The young giant of a cow-boy, being unused to girls, was very shy and he shifted from one foot to another as he said, “Miss Margaret, ah reckon as you’d better ride home with me on my horse.”
“Yes, do, Megsy,” Virginia urged. “It won’t be safe for you to even ride Star until you have had a few lessons.”
Margaret smiled at her friend as she remarked: “Now I have an adventure about which I can tell Babs in my very next letter.”
CHAPTER XIII—THE DESERT HUT.
It was the nineteenth of December and the morning was bright and sparkling. Margaret Selover stood on the wide veranda of the ranch house, her eyes glowing with appreciation as she gazed across the shimmering white desert and toward the mountains over which hung a blaze of blue and gold.
“Ho, Virginia,” she called to the girl, who, hatless, came up from the chicken yard, where she had been to scatter a breakfast to her feathered pets, “it is hard for me to realize that it is nearly Christmas and not a snow flake to be seen.”
“When we go up in the mountains after our Christmas tree, you will see plenty of snow,” Virginia assured her. “Slim tells me that when he rode over the Seven Peak range yesterday, it was snowing and blowing a regular blizzard.”
“Oh, Virg, how nice! Are we going to have a truly Christmas tree? I haven’t had one since mother and dad and I were all together.”
The other girl nodded. “Yes, indeed. We have a big tree every Christmas for our own family and for the Slaters. One year we have it here and the next to the Bar S Ranch. That makes quite a party, for they have four cow-boys and we have two.” Then after a thoughtful moment, Virginia added, “How I do wish that some kiddies lived nearby. It would be heaps more fun to have children to skip around a Christmas tree wouldn’t it, but there isn’t a chick or child for ten miles around.”
At that moment Malcolm appeared. “Sis,” he said, “I have an important letter to send. Would you and Margaret be willing to ride over to the junction and mail it for me? I had planned going myself, but Mr. Slater just phoned that he saw several of our prize yearlings headed for the Mexican border, and so Rusty and I are going at once to search for them and turn them back, for, if they cross the line, we will never see them again. If we aren’t home tonight, don’t worry, girls, for we will camp down that way until we find them all.”