Later, when Babs and Margaret were on the back seat of the “Rollabout” the former confided in a low voice, “I’m so glad to find that cow-boys are really like moving pictures. The girls in school said they knew I was going to be disappointed, but I’m not! Everything is just as I had expected, only heaps more so!” Megsy reached out and took her friend’s hand. “You’ll love it here, Babsie,” she said, “and, too, you will love Virginia and Malcolm. “I care for my guardian now just as though he were my own brother,” she added, trying to convince herself that her words were true. Then she leaned back, wondering where her guardian might be at that moment. Babs, too, was glad to be quiet that she might look about at the desert and mountains and rejoice that at last she was in the land of which she had so long dreamed. Uncle Tex was waiting on the porch of the ranch house, and, if Babs wished to see a character who would have rejoiced the heart of a moving picture director, she surely did in the old man who had been a cow-boy since those early days when the desert teemed with exciting adventure. “Miss Virginia, dearie,” he drawled, when he had carried in the luggage, “that thar Injun boy was here twict while yo’ all’s been gone.” Babs was eagerly listening. “Oh, was that little Red Feather, Megsy, that you wrote me about? I’m just wild to see him.” Virginia assented. “I wonder what he wanted,” she said, then, as a sudden thought came to her, she caught Margaret’s hand as she exclaimed, “Megsy, if Tom manages to escape from the rustlers, I do believe that he would go to the Indian village to hide. A stranger never could find the entrance in the wall of rocks unless he just happened to stumble upon it.” “I do hope you are right,” Margaret replied. “I hope our Tom is safe with the Papagoes.” “Girls,” the mystified Barbara exclaimed, “who are you talking about? Has anything happened to the outlaw Tom about whom you wrote me?” Virginia, remembering that she was hostess, and that her anxiety must not occupy her thought to the exclusion of the comfort of the newly arrived guest, then exclaimed, “Margaret will tell you all about it while you unpack. I am sure you will want to wash and rest a while before supper. You two are to room together just as you did at school. Meanwhile, I will hie me to the kitchen and assist Uncle Tex in preparing an early repast, for I am sure that you are still hungry after so long a journey.” When the two eastern friends had entered Margaret’s pleasant room Virginia did not go at once to the kitchen. Instead she took her brother’s powerful glasses and looked long up the mesa trail, hoping to see the little Indian boy reappearing, but he did not come. At last, with a sigh, she turned toward the kitchen and her heart was heavy. “I wonder what message Winona has for me,” she thought. “It must be important or she would not have sent twice.” CHAPTER XLI A HOPE RENEWED