Virginia's Ranch Neighbors

“Oh Virg, are we really to arrive at your desert home this morning?” Betsy Clossen exclaimed the first moment that she opened her eyes on the fifth day after their departure from the Vine Haven Boarding School.

“Not until nearly noon,” Virginia, who was dressing in the lower berth, smiled up at the eager face that peered down from the upper.

“And will your nice brother Malcolm be there to meet us, do you suppose?”

“I certainly hope so. I wired him from Chicago that we were to be on this train. If he can’t come himself, for any reason, he will surely send Lucky over with the car.”

“That’s one disillusioning thing about the desert,” Betsy continued. “I’m powerfully sorry that you have an automobile. It’s heaps too modern. I wish we were to be met with a—well a prairie schooner or something like that.”

Virg laughed. “I’m afraid you are going to be disappointed in us, Betsy. You’ll find V. M. really quite tame if you have been reading Wild West stories.” Then Margaret said quietly to her berth companion, “I do wish something exciting would happen the moment we arrive, don’t you, Virg?”

The older girl smiled but shook her sunny head. “No need to wish for that these days, dear. Life in Arizona is not nearly as thrilling as it is in the city of New York, if one can believe the newspapers.”

“Don’t tell Betsy, for if she thinks it is to be too commonplace, it will take all the thrill of expectancy out of it for her. You know she is never really enjoying herself unless there is a mystery to unravel or some adventure awaiting her.”

Fifteen minutes later the four girls were in the dining car.

Betsy beamed on her companions. The early morning sun falling on her red-brown hair made it shine like burnished gold.

“Even your freckles look gilded this morning,” Barbara teased.

The pug nose of the youngest wrinkled at her tormentor, then with an excited little squeal she exclaimed, “Oh, isn’t the desert just gloriously lonesome looking? Those mountains over there are so bleak and gray and the canons so dark! I can’t see a living thing anywhere, can you?”

Margaret, being questioned, peered out at the wide sandy waste of desert stretching to the distant mountains that rose grim, gray and forbidding. Here and there a clump of greasewood or of mesquite was half buried in mounds of sand that the frequent whirlwinds had left.

Betsy shivered. “Girls,” she said solemnly, “the very scene teems with mystery. I just feel sure that an exciting adventure is about to begin at most any moment. The setting is perfect for one. I’m going to watch that sandhill over there as long as it’s in sight. I expect to see a Mexican bandit peer around it and utter a shrill cry which will mean—”

“Do the young ladies wish oatmeal this morning?” It was the suave waiter who had interrupted, and although the girls gave their orders with solemn faces, they laughed merrily when they were again alone.

“It’s too bad to disappoint you, Betsy, but that’s about the way all of your hoped-for adventures will end,” Virginia told her friend.

The four girls, Virginia Davis, the seventeen-year-old mistress of V. M. Ranch and her adopted sister, Margaret Selover, who was sixteen, their neighbor, Barbara Blair Wente, also sixteen, and Virginia’s guest, Betsy Clossen, who as yet was but fifteen, had traveled from Vine Haven, where they had been attending boarding school for the past year.

Although the other three girls were well acquainted with the Arizona desert, Betsy Clossen had never been west of Chicago. However, she had often frequented that big city, as she had many others in the east, for her father was a famous detective who was often following clues that led him from Chicago to New York, and, at first, not wanting to be parted from his motherless little girl, he had taken her with him, but at last, believing that he was doing the child an injustice, he had placed her in the Vine Haven boarding school, where she had since remained, making friends of all whom she met. The years she had spent as her father’s close companion had given her an insight into the ways of unraveling mysteries and the game had fascinated her adventure-loving nature.

To the great amusement of the girls she was always trying to imagine a mystery that she might solve it, but in the past year she had twice failed while two of her comrades who had no such ambition had been successful, and so, no wonder was it that Betsy looked forward to the desert as a place where she would surely find a mystery to solve.