“Oh Virg, are you making a pun?” Betsy Clossen called as she and Margaret rode up within hearing.
Virginia laughed as she gaily replied, “Maybe I am. I don’t feel accountable just at this particular moment.”
Peyton glanced at the flushed pretty face of the speaker and wondered why Virginia seemed confused but he did not have another moment alone with her for they were entering the door-yard where a cowboy, apparently a Mexican of the better class, advanced to take their ponies.
“Who is your new acquisition, brother?” Barbara asked as she gazed with interest at the graceful Mexican lad, who, having made almost courtly salutations to the young ladies, had, without speaking, turned and led the horses toward the corral.
Peyton remonstrated. “Don’t you know enough about the ways of the desert, little sister, not to ask who anyone is? I really am as ignorant concerning the past of my faithful head rider Trujillo as you are. He blew in one day last March—literally blew in! We were having one of those terrible hurricanes which frequently visit us in the spring. For the first time since I had acquired ‘The Three Cross Ranch’ I was desperately dismal. The only capable cowboy I had, departed to become overseer elsewhere, and I was left with the shiftless Mexican peons who knowing my ignorance, took advantage of it. Then, as though that were not trouble enough, a blinding sandstorm came, and I feared my newly acquired herd would be driven by it over into Mexico. It was in the midst of all this that I heard a pounding on the front door. Opening it, I let in a whirl of wind and sand and also this Mexican lad, Trujillo.
“I was desperate for companionship just then, and, although he did not speak English, he could understand my Spanish and I told him my woes. When the tale was finished, the sandstorm had passed. Silently the stranger arose. I believed that he was leaving without a word of gratitude for the refreshment I had given him. I watched him mount his weary horse and ride down to the bunk house. He called to the peons and they gathered about him. I saw them bring him a fresh mount and then they all rode away with him toward the South. I thought dismally that perhaps he had come to take them away from me, but, toward evening I heard them all returning. They had rounded up my frightened, scattering herd, and, before dark, the cattle were safe in the five-acre enclosure. Then the stranger came to say adios, but I persuaded him to remain until morning and he is still here.”
“I believe there is a mystery about your Trujillo,” Betsy Clossen said. “Wouldn’t it be interesting if we could find out what it is?”
The other girls laughed.
“Betsy is always on a still hunt for a mystery,” Babs told her brother, as they walked toward the house. “We call her Detective Betsy in school, but, as yet, she has never discovered one worth the effort to unravel. School girls are not mysterious.”
“Personally, I think one might find a mystery in this old house,” Margaret said. “If walls had tongues as well as ears what interesting stories it could tell.”