the information you have been able
to give us, Steve, we ought to be able to find these fellows without
much difficulty. We will be back before long, Dorothy, and the next time
you see us we will have Joe along. Promise not to worry!”

Dorothy looked at him in swift alarm.

“You don’t mean that you intend to go without me and Tavia!” she cried,
still incredulous, though he nodded decisively in answer. “Why, Garry,
you can’t! We can’t stay here alone, thinking, wondering!”

“But this is a man’s job, Dorothy,” Garry explained gently. “You would
only hamper us and hold us back in the search for Joe. You don’t want to
do that, do you?”

Dorothy turned away, her lip quivering. Garry took her hand and gripped
it fiercely for a moment. Then turned to his men and nodded.

“Let’s go!” he called again, and there was an answering shout,
triumphant and fierce, as the others closed in after him and galloped
down the road in a cloud of dust.

The two girls remained quiet until the clatter of hoofs had died away in
the distance, Dorothy, trying to fight the bitter disappointment that
burned within her, Tavia staring thoughtfully after the cavalcade.

The latter finally looked at Dorothy, a quizzical and sympathetic smile
playing about the corners of her mouth.

“Come on, Doro, don’t take it so much to heart,” she urged, adding
judicially: “Of course you know Garry is right—really—although it isn’t
very pleasant to be told that you will be in the way.”

“I shouldn’t be in the way. He doesn’t know me yet,” said Dorothy, in a
stifled voice. “And I wanted to go with him, to look for Joe.”

“Of course you did, you poor dear,” said Tavia sympathetically. Then she
added, as a daring gleam crept into her pretty eyes: “And I don’t know
that Garry ought to have everything to say about it, at that!”

Dorothy turned quickly toward her. A hot flush rose to her face.

“What do you mean?” she demanded.

“Oh, Doro, you know well enough what I mean. Why pretend you don’t?” By
this time Tavia’s eyes were frankly dancing. “Since when, I ask you,
have we come to the point where we may be ordered about by any man?”

“You mean,” cried Dorothy breathlessly, “that you suggest that we
organize a search party of two?”

“Who said I was suggesting anything?” protested Tavia impishly. “I can’t
open my mouth but what my words are misconstrued.”

“Misconstrued, your grandmother!” retorted Dorothy rudely, at which
Tavia chuckled in great delight. “I haven’t lived with you all my life,
Tavia—more or less—without being pretty sure what you mean, as a rule.
Are you coming or must I go alone?”

“Well, of all the nerve!” crowed Tavia in huge delight, as she spurred
her mount down the road in the wake of Dorothy’s mettlesome pony. “I’ll
say there is nothing slow about Dorothy these days—or Garry either. This
promises to be a real interesting party.”

“I say, Dorothy,” she called, as she urged her pony neck and neck with
Dorothy’s galloping mount, “we ought to work out some plan of attack,
you know. We really ought. We’ll probably just be rushing into trouble
this way.”

With difficulty Dorothy drew her pony to a walk and regarded her chum
thoughtfully.

“I don’t know how we can make any plans when we haven’t the slightest
idea what we are going to do next,” she said.

“We know just as much as Garry,” Tavia retorted. “That good-looking
cowboy—Steve, did Garry call him—said that the two men and the boy
disappeared in that direction,” and she swept an arm toward the
mountains rising majestically before them. “Look!” she cried suddenly,
leaning from the saddle and gripping Dorothy’s arm. “Do you see those
two tall peaks with the smaller one between? If we keep our eye on that
formation we can’t go far wrong.”

“But we shall lose sight of your church spires as soon as we enter the
woods,” objected Dorothy, and Tavia’s face fell.

“That’s right,” she admitted. “You’re a better man than I am, Dorothy
Dale. Oh, but I’ll tell you what,” she added, on the crest of another
illumining thought. “There’s a trail—the one we used to follow when we
were here before, don’t you remember? I am very sure that winds through
the woods in the general direction Steve pointed out. It probably is the
very one the kidnappers used when they spirited Joe away,” she added
triumphantly.

“I wish you wouldn’t call them kidnappers, Tavia,” Dorothy objected
nervously. “It sounds so horrid.”

“Well, I could think of a good many worse things to call Philo Marsh and
your gallant friend, Stiffbold,” retorted Tavia. “Doro—I do believe—why,
yes, here is the trail right here!”

Tavia had checked her horse at the edge of the wood and Dorothy turned
her own pony, riding back to her.

“Looks like a pretty dark and gloomy one to me,” she said, eyeing the
narrow, rocky path through the woods with marked disfavor. “But if it’s
the best you can do, I suppose we might try it.”

“Such is gratitude!” sighed Tavia. “I ought never to expect it.”

“Tavia!” Dorothy was ahead, leading her horse carefully up the narrow
trail that rose steeply as it followed the rise of the mountain. Her
voice, muffled, came back eerily to Tavia as she followed. “I suppose
Aunt Winnie would think we were crazy to do a thing like this.”

“We are,” retorted Tavia, adding with a chuckle: “But as soon as I cease
to be crazy I shall want to die!”

“The Major would understand though,” said Dorothy, still as though
talking to herself. “He would know that I couldn’t stand back and just
wait when Joe was in danger.”

“You bet he would, honey,” said Tavia reassuringly. “You could count on
the Major to understand every time.”

“Do you think we are following the right trail?” Dorothy asked, some
time later.

They had reached a level spot and paused to rest their ponies, and were
looking back the way they had come.

“I don’t know,” returned Tavia, with a thoughtful shake of her head.
“All we can do is to follow the trail as far as it goes, Doro, and hope
for the best. Hark! What’s that?”




                              CHAPTER XXV
                               THE STORM


There came to the girls’ ears the grumbling of thunder, faint at first
but growing louder as it flung itself against the lofty mountains. A
flash of lightning illumined the semi-dusk of the woods.

The ponies pricked up their ears nervously and danced a little,
threatening to unseat their riders. But the girls spoke to them gently
and soothingly and in a moment had them under control again.

“I suppose we ought to go back,” said Dorothy. “You know what storms are
up here. And the ponies don’t like the thunder.”

“So it seems,” said Tavia dryly, adding, as she turned her pony so that
its nose was pointing toward the trail again: “You may go back, if you
like, Dorothy Dale, but I am going on. You are not afraid of a little
storm, are you?”

“Only this doesn’t promise to be a little one,” replied Dorothy shortly.
“But come on. If we keep the ponies on the trail——”

“All may yet be well,” finished Tavia. “Whew—that was a bad one!” she
added, as a terrific crash of thunder flung itself against the
mountainside and retreated, grumbling ominously.

The ponies attempted to stand on their hind legs again but the girls
only urged them on the faster.

The storm was waxing fast and furious now. The wind tore down upon them
in titanic gusts, catching at their breath, whipping twigs and branches
across their faces, fairly blinding them.

Another terrific crash of thunder came, a vicious streak of lightning,
and then the rain!

It did not come slowly in gentle little drops, but burst upon them in
full fury, soaked them to the skin in its first onslaught, enveloped
them in a solid sheet of water.

They struggled on, urging their reluctant ponies up the rocky trail—up
and up, while the trail grew ever steeper, the ground more thickly
strewn with rocks and tree stumps, more impassable.

It seemed to the girls that they were like flies, clinging to the walls
of a precipice.

A hideous crash of thunder, more terrific than any that had preceded it,
broke shatteringly above them and seemed to cause the very ground
beneath their feet to tremble.

