The Ranch Girls' Pot of Gold
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"I am only here for a little while, Mr. Colter," Frank Kent explained, answering the question in Jim's words and in Jack's eyes. "I came back to America on a short business trip. My father heard of some mines in Colorado, and as I was so enthusiastic about the West he sent me out to investigate them for him. As Colorado is a sister state to Wyoming, I had to slip across the border, you know," he ended shyly.
Olive had let every one else in the room finish their welcome to Frank Kent before she attempted to speak to him. Now she put out her slender hand and held his only for a moment while her face flushed and her dark eyes shone with a soft radiance. "I am truly glad to see you again," she declared with more real feeling than any one of the other girls had yet revealed. Jack, who adored Olive, and was a little jealous of any affection she might show for other people, stared at her curiously.
"O Frank, do let's all go out of doors," Jack suggested. "We have the most wonderful scheme we want to tell you about and we want to know everything about your people in England, your father and mother and two sisters and your wonderful estate in Surrey."
The entire party was just leaving the living room when Aunt Ellen's tall form blocked the door. Her face showed anger and she held the small Indian boy by his uninjured arm. Carlos' eyes were larger and more mournful than ever and his lips set in an obstinate curve.
"This boy says he won't eat with Zack and me," Aunt Ellen announced angrily. "He says he is the son of a chief and the grandson of one and that he should be fed first; and I won't put up with such nonsense."
"O Carlos!" Olive came across the room and dropped on the floor in front of the lad. "How can you be so silly and ungrateful?" she asked pleadingly. "Aunt Ellen, his people are all dead; they were killed in a fight on the plains, and I don't know whether Carlos is a chief's son or not. But of course we can't keep him at the ranch if he is troublesome."
Olive was such a lovely picture as she knelt on the floor gazing up into the Indian boy's face that Frank Kent looked at her closely for the first time since he entered Rainbow Lodge. She was more changed than any one of the ranch girls in the six months of his absence, and seemed older and somehow more graceful and elusive than ever.
Jim Colter took several great strides across the room toward small Carlos, without apparently heeding Ruth's little cry of remonstrance nor Olive's plea for patience; he seemed so big and fierce and strong and the Indian boy so little and weak and defiant, that it was like a great eagle pouncing down on an impudent sparrow. Jim swooped Carlos up in his arms, but instead of devouring him, put the lad down in a chair by the breakfast table, poured out a glass of milk for him and made him drink it, for he saw what no one else had, that the boy was almost dying of hunger.
"Leave us to ourselves, please," Jim demanded, smiling at Aunt Ellen apologetically. "I want to see after this boy myself for a few minutes. Who knows but we may need just such a little scout in our trip across the prairies."
Ruth smiled at Jim without a trace of the old-maid disapproval of him which she once felt, and Olive gave a sigh of relief, for she had been worrying all through breakfast about what they could do with Carlos when they went on their wonderful caravan trip. It had seemed so unkind to desert him after his long and faithful quest of her.
A quarter of an hour later Jim came out in the yard, and the Indian lad went to the kitchen to do as he was bid. Whatever Jim had told him served to keep him proudly obedient so long as he remained at the ranch house.
In front of the Lodge, Jean, Olive, Frieda and Ruth were still talking of their journey, while Frank and Jack had wandered off somewhere together. Jean was flitting about in the sunlight like a brown sparrow, twittering and singing and hopping from very joy at being alive. She suddenly seized Jim's hand and forced Ruth to take hold of his other one, then when Olive and Frieda joined the circle, she made them whirl around until they were completely out of breath. "I declare, I never was so happy in my life," Jean panted, when she finally released her victims. "I believe every good thing in the world comes true if you only want it hard enough. But don't you wish we were traveling across the plains right now? It is such a wonderful, wonderful day!"
Truly it might have been a spring morning in the Garden of Eden. The pale green leaves of the tall cottonwood trees were shimmering and quivering with each faintest breeze; the birds were rustling softly in their branches, and, beyond the trees, the alfalfa fields were now a delicate lavender and rose.
Jean pointed through an opening in the trees, where the landscape stretched almost unbroken to the line of hills on the western horizon and made a little curtsy to Ruth.
