“There she is! There’s my Babs!” Megsy sang out as she saw her friend’s face beaming through one of the windows. A moment later, when the train had come to a standstill, Barbara leaped to the platform, dropped suitcase and umbrella, and gave Megsy a good, hard, schoolgirl hug. Then she whirled about and held out both hands to Virginia as she bubbled, “I’m not going to wait to be introduced for I know you well and love you right this very minute.” Then putting an arm about each she exclaimed happily, “I wonder if you dear cow-girls have any idea how excited and delighted I am to be here.” “We are just as excited, and I do believe even more delighted,” Margaret declared. “We hardly know what to say or do.” “Well, first of all, please, lead me to a cafeteria,” Babs implored. “A—a which?” Virginia inquired, truly puzzled, for the western girl had never before heard of such a place. How Margaret laughed! “Babs,” she said, “if you can find one on our desert, we will gladly pay for whatever you wish to order.” Barbara looked about, her eyes glowing. “Oh! Oh!” she exclaimed. “I’m glad—glad that there isn’t one around. I’ve been just longing to get away from civilization, and so, the wilder it is out here, the better I shall like it.” They were starting toward the car, when kind Mrs. Wells hailed them from her kitchen door. “Virgie!” she called, “wouldn’t you girls like a few of my sugar cookies? They’re just fresh from the bakin’.” “Do my ears hear right?” Babs said dramatically, in a low undertone, while Virginia was gladly accepting the proffered treat. “Barbara,” the western girl called, “you and Megsy come here. I want Mrs. Wells to meet the newest addition to the V. M. family and if we like, we may each have a glass of buttermilk.” “Wall, now, Miss Barbara, you’ve come to stay on the desert for a spell, hev yo’?” the motherly woman asked as she smiled down at the petite Babs. Then she added, “Yo’ aren’t much bigger than a pint o’ honey, and I can easy tell by your sunny face that you’re most as sweet.” Virginia took two of her sugar cookies over to the waiting Lucky who had spent most of the hour discussing desert topics with Mr. Wells. Babs gazed at the lean, sinewy, sun-browned cow-boy with unconcealed interest, and when she was introduced, she extended her small gloved hand saying eagerly, “Oh, Mr. Lucky, you do look like Bill Hart, don’t you? He’s the cow-boy I’m best acquainted with, but he always has a gun sticking out of his hip pocket or somewhere. I don’t suppose that you carry a gun, do you?” The cow-boy replied, with his good-natured drawl, that he usually “packed” along a couple or so, and to prove this statement, he produced two small guns. After a whispered hint from the fun-loving Margaret, Lucky threw an empty bottle high in the air and then, firing three times in rapid succession, he shattered the bottle, much to the delight of the newly arrived easterner.