Dorothy’s pony, scrambling over a huge boulder in the trail, slipped,
stumbled, caught itself, and then, in fright, reared suddenly backward.

Caught unawares, Dorothy shot from her saddle like a bullet from a gun
and rolled down the steep incline directly beneath the feet of Tavia’s
prancing pony.

The whole thing was so sudden, so horrible, that Tavia could only gasp
in sickening fear.

But it was the gallant beast she rode that saved the life of her chum,
helpless beneath the death-dealing hoofs.

The pony reared, balanced with his forefeet in the air for a moment
while Dorothy’s life hung in the balance. Then, with a terrific effort
and almost human intelligence, he flung himself backward and to one
side.

Even then his forefeet came to earth gently, tentatively, making sure
that they touched only earth and stone. Then he stood quite still,
shivering.

Dorothy lay beneath his body, her arm flung out, her face turned upward
to the sky. She was as still as death and a sinister red spot grew upon
her forehead—grew and widened while two tiny rivulets of blood ran down
her cheek.

For a moment Tavia stared down at her chum as though paralyzed. She
dared not move for fear her action might excite the shivering pony and
cause him to move only the fraction of an inch.

“But I must get down,” she told herself dully, as though in a terrible
dream. “Any minute the pony may move. Anyway—oh, Dorothy! Dorothy!”

Slowly and with infinite care she let herself down from the saddle on
the opposite side from her chum, speaking gently to the pony, patting
his neck, urging him to stand quietly.

But the gallant little beast needed no urging. He knew as well as Tavia
that a human life depended on his ability to remain absolutely still.

Except for the nervous quivering of his muscles he stood like a horse
carved out of rock as Tavia lifted her chum from her perilous position
and laid her gently on the grass beside the trail.

The thunder was more frequent, more deafening in its increasing
nearness. The rain continued to pour down in a great torrential flood.

Tavia’s hair had come down and was clinging soddenly to her face and
neck. She had to push it back before she could look at Dorothy, shake
her, wildly call her by name, beg her sobbingly to open her eyes and
look at her.

The blood was still coming from the cut in Dorothy’s forehead, but aside
from that vivid blotch of color, her face was deadly pale.

Tavia sought for and found a clean handkerchief in the pocket of her
riding coat. With this she sought to staunch the wound. The handkerchief
became red and sodden and still the wound bled freely, sickeningly.

Tavia stumbled to her feet and, with a hand before her eyes to ward off
the twigs and branches that lashed at her face, fought her way back
along the trail toward a spot where they had passed a mountain brook.

She knelt beside the stream, saturated the handkerchief with the almost
ice-cold water, and returned to Dorothy. Several times she made the
trip, until she was bruised and torn and panting.

Finally she had her reward. The blood ceased to flow and, washing away
the last traces of it, Tavia was able to inspect the wound more closely.

To her surprise and intense relief she found that, instead of being on
her forehead, the cut began farther up, on the scalp, just reaching past
the line of the hair.

That then, was the reason it had bled so profusely. A scalp wound is in
appearance usually worse than in reality, sending out wild signals of
distress when there is really very little to be distressed about.

Dorothy had evidently in falling struck upon a pointed stone, gashing
the scalp jaggedly and in such a way that it seemed an ugly wound.

“Might have killed her,” muttered Tavia. “If she would only open her
eyes! Perhaps some water—” But the irony of that suggestion curved her
lips in a wry smile. Foolish to talk of water when nature was supplying
it in bucketfuls, free of charge!

At that moment Dorothy stirred, lifted her hand in an aimless gesture
and made as though to rise.

Tavia put a hand beneath her chum’s head, lifting her a little.

“Take it easy, Doro honey,” she advised gently. “You have had a pretty
hard knock, and it may take a little while for you to remember what
happened. Oh, keep still, will you!” she cried to the elements in
senseless fury as a crash of thunder shook the earth, drowning out her
last words. “Don’t you know it isn’t polite to interrupt a person while
she’s talking? Doro darling,” as Dorothy once more made an effort to
rise, “how are you feeling?”

“All right—I guess,” said Dorothy unsteadily. “I seem a little—dizzy.”

Tavia tried to laugh and made a rather dismal failure of it.

“I should think you might,” she said. “After a fall like that!”

“What happened?” asked Dorothy, sitting up, her hand feeling
instinctively for the painful cut in her head. “I fainted, didn’t I?”

“You surely did, Doro, my love!” responded Tavia, once more herself now
that Dorothy was out of danger. “You fainted good and plenty, and I
don’t mind telling you you gave me the scare of my life.”

“Sorry—but I guess we had better get away from here,” said Dorothy,
still faintly, looking uneasily about her. She clapped her hands to her
ears nervously as another thunder clap broke above their heads. “Help
me, Tavia, please—I feel a little—weak.”

She tried to stumble to her feet, but sank down again with a cry of
alarm.

“Not so fast!” Tavia scolded her. “You lost quite a good deal of blood,
my dear, if you did but know it, and naturally you feel pretty faint.”

“Blood!” echoed Dorothy alarmed. “I had no idea——”

“Only a scalp wound,” Tavia said quickly. “But it bled like sixty. Now,
let’s try it again. That’s the idea. Feel better?”

Dorothy stood, swaying a little on her feet, Tavia’s supporting arm
about her shoulders.

“I guess I don’t remember just what happened, but I guess I must owe my
life to you, Tavia.”

“No, you don’t,” denied Tavia quickly, adding, as she pointed to the
pony standing quietly enough now where she had left it. “There’s the
fellow you ought to thank!”




                              CHAPTER XXVI
                              A GENTLEMAN


Dorothy looked bewildered. Swiftly and with a return of the emotion she
had felt at that time of her chum’s great peril, lending eloquence to
her words, Tavia told Dorothy what had happened.

“That blessed pony knew you were lying there, helpless under his feet,”
she said, “and, like the gentleman and thoroughbred he is, he wasn’t
going to hurt a lady if he could help it. You should have seen him,
Doro, pawing the air to make sure he wasn’t touching you.

“And then when I pulled you out from under him he stood so still you
would have thought he was holding his breath for fear he would move. I
never saw an animal act like that. He was human, Doro!”

Dorothy took an uncertain step toward the little pony, hands
outstretched, and Tavia regarded her curiously.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

There was a curious catch in her voice as Dorothy answered softly:

“I am going to thank—a gentleman.”

She put an arm about the pony’s neck and with her other hand gently
stroked his soft muzzle. And as though he understood what she was trying
to say to him, the little horse nuzzled against her shoulder and
whinnied gently.

Suddenly Tavia thought of the other pony, the one that had so nearly
precipitated Dorothy to her death.

She found him standing on the ledge above them, tossing his head
nervously now and then at some particularly harsh rumble of thunder or
flash of lightning, but making no attempt to stray away.

“Lucky for us they gave us a couple of gentle, domesticated ponies,”
remarked Tavia, as she climbed the trail to bring the pony back to the
spot where Dorothy was standing, her arm still about the neck of the
little horse. “One with a wilder strain in him would have shown us his
heels long since and one of us would have been obliged to walk back.”

Returning with the captured pony slipping and sliding down the trail
behind her, Tavia looked anxiously at her chum.

“Do you think you are strong enough to sit in a saddle, Doro? Because if
you’re not——”

“Oh, I am,” protested Dorothy quickly. “I feel strong enough to do
anything except stay in this awful place, Tavia. Listen to that
thunder!”

