Suddenly she whirled Nigger's head about and urged him to a gallop.
"Race you home, Allen!" she challenged. "Winner gets the other fellow's piece of cake."
"Who cares for cake!" cried Allen, but it might have been noticed that he followed her just the same.
CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE SHADOWS
Allen was acting in two capacities at this time—that of lawyer and that of private detective. He probably would not have taken this rôle for anybody but Betty and her family, but in order to serve them he was willing to do pretty nearly anything.
So he had taken to scouting around the northern end of the ranch after dark, in the hope that he might possibly discover something that would help him in his theory that there was really gold on the ranch and, also, that Peter Levine and his cronies, whoever they were, knew of it.
However, as the days passed, bringing no new developments, the young fellow began to think that he had let his imagination run away with him. He even began to formulate plans by which he could lure the unsuspecting Peter Levine into telling what he knew.
And then—just when he was beginning to despair of being any help at all to Betty and her family—fate or luck, or whatever one wishes to call it, chose to smile upon him once more.