You, White Lily, will know what finding Fleet Foot meant to me, for is he not one of my father’s people? I cared for him as tenderly as a sister might. Then the good doctor took him to his country home, that he might grow strong away from the noise of the city, but, when I had finished my course, Fleet Foot wished to return with me to our village and so together we are now nearing the end of our long journey. Will you not soon ride north to our village and remain with me as long as you wish.
My friendliest thoughts I send to Margaret and Barbara if they are with you.
Your\ \ \ \ Winona.
At the close of the letter, the four girls were all thinking the same thing but it was the quiet Margaret who voiced it. “Poor Harry!” she said. “For of course this Papago lad, who is of her own people, will be the one Winona will love and eventually marry.”
“I shall be sorry if this is true,” Virginia remarked, “for Harry Wilson is so unlike other boys. He may never again find just the companion he wishes.”
Then, as the dinner gong was sounding, the girls sprang up to hastily remove their khaki suits and don their house-dresses.
Meanwhile what of the neighbors farther north?
CHAPTER XII
BENJY ARRIVES HOME
In the meantime when Benjy Wilson left the train at Red Riverton, he glanced about anxiously hoping that his brother Harry would be there to meet him. He had been the only passenger to descend to the platform and, almost at once, the station master hurried up to him to say that his brother had been in a few days before and had told him to keep on the watch-out for Benjy. “He said he mightn’t be able to get in to meet you an’ if he didn’t, you’d find yer little horse Clipper over to the stables waitin’ for yo’.” Then the kindly man searched in the pockets of his blue denim coat and drew from one of them a letter. “Likewise he left this for you to sorto’ explain things.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hendrix. I’ll go at once after Clipper,” the boy said with a break in his voice, which drew from the sympathetic old man the query. “Yo’ ma wan’t any worse last yo’ heard, was she? Hal was in a hurry t’other day, I didn’t get to ask.”