“Oh, Don,” she cried, “isn’t it wonderful? Just think! Our dream is really coming true! I used to say at school that even if it didn’t come true, we’d have the joy of dreaming it anyway. But it’s coming—this very day! And, oh, Don, isn’t this morning perfect? When I found in June they were really coming, I said I’d never be selfish enough to expect a perfect day, because it seemed as though I’d had enough already! But now it’s come, I just know it’s”—her voice softened—“it’s a real gift from God. Don’t you think so, too?”

“Yes, Virginia,” said the boy.

Then he gathered up the reins and drove his horses through the creek, and on toward the Gap and the open prairie.

Donald Keith laughed.

“Of course, I am,” he said, “only, you see, Virginia, I don’t get so excited on the outside as you do. Fellows don’t, I guess.”

“Don’t try,” said the boy bluntly. “I like you best just as you are, Virginia.”

She sighed—a happy, little sigh.

“I’m glad,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do if you didn’t, Don. Think of all the good times we’d miss!”

They passed a little stream, hurrying on toward Elk Creek. Some quaking-asps made a shady spot where ferns grew.

“I’d like her anyway for being such a peach to you,” said Donald.

“I’ll never forget it,” Virginia told him, a little break in her voice. “And especially when—when Jim went—Somewhere Else. Oh, Don, she was so good to me at that time! And she seemed to understand everything! I’ll always love her for it!”

Her gray eyes filled with tears. The boy beside her placed his hand on hers in quick sympathy.

“I know,” he said. “We don’t find a friend like that every day, Virginia. I wish she were coming, too! I’d like to thank her myself.”

Virginia swallowed the lump in her throat and smiled again.

“I wish so, too, but she can’t, so we must make the best of it. Aunt Nan is next best. She’ll love everything! I know she will. She’s such a good sport, too! She’ll learn to ride and shoot, I’m sure. I hope she’ll want to go everywhere with us, and that we won’t seem too young for her.”

“Yes,” said Virginia. “I never thought of it before, but I guess he is. Aunt Nan’s thirty, I know, because I remember she told me she’d always sort of dreaded being thirty, but now she’d reached there she found it the most comfortable age in the world. I hope Malcolm will go along. He’s splendid!”

“He’s all right,” returned Donald loyally.

“Every one’s been so dear at home about getting ready,” Virginia went on. “William put the finishing touches on the flower garden yesterday. It looks lovely, and Aunt Nan’s marigolds are all in bloom. William planted some to make her think of home. And Alec and Joe and Dick insisted on riding three of the horses so they’d be ready for the girls to ride to-morrow. Hannah’s baked everything I like best, and Father bought two bran-new tents, because the girls want to sleep out with me. Do Jack and Carver ride, do you suppose?”

“Oh, I’m sure he will,” Virginia assured him. “I wish you could have seen how pleased he was when Father asked him to come. And his grandfather, the old Colonel, nearly burst with pride! Of course Carver’s different. I think his father and mother are very—well, New Englandy! You know what I mean. But I’m sure he’ll love it out here. It’s lovely of you to have him at your house, Don. He could stay with us as well as not, of course, but he’ll be happier over there with you and Jack and the boys.”

“That’s all right,” said Donald carelessly. “There’s always room for one more at the Keith ranch. Father says there always will be. Are all the girls Vigilantes, Virginia—Mary and Priscilla and Vivian?”

Virginia explained. Mary wasn’t really a member, and yet she really was, being the advisor of the society, and general assistant whenever called upon to help.

Virginia discredited his praise.

“What do you suppose they’re doing now?” asked Donald, excited in his turn.

“I suppose,” began Virginia—“oh, Don, there’s another bergamot!—I suppose they’re all out on the observation platform, looking at everything they can see. Mary isn’t saying much—she’s just looking, and Vivian is surprised at all the new sights—I can just see how round and blue her eyes are!—and Aunt Nan is pointing out things, so as to be sure no one will miss one of them. Somehow I can’t exactly picture Jack and Carver, but I know what Priscilla is doing. I don’t even have to imagine or suppose. I know she’s just wild—outside and in! I can just see her jumping from one side of the platform to the other, and exclaiming at everything. Her hair is all blown about her face—she has such unruly hair anyway—and her eyes are almost black, she’s so excited over being so near. You see, I know Priscilla. She’s a lot like me. She just can’t keep still when she’s happy! I know she’s got the same queer feeling inside that I have. Oh, drive faster, Don! I just don’t believe I can wait to see them all!”