“Quite a pretty storm!” Tavia admitted. “Now, Doro dear, if you will let
me help you into the saddle, perhaps we had better start.”

“We are going back though,” asserted Dorothy almost defiantly, and was
relieved when Tavia agreed with her.

It was obvious that with Dorothy in her present condition, they could
gain nothing by going on. The only sensible thing, under the
circumstances, was to return to the safety and comfort of the ranch.
Mrs. Hank Ledger’s kitchen seemed particularly alluring to them just
then!

Tavia helped Dorothy into the saddle—almost lifted her, in fact—and was
more than ever alarmed to see how much the accident had weakened her
chum.

Dorothy was game—game as they come—she told herself loyally. But nothing
could hide the trembling hands and the fact that it required all
Dorothy’s will power, even with Tavia’s help, to climb into the saddle.

It had been tacitly decided that Dorothy should ride Hero—for so she had
dubbed the little horse in appreciation of what he had done—on the
return journey.

But as she turned the pony’s head and looked back over the
sharply-sloping trail up which they had clambered, Dorothy’s heart
misgave her.

The descent would be infinitely more difficult than the ascent had been.
The ponies, though sure-footed and used to the rough mountain trails,
would be in constant danger of slipping on the wet rocks and moss.

Guessing her thoughts, Tavia urged her own pony close to her chum and
stood for a moment beside her, staring down the steep descent.

“Looks pretty bad, doesn’t it?” she said soberly, after a moment. “But I
guess we will have to risk it, Doro. We can’t very well stay where we
are.”

“No, we can’t stay where we are,” repeated Dorothy automatically,
adding, as she pressed her hand, palm out, against her forehead: “But I
am so dizzy, Tavia. When I look down it seems as if the earth rose up to
meet me.”

“Then don’t look down!” cried Tavia sharply, noting with an access of
alarm that Dorothy reeled in the saddle as she spoke. “Look up as much
as you can, Doro, and hold on tight to the pony’s mane if you feel
yourself slipping. Oh, I wish Garry were here!”

Perhaps she had revealed more of her alarm than she had meant to in that
exclamation.

At any rate, Dorothy looked at her queerly, and, with a huge effort of
will, jerked herself upright in the saddle.

“I’m all right, Tavia,” she said courageously. “I’ll keep hold of the
pony’s mane as you said. But, Tavia—you go first!”

Her heart full of misgivings, Tavia urged her pony forward and began the
steep and slippery descent to the road far below.

It seemed for a little while that the elements, having given them a
taste of what they could really do if put to it, had decided to take
mercy on them.

There was a lull in the storm. The rain continued to fall, but more
gently, and the thunder seemed to have spent its fury, retiring into the
distance with muttered and ever decreasing rumblings.

But just as the girls, making slow progress of it and stopping every now
and then to rest and give Dorothy a chance to rally her forces, had
begun to hope that the storm was almost over, it burst upon them again,
more furiously than ever.

Came the rain again and then the wind, bending trees backward before its
onslaught, driving the rain relentlessly into their faces, forcing them
to halt every few paces to pass a hand across their blinded eyes and
peer anxiously along the trail.

“We shall be lost if we don’t look out,” Dorothy panted, during one of
these pauses.

“Look out!” repeated Tavia, with a brief laugh. “Fine chance we have to
look out when we can’t see more than a few feet before our faces. How
are you feeling, Doro—any stronger?”

“Oh, I’m all right,” Dorothy responded. But in spite of the brave
assertion, Tavia knew that she was not all right, that she was fighting
every inch of the way to keep herself erect in the saddle. Despite her
effort to hide it, Tavia saw that she was trembling all over.

“Cold?” she asked, and again Dorothy shook her head, this time almost
impatiently.

“Let’s go on,” she cried. “We must be very near the road by this time.”

But Tavia knew that they were not near the road. In fact, it was not
very long before Tavia made a discovery that startled her. In the sudden
fright that caught at her throat she must have made some sort of an
ejaculation, for Dorothy, reining up beside her, called above the noise
of the storm:

“Did you say anything, Tavia?”

“Nothing, except that we are not on the trail,” retorted Tavia calmly.
“Dorothy, I am very much afraid that we are lost!”




                             CHAPTER XXVII
                             WHAT WAS THAT?


Dorothy stood very quiet for a moment, saying nothing, just staring at
her chum.

Then suddenly she began to laugh—a wild sort of laughter that had tears
in it.

Tavia looked at her sharply, then reached out a hand and gripped her
hard.

“Dorothy, you’ve got to stop that!” she cried. “There isn’t anything to
laugh about—really, you know.”

“That’s why I’m laughing, I guess!” retorted Dorothy.

But she had stopped her untimely mirth and was gazing moodily enough at
the sodden, dreary forest about them.

“We shouldn’t be standing under a tree in a thunder and lightning
storm,” she said absently. “It’s dangerous.”

It was Tavia’s turn to laugh.

“So I’ve heard,” she said. “And if you can tell me any way that we can
avoid it, I’ll be very grateful. Oh, Doro, what’s the use? We are just
stuck, that’s all.”

That fact was so obvious that Dorothy did not take the trouble to answer
it.

“It’s all my fault,” said Tavia after a moment, her voice sounding queer
and remote above the clamor of the storm. “I ought to have looked where
I was going.”

“It isn’t your fault any more than mine,” Dorothy declared. “Anyway,
nobody could look where she was going in this storm.”

“Well, I suppose we might as well go on,” said Tavia, slapping the reins
upon the pony’s sleek and steaming back. “If we have luck we may stumble
on the path.”

“Stumble is right,” said Dorothy wearily, as she urged her reluctant
pony onward. “Oh, if I could only lie down somewhere,” she added, in a
tone that she made sure would not reach Tavia. Then the absurdity of her
wish appealed to her and in spite of the misery and danger of their
predicament, she was forced to laugh at herself.

“So many nice comfortable places around here to lie down in,” she told
herself, sweeping a hand about at the sodden landscape. “Although it
would be hard to be more wet and miserable than we are just now,” she
added.

They wandered on for a long time—they had no conception of just how
long. Finally, because the chill was creeping into their bones and they
felt stiff and cramped in their saddles, they dismounted and stumbled
along on foot, leading their ponies.

At least they would get some exercise and keep the blood stirring in
their veins.

Then at last relief came, or partial relief. The storm at last blew
itself away and the sun—a faltering and late-afternoon sun, but the sun
nevertheless—broke through the heavy clouds.

Tavia was inclined to greet him with loud exclamations of joy, but
Dorothy was too bruised and anxious and miserable of mind and body to
care very much whether the sun shone or not.

They sat down after a while on a couple of rocks that seemed not quite
so wet as the surrounding country to talk things over.

“Garry and the rest of the handsome cowboys must be somewhere in the
neighborhood,” said Tavia, determined to take a cheerful view. “And if
one of them doesn’t stumble upon us Garry is sure to send out a
searching party as soon as he finds we are gone.”

“But he won’t know we are gone till he gets back to the ranch, and that
may be late to-night,” Dorothy pointed out to her, adding with a little
moan: “What will he think of me when he finds what I have done!”

“What we have done,” corrected Tavia. “Anyway, he will be far too glad
to get you back again to scold. You can be sure of that.”

“And Joe! We have done a lot toward finding Joe!” went on Dorothy
bitterly. “Those men could have done anything they liked to him as far
as we are concerned. As trailers we are a brilliant success!”

