“Yes, it’s sagebrush, ma’am, and nothin’ much grows on them buttes except that and rattlers.”
“Oh!” screamed Priscilla. “That’s one thing I’d hate to see! You don’t think I will, do you?”
“Like’s not,” encouraged the brakeman. “They ain’t so bad. Must come in handy for something, else we wouldn’t have ’em.”
Just then Carver Standish had opened the door for Aunt Nan, who announced breakfast for the party. Priscilla was obdurate.
“Miss Webster,” she remonstrated, “please don’t make me eat! I simply couldn’t do it! I’ve had the 18 most wonderful morning of my whole life. I’ve seen prairie-dogs and yucca and quaking-asps and a cow boy, and I know I heard a meadow-lark. This gentleman has taught me all kinds of things.”
The brakeman touched his hat.
“He’s been very kind, I’m sure,” said Aunt Nan, too used to her own niece’s methods of making new friends to be troubled. “But we’re going to reach Virginia and Donald in another hour, and you must have some breakfast, Priscilla.”
“Carver will bring me some fruit,” persisted Priscilla, “and you can’t see a thing from the window. Oh, please, Miss Webster! I just can’t eat when I have this queer feeling inside of me!”
So Priscilla had been left in peace, much against the better judgment of the chaperone; and now at nine o’clock, the three Vigilantes with Aunt Nan, Jack Williams and Carver Standish III viewed Virginia’s country together and all for the first time. The picture which Virginia was at that very moment painting for Donald was very accurate—even to detail. Aunt Nan, eager that no one should miss a thing, kept pointing out this and that feature of 19 interest—the strange, new flowers by the track, the occasional log houses, the irrigation ditches, so new to them all. Vivian sat quietly in one corner—her eyes big, round, almost frightened. The endless stretches of country, the lonely barren places, and the great mountains somehow scared Vivian. It was the loneliest country she had ever seen, she told Aunt Nan. Mary Williams said nothing, but her dark blue eyes roamed delightedly from prairie to foot-hills, and from the foot-hills to the mountains, where they lingered longest. In all her dreams she had never pictured anything so big and wonderful as this. Jack and Carver stood together by the railing, and let nothing escape their eager eyes; while Priscilla, forgetting to eat Carver Standish’s banana, hurried from one to another with eager explanations gained from her morning’s experience.
In half an hour they would be there. Already the barren stretches had given place to acres and acres of grain, across which were comfortable ranch-houses, set about by cottonwoods. Beyond the grain-fields rose the foot-hills—open ranges where hundreds of cattle were feeding, and far above the 20 foot-hills towered the mountains in all their blue-clad mystery.