Betty remembered having seen a box of borax on the kitchen shelf, and Bob volunteered to go for it. When he returned with it, he brought the news that there was a peddler at the back door with a bewildering "assortment of everything," Bob said.

"Put a lot of this in," he directed, handing the box to Betty, who obediently shook in half the contents. "Now we'll put the stuff to soak, and go and look at this fellow's stuff. When you come back to wash, all you'll have to do will be to rinse 'em out and put them out to dry."

This sounded plausible, and the middy blouse and collars were left to soak themselves clean.

The peddler proved to have a horse and wagon, and he carried dress goods, notions, kitchen wear, books, stationery and candy. Bob and Betty had never seen a wagon fitted up like this, and they thought it far better than a store.

"I might buy that dotted swiss shirtwaist," whispered Betty, as Mrs. Watterby ordered five yards of apron gingham measured off. "My middy blouse might not dry in time."

"All right. And I'll get a clean collar," agreed Bob. "These aren't much and I suppose they're too cheap to last long, but at any rate they're clean."

The peddler drove on at last, and then Bob and Betty hurried back to their washing. Alas, the tub had disappeared. At supper that night, Mrs. Watterby had missed it and demanded of her husband if he had seen it.

"Sure, I had Ki spraying the hen house this afternoon," Watterby rejoined. "Thought you'd mixed the soapsuds and washing soda for him. It was standing in the barn."

Betty explained. Of her blouse and Bob's collars, there remained a few ragged shreds, for she had poured enough washing powder in to eat the fabric full of holes. She took her loss good-naturedly and was thankful she had the new blouse to wear.

Uncle Dick, when he heard the story, went into gales of laughter.

"Tough luck, Kitten," he comforted her. "We'll go to see an oil fire this afternoon and that'll take your mind off your troubles."



CHAPTER XI

AN OIL FIRE

Mr. Gordon had arrived the night of the disastrous laundry experiment, and made his announcement at the supper table.

"An oil fire!" ejaculated Betty. "Where is it? Won't it burn the offices and houses? Perhaps they'll have it put out before we get there!"

Mr. Gordon did not seem to be at all excited, and continued to eat his supper placidly. He looked tired, and he later admitted that he had slept little the night before, having spent the time discussing ways of putting out the fire with the well foreman.

"No, we'll get to it in plenty of time in the morning," he assured his niece. "An oil fire is less dangerous than expensive, my dear. We've got a man coming up from beyond Tippewa with a sand blast on the first train. Telegraphed for him to-night. It will cost fifteen hundred dollars to put the fire out, but it's worth it."

"Fifteen hundred dollars!" Betty stared aghast.

"Well, think of the barrels of oil burning up," returned her uncle. "The fire's been going since yesterday afternoon. The normal output of that well is round about three thousand barrels a day. Every twenty-four hours she burns, that much oil is lost to us. So we count the fifteen hundred cheap."

The Watterby household had the farm habit of retiring early, and to-night Betty and Bob were anxious to get to sleep early, too, that they might have a good start in the morning. Mr. Gordon was glad to turn in when the rest did and make up for lost sleep, so by nine o'clock the house was wrapped in slumber.

An hour or two later Betty was awakened by what sounded like a shot. Startled, she listened for a moment, and then, hearing no further commotion, went to sleep again.

She was the first one down in the morning, barring Mrs. Watterby, who, winter and summer, rose at half-past four or earlier. Going out to the pump for a drink of water she saw Ki bending over something beside the woodshed.

"Hey!" he hailed her, without getting up. "Come see what I got."

Ki and Betty were now excellent friends, the taciturn Indian apparently recognizing that her interest in his stories and Indian tales was unfeigned.

"Why, what is it?" she asked, stopping in amazement as her foot touched a furry body. "Is it a dog? Oh, Ki, you didn't kill a dog?"

"No, not a dog," said the Indian showing his white teeth in a grin which was the nearest he ever permitted himself to come to a laugh. "Not a dog—a fox. I shot him last night. He would eat Mis' Watterby's chickens."

"So that was what I heard," Betty said, recalling the noise that had wakened her. "Bob, come and see the fox Ki shot."

Bob came running over to the woodshed, and appraised the reddish yellow body admiringly.

"Gee, he was a big one, wasn't he?" he murmured. "When'd you shoot him, Ki? Last night? I didn't hear anything. Stealing chickens, I'll bet a feather."

Ki nodded, and displayed a shining knife.

"You watch," he told them. "I skin him, and cure the fur—then I give it to Miss Betty. Make her a nice what you call neck-piece next winter."

"Oh, don't skin him!" Betty involuntarily shuddered. "I couldn't bear to watch you do that. He will bleed, and I'll think it hurts him. Poor little fox—I hate to see dead things!"

Her lips quivered, and Ki looked hurt.

"You no want a neck-piece?" he asked, bewildered. "Very nice young ladies wear them. I have seen."

Betty smiled at him through the tears that would come.

"I would love to have the fur," she explained. "Only I'm such a coward I can't bear to see you skin the fox. I heard a man say once that women are all alike—we don't care if animals are killed to give us clothes, but we want some one else to do the killing."

Somewhat to her surprise, Ki seemed to understand.

"Bob help me skin him," he announced quietly. "You go in. When the fur is dry and clean, you have it for your neck-piece."

Betty thanked him and ran away to tell Mr. Gordon and Grandma Watterby of her present. A handsome fox skin was not to be despised, and Betty was all girl when it came to pretty clothes and furs.

Ki and Bob came in to breakfast, and the talk turned to the oil fire. Mr. Gordon generously invited as many as could get into his machine to go, but Mrs. Price could not stand excitement and the Watterbys were too busy to indulge in that luxury. Will Watterby offered to let Ki go, but the Indian had a curious antipathy to oil fields. Grandma Watterby always insisted it was because he was not a Reservation Indian and, unlike many of them, owned no oil lands.

"I'd go with you myself," she declared brightly, "if the misery in my back wasn't a little mite onery this mornin'. Racketing about in that contraption o' yours, I reckon, wouldn't be the best kind of liniment for cricks like mine."

So only Mr. Gordon, Betty and Bob started for the fields.

"I saw a horse that I think will about suit you, Betty," said her uncle when they were well away from the house. "I'm having it sent out to-morrow. She is reputed gentle and used to being ridden by a woman. Then, if we can pick up some kind of a nag for Bob, you two needn't be tied down to the farm. All the orders I have for you is that you're to keep away from the town. Ride as far into the country as you like."

"But, Mr. Gordon," protested Bob, "I don't want you to get a horse for me! I'd rather have a job. Isn't there something I can do out at the oil fields? I'm used to looking out for myself."

"Look here, young man," came the reply with mock severity, "I thought I told you you had a job on your hands looking after Betty. I meant it. I can't go round on these inspection trips unless I can feel that she is all right. And, by the way, have you any objection to calling me Uncle Dick? I think I rather fancy the idea of a nephew."

Bob, of course, felt more at ease then, and Betty, too, was pleased. The boy found it easy to call Mr. Gordon "Uncle Dick," and as time went on and they became firmer friends it seemed most natural that he should do so.

They were approaching the oil fields gradually, the road, which was full of treacherous ruts, being anything but straight. Whenever they met a team or another car, which was infrequently, they had to stop far to one side and let the other vehicle pass. Betty was much impressed with her first near view of the immense derricks.

"What a lot of them!" she said. "Just like a forest, isn't it, Uncle Dick?"

Her uncle frowned preoccupiedly.

"Those are not our fields," he announced curtly. "They're mostly the property of small lease-holders. It is mighty wasteful, Betty, to drill like that, cutting up the land into small holdings, and is bound to make trouble. They have no storage facilities, and if the pipe lines can't take all the oil produced, there is congestion right away. Also many of the leases are on short terms, and that means they've the one idea of getting all the oil out they can while they hold the land. So they tend to exhaust the sands early, and violate the principles of conservation."

They were following the road through the oil fields now, and presently Mr. Gordon announced that they were on his company's holdings. At the same time they saw a column of dense black smoke towering toward the sky.

"There's the fire!" cried Betty. "Do hurry, Uncle Dick!"

Obediently the little car let out a notch, and they drew up beside a group of men, still some distance from the fire.

"Chandler's come," said one of these respectfully to Mr. Gordon. "The five-ton truck brought up a load of sand, and they're only waiting for you to give the word."

The speaker was introduced to Betty and Bob as Dave Thorne, a well foreman, and at a word from Mr. Gordon he jumped on the running board of the car and they proceeded another mile. This brought them to the load of sand dumped on one side of the road and the powerful high-pressure hose that had been brought up on the train that morning. The heat from the burning well was intense, though they were still some distance from the actual fire.

"Now, Betty, watch and you'll see a fire put out," commanded her uncle, getting out of the car and going forward, first cautioning both young people to stay where they were and not get in any one's way.

A half dozen men lifted the heavy hose, turned the nozzle toward the column of smoke, and a shower of fine sand curved high in the air. For perhaps five minutes nothing could be noticed; then, almost imperceptibly, the smoke began to die down. Lower, lower, and lower it fell, and at last died away. The men continued to pump in sand for an extra ten minutes as a matter of precaution, then stopped. The fire was out.

