nothing would make them pass a night in those hills if they could help it."

But ghosts were something in which the two brothers had been taught not to believe, and Tom exclaimed:

"Huh! I'll bet some one has found the mine and started these stories to keep other people from going there. Maybe there are three or four mines," he added as his lively imagination began to work.

"It's all right for you to laugh; you haven't been in the hills," snapped Horace. "If you'd heard Cross-eyed Pete tell about the night he was camping there and was scared away by hearing men shooting you might think differently."

"Just the same, I'd be willing to go and hunt for it," persisted
Tom.

"And so would I," chimed in his brother. "I say," he continued, "why can't we go on a hunting trip? We needn't say anything about trying to find the mine. Then, if we didn't, no one could laugh at us and say we got scared."

The refusal of the boys from Ohio to believe in the haunted mine had at first nettled Bill and Horace, but they had always been keen to hear or see phantoms, and at Larry's proposal of the hunting trip they became enthusiastic.

"It will be great sport, if father will let us," assented Horace.
"Come on, we'll ask him."

And abandoning their intention of roping ponies, they turned back to the house in search of Mr. Wilder.

Finding him on the piazza, they lost no time in laying their plan for a hunting trip before him.

As he beheld the eager faces and noted the lithe, supple bodies of the boys, in whose eyes shone the light of fearlessness, the ranchman replied:

"I have no objection, if you don't go beyond the foothills. Bill, you remember the trails I showed you last spring, don't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right, keep to them. You boys certainly ought to be able to take care of yourselves. Go and tell Hop Joy to put up some grub for you. You had better camp on the plains to-night, so you won't be able to shoot your food."

Delighted at the thought of going on a hunting trip, the boys hurried away to the Chinaman.

"Golly! You boyee go shootee?" exclaimed the celestial when he had received the orders to pack their food. "No flaid ghostee?"

"Of course not," replied Horace. "There's no such thing as ghosts,
Hop Joy."

"Mebbe so, mebbe not; no be too sure," grunted the Chinaman.
"Plete, him say they be."

But the boys did not linger to argue the matter, and only waiting to see that Hop Joy put in a quantity of doughnuts, went to get their rifles and shells ready.

To their surprise, when they returned to the piazza, they found the ranchman busily overhauling his guns.

"I reckon I'll go with you," he explained. "I haven't been hunting for some time, and as everything is quiet I can get away for three or four days as well as not."

"Oh, good! Hooray!" exclaimed the boys.

And Horace added: "Now we won't have to worry about getting lost."

Not long did it take the lads to clean their rifles and fill their cartridge belt with shells.

"Have you two got any knives?" inquired Mr. Wilder, looking at Tom and Larry.

"Sure," replied Larry, and he told of the old gold miner's presents and his advice about always carrying the pieces of thong with them.

"Silas is no fool," smiled the ranchman. "If you remember all he told you, you won't get into trouble. Still, I think it would be just as well for you to let me put your money in my safe. Then you surely can't lose it."

"That's what father told us to do," said Larry as he and Tom removed their buckskin money bags and gave them to the ranchman. "We forgot it, though."

"Speaking about forgetting, what about the German boy?" asked Mrs.
Wilder, who had come to learn the cause of the preparations.

At the mention of Hans the four lads looked at one another in dismay. But the ranchman came to the rescue, saying:

"From all Larry and Tom say, I don't reckon he'll be keen on hunting. You can let him help Ned."

"Ned's our handy man," explained Horace in a whisper. "He drives the grub wagon to Tolopah, and to the boys in their camps."

"Well, here comes the wagon now," observed Mrs. Wilder as she caught sight of the big white-covered wagon, called a prairie schooner in the old days, bobbing over the plains about a mile away.

"Oh, don't let's wait," protested Horace. "We can saddle up and go and meet them. I'll make my pony dance and perhaps that will scare Hans so he won't care to go."

"All right," laughed Mr. Wilder. "Bring up the ponies. Get
Buster for me."

Running to the wagon shed, the boys gathered the saddles, bridles, some oats and pans and started for the corral.

Opening the big gate, they entered, closed it and then threw their saddles on the ground.

"Always close the gate before you start to get your ponies," instructed Bill. "Sometimes they cut up, and if they get out onto the prairie it's the old Harry of a job to catch them again.

"Now put your oats in your pans. Watch Horace and me and you'll see what to do."

When they had prepared the oat bait, the two Wilder boys began to beat on the pans, calling Buster and the other ponies by name.

The animals, which were at the farther end of the corral browsing, lifted their heads and then came trotting toward them, halting about ten feet away.

"Swish your pans so they can hear the oats," whispered Bill.

Slowly the ponies approached, as though deciding whether they preferred their oats or their liberty.

"Come, Blackhawk! Come, Buster!" called Horace.

The boys set the pans on the ground. For a moment the ponies eyed them and then trotted up, the eight crowding one another to get at the four measures.

"Now's the time," breathed Bill.

In a trice the bits were thrust into the ponies' mouths and the leather over their ears.

Lightning plunged back, but Larry grabbed the reins just in time and held him.

"Push the pan to him," directed Horace, and, as he smelled the oats, the pony grew still and was soon munching contentedly.

After catching his own mount, Bill had bridled Buster, and as soon as the oats were devoured, all five were saddled with little trouble and the boys were quickly on the backs of four of them, Bill leading the pony for his father.

It required but a few minutes to make fast the saddle bags Hop Joy had filled with food, tin plates, cups, knives and forks, coffee pot, sugar and coffee and to tie on their sleeping blankets.

Then they buckled on their cartridge belts, slung their rifles across their shoulders and again mounted.

By the time they were ready, however, the grub wagon was coming into the yard.

"Where's Hans?" gasped Larry, the first one to discover that there was only one occupant.

With a broad grin suffusing his face, the driver cried:

"Whoa!"

As the horses stopped Mr. Wilder, fearing that the boy had been made the butt of some mad prank, said severely:

"If anything happened to that lad, I shall hold you responsible,
Ned. Where is he?"