"Yes," answered Virginia, going to the window, "it does in August, though the twilights stay like this a long time. See, there's a star! Doesn't it twinkle? You can actually see the points! Let's wish on it. I wish--let me see--I wish for the loveliest year at St. Helen's we could possibly have--a year we'll remember all our lives!"

"I wish," said Mary, "that college may be just as lovely, and that I'll make as good new friends as you all are."

"I wish," said Priscilla thoughtfully, "I wish I may be just as good a Senior Monitor as you were, Mary."

"I'm not going to tell my wish," said Vivian softly. "It's--it's too much about me."

Dishes were washed and dogs and chickens fed. Then they came out-of-doors in the ever-deepening stillness to watch the moon rise over the blue shadowy mountains, and look down upon the mesa, upon the horses feeding some rods away among the sagebrush, and upon them as they stood together a little distance from the cabin.

"Isn't it still?" whispered Vivian, holding Virginia's hand. "You can just hear the silence in your ears. I believe it's louder than the creek!"

"I love it!" said Mary, unlocked doors all forgotten in a blessed, all-together feeling. "See the stars come out one by one. You can almost see them opening the doors of Heaven before they look through. I never saw so many in all my life. And isn't the sky blue? It's never that way at home!"

"I can understand better than ever, Virginia," said Priscilla, "how you used to feel at school when we would open the French doors and go out on the porch. You said it wasn't satisfying someway. I thought I understood on the getting-acquainted trip, but now I know better than ever."

"It makes you feel like whispering, doesn't it?" Vivian whispered again.

"It's all so big and we're so little. But it doesn't scare me so much now."

"I've been thinking," said Virginia softly, "of Matthew Arnold's poem--the one on _Self-Dependence_, you know, Vivian, which we had in cla.s.s, and which Miss Wallace likes so much. Of course, he was on the sea when he thought of it, but so are we--on a prairie sea--and I'm sure the stars were never brighter, even there. I learned it because I think it expresses the way one feels out here. I used to feel little, too, Vivian, but I don't any more. I feel just as though some strange thing inside of me were trying to reach the stars. It's just as though all the little things that have bothered you were gone away--just as though you were ready to learn _real_ things from the stars and the silence and the mountains--learn how to be like them, I mean. You know what he said in the poem, Vivian--the stanza about the stars--the one Miss Wallace loves the best:

'Unaffrighted by the silence round them, Undistracted by the sights they see, These demand not that the things without them Yield them love, amus.e.m.e.nt, sympathy.'"

Vivian sighed--a long, deep sigh that somehow drew them closer together.

"I don't believe I'll ever be like that," she said. "I'm afraid I'll always want sympathy and--love!"

"But it doesn't mean that, Vivian," explained Virginia. "I'm sure it doesn't. Of course, we all want those things--more than anything else in the world. But I think it means just as Miss Wallace said, that instead of demanding them we're to live so--so n.o.bly that they will come to us--unsought, you know. Doesn't that make it a little easier, don't you think?"

The August night grew cold, and soon they went indoors to a friendship fire in the stone fire-place. They watched the flames roar up the chimney, then crackle cheerily, and at last flicker away to little blue tongues, which died almost as soon as they were born. There was no other light in the cabin. Virginia had said that none was needed, and she did not notice the apprehensive glances which the other Vigilantes cast around the shadowy, half-lit room. At last Vivian yawned.

"Nine o'clock," said Virginia. "Bed-time! I guess we can see to undress by moonlight, can't we?"

"What shall we do about the door?" asked Mary hesitatingly. "It won't lock, you know."

"That won't matter," said Virginia carelessly, while she covered the fire-brands with ashes. "There's no one in the world around. Besides, Watch and King will take care of things. You don't feel afraid, do you?"

"Oh, no!" announced Priscilla, trying her best to ape Virginia's careless manner, and determined to _act_ like a good sport at least.

"Oh, no!" echoed Mary faintly.

Vivian was unspeakably glad that her lot had fallen with Virginia, and that their bed was in the farther corner of the living-room.

"I wish Dorothy were here!" Virginia called fifteen minutes later to the brave souls on the kitchen cot. "Then 'twould be perfectly perfect.

Good-night, everybody. Sweet dreams!"

"Sweet dreams!" whispered Priscilla to Mary, while she clutched Mary's hand. "I don't expect to have a dream to-night! Mary, don't go to sleep before I do! We'll have to manage it somehow! I'll die if you do!"

"I won't," promised Mary.

But they were tired from excitement, and sleep came in spite of unlocked doors. A half hour pa.s.sed and every homesteader was sleeping soundly. The night wore on, midnight pa.s.sed, and the still, stiller hours of the early morning came. It was yet dark when Mary was rudely awakened by her roommate kicking her with all her might. She sat up in bed, dazed, frightened. Priscilla was clinging to her.

