A surprise awaited them, for a little later, when the three girls trooped out to the kitchen from which a tempting odor of frying ham and eggs and steaming coffee was wafted, they saw not only the bustling, motherly woman, Mrs. Wilson, but standing near the range, warming his hands over the heat, was a tall, comely youth, dressed in the uniform of a military academy.
He glanced up when he heard the girls entering, and it was evident by his expression that his mother had not told him of the near presence of his friend from the East.
Leaping forward with outstretched hands, his face alight, the lad exclaimed, “Am I seeing visions? Miss Barbara, this surely cannot be you! Only last week I rode over to your school to bid you good-bye and ask when you were coming to visit your friends in Arizona. I was told that all of the pupils had suddenly departed because of an epidemic, and I deeply regretted not being able to see you and make plans for re-meeting you here on the desert. I little supposed that you would be awaiting me in my very own home.”
Barbara laughed. “I do not wonder that you are amazed,” she declared. “We three girls have been living in a whirl of strange adventure of late, and honestly I am not at all sure that we are real. Perhaps, as you first suggested, we may be merely visions, and yet,” she added doubtfully as she sniffed the appetizing odors, “can a vision be ravenously hungry for ham and eggs and coffee? But I am quite forgetting my manners. Doesn’t it seem queer that I had to cross a continent to introduce Miss Virginia Davis to her neighbor, Mr. Benjamin Wilson? This other fair maid with violets for eyes and the dimples we all envy, is, or rather was, my room-mate, Margaret Selover, of whom I have often told you.”
Benjy acknowledged the introductions with a grace of manner which he had readily acquired during his year at the military academy, and his fond mother watching the lad, her eyes shining with pride, secretly congratulated herself that she and “pa” had gone without many little things that the money might be put in the broken nosed tea-pot for Benjy’s education fund.
“Come to breakfast everybody,” she now sang out in her pleasant, hearty way, “and do eat all that you possibly can for you have a long ride ahead of you.
“But there, Benjy doesn’t know a word of all that has happened. He arrived just a few minutes ago and took me so by surprise that I’ve hardly got my breath to coming right yet. Do set down, all of you, and while you’re eating, suppose you tell my boy just what has happened. Then, if he isn’t too tired with traveling, I’m sure he’ll be pleased to escort you back to V. M. ranch. Maybe though, he’d rather be waitin’ till tomorrow.”
Benjy’s curiosity had been greatly aroused by this conversation which suggested interesting adventure of some kind, and so as soon as the young people were seated, he begged Babs to begin at the beginning and tell him all that had happened. As the story progressed the boy ceased eating and listened with eager intentness, and when Babs finished speaking, Benjy exclaimed, “We will not wait until tomorrow. With mother’s permission we will start south as soon as I can get into my riding togs.”
It was still early morning when the four riders departed from the group of white ranch buildings, the girls having bidden the kind Mrs. Wilson an affectionate farewell, promising that, as soon as Tom had been found, they would return and spend a week on the sheep ranch.
The good woman looked with especial interest at the petite Barbara. “Poor little lamb,” she was thinking with sudden tears in her eyes. “Such a mite of a girl to be all alone in the world without a mother and her poor brother lost. How proud that mother would have been had she lived, for a sweeter, prettier, little girl never trod this earth.” Then, as she returned indoors, having waved for the last time to the riders, who were rapidly disappearing toward the mountains, she recalled the tall-good-looking lad whom she had seen riding close to Barbara’s side.