As she got through the corral gate, she saw Burch half-way out toward the main trail. He turned and yelled at her—a brother’s yell—but she had drawn from among the other mail in the bag a letter, addressed in a dashing, clerkly hand, to Miss Hilda Van Brunt, The Three Sorrows, Dawn, Lame Jones County, Texas. In that hand had come addressed all her anonymous gifts. She neither heard nor saw anything about her.
Burch whooped long and derisively, while she sat her pony and read, over and over, the brief letter the envelope contained:
Dear Hilda,
I wonder if this will get to Lame Jones County before I do. Hope it will, for I’m certainly not going to ride up to the Three Sorrows and call, and I do want to see you. I’m making a quick trip through for my company, and I think I’ll be somewhere in your neighborhood about March 28th. That sounds pretty uncertain to you, maybe, but if you should happen to be on the main trail any time that day—why, then you’d happen to see
Your friend,
Pearse Masters.
March twenty-eighth! That was to-day! What luck, that they were going to work Flying M cattle in the small pasture lying beside the Ojo Bravo trail! That was what Pearse must mean. She sent one last shout after the departing Burch, rode her pony along the garden walk and deftly shot the mail bag in, while Sam Kee grumbled at her, then loped off to join the working force. Had the small pasture not commanded the Ojo Bravo trail, Uncle Hank would have lacked her help that day—in which case, many things might have been different.
As it was, her eyes, continually turned to the westward way, were first to see a light outfit coming in on the lower trail. She waved and shouted to Uncle Hank to call his attention. There were only six riders and a chuck wagon. Hank joined brother and sister at the fence and studied the newcomers in the distance with some surprise. The work of getting ready was well under way. All the Marchbanks cattle were in one enclosure. It was barely ten o’clock, yet the sun was beginning to be unpleasantly warm, and Hank pushed back his hat to rub his forehead dubiously and say:
“If there was anybody else for that to be, I’d say it wasn’t them. They’re flyin’ mighty light and goin’ might fast for an outfit that expects to pick up two-thousand-and-some cows.”
On they came, the riders at a thundering gallop, the chuck wagon bumping behind. There was something dashing, arresting, inconsequent about their approach. Hank rode slowly down the fence line, Hilda and Burch after him, and greeted the men half doubtfully.