Nan Sherwood on the Mexican Border

by Annie Roe Carr

Nan looked at the boys sitting around the ground and in the big comfortable chairs and blushed furiously. She had completely forgotten, at the announcement of her proposed journey that anyone else was present beside the girls whom she knew so well.

But her embarrassment couldn’t last long in the face of the excitement.

Nan was going for Rhoda! Nan was going by plane to get Rhoda and bring her back. Nan was going to start the next morning and by Monday she would be back, having flown half the length of Mexico to the border and then from there to Rose Ranch.

It was exciting to think of, but then a thousand, a million times more exciting in reality, for all sorts of unexpected things were to come about as the result of that ride.

Now, Nan could scarcely contain herself as she sat in the group and listened to the little everyday things they were talking about. The only thing that really penetrated her consciousness was the fact that she was leaving and that when she returned Walter and his friends would have left.

Adair brought this fact to life. In his free open, hospitable style, he tried to induce the youngsters to linger. He liked them, liked the excitement they had caused, for in spite of Bess’s complaint to Nan that they were a dull lot, they kept things moving from the moment they serenaded their hostesses until they left.

Through the days there had been hikes, parties, a visit into the interior by auto, and an excursion to a small village where the Indians were celebrating a native holiday. They had seen them dressed in native dress, dancing native dances with all the abandon of a people freed from the daily routine, and they had witnessed one of their elaborate religious rites in which the ritual of the church and the ritual of pagan ancestors who had worshipped the Sun God were mingled with one another to result in a queer worship that was unlike anything any place else in the world.

Then they all went to a moving picture show where Roberta Taylor, the pretty little American actress whom everybody adored spoke in Spanish. How queer that seemed! They had all seen the film—it was an old one—in a theatre in Chicago, but how different it seemed now with all the conversation translated into Spanish. They giggled when the heroine looked up at her tall American hero and murmured “Señor, Señor,” and when he greeted her with “Buenos Días” and other common Spanish phrases. It was all very charming and amusing and everyone had a grand time.

But now Nan was going to leave and the boys were going to leave. The evening, in spite of the excitement about Nan’s proposed journey, turned a little sad when they all gathered around Walter and his guitar to sing as they had each night since he arrived. The songs they sang were all sad little songs.

By next morning all this was forgotten. The girls were all thrilled over Rhoda’s coming. They had telegraphed to tell her what was happening and she had wired back that her mother was well enough now so that she could carry out the plans that Adair MacKenzie had made with such enjoyment, for he did enjoy doing things for other people. He liked being Santa Claus the year round.