Virginia Hunter was right. Priscilla Winthrop, her roommate at St. Helen’s, and junior partner in the formation of the Vigilante Order, had not been still for ten minutes since five A. M. At that hour she had risen from bed, dressed hurriedly, and bribed the sleepy porter to allow her a seat on the observation platform. It was contrary to custom and orders at that hour, but he had done it notwithstanding. Apparently this young lady would take no refusal.

But the climax had occurred shortly afterward when while going through a country of sagebrush stretches and grim, almost naked buttes, she had seen—actually seen a cow boy! He was true to every description Virginia had ever given her—sombrero, bandana, chaps and all! She could not see his face, but she knew he must be fine-looking like the “Virginian” or like Dick at the Hunter ranch. He was galloping through the sagebrush on a mottled, ugly-looking broncho, doubtless bent on some secret errand.

She drew a long breath of the thin, clear mountain air! So this was Virginia’s country! It was a big land! She understood now what Virginia had meant by talking about the bigness of everything. The plains, stretching on and on, gray-green with sagebrush, the gaunt mountain spurs, the far-away real mountains, blue and snow-furrowed, the great, clear sky over all! It must be wonderful at night with countless stars and a moon looking down upon the loneliness of everything. There was something about it all that, in some strange way, pulled out one’s very soul—that made one want to be big in thought, tolerant, kind!

“A real cow boy!” she shouted above the rumble of the wheels.

“Humph!” grunted her companion. “Didn’t you never see one before?”

“Never!” cried Priscilla fervently.

“It ain’t no great sight!” returned the sophisticated brakeman.

“Perhaps not to you,” Priscilla shouted in his ear, “but it would be if you had dreamed of seeing one for ten months and three-quarters the way I have.”

“Humph!” grunted the brakeman again. “You must be a tenderfoot.”

“I am,” cried Priscilla, “and I’m glad of it! You can only see bran-new things once. The second time you see them they aren’t new any longer, and can’t give you thrills like the first time.”

The brakeman grinned.

“What’s that?” screamed the interested Priscilla.

“Sometimes folks call it Indian soap-weed,” explained the brakeman in her ear, “because if you break the leaves they’ll lather in water. And some folks call it Spanish bayonet. It grows in barren places out here.”

“I’ll put that in my Thought Book,” Priscilla told him. “I guess it’s lucky I have a new one with all these new things to write about. Why are all the trees out here those tall cottonwoods?”

“They ain’t all,” answered the obliging brakeman, “but the cottonwoods don’t take so much soil. They grow easy and quick, and make good wind-breaks, so folks plant ’em when they build a house near a creek like that one over there. Quaking-asps—they grow well, too.”

“Quaking-asps!” cried Priscilla. “Where are they? Please show me! I’d give worlds to see one! My roommate lives out here—I’m just on my way to visit her—and it’s her favorite tree.”

Priscilla leaned over the railing and gazed.

“Oh, aren’t they happy? They’re the jolliest trees I ever saw!”

“I guess that is a good word for ’em,” agreed the brakeman. “They sure do dance around.”

“Doesn’t anything grow on those hills but little trees and sagebrush?” queried Priscilla. “It is sagebrush, isn’t it? I guessed it was from pictures, and from what Virginia said.”

“Yes, it’s sagebrush, ma’am, and nothin’ much grows on them buttes except that and rattlers.”

“Oh!” screamed Priscilla. “That’s one thing I’d hate to see! You don’t think I will, do you?”

“Like’s not,” encouraged the brakeman. “They ain’t so bad. Must come in handy for something, else we wouldn’t have ’em.”

Just then Carver Standish had opened the door for Aunt Nan, who announced breakfast for the party. Priscilla was obdurate.

The brakeman touched his hat.

“He’s been very kind, I’m sure,” said Aunt Nan, too used to her own niece’s methods of making new friends to be troubled. “But we’re going to reach Virginia and Donald in another hour, and you must have some breakfast, Priscilla.”

“Carver will bring me some fruit,” persisted Priscilla, “and you can’t see a thing from the window. Oh, please, Miss Webster! I just can’t eat when I have this queer feeling inside of me!”

“There’s the creek bridge!” cried Priscilla, springing to her feet a few minutes later. “Virginia has written me a dozen times that when we crossed that red bridge we should begin to get ready. I suppose I ought to comb my hair. It’s a sight! But Virginia’ll be so happy she’ll never notice in all this world!”

