The next morning before daylight Margaret was conscious that someone was stirring in the room next to hers. Becoming more fully awake, she rose, drew on her kimono and slippers and tiptoed to the door which stood open between the bedrooms of the two girls.
In the dim grey light she saw Virginia dressing. She was donning her riding khakis.
“Why, Virg!” Megsy exclaimed in surprise, “where away so early? You aren’t going to ride to the Three Cross Ranch, are you, to tell Babs and Peyton about the invitation?”
“Not this morning, dear. I want to wait until we receive the telegram from Eleanor that I may be more definite in what I have to tell them.”
“Then, where are you going? I might guess the Papago Village, only I know that Winona is not there.”
Virginia smiled brightly. “It’s an odd fancy, this of mine,” she confessed, “but last night I had a dream; one of those wonderfully realistic dreams when you feel sure that you are awake and that the something is actually happening. I dreamed that you and I had ridden over to Hog Canon to see the Wallace family. You know, Megsy, my conscience has troubled me because, after our first visit, I never went again and that was at least three weeks ago. Mrs. Wallace and the children have so little to interest them that even a visit from their neighbors seems like a treat.”
Megsy, seated on the edge of the bed, remarked, “I don’t believe they feel that way about neighbors in general, but just about Virginia Davis in particular.”
The girl, who was lacing her high riding boots, looked up with a smile. “My friends spoil me, don’t they, Megsy. It’s well that I know myself as I am not as they try to picture me. While I’m gone, will you take good care of my brother? I want him to stay in bed all morning, though you may have Sing Long make him some nice broth at ten if you will. However, I expect to be back long before that.”
Virginia had not asked her friend to accompany her and Margaret, though she had thought of requesting to be allowed do so, believed that for some reason Virg wished to be alone, nor was she wrong.
It was still the grey of early dawn when the girl ran down the trail leading to the small pasture where the ponies remained at night. Some of them were lying down and others were tugging at an enclosed haystack which was kept filled with the long desert grass that grew in the valley pasture, a mile from the house. But one among them whinnied as the girl approached and, kicking up frolicsome heels, he cantered to the bars, knowing well that his mistress was about to let them down. And he was right.
“Good morning, Comrade,” Virginia said as she smoothed his nose affectionately. “Would you like to take me for a ride this morning?”
Again the pony whinnied. “Of course, I knew you would, and if you won’t tell, I’ll tell you a secret. I wanted to be all alone just once more before I go away. There’s something I want to think about. It doesn’t have to be decided just yet; not until I’m nearer eighteen, but I do want to be thinking about it.”
Then kissing the flipping ear of her apparently interested companion, the girl started on a light run to the shed near the great windmill where the saddles hung. Comrade, with colt-like antics, followed. It was evident that he was trying to express the joy that he, too, felt at being the only companion his loved mistress desired.
They had crossed the dry creek bed and had climbed up on the high opposite bank before a flush of rose appeared in the eastern skies. Virginia drew rein and sat for one long silent moment watching the loveliness of the dawning day. A fleecy white cloud near the horizon became opalescent with first one exquisitely delicate color and then another. Then with a burst of glory, the sun rose in sheets of flaming gold and the desert, which had been like a gloomy waste of desolation but a moment before, was transformed to a wide billowing expanse of shimmering silvery-grey.
Jack rabbits fearlessly gamboled about the girl and pony; birds sang and a wren darted from its nest in the top of a choya cactus to contentedly return again to its wee young when it knew that the one who was passing by was a friend of all things that live.
The trail dipped into a hollow where mesquite grass grew. Instantly there was a whirring rush of wings and a flock of quail soared high into the air, to whirl, a moment later, and settle back to their former feeding place. It made the heart of the girl rejoice because her wild neighbors seemed to know that she was one of them.
“We’re all kin folks, somehow, though we can’t understand, and why try, since the sages of all time have not yet been able to tell how a wee seed can fashion a flower. After all, Comrade, if we’re just kind to every form of life we meet on this wonderful earth, I think we will have done the best we know.”
There was a long stretch of sand to be crossed before the Seven Peak Range would be reached and the girl, watching the trail ahead, gradually became unconscious of all about her and was once again on the rock in the moonlight with the lad who loved her at her side.
“I might think that I care enough to marry Peyton,” she was thinking, “but would it be quite fair to others? There are Barbara, and Malcolm and Margaret to consider. I just couldn’t leave my wonderful brother all alone on V. M. My adopted sister I might take to Three Cross with me, if I went to live there, but Malcolm—I just can’t leave him! First he lost the mother whom he so idolized, and then our father, and never did a boy have a closer pal than Dad was, and now if I go, he will lose his only sister and be so lonely and so all alone. I only wish he might meet some nice girl for whom he could care as Peyton cares for me, but he does not seem to feel the need of love; I mean, not that way.”
Then it was that another thought suggested. “Perhaps it is just because he has you that he has not thought of bringing another mistress to V. M. Perhaps he would care for someone, if he knew you were going away.”
Suddenly there was a rush of tears in the violet eyes, and impulsively leaning her cheek against her pony’s head, Virginia said with a little half sob, “Oh Comrade, I don’t believe after all that I really care for Peyton as much as I should, for I can’t bear the thought of leaving my very own home where Mother and Dad were so happy and where I have been so loved. I can’t think of any other girl I would want there, but just Margaret, and, of course, she would want to go with me.”
Then looking up with a smile that flashed through the tears she held out her arms to the shining sky. “Little Mother,” she said softly, as though she were really addressing someone, “I am forgetting that you told me to let my life blossom as quietly and trustingly as a flower unfolds, knowing that the right thing will come at the right time.” Then again the girl ruminated, “How topsy-turvy would be this universe of ours if the flowers said to themselves, ‘Dear me, I wonder now if I’d better open up my petals to the sun; no telling how soon clouds may come and my bloom spoiled in a storm.’
“Comrade, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to trust, and let my life blossom as it will. What would Brother Malcolm think if he knew that I am trying to marry him to someone whom as yet he doesn’t know?” Then as the canon trail had been reached, Virg turned her pony’s head that way and slowly began the ascent.