SAFE CONVOY

Polly did not tell the girls that she had learned what the secret trouble was between the two sisters. Someway, she could not. It seemed such a personal, tender secret that, after all, concerned only the two, and Sandy himself. Dear, stalwart, dauntless Chief Sandy! Polly wondered whether Miss Honoria knew him well. It did not seem as if any one who had met him, and come under the spell of that genial, generous spirit, could fail to sense its charm and worth. She could almost shut her eyes, and imagine him going up the broad stone steps at the Hall, and bowing over Miss Honoria’s hand. No, come to think of it, he wouldn’t bow, not the Chief. He was no courtly Southerner like the Admiral. More likely he would smile that broad sunny smile of his that seemed to take in all creation, and gripping Honoria’s hand in his, he would probably kiss her willy-nilly, in brotherly fashion, and say:

“Well, sister, how goes the world?”

Then what would the mistress of the Hall do? Polly smiled to herself. Would she faint, or would she gasp and laugh, or would she order the Northern invader from the sacred precincts of Calvert Hall? What would she do? Polly could hardly wait to find out. Someway, she decided, someway, it must be arranged for the meeting to happen.

“Does any one feel like taking a camping trip next week?” asked Mr. Murray, Monday night. “I won’t have the time to spare now girls, but if mother says so, we’ll start out a week from to-day, with a good team, and go camping.”

“Why, father, you’ll have to take more than one team, won’t you?” said Mrs. Murray. “I’ll leave Sally to cook for the boys, and go too.”

“Couldn’t we ride horseback?” Polly put in.

“I was figuring on a grub wagon that would take the tents too, and then fix up that old sheep wagon, for the girls to ride in. We can put four cross seats in that, mother, and the boxes and cupboards would come in handy. I’m afraid they’d get tired out riding.”

“If we did, we could hitch the ponies on behind, and get into the wagon, the way the pack-trains do. We’d love to ride, wouldn’t we, girls?”

“Listen to them,” exclaimed Jean. “Wouldn’t you think, to hear them talk, that they’d been in a saddle since they could walk. I’d let them ride, father. We’ll have the fun of teasing them after a good twenty-mile jolt over the mountain roads.”

“Monday then, and an early start. Archie and Neil will look after things, and it will do us good too, won’t it, mother?”

“The biggest lad of the lot,” said Mrs. Murray, tenderly, as she watched the tall, angular figure start off down towards the sheds. “He’ll enjoy it vastly.”

“It seems too wonderful to be true,” said Isabel, in her fervent way. “Will we be right in the mountains, then, Miss Jean?”

“‘In the heart of the ancient woods,’” quoted Jean, blithely. “Have you ever slept out of doors on a bed of spruce boughs, with nothing around you but the mountains and the sky? Mother says it comes the nearest to feeling the everlasting arms around one of anything in this life that she’s found.”

“You’re rocked in Mother Nature’s cradle, bairnies, then,” smiled Mrs. Murray. “Just like all her younglings of the wilds. And good it is for you, too. I feel the summer’s missed its best reward when we fail to have our little camp outing after the haying.”

“I used to think they never bothered over hay on ranches,” said Ted, suddenly. “I thought they just let all the cattle out to range.”

“So they did in the old range days, when it was free. But we small ranchers have to take care of ourselves a good deal.”

“I don’t understand this,” exclaimed Polly, who had been reading over her last letter from the Admiral. “Grandfather says here that he did think he might get out this way, but business keeps him near Washington all summer, so he is sending the Doctor under safe convoy. What is that, ‘safe convoy’?”

“Special delivery, receipt guaranteed,” spoke up Don, who was making a cage for a couple of ’coons he had caught.

“That letter was mailed a week ago, Polly,” Ruth said. “And you know the Doctor will be here by Wednesday.”

“But under ‘safe convoy,’” repeated Polly. “Grandfather never uses too many words. What does he mean by that ‘convoy.’ A convoy is a ship that conducts another ship, isn’t it?”

“Right-O,” sang out Ted, teasingly. “I think he will come straight through by express. And you told Jimmie to be on the watch for him around Deercroft, to make him feel at home, and the Chief is to meet him Wednesday.”

“Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but I ‘s’pects it strongly,’” Polly replied, using Aunty Welcome’s favorite phrase of incredulity. “I don’t believe he is coming alone, but whom could he bring way out here?”

“Let’s ride down and meet him too,” Jean said. “I’m very anxious to meet this wonderful Doctor of yours, anyway. We could take the surrey, and Peggie or I will drive. Then he will have a double surprise to find you girls waiting as well as the Chief.”

“Oh, could we?” cried the girls together.

So it happened that unconsciously they planned a participation in the Doctor’s surprise. Wednesday morning they all packed into the surrey, and drove away over the mountain road to Deercroft. They were early, and Jean put the horses up at the local livery stable, while they walked around and saw what they could of the town.

“It isn’t one bit like what I expected to see,” Ruth declared. “Here are electric lights, paved streets, and everything orderly and shipshape.”

“Well, what did you expect?” asked Peggie, wonderingly.

“I don’t know exactly. A Western town always seems to mean just a row of frame houses, and a lot of saloons—”

“We haven’t any,” said Peggie, simply. “The women voted no license.”

“I told you this was the girl State, didn’t I?” Jean added, merrily. “We keep it swept clean.”

“Grandfather always says that girls don’t have to consider such things,” said Polly, thoughtfully.

“He wouldn’t if he lived out here. Our girls study their political economy and civil government, and it trains them for the issues they will meet later. Hark, that’s the express. I hear it whistle. Let’s hurry.”

“There’s the Chief, and Mrs. Sandy too, at the station,” said Sue, who was ahead. “They are waving to us.”

“How are you, chickens?” called Mrs. Sandy cheerily to them, as they came to the platform. “I had to do some town shopping, so we killed two birds with one stone. Looks like we might have a thunder shower, doesn’t it?”

“That’s blowing to the north, Di,” the Chief put in, placidly. “You can see its shiny lining now.”

The express came swinging down the track, and stopped. Few passengers got off at Deercroft, so it was not hard to find the Doctor. Third coach to the last, they saw him, as the porter put the stool down for him to alight. He turned at their quick call, and waved his hand, but all his attention was centered on some one who was coming down the steps, some one rather tall, and dressed in silver gray, even to the long gray veil that was draped about her hat.

And suddenly, in one flash of recognition, the girls knew the Doctor’s surprise.

But Mrs. Sandy did not. There she stood, smiling happily at the pleasure of the girls, supremely unconscious and unprepared. She saw the tall, slender, stately old lady behind the figure of the Doctor, but did not associate her with him, not until the girls surrounded both, and were kissed and shaken by the hand. It was Polly who put her arm around the figure in gray, and led her where Mrs. Sandy stood, her Chief beside her.

“Here she is, Miss Honoria,” Polly said, with shining eyes that filled with quick tears as the two faced each other after more than thirty-five years. Honoria held out both hands. Her voice trembled with emotion.

“Sister,” was all she could say, “sister, I had to come, too.”

Mrs. Sandy opened her arms, and took the stately figure close to her heart, sobbing happily.

“Let’s get the horses,” said Ted in an inspired moment, and deftly she diverted attention from the main group, leading the way over to the stable with the Doctor, the girls all following.

The Doctor looked like a boy who had achieved some long-cherished ambition. He kept taking off his traveling cap, and smiling around from face to face, then putting the cap on again and adjusting his eyeglasses.

“God bless my heart, but this is a glorious reunion, isn’t it, girls?” he said.

“Wait until you see the skeleton, the—the bones, the fossil remains,” said Polly.

“Polly, I think that was all hatched up by you, as a wise and clever scheme to drag me into this part of Wyoming,” he replied.

“But I sent you a specimen—”

“I’ll wait until I see where you took the specimen from.”

“Wasn’t it a good specimen?”

“Fine, undoubtedly. So was the surrounding rock.” The Doctor laughed heartily at the puzzled expression on Polly’s face. “If it is exactly as represented, we’ll give you a degree, Polly, an honorary degree, if we have to invent one to fit the occasion. We can’t call you a Fellow Geologist, can we? This will necessitate Congress striking off a special bronze medal for a new sisterhood of geologists. How would that do?”

