“March winds surely are blowing,” Margaret sang out, as she and Virginia were hurled along at a merry pace from the “hen corral,” the small fenced-in enclosure whither the girls had been to gather eggs.
When they reached the shelter of the kitchen, Virginia declared, “It’s great fun to race with the wind back of one, but I wouldn’t care to go far across the desert facing this gale. I suppose that it will blow now for days and days. It usually does in March. Sometimes it hurls the sand against our windows in terrific gusts and woe to the horseman who is caught out in a such a storm.”
“What happens? Is he buried alive?” Margaret asked.
“No, not often that. Sometimes he turns and rides with the wind until it has abated. Let’s get the darning basket, shall we? This is such a cozy time to sit by the fire and mend. I always enjoy it most when there is a storm outside, don’t you?”
Fifteen minutes later the two girls were comfortably curled up in easy chairs in front of the wide grate on which a mesquite root was cheerfully burning. Margaret, dropping her darning into her lap sat watching the flames.
“A penny for your thoughts,” Virginia teased. Margaret looked up with a little laugh. “Virg,” she said, “my thoughts had gone way back to the first chapter. I was thinking how I had rebelled when you wrote that I would have to leave boarding school and come out here to live on the desert. I was so sure that I was leaving happiness behind me and that I would be miserable ever after, but instead—” she paused.
“Have you been unhappy, dear, and are you hiding it in your heart?” Virginia asked anxiously.
“Unhappy?” Margaret lifted such a glowing face that Virginia felt that her question was answered before the next words were uttered. “I have never been so happy before in all my life. This is the first real home that I ever had. Mother died when I was so very young, and then father placed me in boarding school, and then he died. Of course I was happy at Vine Haven and Babs was like a dear sister, but Oh, Virginia, there’s nothing like a comfortable, love-filled house for a home, is there? Of course I still love Babs, and now I have you, and Malcolm for a brother.”
Margaret had returned her attention to the sock she was darning which chanced to belong to the lad she had just mentioned, and she smiled as she continued, “How nice Malcolm is. But isn’t he much more serious than most boys of eighteen? Is it because he has had so much responsibility since your father died?”
“Perhaps, and also because he is of a serious nature,” Virginia replied, as she threaded a needle. “And yet there is lots of fun in Buddy. You haven’t had an opportunity to become acquainted with him. He has been so occupied since you came. If he does return to V. M. Ranch tomorrow I do hope he plans staying at home for a while. He has been away now for two weeks.”
“Whew-oo!” Margaret said with a shudder. “Virg, did you hear that gust of wind? It’s blowing the sand, and how dark it is getting!”
Virginia glanced anxiously at the window. “I do hope Lucky will reach here before nightfall,” she said. “However, he may remain all night at the Junction. That would be the wise thing to do.”
“Hark!” Margaret exclaimed listening intently, “I’m sure I heard someone calling just then. Did you?”
They both listened but heard only the rush of the wind and sand.
However, a moment later, there came a rapping on the back door and both girls dropping their darning, hurried to see who the newcomer might be.
As they had really expected, it was the cow-boy who had ridden to the Junction for the mail.
“Lucky!” Virginia remonstrated, “you are covered with sand and your face is almost bleeding. Why did you come out tonight? The mail was not so important.”
“No, Miss Virginia, ’twant the mail that fetched me but the stock. Slim ain’t here and I hadn’t tol’ Uncle Tex about the little sick heifer as I’ve got down in the hospital. I knew it would be dead by morning if I didn’t come home to tend to it.” As the long, lank cow-boy talked, he was taking the mail from the pouch and placing it on the kitchen table. At first he seemed puzzled, and then troubled about something. He turned the mailbag upside down and shook it.
“What’s the matter, Lucky? Have you lost something?” Virg inquired.
“I’m afeared I have, Miss Virginia,” the cow-boy replied. “I know as how I had five letters for V. M. Ranch, but now I don’t count but four. One of ’em must have blowed away. I’m powerful sorry, Miss Virginia. It was a longish one and it was from Red Riverton, I just don’t see where that letter can be.”
