that partner of his, or that bookkeeper, who was guilty. That is the
secret of it," Helen told herself.

"I'll go back East and find out all about it," determined the girl, as her
pony carried her swiftly over the ground. "Up, Rose! There he is! Don't
let him get away from us!"

Her interest in the chase of the buckskin pony and in the mystery of her
father's trouble ran side by side.

"On, on!" she urged Rose. "Why shouldn't I go East? Big Hen can run the
ranch well enough. And there are my cousins--and auntie. If Aunt Eunice
resembles mother----

"Go it, Rose! There's our quarry!"

She stooped forward in the saddle, and as the Rose pony, running like the
wind, passed the now staggering buckskin, Helen snatched the dragging
rein, and pulled the runaway around to follow in her own wake.

"Hush, now! Easy!" she commanded her mount, who obeyed her voice quite as
well as though she had tugged at the reins. "Now we'll go back quietly and
trail this useless one along with us.

"Come up, Buck! Easy, Rose!" So she urged them into the same gait,
returning in a wide circle toward the path up which she had climbed before
the sun went down--the trail to Sunset Ranch.

"Yes! I can do it!" she cried, thinking aloud. "I can and will go to New
York. I'll find out all about that old trouble. Uncle Starkweather can
tell me, probably.

"And then it will please father." She spoke as though Mr. Morrell was sure
to know her decision. "He will like it if I go to live with them a spell.
He said it is what I need--the refining influence of a nice home.

"And I _would_ love to be with nice girls again--and to hear good
music--and put on something beside a riding skirt when I go out of the
house."

She sighed. "One cannot have a cow ranch and all the fripperies of
civilization, too. Not very well. I--I guess I am longing for the
flesh-pots of Egypt. Perhaps poor dad did, too. Well, I'll give them a
whirl. I'll go East----

"Why, where's that fellow's fire?"

She was descending the trail into the pall of dusk that had now spread
over the valley. Far away she caught a glimmer of light--a lantern on the
porch at the ranch-house. But right below here where she wished to see a
light, there was not a spark.

"I hope nothing's happened to him," she mused. "I don't believe he is one
of us; if he had been he wouldn't have raced a pony so close to the edge
of the bluff."

She began to "co-ee! co-ee!" as the ponies clattered down the re