explaining this to the girls, but, knowing that Betsy would be greatly disappointed, she decided to ride with them at least as far as the Three Sand Hills.

This she often did, and, as the hills were surrounded by a vast waste of open desert, she knew that unless the gypsies were camped on the other side of the hills themselves, they would not come unexpectedly upon them.

Betsy, before she had left school, had expected to be timid about riding the western horses but Virg chose for her a gentle pony that was well broken and so interested was the Eastern girl in the quest upon which they were starting, that she found that she was not at all afraid.

The east was beginning to glow with pale rose and lilac when the top of the mesa was reached and Virginia, in the lead, pointed, as they all drew rein, to the Three Sand Hills that loomed dark and isolated, standing alone like sentinels on an otherwise flat expanse of desert.

Betsy looked up with glowing eyes. “It’s wonderful!” she said, “just to see this sun rise on the desert is worth a great deal, even if we don’t find a trail.”

Then they started on again riding single file. Betsy’s pony had taken the lead which delighted the young rider.

“It’s going to be a glorious day,” Margaret smiled back at Virg. “If it weren’t for the lost yearlings and the anxiety it means to you and Malcolm, I would be Oh, just ever so happy to think that we are home again.”

Virginia was pleased to hear her adopted sister call the desert “home.”

“Dear,” she said, “I am not going to worry over the loss nor will Malcolm. Being unhappy and making others unhappy never restores the thing that is lost. I mean to try to forget it as soon as we are sure that the herd cannot be recovered.”

For a moment they rode on in silence, then Megsy looked back again and smilingly nodded toward Betsy, who, quite forgetting that she intended to be afraid of Western horses, was leaning far over in her saddle and gazing at the sand that had been ribbed and scalloped by the wind during the night. Suddenly she stopped her pony to await the others. “Virg,” she asked eagerly, “are we near the place where Lucky first saw the wagon trail?”

Virginia had to confess that they were yet many miles from the edge of the Burning Acres where that trail had been seen. “I’m sorry to disappoint 

 Prev. P 25/133 next