g
his own horse, wore no hat, but it was a pet grievance of his that Betty
persistently scorned headgear whether riding or walking.

"Gallop!" cried Bob. "Shut your eyes if you want to--Clover will
follow Reuben."

The white horse set off, his awkward lunge carrying him over the ground
swiftly, and the little bay Clover cantered obediently after him. Oil
continued to rain down as they headed toward the north.

Betty closed her eyes, clutching her letter and candy box tightly in both
hands and letting the reins lie idle on her horse's neck. Clover,
galloping now, could be trusted to follow the leading horse.

"Getting better now!" Bob shouted back, turning in his saddle to see that
Betty was safe.

Betty's dark eyes opened and she shook back her hair, making a little
face at the taste of oil in her mouth. She slipped Norma Guerin's letter
into her pocket, glancing down at her blouse as she did so.

"I'm a perfect sight!" she called to Bob dolorously. "I don't believe I
can ever get the oil spots out of this silk."

"Sue the company!" Bob cried, with a grin. "Don't let Clover go to sleep
till we're nearer home, Betty."

The girl urged the little bay forward with a whispered word of
encouragement, and gradually, very gradually, they began to draw out of
the rain of oil.

Betty Gordon was not an Oklahoma girl, though she rode with the
effortless ease of a Westerner. She was an orphan, of New England stock,
and had come from the East to the oil fields to join her one living
relative, a beloved uncle whose interest in oil holdings made an
incessant traveler of him.

This Richard Gordon, "Uncle Dick" to Bob Henderson as well as to Betty,
had found himself unexpectedly made guardian of his little niece at a
time when it was impassible for him to establish a home for her. His time
and skill pledged to the oil company he represented, Mr. Gordon had
solved the problem of what to do with Betty by sending her to spend the
summer with an old childhood friend of his, a Mrs. Peabody who had
married a farmer, reputed well-to-do. Betty's experiences, pleasant and
otherwise, as a member of the Peabody household, have been told in the
first book of this series entitled "Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm; or The
Mystery of a Nobody."

She made some true friends during the months she spent with the Peabodys,
and perhaps the closest, and certainly the most loyal, was Bob Henderson.
A year older than Betty, the fourteen year old Bob,