s located?"

"What's the matter with going to the Ritz-Copley Square?" added his
twin, with a grin.

"Perhaps we'll be thankful to get any kind of a shake-down, boys,"
announced Dick Rover. "This certainly is worse than I anticipated,
although I knew that we couldn't expect much in one of these boom
towns."

To a newcomer Columbina certainly offered no special attractions. Only a
few years before it had been nothing but a point where the ranchmen had
shipped their steers on the railroad, with a tiny stockyard and a small
ranchmen's hotel and saloon combined. Now the boom city, if such it
might be called, consisted of a long straggling main street with a much
dilapidated boardwalk on one side only. In the middle of the street the
mud was all of a foot deep, and through this wagons and automobiles
plowed along as best they could. All of the buildings were of wood, and
none of them more than three stories in height. There were half a dozen
general stores, the same number of eating and drinking places, and two
buildings which were designated as hotels, O'Brian's being one and
Smedley's the other. There was also a long, shed-like moving picture
theater advertised to be open twice a week, in the evening.

"I was advised by a man on the train to try the Smedley Hotel first,"
said Dick Rover. "He thought I'd find a better class of people there
than at the O'Brian place. Wait till I ask the station master where the
hotel is located."

"You can't miss it," said the station man, when applied to. "It's down
at the end of that boardwalk. If you go any further you'll sink into mud
up to your knees," and he smiled feebly.

"Any chance of our getting in there?"

"Just as good a chance as getting in anywhere. They tell me O'Brian's
place is so full they're falling out of the windows," and the station
master chuckled over his little joke.

"Anything in the way of a taxicab around here to take us and our baggage
up there?"

"Taxicab? The last man to run a taxicab was Jim Lumpkins, and now Jim's
struck oil and he's so rich he won't do nothing. If you want to get up
to Smedley's I reckon you'll have to hoof it."

"Come on, Dad, let's walk up there," said Jack.

"But your suitcases are pretty heavy," answered his father, with a
smile.

"Oh, we won't mind those," declared Fred. "We've hiked around with just
as much to carry many times."

"I sha'n't mind it myself," declared his uncle. "Campaigning in France
was a splendid th