_THE OLD CHIEF'S DAUGHTER WALKS_
"If the professor is really hidden in that hut, perhaps we can get him
tonight," exclaimed Bet Baxter, as she swung up the trail carrying her
Indian baskets.
"I wish we could find him before tomorrow afternoon when the boys
come," said Enid. "It would be nice to give the boys our full
attention."
"You'll spoil them if you do," Shirley responded.
Bet was quiet the rest of the way home. Thoughts of the professor kept
crowding into her mind, schemes for his release; these things demanded
her attention. Kit spoke to her three times without getting an answer,
then with a smile turned to her chums.
"Bet is trying to solve a problem. She is never this way unless she is
making plans of some sort."
By the time they reached the ranch house, Bet's eyes were glowing in an
absent-minded way and she passed Ma Patten in the patio without
speaking.
She was so intent on the problem that was bothering her that she stood
staring at her father a long time before she recognized him, then with
a cry she threw herself into his arms.
"Oh Daddy! I've been so lonesome for you! How did you get here and
when did you come?"
"Easy, girl, or you'll choke on all those questions," laughed Colonel
Baxter. "I just arrived an hour ago, and I would have let you know if
I'd been sure that I could come. And then at the end, I decided to
surprise you. Are you glad?"
Bet laughed happily, her blue eyes glowing now with a very different
light. There was snap and joy in them as she held tightly to her
father's hand.
In her joy at seeing her father she had not paid any attention to what
the other girls were doing. Now as she heard the sound of happy voices
she turned and saw the boys, Phil and Bob and Paul.
"Oh, you boys! Why we didn't expect you until tomorrow afternoon," she
said, extending her hand to Phil Gordon.
"If you don't want to see us tonight, perhaps we could go back and sit
in the station at Benito."
"Don't be silly, Bob Evans. You're just the same as ever." Bet
laughed as she always did at Bob.
"What did you expect me to do in three weeks time? Get grey headed and
grow a beard?"
Bob had helped Joy to her feet when they heard the girls arriving and
he now stood supporting his sister while he laughed and teased.
"Isn't it good to see them?" cried Joy.
"Does that include me, too?" inquired Colonel Baxter.
"Of course it does! You don't know how often we've talked about you
and wished you were here," answered Enid, before Joy could reply.
There was a real change in Paul Breckenridge since the girls had seen
him the previous winter. The old brooding, shy look was gone, and now
he entered into the pleasures around him as the other boys did. One
could see that he liked to be near Enid, teasing her constantly as if
he had to make up for those years of separation.
Judge Breckenridge smiled around at his happy family, well pleased with
everything.
"The one thing that would make it perfect would be to have the old
professor here," he said. "But we'll find him before long."
Kit gave a little cry. "How terrible of me to have forgotten to tell
you, Judge! We know where the professor is."
"Where?" asked the Judge eagerly.
"Young Mary says that he is in the shack in Rattlesnake Creek."
"But Kie Wicks took us through that hut this afternoon," replied the
Judge. "He isn't there!"
The girls showed their disappointment.
"Maybe they just moved the old man out for an hour until you finished
your search," said Bet. "I wouldn't put that past Kie Wicks. Nothing
is too bad for him to do."
"We hunted inside and outside of that hut," insisted the Judge. "If he
had been there, surely there would have been some sign."
"I have an idea!" cried Bet, jumping to her feet. "I believe he's in
that hut, they put him back after you'd been there. I'm going to find
him tonight."
"You'll do no such thing, Bet. Chasing around among a lot of bad men
is no place for a girl," began her father, but Bet interrupted:
"Just wait until I have worked out my plan and you'll see I'll be as
safe as if I were at home. You can come with me, Dad. Will you help
me, Judge? I'll need several men."
"Let us in on this," exclaimed Phil and Bob in the same breath. "We'd
like to have a hand in solving your latest mystery."
Bet flew to her room and returned in a few minutes in a strange
costume, a long dress of buckskin. Dark braids fell over her shoulders
and feathers rose from her hair. She had no resemblance to the boyish
girl they knew.
The Colonel looked puzzled but Judge Breckenridge caught the idea.
"You're a wonder, Bet! And I do believe you are right. You'll be as
safe as if you were in your own bed."
An hour later, the watchers by the hut rubbed their eyes and stared
about them. A wild, weird cry rang through the canyon, and in the
moonlight Kie Wicks and his bad men saw, far above them on the cliff,
the figure of an Indian girl.
