THE ARRIVAL
Virginia Hunter was right. Priscilla Winthrop, her roommate at St.
Helen's, and junior partner in the formation of the Vigilante Order, had
not been still for ten minutes since five A. M. At that hour she had risen
from bed, dressed hurriedly, and bribed the sleepy porter to allow her a
seat on the observation platform. It was contrary to custom and orders at
that hour, but he had done it notwithstanding. Apparently this young lady
would take no refusal.
Priscilla had moved her chair to the extreme rear of the platform that
nothing on either side might escape her eager eyes. She had watched the
sun rise from behind the first mountain spurs, and gild their barren
summits and sagebrush-covered sides. They looked so gaunt and lonely
standing there, she thought, like great gods guarding the entrance to an
enchanted land. Between her and them stretched the plains--here white with
alkali, there barren with sparse sagebrush. Not infrequently the train
rumbled across a little creek or irrigation ditch around which cottonwoods
grew and grass was green. In these fertile spots there were always rude
houses of logs with outlying shacks and corrals. Priscilla had shuddered
at the thought of living in such places. These must be other pioneers, she
said to herself, whose ancestors Virginia delighted to honor. Well, they
most certainly deserved it!
She had hardly kept her seat at all. There was constantly something on one
side or the other which attracted her attention, and she darted right and
left much to the amusement of the brakeman who sat within the car and
watched her. As they hurried through one of the irrigated spots, she heard
a bird sing--a clear, jubilant, rollicking song. Could it be the
meadow-lark of which Virginia had always spoken? At six they had passed
through a prairie-dog town, whose inhabitants had thus far existed for
Priscilla only in books and in Virginia's stories. Her fascinated eyes
spied the little animals, as for one instant they stood upright to survey
this rude and noisy intruder, and then darted into their house doorways.
She had knocked over two camp chairs in her excited efforts to reach the
brakeman, and assure herself that they were really prairie dogs.
But the climax had occurred shortly afterward when while going through a
country of sagebrush stretches and grim, almost naked buttes, she had
seen--actually seen a _cow boy!_ He was true to every description Virginia
had ever given her--sombrero, bandana, chaps and all! She could not see
his face, but she knew he must be fine-looking like the "Virginian" or
like Dick at the Hunter ranch. He was galloping through the sagebrush on a
mottled, ugly-looking broncho, doubtless bent on some secret errand.
Priscilla was seized with half a dozen impulses as she watched him. Should
she hurry through four cars and tell the others that they might see him
also? Should she send the porter? How any one could sleep at such a time
as this was far beyond her comprehension! But she had remained, rooted at
last to one spot, and watched him until he was lost to sight. How would it
seem, she wondered, to gallop alone through this country? She hoped the
cow boy had noticed the sun rise over the buttes; she hoped that even now
he was not blind to the great mountains in the distance, which were
reaching their blue summits toward the sky.
She drew a long breath of the thin, clear mountain air! So this was
Virginia's country! It was a big land! She understood now what Virginia
had meant by talking about the bigness of everything. The plains,
stretching on and on, gray-green with sagebrush, the gaunt mountain spurs,
the far-away real mountains, blue and snow-furrowed, the great, clear sky
over all! It must be wonderful at night with countless stars and a moon
looking down upon the loneliness of everything. There was something about
it all that, in some strange way, pulled out one's very soul--that made
one want to be big in thought, tolerant, kind!
The brakeman, perhaps alarmed at seeing his interesting passenger actually
standing still, had joined her at that moment. Priscilla pointed to a
speck in the sagebrush--the vanishing cow boy.
"A real cow boy!" she shouted above the rumble of the wheels.
"Humph!" grunted her companion. "Didn't you never see one before?"
"Never!" cried Priscilla fervently.
"It ain't no great sight!" returned the sophisticated brakeman.
"Perhaps not to you," Priscilla shouted in his ear, "but it would be if
you had dreamed of seeing one for ten months and three-quarters the way I
have."
"Humph!" grunted the brakeman again. "You must be a tenderfoot."
