l over.
My gosh, ma'am! how many gals there is runs away from their homes! Ye
wouldn't believe the number 'nless ye was huntin' for a pertic'lar
one an' got yer rope on so many that warn't her!"

"You have had many disappointments, sir?" said Miss Kate, beginning
to feel a great sympathy for this uncouth man.

He nodded his great, bald, shining head. "I hope you ain't going to
tell me thar's another in store for me right yere," he said, in a much
milder voice.

"I cannot tell you where Nita--if she is your niece--is now," said Miss
Kate, firmly.

"She's left you?"

"She went away some time during the night--night before last."

"What for?" he asked, suspiciously.

"I don't know. We none of us knew. We made her welcome and said nothing
about sending her away, or looking for her friends. I did not wish to
frighten her away, for she is a strangely independent girl----"

"You bet she is!" declared Mr. Hicks, emphatically.

"I hoped she would gradually become confiding, and then we could really
do something for her. But when we got up yesterday morning she had stolen
out of the house in the night and was gone."

"And ye don't know whar Jane Ann went?" he said, with a sort of groan.

Miss Kate shook her head; but suddenly a voice interrupted them. Ruth
Fielding parted the curtains and came into the room.

"I hope you will pardon me, Miss Kate," she said softly. "And this
gentleman, too. I believe I can tell him how Nita went away--and perhaps
through what I know he may be able to find her again."

CHAPTER XXI

CRAB MAKES HIS DEMAND

Bill Hicks beckoned the girl from the Red Mill forward. "You come right
here, Miss," he said, "and let's hear all about it. I'm a-honin' for
my Jane Ann somethin' awful--ye don't know what a loss she is to me.
And Silver Ranch don't seem the same no more since she went away."

"Tell me," said Ruth, curiously, as she came forward, "was what the
paper said about it all true?"

"Why, Ruth, what paper is this? What do you know about this matter that
I don't know?" cried Miss Kate.

"I'm sorry, Miss Kate," said the girl; "but it wasn't my secret and
I didn't feel I could tell you----"

"I know what you mean, little Miss," Hicks interrupted. "That New
York newspaper--with the picter of Jane Ann on a pony what looked like
one o' these horsecar horses? Most ev'rythin' they said in that paper
was true about her--and the ranch."

"And she has had to live out there without a