“I’ll go you,” answered Dick Rover.  “Come on, I’ll see that you get the right trunks.”

“I think we are going to have some good times while we are on the Pacific coast,” observed Tom Rover, while he and Sam were waiting for Dick and the cabman to return.

“I shan’t object to a good time,” replied Sam.  “That is what we came for.”

“Before we go back I am going to have a sail up and down the coast.”

“To be sure, Tom.  Perhaps we can sail down to Santa Barbara.  That is a sort of Asbury Park and Coney Island combined, so I have been told.”

Dick Rover and the cabman soon returned.  The trunks were piled on the carriage and the boys got in, and away they bowled from the station in the direction of the Oakland House.

It was about ten o’clock of a clear day in early spring.  The boys had reached San Francisco a few minutes before, taking in the sights on the way.  Now they sat up in the carriage taking in more sights, as the turnout moved along first one street and then another.

As old readers of this series know, the Rover boys were three in number, Dick being the oldest, fun-loving Tom next, and sturdy-hearted Sam the youngest.  They were the only offspring of Anderson Rover, a former traveler and mine-owner, who, at present, was living with his brother Randolph and his sister-in-law Martha, on their beautiful farm at Valley Brook, in the heart of New York State.

During the past few years the Rover boys had had numerous adventures, so many, in fact, that they can scarcely be hinted at here.  While their father was in the heart of Africa, their Uncle Randolph had sent them off to Putnam Hall Academy.  Here they had made many friends among the boys and also among some folks living in the vicinity, including Mrs. Stanhope and her daughter Dora, a girl who, according to Dick Rover’s idea, was the sweetest creature in the whole world.  They had also made some enemies, the worst of the number being Dan Baxter, a fellow who had been the bully of the school, but who was now a homeless wanderer on the face of the earth.  Baxter came from a disreputable family, his father having at one time tried to swindle Mr. Rover out of a rich gold mine in the West.  The elder Baxter was now in prison suffering the penalty for various crimes.

A term at school had been followed by an exciting chase on the ocean, and then by a trip through the jungle of Africa, whence the Rover boys had gone to find their long-lost father.  After this the boys made a trip West to establish their parent’s claim to the gold mine just mentioned, and this was followed by a grand trip on the Great Lakes in which the boys suffered not a little at the hands of the Baxters.  On an island on one of the lakes the Rover boys found a curious casket and this, on being opened, proved to contain some directions for locating a treasure secreted in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains.

“We must locate that treasure,” said Tom Rover, and off they started for the mountains, and did locate it at last, but not before Dan Baxter had done everything in his power to locate it ahead of them.  When they finally outwitted their enemy, Dan Baxter had disappeared, and that was the last they had seen of him for some time.