While the boys talked Jane and Merry had been washing and wiping the lunch dishes. When they joined the excited group on the front porch, Bob stood up, saying, “Shall we start now?”
Jane also arose, but, happening to glance down at Julie, she saw tears brimming the small girl’s eyes and that her lips were quivering. Instantly the older girl sat on the cot beside her, and, putting her arms about her little sister, she said compassionately: “Is your ankle hurting again, dearie? Since you cannot go, I will stay here with you and read to you. Don’t feel badly, Julie. Your foot will soon be well; long before they find the box, I am sure of that.”
The small girl leaned happily against her sister and looked up at her with adoration in her dark violet eyes. Then Merry announced: “This is a boys’ adventure anyway. We girls will sit on the porch and have the best kind of a time all together.”
And so the boys departed, armed with stout staffs and guns and calling that they would surely be back by supper time.
But when at last they did return, they had discovered nothing, and Bob was eager to start at dawn the next day and search everywhere around the Crazy Creek Camp.
Merry shuddered. “Goodness, don’t!” she ejaculated. “It was ghostly enough before, but now that we know that old Ute is entombed in one of those cabins, you couldn’t get me within a mile of the place.”
Bob retorted: “Well, we hadn’t invited you girls, had we? So you need not refuse with such gusto! We’re going to take the horse, so that Dan can ride most of the way.” But that lad interrupted: “You mean that we will take turns riding. Although I have been in the Rockies so short a time my cold is entirely cured, and, as my lungs had not really been affected, I am soon to be as husky as you, Bob.”
“Of course you are, old man,” Bob put a hand on his friend’s shoulder, “but soon isn’t now. I won’t go unless you will ride, when I think it is the best for you to do so.”
“All righto! Anything to be agreeable.” Dan sank down on the porch step as though he were rather tired after the climb they had just completed.
Bob then turned to the girls. “You maidens fair need not awaken. We’ll be as quiet as—as——” Dan smilingly offered: “How would Santa Claus do? He steals around very softly, or so tradition has it.” Bob laughed. “I was going to say as a thief in the night, but I don’t like to use a simile which suggests an unpleasant picture, and it’s the wrong time of the year for Santa Claus.”