“It is a very large skeleton, I think,” Polly answered. “And truly, Doctor, we girls have nothing to do with it. Peggie Murray found it long ago. We are only the—the—”

“Promoters of the science,” finished the Doctor. “I see. Dear, dear, what a tanned lot of young Indians you are. Isn’t it a splendid country? I felt several inches taller as soon as I breathed the air of this altitude.”

Jean said the team was ready to start now, so they all climbed in, and drove back to the station.

“This is my first experience with a three-seated surrey behind a pair of bronchos,” exclaimed the Doctor. “They use them on the tourist expeditions through the National Park, though, come to think of it. Have you been over there yet?”

“Not this time,” said Ruth, frankly. “We haven’t money enough. But we’re having a perfectly splendid time at the ranch, and next week we’re going camping.”

“Just for a few days to give them a taste of it,” Jean added over her shoulder. “We start back for Virginia on our fourth week.”

“You, too, Miss Jean?” asked Polly. She had not expected that Miss Murray would go back with them.

“Isn’t this a personally-conducted tour?” asked Jean, smiling. “Of course, I shall see you safe and sound at home.”

When they drove up to the station, there sat Mrs. Sandy and Miss Calvert holding each other’s hands, and talking in low tones, making up for the silence of all the years.

Sandy had a quiet, comprehensive, half-humorous smile on his face, and as he shook hands with the Doctor, he said in an undertone:

“Lee has surrendered.”

The Doctor nodded his head in quick appreciation.

“It’s high time,” he answered. But the girls held bravely to the traditions of Calvert Hall. Never by smile or look or word did they show that they knew of the reconciliation. Not then. Not until the drive home was finished, and they had waved a temporary good-bye to the MacDowells and the Doctor and Miss Calvert at the creek crossing, did they dare to give vent to their feelings, but when they finally reached their own private quarters, Ted tossed her cap high in the air, and Polly began to dance a Virginia reel with Sue.

“Well, they’ve made it up, that’s sure,” said Ruth, meditatively, “but what puzzles me is, what the trouble was in the first place.”

“I know,” cried Polly, pausing to take breath. “I’ve known for days. And I couldn’t tell. But as long as it’s all over, I will. Let’s sit down in front of the fire, and comb our hair and talk.”

The nights had been cool ever since their arrival, and a few blazing spruce knots just took the shiver off, as Sue said, so they sat around its blaze now, clad in kimonos, combing out their hair, as girls love to do, and talking. And the old love-tale of Diantha Calvert and her Northern sweetheart gained a fresh tenderness and charm, told there in the dancing firelight. When Polly had finished, there was a long silence, while blue eyes and gray eyes and brown stared dreamily at the fire. Then Ruth said softly:

“‘Many waters cannot quench love.’”

“Did you hear what Mrs. Sandy said, when I asked her if she was surprised?” Polly reached over and gave a big log a friendly poke so that it rolled over and became a blazing ledge. “She said, with such a look, you know, all glad and proud and kind of relieved too: ‘No, honey, not very much. I always knew it would happen some day. Love will bring to us that which is ours if we trust.’ Isn’t that beautiful to remember? Love will bring to us that which is ours, if we trust.”

“Well, I’m trusting that those bones will turn out to be a perfect and well-preserved dinosaur,” proclaimed Sue, rising, “and it’s getting late.”

They left the cabin-door open now, with the screen door fastened, and long after the rest were asleep, Ruth lay wide awake thinking. A head raised cautiously from Polly’s pillow.

“Ruth, are you asleep?”

“No,” came back a whisper.

“Aren’t you glad for poor dear old Honoria?”

“So glad I can’t sleep. Think of them to-night, talking and making up for thirty-five years of lonesomeness.”

“Bet a cookie she’d never have thought of coming out here if we hadn’t blazed the way. Good-night.”

Ruth’s whisper came back softly, and there was silence in the guest-cabin.