time,"
laughed Betty.

"Well," said Grace as she gave Nabob a gentle slap that started him on
again, "Peter Levine must want that ranch very badly, to be following us
all over the continent this way."

"He seems to be rather anxious," said Betty dryly. "He has offered
mother twenty thousand for it this time."

"Going up," cried Mollie, with a chuckle. "If your mother holds on much
longer, Betty, she will be a millionaire."

"Well, mother is more certain than ever that there is something unusual
about Gold Run Ranch," went on Betty, as she urged Nigger up a gentle
slope. "She confidently expects to discover a gold mine, and so that's
another reason why she thinks Allen ought to be here."

"Goodness, let's all get out and dig," cried Mollie.

"Can we have all we find, Betty?" called Amy, with a laugh.

"Every last gold brick," answered Betty happily, and then they came upon
another open space, and there, lying not more than half a mile below
them, was the mining town of Gold Run.

"Now here's the place to have some lunch," said Betty, slipping to the
ground and leading Nigger off a little way into the woods where she
tethered him securely. "We can look right down into the town and eat our
lunch at the same time."

The girls followed suit, and it did not take them long afterward to
discover that they were very hungry. So out came the lunch basket, and
never did biscuits and cheese and fried chicken taste more delicious
than they did to the girls right there in that romantic little spot in
the woods.

"I hope it doesn't rain the way it did the other day," said Mollie, as
she lazily surveyed a cloudless sky.

"We haven't even a cabin in the woods to go to this time," said Grace,
adding, as the thought brought up a picture of the long-haired musician
who had been so painfully polite: "I wonder what our friend, Long Hair,
lives on, anyway. Maybe he goes out and kills bears and things. They say
bear meat is very good eating," she added reflectively.

"Maybe we can catch one ourselves and take it home for dinner,"
suggested Mollie, and the girls looked as if they did not like her
suggestion at all.

"Methinks the bear would be more likely to catch us," Betty was saying
when a chorus of low whinnyings and stampings coming from where the
horses were tethered caused them to jump to their feet in alarm.
Suddenly the nervousness of the animals changed to panic and they began
to rear and plunge, straining madly at th