"'Oh, what's the way to ArcadyWhere all the leaves are merry?'""Tell me, Ruth, dear," she quoted mischievously from a volume of poems she and her chaperon had just finished reading.
Ruth shook her head, but Jim stared at Jean thoughtfully. "Say that little verse again, Jean," he said slowly. "I don't know where Arcady is, but it is a pretty sounding place."
Jean laughed roguishly and blew him a kiss. "What has come over you, Jim, to make you willing to listen to poetry?" she inquired. "Arcady is just an ideal country that poets like to write about, but here's the way to find it if you like:
"'What, know you not, old man (quoth he), —Your hair is white, your face is wise, —That love must kiss that Mortal's eyesWho hopes to see fair Arcady?No gold can buy you entrance there, —But beggared love may go all bare —No wisdom won with weariness,But love goes in with Folly's dress —No fame that wit could ever win,But only love may lead love inTo Arcady, to Arcady.'"At the end of her recitation Jean quickly put her hands in Olive's and Frieda's and ran off to see if any flowers had bloomed in their violet bed, leaving Ruth and Jim alone. Ruth was blushing, for she had a far-off idea of what Jean meant to suggest by her quotation, but Jim appeared so sublimely unconscious that she felt relieved. He was evidently thinking of something very different from love or Arcady, for Ruth had to touch him before he seemed to hear what she was saying. "When may Jack write the people to say they can have the Lodge?" she inquired, determined not to be entirely forgotten by her companion, no matter how glad she was that he had paid no attention to Jean.
"The Lodge? Oh, any time," he answered vaguely, looking at Ruth in a way that made her catch her breath. Jim was not thinking at the moment of anything connected with Rainbow Lodge. He was wondering if a man, who had something in his past he wished to forget, could ever travel over into Arcady by the route Jean's poem suggested – Arcady, that country he knew nothing about except that the name had a pleasant sound.
CHAPTER V
MEETING WITH NEW PEOPLE
"JEAN BRUCE, if you add one more item to that everlasting old list of yours, we will have to give up our trip," Jack Ralston remarked crossly. "Even if Jim has given us a few precious dollars to invest in our going-away outfits, we can't buy the entire town of Laramie and cart it across the state to the Yellowstone Park." Jack was standing in front of her mirror trying to fasten down her shirtwaist in the back, and as a pin had just pricked her finger, she was irritable.
"What was that funny thing you advised our buying last night, Olive?" Jean called into the next room, ignoring her cousin's protest in the serenest possible manner. Miss Bruce was dressed for a journey of some sort in a pretty, dark blue suit and a cream straw hat with a pair of jaunty blue wings atop of it. Her expression was one of demure readiness for any great event, yet she was seated quietly at a table with a half-filled memorandum book before her and a much-used pencil in her hand.
Olive flitted in from the adjoining chamber with her new frock half buttoned. "Oh, never mind, if we can't afford the thing I suggested," she said soothingly. "I am afraid it will cost an awful lot, but I read that every traveler across a desert ought to have a sleeping bag to take along. We can wrap up in our old blankets and comforts, but I thought it would be fine to get a bag for Ruth if we could, for you know she is such a chilly person, and if she isn't comfortable at night she will lie awake and listen to the strange sounds of the desert that we love and she fears."
Jack looked instantly penitent. She was never impatient with Olive, as she sometimes was with Jean; and, besides, she had about finished dressing and the reflection in the glass was gratifying. The ranch girls had new spring suits sent from the East. Jack's was brown, and her little straw toque had in it a curling feather that matched the bronze tones in her hair.
"We will have the sleeping bag if we have to go without shoes," she answered amiably. "But, Jean, dear, why do you have to have a bottle of violet perfume to take with you across the plains when you have lived for some sixteen years without one?"
"That's just the reason, Jack Ralston," Jean returned uncompromisingly. "I wonder when you'll learn that we are not tomboys any longer and ought to have the things other girls have. You know you are as vain of your appearance in that suit Cousin Ruth made you get, as you can be. I must say you do look rather well in it."
Jack kissed Jean quickly. "I am an interfering old thing," she confessed meekly. "But please don't talk about our being nearly grown up, for it frightens me; I am not going to be grown for years and years. Promise me you won't say a word about my remembering that I am a girl and a fairly elderly one the whole time we are on our caravan trip and I'll agree to do whatever you wish while we are in Laramie."