“We haven’t set the world on fire yet,” Tavia admitted, as she jumped
briskly to her feet. “But there is no use giving up the old ship so
soon. As long as we can’t find our way out of the trackless forest we
might as well make good use of our time and keep on hunting for Joe.”

Dorothy stared at her chum for an instant. Then she also got to her
feet, though stiffly and wearily. She was beginning to be achingly
conscious of numerous bruises she had not known she possessed, of sharp
twinges in her back and arms that made her want to cry aloud with the
stabbing pain.

But if anything could be done, if there was the slightest chance of
finding Joe—though this she doubted—she would not give up.

“You are a confirmed optimist, Tavia honey,” she said. “But I’m glad you
are. You make a mighty-much cheerfuller companion, that way.”

“You said it!” Tavia replied, as they started on slowly, leading the
horses. “Although I must confess that, internally, I am not as cheerful
as I have sometimes been. Something whispers that it has been a long,
long time since I gratified my craving for sustenance.”

“Oh, I don’t believe I can ever eat again!” cried Dorothy.

“You just wait till somebody tries you on a good hot plate of stew or
some good hot vegetable soup,” advised Tavia sagely. “My, what would I
give for a sniff of Mrs. Hank Ledger’s kitchen just now!”

“Oh, don’t! What is the use!” cried Dorothy, and to Tavia’s complete
surprise and dismay she began to cry, not violently, but softly and
pathetically as if she could no longer check the tears.

“Doro darling!” cried Tavia, putting an arm about her chum in instant
sympathy and alarm. “What is the matter? You? Why, you never did this
before!”

“I know it,” replied Dorothy, dabbing at her eyes with a sodden
handkerchief. “But I ache so, Tavia, and I am so frightened about Joe,
and I wish Garry were here. Then, when you spoke of the ranch kitchen,
it was just about the last straw!”

“You might know I would go and put my foot in it!” cried Tavia
penitently and quite at a loss what to do next. “You poor girl. You got
horribly banged up with that fall. If you weren’t the best sport ever
you wouldn’t go on at all. But honestly, Doro, I don’t know what to do.”

“Of course you don’t,” cried Dorothy, trying to smile and succeeding
pretty well, considering. “And I am a goose to act this way——”

She stopped short, a curious expression leaping to her eyes.

What was that she had heard?

Had it been a wail—a cry for help?

Nonsense! In this wilderness?

Again it came, and this time unmistakable.

She clung to Tavia, her face terrible to see in its agony of doubt, of
sudden hope.

“Some one is in trouble!”

Tavia whispered the words as though loth to break the tense silence
between them.

But suddenly Dorothy broke from her, running wildly, blindly through the
woods.

“It’s all right, Joe darling! I’m coming! Dorothy’s coming!”




                             CHAPTER XXVIII
                        A VOICE IN THE MOUNTAIN


Tavia overtook Dorothy, grasped her fiercely by the arm and clapped a
frantic hand upon her mouth.

“Hush, Doro! Are you mad?” she whispered fiercely. “There is something
queer going on here. You must not let any one hear you.”

“But it was Joe!” cried Dorothy, struggling frantically to be free.
“Didn’t you hear? It was Joe’s voice! Let me go, Tavia! Let me go!”

“Not until you can listen to reason,” cried Tavia, and Dorothy suddenly
became quiet, staring at her tensely.

“Oh, you are right—of course you are right,” she said, making a terrible
effort to calm herself. “I was a little mad, I guess. Joe calling for
help. Tavia, we must go to him quickly!”

“Of course we must,” agreed Tavia soothingly. “But it won’t do us any
good to rush in when we don’t know what we may be rushing into. Besides,
how can you be sure that was Joe’s voice?”

“Oh, Tavia, I know! Don’t you suppose I would know his voice anywhere?”

Tavia nodded and scanned the mountain side with puzzled eyes.

“Where do you suppose it came from?” asked Dorothy, her voice lowered to
a whisper. She was beginning to tremble and her teeth chattered
uncontrollably. “It sounded as if——”

“It came from the side of the mountain,” Tavia replied. “I can’t
understand it, but if we go cautiously we probably can solve the
mystery.”

But to “go cautiously” was the last thing Dorothy wanted to do just
then. Usually the cautious one, accustomed to restraining the impetuous
Tavia, now the tables were reversed. Dorothy was the one who could brook
no delay, Tavia the one who counseled caution.

But though Dorothy’s heart urged her to fly to Joe, knowing that he was
in peril, her head whispered that Tavia’s advice was sound—that they
must proceed with infinite caution if they meant to help her brother.

When Tavia said that the sound seemed to come from the side of the
mountain she had meant to be taken literally.

Through the woods and directly in front of them they could see the
mountain where it rose abruptly upward. There was no trail at this
point, for here the mountain was practically unclimbable.

The trail, the one they had lost, zigzagged tortuously this way and that
seeking those sections of the mountain where it was possible for men to
force a pathway.

“We had better tether our ponies here,” Dorothy suggested softly. “If we
take them much farther they are apt to whinny.”

“Excellent idea!” said Tavia, suiting the action to the word. “Now,
we’ll see what is funny about that mountain.”

Silently they crept through the woods, careful to avoid twigs that might
crack under their feet.

Once when Tavia caught her toe in the gnarled root of a tree and fell
full length upon the ground, she lay there for several seconds, afraid
to move while Dorothy stood motionless, her hand touching the trunk of a
tree to steady herself.

Nothing happened, no sound broke the murmurous silence of the woods, and
finally they gained courage to start again.

They had gained some distance when Dorothy stopped, bewildered, and
reached out a hand to Tavia.

“It’s queer we don’t hear any further sound from him,” she said, her
lips close to Tavia’s ear. “I can’t tell which way to go, can you?”

Tavia shook her head and was about to speak when Dorothy raised her hand
imploringly.

She had heard another sound, and they were startlingly close to it.

A man was speaking and although they could not hear the words they could
tell by his tone that they were angry and threatening. And again the
voice seemed to come from the heart of the mountain itself.

“Where in the world _does_ that voice come from?” whispered Tavia. “I
don’t mind telling you, Doro, that it has me scared.”

Dorothy held up her hand again, gesturing for silence. Then, before
Tavia knew what she was up to, Dorothy flung herself face down upon the
ground and with infinite caution made her way, eel-like, toward a huge
rock that jutted out from the mountainside.

Wondering, Tavia followed her example.

Dorothy did not increase her speed even when a sharp cry rang out,
shattering the silence with breath-taking abruptness.

“I won’t do it—you—you—” came a boy’s voice, broken and furious. “You
wouldn’t try to make me do a thing like that if you weren’t a lot of
cowards! You wait till I tell Garry! You just wait!”

“Oh, we’ll wait all right, kid.”

The girls were near enough now to hear the sneering words, although the
tone was still carefully lowered.

The boy tried to answer, but a heavy hand across his mouth strangled the
defiance.

Dorothy had reached the jutting, out-flung rock and had solved the
mystery of the mountain.

For the rock served as a gigantic door, almost blocking up the entrance
of a cave that seemed to extend far into the mountain. From where she
and Tavia had stood when Joe’s desperate cry first reached their ears,
the rock entirely concealed the entrance to the cave.

A most excellent retreat and one admirably adapted to the needs of
Larrimer and his gang!

Tavia crowded close to her side and Dorothy saw that she also had
discovered the answer to the riddle.

With infinite caution Dorothy crept still closer to the entrance of the
cave, peering around the edge of the rock.

The cave was so dark that at first she could see nothing.

