family into a barbarous land where every second man you meet has designs on a well-filled pocketbook——"

But he got no further, for Betty had run over to him and turned him imperiously around till his smiling eyes looked down into her gleeful ones.

"Daddy," she cried, "do you really mean it? We can all go to Gold Run—you and mother and the girls? We'll have to have the girls, you know!" she ended on a pleading note.

"Oh yes, of course," said Mr. Nelson resignedly. "We will have to have the girls."

It was a very radiant Betty who, a few minutes later, saw Allen Washburn to the door.

"And to think," she murmured, while Allen smiled down at her, "that I didn't like that perfect angel, Peter Levine, at first. Why, I should have welcomed him with open arms!"

"Why?" asked Allen, taken by surprise.

"Don't you know?" asked Betty, mischievously wide-eyed. "If he hadn't happened along just when he did our glorious adventure would have dwindled into a might-have-been. Why, I could love him for it."

"Good-night, I'm going!" ejaculated Allen, and before Betty could gasp he had flung out of the door.

"Where are you going?" she called, laughter in her voice.

"To kill Peter Levine," growled a voice out of the darkness, and Betty, closing the door very softly, chuckled to herself.

CHAPTER IV

AN IMITATION HOLD-UP

It was all over. The bustling days of preparation for the long trip, during which the girls had hardly had time to give vent to their excitement, had passed, and here they were actually finding their places in the puffing, western bound train.

"Here's number five," Grace said, as she slid into a velvet-covered seat with a sigh of thankfulness. "Who is coming in here with me?"

"Guess I'm elected," laughed Betty. "And here's number seven for Mollie and Amy, and mother and dad are in six right across the way. That completes the family party."

They were hardly settled when there was a last warning cry of "All aboard" and the train began to move ever so slowly from the station.

The girls peered out to wave good-by to the boys and some of their other friends who had come to see them off. The young fellows looked rather gloomy—all except Allen. The latter shouted something that they took to be "See you later!" and then the train swept around a curve, hiding the station from view.

"Well," said Grace, with a sigh, as she opened her grip to fish for the inevitable candy box, "the boys seemed to take our flitting pretty hard. They looked as if we were already dead and buried."

"Far from it," murmured Betty happily, her eyes on the ever changing view from the window. "I feel as if we were just beginning to live."

The hours of the morning passed like minutes to the girls, and they were surprised when the porter came through with his "Foist call fo' dinnah!"

The afternoon passed uneventfully, and they amused themselves by making up stories about their fellow passengers. There was the quaint little man in number four who reminded them of Professor Arnold Dempsey and who might very easily have been a professor, judging from the number of books he carried.

Then there was the freckled-faced small boy in number three whose antics kept his mother in a continual state of "nerves." Once when he bounced one of those implements commonly known as "spit balls" off of the bookish little man's bald head, the girls thought they would die trying to stifle their merriment.

Then there was the very pretty, but much be-powdered and rouged girl behind them in number nine. Grace embarrassed Betty very much by turning around to look at her every five minutes or so.

"She's a moving picture actress or something, I'm sure of it," Grace confided in Betty's unsympathetic ear. "I wonder if I could fix my hair the way she does. She fascinates me."

"She seems to," Betty retorted dryly, adding with a twinkle. "You may be able to fix your hair like hers—though I doubt it—but please remember that your mother doesn't want you to use rouge."

"Well, you know I wouldn't do that," said Grace in a huff, adding maliciously, "I guess you are just jealous, that's all."

"Uh-huh, that must be it," said Betty, with an unruffled good-nature that made Grace secretly ashamed of herself.

"I'm sorry, Betty," she said after a rather long pause, adding generously: "You don't need to be jealous of anybody."

"Thanks," Betty answered, with a smile. "I knew you didn't mean it, dear."

And so the long hours of the afternoon wore away, dusk came, shrouding the swiftly moving landscape in a veil of mystery. So engrossed were the girls in contemplation of the changing beauty of nature that it seemed almost sacrilege when the blatant lights of the train flashed forth, bringing them violently back to a realization of time and place.

"Don't you want any supper?" Mr. Nelson was asking, in his pleasant voice. "It isn't like the Outdoor Girls to overlook meal time."

"Far be it from us to spoil our good reputation," cried Mollie buoyantly, and away they rushed to the dressing room to wash for supper. Though dining on a train was no novelty to the girls, they never lost the keenness of their first delight in the experience.

"It's fascinating," Mollie remarked once, spearing desperately at an elusive potato as the train jerked and jolted over the rails at sixty miles an hour, "to see how often you can raise your coffee cup without spilling the coffee all over your food!"

On this night at supper Mollie was so screamingly funny that the girls had all they could do to keep their hilarity from making them conspicuous.

Mr. and Mrs. Nelson at a table for two across the aisle smiled indulgently at their charges, and once Mrs. Nelson met her husband's glance and chuckled fondly.

"Pretty nice set of girls?" she said softly.

"Pretty nice!" Mr. Nelson agreed.

"I'm beginning to wish we were at Gold Run now," confided Mollie, after dining. She and Amy had slipped into the seat opposite Betty and Grace.

"Oh, I think it's all fun," cried Betty, for she was always the last of the Outdoor Girls to feel tired. "We change at Chicago to-morrow afternoon," she added. "And then two more nights on the train, and then Gold Run!"

"Oh, that sounds good," cried Mollie, adding eagerly: "Tell me, Betty, shall we be able to choose any horse we want for our own particular mount?"

"Oh, yes," said Betty, adding with a smile: "It will be interesting to see the kind of horse each one of you will choose. Amy will like the gentle one, Grace will choose hers for its looks and yours will be the most vicious one in the pack, Mollie."

"Well, I like that!" said Mollie unperturbed. "She wants to kill me off even before I get there."

"Pack?" murmured Amy. "Is a 'pack' of horses right?" But no one answered her.

"I wonder," mused Grace dreamily, "if there will be a tan one—all tan, you know, without even a spot of any other color——"

"Oh, of course," laughed Betty. "If we haven't an all tan one in the corrals at Gold Run, we'll send to the nearest ranch and have one imported for you. Don't worry your little head about that."

A little while after that they stopped at a water station, and most of the passengers got off to stretch their cramped limbs. And, as the conductor informed them that they would be there for fifteen minutes at least, the girls followed the general example.

However, in their enthusiasm at finding the good old solid earth under their feet once more, they