“Good morning, Comrade,” Virginia said as she smoothed his nose affectionately. “Would you like to take me for a ride this morning?”
Again the pony whinnied. “Of course, I knew you would, and if you won’t tell, I’ll tell you a secret. I wanted to be all alone just once more before I go away. There’s something I want to think about. It doesn’t have to be decided just yet; not until I’m nearer eighteen, but I do want to be thinking about it.”
Then kissing the flipping ear of her apparently interested companion, the girl started on a light run to the shed near the great windmill where the saddles hung. Comrade, with colt-like antics, followed. It was evident that he was trying to express the joy that he, too, felt at being the only companion his loved mistress desired.
They had crossed the dry creek bed and had climbed up on the high opposite bank before a flush of rose appeared in the eastern skies. Virginia drew rein and sat for one long silent moment watching the loveliness of the dawning day. A fleecy white cloud near the horizon became opalescent with first one exquisitely delicate color and then another. Then with a burst of glory, the sun rose in sheets of flaming gold and the desert, which had been like a gloomy waste of desolation but a moment before, was transformed to a wide billowing expanse of shimmering silvery-grey.
Jack rabbits fearlessly gamboled about the girl and pony; birds sang and a wren darted from its nest in the top of a choya cactus to contentedly return again to its wee young when it knew that the one who was passing by was a friend of all things that live.
The trail dipped into a hollow where mesquite grass grew. Instantly there was a whirring rush of wings and a flock of quail soared high into the air, to whirl, a moment later, and settle back to their former feeding place. It made the heart of the girl rejoice because her wild neighbors seemed to know that she was one of them.
“We’re all kin folks, somehow, though we can’t understand, and why try, since the sages of all time have not yet been able to tell how a wee seed can fashion a flower. After all, Comrade, if we’re just kind to every form of life we meet on this wonderful earth, I think we will have done the best we know.”
There was a long stretch of sand to be crossed before the Seven Peak Range would be reached and the girl, watching the trail ahead, gradually became unconscious of all about her and was once again on the rock in the moonlight with the lad who loved her at her side.
“I might think that I care enough to marry Peyton,” she was thinking, “but would it be quite fair to others? There are Barbara, and Malcolm and Margaret to consider. I just couldn’t leave my wonderful brother all alone on V. M. My adopted sister I might take to Three Cross with me, if I went to live there, but Malcolm—I just can’t leave him! First he lost the mother whom he so idolized, and then our father, and never did a boy have a closer pal than Dad was, and now if I go, he will lose his only sister and be so lonely and so all alone. I only wish he might meet some nice girl for whom he could care as Peyton cares for me, but he does not seem to feel the need of love; I mean, not that way.”
Then it was that another thought suggested. “Perhaps it is just because he has you that he has not thought of bringing another mistress to V. M. Perhaps he would care for someone, if he knew you were going away.”