Then, as her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, she made out the
figure of a man squatting upon something that looked like an overturned
keg or small barrel. His back was turned squarely to her so that she
could not catch even a profile glimpse of his face.

Then, her eyes searching feverishly, they fell upon an object that very
nearly caused her to forget the need of caution.

Lying huddled upon the floor of the cave, pushed a little further into
the darkness than the man’s figure, was something that appeared to be a
bunch of old clothes. It moved, cried out in misery, and Dorothy knew
that it was Joe.

Every instinct in her prompted her to fly to him, to take him in her
arms and loose the cruel bonds that bound him.

She half rose to her feet. A sound that seemed loud to Tavia, crouching
at her side, but was, in reality, only the shadow of a sound, escaped
her lips.

Tavia immediately drew her down, pressed a warning hand against her
lips.

“Don’t spoil it all now!” she hissed. “Lie still and wait.”

Dorothy nodded mutely and peered round the rock again.

Suddenly she pressed back, pushing Tavia with her behind the shelter of
its huge bulk.

For the man had risen and was moving toward the entrance of the cave.

“So you think you won’t, my hearty,” they heard him say in his heavy,
jeering tone. “Well, I am goin’ to give you just one more chance before
we really begin to put the screws on. This here little letter we want
you to write, my lad, ain’t goin’ to hurt Garry Knapp none.” The
scoundrel condescended to an argumentative tone and Dorothy clinched her
hands fiercely.

“All you have to do is to write him a letter,” the heavy voice went on,
“tellin’ him you will be as free as air as soon as he agrees to sell us
his land—at a fair figure, mind, a very fair figure. You would be doin’
him a favor, really. Think of all that cash right in his hand to-morrow,
say, or the next day at the outside. You would be doin’ him a favor and
savin’ your own skin at the same time. Come now, how about it? Let’s be
sensible.”

Dorothy listened breathlessly for her brother’s answer. She did not
realize how much that answer meant to her till later when she found the
imprint of her fingernails in the palms of her two hands.

“Say, I can’t tell you what I think of you—I don’t know words that are
bad enough!” cried Joe furiously. “But I know you’re a—a—bum—and I’ll
get even with you for this some day.”

“Some day—mebbe,” the man sneered. “But in the meantime this place ain’t
goin’ to be any bed of roses for you, my lad. You gotta think of that,
you know.”

“I don’t care, as long as I play fair with Garry,” muttered the boy.
“I—I—don’t care what—what you do with me.”

But Dorothy knew that, despite all his bravado, Joe was only a boy and
he did care. And even while her heart ached with pity, it thrilled with
pride at the thought that he had stood the test, had proved himself a
thoroughbred. He would “play fair” with Garry, no matter what happened.

She shrank back suddenly as Joe’s tormentor brushed the rock that
guarded the entrance of the cave and disappeared into the woods.

“Now, Tavia!” she whispered tensely. “Now!”




                              CHAPTER XXIX
                           THE DASTARDLY PLOT


The two girls waited to make sure there was no one else in the cave
besides Joe, listened until the sounds made by his captor crashing
through the underbrush had died away.

Then Dorothy ran to him, sank to her knees beside him, laughed and cried
over him as she lifted his head and held it tight against her.

“Joe, Joe! why did you run away? We’ve been nearly crazy, dear! No, no,
don’t cry, Joe darling! It’s all right. Your Dorothy is here. Nothing,
nothing will ever hurt you again.”

Her arms tightened about him fiercely and the boy sobbed, great, tearing
sobs that he was ashamed of but could not control.

The storm lasted only a minute, and then he said gruffly, big-boy
fashion, to hide his weakness:

“I—you oughtn’t to come near me, Dot. I—I’ve done an awful thing and got
myself into a heap of trouble!”

“Never mind about that now, dear,” cried Dorothy, suddenly recalled to
the peril of their situation. “We’ve got to get you away before that
dreadful man comes back.”

“He went off to fetch the others,” said Joe, growing suddenly eager and
hopeful now that rescue seemed near. “They are going to do something
awful to me because I wouldn’t——”

“Yes, yes, Joe, I know. But now be quiet,” cried Dorothy, as she propped
him up against the wall and began to work feverishly at the knots of the
heavy cord that bound his feet and hands. “Some one might hear you
and—oh, we must get away from here before they come back!”

“Here, I have something better than that,” cried Tavia, who had been
watching Dorothy’s clumsy efforts to unloose Joe’s bonds.

She fished frantically in the pockets of her jacket and brought forth a
rather grimy ball of cord and a penknife. This she held up triumphantly.

“A good sight better than your fingers!”

“Oh, give it to me, quickly,” cried Dorothy, reaching for the knife in
an agony of apprehension. “Oh, it won’t open! Yes, I have it!”

With the sharp blade she sawed feverishly at the cords.

They gave way one after another and she flung them on to the floor of
the cave.

Joe tried to get to his feet, but stumbled and fell.

“Feel funny and numb, kind of,” he muttered. “Been tied up too long, I
guess.”

“But, Joe, you must stand up—you must!” cried Dorothy frantically.
“Come, try again. I’ll hold you. You must try, Joe. They will be back in
a minute! Never mind how much it hurts, stand up!”

With Dorothy’s aid Joe got to his feet again slowly and painfully and
stood there, swaying, an arm about his sister’s shoulders, the other
hand clenched tight against the damp, rocky wall of the cave.

The pain was so intense as the blood flowed back into his tortured feet
that his face went white and he clenched his teeth to keep from crying
out.

“Do you think you can walk at all, dear?” asked Dorothy, her own face
white with the reflection of his misery. “If you could manage to walk a
little way! We have horses in the woods and it would be harder for them
to find us there. Try, Joe dear! Try!”

“I guess I can make it now, Sis,” said Joe from between his clenched
teeth. “If Tavia will help a little too—on the other side.”

“I guess so!” cried Tavia with alacrity, as she put Joe’s other arm
about her shoulders and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “Now
something tells me that the sooner we leave this place behind the
healthier it will be for all of us.”

“Hush! What’s that?” cried Dorothy, and they stood motionless for a
moment, listening.

“I didn’t hear anything, Doro,” whispered Tavia. “It was just nerves, I
guess.”

They took a step toward the entrance of the cave, Joe still leaning
heavily upon the two girls.

A horse whinnied sharply and as they paused again, startled, a sinister
shadow fell across the narrow entrance to the cave. They shrank back as
substance followed shadow and a man wedged his way into the cave.

He straightened up and winked his eyes at the unexpected sight that met
them.

Dorothy stifled a startled exclamation as she recognized him. It was the
small, black-eyed man, Gibbons, known to Desert City as George Lightly,
who stood blinking at them.

Suddenly he laughed, a short, sharp laugh, and turned back toward the
mouth of the cave.

“Come on in, fellows!” he called cautiously. “Just see what I found!”

Joe’s face, through the grime and dirt that covered it, had grown fiery
red and he struggled to get free of Dorothy and Tavia.

“Just you let me get my hands on him!” he muttered. “I’ll show him!
I’ll——”

“You keep out of this, Joe,” Dorothy whispered fiercely. “Let me do the
talking.”

Three other men squeezed through the narrow opening and stood blinking
in the semi-darkness of the cave.

One of them Dorothy recognized as Joe’s former captor, a big, burly man
with shifty eyes and a loose-lipped mouth, another was Philo Marsh, more
smug and self-sufficient than she remembered him, and the third was Cal
Stiffbold, her handsome cavalier of the train ride, who had called
himself Stanley Blake.

