wrangling corral, the pens for the cattle that needed temporary sheltering, the small adobe house nearer the dry creek bottom in which lived the Mahoys, and towering above them all was the huge red windmill, the great wings of which were slowly turning in the gentle breeze that was blowing from the west.

There in the valley was the big rambling low-built adobe house.

While the little stranger’s glance roamed from one of these buildings to another, Virginia’s violet eyes were eagerly searching the trails leading to the ranch, hoping that on one of them she might see her brother returning from the mysterious errand about which Uncle Tex had hinted and the nature of which as yet she did not know. There was no one in sight. Not wishing her companions to know how truly anxious she was, Virg stopped the car and turned with a bright smile to exclaim: “Girls, welcome to my home.”

Betsy was charmed with the inside of the ranch house as she had been with the out. The great living room, with its wide fireplace on which a mesquite root burned slowly, suggested cosy evenings spent around it.

The long library table scattered over with books and magazines, the student lamp with its wide warm-colored shade, many comfortable arm chairs, a piano and its companioning music box, bear skin rugs on floor and wall, and pictures framed by the windows, of desert, sand hill and distant mountains, furnished the most home-like room that little Betsy had ever seen.

“I’m going to just love it here,” she said, then to tease, she merrily added, “if you can provide me with a mystery.”

Virginia laughed. “Girls,” she turned to the other two, “since we three are hostesses, and it is our aim to please, let’s make up a mystery, but there, I musn’t tell Betsy what it is to be. In fact I haven’t thought it out yet. But come, let’s take our bags to our rooms for Uncle Tex is waiting to show us the surprise.”

The two large, sun-flooded bedrooms were next each other with a door opening between.

Margaret and Virginia were to share the room which Virg had occupied since her childhood, while Babs and Betsy were to have the other for their very own.

“I can hardly wait until our trunks come,” Babs prattled. “I am just wild to see myself in my new cow-girl costume.”

“You looked at yourself times enough in the school 

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