"I am," cried Priscilla, "and I'm glad of it! You can only see bran-new
things once. The second time you see them they aren't new any longer, and
can't give you thrills like the first time."
The brakeman grinned.
"There's some yucca," he shouted, pointing to a tall, straight plant with
white, bell-shaped flowers growing by the track.
"What's that?" screamed the interested Priscilla.
"Sometimes folks call it Indian soap-weed," explained the brakeman in her
ear, "because if you break the leaves they'll lather in water. And some
folks call it Spanish bayonet. It grows in barren places out here."
"I'll put that in my Thought Book," Priscilla told him. "I guess it's
lucky I have a new one with all these new things to write about. Why are
all the trees out here those tall cottonwoods?"
"They ain't all," answered the obliging brakeman, "but the cottonwoods
don't take so much soil. They grow easy and quick, and make good
wind-breaks, so folks plant 'em when they build a house near a creek like
that one over there. Quaking-asps--they grow well, too."
"Quaking-asps!" cried Priscilla. "Where are they? Please show me! I'd give
worlds to see one! My roommate lives out here--I'm just on my way to visit
her--and it's her favorite tree."
"You don't have to give nothin'," shouted her companion dryly. "There's
plenty of 'em right along this creek we're passing. They're them little
trees with light green trunks and trembly leaves. They grow by creeks and
in springy places mostly."
Priscilla leaned over the railing and gazed.
"Oh, aren't they happy? They're the jolliest trees I ever saw!"
"I guess that is a good word for 'em," agreed the brakeman. "They sure do
dance around."
"Doesn't anything grow on those hills but little trees and sagebrush?"
queried Priscilla. "It _is_ sagebrush, isn't it? I guessed it was from
pictures, and from what Virginia said."
"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 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 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 foot-hills towered the mountains in all their blue-clad
mystery.
"There's the creek bridge!" cried Priscilla, springing to her feet a few
minutes later. "Virginia has written me a dozen times that when we crossed
that red bridge we should begin to get ready. I suppose I ought to comb my
hair. It's a sight! But Virginia'll be so happy she'll never notice in all
this world!"
Virginia was assuredly too happy to notice disheveled heads or
smoke-stained faces or wrinkled suits when she saw her own dear Aunt Nan
and her very best friends step excitedly from the train onto the little
station platform. That queer sinking feeling inside vanished, and only joy
was left.
"It's come true! It's come true!" she kept crying as she greeted them all.
"Just think, Priscilla, it's really happening this minute! You're all in
my country at last--Donald's and mine!"
So the world looked very beautiful to them all as they drove homeward. The
three boys on the front seat became acquainted and re-acquainted, while
the Vigilantes and Aunt Nan behind held one another's hands and asked
question after question of the happy Virginia. No, she told them, the days
weren't all as perfect, but most of them were. Yes, the sunflowers grew
wild all in among the grain. No, there were no snakes very near. Yes, it
was truly sixty-five miles away to the farthest mountains. No, she had
never been so happy in all her life.
They stopped at the Keith ranch to receive a copyrighted Western welcome,
and to leave Jack and Carver. Donald would drive the girls home, and then
return. Mr. David, Mother Mary, Malcolm and little Kenneth--all the Keith
family--came to greet them. It seemed to Jack Williams as though he had
never received a welcome so genuine; and to the hungry and tired Carver
Standish III the simple brown ranch-house, surrounded by cottonwoods and
set about by wide grain-fields, possessed a charm unsurpassed by the most
stately mansions of New England.
The Vigilantes and Aunt Nan received as genuine a welcome a half hour
later when they drove down the long avenue of cottonwoods to Virginia's
home. It came not only from a tall, bronzed man, who shared his little
daughter's joy, but also from a white-aproned, kind-faced woman in the
doorway, and a quiet, stooped man by Aunt Nan's marigolds.
"I know it's Hannah," cried Priscilla, running to the doorway. "She looks
just as though she knew all about the German measles!"
"And I'm sure this is William," said Mary a little shyly, as she shook
hands with the quiet man by the garden. "It just couldn't be--any one
else!"