CHAPTER VThe Silver Spur Bakery"Elizabeth," whispered Ruth, tragically, "I have done something too awful to tell--and I've got to tell it.""I just knew you were dreadfully worried," whispered back Elizabeth, sympathetically. "I knew it as soon as you came back this morning. Mother thought you were just plain tired, but I felt in my bones that there was worse. What is it?"The two girls were in their room getting ready for bed, tiptoeing and whispering to avoid waking Mrs. Spooner, who was sleeping in the next room."It's this, Elizabeth--" Ruth's whisper was a wail of despair--"I've lost Maudie Pratt's--diamond--ring: And I've promised to pay her for it by Thanksgiving! Elizabeth, it cost--a hundred--dollars! And you know I've got just thirty-five cents in all the world!"Then, Elizabeth remaining dumb from astonishment, she went on to tell the whole story."And, O, Elizabeth, howwillI ever get the money?" she ended, despairingly."You mustn't tell mother, Ruth," warned Elizabeth, with that sweet, elder-sister air that had grown on her since Mary went away; "she's got worries enough already with father away, and everybody afraid it's going to be a dry year. I can't think just now of any way to earn a hundred dollars quick. I'll sleep on it--maybe I'll dream of a way. One thing's certain; you've got to keep your word, for the credit of the family.""I was just sure you'd feel that way about it, Elizabeth. What on earth would we do without you!" sighed Ruth, gratefully.Secure in Elizabeth's ability to find a way, she nestled down among her pillows and went peacefully to sleep. And indeed she needed it sorely, after the miserably wakeful night she had spent with Maudie Pratt.Elizabeth did not dream at all. She lay awake so long trying to think up some miraculous way by which Ruth and she might earn a hundred dollars, that when she did fall asleep her slumber was entirely too deep for dreams to enter--so deep indeed that it took the warning rattle of the alarm-clock to wake her in time to get the early breakfast necessary for Roy and Jonah."Did you think of anything, Elizabeth?" asked Ruth anxiously, as she, too, sprang out of bed at the alarm-clock's warning. And Elizabeth was obliged to confess that she hadn't yet."But don't you worry," she soothed, "I'll think of a way. Let's ask Roy, as soon as we get a chance; somehow I feel sure he could help."It was evening before they found an opportunity to take Roy into their confidence, down at the milk-pen. Milking had been one of the girls' recognized duties before he came, since then he had forbidden them to interfere with the chores, declaring them to be men's work.Roy set the foaming pails on the fence, turned out the little bunch of milk-pen calves kept to lure home the cows from the open range, and regarded the girls with a grave face."I should call that a tough proposition," he said thoughtfully, "but not impossible. In fact it seems that 'most anything's possible if you work hard enough for it. How about cooking, Ruth? You're a dandy on 'pie'n things'. Every ranch round here would buy your truck if it was properly advertised.""That's just it!" jubilated Elizabeth, "advertise! Ruth, we'll put up a sign-board at the road gate: 'Bread, Doughnuts and Pies for Sale.' Every cowboy that passes will see it, and every single one will buy. I never saw a boy or man that wasn't hungry.""Elizabeth has a great head," nodded Roy, approvingly, "that's the ticket, Ruth. I'll paint the sign-board to-night and to-morrow you begin baking--money!"Ruth breathed a sigh of relief. "I just can't thank you enough, Roy," she declared gratefully. "I'll bake day and night if I can just pay Maudie Pratt for that hateful ring!"Mrs. Spooner was rather bewildered when her young folks--the Babe excepted, begged earnestly for permission to make some money by going into the bakery business."We can't tell you just now what it's for, mother," explained Ruth. "Only that it's for something important. You'll know all about it when the right time comes.""It seems to me that every one of you does as much work as possible, now," doubted Mrs. Spooner. "But as Ruth's heart seems to be set upon this extra labor, I promise not to interfere. And I won't ask any questions about it until you see fit to tell me of your own accord."The Babe, who had listened carefully to this conversation, beamed hopefully upon them, seeing in the plan certain possibilities."I'llhelp you, Ruth," she volunteered magnanimously. "And maybe if you make a whole heap of money, youmighthave enough left over to buy a new Ivanhoe. Mine's got