CHAPTER XVI—CAUGHT IN A BLIZZARD.
Three days had passed and the little mother had responded to the loving care of the two girls. Nourishing food taken each hour had revived her and slowly she was regaining her strength. She was able to walk about the little house and care for her babies. Virginia assured her that she need worry about nothing; that she and her children would be well cared for as long as she wished to remain there.
The frail woman took the girl’s hand and with tears in her eyes she said: “You are one of God’s angels sent to save my babies and now may He guide my husband back to me.”
“He will! I know He will, Mrs. Mahoy,” Virginia said earnestly. Then hearing the telephone ringing in the big ranch house, she ran to answer it. Margaret had also heard the summons and the two girls met on the veranda. Together they raced to the living-room, but it was Virginia who first reached the phone. “Oh, Brother Malcolm,” she exclaimed, “Where have you been all these three days? I feared that you had been dragged over the border by Mexican bandits. Have you found all of the straying cattle?”
Then after listening with shining eyes for a moment, Virginia exclaimed: “Oh, goodie. We’ll come at once. I have a very exciting something to tell you, but it will keep till we get there. Good-bye, Buddie.”
“Guess what Malcolm wants us to do?” she then exclaimed as she looked beamingly up at Margaret.
“Well, dear, I judge that he wants us to ride somewhere and meet him for some reason which seems pleasing to his sister.”
Virginia laughed. “You ought to know what we are to do if you will put on your thinking cap. Do you remember what I said brother and I do every year just before Christmas?”
Margaret looked blank and shook her head. “Why, we were talking about it only last week when you said you wished that you could see snow and—”
“Oho! I know now. We are to meet Malcolm somewhere and go up into the mountains after a Christmas tree.” Then she added blithely: “Virginia, do you remember that on that very same day you wished that we might have a child to dance around the Christmas tree and now we have three children, and so it will be heaps more fun, won’t it?”
As the girls chattered, they entered their bedrooms to exchange their house dresses for their khaki riding habits.
“There’s little Pat on the cow-pony that you told him he might ride,” Margaret said, looking out of the window.
“I will ask him if he would like to go with us,” Virginia remarked. The little lad was delighted to accompany the two girls, and half an hour later the three were riding along the desert trail toward the Slater Ranch, where they were to meet Malcolm.
“I just love Christmas, don’t you, Virg?” Margaret exclaimed, when, the deep dry creek having been crossed, the girls were cantering along on the hard sand side by side. “It’s such fun to get packages by mail and then put them away to keep until Christmas. Of course I know just where they are, and every now and then I peek at them and try to guess from the shape what is in them, but I am strong-minded about it. I never do really open them until Christmas morning, do you?”
Virginia laughed. “I’ll have to confess that last year I opened a long, mysterious box the moment it arrived. I was so eager to see if it was the something that I wanted most, and it was.”
“What was it?” the other asked with interest.
“A set of grey fox furs,” Virginia replied. “Brother shot the fox in the early winter and I had said what an adorable set of furs could be made from the skin. Well, I noticed that it disappeared from Buddie’s room, but I wasn’t real sure what had become of it until that box arrived from the town furrier.”
Suddenly the girls noticed that the little Irish boy riding near was listening with wide-eyed interest.
“Well, Little Pat,” Margaret said gaily, “a penny for your thoughts.”
“But Miss Virginia,” was the reply, “Christmas presents don’t come on the train. Weren’t you after knowin’ that it’s the good St. Nick as brings them?”
“Of course, dearie,” Virginia hastened to say, “I know it is the good St. Nick who brings presents to children, but we grown folks sometimes give gifts to each other. Ho! look ahead! Megsy,” she added. “There’s Brother Malcolm waiting for us at the Big Boulder, and good! Slick Cy is with him.”
The latter cow-boy had told Malcolm all about the poor family that Virginia had rescued, and he was eager to assure his sister that she had done just as he would have wished her to do had he been there.
After the merry greetings had been exchanged, Virginia exclaimed “Where are we to go for a Christmas tree, Slick Cy?”
“Ah saw a beauty tree last week, high on Second Peak trail,” that cow-boy drawled. Then he looked anxiously at the sky. “Looks sort of to me like thar might be a blizzard. If so, ’twouldn’t be safe nohow fo’ you gurls to ride up that trail.”
“Oh, please, let us go,” Margaret begged. “I’m wild to see a pine tree growing up in the mountains. I don’t believe a storm is coming, do you, Malcolm?”
That boy looked toward the north where threatening clouds were rapidly gathering.
“I’m afraid Slick Cy is right,” he said. “Perhaps we ought to give up the idea of getting the tree today.”
“But, brother, there is only one day more before Christmas and we need that to trim the tree and get ready for the party,” Virginia protested.
“Well, like as not it may blow over,” Slick Cy said, really against his better judgment. “If we are a-goin’, we’d better get started.”
And so with the Slater cow-boy in the lead and Malcolm in the rear, the little procession started up the steep trail. But they had not gone far when Slick Cy whirled in his saddle and held up a warning hand. Malcolm had also heard the low ominous sound which seemed to be gathering in volume as though whatever caused it, with each second, was drawing nearer.
“What is it?” the eastern girl inquired, looking from one startled face to another.
“It’s the blizzard I dreaded,” Malcolm replied. “Cy, what shall we do? Just ahead of us the trail is exposed. How I do wish that we had insisted upon the girls returning.”
“Oh, brother,” Virginia exclaimed “we will return at once if you think best.”
“It’s too late now,” the lad replied. “Quick, jump from your horses and follow me. There is a small cave near here and in it you will be protected from the storm.”
A moment later the two girls and small boy were huddled in the cave, and none too soon, for a blinding hurricane of snow and hail surged past. The two cow-boys had succeeded in leading the ponies into a shelter of brush and rock. Luckily the storm was of short duration and it was followed by a gleaming blue sky. But Malcolm would not permit the girls to ride higher up a trail which he knew might be dangerous at that time of the year, and so, reluctantly, they agreed to return to V. M. Ranch after having received the promise from the cow-boys that they would surely bring a tree by nightfall that the girls would have time to trim it and have it in readiness for the joyful Christmas day.
Little Pat was very proud indeed when Malcolm placed a hand on his shoulder and said in his kind, comrady manner: “Laddie, you will take good care of the young ladies won’t you?”
“Shure, sir, I’ll be doin’ me best,” the Irish boy declared, and the girls laughed to themselves as they rode down the trail, for often the little fellow looked back anxiously to be sure that all was well with them.
“I’m disappointed not to see our Christmas tree growing in its mountain home,” Margaret said when they were cantering across the level desert trail toward V. M., “but I was so frightened when the storm surged by that I would not care to be caught in another.”
“Such storms high on the mountains are very frequent at this time of the year,” Virginia told her friend, then she added: “How I do hope the boys will be able to find the big tree that Cy saw last week.”
Even as Virg spoke, high up in the mountains, the two boys had found something, but it was not a Christmas tree.