It took the girls, crouched against the wall of the cave, only a moment
to see all this, and the men were no slower in reading the meaning of
the situation.

Stiffbold’s face was suffused with fury as he recognized Dorothy and
Tavia, and he took a threatening step forward. Philo Marsh reached out a
hand and drew him back, saying in mild tones:

“Easy there, Stiffbold. Don’t do anything you are likely to regret.”

“So, ladies to the rescue, eh?” sneered Lightly, thrusting his hands
into his pockets and regarding the girls with an insulting leer.
“Regular little heroines and all, ain’t you? Well, now, I’ll be blowed!”

“Young ladies, this isn’t the place for you, you know.” Philo Marsh took
a step forward, reaching out his hand toward Joe. “You’re interfering,
you know, and you’re likely to get yourselves in a heap o’ trouble. But
if you’ll go away and stay away and keep your mouths closed——”

“And leave my brother here with you scoundrels, I suppose?” suggested
Dorothy.

The hypocritical expression upon the face of Philo Marsh changed
suddenly to fury at her short, scornful laugh.

“Scoundrels, is it?” he sneered. “Well, my young lady, maybe you’ll know
better than to call honest people names before you leave this place.”

“Honest people! You?” cried Dorothy, no longer able to contain her
furious indignation. “That sounds startling coming from you, Philo
Marsh, and your—honest friends!

“Do you call it honest,” she took a step forward and the men retreated
momentarily, abashed before her fury, “to take a poor boy away from his
people, to hide him here in a place like this, to torture him physically
and mentally, to attempt to make him false to all his standards of
right——”

“See here, this won’t do!” Lightly blustered, but Dorothy turned upon
him like a tigress.

“You will listen to me till I have said what I am going to say,” she
flung at him. “You do all this—you honest men,” she turned to the
others, searing them with her scorn. “And why? So that you can force
Garry Knapp, who has the best farmlands anywhere around here—and who
will make more than good some day, in spite of you, yes, in spite of
you, I say—to turn over his lands to you for a song, an amount of money
that would hardly pay him for the loss of one little corner of it——”

“Say, are we goin’ to stand here and take this?”

“Yes, you are—Stanley Blake!” Dorothy flamed at him, and the man
retreated before her fury. “And then, when this boy defies you, what do
you do? Act like honest men? Of course you do! You threaten to ‘put the
screws on’ until he is too weak to defy you, a boy against
four—honest—men! If that is honesty, if that is bravery, then I would
rather be like that slimy toad out in the woods who knows nothing of
such things!”

“Hold on there, you!” George Lightly started forward, his hand uplifted
threateningly. “You call us any more of those pretty names and I’ll——”

“What will you do?” Dorothy defied him gloriously, her eyes blazing.
“You dare to lay a hand upon me or my friend or my brother,”
instinctively her arm tightened about Joe, “and Garry Knapp will hound
you to the ends of the earth. Hark! What’s that?” She paused, head
uplifted, listening.

They all listened in a breathless silence while the distant clatter of
horses’ hoofs breaking a way through the woodland came closer—ever
closer!

“Garry!” Dorothy lifted her head and sent her cry ringing through the
woodland. “We are over this way, Garry, over this way! Come qui——”

[Illustration:

  A HORSEMAN BROKE THROUGH THE UNDERBRUSH. IT WAS GARRY.

  “Dorothy Dale to the Rescue.”       Page 237
]




                              CHAPTER XXX
                                CAPTURED


A rough hand closed over Dorothy’s mouth, shutting off her breath,
strangling her. In an instant Tavia and Joe were similarly gagged and
helpless.

There was a silence during which their captors waited breathlessly,
hoping that the horseman had not heard the cry, would pass the cave by.

For a moment, remembering how well the spot was concealed, Dorothy was
horribly afraid that this might actually happen. If it was really Garry
coming! If he had heard her!

But the clattering hoofs still came on. She could hear the shouts of the
riders, Garry’s voice, calling her name!

She felt herself released with a suddenness and violence that sent her
reeling toward the rear of the cave. The men were making for the
entrance, jostling one another and snarling in their efforts to escape.

The men out of sight beyond the huge rock, Dorothy and Tavia rushed to
the cave mouth, leaving poor Joe to limp painfully after them, just in
time to see the knaves disappear among the trees.

The next moment a horseman broke through the underbrush, charging
straight for them. It was Garry!

At sight of Dorothy he pulled his horse to its haunches, drawing in his
breath in a sharp exclamation.

“Dorothy! Thank heaven! I thought——”

“Never mind about us, Garry. They went over that way—the men you are
after!”

She pointed in the direction the men had disappeared and Garry nodded.
The next moment he had spurred his pony in pursuit, followed by several
other horsemen who had come up behind him.

The girls watched them go, and Joe, coming up behind them, laid a dirty
hand upon his sister’s shoulder.

“You—you were great, Sis, to those men!” he said awkwardly. “I was
awfully proud of you.”

Dorothy smiled through tears and, taking Joe’s grimy hand, pressed it
against her cheek.

“It is so wonderful to have you again, dear!” she said huskily.

They were back again in a moment, Garry and his men, bringing with them
two captives—the big-framed, loose-lipped fellow who had first taunted
Joe in the cave, and George Lightly.

By Garry’s face it was easy to see he was in no mood to deal gently with
his prisoners.

He dismounted, threw the bridle to one of the men, and approached the
big fellow whom he knew to be a tool of the Larrimer gang.

The fellow was sullen and glowering, but Garry was a good enough judge
to guess that beneath this exterior the fellow was ready to break.

“Now then,” Garry said coolly, as he pressed the muzzle of his revolver
in uncomfortable proximity to the ribs of his prisoner, “you tell us
what you were doing in that cave over there and you’ll go scot free.
Otherwise, it’s jail for you—if not worse. My men,” he added, in a
gentle drawl, “are just hankering to take part in a lynching party. It’s
a right smart time since they have been treated to that sort of
entertainment, and they are just ripe for a little excitement. How about
it, boys, am I right?”

There came an ominous murmur from the “boys” that caused the prisoner to
look up at them quickly and then down again at his shuffling feet.

Lightly tried to interfere, but Garry silenced him sharply.

“You hankering to be in this lynching party, too?” he inquired, adding
gratingly: “Because if you are not, I’d advise you to keep your mouth
tight shut!”

It was not long before the captive yielded to the insistence of that
revolver muzzle pressed beneath his fifth rib and made a clean breast of
the whole ugly business. Possibly the invitation to the lynching party
had something to do with his surrender.

As he stutteringly and sullenly revealed the plot which would have
forced Garry to the sale of his lands to insure the safety of his
fiancée’s brother, Garry jotted down the complete confession in his
notebook and at the conclusion forced both his prisoners at the point of
his revolver to sign the document.

Then Garry turned to two of the cowboys, who had been looking on with
appreciative grins.

“Here, Steve, and you, Gay, take these two worms to town and see that
they are put where they belong,” he ordered, and the two boys leaped to
the task eagerly. “You others go help the boys round up the rest of the
gentlemen mentioned in this valuable document,” and he tapped the
confession with a cheerful grin. “So long, you fellows!”

They waved their hats at him, wheeled their ponies joyfully, and were
off to do his bidding.

Then it was that Garry came toward Dorothy, his arms outstretched. It is
doubtful if at that moment he even saw Joe and Tavia standing there.