"That fire wasn't no accident, Boss," proclaimed Dave Thorne, wiping his perspiring face with a red handkerchief. "She was set. And, believe me, where there's one, there'll be others. The north section keeps me awake nights. If a fire started there where that close drilling's going on, it couldn't help but spread. You can fight fire in a single well, but let half a dozen of 'em flare up and there'll be more than oil lost."

"What a croaker you are, Dave," said Mr. Gordon lightly. "Don't lose sleep about any section. A night's rest is far too valuable to be squandered. These young folks want to see the sights, and I'll take them around for an hour or so. Then I'll go over that bill of lading with you. Come, Betty and Bob, we'll leave the machine and take the trail on foot. Mind your clothes and shoes—there's oil on everything you touch."



CHAPTER XII

IN THE FIELDS

"I always thought oil was for lamps," said Betty, as she picked her way after her uncle and Bob, "but there aren't enough lamps in the world to use all this oil."

They were walking toward a pumping station still in the distance, and Mr. Gordon waited for her to come up with him.

"Perhaps lamps are the least important factor in the whole big question," he answered earnestly. "Oil is being used more and more for fuel. Oil burners have been perfected for ships. And schools, apartment houses and public buildings are being heated with oil in many cities. And, of course, the demand for gasolene is enormous. I rather think the engine of the train that brought you to Flame City was an oil burner."

"I wish we'd gone and looked, don't you, Bob?" said Betty. "Oh, what a big derrick! How many quarts of oil does that pump in a day, Uncle Dick?"

Mr. Gordon laughed heartily.

"Little Miss Tenderfoot!" he teased. "I thought you knew, goosie, that we measured oil by barrels. That well is flowing slightly over five thousand barrels a day. Altogether our wells are now yielding well over fifty thousand barrels of oil a day."

"I read in one of the papers about a man who paid three thousand dollars for one acre of oil land," said Bob thoughtfully. "How did he know he was going to find oil here?"

"He didn't know," was the prompt answer. "There is no way of knowing positively. Many and many a small investor has lost the savings of a lifetime because he had a 'hunch' that he would bring in a good well. Right here in Oklahoma, statistics show that in one section, of five thousand two hundred and forty-six wells driven, one thousand three hundred and fifty-six were dry. Now it takes a lot of money to drive a well, between twenty and thirty thousand dollars in fact, so you may count up the loss."

"But there is oil here—just look!" Bob waved comprehensively toward the beehive of industry that surrounded them.

"Right, my boy. And when they do strike oil, they strike it rich. Huge fortunes have been made in oil and will be made again. If the crooks who pose as brokers and promoters would keep their hands off, it might be possible to safeguard some of the smaller speculators."

Bob was minded to speak again of the two sharpers he had overheard on the train, but they had reached the pumping station, and he and Betty were immediately interested in what Mr. Gordon had to show them.

There was a long bunk house at one side where the employees slept and ate and where a comfortable, fat Chinese cook was sweeping off the screened porch. The pumping station was another long, one-story building, with eight tall iron stacks rising beside it. Inside, set in a concrete floor, huge dynamos were pumping away, sending oil through miles and miles of pipe lines to points where it would be loaded into cars or ships and sent all over the world. The engineer in charge took them around and explained every piece of machinery, much to the delight of Bob who had a boy's love for things that went.

From the station they walked to one of the largest storage tanks, a huge reservoir of oil, capable of holding fifty-five thousand barrels when full, Mr. Gordon told them. It was half empty at the time, and three long flights of steps were bare that would be covered when the storage capacity was used.

"If there isn't a laundry or a hotel in Flame City," observed Betty suddenly, "there is everything to run the oil business with, that's certain. Is it all right to say you have very complete equipment, Uncle Dick?"

"Your phrase is correct," admitted her uncle, smiling. "Poor tools are the height of folly for any business or worker, Betty. As for Flame City, the place is literally swamped. People poured in from the day the first good well came in, and they've been arriving in droves ever since. You can't persuade any of them to take up the business they had before—to run a boarding house, or open a restaurant or a store. No, every blessed one of 'em has set his heart on owning and operating an oil well. It was just so in the California gold drive—the forty-niners wanted a gold mine, and they walked right over those that lay at their feet."

They took the automobile after inspecting the storage tank and went several miles farther up the field to the gasolene plant that was isolated from the rest of the buildings. Here they saw how the crude petroleum was refined to make gasolene and were told the elaborate precautions observed to keep this highly inflammable produce from catching fire. Seven large steel tanks, built on brick foundations, were used for storage, and there was also a larger oil tank from which the oil to be refined was pumped.

"I'd like to see a ship that carries oil," remarked Betty, as they came out of the gasolene plant and made their way to the automobile.

One of the men had happened to mention in her hearing that an unusually large shipment of oil had been ordered to be sent to Egypt.

"Well, that's one request we can't fill," acknowledged her uncle regretfully. "You're inland for sure, Betty, and the good old ocean is many miles from Oklahoma. However, some day I hope you'll see an oil tanker. The whole story of oil, from production to consumption, is a fascinating one, and not the least wonderful is the part that deals with the marketing side of it. We have salesmen in South America, China, Egypt, and practically every large country. Who knows but Bob will one day be our representative in the Orient?"

They had dinner, a merry noisy meal, with the men at the bunk house. It was a novelty Bob and Betty thoroughly enjoyed and they found the men, mostly clerical workers, a few bosses and Dave Thorne, the well foreman, a friendly, clever crowd who were to a man keenly interested in the work at the fields. They talked shop incessantly, and both Betty and Bob gained much accurate information of positive value.

After dinner Mr. Gordon drove them back to the Watterby farm, promising another trip soon. He had to go back immediately, and slept at the fields that night. Thereafter he came and went as he could, sometimes being absent for two or three days at a time. The horse he had ordered for Betty arrived, and proved to be all that was said for it. She was a wiry little animal, and Betty christened her "Clover." For Bob, Mr. Gordon succeeded in capturing a big, rawboned white horse with a gift of astonishing speed. Riding horses were at a premium, for distances between wells were something to be reckoned with, and those who did not own a car had to depend on horses. Bob even saw one enthusiastic prospector mounted on a donkey.

As soon as they were used to their mounts, Betty and Bob began to go off for long rides, always remembering Mr. Gordon's injunction to stay away from the town.

"How tanned you are, Betty!" Bob said one day, as they were letting their horses walk after a brisk gallop. "I declare, you're almost as brown as Ki. I like you that way, though," he added hastily, as if he feared she might think he was criticising. "And that red tie is awfully pretty."

"You look like an Indian yourself," said Betty shyly.

But Bob's blue eyes, while attractive enough in his brown face, would preclude any idea that he might have Indian blood. Betty, on the other hand, as the boy said, was as brown as an Indian, and her dark eyes and heavy straight dark hair, which she now wore in a thick braid down her back, would have enabled her to play the part of Minnehaha, or that of a pretty Gypsy lass, with little trouble. Her khaki riding suit was very becoming, and to-day she had knotted a scarlet tie under the trim little collar that further emphasized her vivid coloring and the smooth tan of her cheeks. Although the sun was hot, she would not bother with a hat, and Bob, too, was bareheaded. They looked what they were—a healthy, happy, wide-awake American boy and girl and ready for either adventure or service, or a mixture of both, and reasonably sure to call whatever might befall them "fun".

"Why don't we go to that north section Dave Thorne is always talking about?" suggested Bob. "He is forever harping on the subject of a fire there, and I'd like to look it over."

"But it must be five miles from here," said Betty doubtfully. "Can we get back in time for dinner?"

"If we can't, we'll get some one of the Chinese cooks to give us a lunch," returned Bob confidently. "Let's go, Betty. I know the way, because I studied the map Uncle Dick had out on the table night before last. The north section is shut off from the others, and it's backed up against the furthest end of that perfect forest of derricks we saw the first time we went to Uncle Dick's wells—remember? I think that is what worries Dave—some of those small holders have tempers like porcupines and they always think some one is infringing on their rights. Let one of 'em get mad and take it out on Dave, and there might be a four-alarm fire without much trouble."

"Do you know what I miss more than anything else?" asked Betty, when the horses' heads were turned and they were on their way to the north section. "You'll never guess—ice-cream soda! I haven't had one for weeks—not since we left Chicago."

"And I guess it will be some more weeks before you get another," said Bob. "Ice doesn't seem to be known out here, does it? Did you see how the butter swam about under that hot kitchen lamp last night? We used to think the Peabodys were stingy because they wouldn't use butter, but I'd rather have none than have it so soft."

They reached the north section and found Dave Thorne directing the drilling of a well which he told them was expected to "come in" that morning.

"Bob, I wonder if you'd do an errand for me?" he inquired. "I have to go back to the pumping station, and I want to send a record book back to one of the men here. Will you ride back with me and get the book? Betty will be all right, and she'll get a chance to see the well come in. MacDuffy will look after her."

Bob, of course, was glad to do Dave a service, and the old Scotchman, MacDuffy, promised to see that Betty did not get into any danger.