seven leaves lost out, right at the most exciting part.""Done!" agreed Roy heartily, "I promise that you shall have a new Ivanhoe if you help. The bargain's between you and me, Baby. We'll leave the girls out of it.""Except to see that you earn your book," laughed Elizabeth.That night when they were all gathered around the evening lamp, Roy painted the sign on a smooth white board, with some of the brown paint left over from the phaeton. Bread, he declared, was Ruth's "long suit," but as cowboys would scarcely like dry bread, it was cut out of the list. Pies, however, were always acceptable. Custard being objected to as too "squshy," they decided on mince and apple as being best for cooks and customers. Doughnuts, of course, because everybody liked the little fried cakes, and they could be conveniently handled. Completed, the sign read:"HOME-MADE DOUGHNUTS.APPLE PIES.MINCE PIES.FOR SALE ATSILVER SPUR RANCH.""Now," decided Roy, after all the family had duly admired his handiwork, "I'm going to Emerald early in the morning, and I'll fetch back all your necessary supplies, down to the paper bags to hold 'em, by noon. The McGregor ranch is shipping cattle--they'll pass here Thursday, one of their punchers told me; that'll be day after to-morrow. You can spend the afternoon baking and be ready for them, for I'm certain they'll buy you out. Their range-cook's quit, and Chunky Bill's cooking for the outfit, so they're about starved for something good to eat.""We'll be obliged to have the first groceries charged to you, mother," apologized Ruth, "but we promise to pay for them ourselves.""Very well--only don't buy too much at a time," warned Mrs. Spooner, who was doubtful of the success of the enterprise, "until you are sure of making sales.""We'll succeed all right, never you fear, mumsy," asserted Roy, with cheerful confidence. "I'll drum up trade, and Ruth's good cooking'll do the rest."Fuel in that woodless country was quite an item; Roy, realizing this, brought home the next day a load of coke along with the other supplies, all, it was agreed, to be paid for out of the proceeds of the sales.Also he brought good news from Emerald, where he had met one of the cowboys from the McGregor ranch, who not only confirmed the report of the cattle passing next day, but told him that the ranch cook had quit out there, as well as the man hired to go with the shipping outfit. He offered to get Ruth the job of baking for the ranch until a new cook could be procured."Of course I said Ruth would take the job, so he's to bring along the order in the morning. How's that for a beginning for The Silver Spur Bakery?""I see land ahead!" exulted Elizabeth, joyfully waving her big cook-apron. "Allow me to invest you with your uniform, Mademoiselle Chef: You will now proceed to mix the magic potions, while the Babe kindles the fire on the Altar of Cookery known to mere mortals as the kitchen range, and I complete the rites by rolling out the crust and filling the tins. Know all men by these greetings, the Silver Spur Bakery is ready for business, and Roy may go tack up the sign."Inspired by the hope of reward, they made a frolic of the baking working with such zeal and enthusiasm that when evening came and the chief cook doffed her floury apron with a sigh of weary content, there were shelves full of pies and pans full of doughnuts as a result of their labors. Delicate pies, with crisply melting covers and toothsome "inwards," and doughnuts that were deliciously tender and flavory."Just for this once we'll let everybody have a treat," decided Ruth, generously. "We'll just make a big pot of coffee and have doughnuts and pie for supper. I want Roy and Jonah to have a taste; they'll relish sweets for a change.""And I think we'd better let them fix the price, too," suggested Elizabeth. "Men always know more about such things than we do."Roy and Jonah were most appreciative judges, declaring that twenty-five cents apiece was dirt-cheap for the apple, and--mincemeat costing so much more than dried apples--fifty cents for the mince pies. The doughnuts, being superlatively excellent, were valued at five cents apiece, or fifty cents a dozen.The Babe could not be kept off the porch next morning, hovering there to watch for the McGregor outfit. Soon, like Bluebeard's sister-in-law, she reported a cloud of dust rising--the customers were coming!Far ahead of the herd rode a single horseman who turned in at the gate and came galloping up to the house. The futile chuck-wagon, with its incompetent cook, slid past unnoticed while the message from