The poor cow-boy was so distressed that Virginia assured him that the missive was of no great importance and that probably it would be found in the morning.
Then, returning to the living-room the girls drew their chairs close to the center table where Virginia had lighted the lamp with its cheerful crimson shade.
“Where did Lucky say the lost letter was from?” Margaret asked as she slipped a gourd into the toe of one of Malcolm’s socks. “I had never heard of the place before.”
“Oh, I imagine it is a letter from some neighboring rancher to my brother,” Virginia remarked as she took up her darning. “Red Riverton is in the northern part of the state, and—”
“Virg!” Margaret interrupted, “do you suppose that letter was from our Tom? Or rather I should say, your Tom, as he never seems conscious of my existence.”
Virginia’s eyes glowed and springing up she exclaimed, “I do believe that you may be right. I’ll ask Uncle Tex the name of the nearest postoffice to the Wilson Sheep Ranch.” Into the kitchen she skipped returning with a woe-begone expression. “You are right, and, Oh Megsy, isn’t it dreadful? We have lost the very first letter that Tom ever wrote to us, for of course it must be blown far away. Just listen to that wind. It is traveling sixty miles an hour or more and by this time the letter will be far over the Mexican border. I am just sure we never will find it.”
“It might have been caught on a thorny cactus,” Margaret said, but neither of the girls had any real hope of finding the missive in which they were so interested.
During the night the wind subsided and the next day dawned gloriously still and sunny. The cow-boy, Lucky, arose before daybreak and rode up to the mesa, searching everywhere for the lost letter until the bell on the back porch of the ranch house called him to breakfast.
When he entered the kitchen, he looked so troubled that Virginia said with her friendly smile, “Don’t you worry about that letter. If it doesn’t turn up, I know who sent it, and I will write and explain that it was blown away in a sand storm.”
After breakfast the two girls tramped over every bit of sand between the ranch house and the corrals; then they mounted their ponies and rode over the trail toward the Junction, but not a gleam of white did they see.
“How the sand has changed!” Margaret exclaimed. “It is lying in billow-like waves. It isn’t smooth, the way it was yesterday.”
“That is how the three little sand hills were formed, I suppose,” Virginia remarked. “Something must have been there, a giant cactus, perhaps around which the sand first gathered, and then, being held, other storms added to it until the mounds became quite sizable sand hills standing all alone on the desert, but these little waves have nothing to hold them and they will soon smooth out again.”
At noon they gave up the search and returned for lunch. As they entered the house, Margaret suddenly exclaimed, “Why, Virginia, how could that letter have blown away? Lucky took the mail out of the pouch right here in the kitchen and before that the flap was buckled down.”
“That’s so,” Virginia replied, “and yet he remembers having had it and I have looked in the pouch several times.” Then, chancing to glance out of the window, she laughingly added, “You’d better hide, Margaret, for here comes your fierce warrior and he may be after your curly scalp.”
Megsy took the teasing good naturedly and both girls went out on the veranda to see what message little Red Feather had for them.
Far on the mesa they saw a gray line of horsemen whom they knew were the Papagoes returning to their mountain encircled home. Probably Winona had sent the Indian boy down to the V. M.
As the little fellow rode up, he reached under his red saddle blanket and drew forth a long white envelope. This he handed to Virginia with a slip of brown wrapping paper on which Winona had written:
“Dear White Lily:
“Mrs. Wells sent this. Your cow-boy dropped it at the station. Your friend, WINONA.”
“Oh thank you, Red Feather!” Virginia exclaimed, when she had read the message. “Tell Winona to come soon again and pay us a real visit.”
The little Indian lad showed his white teeth in a wide smile but whether he understood or not the girls could not tell.
When he was gone, Virginia dragged Margaret into the living-room and whirled her about merrily. Then they sank down on the window seat and Virginia tore open the long white envelope.