"You'll like to see the well shot off," he told her pleasantly. "'Tis a bonny sight, seen for the first time. The wee horse is not afraid? That is gude, then. Rein in here and keep your eye on that crowd of men. When they run you'll know the time has come."

Obediently Betty sat her horse and fixed her gaze on the small group of men who were moving about with more than ordinary quickness and a trace of excitement. There is always the hope that a well will "come in big" and offer substantial payment for the weeks of hard work and toil expended on it.

Suddenly the group scattered. Involuntarily Betty's hand tightened on Clover's rein. For a moment nothing happened. Then came a roar and a mighty rumble and the earth seemed to strain and crack.



CHAPTER XIII

THE THREE HILLS

Betty saw an upheaval of sand, followed by a column of oil, heard a shout of victory from the men, and then Clover, who had been shivering with apprehension, snorted loudly, took the bit between her teeth and began to run. MacDuffy, resting securely in the assurance Betty had given that the horse would not be frightened, was occupied with the men, and horse and rider were rapidly disappearing from sight before he realized what had happened.

"Clover, Clover!" Betty put her arms around the maddened creature's neck and spoke to her softly. "It's all right, dear. Don't be afraid. I thought you had been brought up in an oil country, or I wouldn't have let you stand where you could see the well."

But Clover's nerves had been sadly shaken, and she was not yet in a state to listen to reason. Betty was now an excellent horsewoman, and had no difficulty in remaining in the saddle. She did not try to pull the horse in, rather suspecting that the animal had a hard mouth, but let the reins lie loosely on her neck, speaking reassuringly from time to time. Gradually Clover slackened her wild lope, dropped to a gentle gallop, and then into a canter and from that to a walk.

"Well, now, you silly horse, I hope you feel that you're far enough from danger," said Betty conversationally. "I'm sure I haven't the slightest idea where we are. Bob and I have never ridden this far, and from the looks of the country I don't think it is what the geographies call 'densely populated'. Mercy, what a lonesome place!"

Clover had gone contentedly to cropping grass, and that reminded Betty that she was hungry.

Far away she saw the outlines of oil derricks, but the horse seemed to have taken her out of the immediate vicinity of the oil fields. Not a house was in sight, not a moving person or animal. The stillness was unbroken save for the hoarse call of a single bird flying overhead.

Suddenly Betty's eyes widened in astonishment. She jerked up Clover's head so sharply that that pampered pet shook it angrily. Why should she be treated like that?

"The three hills!" gasped Betty. "Grandma Watterby's three hills! 'Joined together like hands' she always says, and right back of the Saunders' house. Clover! do you suppose we've found the three hills and Bob's aunts?"

Clover had no opinion to offer. She had been rudely torn from her enjoyment of the herbage, and she resented that plainly. Betty, however, was too excited to consider the subject of lunch, even though a moment before she had been very hungry.

She turned the horse's head toward the three hills, and with every step that brought her nearer the conviction grew that she had found the Saunders' place. To be sure, she had seen nothing of a house as yet, but, like the name of Saunders, three hills were not a common phenomenon in Oklahoma, at least not within riding distance of the oil fields.

"It's an awful long way," sighed Betty, when after half an hour's riding, the hills seemed as far away as before. "I suppose the air is so clear that they seemed nearer than they are. And I guess we came the long way around. There must be a road from the Watterby farm that cuts off some of the distance."

Betty did not worry about what Bob or the men at the wells might be thinking. They knew her for a good rider, and Clover for a comparatively easily managed horse. No one in the West considers a good gallop anything serious, even when it assumes the proportions of a runaway. Betty was sure that they would expect her to ride back when Clover had had her run, and, barring a misstep, no harm would be likely to befall the rider.

After a full hour and a half of steady going, the three hills obligingly moved perceptibly nearer. Betty could see the ribbon of road that lay at their base, and the outline of a rambling farmhouse.

"Grandma Watterby said the hills were right back of the house!" repeated Betty ecstatically. "Oh, I'm sure this must be the place. If only Bob had come with me!"

She laughed a little at the notion of such an accommodating runaway, and then pulled Clover up short as they came to a rickety fence that apparently marked the boundary line of a field.

"We go straight across this field to the road, I think," said Betty aloud. "I don't believe there is anything planted. Clover, can you jump that fence?"

The fence was not very high, and at the word Clover gracefully cleared it. The field was a tangled mass of corn stubble and weeds, and a good farmer would have known that it had not been under cultivation that year. At the further side Betty found a pair of bars, and, taking these down, found herself in a narrow, deserted road, facing a lonely farmhouse.

The house was set back several yards from the road and even to the casual observer presented a melancholy picture. The paint was peeling from the clapboards, leaders were hanging in rusty shreds, and the fence post to which Betty tied her horse was rotten and worm-eaten.

"My goodness, I'm afraid the aunts are awfully poor," sighed Betty, who had cherished a dream that Bob might find his relatives rich and ready to help him toward the education he so ardently desired. "Even Bramble Farm didn't look as bad as this."

She went up the weedy path to the house, and then for the first time noticed that all the shades were drawn and the doors and windows closed. It was a warm day and there was every reason for having all the fresh air that could be obtained.

"They must be away from home!" thought Betty. "Or—doesn't anybody live here?"

A cackle from the hen yard answered her question and put her mind at ease. Where there were chickens, there would be people as a matter of course. They might have gone away to spend the day.

"I'll take Clover out to the barn and give her a drink of water," decided Betty. "No one would mind that. Grandma Watterby says a farmer's barn is always open to his neighbor's stock."

So, Clover's bridle over her arm, Betty proceeded out to the barnyard.

"Why—how funny!" she gasped.

The unearthly stillness which had reigned was broken at her approach by the neighing of a horse, and at the sound the chickens began to beat madly against the wire fencing of their yard, cows set up a bellowing, and a wild grunting came from the pig-pen.

Betty hurried to the barn. Three cows in their stanchions turned imploring eyes on her, and a couple of old horses neighed loudly. Something prompted Betty to look in the feed boxes. They were empty.

"I believe they're hungry!" she exclaimed. "Clover, I don't believe they've been fed or watered for several days! They wouldn't act like this if they had."

There wasn't a drop of water anywhere in or about the barn, and a hasty investigation of the pig troughs and the drinking vessels in the chicken yard showed the same state of affairs.

"I don't know how much to feed you," Betty told the suffering animals compassionately, "but at any rate I know what to feed you. And you shall have some water as fast as I can pump it."

She was thankful for the weeks spent at Bramble Farm as she set about her heavy tasks. She was tired from her long ride and the excitement of the morning, but it never entered her head to go away and leave the neglected farm stock. There was no other house within sight where she could go for help, and if the animals were fed and watered that day it was evidently up to her to do it.

She worked valiantly, heaping the horses' mangers with hay, carrying cornstalks to the cows and feeding the ravenous pigs and chickens corn on the cob, for there was no time to run the sheller. She had some difficulty in discovering the supplies, and then, when all were served, she discovered that not one of the animals had touched the food.

"Too thirsty," she commented wisely.

Watering them was hard, tiresome work, for one big tub in the center of the yard evidently served the whole barn. When she had pumped that full—and how her arms ached!—she led the horses out, and after them, the cows. She was afraid to let either horses or cows have all they wanted, and jerking them back to their stalls before they had finished was not easy. She carried pailful after pailful of water to the pigs and the chickens and it was late in the afternoon before she had the satisfaction of knowing that every animal, if not content, was much more comfortable than before her arrival.

"Now I think I've earned something to eat!" she confided to Clover, when, hot and tired and flushed with the heat, she had filled the last chicken yard pan. "And I'm going up to the house and help myself from the pantry. I'm 'most sure the kitchen door is unlocked; no one around here ever locks the back door."

She was very hungry by this time, having had nothing since an early breakfast, and she had no scruples about helping herself to whatever edibles she might find.

"I begin to sympathize with all the hired men," she thought, making her way to the kitchen door. "I don't wonder they eat huge meals when they have to do such hard work."

The door, as she had expected, was not locked. A slight turn on the knob opened it easily, and Betty stepped cautiously into the kitchen. The drawn shades made it dark, but it was not the darkness that caused Betty to jump back a step.

She listened intently. Would she hear the noise again, or had it been only her nervous imagination?

No—there it was again, plain and unmistakable. Some one had groaned!



CHAPTER XIV

TWO INVALIDS

Betty, for a single wild instant, had an impulse to slam the door shut and gallop off the place on Clover. She was all alone, and miles from help of any sort, no matter what happened. Then, as another groan sounded, she bravely made up her mind to investigate. Some one was evidently sick and in pain; that explained the state of affairs at the barns. Could she, Betty Gordon, run away and leave a sick person without attempting to find out what was needed?

It must be confessed that it took a great deal of courage to pull open the grained oak door that led from the kitchen and behind which the groans were sounding with monotonous regularity, but the girl set her teeth, and opened it softly. In the semi-darkness she was able to make out the dim outlines of a bed set between the two windows and a swirl of bedclothes, some of which were dragging on the floor.

