CHAPTER XL—A SURPRISING TELEGRAM.
The next day the girls were restless; troubled by the uncertainty of it all, and anxiously waiting for news, although they had no way of hearing directly from Red Riverton. However, Malcolm had promised that he would telegraph Mr. Wells at the Junction if there were any definite news, then he could ride over and deliver it to the girls.
Uncle Tex, when told all that had happened, shook his head dismally. “Ah reckon as how Malcolm is right,” he drawled, “Rustlers ’twas as took the herd, like’s not, and if so, they’ve hushed up the drivers someway.” Then noting the white face of the girl he so loved, he hastened to add, self-reproachingly, “Thar! Thar! Miss Virginia dearie, ah ought not to skeer yo’ all that-a-way. Like’s not yo’ friend Tom is safe somewhar. Ah feels in ma bones as we’ll heah news somehow today.”
“So do I,” Margaret declared, “and honestly, Virg, I believe that it will be good news.”
Virginia smiled wanly, and then, springing up she exclaimed, “Let’s ride over to The Junction, Megsy, and see if there is any mail for us. That will help to pass the time away.”
They were soon in the saddle, but, before they had left the dooryard, Margaret pointed up toward the mesa trail. “Someone is coming at top-speed,” she called over her shoulder. They drew rein and watched the rapidly approaching cloud of sand in the midst of which they soon saw a small horse and a boy rider.
“It’s Wells,” Virginia cried excitedly, urging forward to meet the newcomer. “I do believe that he has a telegram for us.”
“He certainly has,” Megsy agreed, as she rode alongside. “See! He is waving a yellow envelope. I am sure it is good news or Malcolm would not have wired it.”
But a surprise awaited the girls. It was a telegram, to be sure, that the boy gave to Virginia, but it was not about Tom nor from Malcolm.
“Margaret Selover!” Virginia exclaimed, her eyes wide with surprise when she had read the message. “Who do you suppose this telegram is from?”
“Babs?” was the eager inquiry.
“Yes, Babs. The school has been closed because of an epidemic and her father is bringing her West at once. In fact, she will arrive at The Junction this afternoon at 2.”
“Isn’t that the most wonderful news?” Margaret cried. “Oh Virg! I can hardly believe it possible that I am to see my beloved roommate this very day.”
“It is hard to believe but it must be true,” her friend laughingly replied; then she called to the little boy who was starting away on his Pinto. “Wait, I am going to give you something.”
The something was a big shiny silver dollar. The boy’s eyes were almost as big and bright when he clasped it in his small grimy hand. “Is it all fo’ me Miss Virginia?” he asked, and, when assured that it was he ejaculated, “Gee Whilikers!” Then, quite forgetting his manners, he started the pony on a mad race for home but whirled around to shout, “Thank you, Miss Virginia!” from up on the mesa trail.
“If I only knew that all is well at the Wilson Ranch,” Virginia said, “I would be so happy about Barbara’s coming. Of course I am glad, as it is, to have her visit us, but it does seem as though I can’t be really merry again until I know what has happened to Tom.”
“I understand just how you feel, dear,” Margaret replied as the two girls, having returned their horses to the corral, started walking arm in arm toward the house.
At dinner that noon Virginia asked Lucky if he would drive them to The Junction in their car, which Malcolm called the “Rollabout,” to meet the 2:10 train. The kindly cow-boy assured them that he would do so. At 1 o’clock the two girls were in the big touring car with Lucky at the wheel, and at 2 o’clock were waiting at the Junction for the coming of the train.
“Maybe some word about Tom will arrive from Malcolm while we are here,” Virginia said, as she and Margaret sat on the bench in front of the long, low building which was station, postoffice, general store and home of the Wells family.
There were no other buildings in sight, only desert and mountains with here and there, near the creek bed, a clump of cottonwood trees where a silver thread of water trickled from the rocks.
Suddenly Virginia sprang up and listened to the clicking of the instrument within. “A telegram,” she said. “But Mr. Wells isn’t here so how are we to know what it is?”
“There he is, down the track,” Margaret told her, and Virginia, running forward, eagerly called, “Oho, Mr. Wells, isn’t a telegram coming in?”
“Wall, now, like as not,” the good man replied, as he bustled into the small ticket office. The girls, with tightly clasped hands, waited breathlessly. Would it be a message from Malcolm?
At last Mr. Wells peered smilingly at them, over his glasses. “Tain’t nothin’ unusual,” he said. “Tain’t nothin’ unusual,” he said. “Train’s late. That’s all, but it may make up time on the down grade. It usually does.”
The girls sank back on the hard bench truly disappointed.
“Here comes the train!” little Wells sang out ten minutes later as he raced toward them. The roaring noise in the tunnel proved the truth of his statement even before the long train drawn by two engines emerged into the sunlight.
The girls ran forward and eagerly scanned each coach.