"She wasn't walking, she was just floating in the air, it seemed, and
as she moved, she moaned and shrieked. It was terrible! There was no
doubt about it. It was the ghost," Kie Wicks told his wife when he was
safely at home.
"What happened?" Maude urged him to continue the story.
"You should have seen those Indians go! 'The Old Chief's daughter
walks! It's the ghost girl!' they cried hoarsely. And that's the last
I saw of them."
"And what did you do?" Maude pressed him further.
"I--well, I ran, too. I got out of there in record time, let me tell
you. I don't mind shooting it out with a human being, but I don't take
no chances with a ghost. I vamoosed."
"And the old man?" she inquired.
"He's there yet. One thing certain, I'll never go into that canyon
late at night again."
Bet's ruse had worked better than she had hoped. In less than two
minutes after she stepped out on the cliff, the place was deserted, the
hut left unguarded and Judge Breckenridge and his men rushed in, broke
open the door and found the old man asleep on a sack of straw.
The Judge touched him and the professor tried to shake him off.
"What are you going to do with me now?" he asked peevishly, "I want to
go to sleep. Can't you let me be?"
"Ssh! Don't talk! We've come to take you home. This is Judge
Breckenridge."
The professor recognized his voice and breathed a sigh of relief. He
rose unsteadily and did not speak again until they were a long way up
the trail.
Then he suddenly got weak and felt as if he were going to faint.
"Don't worry, I get this way sometimes. I have some medicine over at
the tent."
As it was only a short distance to the claim, the Judge decided to get
him there as quickly as possible.
The professor was like a child in his eagerness to stay at the camp,
and finally toward morning the Judge left him there in charge of the
boys and Seedy Saunders.
And when Kie Wicks, deciding that he would have a look at the tunnel
which he had left in charge of the two ruffians, climbed the trail to
the summit the next morning about dawn, the first person he saw was the
old professor, smoking his pipe and gazing far off over the hills with
a smile of happiness on his face.
Kie wheeled his horse as if he had been shot at and raced madly away.
He was muttering excitedly:
"The mountains are bewitched! That ghost has spirited the old man out
of the hut and back to the tunnel."
When his horse finally stopped before the store in Saugus, he was
covered with foam and the man who bestrode him was trembling in every
limb.
Yet he said nothing to Maude. What was the use? She would only worry
and fret, and besides he had always made light of ghosts and said he
didn't believe in them.
"But seein' is believin'," he said to himself as he dismounted. "I'm
outdone by a ghost."
And Bet, as she put away the Indian costume the next morning, hugged it
to her as if it had been responsible for the whole affair. "Whatever
made you think of it, Bet?" asked Enid.
"Thoughts like that just come to her. It's what you might call
inspiration, or intuition," laughed Shirley.
"Why give it such a big name," returned Bet. "I simply had a hunch,
and it worked out."
"Just like that!" exclaimed Joy, as she tried to dance on the lame
foot, snapping her fingers in time to the step.
"What's the next thing on the program, Bet?" asked Bob Evans. "Have
you a bulletin board with the adventures scheduled?"
"I wish you'd stop teasing me. It isn't my fault if I'm always getting
into the middle of a problem."
"Whose is it, Bet?" laughed her father.
"Yours, I think, Dad. You brought me up." She slid an arm around her
father's neck. "And are you very much disappointed in me?"
"Fishing for compliments?" Colonel Baxter pinched her rosy cheek.
"No, I only want a little appreciation," she replied.
At that moment Billy Patten poked his head into the corridor.
"The old man at the tunnel. He says for the girls to come quick."
"Something important has happened!" insisted Kit. "Hurry up, let's go!"
Colonel Baxter hurried to his horse and followed after the girls. His
mind was not, for the moment, on possible treasure, he was overwhelmed
by the magnitude of the hills, their rugged outlines and the blazing
sun that beat down upon them.
When they reached the summit, the girls spurred their horses across the
flat.
What they saw was an excited little old man, waving his arms and
dancing about a huge box.
As the girls approached, he cried.
"Come quickly. It's a brass-bound chest. It's the treasure!"
Tommy Sharpe pried the rusty lock, and as the cover was swung back, the
girls gave a gasp of astonishment and dismay.
The chest was empty!