"All right. Here comes Frieda and Cousin Ruth, so it must be almost time for us to start," Jean consented, stuffing her paper and pencil into her shiny new traveling bag.
Jean, Jack and Olive were about to leave for the city of Laramie to purchase the supplies for their caravan trip to the Yellowstone Park.
Several weeks had passed since Jean originated her wonderful idea, and most of the arrangements for the journey had been completed. The Harmons had signed the contract to rent Rainbow Lodge for the summer, and Frank Kent had gone to Colorado, after a short visit at the ranch, threatening to meet the girls again in some out-of-the-way place before their holiday was over.
The girls were trying not to appear perturbed, though they were really in a great state of excitement. For the first time in their lives they were to spend two nights alone in a hotel. Jim could not leave the ranch, on account of some special business; Ruth could not accompany them, because she would not leave Frieda, who had a bad cold and was not well enough to go. However, Mrs. Peterson, the proprietress of a boarding place where the girls were to stay, was an acquaintance of Jim's and had promised to act as their chaperon.
Frieda tumbled into the room at this instant, with her big blue eyes more aggrieved than usual and her small nose distinctly pink around the edges. It was her first experience in being left at home and she was not happy over it. She flung her arms about her sister, and Jack leaned over to whisper pleadingly, "Promise you won't cry when we go, baby, and we'll bring you and Ruth the funniest surprise presents in town."
While Ruth was rearranging Jean's hat, which had slipped to one side in the flurry of departure, and straightening Olive's long coat, the rattling of the horses' harness and Jim's voice telling the girls to hurry could be distinctly heard.
"Don't forget my list of medicines, Jean, and don't forget the new toothbrushes," Ruth advised hastily. "And, Jack, please, for goodness' sake, don't fail to keep your appointment with the Harmons at their hotel to-morrow afternoon. As they have been good enough to wait in town an extra week for us to give up the Lodge to them after their long trip from New York, you ought to be willing to meet them if they wish it."
"Well, I'm not willing, Ruth," Jack demurred; "though we promise to keep our words like ladies. I confess I am horribly embarrassed at having to call on entire strangers with no one even to introduce us. I do devoutly hope the men of the family won't think they have to appear, because I am afraid enough of the mother and daughter. I suppose it is this poor Elizabeth Harmon who is curious to see what we are like, so I presume we will have to give her the pleasure. Imagine us, Ruth, at five to-morrow afternoon making our bows to the rich New Yorkers. It is silly of me, but I have taken a dislike to the entire Harmon family simply because they are going to live in our home for a while, I suppose, though I am anxious enough for their money for our holiday."
During Jack's monologue the girls had gone into the yard, and a few minutes later Ruth and Frieda were almost overpowered by the fervor of their farewell embraces. The last glimpse they had of the travelers, Jack was standing up in their wagon, with Jean and Olive clutching at her skirts and entirely unmindful of the grandeur of her new attire, waving both hands and giving the familiar, long-drawn-out call of the cowboys of the Rainbow Ranch.
The trip to Laramie was uneventful, and though the ranch girls slept three in a bed, and talked till almost morning that they might enjoy to the full the novelty of the experience, their first night at Mrs. Peterson's boarding house was equally without excitement.
By eight o'clock the following morning the girls set out on their first regular shopping expedition, and by four in the afternoon Jean sank dejectedly down on a stool in a grocery store. "Girls," she declared wearily, "we have shopped all day and shopped all night and shopped again until broad daylight. At least, I feel as if we had, and if you don't take me somewhere to rest I shall surely die." But the girls had scrimped and saved pennies all day in order to buy the sleeping bags for Ruth and Freida, and would not give up until they were purchased.
Poor Jean was forcibly dragged from her resting place by Olive and Jack, and the three girls set out down the street again, gazing in all the shop windows. "For mercy's sake, what kind of a store would keep a sleeping bag, Olive?" Jean inquired mournfully, leaning heavily upon Jack, who walked next her. "I have seen a punching bag in Jim's room at the rancho, and I have heard somewhere of carpet-bags, but I have no more idea of what a sleeping bag is like than the old man in the moon."