"I'm just Betty," she quavered uncertainly, for though the groans had stopped no one spoke. "I heard you groaning. Are you sick, and is there anything I can do for you?"

"Sick," murmured a woman's voice. "So sick!"

At the sound of utter weariness and pain, Betty's fear left her and all the tenderness and passionate desire for service that had made her such a wonderful little "hand" with ill and fretful babies in her old home at Pineville came to take its place.

"I'll have to put the shades up," she explained, stepping lightly to the windows and pulling up the green shades. "Then I can see to make you more comfortable."

She spoke clearly and yet not loudly, knowing that a sick person hates whispering.

The afternoon sunlight streamed into the room, revealing a clean though most sparsely furnished bedroom. A rag rug on the floor, two chairs, a washstand and mirror and the bed were the only articles of furniture.

Betty, after one swift glance, turned toward the occupant of the bed. She saw a woman apparently about sixty years old, with mild blue eyes, now glazed by fever, and tangled gray hair. As Betty watched her a terrible fit of coughing shook her.

"You must have a doctor!" said Betty decidedly, wondering what there was about the woman that seemed familiar. "How long have you been like this? Have you been alone? How hard it must have been for you!"

She put out her hand to smooth the bedclothes, and the sick woman grasped it, her own hot with fever, till Betty almost cried out.

"The stock!" she gasped. "I took 'em water till I couldn't get out of bed. How long ago was that? They will die tied up!"

"I fed and watered them," Betty soothed her. "They're all right. Don't worry another minute. I'll make you tidy and get you something to eat and then I'm going for a doctor."

What was there about the woman—Betty stared at her, frowning in an effort to recollect where she had seen her before. If Bob were only here to help her—Bob! Why, the sick woman before her was the living image of Bob Henderson!

"The Saunders place!" Betty clapped her hand to her mouth, anxious not to excite her patient. "Why, of course, this is the farm. And she must be one of Bob's aunts!"

As if in answer to her question, the sick woman half rose in bed.

"Charity!" she stammered, her hands pressed to her aching head. "Charity! She was sick first."

She pointed to an adjoining room and Betty crossed the floor feeling that she was walking in a dream and likely to wake up any minute.

The communicating room was shrouded in darkness like the other, and when Betty had raised the shades she found it furnished as another bedroom. Evidently the old sisters had chosen to live entirely on the first floor of the house.

The woman in the square iron bed looked startlingly like Bob, too, but, unlike her sister, her eyes were dark. She lay quietly, her cheeks scarlet and her hands nervously picking at the counterpane. When she saw Betty she struggled to a sitting posture and tried to talk. It was pitiable to watch her efforts for her voice was quite gone. Only when Betty put her ear close down to the trembling lips could she hear the words.

"Hope!" murmured the sick woman hoarsely. "Hope—have you seen her?"

"Yes, she asked for you, too." Betty tried to nod brightly. "I'm going to do a few things here first and get you both something to eat, and then I'm going for a doctor."

Miss Charity sank back, evidently satisfied, and Betty hurried out to the kitchen. The wood box was well-filled and she had little difficulty in starting a fire in the stove. Like the rest of the farm homes, the only available water supply seemed to be the pump in the yard, and Betty pumped vigorously, letting a stream run out before she filled the teakettle. She thought it likely that no water had been pumped for several days.

There was plenty of food in the house, though not a great variety, and mostly canned goods at that. Betty, who by this time was really faint with hunger, made a hasty lunch from crackers and some cheese before she carried a basin of warm water in to the two patients and sponged their faces and hands. She wanted to put clean sheets on the beds, but wisely decided that was too much of an undertaking for an inexperienced nurse and contented herself with straightening the bedclothes and putting on a clean counterpane from the scanty little pile of linen in a bottom drawer of the washstand in Miss Hope's room. She was slightly delirious for brief intervals, but was able to tell Betty where many things were. Neither of the sisters seemed at all surprised to see the girl, and, if they were able to reason at all, probably thought she was a neighbor's daughter.

When Betty had the two rooms arranged a bit more tidily, and she was anxious to leave them looking presentable for she planned to send the doctor on ahead while she found Bob and brought him out with her, she brushed and braided her patients' hair smoothly, and then fed them a very little warm milk. Neither seemed at all hungry, and Betty was thankful, for she did not know what food they should have, and she longed for a physician to take the responsibility. She had given each a drink of cool water before she did anything else, knowing that they must be terribly thirsty.

She stood in the doorway where she could be seen from both beds when she had done everything she could, and the two sisters, if not better, were much more comfortable than she had found them.

"Now," she said, "I'm going to get a doctor. No, I won't leave you all alone—not for long," she added hastily, for Miss Charity was gazing at her imploringly and Miss Hope's eyes were full of tears. "I'll come back and stay all night and as long as you need me. But I must get some things and I must tell the Watterbys where I am. I'll hurry as fast as I can."

She ran out and saddled Clover, for she had been turned out to grass to enjoy a good rest, and, having got the proper direction from Miss Hope, urged her up the road at a smart canter. She knew where the Flame City doctor lived; that is, the country doctor who had practised long before the town was the oil center it was now. There were good medical men at the oil fields, but Betty knew that they were liable to be in any section and difficult to find. She trusted that Doctor Morrison would be at home.

He lived about two miles out of the town and a mile from the Watterby farm, and, as good luck would have it, he had come in from a hard case at dinner time, taken a nap, and was comfortably reading a magazine on his side porch when Betty wheeled into the yard. She knew him, having met him one day at the oil wells, and when she explained the need for him, he said that he would snatch a bit of supper and go immediately in his car.

"I know these two Saunders sisters," he said briefly. "They've lived alone for years, and now they're getting queer. It's a mercy they ever got through last winter without a case of pneumonia. Both of 'em down, you say? And impossible to get a nurse or a housekeeper for love or money."

"Oh, I'm going back," explained Betty quickly. "They need some one to wait on them. Uncle Dick will let me, I know, and I really know quite a lot about taking care of sick people, Doctor Morrison."

"But you can't stay there alone," objected the doctor. "Why, child, I wouldn't think of it. Some one will come along and carry you off."

"Bob will come and stay, too," declared Betty confidently. "There are horses and cows to take care of, you know. I found them nearly dead of thirst, and all tied in their stalls."

The doctor interrupted impatiently.

"Nice country we live in!" he muttered bitterly. "Every last man so bent on making money in oil he'd let his neighbor die under his very eyes. Here are two old women sick, and no one to lift a hand for 'em. I suppose they haven't been able to get a hired man to tend to the stock since the oil boom struck Flame City. Well, child, I don't see that I have much choice in the matter. I know as well as you do, that they must have some one to help out for a few days. That Henderson lad looks capable, and you'll be safe, as far as that goes, with him in the house. But you musn't try to do too much, and, above all, no lifting. I'll keep an eye on you."

The doctor offered to take Betty back with him in the car but she was anxious that he should not be delayed and asked him to go as soon as he could. She herself would ride on to the Watterby farm, see if Bob was there, get her supper, and pack a few necessary things in a small bag. Then she and Bob would ride back to the Saunders' place. Clover was fresh enough now, after her respite, far fresher than Betty, who was more tired than she had ever been in her life, though nothing would have dragged that confession from her. Of course her uncle must be notified, if he were not at the farm. Betty knew that a message left with the Watterbys would reach him. He had been off for four days, and was expected home very soon.

Betty did not hurry Clover, for she wanted to save her for that evening's trip, and it was well on toward six o'clock before she came in sight of the farm. A black dot resolved itself into Bob and he came running to meet her.

"I was beginning to worry about you," he called. "I waited up at the fields till afternoon, because Thorne was sure you would come back there. When I got here and found you hadn't come in, I was half afraid the horse had thrown you. You look done up, Betty; are you hurt?"

"I'm all right," said Betty carelessly, dismounting. "Have you heard from Uncle Dick?"

Bob did not answer, and she turned in surprise to look at him. His face was rather white under the tan, and his hands, fumbling with the reins, were trembling.



CHAPTER XV

UNEXPECTED NEWS

"Bob!" Betty's over-tired nerves seemed to jangle like tangled wires. "Bob, is anything the matter?"

"Well, of course, nothing is really the matter," replied Bob, his assumed calmness belied by his excited face. "Nothing that need worry you, Betty. But—there's another oil fire!"

"Another well on fire?" repeated Betty. "Oh, Bob, is it anywhere near Uncle Dick?"

"You come in and sit down. Ki will look after Clover," said Bob authoritatively. "Supper is almost ready, and I'll tell you all I know. Mrs. Watterby has gone to bed with a sick headache, but Grandma is taking her place."

"Is it a very bad fire?" urged Betty. "Where is it? When did it start? Have you seen it?"

"I guess it is pretty bad," said Bob soberly. "It's the north section, Betty. Just what Thorne has been afraid of."

"The north section!" Betty looked startled. "But, Bob, we were there this morning. Everything was all right."

