“Oh, Mary!” she breathed. “Listen! There are footsteps outside our window! There are, I tell you! Listen!”
Mary listened. Her heart was in her mouth and choking her. Yes, there were unmistakably footsteps outside. As they listened, the sound of breathing became apparent.
“It isn’t our breathing, Mary,” Priscilla whispered. “I tell you it isn’t! It’s—oh, the steps are coming nearer! They’re on the path! Oh, Virginia! V-i-r-g-i-n-i-a! V-I-R-G-I-N-I-A!!”
The last word ended in a mighty shout, which awoke Virginia and the terrified Vivian. Before the shout was fairly completed, the cot in the living-room was groaning beneath an added weight, and 107 Virginia, striving to rise, was encumbered by three pair of arms.
“Let me go, girls!” she cried. “Let me go, I tell you! No one’s coming into this cabin unless I say so! Remember that!”
By this time the steps were on the porch. Virginia, finally free from embraces and on her feet, reached for Jean MacDonald’s gun, and started for the door, which she was just too late to open. Instead, the visitor from without pushed it open, and the terrified Vigilantes on the bed, hearing Virginia laugh, raised their frightened heads from the pillows to meet the astonished gaze of poor old Siwash!
“Don’t ever let the boys know,” warned Virginia, as she returned from escorting Siwash to the gate and out upon the mesa. “We’ll never hear the last of it if you do. ’Twas our own fault. We didn’t close the gate, that’s all, and Siwash has always loved company!”
So the boys never knew, though they wondered not a little at the significant and secret glances which the Vigilantes exchanged upon their arrival home 108 the next morning, and at intervals during the days that followed whenever homesteading became the topic of conversation. Once Aunt Nan, to whom also the secret was denied, attempted to probe the mystery, choosing Vivian as the most likely source of information.
“Did you really have a splendid time, Vivian?” she asked.
“We certainly did, Aunt Nan,” answered the loyal Vivian. “I never had a better time in all my life. Only one night of homesteading is enough for me. There are lots of things I envy Jean MacDonald, but homesteading isn’t one of them!”