"Well, I don't know exactly either, Jean," Olive confessed, walking a little in advance of her friends, with her eyes on the ground. Her frightened "Oh!" and stumble against Jack brought the entire party to a standstill. A young man had been marching along the street toward them in an entirely abstracted state of mind and had run into Olive.
"I beg your pardon," he stammered apologetically. "I am not a native of this place and – "
Jack's eyes flashed with indignation and Olive flushed, with the soft color that was peculiar to her rising in delicate waves from her throat to her forehead, but mischievous Jean giggled. "Is it the custom to bump into people in the place you do come from?" she inquired innocently. "Because, crude as we are, it isn't the custom here."
Jack frowned at Jean's frivolity, indicating very plainly that Miss Bruce was not to enter into a conversation with a stranger, but she need not have worried, because the young man was not paying the least attention either to her or Jean. He was staring at Olive, not rudely, but with a curious, questioning gaze that made her drop her dark eyes until her long, straight lashes touched her cheeks.
"I hope I didn't hurt you," the young fellow protested awkwardly. Olive shook her head without glancing up, but the other two girls got a good look at him. He was almost as dark as Olive herself, although he had none of her foreign appearance, and was big and broad-shouldered, and seemed to be an eastern college fellow, twenty or twenty-one years old.
Jack engineered her party into a near-by department store, leaving the young man still staring after them with his hat in his hand.
"Great Scott, what a boor I was!" he exclaimed to himself a second later. "But I never had anything strike me so all of a heap as that girl's face in my life." And he strode away looking tremendously puzzled.
Fortunately the brown woolen sleeping bag for Ruth was discovered in this first shop, but by the time a smaller one was bought for Frieda, it occurred to Jack to ask the time, as no one of them possessed a watch, and Jean and Olive had wandered off to make new investments in motor veils. "Ten minutes to five o'clock," the shopkeeper announced, and Jack's heart sank to zero. All day she had been wishing that she had not promised Ruth to keep the appointment with the Harmons, but what would Jean and Olive do when they found they had no time to dress before their engagement?
"Girls," a sepulchral voice whispered suddenly in Jean's ear, "we have just ten minutes to get to the hotel to call on those dreadful Harmons, if we rush off this minute."
Jean caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror which happened to be just before her on the counter. Her stylish appearance of the morning had disappeared; her hat was on one side and a smudge decorated the tip of her piquant nose. Then she gazed disapprovingly at Jack, who was almost as much wilted and whose hair was anything but neat. Olive's appearance was the best, but she was unusually pale, with violet shadows under her eyes and a soft droop to her whole body.
"Behold the Three Graces!" Jean remarked disdainfully. "Jack Ralston, I'll not go a step to call on those people until we have had a chance to fix ourselves up. I know they will talk all summer about how dreadful we are if they see us first looking such frights."
"But, Jean," Jack argued, as much depressed as her cousin, "if we go back to our boarding place and dress before we make our call we shall be so horribly late that Mrs. Harmon probably won't see us and she may be so offended that she will refuse to come to the Lodge this summer. Then good-by to our caravan trip."
Jean's rebellious attitude slowly altered. "But what shall I do about the smut on my nose, Jack?" she objected faintly.
"Rub it off with your handkerchief," Jack replied cruelly, as the three girls made a hurried rush for a car.
"But we may meet the son of the family, and I think Donald Harmon is a dream of a name," Jean continued mournfully, "and I did hope that one of us would be able to make an impression on him."
Olive laughed and gave Jack's hand a conciliatory squeeze, for Jack's face had flushed as it usually did when Jean made any such teasing suggestion. The truth of the matter was that Jack hated to think there was any real difference between friendship with a boy or a girl, and Jean, though she only joked about the subject at present, cherished a very different idea.
"It is much more important that we make ourselves agreeable to Mrs. Harmon and her daughter," Jack answered, with her nose in the air, as she sat down in the car, but Jean merely lifted her pretty shoulders and gave a sly glance at Olive. "Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Ralston," she apologized. "I forgot you were a man-hater, unless one leaves Frank Kent out of the question." This was a hateful speech of Jean's and she deserved the speedy punishment she received.
