Virginia of V. M. Ranch

It was a glorious morning. The sky above was a gleaming cloudless blue, the desert, below, stretching to the far horizon, shimmered white in the sunlight, while some bird in a c...

Barbara Blair Wente in the Vine Haven Seminary looked up from the cosy window seat where she was comfortably curled, studying French verbs, when she heard the door open. It was...

Virginia was right in believing that she would receive a reply from their unknown ward as soon as one could possibly reach them. She had counted the days that her own letter wou...

Virginia had at last decided to take Uncle Tex into their confidence. He it was who had first taught five-year-old Malcolm to ride and shoot and Virginia he loved as dearly as h...

The next day was a busy one at the V. M. Ranch, for a crate of fruit arrived for Virginia and she preserved and canned until at last the grandfather clock in the living-room chi...

Barbara Blair Wente, fluffy, golden and petite, sat curled up on the window seat of the room they had shared together for the past year looking the picture of misery.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Peter Wallace,” he said to his beaming reflection. Then, donning his sombrero, he started out as he thought, “Now I know what I will look like twenty y...

“I’m so interested and excited,” she confided to Shags who trotted along at her side when she went down to what Rusty Pete called “the hen corral” to feed the plump biddies that...

“Virg,” Malcolm blurted out, “I feel that we are not doing right to treat a lonely orphan girl in this fashion. I am positive that I heard her crying in her room just now. I kno...

“Oh, let’s just do everything together,” Virginia replied. “That’s more sociable. First, we will make the beds. I’ll spread one side and you the other, and while we’re doing the...

Margaret’s very own room in the ranch house was delightfully homey. Glass doors opened upon a wide veranda where a vine, which Virginia watered daily, was growing luxuriantly. E...

The next morning Virginia breakfasted at sunrise with her brother. Margaret, who was not accustomed to awakening at so early an hour, slept until she heard voices outside her wi...

It was the nineteenth of December and the morning was bright and sparkling. Margaret Selover stood on the wide veranda of the ranch house, her eyes glowing with appreciation as...

Virginia did not pause in her mad gallop over the hard, sandy trail toward the mountains until they were near enough for Margaret’s untrained eyes to see clearly the old adobe....

Back of the big, rambling V. M. ranch house there was a comfortable small adobe which had been occupied at one time by the foreman and family, but now that Malcolm was his own f...

Three days had passed and the little mother had responded to the loving care of the two girls. Nourishing food taken each hour had revived her and slowly she was regaining her s...

It was Christmas Eve. Slick Cy and Malcolm had returned toward nightfall with a fine tree, to the delight of the girls, who had it erected in the big living-room, where they spe...

Malcolm, who was greatly interested in the finding of the mine on Second Peak conferred for several hours with his sister, and finally decided that together they would grubstake...

The next morning the two girls were up with the sun. “I feel as though something unusual is going to happen today,” Virginia said as she poured the coffee and smiled over at Mar...

“It’s my old play trunk,” the western girl replied, “where I put all of my old castaway toys as I outgrew them, and so, what is more natural than that I should also have placed...

“Isn’t it good to be alive on a day like this?” Margaret exclaimed as she gazed over the wide desert that was gleaming white in the early afternoon sun. “Somehow, when everythin...

The sun was nearing the western horizon when at last the two girls swung from their ponies and entered the log cabin which did indeed look deserted and desolate standing alone s...

Virginia, sincerely hoping that the eastern girl would not awaken, tiptoed out of the log cabin and very quietly closed the door. She was carrying the unlighted lantern and some...

When the lad called Tom calmly remarked, “I am that outlaw,” Margaret, who had supposed an outlaw to be a villain, such as she had seen in the moving pictures, did not know how...

A letter from Babs was the first one that tumbled out on the big library table when Virginia held the pouch upside down. Other papers and letters rattled out, but both girls wer...

When Margaret pointed out of the window, Virginia sprang up and looked down toward the bunkhouse. Was it possible that the sheriff did suspect that Tom was one of the three who...

When the girls awakened from their siesta, arm in arm they sauntered down to the corral where they saw Tenderfoot Tom trying to ride a broncho, but without much success. He leap...

“Tom!” Virginia’s manner of uttering the name seemed almost like a cry of joy and the lad who was wearing a white apron chef-fashion, turned toward the open door with a pleasant...

Ten minutes later Virginia opened the door very quietly that she might not attract the attention of the old cow-man and together the two girls stepped out into the gathering dar...

When the girls went back into the house, Margaret exclaimed, “Pinch me, Virg, will you? I want to make sure that I am a flesh and blood person and not a character in a book. I n...

Luckily for Tom’s comfort, the storm which had threatened when he left V. M. Ranch was turned by a changing wind toward the south; and, when the chill grey of daylight came, he...

A week had passed and it had been an anxious one for Virginia and Margaret as they had no way of knowing whether or not Tom had managed to escape the posse that had been searchi...

“March winds surely are blowing,” Margaret sang out, as she and Virginia were hurled along at a merry pace from the “hen corral,” the small fenced-in enclosure whither the girls...

“A letter from an outlaw,” Margaret laughingly exclaimed as the two girls curled up on the window seat, one to read and the other to listen to their very first letter from Tom.

“Megsy, you remember how prim and proper Miss Pickle was when you were here at school and how ‘skeered’ of her we girls always were. Well, some mysterious power is surely workin...

A month had passed. The wild March winds had blown itself out. The spring rains had filled the usually dry creek with a rushing, raging torrent which could be forded by neither...

You never could guess what has happened since I wrote you last and, since you are too far away for me to really enjoy mystifying you, I will tell you all about it.

When Malcolm entered the ranch living-room, his sister Virginia told him of the newspaper article which they had discovered. “That’s great news!” he exclaimed, “We must convey i...

The sun was just appearing above a range of misty gray mountains far across the desert on the eastern horizon when the three young riders reached the top of the mesa trail and d...

The next day the girls were restless; troubled by the uncertainty of it all, and anxiously waiting for news, although they had no way of hearing directly from Red Riverton. Howe...

That evening as the three girls sat in front of the wide hearth on which a mesquite root was cheerily burning, they talked quietly together of all that had happened.

When Virginia calmly announced that she was going to ride to the Papago village, Margaret exclaimed in surprise: “But, Virg, dear, it’s mid-day now and you have said that it is...

“Winona has been telling me that she did not really have a message for us, that is, nothing that could concern Tom. Red Feather had chanced to capture a carrier pigeon which in...

The three girls, tired indeed from the long day with its varied adventures, had found themselves weary enough to sleep in the wide bed to which Winona had referred, and even Bab...

It was mid-afternoon when the long ever upward winding trail had been climbed, and, at last the girls and their guides drew rein on the very summit, where a few weeks before, li...

Virginia, who had not slept at all until nearly morning, awoke with a sense of great weariness and then, of even greater anxiety. It seemed strange to her that she should care s...

Virginia leaped forward with a cry of joy and was caught in her brother’s close embrace. Harry followed, but though they all gazed eagerly back of these two, hoping to see anoth...

Everyone in the ranch house the next morning was astir long before daybreak. The boys breakfasted at once and were in the saddle just as the sun was rising above the low line of...