Virginia’s eyes glowed and springing up she exclaimed, “I do believe that you may be right. I’ll ask Uncle Tex the name of the nearest postoffice to the Wilson Sheep Ranch.” Into the kitchen she skipped returning with a woe-begone expression. “You are right, and, Oh Megsy, isn’t it dreadful? We have lost the very first letter that Tom ever wrote to us, for of course it must be blown far away. Just listen to that wind. It is traveling sixty miles an hour or more and by this time the letter will be far over the Mexican border. I am just sure we never will find it.” “It might have been caught on a thorny cactus,” Margaret said, but neither of the girls had any real hope of finding the missive in which they were so interested. During the night the wind subsided and the next day dawned gloriously still and sunny. The cow-boy, Lucky, arose before daybreak and rode up to the mesa, searching everywhere for the lost letter until the bell on the back porch of the ranch house called him to breakfast. When he entered the kitchen, he looked so troubled that Virginia said with her friendly smile, “Don’t you worry about that letter. If it doesn’t turn up, I know who sent it, and I will write and explain that it was blown away in a sand storm.” After breakfast the two girls tramped over every bit of sand between the ranch house and the corrals; then they mounted their ponies and rode over the trail toward the Junction, but not a gleam of white did they see. “How the sand has changed!” Margaret exclaimed. “It is lying in billow-like waves. It isn’t smooth, the way it was yesterday.” “That is how the three little sand hills were formed, I suppose,” Virginia remarked. “Something must have been there, a giant cactus, perhaps around which the sand first gathered, and then, being held, other storms added to it until the mounds became quite sizable sand hills standing all alone on the desert, but these little waves have nothing to hold them and they will soon smooth out again.” At noon they gave up the search and returned for lunch. As they entered the house, Margaret suddenly exclaimed, “Why, Virginia, how could that letter have blown away? Lucky took the mail out of the pouch right here in the kitchen and before that the flap was buckled down.” “That’s so,” Virginia replied, “and yet he remembers having had it and I have looked in the pouch several times.” Then, chancing to glance out of the window, she laughingly added, “You’d better hide, Margaret, for here comes your fierce warrior and he may be after your curly scalp.” Megsy took the teasing good naturedly and both girls went out on the veranda to see what message little Red Feather had for them. Far on the mesa they saw a gray line of horsemen whom they knew were the Papagoes returning to their mountain encircled home. Probably Winona had sent the Indian boy down to the V. M.