CHAPTER I

TO THE MOUNTAINS OF GOLD

"Twenty-five thousand people and more on the way! Think of that!" exclaimed Mr. Richards, Terry's father.

It was an evening in early April, 1859, and spring had come to the Richards ranch, up the Valley of the Big Blue, Kansas Territory. Excitement had come, too, for Harry (Harry Revere, that is, the clever, boyish Virginia school-teacher who was a regular member of the family) had been down to the town of Manhattan, south on the Kansas River and the emigrant trail there, and had brought back some Kansas City and St. Louis papers. They were brimming with the news of a tremendous throng of gold-seekers swarming to cross the plains for the new gold fields, discovered only last year, in the Pike's Peak country of the Rocky Mountains.

"Do you suppose it's true, Ralph? So many?" appealed Mrs. Richards, doubting.

"Whew!" gasped Terry the third man in the family. At least, he worked as hard as any man.

"I believe it," asserted Harry."Manhattan's jammed and the trail in both directions is a sight!"

"So are Kansas City and Leavenworth, according to the dispatches," laughed Terry's father."People from the east are flocking across Iowa, to the Missouri River, and the steamboats up from St. Louis are loaded to the guards everybody bound for the Pike's Peak country and the Cherry Creek diggin's there. It beats the California rush of Forty-nine and Fifty."

"But twenty-five thousand, Ralph!" Mother Richards protested.

"Yes, and the papers say there'll be a hundred thousand before summer's over."

"Oh, Pa! Can't we go?" pleaded Terry.

"And quit the ranch?"

"But if we don't go now all the gold will be found."

"I think it would be sinful to leave this good ranch and go clear out there, with nothing certain," voiced his mother, anxiously."You know it almost killed your father. He'd never have got home, if it hadn't been for you."

"That was when he was coming back, and we wouldn't need to come back," argued Terry."And he fetched some gold, too, didn't he?"

"And hasn't recovered yet!" triumphed Mother Richards."He couldn't possibly stand another long overland trip and I don't want to stand it, either. Why, we're just nicely settled, all together again, on our own farm."

"Well, some of us ought to go," persisted Terry."I'd a heap rather dig gold than plant it.'

"I notice you aren't extra fond of digging potatoes, though," slily remarked Harry."You say it makes your back ache!"

"Digging gold's different," retorted Terry."Besides, we've a gold mine already, haven't we? The one dad discovered. If we don't get there soon somebody else will dig everything out of it and we'll have only a hole."

"That will be a cellar for us, anyway, to put a house over," mused Harry, who always saw opportunities.

"I don't lay much store on that claim of mine," confessed Terry's father."The country'