"Surest thing you know," responded the boy quickly, his nice eyes full of sympathy for them. "Some of the boys will see you home—your folks are getting awfully worried about you, you know—and the rest of us will go on and dig out the poor bronchos. So long. We'll be back pronto."
"And now home," sighed Betty, as she looked at the ranch house just visible in the distance. "And a bath—and something to eat. What does that sound like, girls?"
CHAPTER XIII
THE LURE OF GOLD
The task of releasing the imprisoned horses was not such an easy task as the girls and even Andy Rawlinson had thought it would be.
In the first place, it took Andy and his company some time to discover the place along the trail where the landslide had occurred, for Betty's account had been hasty and excited and she had overlooked several details that might have helped them in their work.
And when they did reach the scene of what might have been a tragedy the ranch hands were appalled by the immensity of the landslide. There had been several small ones in that vicinity, but this was what Andy termed a "humdinger."
There was a stamping and snorting from inside that dirt-choked cavern that, there in that lonely spot on the very edge of night, seemed positively uncanny to the men who stood and listened.