.

"What do you know about that!" gasped the boy. "They couldn't have
arranged for the car to meet them, because the tree blowing down was
an accident pure and simple. Where can they be going?"

"I don't know," said Betty practically. "But here's a drug store and
I must have something cold to drink. My throat feels dried with dust.
Why don't you ask the drug clerk whose car that was?"

Bob acted upon this excellent suggestion, and while Betty was
recovering from her disappointment in finding no ice-cream for sale
and doing her best to quench her thirst with a bottle of lukewarm
lemon soda, Bob interviewed the grizzled proprietor of the store.

"A small car painted a dull red you say?" this individual repeated
Bob's question. "Must 'a' been Fred Griggs. He hires out whenever he
can get anybody to tote round."

"But where does anybody go?" asked Bob, feeling that his query was
not couched in the most complimentary terms, but unable to amend it
quickly.

The drug store owner was not critical.

"Oh, folks go over to Xville," he said indifferently. "That's a new
town fifteen miles back. They say oil was discovered there some
twenty years ago, but others claim nothing but water ever flowed.
That's how it came to be called Xville. I guess if the truth was
known, the wells wasn't oil--we're a little out of the belt here."

That was as far as Bob was able to follow the sharpers. He had no way
of knowing certainly whether they had gone to Xville, or whether they
had hired the car to take them to some other place nearer or further
on. Betty finished her soda and they strolled about the single street
for a half hour, buying three collapsible Indian baskets for the
Littell girls, since they would easily pack into Betty's bag.

They reached the train to find the last section of the big tree being
lifted from the track, and half an hour later, all passengers aboard,
the train resumed its journey. Bob and Betty had eaten lunch in the
town, and they spent the afternoon on the observation platform, Betty
tatting and Bob trying to write a letter to Mr. Littell. They were
glad to have their berths made up early that night, for both planned
to be up at six o'clock the next morning when the train, the
conductor told them, crossed the line into Oklahoma. Betty cherished
an idea that the State in which she was so much interested would be
"different" in some way from the country through which they had been
passing.

The good-nature