Dorothy took a step toward him and suddenly the whole world seemed to
rock and whirl about her. She flung out her hand and grasped nothing but
air. Then down, down into fathomless space and nothingness!


Dorothy opened her eyes again to find herself in a bed whose softness
and cleanliness meant untold luxury to her. Her body ached all over,
horribly, and her head ached too.

She closed her eyes, but there was a movement beside the bed that made
her open them again swiftly. Somebody had coughed, and it had sounded
like Joe.

She turned over slowly, discovering new aches and pains as she did so,
and saw that it was indeed Joe sitting there, his eyes fixed hungrily
upon her.

She opened her arms and he ran to her and knelt beside the bed.

“Aw, now, don’t go to crying, Sis,” he said, patting her shoulder
awkwardly. “They said if I bothered you they wouldn’t let me stay.”

“I’d like to see them get you away,” cried Dorothy. “Joe, sit back a
little bit and let me look at you. I can’t believe it’s you!”

“But I did an awful thing, Dot,” he said, hanging his head. “You’d
better let me tell you about it before you get too glad I’m back.”

“Tell me about it then, dear,” said Dorothy quietly. “I’ve been wanting
to know just why you ran away.”

“It was all because of the fire at Haskell’s toy store,” said Joe,
speaking swiftly, as though he would be glad to get the explanation
over. “Jack Popella said the explosion was all my fault and he told me I
would be put in prison——”

“But just what _did_ you do?” Dorothy insisted.

“Well, it was like this.” Joe took a long breath, glanced up at her,
then turned his eyes away again. “Jack had a fight with Mr. Haskell over
some money he picked up in the road. Mr. Haskell said he stole it from
his cash drawer, but Jack kept on saying he found it in the road. I
shouldn’t wonder if he did steal it though, at that,” Joe went on,
thoughtfully, and for the first time Dorothy looked at him accusingly.

“You know I begged you not to have anything to do with Jack Popella,
Joe.”

The lad hung his head and flushed scarlet.

“I know you did. I won’t ever, any more.”

“All right, dear. Tell me what happened then.”

“Jack was so mad at Mr. Haskell he said he would like to knock down all
the boxes in the room back of his store just to get even. He asked me to
help him and—just for fun—I said sure I would. Then he told me to go on
in and get started and he would come in a minute.

“I knocked down a couple of boxes,” Joe continued, after a strained
silence. “And then—the explosion came. Jack said I was to blame
and—the—the cops were after me. I wasn’t going to let them send me to
prison,” he lifted his head with a sort of bravado and met Dorothy’s
gaze steadily. “So—so I came out West to Garry.”

“And you are going back again with me, Joe,” said his sister firmly. “It
was cowardly to run away. Now you will have to face the music!”

Joe hung his head for a moment, then squared his shoulders and looked
bravely at Dorothy.

“All right, Dot. I guess it was kind of sneaking to run away. I—I’m
awful sorry.”

The door opened softly behind them and Tavia poked her head in.

“My goodness gracious, Doro Doodlekins,” she cried, “you look as bright
as a button. First thing you know I’ll be minus a patient.”

Dorothy propped herself up on her elbow and stared at her chum.

“Tavia, we must send a telegram immediately,” she cried. “The Major must
know that Joe is safe.”

Tavia came over and smoothed her pillow fondly.

“Foolish child, did you think no one but you would think of that?” she
chided. “Garry sent one of the boys to Dugonne with orders to send a
night letter to The Cedars telling everything that happened. That was
after you fainted, you know, and we brought you here.”

“Such a foolish thing to do,” sighed Dorothy, sinking back on her
pillow. “What must Garry think of me?”

“Suppose I let him answer that for himself,” suggested the flyaway, and
before Dorothy could protest she had seized Joe by the arm and escorted
him gently from the room. A moment later Dorothy could hear Tavia
calling to Garry that he was “needed very much upstairs.”

Dorothy closed her eyes and opened them the next minute to find Garry
standing beside the bed, looking down at her. She reached out a hand to
him and he took it very gently, kneeling down beside her.

“Joe and Tavia have been telling me how you stood up to those men in the
cave, little girl. I only wish I had been there to see you do it. We’ve
got them all, by the way, and Stiffbold and Lightly and the rest of them
are where they won’t hatch any more schemes in a hurry—thanks to you.”

“Thanks to me?” repeated Dorothy, wondering. “Garry, why?”

“I never would have discovered that cave if I hadn’t heard you call
out,” Garry explained. “That hole in the mountainside was the coziest
little retreat I ever saw.”

“Well, I’m glad if I helped a little,” sighed Dorothy. “I was afraid you
might be going to scold me.”

“Scold you?” repeated Garry tenderly. “You foolish, little brick!”

It was a long time before Garry remembered something that had once
seemed important to him. With an exclamation of dismay he stuck his hand
in his pocket and drew forth a yellow envelope.

“Here’s a telegram from The Cedars, and I clean forgot all about it,” he
said penitently. “One of the boys brought it from Dugonne where he went
to send the telegram to Major Dale. I didn’t mean to keep it, honest I
didn’t!”

“Under the circumstances, I don’t blame you in the least,” said Dorothy
demurely, as she hastily tore open the telegram.

She read it through, then turned to Garry with shining eyes.

“This is the one thing I needed to make me perfectly happy, Garry,” she
said. “Nat says that Jack Popella has been arrested for setting
Haskell’s store on fire. That automatically clears Joe of suspicion!”

“That’s great. The poor kid has had more than his share of worry lately.
Just wait till he reads that telegram.” And to Tavia, passing the door
at that moment, he gave the yellow sheet with the request that she
convey it to Joe with all possible speed.

“Just to be comfortable and safe and happy once more,” murmured Dorothy,
as Garry came back to her. “It seems very wonderful, Garry.”

“And my job,” said Garry softly, “will be to keep you safe and
comfortable and happy for the rest of your life!”


                                THE END

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                        THE DOROTHY DALE SERIES


                          BY MARGARET PENROSE

     Author of “The Motor Girls Series,” “Radio Girls Series,” &c.

                       _12 mo._     _Illustrated_

                  _Price per volume, $1.00, postpaid_

[Illustration: [Book]]

_Dorothy Dale is the daughter of an old Civil War veteran who is running
a weekly newspaper in a small Eastern town. Her sunny disposition, her
fun-loving ways and her trials and triumphs make clean, interesting and
fascinating reading. The Dorothy Dale Series is one of the most popular
series of books for girls ever published._

                   =DOROTHY DALE: A GIRL OF TO-DAY=
                   =DOROTHY DALE AT GLENWOOD SCHOOL=
                   =DOROTHY DALE’S GREAT SECRET=
                   =DOROTHY DALE AND HER CHUMS=
                   =DOROTHY DALE’S QUEER HOLIDAYS=
                   =DOROTHY DALE’S CAMPING DAYS=
                   =DOROTHY DALE’S SCHOOL RIVALS=
                   =DOROTHY DALE IN THE CITY=
                   =DOROTHY DALE’S PROMISE=
                   =DOROTHY DALE IN THE WEST=
                   =DOROTHY DALE’S STRANGE DISCOVERY=
                   =DOROTHY DALE’S ENGAGEMENT=
                   =DOROTHY DALE TO THE RESCUE=




                         THE MOTOR GIRLS SERIES


                          By MARGARET PENROSE

         Author of the highly successful “Dorothy Dale Series”

  12mo.      Illustrated.      Price per volume, $1.00      postpaid.

