The young man lifted his hat.
“This is the Sunrise Camp Fire outfit. I am glad to meet some of its members at such an hour.”
He pointed toward the east where the sun was now rising above the horizon.
“Perhaps I may be able to show you how to ride, as I am to be your guide.”
In reply, Gerry laughed and Bettina shook her head.
“No, I think not,” Gerry returned. “Mrs. Burton told us that she had engaged an elderly man and his wife to be our guide and cook. She wrote to secure them weeks ago.”
The young man did not reply.
But an hour afterwards Mrs. Burton, who never remembered having gotten up so early since the long-ago Sunrise Camp Fire days, was engaged in argument on this same subject.
“But, my dear Mr. and Mrs. Gardener, surely you can see this young man is impossible, no matter how trustworthy he may be or how excellent a knowledge of the country he may have!” She gave a semi-tragic shrug of her shoulders. “You may not have considered that I am to have six young girls in my camp and one only a little older, besides myself and my maid. And now to hear we are to have an ex-college youth to look after us when I wished a man of fifty at least! You know yourself, Mrs. Gardener, that anything may happen.”
Mrs. Burton was standing beside her host and hostess at one side of the big ranch house veranda at six o’clock that same morning. She looked very fragile and young herself in comparison. For, although Mrs. Gardener was not tall, she made up in breadth what she lacked in height.