"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