iming at
everything. Her hair is all blown about her face--she has such unruly hair
anyway--and her eyes are almost black, she's so excited over being so
near. You see, I know Priscilla. She's a lot like me. She just can't keep
still when she's happy! I know she's got the same queer feeling inside
that I have. Oh, drive faster, Don! I just don't believe I _can_ wait to
see them all!"

CHAPTER II

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, an