the boy, with a grin.

"Lost that paper?"

"Yes. You see, it's a page torn from the Sunday edition of a New
York daily. On this side is a story of some professor's discoveries
in ancient Babylon."

"Couldn't have interested Jack Crab much," remarked Ruth, smiling.

"That's what I said myself," declared Tom, hastily. "Therefore, I
turned it over. And _this_ is what Crab was showing that Nita girl, I
am sure."

Ruth looked at the illustrated sheet that Tom spread before her. There
was a girl on a very spirited cow pony, swinging a lariat, the loop of
which was about to settle over the broadly spreading horns of a Texas
steer. The girl was dressed in a very fancy "cow-girl" costume, and the
picture was most spirited indeed. In one corner, too, was a reproduction
of a photograph of the girl described in the newspaper article.

"Why! it doesn't look anything like Nita," gasped Ruth, understanding
immediately why Tom had brought the paper to her.

"Nope. You needn't expect it to. Those papers use any old photograph to
make illustrations from. But read the story."

It was all about the niece of a very rich cattle man in Montana who
had run away from the ranch on which she had lived all her life. It
was called Silver Ranch, and was a very noted cattle range in that
part of the West. The girl's uncle raised both horses and cattle,
was very wealthy, had given her what attention a single man could in such
a situation, and was now having a countrywide search made for the runaway.

"Jane Ann Hicks Has Run Away From a Fortune" was the way the paper put
it in a big "scare head" across the top of the page; and the text went
on to tell of rough Bill Hicks, of Bullhide, and how he had begun in
the early cattle days as a puncher himself and had now risen to the sole
proprietorship of Silver Ranch.

"Bill's one possession besides his cattle and horses that he took
any joy in was his younger brother's daughter, Jane Ann. She is an
orphan and came to Bill and he has taken sole care of her (for a woman
has never been at Silver Ranch, save Indian squaws and a Mexican cook
woman) since she could creep. Jane Ann is certainly the apple of Old
Bill's eye.

"But, as Old Bill has told the Bullhide chief of police, who is sending
the pictures and description of the lost girl all over the country,
'Jane Ann got some powerful hifalutin' notions.' She is now a
well-grown girl, smart as a whip, pretty, afraid of nothing on four legs,
and j