There was no post-office at or near Santa Lucia, and letters found their way there as best they might, at long intervals. Newspapers came in like manner, if they came at all, but now the tilt of that wagon had covered a very large amount of news. Some of it was beginning to get a little old in the rest of the world, for there were several files of well-known Eastern weekly journals, three months in length. Illustrated journals were there, and magazines, for young and old. The remainder of those mules had gone for books. One serious element of the loneliness Vic had complained of in her ranch life vanished at once.
"I've loads of good company now," she said, after dinner, as she began at last to swing in one of the hammocks.
A stack of printed matter lay on the ground beside her, and the thin, wide pamphlet in her hand emphasized her declaration: "I always want to see all the pictures first."
Mrs. Evans was in the other hammock. She had finished some letters before dinner, and now she was at work with the newspapers, trying to find out what great things had happened in the world since it had been heard from at Santa Lucia.
The day died slowly away, as it always will in June. The pictures were looked at, the news was read, the books were turned over, and if the day had not been so very warm more might have been done with the other contents of the tilted wagon. Even Norah McLory put away the liberal provision made for her department, and sat down to think of it.
"They'll not milt away," she said, "but that's more'n I can prove about mesilf. Injins is fond of sugar, and there's two barrels of it here now. Oh, the villains."
Vic stood out beyond the awning and watched the sun go down over the cloudlike tops of the western mountains.
"What are you thinking of, Vic?" asked her mother, from under the awning.
"Why, mother, Cal and father are somewhere away out there. They're pretty near the Sierra, maybe. I was wondering in what sort of a camp Cal had eaten his supper."
Cal was not in any camp, and he had not eaten any supper. He did not ride Dick uselessly the remainder of that hot afternoon. At first he took long rests, and then he dismounted altogether and walked. The red mustang needed no leading, but seemed to feel better when his human company was close beside him, with a hand upon the bridle. He was evidently suffering from thirst rather than from fatigue, and so was his master. Every now and then any path they happened to be in led out into barren reaches of sand and gravel, on any side of which they were at liberty to choose among several avenues, and this was one of the treacherous puzzles of the chaparral. Cal did not know that the red men who had threaded that maze before him had left marks of their own upon the trunks of the mesquit scrubs. He could not have read, if he had known, for he was worse off than a foreigner in a strange, great city.