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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

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!”

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.

“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.”