Then suddenly her incredulity was engulfed by a terrible apprehension. If Garry was not there, there could be only one reason. Garry could not come! Something had happened to him!
“Well, that young Knapp fellow seems to be conspicuous by his absence,” Tavia observed flippantly. “Guess we’d better get a bus, Doro, and ride up to the Hardin ranch in style. Horrors, here come those awful men!”
Dorothy gave a quick glance up the platform and saw that Blake and Gibbons were bearing rapidly down upon them. Something must be done right away. They couldn’t stand there gaping like Eastern “tenderfoots.”
It was at this critical moment that Tavia discovered her old friend.
“Lance! Lance Petterby!” she called, literally dragging Dorothy along by the hand to the far end of the station where stood a dilapidated Ford car. “Well, if this isn’t the greatest luck ever!”
The broad-hatted young fellow behind the wheel of the battered car looked bewildered for a moment. Then he smiled broadly and, with a sweeping gesture, removed his sombrero.
The next moment he had leaped to the ground, his tanned, good-looking face alight with smiles.
“Well, if it ain’t Miss Tavia and Miss Dorothy!” he cried. “Jerusha Juniper, but it’s good to see you both!”
The familiar exclamation brought a smile from both the girls, for it was the phrase with which Lance greeted every emergency of his life.
“What can I do for you?” asked Lance, as he looked about at the fast-diminishing throng around the station. “No one to meet you, eh?” He was surprised, for he had heard of Garry Knapp’s engagement to Dorothy.