lly did think they might find some gold, though I
said I knew they wouldn't," she ended mournfully.

Jean laughed. "Same here, baby. I confess I thought maybe they would
come home with a grand discovery and we would all be as rich as cream
forever afterwards. Did you have any such idea in your head, Jack?"

Jack blushed. "Not really," she conceded; "but of course as soon as one
hears anything about a gold mine, one goes quite crazy. Remember how we
used to plan, when we were little girls, to run away and find the 'Pot
of Gold at the End of the Rainbow' as soon as we grew up?"

Jean and Frieda nodded, but the entire party was soon busy with their
plans for resuming their trip in the early morning. Jim asked Ralph
Merrit to go along to the Yellowstone Park with them. The young man had
been through the western reserve once before, and since his experience
with Jack, Jim thought it might be just as well to have another man to
divide responsibilities for the remainder of the trip.

By nine o'clock the next day the caravaners had moved away from the
quiet oasis in the desert, their tent had been folded up and the horses
reluctantly driven from the fresh grass. The little place had become but
a memory to its dwellers by the wayside.

CHAPTER XIII

ENTERING WONDERLAND

"The Forest of Arcady, Jim," Jean called gayly from her seat on the back
of her pony. She and Olive, with Ralph Merrit walking beside them, had
just climbed a steep road that led across the Continental Divide into
the great park of the Yellowstone, called Yellowstone by the Indians
many years ago, because its river ran like melted gold between massive
stone walls, shading from palest lemon to a deep orange glow.

Behind its outriders the ranch girls' caravan moved slowly upward. They
had been passing through tall pine forests that shut them in to a
cathedral gloom, but beyond and farther down the hill Jean had just
caught sight of a grove of quaking aspen trees with the sky above them
shining as bright as sunny Italy. The grove looked like a great umbrella
shop with its parasols open on parade, for the trees had circular green
tops growing high above the ground, and their straight, slender trunks
were like white umbrella handles.

Jim cracked his whip in answer to Jean's speech and Jack waved her hat
from the place next him; just behind them Ruth clutched at Frieda and
Carlos to keep them from falling into the road in their efforts to see
everyt