The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle | Page 9

a triumphant glance at her husband.
"You see?" she said. "I was sure Allen would agree with me."

"Of course I may be mistaken," Allen continued, rather hesitantly. "But
I have a very distinct impression, a sort of seventh sense we fellows in
the law game call it, that this Levine is in league with John Josephs, the
man that offered you fifteen thousand for the ranch."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Nelson, startled. "How can you know that?"
"I don't know it," Allen told her. "I only suspect."
"Then what would you advise us to do?"
"Hold tight and not sell till you have had a chance to look matters over
on the ground--not from a distance."
"Well," said Mr. Nelson rising resignedly and knocking the ashes from
his cigar, "I suppose that settles it. I shall have to leave my business to
go to smash," he added, with a chuckle, "while I take my family into a
barbarous land where every second man you meet has designs on a
well-filled pocketbook----"
But he got no further, for Betty had run over to him and turned him
imperiously around till his smiling eyes looked down into her gleeful
ones.
"Daddy," she cried, "do you really mean it? We can all go to Gold
Run--you and mother and the girls? We'll have to have the girls, you
know!" she ended on a pleading note.
"Oh yes, of course," said Mr. Nelson resignedly. "We will have to have
the girls."
It was a very radiant Betty who, a few minutes later, saw Allen
Washburn to the door.
"And to think," she murmured, while Allen smiled down at her, "that I
didn't like that perfect angel, Peter Levine, at first. Why, I should have
welcomed him with open arms!"
"Why?" asked Allen, taken by surprise.

"Don't you know?" asked Betty, mischievously wide-eyed. "If he hadn't
happened along just when he did our glorious adventure would have
dwindled into a might-have-been. Why, I could love him for it."
"Good-night, I'm going!" ejaculated Allen, and before Betty could gasp
he had flung out of the door.
"Where are you going?" she called, laughter in her voice.
"To kill Peter Levine," growled a voice out of the darkness, and Betty,
closing the door very softly, chuckled to herself.
CHAPTER IV
AN IMITATION HOLD-UP
It was all over. The bustling days of preparation for the long trip,
during which the girls had hardly had time to give vent to their
excitement, had passed, and here they were actually finding their places
in the puffing, western bound train.
"Here's number five," Grace said, as she slid into a velvet-covered seat
with a sigh of thankfulness. "Who is coming in here with me?"
"Guess I'm elected," laughed Betty. "And here's number seven for
Mollie and Amy, and mother and dad are in six right across the way.
That completes the family party."
They were hardly settled when there was a last warning cry of "All
aboard" and the train began to move ever so slowly from the station.
The girls peered out to wave good-by to the boys and some of their
other friends who had come to see them off. The young fellows looked
rather gloomy--all except Allen. The latter shouted something that they
took to be "See you later!" and then the train swept around a curve,
hiding the station from view.
"Well," said Grace, with a sigh, as she opened her grip to fish for the

inevitable candy box, "the boys seemed to take our flitting pretty hard.
They looked as if we were already dead and buried."
"Far from it," murmured Betty happily, her eyes on the ever changing
view from the window. "I feel as if we were just beginning to live."
The hours of the morning passed like minutes to the girls, and they
were surprised when the porter came through with his "Foist call fo'
dinnah!"
The afternoon passed uneventfully, and they amused themselves by
making up stories about their fellow passengers. There was the quaint
little man in number four who reminded them of Professor Arnold
Dempsey and who might very easily have been a professor, judging
from the number of books he carried.
Then there was the freckled-faced small boy in number three whose
antics kept his mother in a continual state of "nerves." Once when he
bounced one of those implements commonly known as "spit balls" off
of the bookish little man's bald head, the girls thought they would die
trying to stifle their merriment.
Then there was the very pretty, but much be-powdered and rouged girl
behind them in number nine. Grace embarrassed Betty very much by
turning around to look at her every five minutes or so.
"She's a moving picture actress or something, I'm sure of it," Grace
confided in