Page:The Boy Land Boomer.djvu/79

Rh "How much do you want, Dick?" and Pawnee Brown's pocketbook came out without delay.

"If you will lend me ten dollars"

"Here are twenty. When you want more let me know. Now, goodbye, and good luck to you."

And the next minute Pawnee Brown and Clemmer were gone. Dick watched them out of sight and a warm feeling went over his heart.

"The major is as generous as he is brave," he murmured. "He is one scout of a thousand. No wonder all the boomers asked him to lead them in this expedition."

Ten minutes later Dick was drying himself at the fire in a house near by. Hearing his tale of misfortune, the man who took him in insisted upon treating him to some hot coffee, which did a good bit toward making him feel once more like himself.

"It may be a wild-goose chase, but I can't give it up," he muttered as he continued his search by walking along the river bank. "Poor father, where can he be?"

The outskirts of the city had been left behind and he was making his way through a tangle of brush and over shelving rocks. A bend was passed and he gave a wild cry. And small wonder.

There on the river bank lay the motionless form of his parent, dripping yet with the