Bet spoke up firmly: "I've decided not to go treasure hunting. As a work of art, that map is a treasure in itself, I love it, but I'm going to leave the treasure hunting to Tommy and Kie Wicks and the cross-eyed Mexican."
Bet was so positive in her assertion that the treasure could remain in the ground for all she cared, that no one guessed that before the month was out, not Bet alone, but all The Merriweather Girls would have no thought of anything except that treasure, and all the adventure it brought.
From early morning until late at night their one interest would be unravelling the mystery of Lost Canyon.
Even the old professor whose mind was set on Indian relics, would forget his errand to the hills and all that it involved and be heart and soul in the venture of the hidden treasure.
For Fate upsets all plans and leads into strange and undreamed-of adventures.
CHAPTER VIII
KIT'S HOME FOLKS
Kit's greeting to her quiet, undemonstrative father was as effusive as he would allow it to be. She threw both arms about him with a cry of joy but all he said was: "You're home! That's good!" His tall, stooped figure was that of a hard working man, an outdoor man. His face bore criss-cross wrinkles stamped by the winds and heat of the mountain.
It was from him that Kit had inherited her deep-set brown eyes, her tall, slight body. Father and daughter were very much alike in looks but her mother had given her a disposition of joyousness that her silent father admired but utterly lacked.
Kit knew her father's way. She saw the happiness in his eyes and knew that he had missed her, perhaps even more than her sociable mother had done. Ma Patten could make friends with everybody who came near, and in that way she had worked off a lot of her loneliness at her daughter's absence. But Dad Patten confided in no one, not even Ma knew what was in his heart.