"Yours, daughter. Whoever is writing you from over the hills and what can be so very important as to fetch Santos?" asked Mr. Allen.
"All our wonders seem to come by post," commented Jane. She was scanning the few words on the telegram sent in from the nearest railway station. Suddenly she gave a jump, and seemed too overcome with emotion to express herself in words.
"Daddy!" she exclaimed, finally. "Judy is on her way back from the coast and is looking for us. She is at the Hill Turn. Oh, can you imagine Judy Stearns getting way out here, and being with me on the trip to college!"
"Rare luck indeed, daughter. At the station did you say? Well, let us get to her at once. Can't take a chance on her getting into that famous stage coach of Curly Bill's. You run in and tell Aunt Mary the glad news, and I'll get the tandem hitched. Don't you think it will be nice to show her our best style?"
"Oh, lovely, Daddy. But I am so excited. I never could have dreamed of such luck. To have dear old Judy visit me here until I go back, and then to have her travel with me! Yes, get the tandem. Pedro!" she called to the man just losing himself in the trees towards the big stable. "Come over here! Daddy, don't you slick up a single bit. I want Judy to see you as a ranch chief. And I think I'll get into my Bronco Billie outfit just to show off. No, that wouldn't go with tandem, would it? Yes, it would too," she changed her mind and decided again, too excited to act rationally.
"Now, I'll dress and be ready in five minutes," announced the girl. "Oh, I forgot I haven't told you the message," she had it crumbled in her brown hand. "'Am at the Hill Turn Station. Tell me how to reach you.' There, we will show her how we reach her," and she skipped off leaving her father to arrange about the tandem and the high red-wheel cart.
[CHAPTER III--OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY]
With that efficiency so marked in large establishments (for El Capitan was large and really an establishment) the new arrangements of driving over the hills for Judith Stearns, Jane's college room-mate, and the preparations Aunt Mary was wont to add to the already splendidly planned guest entertainment, were all perfected and carried out without so much as exciting Pedro to complain of his delayed supper, and its consequent effect on "the game" that was to follow.
"I am so glad," Aunt Mary murmured. "Now I shall have a chance to see Jane's most intimate companion, and it will afford me such an opportunity of studying the dear girls, and thus being better able to understand them. I have always wished that Jane might have had some playmate of her own kind, and she is so very fond of Judith, I shall be delighted to know her also."
It seemed to the busy little woman that Jane and her father were scarcely gone when a shrill blast of the trumpet announced their return.