--Sweetheart!" he called.

He halted--was lost to view.

"Well!" ejaculated Helen, contritely, half sorry, half amused. "What a
sudden young gentleman!"

Bo had blushed beautifully.

"Nell, wasn't he glorious!" she burst out, with eyes shining.

"I'd hardly call him that, but he was--nice," replied Helen, much
relieved that Bo had apparently not taken offense at her.

It appeared plain that Bo resisted a frantic desire to look out of the
window and to wave her hand. But she only peeped out, manifestly to her
disappointment.

"Do you think he--he'll come to Uncle Al's?" asked Bo.

"Child, he was only in fun."

"Nell, I'll bet you he comes. Oh, it'd be great! I'm going to love
cowboys. They don't look like that Harve Riggs who ran after you so."

Helen sighed, partly because of the reminder of her odious suitor, and
partly because Bo's future already called mysteriously to the child.
Helen had to be at once a mother and a protector to a girl of intense
and wilful spirit.

One of the trainmen directed the girls' attention to a green, sloping
mountain rising to a bold, blunt bluff of bare rock; and, calling
it Starvation Peak, he told a story of how Indians had once driven
Spaniards up there and starved them. Bo was intensely interested, and
thereafter she watched more keenly than ever, and always had a question
for a passing trainman. The adobe houses of the Mexicans pleased her,
and, then the train got out into Indian country, where pueblos appeared
near the track and Indians with their bright colors and shaggy wild
mustangs--then she was enraptured.

"But these Indians are peaceful!" she exclaimed once, regretfully.

"Gracious, child! You don't want to see hostile Indians, do you?"
queried Helen.

"I do, you bet," was the frank rejoinder.

"Well, I'LL bet that I'll be sorry I didn't leave you with mother."

"Nell--you never will!"

They reached Albuquerque about noon, and this important station, where
they had to change trains, had been the first dreaded anticipation of
the journey. It certainly was a busy place--full of jabbering Mexicans,
stalking, red-faced, wicked-looking cowboys, lolling Indians. In the
confusion Helen would have been hard put to it to preserve calmness,
with Bo to watch, and all that baggage to carry, and the other train to
find; but the kindly brakeman who had been attentive to them now helped
them off the train into the other--a service for which Helen was very
grateful.