“I may be wrong,” the lad began, “but, from the wording of the memorandum, I believe a boy has written it, and surely a tenderfoot, else he would not have tried to cross the desert in a prairie schooner, if that’s what he has. Maybe he’s here for his health. Many a lad finds his lungs in danger after years of hard study, and they come out here to rough it and get strong again. Anyway, that’s my guess. I don’t believe that the writer of this note has ever even heard of our lost yearlings.”
“Hark!” Virginia cried, springing up and running to the door. “What’s all the commotion outside?”
There was indeed a most unusual commotion not far away, but, from the kitchen window nothing could be seen but the sandy door-yard, the chicken corral, the outhouses and farther down the slope and near the dry creek, the adobe cabin of the Mahoys.
Malcolm, at once on the alert, caught his sombrero from its place near the back door. He leaped from the porch without taking time to descend the steps, and, before the astounded girls could speak, he was racing for the corral that was down in the valley-like hollow near the towering red windmill.
“Girls!” Virg had listened but a moment when she whirled, her cheeks burning, her eyes glowing, “Don’t you know what it means, that bellowing of cattle and shouting of men?”
“It sounds like a round-up to me,” Barbara ventured.
“It is! It surely is! Oh, if only someone has found the lost yearlings.” The four girls were running so fast that Virg had not breath to finish her sentence. A second later they reached the top of the trail and in the depression below them, they saw something which filled their heart with rejoicing.
“The yearlings! Oh how happy Malcolm will be,” Margaret cried. “Virg, you too, how glad you must be!”
“How do you suppose it happened?” Betsy was tremendously interested, this being the first time she had witnessed the driving in of a restless herd of cattle.
“Slim found them,” Virg said. “See Megsy, how cleverly he herds them toward the open gate of the corral. There’s one that is trying to make a break.”