A query or two about Rose Ranch, something about the Navaho blanket Nan and her chum had bought for their couch—before she knew it the girl from the West was eagerly describing her home, and telling more in ten minutes about her life before she had come to Lakeview Hall than she had related to anybody in all the weeks she had been here.
"Rose Ranch must be a great place," sighed Bess longingly.
"A beautiful country?" suggested Amelia.
"Magnificent views all around us," Rhoda agreed softly. "A range of hills to the southeast that we call the Blue Buttes. Many mesas on their tops, you know, on which the ancient Indian peoples used to till their gardens. There was a city of Cliff Dwellers not fifty miles from our house."
"Sounds awf'ly interesting," declared Laura.
"And winding through the Blue Buttes is the old Spanish Trail. Up from Mexico by that trail came the Spanish Conquistadors, they say," Rhoda went on, quite excited herself now, in telling of her home and its surroundings.
"And I s'pose there's an electric car line running through those hills now—on the Spanish Trail, I mean?" laughed Laura.
"Well, no. We're not quite as far advanced as that," the Western girl said, good-naturedly enough. "But we don't have any Indian scares nowadays. The Indians used to ride through that gap in the Blue Buttes years ago. Now it's only Mexican bandits."
"Never!" gasped Bess, sitting up suddenly.
"You don't mean it?" from Grace and Lillie in unison.