e are dreadfully tired sitting still, Aunt Sallie," Ruth begged.
"Please let us follow the wagon!"

"Certainly, you can walk if you are able. In fact, you have no way to
ride except in the grocery wagon, where you would probably get mixed up
with the pickles and preserves," responded Miss Stuart. "Walk by all
means!"

The cavalcade started.

"Let's pretend," proposed Bab to Ruth, "that we are starting out on what
the Indians called 'the long walk.'"

"Surely, Bab, it's a long walk, all right. But why introduce the
Indians?"

The girls were climbing up the steep path ahead of the wagon. Bab
laughed. "Oh, I read somewhere," she explained, "that the Indians used to
sell their land that way. Suppose you and I were early settlers, who were
trying to purchase this hillside from the Indians. They would tell us we
could have, for a fixed sum, as much land as we could cover in the 'long
walk.' That would mean that we were to walk along quietly from sunrise to
sunset, sitting down occasionally to smoke a pipe of peace, to break
bread, and to drink water. That reminds me, are we ever going to break
bread again? I am starving!"

But Ruth was not sympathetic at the moment. "It is curious," she replied.
"These mountains are so full of Indian legends, we shall think, hear and
dream of nothing but Indians in the next few weeks. The names of all the
places around were once Indian. I suppose we shall do almost everything
except see an Indian. The last of them has vanished from here. Oh, Bab,
do look at Aunt Sallie!"

Miss Stuart had forgotten her fright. Fortunately, she did not realize
how absurd she appeared.

"Ruth!" she called from her throne on the wagon seat. "Here is a
perfectly good place for our lunch. There is water near and view enough,
I am sure. I must be given food before I am taken another step up these
hills. I am famished!"

The party found a clear space in the woods. In a short time Naki had
built a fire of pine twigs, and Ceally had a giant pot of coffee boiling
over it. Its delicious perfume mingled with the fresh mountain air.

"I declare I haven't been so hungry since I was a girl," Miss Sallie
avowed. She was seated on a log, with a sandwich in one hand and a cup of
coffee on the ground by her. Her hat was on one side of her head, and her
pompadour drooped dejectedly, but Miss Sallie was blissfully unconscious.
The color in her cheeks shone as fresh and rosy as the tints in the
cheeks of any other of "