"Regular golden trail," laughed Clancy. "That was some dream, Pink."

"The professor," resumed Ballard, "was running along the trail, hat off,
his bald head glimmering in the sun, and the tails of his long coat
flying out behind. Three or four nuggets behind him, running after him
as fast as they could go, were several hard-looking citizens. That's
about all. For three times, now, I've seen the prof chased over that
golden trail by desperadoes. I've never be able to see how the chase
came out, for always, just at the critical moment, I'd wake up. What do
you think of it?"

Before Frank could answer, some one appeared in the clubhouse door,
across the athletic field from the grand stand, and trumpeted
Merriwell's name through his hands.

"Hello!" answered Frank, getting up and shouting.

"Mr. Bradlaugh wants you on the phone," came the answer.

Without delaying, Frank leaped the rail in front of him and sprinted for
the clubhouse. Ballard and Clancy followed, but at a more leisurely
pace.

"That dream of yours, Pink," averred Clancy, on the way across the
field, "was a 'happenchance'--like the old, played-out town we found in
the Picket Posts."

Ballard merely grunted. It was plain that he had his own ideas on the
subject of that dream.

On reaching the clubhouse the two lads found Merry just coming away from
the telephone. His face was clouded, and there was an anxious light in
his eyes.

"What's wrong, Chip?" inquired Clancy.

"Borrodaile isn't in Gold Hill," was the answer. "He left the Bristow
Hotel three days ago, and hasn't been seen since."

CHAPTER II.

THE TELEGRAM FROM BLOOMFIELD.

Professor Phineas Borrodaile had for years been an instructor in an
academy in the middle West. His health failing, he was ordered to
Arizona. The dry, invigorating climate had worked wonders in thousands
of cases similar to the professor's, and there was every reason to
believe that the professor would be greatly benefited, if not entirely
cured of his malady.

At the last moment before starting Borrodaile had happened to think of
an old letter from a nephew of his who had been engaged in the mining
business in a camp called Happenchance, in southern Arizona. The
professor looked up the letter. The writer of it had died years before,
and the camp of Happenchance had had its day and was now deserted and
lost among the Picket Post Mountains. What made the letter of especial
interest to the professor was the