"Well, when I came back with the record book Thorne sent me with and found you and Clover had dashed off, everything was all right, too. I hung round for an hour or so, hoping you'd ride back, and then MacDuffy asked me to take a message to Thorne. They were having dinner at the mess house, and Uncle Dick came in before we had finished. He was feeling great over some leases they'd signed that morning, and he thought he'd get home to-night. He didn't seem to worry about you—said he knew Clover was a sensible and well-broken horse and that he guessed you'd come out none the worse for wear. Somebody called Thorne outside just as the Chink brought in the pie, and he was back in a few minutes, looking as if the bottom had dropped out of the world.

"'Two wells afire in the north section, Mr. Gordon,' he said, and at that every man shot from the table out into the air. We could just see the two thin spirals of smoke—that section must be four miles from the bunk house.

"Everybody ran for their horses, and Uncle Dick for his car. He cranked it and then saw me getting in with him.

"'You go back and stay with Betty,' he cried to me. 'Stay with her every minute till I come back. If I'm gone three hours or three days or three years, don't leave her. And keep her away from the oil fields. We'll be overrun as soon as news of this gets out, and the kind of crowd that will be here is no place for a girl. Promise me, Bob.'

"So of course I promised," concluded the lad earnestly. "He got into the car, and maybe he didn't make that tin trap speed. All I saw was a cloud of dust. This afternoon all of Flame City has gone past here on foot, in cars, and on horseback. They say more wells have caught."

"Do you think Uncle Dick is in danger?" faltered Betty. "Aren't the fire fighters surrounded sometimes and suffocated with smoke?"

"What have you been reading?" demanded Bob with a stoutness he was far from feeling. "Uncle Dick knows too much to be caught like that. No, he may not get home for a couple of days more, but there is no need for you to lie awake and worry. Take my advice and go to bed the minute you've had supper; you look tired to death, Betty."

"Oh, Bob!" For the moment Betty had actually forgotten her great news, but now it came rushing back to her. "Oh, Bob, I've something wonderful to tell you!"

"Won't listen till you've had your supper," said Bob firmly, marching her out to the dining-room table, as Grandma Watterby rang the bell. "You eat first, then you can talk."

Betty could hardly touch her food for excitement, but she did not want the Prices to hear what she had to tell Bob, so she made a pretense of eating. The Watterby household was eager to hear what had happened to her on her unplanned-for ride, and she told them that Clover had taken her some miles before she could be halted. She did not go into details.

"Now, Bob!" She fairly dragged him from the supper table, ignoring his suggestion that they help Grandma Watterby wash the dishes. "I can't wait another minute, not even to help Grandma. I have something to tell you, and you simply must listen. I've found your aunts!"

Bob stared at her stupidly.

"I found the three hills!" Betty hurried on excitedly. "Clover carried me ever so far, and I saw the three hills in the distance. I had to ride miles before I reached them, but it isn't more than seven or eight by the road. And, Bob, both your aunts are very sick, and they have no one to take care of them or get them anything to eat. There aren't any neighbors around here, you know; all the women are too old or too busy like Mrs. Watterby, and the men are crazy about oil. You and I have to go there to-night."

"Betty, are you sure you are not crazy?" demanded Bob uneasily. "How do you know they are my aunts? How can we go there and stay? They must need a doctor."

Betty was impatient of explanations, but she saw that Bob was genuinely bewildered, so she hastily sketched the proceedings of the afternoon for him.

"And Doctor Morrison must be there now," she wound up triumphantly. "They look so much like you, Bob. He'll see it, too."

"I never saw any one like you, Betty!" Bob gazed at her in undisguised admiration. "No wonder you look tired. Why, I should think you'd be ready to drop. Hadn't you better go to bed and get a good night's sleep and let me go out to the farm? You can come to-morrow morning."

"I'm rested now," insisted Betty. "That hot supper made me feel all right again. Doctor Morrison will probably have some directions for me, and I promised the old ladies I'd be back and you promised Uncle Dick not to leave me. Let's go and tell Grandma and leave word with her for Uncle Dick. Then you saddle up, and I'll get my bag."

Bob forbore to argue further, more because he thought that it was best to get Betty away from the Watterby place on the main road to Flame City than because he approved of her taking another long ride after an exhausting day. The most disquieting rumors had come down from the fields that afternoon, and Bob knew that every kind of story, authentic and unfounded, would be promptly retailed over the Watterby gate. If Mr. Gordon's life were in danger, and Bob feared it was, it would be agony for Betty to be unable to go to him and be forced to listen to hectic accounts of the fire.

"Well, well," said Grandma Watterby, when Betty told her that she had found the Saunders place. "So you rode to the three hills, did you? Ain't they pretty? Many and many's the time I've seen 'em. And Bob's aunties—Hope and Charity—they living there?"

Betty explained briefly that they were ill and that she and Bob were going to look after things.

"We may be gone two or three days or a week," she said. "You tell Uncle Dick where we are if he comes, won't you? Doctor Morrison will bring messages if you ask him. He's going to see them, too."

Grandma Watterby hurried to the pantry and came back with a glass jar in her hands.

"This is some o' my home-made beef extract," she told them. "You take it with you, Betty. There ain't nothing better for building up a sick person. Dear, dear, to think of you finding Hope and Charity Saunders. Do they know 'bout Bob?"

Betty said no, and the horses being brought round by Ki, who had insisted on saddling them, she and Bob rode off. It was faintly dusk, and a new moon hung low in the sky.

"Isn't it lovely?" sighed Betty. "In spite of sickness and danger and selfish people, I love this country on an evening like this. What do you think we ought to do about telling your aunts, Bob? I knew Grandma would ask that question."

"Why, if they're sick, I think it would be utterly foolish to mention a nephew to 'em," said Bob cheerfully. "They probably are blissfully unaware that I'm alive, and trying to explain to them would likely bring on an attack of brain fever. I'm just a neighbor dropped in to help while they're laid up."

Betty could not bring herself to speak of the evident poverty of the lonely Saunders home. She had built so many bright castles for Bob, and the dilapidated house and buildings she had left that afternoon quite failed to fit into any of the pictures. However, she remembered happily, there was always the prospect of oil.

"It can't be out of the fields," she argued to herself. "Just suppose oil should be discovered in that section! Bob might easily be a millionaire!"

Bob was silent, too, but his thoughts were not on a problematical fortune. He was wondering, with a quickened beating of his heart, how his mother's sisters would look and whether he should be able to see in them anything of the girlish face in the long-treasured little picture that was one of the few valuables in the black tin box.

"There's a team ahead," said Betty suddenly.

Her quick ears had caught the sound of wheels, and though it was almost dark now, no lantern was lit on the rattling buggy to which they presently caught up. The rig made such a noise, added to the breathing of the bony horse that was suffering from a bad case of that malady popularly known among farmers as "the heaves," that the occupants were forced to raise their voices to make themselves heard. The top was up and it was impossible to see who was inside.

"I tell you, let me handle it, and I'll make you thousands," some one was saying as they passed the buggy single file. "I can manage women and their money, and I don't believe the idea of oil has as much as entered their heads."

"Always oil," thought Bob, hurrying his horse to catch up with Betty. "In Oklahoma the stuff that dreams are made of comes up through an iron derrick, that's sure."

At the Saunders place, bathed in faint moonlight, they found Doctor Morrison's car, and a light in the window told that he was waiting for them.

"Didn't know whether you would make it to-night or not," was his greeting, as they went around to the kitchen door and he opened it to show the room brightly lighted by two lamps. "Both patients are asleep. Miss Charity has laryngitis and Miss Hope a very heavy cold. But I think the worst is over."

He stopped, and shot a keen glance at Bob.

"Funny," he said abruptly. "For the moment I would have said you looked enough like Miss Hope to have been her younger brother."

Bob merely smiled at the doctor's remark, for he did not want the relationship to be guessed before his aunts had recognized him.



CHAPTER XVI

HOUSEKEEPER AND NURSE

"I must be going on," Doctor Morrison continued, finishing his writing at the kitchen table which the entrance of Bob and Betty had evidently interrupted. "Here are a few directions for you, Betty. I do not think there will be anything for you to do to-night. Both should sleep right through, and I'll be out in the morning. I have made a bed for you on the parlor sofa, and one for Bob here in the kitchen. I thought you'd want to be near the patients. And, then, too, the rooms upstairs are damp and musty; evidently the upper floor of the house hasn't been used for some time. Now are you sure you will be all right? Does Mr. Gordon know you are here?"

Bob explained that they had left a message for Mr. Gordon at the Watterby farm, and Doctor Morrison, who of course knew of the fire, nodded understandingly. Then he bade them good-night, promising to make them his first call in the morning.

"I'll go out and bed down the horses and feed the stock," said Bob, after the light of the doctor's car had disappeared down the road. "Do go to bed, Betty; you're all tuckered out."

But Betty flatly refused to stay in the house without Bob. She tagged sleepily after him while he carried water to the horses and cows, bedded them down and littered the pig pens with fresh straw. He bolted the doors of the barns and hen house and made everything snug for the night. Then he and Betty went back to the house, having stabled their own horses in two empty stalls that, judging from the dusty hay in the mangers, had not been used recently.