[Illustration: [Book]]

Since the enormous success of our “Motor Boys Series,” by Clarence
Young, we have been asked to get out a similar series for girls. No one
is better equipped to furnish these tales than Mrs. Penrose, who,
besides being an able writer, is an expert automobilist.

              THE MOTOR GIRLS
                    _or A Mystery of the Road_

              THE MOTOR GIRLS ON A TOUR
                    _or Keeping a Strange Promise_

              THE MOTOR GIRLS AT LOOKOUT BEACH
                    _or In Quest of the Runaways_

              THE MOTOR GIRLS THROUGH NEW ENGLAND
                    _or Held by the Gypsies_

              THE MOTOR GIRLS ON CEDAR LAKE
                    _or The Hermit of Fern Island_

              THE MOTOR GIRLS ON THE COAST
                    _or The Waif from the Sea_

              THE MOTOR GIRLS ON CRYSTAL BAY
                    _or The Secret of the Red Oar_

              THE MOTOR GIRLS ON WATERS BLUE
                    _or The Strange Cruise of the Tartar_

              THE MOTOR GIRLS AT CAMP SURPRISE
                    _or The Cave in the Mountain_

              THE MOTOR GIRLS IN THE MOUNTAINS
                    _or The Gypsy Girl’s Secret_




                         THE LINGER-NOT SERIES


                            BY AGNES MILLER

    _12mo._   _Cloth._    _Illustrated._    _Jacket in full colors_

                 _Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_

[Illustration: [Book]]

_This new series of girls’ books is in a new style of story writing. The
interest is in knowing the girls and seeing them solve the problems that
develop their character. Incidentally, a great deal of historical
information is imparted, and a fine atmosphere of responsibility is made
pleasing and useful to the reader._


                1. THE LINGER-NOTS AND THE MYSTERY HOUSE
                _or The Story of Nine Adventurous Girls_

How the Linger-Not girls met and formed their club seems commonplace,
but this writer makes it fascinating, and how they made their club serve
a great purpose continues the interest to the end, and introduces a new
type of girlhood.


                 2. THE LINGER-NOTS AND THE VALLEY FEUD
                    _or The Great West Point Chain_

The Linger-Not girls had no thought of becoming mixed up with feuds or
mysteries, but their habit of being useful soon entangled them in some
surprising adventures that turned out happily for all, and made the
valley better because of their visit.


               3. THE LINGER-NOTS AND THEIR GOLDEN QUEST
                   _or The Log of the Ocean Monarch_

For a club of girls to become involved in a mystery leading back into
the times of the California gold-rush, seems unnatural until the reader
sees how it happened, and how the girls helped one of their friends to
come into her rightful name and inheritance, forms a fine story.




                         THE RADIO GIRLS SERIES


                          BY MARGARET PENROSE

 _12mo._    _Cloth._        _Illustrated._      _Jacket in full colors_

                 _Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_

[Illustration: [Book]]

_A new and up-to-date series, taking in the activities of several bright
girls who become interested in radio. The stories tell of thrilling
exploits, out-door life and the great part the Radio plays in the
adventures of the girls and in solving their mysteries. Fascinating
books that girls of all ages will want to read._


                     1. THE RADIO GIRLS OF ROSELAWN
                  _or A Strange Message from the Air_

Showing how Jessie Norwood and her chums became interested in
radiophoning, how they gave a concert for a worthy local charity, and
how they received a sudden and unexpected call for help out of the air.
A girl wanted as witness in a celebrated law case disappears, and the
radio girls go to the rescue.


                   2. THE RADIO GIRLS ON THE PROGRAM
            _or Singing and Reciting at the Sending Station_

When listening in on a thrilling recitation or a superb concert number
who of us has not longed to “look behind the scenes” to see how it was
done? The girls had made the acquaintance of a sending station manager
and in this volume are permitted to get on the program, much to their
delight. A tale full of action and fun.


                  3. THE RADIO GIRLS ON STATION ISLAND
                 _or The Wireless from the Steam Yacht_

In this volume the girls travel to the seashore and put in a vacation on
an island where is located a big radio sending station. The big brother
of one of the girls owns a steam yacht and while out with a pleasure
party those on the island receive word by radio that the yacht is on
fire. A tale thrilling to the last page.


                   4. THE RADIO GIRLS AT FOREST LODGE
                   _or The Strange Hut in the Swamp_

The Radio Girls spend several weeks on the shores of a beautiful lake
and with their radio get news of a great forest fire. It also aids them
in rounding up some undesirable folks who occupy the strange hut in the
swamp.




                        THE BETTY GORDON SERIES


                          BY ALICE B. EMERSON

             _Author of the Famous “Ruth Fielding” Series_

   _12mo._    _Cloth._    _Illustrated._     _Jacket in full colors_

                 _Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_

[Illustration: [Book]]

_A series of stories by Alice B. Emerson which are bound to make this
writer more popular than ever with her host of girl readers._


                    1. BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM
                      _or The Mystery of a Nobody_

At the age of twelve Betty is left an orphan.


                     2. BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON
                _or Strange Adventures in a Great City_

In this volume Betty goes to the National Capitol to find her uncle and
has several unusual adventures.


                   3. BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL
                 _or The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune_

From Washington the scene is shifted to the great oil fields of our
country. A splendid picture of the oil field operations of to-day.


                   4. BETTY GORDON AT BOARDING SCHOOL
                   _or The Treasure of Indian Chasm_

Seeking the treasure of Indian Chasm makes an exceedingly interesting
incident.


                    5. BETTY GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP
                  _or The Mystery of Ida Bellethorne_

At Mountain Camp Betty found herself in the midst of a mystery involving
a girl whom she had previously met in Washington.


                     6. BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK
                   _or School Chums on the Boardwalk_

A glorious outing that Betty and her chums never forgot.


                  7. BETTY GORDON AND HER SCHOOL CHUMS
                   _or Bringing the Rebels to Terms_

Rebellious students, disliked teachers and mysterious robberies make a
fascinating story.




                        THE RUTH FIELDING SERIES


                          BY ALICE B. EMERSON

 _12mo._     _Illustrated._      _Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_

             _Ruth Fielding will live in juvenile Fiction._

[Illustration: [Book]]

          =RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL=
                _or Jasper Parloe’s Secret_

          =RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL=
                _or Solving the Campus Mystery_

          =RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP=
                _or Lost in the Backwoods_

          =RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT=
                _or Nita, the Girl Castaway_

          =RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH=
                _or Schoolgirls Among the Cowboys_

          =RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND=
                _or The Old Hunter’s Treasure Box_

          =RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM=
                _or What Became of the Raby Orphans_

          =RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES=
                _or The Missing Pearl Necklace_

          =RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES=
                _or Helping the Dormitory Fund_

          =RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE=
                _or Great Days in the Land of Cotton_

          =RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE=
                _or The Missing Examination Papers_

          =RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE=
                _or College Girls in the Land of Gold_

          =RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS=
                _or Doing Her Bit for Uncle Sam_

          =RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT=
                _or The Hunt for a Lost Soldier_

          =RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND=
                _or A Red Cross Worker’s Ocean Perils_

          =RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST=
                _or The Hermit of Beach Plum Point_

          =RUTH FIELDING IN THE GREAT NORTHWEST=
                _or The Indian Girl Star of the Movies_

          =RUTH FIELDING ON THE ST. LAWRENCE=
                _or The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands_

          =RUTH FIELDING TREASURE HUNTING=
                _or A Moving Picture that Became Real_


            CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers      New York

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
      spelling.
 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.