“No need to organize, daughter, the boys have one in splendid working order. Perhaps we will be able to have a concert from them before you leave.” “Oh, how jolly! Jane, how do you think we will ever be able to tear ourselves away from all this? Couldn’t we start a home-study course, or something outside?” pouted Judith. Donning their brilliant sweaters, the girls were soon ready, and taking their places in the buck-board set out to assist in the inspection. Within the corrals the shouting of the cowboys, and the antics of broncos and ponies, presented a scene quite like the Wild West of the screen world. Jane and Judith were in their glory. Jane with the joy of exhibiting the “High Spots of Ranch Life,” she had promised, and Judith with the exhilarating delight of observing such wonders for the first time. “And to think I might have missed it all,” she reflected in Jane’s ear, when a dash of the ponies brought them up to the end of the fenced-in patches of dust, noise and horses. “I had not planned to stop off until—Can you guess what made me think you lived somewhere near the Montana trail?” “Oh, of course. Butte, pronounced ‘beaut’?” ventured Jane, and even Henry Allen considered the guess worthy of a prize. And he said so. This particular evening, the prelude of a series that followed, there was carried out a program of such enjoyment, that one would easily agree with Judith, it would be hard indeed for the girls to tear themselves away from the ranch life to take up the circumspect duties of college. The excitement of actually bargaining with the Indians and obtaining the souvenir beaded bags (although none with an abject apology worked in its intricacies was to be found for Judith), then the dear moccasins, about which Mr. Allen coaxed the squaws to tell such quaint fables, not to speak of the mysteriously woven baskets, made big enough and small enough for any imaginable dressing or sewing use, when all garnered and gathered made up a precious burden for the depot cart in which the El Capitan party rode home that wonderful summer afternoon. “Couldn’t we stop at Squaw Squatty’s, Daddy? I would love to have the old Indian tell Judy’s fortune,” Jane suggested. “Oh, yes, do,” pleaded Judy. “I want so much to know about a big secret I have planned for the first half,” she volunteered. “Jane, I’ll tell you about it, maybe. But I should like to know how it will all pan out, and I’m sure a squaw would be able to foretell,” she ventured, with a sly grimace at Aunt Mary. CHAPTER IV—WOO NAH AND THE FORTUNES “Can we make it, Daddy?” asked Jane. “Doesn’t that look like a little cyclone cloud?” indicating the cloud with a “tail” that seemed to be gathering color and speed as the buckboard traveled on.