Luckily at that moment there came a welcome interruption. A gay hallooing lower down the road announced the approach of Dick and Jerry.
Dora could see Etta rebuilding her wall of reserve. She acknowledged the introduction to Dick with a formal, unsmiling bow. Baby Bess kept the situation from becoming awkward by welcoming Jerry with delighted crows and leaps. The tall cowboy, his sombrero pushed back on his head, took her in his strong hands and lifted her high. The child’s gurgling excited laughter was like the rippling laughter of the mountain brook. After a few moments Jerry gave the baby to Etta. The twins came around a clump of cottonwood trees leading the horses, their freckled faces bright with wide grins, their Irish blue eyes laughing. Not for them the anxiety and sorrow that so crushed their big sister.
Jerry tossed them coins to pay them for the care they had taken of the ponies. Dora, glancing quickly at Etta, saw that the troubled expression was again brooding in her eyes.
Later, when Mary and Dora had said goodbye to their new friend and were riding away up the canyon road, Dora said, “Jerry, doesn’t it seem queer to you that the boys are so different from their sister? I should almost think that she belonged to an entirely different family.”
“A changeling, perhaps,” Dick suggested.
“Me no sabe,” the cowboy replied lightly. He was thinking of a very pleasant dream of his own just then.
Mary said with fervor, “Anyway, whoever she is, I think she is a darling girl and the baby is adorable. I wish that we lived nearer that we might see her oftener, Dora.” Then, before her friend could reply, Mary added brightly, “Oh, Jerry, I know where you are taking us. You want to show Dick your own five hundred acres, don’t you? It’s the loveliest spot in all the country round, I think.”
Jerry’s gray eyes brightened. “That’s what I hoped you would think, Little Sister,” he said in a low voice, which the other two, following, could not hear.
They had gone about half a mile up the winding, slowly climbing road when Jerry stopped. The mountain had flattened out in a wide grass-covered tableland moistened by many underground springs.
Jerry waved his left hand. “This all was blue and yellow with wild flowers after the spring rains,” he told them. Mary turned her horse off the road and went to the edge of the hurrying brook.