“Why Virginia, surely Old Stoic isn’t afraid of smoke, is he?” Margaret turned inquiringly toward her adopted sister.
“No indeed! Brother always takes that pack horse with him when he goes to the mine and they have camp fires every night.”
“What do you suppose this smoke means? A camp?” Barbara began when Betsy interrupted eagerly. “Oh Virg, maybe that’s where the gypsy caravan is stuck. Do you suppose it might be?”
Virginia shaded her eyes and gazed long at the jutting point of rock which hid from their sight whatever was beyond it. “It’s a fire of course,” she told them. “Shall we ride over and see who is camping there?”
“Oh yes, let’s!” Betsy was her old brave self again. She had no fear of gypsies nor of cattle rustlers she was sure, though she had never seen any of them except on the screen.
A short gallop took them to a point where they could see the fire. Virg, in the lead, uttered a cry of surprise, then turned and beckoned. “It is the gypsy caravan, or at least it is a covered wagon, like a prairie schooner of the olden days, I should say, but there seems to be no one around. Shall we go closer?”
“Of course!” This emphatically from Betsy. “Haven’t I been wild—crazy to find this very caravan, and you don’t suppose I’d leave without seeing the gypsies. Anyway, aren’t they in trouble? Don’t you remember the handwriting said ‘Stuck for keeps. No ranches in sight’.” So Virg laughingly led the way toward the apparently deserted covered wagon.
“We’re wrong about one thing,” the young mistress of V. M. remarked. “This is not the caravan that was stuck, for the wheels are quite free, at present, anyway.”
“I wonder where the gypsies are.” Betsy was dismounting as she spoke. “I’m going up to their front door and knock,” she informed the others. This she did pounding loudly on the wooden sides of the wagon. A low growl from within was the only answer but it was sufficient, as Betsy said afterwards, to make her hair stand on end. With a shrill cry she took to her heels and where she would have gone, it is hard to know, had she not suddenly been confronted by a girl of about sixteen who had leaped from between the flaps of the tent-like covering. Her expression was at first puzzled, then merry and apologetic.
Holding out her hand to Betsy, she exclaimed, “Oh, do forgive us for having given you such a dreadful scare when you came to call.” Then her sweeping glance, which held an inquiry, included them all. “You have come to call, haven’t you?”