"Oh, Mary!" she breathed. "Listen! There are footsteps outside our window!

There are, I tell you! Listen!"

Mary listened. Her heart was in her mouth and choking her. Yes, there were unmistakably footsteps outside. As they listened, the sound of breathing became apparent.

"It _isn't_ our breathing, Mary," Priscilla whispered. "I tell you it _isn't!_ It's--oh, the steps are coming nearer! They're on the path! Oh, Virginia! V-i-r-g-i-n-i-a! V-I-R-G-I-N-I-A!!"

The last word ended in a mighty shout, which awoke Virginia and the terrified Vivian. Before the shout was fairly completed, the cot in the living-room was groaning beneath an added weight, and Virginia, striving to rise, was enc.u.mbered by three pair of arms.

"Let me go, girls!" she cried. "Let me go, I tell you! No one's coming into this cabin unless I say so! Remember that!"

By this time the steps were on the porch. Virginia, finally free from embraces and on her feet, reached for Jean MacDonald's gun, and started for the door, which she was just too late to open. Instead, the visitor from without pushed it open, and the terrified Vigilantes on the bed, hearing Virginia laugh, raised their frightened heads from the pillows to meet the astonished gaze of poor old Siwash!

"Don't ever let the boys know," warned Virginia, as she returned from escorting Siwash to the gate and out upon the mesa. "We'll never hear the last of it if you do. 'Twas our own fault. We didn't close the gate, that's all, and Siwash has always loved company!"

So the boys never knew, though they wondered not a little at the significant and secret glances which the Vigilantes exchanged upon their arrival home the next morning, and at intervals during the days that followed whenever homesteading became the topic of conversation. Once Aunt Nan, to whom also the secret was denied, attempted to probe the mystery, choosing Vivian as the most likely source of information.

"Did you really have a splendid time, Vivian?" she asked.

"We certainly did, Aunt Nan," answered the loyal Vivian. "I never had a better time in all my life. Only one night of homesteading is enough for me. There are lots of things I envy Jean MacDonald, but homesteading isn't one of them!"

CHAPTER VIII

AUNT DEBORAH HUNTER--PIONEER

Aunt Deborah Hunter was driving from her ranch on Snake Creek to spend the day with her nephew, her grand-niece, and her grand-niece's guests. Clad in her best black silk dress, her black bonnet with the red cherries on the front, and her well-darned black cotton gloves, she was sitting up, very straight and stiff, beside Alec on the front seat. One would have said that her dignity forbade her to rest her shoulders, doubtless tired from the fifteen mile drive. Still, it was not altogether dignity which made Aunt Deborah scorn the support of the cushions which Alec had placed behind her. A great part of it was eagerness.

It had been a long time since she had left her ranch even for a day. No one there could attend to things quite so well as she herself, she always insisted. But now, between shearing and threshing, she had chosen a day upon which to accept Virginia's and her father's oft-repeated invitation, and it was a festive occasion for her. Truth to tell, she needed one day a year, she said, "to meet folks." For the remaining three hundred and sixty-four, the hired man, her two dogs, an occasional visitor, her thoughts, and the mountains were quite enough.

If the infrequent pa.s.ser-by had paused long enough to look into Aunt Deborah's gray eyes beneath the cherry-trimmed bonnet, he would have seen therein the eagerness that made their owner scorn the sofa-pillows. It sparkled and beamed, now on this side, now on that, as she spied blue gentians blossoming in a hollow, and the gold which was already creeping over the wheat; it glowed as she looked at the mountains, and shone as she drew long breaths of the clear, bracing air; it was the self-same eagerness which lay deep in the gray eyes of her grand-niece Virginia.

As they drew near their journey's end, and came in sight of the white ranch-house behind the cottonwoods, Aunt Deborah made her final preparations. With her handkerchief she brushed every speck of dust from her black dress, settled the old-fashioned brooch at her neck, gave a final straightening to her bonnet, and pulled her cotton gloves on more smoothly before again folding her hands on her lap. She sat up straighter than ever as Alec turned the horse down the lane.

She seemed a little troubled about something when she saw the group of young people gathered at the porch and waiting for her.

"Alec," she whispered, "the cherries on my bonnet? They worry me. I want to be young, but being long toward eighty I mustn't be childish. What do you think, Alec? I wouldn't displease Virginia for anything!"

"Couldn't be nicer, ma'am," rea.s.sured Alec. "You need 'em for a touch o'

life to your black."

Thus a.s.sured, the little old lady sat in state, her eyes glowing and her folded hands trembling with excitement.

"No, John," she said a few moments later, as she declined Mr. Hunter's outstretched arms. "No, thank you. When I get so I have to be lifted out, I'm not coming any more. Turn just a little more, Alec. There! Here I am!"