Mary lifted startled blue eyes. “Jerry, what do you make of that?” she asked. “We couldn’t have imagined that gun shot and surely the horses heard it also.”
Jerry’s smile was reassuring. “’Twas the story that frightened you girls, I reckon,” he said, glancing about and up and down the road as he spoke. “It’s hunters out after quail or rabbits, more’n like.”
Then, seeing that Mary still glanced anxiously back at the gate in the rock wall, Dick said sensibly, “Of course you girls know that Sven Pedersen couldn’t be in that high house. He must have been dead for years if he was old when Jerry’s father was a boy.”
“Of course,” Dora, less inclined to be imaginative, replied. Then to the cowboy she said in her practical matter-of-fact way, “Hurry along home to your milking, Jerry, and Dick, don’t you bother to come with us. Now that you’re working on the Newcomb ranch you ought to be there. It’s only a few miles up over this sunshiny road to Gleeson. We aren’t the least bit afraid to ride home alone, are we?” She smiled at her friend.
Mary, not wishing to appear foolishly timid, said, in as courageous a voice as she could muster, “Of course we’re not afraid. Goodbye, boys, we’ll see you tomorrow.”
Turning the heads of their horses up a gently ascending mountain road, the girls cantered away. At a bend, Mary glanced back. The boys were sitting just where they had left them. Jerry’s sombrero and Dick’s cap waved, then, feeling assured that the girls were all right, the boys went at a gallop down the road and across the desert valley to the Newcomb ranch which nestled at the base of the Chiricahua range.
“They’re nice boys, aren’t they?” Mary said. “I’ve always wished I had a brother and I do believe Jerry is going to be just like one.”
Aloud Dora replied, “I have noticed that sometimes he calls you ‘Little Sister.’” To herself she thought: “Oh, Mary, how blind you are!”
Dreamily the younger girl was saying—“That’s because we were playmates when we were little so very long ago.”
“Oh my, how ancient we are!” Dora said teasingly. “Please remember that you are only one year younger than I am and I refuse to be called elderly.”