They answered Kit's hail and raced their horses up the grade.

By the time they reached the summit, Bet and Kit were almost hysterical from laughing. Bet put the gun down gingerly. "I wonder what I would have done, if they had called my bluff!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, boys, if you could only have heard her," shrieked Kit, at last getting her breath. "You'd have thought she had just stepped out of a western two-gun story, the way she threatened those men, it's a wonder they didn't see through her. And she hardly knows how to hold the gun.

It was a scream!"

"I don't believe I'd enjoy that sort of thing for regular work,"

laughed Bet. "I guess I don't like to give orders that much."

But the two ruffians, hastening toward the railroad station thirty miles away, never dreamed that the girl who menaced them so daringly, had never pulled a trigger.

"We're lucky to be out of it," they agreed. "Girls have a way of always making trouble and getting their own way!"

CHAPTER XVII

_INDIAN TRADING_

Much to the disgust of Tommy Sharpe, Kie Wicks was a guest at the Judge's table that day. Kie was beaming with self-satisfaction. He felt that he had put over a good deal and could afford to be genial.

Kie's plan was to let the ruffians hold the claim until he could make arrangements to put men to work and dig out the treasure in the tunnel.

Kie did not doubt for a moment that the treasure was there. And tonight he intended to investigate and see how much needed to be done.

If he could handle it alone, so much the better.

Kit and Bet arrived when the meal was half finished and pretended to be hurt at the teasing that they encountered. They decided to wait until the family was alone before saying anything about the capture of the tunnel. Kie might get ugly and actually harm the old man.

"Saw your playmate, Young Mary, coming up the canyon today," said Kie, glad of some new excitement for the girls, to take their minds off the professor for a while.

"Oh, is Mary home?" cried Kit happily. "I do want to see her!"

"Yes, Young Mary is here with a dozen other Indians of all sizes and shapes," grinned Kie. "They sure are a funny looking crowd."

Kit herself might have made the same remark, but coming from Kie, she resented it.

"Where are they?" exclaimed Bet. "I'll pay them a visit. Do you think they will make some baskets for me?"

"You can never tell a thing about them. If they need money, they will, but like as not they'll refuse. This is their vacation, they come up every year to pick mesquite beans and pinon nuts," Kit informed them.

"Let's go down right after lunch and see them," proposed the girls, but Kit hesitated.

"We might frighten them away if we are too anxious," she said.

"Indians are very shy."

"I'll say they are," smiled Tommy. "And about as friendly as a block of ice."

"Why Tommy Sharpe, how can you say such a thing? There's Old Mary and Indian Joe, they are the most friendly people in the world. There isn't anything they wouldn't do for Mum and Dad and me. And they think you're a great man!" Kit defended them.

"Old Mary and Joe are altogether different. Indian Joe is just like a white man!" answered Tommy.

"And good as gold!" emphasized Kit.

"The only good Indian is a dead Indian," Kie Wicks exclaimed dramatically.

Kit flared up, but Bet soothed her.

"Remember we are already even with Kie Wicks," she whispered.

Kit nodded her head. "Just the same I don't like to hear Indians talked about like that. It always makes me angry."

After lunch, much to the joy of Kie Wicks, the girls decided to walk down into the canyon and see the Indians.

Kit ran home first, for she was sure that she would find Young Mary there, and she wanted to see the girl alone. With the other girls she might be shy.

So it was Bet who called the Judge aside, to a safe distance, from Kie Wicks' eager ears, and told him of the capture of the tunnel.

"And those fellows said that Kie put them up to it and that it is Kie who took the old man. He's safe, they said, but I'm not so sure about that."

"I wouldn't worry about him. Kie Wicks has no reason to harm the professor," declared Judge Breckenridge. "Now I'll tell you what we'd better do. You and the girls go along down the trail and visit the Indian camp. That is evidently what Kie wants you to do. I'll send Tommy over to the tunnel with two men to start the excavation work and maybe by the time we get the professor back, we'll have something to show him. Who knows, Bet? Sometimes I'm half hopeful, although my common sense tells me there isn't anything there."

"Don't use so much common sense, Judge. It's lots of fun to dream. I wish Dad were here, he'd love this. He'd have the whole thing worked out, he'd be able to see the Spaniards who buried the treasure and all the rest of it. Dad's wonderful!"

"He is, Bet. I agree with you, and I wish that he would make us a visit, he half promised, you know."

"Yes, but in his last letter he said he'd not be able to come," Bet added with a sigh, for the separation from her father was a trial to the motherless girl.

"All right, now you run along and don't say anything to the girls--not yet. Make a lot of fuss about going to see the Indians and pretend you're crazy about them."

"I don't have to _pretend_ that, I am crazy to see them. Oh, I do hope they will like me and want to be friends."

The Judge laughed at the girl's enthusiasm.

"They will, Bet, they can't help themselves, if they are human at all."

Bet turned away without noticing the delicate compliment that the Judge had paid her. In her heart she was really concerned for fear she might not be able to get on friendly terms with the Indians.

Judge Breckenridge joined Kie Wicks and his party, after giving instructions to Tommy Sharpe, and he followed Kie on what he knew to be a "wild goose chase." Kie flattered himself that he was being very clever in keeping the searchers away from the old man.

The girls waited impatiently for Kit. "I do wish she would hurry,"

fussed Bet. "What's keeping her?"

"Maybe she found Young Mary there, as she hoped, and as it's been such a long time since they've seen each other, they'll need to do a lot of talking to make up for lost time."

But Kit's meeting with her Indian friend was very different from what the girls pictured.

Even Kit was surprised and a little hurt at the lack of interest in her childhood friend.