Both patients were sleeping, breathing rather heavily and hoarsely, it is true, but apparently resting comfortably. Betty and Bob were thoroughly tired out and glad to say good-night and go to bed. As Betty snuggled down on the comfortable old couch, she thought how kind of the doctor to have made things ready for them.

The sun streaming in through the windows woke her the next morning. With a start she jumped up and put on her slippers and blue robe. With the healthy vigor of youth she had slept without once waking during the night, and not once had the thought of her patients disturbed her. Cautiously she tiptoed into the two bedrooms. Miss Charity and Miss Hope were sleeping quietly. A swift peep into the kitchen showed her a fire snapping briskly in the stove and the teakettle sending out clouds of steam. Bob was nowhere in sight.

"He's out at the barn," thought Betty. "I must hurry and get breakfast."

She dressed quickly but trimly, as usual, and raised the windows of the parlor. Screens or not, she felt the house would be the better for quantities of fresh air. She closed the door softly and went down the narrow little passage into the kitchen.

She found a bowl of nice-looking eggs in the pantry and a piece of home-cured bacon neatly sewed into a white muslin bag and partly sliced. This, with slices of golden brown toast—the bread box held only half a loaf of decidedly stale bread—solved her breakfast menu. There were two pans of milk standing on the table, thick with yellow cream, and Betty was just wondering if Bob had milked and when, for the cream could not have risen under two or three hours' time, when the boy came whistling cheerfully in, carrying a pail of foaming milk.

"Sh!" warned Betty. "Don't wake your aunts up. When did you milk, Bob? You can't have done it twice in one morning."

"Well hardly," admitted Bob, lowering his voice discreetly. "I went out last night after I was sure you were asleep. I knew the cows had to be milked and that you'd probably insist on staying out there if you went to sleep standing up. So I took a lantern I found under the bench on the back porch and went out about an hour after you went to bed. Gee, fried eggs and bacon! You're a good cook, Betsey!"

Betty had spread one end of the table with a clean brown linen cloth, and now, after Bob had washed his hands and she had strained the milk, she placed the smoking hot dishes before him, and they proceeded to enjoy the meal heartily.

"I wonder if the fire is out," said Betty anxiously. "Perhaps Doctor Morrison will know when he comes. What are you going to do now, Bob?"

"You tell me what will help you," answered Bob. "I suppose you have to cook breakfast for the aunts—doesn't that sound funny? I thought I'd kind of hang around the house—you might want furniture moved or something like that—till you had 'em all fixed comfy, and then you could go out to the barn with me while I finished out there. It's lonesome in a new place."

"Sometimes I think," announced Betty, stopping with the frying pan in her hand and beaming upon Bob, "that you have more sense than any one I ever knew. You needn't do a thing, if you'll just wait for me. There's a pile of old magazines in the parlor. You can read the stories in those."

Leaving Bob comfortably established in a padded rocking chair, she went in to see if either of her patients was awake. Both were, as it happened, and though they looked slightly bewildered at first, Betty soon recalled to their minds her coming and the visit from the doctor. Both were very weak, and Miss Charity still was voiceless, but their eyes were clear and there was no sign of delirium.

Betty had brought an enveloping white apron and cap with her, and she presented an immaculate little figure as she gently sponged the hands and faces of the old ladies and made their beds tidy and smooth. Doctor Morrison had ordered water toast and weak tea for their breakfast, and when Betty went out to the kitchen to prepare two trays she found that Bob had pumped two pails of fresh water, cleared the table and stacked the dishes in the dishpan and was taking up ashes from the stove while he waited for the kettle of water which he had put on for them to heat.

"I thought you'd need the teakettle yourself," observed this energetic young man, a streak of soot across his forehead in no way detracting from his engaging smile. "I'll have to put in an hour or so chopping wood this afternoon. The box will be empty by noon."

Betty found that both her patients were too weak to feed themselves, so she had to handle one tray at a time. The meal was barely over when Doctor Morrison drove up. He found Bob washing dishes and Betty drying them.

"Well, well, you look as bright as two dollars," said the gray old doctor merrily. "You don't need any prescriptions, that's evident. How are the sick ladies, Miss Nurse?"

"They slept all night—at least, I think they did," she reported conscientiously. "I never woke up, and I think I would have heard them call, for the door from the parlor was left open and their doors too, of course. They slept about an hour and a half after Bob and I were up and about. But they are very weak. I had to feed them."

"That's to be expected," said the doctor professionally. "We'll go in and see how the fever is. I don't suppose they've seen Bob?"

Betty shook her head.

"I thought the fewer people they saw the better," she answered quietly. "Miss Hope was afraid I was doing too much and I told her a boy was here looking after the barns and the stock. That seemed to satisfy her."

"Well, for two youngsters, I must say you show extraordinary good sense," the doctor said. "I don't know what these old ladies would have done if you hadn't taken hold."

He wanted Betty to go with him to the sick-rooms, and at his first glance pronounced Miss Hope better. Miss Charity, too, was much improved, but she struggled against the throat spray and was exhausted when the treatment was finished.

"They'll build up, but slowly," declared the doctor when he and Betty and Bob were again together in the kitchen. "I think it is safe to say that they'll sleep nearly all day. Keep them warm and on a light diet—here is a better list than the one I scribbled last night—and be careful of yourself, Betty. I'm having some supplies sent out to you. I took a look at the pantry last night before you came, and the old ladies have been living on what the farm produced; if it didn't produce what they needed, they evidently went without. I'm afraid they're desperately poor and proud. What's that? Grandma Watterby's beef extract? Fine! Just what you need! Give 'em some for supper. Well, Betty, out with it—don't ask a question with your eyes; use your tongue."

"The fire?" stammered Betty. "Is it out? Have you heard anything?"

"Still burning," was the reluctant answer. "About all the town spent the night up there, hampering the employees I haven't a doubt and thinking they were helping the force. However, don't worry, child; I honestly believe that Mr. Gordon is in no danger. He is intelligent and careful, and the company will sacrifice the whole field before they will let a man risk his life."

Doctor Morrison was to come the next day, and some hours after he left them a rickety oil field wagon drove up and left a box of groceries. The boy driving the sleek mule was in a great hurry "to see the fire," and he merely tumbled the box off and drove on with hardly an unnecessary word.

"Goodness, the doctor seems to expect us to stay a month!" gasped Betty, unpacking the tin cans and packages. "It's almost as much fun as keeping a store, isn't it, Bob? Oh, my gracious! what was that?"

A cry had sounded from Miss Hope's bedroom.

Bob and Betty ran to the door. She was sitting up in bed, her bright, hot eyes staring at them unseeingly.

"Faith!" she cried piercingly. "Faith, my darling!"



CHAPTER XVII

SICK FANCIES

Betty turned to stare at Bob. He looked at her helplessly.

"My mother!" he whispered. "She's calling my mother!"

Betty was the first to recover. She went quietly over to the bed.

"There, dear, lie down," she said soothingly. "Everything is all right. It's the fever," she explained in an aside to Bob. "The doctor said she used to be out of her head when she had even a slight cold."

"Faith!" cried Miss Hope again, resisting Betty's attempts to press her back against the pillow. "I wrote and wrote," the hoarse voice babbled on. "You and David are so cruel—you will never send us word. David!" she sat up straighter and pointed an accusing finger at Bob standing in the doorway. "David! Faith and David——"

"You're making her worse," said Betty. "Go away, please, Bob. See, she'll lie down now."

Exhausted, Miss Hope sank back on her pillow, and suddenly the delirium left her.

"You're very good to me, my dear," she whispered weakly. "I think I'll go to sleep."

Betty watched her for a few minutes till her even breathing told that she really was asleep. Then she went in to see if Miss Charity had been disturbed. She was awake and beckoned for Betty to come nearer the bed.

"Was Faith here?" she whispered painfully. Betty had to put her ear down to her mouth to hear. "Has she come at last?"

Betty shook her head sorrowfully. She had hoped the sick woman's voice had not reached her sister.

"Miss Hope had more fever," she said compassionately. "She has gone to sleep now. If I bring you a little nice beef tea, don't you think you might take a nap, too?"

The old lady was childishly pleased with the idea of something to eat again, and Betty fixed her tray daintily and toasted a cracker to go with the cup of really delicious home-made beef tea. Miss Charity drank every drop, and fifteen minutes later Betty had the satisfaction of seeing her go to sleep.

Bob was out on the back porch, whittling furiously, a sure sign that he was disturbed.

"They're my aunts, all right," he began, as soon as Betty appeared. "I couldn't be quite sure, in spite of the name and the coincidences, but now I know it. Do you think I look like them, Betty?"

"You look an awful lot like Miss Hope," said Betty. "You look like Miss Charity, too, but not nearly as much. Miss Hope has blue eyes, you see. You haven't seen Miss Charity yet, but her eyes are black. I'm sure they are your aunts, Bob."

"Well, if they ever needed a husky nephew they need him now," declared Bob whimsically. "I don't know how long they've been sick, but this place looks as though no one had cleaned it up in a year. The animals need currying, too."

"They haven't been able to hire any help, I suppose," said Betty. "And I don't believe you can get a hired man around here. The men are all working in the oil fields. Ki is mad at the oil investors, and that's the only reason Will Watterby can keep him."

