Nancy had not attempted to engage Miss Campbell in conversation. She stood rooted to the spot, fascinated while Billie worked her way up and finally swung herself into a fork where the big stone pine divided and became as two trees. Then, choosing the next largest branch, she climbed on as nimbly as a sailor in the rigging of a ship. Nancy admired her friend’s graceful and agile figure, and occasionally through the foliage, she caught glimpses of Billie’s earnest face. Her gray eyes were filled with the fire of her resolution, and her mouth, in which sweetness and determination were blended, was closed tightly. Not a lock of her fine light brown hair had been disturbed by the climb and the two side rolls were as smooth and glossy as silk.
All this while Miss Campbell and the others had been busy storing away the breakfast dishes which could not under any circumstances be washed. It was various degrees between seven and half-past by the several watches in the party and the sun had mounted the Eastern heavens and was shedding its glory over the great plain.
“Someone must surely be coming this way soon——” Miss Campbell was saying when a jolly voice singing an Irish song broke in on the silence.
“I had a sister Helen, she was younger than I am,
She had so many sweethearts, she had to deny ’em;
But as for meself, I haven’t so many,
And the Lord only knows, I’d be thankful for any.”
A man on horseback immediately hove into sight around a bend in the road. He was long and lean and brown with eyes as mildly blue as the summer sky above them. The thin lips of his large mouth had a nervously humorous twitch at the corners, and his yellow hair, much longer than men wear their hair in the East, could be seen underneath his sombrero. He wore a blue flannel shirt with a bright scarlet tie, velveteen trousers and long cowhide boots which extended beyond the knees. He was, in fact, a cowboy. The girls were certain of it although he did not wear the fantastic sheepskin trousers they had seen in pictures. But he had every other mark of the cowboy, the lean Texas horse, the high-built saddle, much decorated, and the jingling spurs on his high-heeled boots.
Giving the belated motorists one grand, sweeping, comprehensive glance, he was about to amble on politely, since it was none of his business to show interest in things that did not concern him, when Miss Campbell rushed dramatically into the road and stretched out her arms with gestures of distress.
“Oh, I beg of you, sir, don’t leave us,” she cried. Billie in the garb of Peter Pan watching from the tree tops could not restrain her smiles; and Nancy from behind the same tree giggled audibly.
“Excuse me, ma’am, I didn’t know you were in any trouble,” said the cowboy reining in his horse and lifting off his sombrero. “I’m Barney McGee, at your service, ma’am. What can I do for you?”