“There she is! There’s my Babs!” Megsy sang out as she saw her friend’s face beaming through one of the windows. A moment later, when the train had come to a standstill, Barbara leaped to the platform, dropped suitcase and umbrella, and gave Megsy a good, hard, schoolgirl hug. Then she whirled about and held out both hands to Virginia as she bubbled, “I’m not going to wait to be introduced for I know you well and love you right this very minute.” Then putting an arm about each she exclaimed happily, “I wonder if you dear cow-girls have any idea how excited and delighted I am to be here.”
“We are just as excited, and I do believe even more delighted,” Margaret declared. “We hardly know what to say or do.”
“Well, first of all, please, lead me to a cafeteria,” Babs implored. “A—a which?” Virginia inquired, truly puzzled, for the western girl had never before heard of such a place.
How Margaret laughed! “Babs,” she said, “if you can find one on our desert, we will gladly pay for whatever you wish to order.”
Barbara looked about, her eyes glowing. “Oh! Oh!” she exclaimed. “I’m glad—glad that there isn’t one around. I’ve been just longing to get away from civilization, and so, the wilder it is out here, the better I shall like it.” They were starting toward the car, when kind Mrs. Wells hailed them from her kitchen door. “Virgie!” she called, “wouldn’t you girls like a few of my sugar cookies? They’re just fresh from the bakin’.”
“Do my ears hear right?” Babs said dramatically, in a low undertone, while Virginia was gladly accepting the proffered treat. “Barbara,” the western girl called, “you and Megsy come here. I want Mrs. Wells to meet the newest addition to the V. M. family and if we like, we may each have a glass of buttermilk.”
“Wall, now, Miss Barbara, you’ve come to stay on the desert for a spell, hev yo’?” the motherly woman asked as she smiled down at the petite Babs. Then she added, “Yo’ aren’t much bigger than a pint o’ honey, and I can easy tell by your sunny face that you’re most as sweet.”
Virginia took two of her sugar cookies over to the waiting Lucky who had spent most of the hour discussing desert topics with Mr. Wells.
Babs gazed at the lean, sinewy, sun-browned cow-boy with unconcealed interest, and when she was introduced, she extended her small gloved hand saying eagerly, “Oh, Mr. Lucky, you do look like Bill Hart, don’t you? He’s the cow-boy I’m best acquainted with, but he always has a gun sticking out of his hip pocket or somewhere. I don’t suppose that you carry a gun, do you?”
The cow-boy replied, with his good-natured drawl, that he usually “packed” along a couple or so, and to prove this statement, he produced two small guns. After a whispered hint from the fun-loving Margaret, Lucky threw an empty bottle high in the air and then, firing three times in rapid succession, he shattered the bottle, much to the delight of the newly arrived easterner.
Later, when Babs and Margaret were on the back seat of the “Rollabout” the former confided in a low voice, “I’m so glad to find that cow-boys are really like moving pictures. The girls in school said they knew I was going to be disappointed, but I’m not! Everything is just as I had expected, only heaps more so!”
Megsy reached out and took her friend’s hand. “You’ll love it here, Babsie,” she said, “and, too, you will love Virginia and Malcolm.
“I care for my guardian now just as though he were my own brother,” she added, trying to convince herself that her words were true. Then she leaned back, wondering where her guardian might be at that moment. Babs, too, was glad to be quiet that she might look about at the desert and mountains and rejoice that at last she was in the land of which she had so long dreamed.
Uncle Tex was waiting on the porch of the ranch house, and, if Babs wished to see a character who would have rejoiced the heart of a moving picture director, she surely did in the old man who had been a cow-boy since those early days when the desert teemed with exciting adventure.
“Miss Virginia, dearie,” he drawled, when he had carried in the luggage, “that thar Injun boy was here twict while yo’ all’s been gone.”
Babs was eagerly listening. “Oh, was that little Red Feather, Megsy, that you wrote me about? I’m just wild to see him.”
Virginia assented. “I wonder what he wanted,” she said, then, as a sudden thought came to her, she caught Margaret’s hand as she exclaimed, “Megsy, if Tom manages to escape from the rustlers, I do believe that he would go to the Indian village to hide. A stranger never could find the entrance in the wall of rocks unless he just happened to stumble upon it.”
“I do hope you are right,” Margaret replied. “I hope our Tom is safe with the Papagoes.”
“Girls,” the mystified Barbara exclaimed, “who are you talking about? Has anything happened to the outlaw Tom about whom you wrote me?” Virginia, remembering that she was hostess, and that her anxiety must not occupy her thought to the exclusion of the comfort of the newly arrived guest, then exclaimed, “Margaret will tell you all about it while you unpack. I am sure you will want to wash and rest a while before supper. You two are to room together just as you did at school. Meanwhile, I will hie me to the kitchen and assist Uncle Tex in preparing an early repast, for I am sure that you are still hungry after so long a journey.”
When the two eastern friends had entered Margaret’s pleasant room Virginia did not go at once to the kitchen. Instead she took her brother’s powerful glasses and looked long up the mesa trail, hoping to see the little Indian boy reappearing, but he did not come. At last, with a sigh, she turned toward the kitchen and her heart was heavy. “I wonder what message Winona has for me,” she thought. “It must be important or she would not have sent twice.”