"Are they both asleep?" asked Bob, whose mind skipped topics with amazing rapidity. "All right then, let's go out to the barn. Something tells me if you look around you'll get a basket of eggs."

They had great fun doing the work together, and both agreed that if they never thanked the Peabodys for another thing, they could say truthfully that they were thankful for the knowledge of farm work learned on Bramble Farm. Bob knew what to feed the animals, how to take care of them, and even what to do for a severe nail cut one of the cows had suffered. Betty gathered a basket of eggs with little hunting and also found several rat holes which Bob promptly attended to by nailing tin over them.

"We can't start in and repair the whole place," he said cheerfully. "But we'll do little jobs as fast as we come to them."

Both sisters were soundly sleeping when, the chores finished, Betty and Bob came back to the house. They had their lunch, and then Bob brought the dilapidated old lawn mower around to the back porch to see if he could put it in running order. Betty sat down near him, with the doors open so that she could hear the slightest movement within the house, and worked fitfully at her tatting. She was learning to make a pretty edge, under Grandma Watterby's instruction, but it did not progress very quickly, mainly because Betty was always going off for long rides, or playing somewhere outdoors.

"Look at that cloud of dust!" said Bob suddenly, glancing up from his tinkering. "Some one is going somewhere in a hurry. He's stopping. Why, Betty, it's Ed Manners!"

Manners was a Flame City youth, a lad of about eighteen, and the son of the postmaster. Bob and Betty ran down to the road to see him as he stopped his motorcycle with skillful abruptness.

"Will Watterby told me you were out here," he called as soon as he saw Bob. "Say, two more wells caught last night, and they say it's absolutely the biggest fire we've ever had. The close drilling has made the trouble. Remember how Mr. Gordon used to rave over so many derricks on an acre? Don't you want to come with me, Bob? I'd take you, too, Betty, but it is no place for a girl."

Ed Manners waved an inviting hand towards the side-car. Bob was eager to go—what boy would not be?—and he knew that not to go would mean that he was missing something which in all probability he would never see again.

"Go ahead, Bob," urged Betty bravely. "I'll be all right. Honestly I will. If you don't get back to-night, why, Doctor Morrison will be out in the morning."

But Bob had made up his mind. He heard clearly again the final commands of Mr. Gordon, his Uncle Dick, for whom he would do far more than this.

"Can't go, Ed," he said briefly and finally. "Sorry, but it isn't to be thought of. Betty and I have a job cut out for us right here."

The lad on the motorcycle had no time to waste in arguing. He was eager to get to the scene of excitement, and if Bob chose to throw up a chance to see a spectacular fire, why, that was his business. With a loud snort and a series of back-fires, the machine shot up the road and in less than a minute was out of sight.

"I hope, oh, I hope that Uncle Dick is all right," worried Betty, walking back to the house. "You needn't have stayed with me, Bob. Still, of course, I'm glad you did. I might be a little nervous at night."

Bob thought it more than likely but all he said was that he wouldn't think of leaving her alone with two sick women and no telephone in the house.

"As soon as my aunts are well enough to hear the sad news that I'm their long-lost nephew," he said half in fun and half in earnest, "I intend to have a 'phone put in for them. It's outrageous to think of two women living isolated like this."

The afternoon passed rapidly, Bob getting his machine in running order and clipping a little square of lawn before supper time. Betty fed her patients again, and again they went to sleep. After an early supper Betty and Bob were glad to go to bed, too, and it seemed to the former that she had been asleep only a few moments when something wakened her, and she sat up, startled.

The moonlight was streaming in at her windows, silvering the stiff, haircloth furniture and bathing the red and blue roses of the Brussels carpet in a radiance that softened the glaring colors and made them even beautiful. Betty was about to lie down and try to go to sleep again when a cry came from Miss Hope.

"Faith!" she moaned. "Faith, my dear little sister!"

Betty was out of bed in a second and pattering toward the sufferer's room. Bob, half-dressed, appeared at the door leading into the kitchen simultaneously.

"Don't let her see you," warned Betty. "I think that makes her worse. I wish I knew what to do when she gets these spells."

For some time Miss Hope rambled on about "Faith," and would not be persuaded to lie down. At last, after crying pitifully, she sank back on the pillow and the phantoms seemed to leave her poor brain. Like a child she dropped off into a deep sleep, and Bob and Betty were free to creep back to their rooms and try to compose their nerves. Miss Charity had slept peacefully through it all.

The doctor, told of Miss Hope's ravings, listened thoughtfully, but did not seem to attach much importance to the recital. He had driven up early the following morning and brought the hopeful news that the fire was said to be under control.

"She's always had a tendency to be flighty in any illness," he said, speaking of Miss Hope's disorders. "Faith was a sister to whom she was greatly attached. A pretty girl who married and went away before I came here to practise. Miss Saunders told me once that from the time of her marriage to this, not a word of her ever reached them. She completely disappeared. Of course this has preyed on the minds of both sisters, and it's a wonder they haven't broken down before this."

Doctor Morrison stayed an hour or so, and praised Betty's nursing unstintedly. He said she seemed to know what to do instinctively and had that rare tact of the born nurse which teaches her how to avoid irritating her patients.

Both Betty and Bob felt that they had no right to explore the house, though they were interested to know what might be upstairs. Betty, especially, was anxious to see the attic. She pictured trunks filled with papers that might be of help and interest to Bob, and in her experience an attic never failed to reveal a history of the family.

She did find, in the parlor where she slept, an old album, and that afternoon brought it out on the porch to show it to Bob. She hoped he might be able to recognize his mother among the tintypes and photographs. But as soon as she stepped outdoors she saw something which made her almost drop the precious old album and clutch Bob's arm wildly.

"Look who's coming in here!" she cried excitedly.

"Well, what do you know about that!" ejaculated the astonished Bob.



CHAPTER XVIII

STRANGE VISITORS

Walking jauntily down the path which now, thanks to Bob, was neat and trim, came the two men who had aroused Bob's suspicions on the train, and whom he had followed into the smoking-car. They were dressed as they had been then—gray suits, gray ties, socks and hats. The older man was mopping his face with a very white handkerchief, and his shorter companion was looking eagerly up at the house.

"I beg your pardon," said the one with gray hair—Bob remembered that he had been called Fluss—"is this the Saunders home—place, I believe the natives call it?"

He smiled at Betty, showing several gold teeth, and she shrank behind Bob and hid the album under her apron.

"Yes," answered Bob civilly. "This is the Saunders farm."

"We'd like to see," the younger man spoke crisply and consulted a small leather-bound note-book, "Miss Hope Saunders or her sister. Miss Charity. Please take her our cards."

He held out the two bits of pasteboard and Betty, looking over Bob's shoulder, was astonished to read, not "Cal Blosser" and "Jack Fluss," but "Irving Snead" and "George Elmer." Each card, in the lower left-hand corner, was lettered "The West Farm Agency."

Bob controlled whatever he was feeling, and handed back the cards very politely.

"My aunts are both very ill," he said courteously. "They are under the doctor's care, and it will be impossible for them to see any one for several weeks."

"But some one must be in charge," urged Blosser, or Irving Snead, as he seemed to prefer to be known. "Isn't there some older person about?"

"Miss Gordon and I"—Betty thought that had a very nice sound as Bob said it—"are taking care of them. It is hard to get help of any kind because of the demand for workers at the fields and in Flame City. If we can do anything for you——"

"You can't!" Fluss broke in sharply. "It's very annoying not to be able to see the Misses Saunders. We've come a good many miles, thinking this place might suit one of our customers. He has a delicate daughter, and he wants to get her out on a farm. This part of Oklahoma ought to be beneficial for lung trouble. I suppose the old ladies would be willing to sell? The place is much run down and not worth much, but if our client should take a fancy to it, he would overlook the poor location and the condition of the buildings. Why not let us talk to your aunts just a few minutes? You may be the cause of their losing a sale."

"It is impossible for you to see them," repeated Bob. "They're in bed and have fever and great difficulty in talking at all. I'm sorry, but you can not see them to-day."

Blosser took out his handkerchief again and mopped his streaming face. Betty, who would be kind to any one in distress, had gone in for a glass of water and brought it out to him.

"Thank you, my dear," he murmured gratefully, gulping it down in one long swallow while Fluss shook his head impatiently in answer to Betty's mute interrogation. "My, that tasted good," Blosser added, handing back the glass. "I don't suppose you know whether your aunts want to sell?" he shot at Bob. "Must be kind of hard for them to run the farm all alone."

"Well, it was," admitted Bob, with a misleading air of confidence. "Hereafter, of course, they'll have me to help."

He did not know whether it would be wise to say any more or not; but he could not resist one thrust.

"I suppose in time they will sell," he observed carelessly. "The farm is sure to be bought up by some oil company."

Blosser and Fluss scowled darkly and looked at Bob with closer attention.

"I didn't know the old ladies had a nephew," said Fluss suspiciously. "Funny they didn't mention it when I was driving through here last spring, listing properties, eh?"

"I never knew my aunts to confide personal and private affairs to strangers," said Bob calmly.