Virginia was assuredly too happy to notice disheveled heads or smoke-stained faces or wrinkled suits when she saw her own dear Aunt Nan and her very best friends step excitedly from the train onto the little station platform. That queer sinking feeling inside vanished, and only joy was left.

“It’s come true! It’s come true!” she kept crying as she greeted them all. “Just think, Priscilla, it’s really happening this minute! You’re all in my country at last—Donald’s and mine!”

They stopped at the Keith ranch to receive a copyrighted Western welcome, and to leave Jack and Carver. Donald would drive the girls home, and then return. Mr. David, Mother Mary, Malcolm and little Kenneth—all the Keith family—came to greet them. It seemed to Jack Williams as though he had never received a welcome so genuine; and to the hungry and tired Carver Standish III the simple brown ranch-house, surrounded by cottonwoods and set about by wide grain-fields, possessed a charm unsurpassed by the most stately mansions of New England.

“I know it’s Hannah,” cried Priscilla, running to the doorway. “She looks just as though she knew all about the German measles!”

“And I’m sure this is William,” said Mary a little shyly, as she shook hands with the quiet man by the garden. “It just couldn’t be—any one else!”

“If—if you’ll excuse me, Virginia, I’d—I’d really rather stay at home with Hannah and your father.”

It was Vivian who spoke. She was clad in a new riding-suit, which had been worn only during a few trembling and never-to-be-forgotten moments of the day before, when Donald had led the oldest and safest horse on the ranch to and fro beneath the cottonwoods. Old Siwash would never have thrown Vivian. Far was it from him to treat a guest of his mistress in that manner. But in spite of stirrups, saddle-horn, and the reassuring presence of Donald, Vivian had, in some mysterious way, slipped from the saddle, and fallen in an ignominious little heap by the wayside.

“I—I just can’t do it, Virginia!” she finished.

Virginia considered for a long moment. Then her clear gray eyes met Vivian’s frightened blue ones.

It was hard, blunt doctrine, built on seventeen years of wholesome life in a land where cowardice has found no room; but at that moment it was just what Vivian Winters needed. From her frightened heart the fear of Siwash fled only to give place to a more dreadful fear, the contempt and scorn of the Vigilantes. Better be thrown by Siwash than despised by Virginia and Priscilla, Mary and the far-away Dorothy. She had no time to tell Virginia that she would go after all, and to ask her to try to forget her cowardice, for the boys called just then that all was ready. But Virginia understood, for as they hurried toward the corral she held Vivian’s hand closely in her own, and gave it a final, encouraging squeeze, as Vivian edged a cautious way toward Siwash and the faithful Donald.

Only three of the nine had ever ridden through a canyon or followed a mountain trail, and those three experienced the keenest delight in pointing out every object of interest to the others—the blue lupines and pink cranesbill, which made the occasional open spaces riotous with color, the forget-me-nots growing in shady places, and the rare orchids, which they discovered after they had penetrated to the heart of the mountain forest.

Up—up—up they went. The trail wound in and out around the mountain-side, and their sure-footed horses followed it, never daunted by fallen trees or by rocky and precipitous places. More than once every Vigilante save one held her breath as she was carried up a dangerous, almost obliterated path to heights beyond. But Virginia’s Pedro, who was far-famed as a trailer, led the way, and his rider called back reassuring words to those behind.

An hour later they reached the mountain-top, and lo! it was spring again. The ground was covered with early spring flowers—shooting-stars and spring beauties and bearded-tongues. In the sheltered nooks they found dog-toothed violets, and more forget-me-nots—both pink and blue.

It was here that the inexperienced New Englanders longed to camp. They wanted to wake in the morning, they said, and look far across the blue distances, over the tops of the highest trees, to the mountains beyond, like Moses gazing into the Promised Land. But they willingly consented to ride down on the other side to a more sheltered spot and camp by a tiny mountain lake, when Malcolm, aided by Donald and Virginia, explained that a snow-storm was not an unlikely occurrence away up there—even in July!

In that strange, just-before-dawn stillness Virginia awoke to miss Priscilla from her side. She moved the tent flap, and looked out. Priscilla stood by the entrance, her eyes raised to the distant mountains—great shadows beneath a star-strewn sky. She was learning the old, old secrets of those mountains at night.

The next day, perfect as the one before, they went down, down, down the trail, through the canyon, across the prairie, and home once more.

“Mr. Hunter named it just right,” Priscilla said to Dick, who came to take the horses. “I’ve never felt so well-acquainted in my life!”