An influential group of miners represented secretly by a lawyer of shady reputation, the Philo Marsh spoken of by Tavia, had nursed quite different plans in connection with Lost River. They needed the stream in their mining operations and were determined to get it.
The Major and Mrs. White, however, were quite as determined to act according to the wishes of Colonel Hardin. They successfully combated more than one attempt by the mine owners to get possession of the river, but it remained for the young folks, Dorothy, Tavia and the two White boys and a young Mexican girl on the ranch, to outwit the final plot of the unscrupulous men.
Lost River had consequently gone to the ranchlands in the vicinity as Colonel Hardin had wished and there had followed a period of rare contentment and prosperity for the farmers.
Garry Knapp’s land adjoined the Hardin estate and had been left to the young Westerner by the will of his uncle, Terry Knapp.
The latter was an irascible, though kind-hearted, old fellow who had quarreled with his nephew on a point of ethics and had promptly disinherited him. Consequently, Garry was very much surprised and affected to find that his Uncle Terry had repented of his harshness and on his death bed had left the old Knapp ranch to him.
Naturally, Garry had benefited, as had his neighbors, by the diversion of Lost River and there had seemed until lately nothing in the path of his ambition to raise the finest wheat crop in all that productive country.
Of course Garry had had enemies, Dorothy knew that. There were those who envied him his good fortune and who would willingly have taken the Knapp ranch away from him.
With the help of Bob Douglas, Terry’s foreman while he lived and now as devotedly Garry’s, the young ranchman had been able to laugh at these attempts.
But now it looked to Dorothy as though something more serious than ever was afoot to rob Garry of the fruits of victory, and she was anxious.
“Wake up, Doro darling,” she heard Tavia hiss excitedly. “The villains approach. Now is your opportunity to prove yourself a great melodramatic actress if not worse.”