That evening as the three girls sat in front of the wide hearth on which a mesquite root was cheerily burning, they talked quietly together of all that had happened.
“Have you heard lately from your brother, Peyton?” Margaret asked.
Babs shook her head and there were sudden tears in her pretty blue eyes as she replied, “Oh, girls, I try to forget my great disappointment, but of course I must tell you about it. The cards that were sent to me from China, bearing only the initials P. W., were not from my darling brother after all. I had actually forgotten that I had an acquaintance with those same initials. Who do you suppose Megsy, that the cards were from?”
“Patty Warren, perhaps,” Margaret surmised. “Long ago I thought of her, merely because of the initials, but I supposed that she was still in school with you. Had she gone to China?”
“It would seem so,” Barbara replied. “I did know that Patty had left school because her widowed mother had married a minister to some outlandish foreign country, but, though the child was very fond of me, I never thought much about her, partly, because she was younger, and also, because I had you and Betsy Clossen for pals and two intimate friends are as many as I care for, but last week I had a letter from her postmarked London asking me if I had received the truly lovely Chinese kimona that she had sent for my birthday and giving me for the first time, a return address. Of course, I wrote her at once to express my appreciation, but I was heart broken. I cried for hours and hours that night, for I had been so sure that my dear lost brother was keeping in touch with me and somehow, even that little had been a comfort to me. Now, I am convinced that Peyton must be dead. He was so loving and tender-hearted even when he was a little fellow; he wouldn’t let month after month pass if he were alive without assuring me that he still cares for me and that all is well with him.”
“Poor Babs,” Virg said as she reached out, with real sympathy, and placed a comforting hand over the petite one of their friend. “I know how my heart would ache if Malcolm were lost, but don’t give up hope, dear. Such strange things happen in this world.”
“I am going to keep on hoping,” Barbara assured them. Then she added, “I have no way of knowing, of course, but I do believe that the object of my father’s visit to the West is to try to find Peyton. You see, when the epidemic broke out in school, we packed and left that very day, all of us who had not been exposed, and when I reached home father was not expecting me. I quietly entered the house and stood in the open library door. There he was, pacing up and down, an expression of grave anxiety on his face. I knew at once that he was greatly troubled about something, and for the first time since mother died there was a rush of tenderness in my heart for him. He looked so gray and sad and so all alone.
“Father!” I cried as I ran to him. He didn’t seem surprised, someway; he just reached out his arms and held me close.
“‘Little daughter,’ he said, ‘I needed you and you came to me; just as your mother came once, when I needed her—but—she couldn’t stay. If only that other Barbara had lived, all this would not have happened.’”
Then he bent his head down against mine and a hot tear fell on my cheek.
“‘Daddy,’ I said; I hadn’t called him that since I was very little. ‘Daddy, have you been so lonely? why didn’t you send for me sooner?’
“His reply was, ‘I am going West on a very important mission tomorrow, little daughter, so don’t unpack your trunk. I’ll take you with me and you may visit your friends in Arizona.’
“He didn’t tell me what his mission was, but I do know that he bought a ticket for some small town in Texas. He said that he would communicate with me in about a week. Oh, girls,” Babs added with a sob in her voice, “I wish I’d been more loving to my father. I ought to have known that his seeming sternness covered a most lonely heart with mother gone, and his only son wayward, or so daddy supposed.”
Margaret was thinking rapidly. “A town in Texas. Tom had been wrongly accused somewhere down there. Could Tom be Peyton after all and had the father received some word that had led him to believe that he would find his boy?”
“Bedtime, girls,” Virginia said as she arose. “We may need unusual strength tomorrow.”
Megsy sought an early opportunity to be alone with Virginia the next morning and ask her if she thought it possible that Tom might be the missing Peyton, and that the father having received some inkling of the boy’s whereabouts, had come West to search for him.
Virginia looked up eagerly. “I hadn’t thought of it, Megsy,” she said, “but now that you suggest it, I do believe that it might be possible. For myself I do not care who Tom may be, all that I want to know is that he is safe and well somewhere, anywhere. Uncle Tex doesn’t tell us what he really thinks, but I know. I have often heard the cow-boys relate tales of rustlers who came upon a lonely herder, and if they wish to spirit away the sheep, they silence the only man who could witness against them.” Then she added, “Babs is calling, dear. We would better not tell her that we think Tom may be her lost brother, Peyton, for how cruel would be the disappointment were we wrong.”
The morning hours dragged slowly to the girls who were eagerly awaiting the hoped-for reappearance of little Red Feather. “I am sure Winona will send him back,” Virg said many, many times, but he did not come.
In the meantime Lucky had ridden to the Junction to get any mail that might have come on the early morning train, and about noon he returned with several letters for each of the girls. Virg, with an exclamation of eagerness, tore open an envelope addressed in her brother’s familiar handwriting.
“Dear little sister,” she read aloud.
“I know just how eagerly you are awaiting a message from me, but I have been unable to communicate with you before. When I reached the sheep ranch, Mr. Wilson asked me to ride with several Mexicans whom he trusted, up toward the Lost Canyon which is in the roughest and wildest part of the mountains to the north. It is seldom visited by herders as there is practically no vegetation there. However, Lopez Andero, one of the herders who has long been in Mr. Wilson’s employ, stated that after a spring of heavy rains there was, in an almost inaccessible valley in the heart of the mountains, enough grass to last a herd of 500 Merinos for several weeks and that there could not a better place for rustlers to hide the flock. It was twilight when we started, Lopez in the lead. After a long, wearisome ride we reached the entrance to the canyon an hour before daybreak.
“We wished to approach the valley under cover of the darkness so that we might come upon the rustlers without their knowledge, if indeed, they were there, but when at last we reached the summit overlooking the valley, to our great disappointment, in the grey light of the dawning day we saw only a lonely, bowl-shaped hollow, in which, as Lopez had said, grass was luxuriantly growing.
“We then rode back to the home ranch and found several other parties who had also returned with the same discouraging report. No trace of sheep or shepherds had been found.
“Mr. and Mrs. Wilson are greatly depressed, as indeed, are we all. The loss of the sheep, Mr. Wilson assures me, means little to him; he is so eager to find Tom. I am sorry, sister, that I have to write this news, knowing that it will sadden you and Margaret. I had hoped that today I would be able to return to V. M. accompanied by Tom and give you a real surprise, but now I do not expect to be able to do that, at least not soon. Send me a line to Red Riverton today if you can conveniently.
“Margaret,” Virginia said when she had finished reading the letter, “I am going to ride to the Papago village today. Will you and Babs accompany me?”