Blosser turned on him angrily.

"You're fresh!" he snarled. "If you knew what was for your own good, you'd keep a civil tongue in your head. Come on—er—Elmer, we're wasting time with this kid. We'll come back and talk to the aunts."

Fluss still lingered. His gray eyes appraised Bob keenly and something in their steady, disconcerting stare made Betty uneasy.

"What's happened to the town?" demanded Fluss abruptly. "Couldn't find even the oldest inhabitant hanging around the station. Everybody gone to a funeral?"

"There's a big oil fire," returned Bob. "Four or five wells have been burning a couple of days now, though they say they have it under control."

The word "oil" roused Blosser again.

"There ain't no oil on this place," he announced heavily. "I've seen a lot of money sunk in dry wells, and what I don't know about the oil country ain't worth mentioning. Isn't that so, George? Traveling round to list farms as I do, I just naturally make a study of the sections. If ever I saw a poor risk, it's this place; there ain't an inch of oil sand on it."

Betty's hand on his arm telegraphed Bob not to argue.

"You may be right," the boy replied indifferently. "We won't quarrel over that."

There was nothing more to be said, and the two men turned away, Blosser putting the cards down on the step with the curt wish that "You'd hand those to your aunts and tell 'em we'll drop in again in a couple of days."

"Oh, I'm so glad they've gone!" Betty watched the retreating backs till they disappeared around a bend in the road. "Did you see how the older man stared at you, Bob? Do you suppose he remembers seeing you on the train?"

"Certainly not!" Bob openly scoffed at the suggestion. "They were stumped because they couldn't see my aunts, that's all. I only hope they forget to come around here until I've had a chance to warn my relatives—get that, Betty? My relatives sounds pretty good, doesn't it?—against their crooked ways. If they don't believe there is oil on this farm, I'll eat my hat. No client with a delicate daughter could explain their eagerness. I'll bet they've thoroughly prospected the fields before they even approached the house."

Betty could not share Bob's light-heartedness. The look in the older man's eyes as he studied Bob would persist in sticking in her mind, and she was unable to rid herself of the feeling that he would do the boy actual harm if a chance presented. What he hoped to gain by injuring Bob, Betty could not thoroughly understand, but added to her anxiety for her uncle and the responsibility she felt for the sick women, was now added a fear for Bob's safety. She tried to tell him something of this, but he laughed at her.

"If you have a vision of me kidnapped by the cruel sharpers," he teased her, "forget it. What were my voice and my two trusty arms and legs given me for? I can take care of myself and you, too, Betsey."

Nevertheless, Betty's tranquillity was sorely shaken, and though she gradually became calmer as the day wore on, she insisted on going out with Bob to do the chores at the barn that night, and extracted a promise from him that he would call her when he got up in the morning so that she might make the morning rounds with him. Luckily Miss Hope passed a quiet night, for if she had called for her lost sister again it is difficult to say what the effect might have been on Betty's already tried nerves.

One of her anxieties was removed to some extent the next morning when Doctor Morrison came out in his car and brought her word that her uncle had telephoned the Watterbys and sent Betty a message.

"The connection was very faulty," said the doctor, "and Will Watterby says he doesn't believe he made your uncle understand where you and Bob were. But he made out that Mr. Gordon was safe and the fire slackening up a bit. He doesn't expect to be able to get away under a week. Of course work is demoralized, and he'll have his hands full."

Both Betty and Bob were overjoyed to learn that Uncle Dick was all right, and when the doctor pronounced both patients on the road to certain recovery, they were additionally cheered. They said nothing to the physician of their visitors of the day before, because Bob was unwilling to announce that he was a nephew of the Saunders. He wished them to hear it first.

"I think Miss Hope might sit up for a few minutes this afternoon," counseled the doctor on leaving. "Miss Charity might try that to-morrow. Of course, I'll be out again in the morning. You two youngsters are in my mind continually."

He drove away, and for the rest of the day Bob was left pretty much to his own devices, Betty, however, stipulating that he was to stay close to the house. She could not shake off her fear of the two men, and Bob was far too considerate to worry her deliberately when she had so much to attend to.

Miss Hope was delighted to sit up for half an hour, and now that her patients were stronger, Betty was put to it to keep them amused and contented in bed. The doctor's orders were strict that they were not to get up for at least two more days.

Betty read aloud to them, seated in the doorway between the two rooms so that both could hear; she gave them reports of the condition of things outside; and Miss Hope said primly that she would like to meet and thank the boy who had been so kind as soon as she could be "suitably attired." Betty was thankful that she did not ask his name, but the sisters were not at all curious. They had been so ill and were still weak, and the fact that their household and farm was apparently running smoothly was enough for them to grasp. The details did not claim their attention.

"Charity was sick first," said Miss Hope, over her beef tea and toast. "What delicious tea this is, my dear! Yes, she was down for two days, and I took care of her and did the milking. Then I felt a cold coming on, but I crawled around for another day, doing the best I could. The night before the day you came I went out to milk and I must have fainted. When I came to I was within an inch of old Blossom's hoofs. That scared me, and I came right into the house without finishing a chore. I think I was delirious all night, and I remember thinking that if we were both going to die, at least I'd have things as orderly as possible. So I went around and pulled down all the first floor shades. Upstairs we always keep 'em drawn. And then I don't remember another thing till I came to and found you in the room."

"And she didn't come a minute too soon," croaked Miss Charity.



CHAPTER XIX

LOOKING BACKWARD

Doctor Morrison declared that it was due to Betty's skill in nursing more than to his drugs, but it is certain that, once started, the aunts gained steadily. In two or three days from the time they first sat up he pronounced it safe for them to be dressed, and while they were still a bit shaky, they took great delight in walking about the house.

Bob was introduced to them off-handedly one morning by the doctor, and though both old ladies started at his name, they said nothing. After the physician's car had gone, Miss Hope came out on to the back porch where Betty was peeling potatoes and Bob mending a loose floor-board.

"My sister and I——" stammered Miss Hope, "we were wondering if you were a neighbor's boy. We've seen so little of our neighbors these last few years, that we haven't kept track of the new families who have moved into the neighborhood. I don't recollect any Hendersons about here, do you, Sister?"

Miss Charity, who had followed her, shook her head.

Bob looked at Betty, and Betty looked helplessly at Bob. Now that the time had come they were afraid of the effect the news might have on the sisters. Bob, as he said afterward, "didn't know how to begin," and Betty wished fervently that her uncle could be there to help them out.

"A long time ago," said Miss Hope dreamily, "we knew a man named Henderson, David Henderson. He married our younger sister."

Caution deserted Bob, and, without intending to, he made his announcement.

"David Henderson was my father," he stated.

Miss Hope turned so white that Betty thought she would faint, and Miss Charity's mouth opened in speechless amazement.

"Then you are Faith's son," said Miss Hope slowly, clinging to the door for support. "Ever since Doctor Morrison introduced you, I wanted to stare at you, you looked so like the Saunders. Faith didn't—she was more like the Dixons, our mother's people. But you are Saunders through and through; isn't he, Charity?"

"He looks so much like you," quavered Miss Charity, "that I'd know in a minute he was related to us. But Faith—your mother—is she, did she——?"

"She died the night I was born," said Bob simply. "Almost fifteen years ago."

The sisters must have expected this; indeed, hope that their sister lived had probably deserted them years ago; and yet the confirmation was naturally something of a shock. They clung to each other for a moment, and then Miss Hope, rather to Bob's embarrassment, walked over to him and solemnly kissed him.

"My dear, dear nephew!" she murmured.

Then Miss Charity, more timidly, kissed him too, and presently they were all sitting down quietly on the porch, checking up the long years.

When Bob's tin box was finally opened, and the marriage certificate of his parents, the picture of his mother in her wedding gown, and a yellowed letter or two examined and cried over softly by the aunts, Miss Hope began to piece together the story of their lives since Bob's mother had left them. Bob and Betty had found Faith's photograph in the family album, but Miss Hope brought out the old Bible and showed them where her mother had made the entry of the marriage of his mother and father.

"They went away for a week for their wedding trip, and then came back to get a few things for housekeeping," said the old lady, patting Betty's hand where it lay in her lap. Bob was still looking over the Bible. "Then they said they were going to Chicago, and they drove away one bright morning, eighteen years ago. And not one word did we ever hear from Faith, or from David, not one word. It killed father and mother, the anxiety and the suspense. They died within a week of each other and less than a year after Faith went. Charity and I always wanted to go to Chicago and hunt for 'em, but there was the expense. We had only this farm, and the interest took every cent we could rake together. How on earth we'll pay it this year is more than I can see."

"What do you think was the reason they didn't write?" urged Miss Charity, in her gentle old voice. "There were almost three years 'fore you came along. Why couldn't they write? I know David was good to Faith—he worshiped her. So that couldn't have been the reason. Bob, is your father dead, too?"

"I'll tell you, though perhaps I shouldn't," said Bob slowly. "If I give you pain, remember it is better to hear it from me than from a stranger, as you otherwise might. Aunt Hope—and Aunt Charity—I was born in the Gladden county poorhouse, in the East."