The three ranch girls found the hotel they sought and were given the number of Mrs. Harmon's sitting room. They hesitated for a minute outside her door. "I don't know why I feel so nervous about going in, just as though something dreadful was going to happen," Jack whispered softly. "I don't even like to knock."
"I know what is troubling you, Jack," Olive murmured gently. "None of us has confessed it to the other, but I believe we are nervous about meeting Elizabeth Harmon. We don't know how ill she is or whether she is even able to walk, and we are afraid we may do or say the wrong thing."
"I am sure you won't, Olive," Jack returned, as she summoned courage to knock at the closed door. The girls thought they heard a faint response from the inside, and walked slowly into the room, hesitating for a moment because of the sudden change from daylight to almost complete darkness. The blinds at the windows were drawn closely down, and there was no light except that which shone from two rose-colored candles that burned on the tall mantel-piece. No one seemed to be in the room as Jean started blindly forward. Olive put out her hand to stop her, but she was not in time, for at the same instant Jean plunged blindly into a small table loaded with teacups, and the quiet room echoed with the noise of crashing china and embarrassed exclamations from poor Jean.
The next moment Jack and Olive saw a fragile figure rise up from an immense leather chair and swing herself toward them on a single crutch. She was so thin and delicate and dressed in such an exquisite clinging white gown that she looked like the ghost of a girl, the only color about whom was the mass of shining red-gold hair that hung in a loose cloud over her shoulders.
"Oh, I am so sorry and ashamed!" Jean murmured miserably, her brown eyes filling with tears, as she surveyed the havoc she had wrought.
"Please don't mind; it was all my fault." Elizabeth Harmon put out a small, hot hand and touched Jean's fingers shyly. "I know I ought not to have had the room so dark when you came in, but I have a fancy for meeting people for the first time in the soft candle light."
Elizabeth spoke the last words gently and Jack tried to conceal it, but her hostess knew that the girl with the sympathetic warm gray eyes understood why she preferred to meet strangers in a semi-darkness.
Elizabeth was not a pretty girl. Her eyes were too pale a blue and she looked too ill for beauty; besides, her face had a wilful and unhappy expression, and yet, in spite of these defects, she had a curious kind of grace and charm.
Jean and Olive were trying vainly to pick up the shattered teacups, so it was Jack who first saw Elizabeth Harmon's dilemma. She had walked across the room toward them, but she was not strong enough to get back to her chair alone and she was too sensitive to ask for help. Jack put her arm about her hostess, without waiting for her permission, and led her to a chair, then she sat down on a little spindle-legged stool near her, feeling shy and confused.
"You shouldn't have helped me; I hate to have people do things for me," Elizabeth remarked rudely. "I could have walked back to my chair perfectly well by myself. Please do sit down, everybody; you make me feel dreadfully nervous. Mother would join us if she knew you were here."
The ranch girls were embarrassed by their hostess' ungracious manner, but they could not be really angry with her. Jean and Olive wondered why she didn't let her mother know of their arrival. Again Jack guessed the truth. Elizabeth could not get across the room to the bell and would not ask one of them to ring it for her. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Elizabeth bent over toward Jack, whispering softly: "Forgive my being so hateful, and thank you for helping me. I have wanted dreadfully to know you girls, but I'm afraid you'll think I am so spoiled you won't have anything to do with me. Will you please ring the bell?"
Jack moved quietly across the room, but before she reached the bell the door flew open, admitting a big fellow with flashing white teeth. He stopped in amazement at the sight of the three visitors. Jean and Jack recognized him at once as the young man who had stared at Olive so curiously after running into her on the street.
CHAPTER VI
A CURIOUS RESEMBLANCE
"I'LL be – I beg your pardon," Donald Harmon apologized hurriedly. "Sister, I didn't know your visitors had come." He held out his hand to Jack, who was nearest him. "I ought to have known who you were when I met you an hour ago, but I was a little confused over something," he said.
Elizabeth Harmon introduced her brother to the girls, whose names she had now learned. When Donald spoke to Olive he tried in vain to hide his puzzled expression, and again she dropped her gaze before his as though she did not wish him to see her face. Olive was always shy, but to-day she seemed more so than usual, and she had a peculiar fashion, like some flowers, of folding herself about with little leaves and tendrils of reserve to hide her real self from the outside world.