ildren,
"both say that they have found neither Rose's wrist-watch nor Laddie's
stick-pin. I am afraid, Rose and Laddie, that your carelessness has cost
you both your jewelry. It is too bad. But perhaps it will teach you the
lesson of carefulness with your possessions."

This, however, did not make either Rose or Laddie feel any better in
their minds. They had been very proud of both the lost articles and it
looked now as though they would never see the watch and the pin again.

CHAPTER XIX

RUSS BUNKER GUESSES RIGHT

One morning, while Mother Bunker was amusing the four younger children
in the house (for the twins and Margy and Mun Bun could not always go
where Rose and Russ went) the two older Bunker children rode away from
the big ranch house on that very wagon-trail that had led them into such
a strange adventure the first day of their stay on Cowboy Jack's ranch.
Rose rode on Laddie's pony, Pinky.

Russ and Rose had thought of something the night before, and they had
planned this ride in order to do it. They had remembered Black Bear's
wild Indians and the strange soldiers in blue. The two older Bunker
children decided to try to find those strange people again, and the man
and woman and baby at the brookside.

Just who those "white settlers" could be, and why they were living in
that part of the ranch away from Mr. Cowboy Jack's nice house, neither
Russ nor Rose had been able to make up their minds. Of course, there was
a mystery about it, and a mystery was bound to worry the little Bunkers
a good deal. They were persistent, and Russ, at least, seldom gave up
any problem until he had solved it.

"I saw a picture in a big book at the ranch," said Rose to her brother,
"and in it a frontiersman--that's what the book called him--was dressed
like that man we saw chopping wood--the man with the squirrel-tail on
his cap and his long hair tied in a queue."

"Did you? But that must have been the way they wore their hair a long,
long time ago."

"It said in the book under the picture that trappers and hunters out
West here wore their hair long and tied in queues long after they
stopped doing so anywhere else. Some of the white hunters wore a
scalp-lock like the Indians. I guess maybe that was a scalp-lock," said
Rose.

"Well, those soldiers----"

"They are not dressed like soldiers are now," Rose interrupted. "But in
the book there were pictures of soldiers in the Mexican War--When was
that, Russ?"

R