The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure Part 34

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 hoa.r.s.ely. 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?"

"Ss.h.!.+ 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.