Mrs. McGregor was delivered. She had sent a tin bread-box of ample size, and she wanted it filled with so much bread, cake and pie, that the Silver Spur Bakery was rather startled. She thought the amount she specified might last them for half the week, the messenger said, and at the end of that time she would return the empty tin box to be refilled. And the Spooner girls were to put their own prices on their wares.While these things were being settled two other riders from the shipping herd came up for sample orders, and hurried into the kitchen with the Babe and Mrs. Spooner, eager to buy something to satisfy the pangs of hunger to which Chunky Bill's cooking had delivered them.The stocky little Englishman who had brought Mrs. McGregor's note, and said he would be back from Emerald on his return trip next morning for the box, if they would have it ready for him, paused at the edge of the porch and negotiated a more personal errand."And I've a little order of my own, Miss," grinned he cowboy genially. "You see, I'm from the old country, myself, and I'm fairly longing for a taste of plum-pudding once more. Think you're equal to making one? I'm willing to pay your own price."There was a note of wistful eagerness in his voice that touched Ruth's sympathies, but a plum-pudding was, she feared, beyond her powers. Elizabeth, seeing her hesitation, spoke promptly. "Certainly, we'll be pleased to fill your order," she said, with business like briskness. "And if it isn't as good as any you ever ate in England you needn't pay for it.""I'm sure it'll be rippin' good pudding, if you make it, miss," politely assured the cowboy, and, with a sweeping bow, he mounted his pony and galloped away to join the approaching herd.As the hundreds of cattle tramped slowly by, one after another of the attending punchers turned in at the Spooner's gate, a purchaser to the full extent of his pocketbook.Doughnuts and pies fairly melted away; Mrs. Spooner and the Babe filling the bags in the kitchen while Ruth and Elizabeth delivered the goods and received the money.And, when they counted up the receipts that night, they found that, deducting all expenses, there would be five dollars profit!"Andthe McGregor ranch to bake for!" crowed Elizabeth, joyously. "Ruth, I plainly see land ahead!""I'm so relieved!" sighed Ruth, "But Elizabeth, are you sure you can manage the pudding?""'In the bright lexicon of youth there's no such word as fail', little sister," laughed Elizabeth. "Of courseI can bake--or boil--or steam a pudding as well as a born Britisher! In fact, being an American citizen, I don't see why I can't make even a better one. Let me take a look at that old cook-book of mother's."All the next day they baked for the McGregor ranch, besides boiling the pudding for the Englishman. Elizabeth declared she wanted him to try it before he paid for it, but after one glance and a hearty sniff, he decided to pay in advance the two dollars and fifty cents which Elizabeth had figured out as a fair price.That it was satisfactory was fully proven when he returned for the next baking, with orders for half-dozen more."I poured brandy over it and set it afire, like they do in England," he said. "And every bloomin' puncher that tasted it is wild for more! They call it 'The Perishin' Martyr Pie.' O, it's made a hit, all right."After that there was quite a run on puddings, and hardly a day passed that the girls did not make a "Perishin' Martyr Pie"--a name that tickled them immensely. Even the Babe learned to mix the batter, and Roy declared he was quite an expert at boiling martyrs.Money flowed into the little green pasteboard box, so that now there was plenty of company for the lonely thirty-five cents it had originally contained, when Ruth rashly decided she would pay Maudie Pratt for the lost diamond ring. It must be admitted that as the money tide rose Ruth's spirits fell."O, it would be so lovely if we were earning it for ourselves," she lamented. "Think of the things we could buy: If we could only give it to mother to help with the living I should be perfectly satisfied--but to go and hand it over to Maudie Pratt for a ring she just made me put on--""Now, Ruth," Elizabeth interrupted, laying a loving arm across her junior's shoulder, "we're all getting lots of fun out of the work. I think the whole family is finding that it is really play to earn money. Maybe we'll get into the habit and keep it up after Maudie's ring's paid for. Don't you worry. If we do the best we can, and do it every day, we are going to arrive at delectable places."Ruth looked at her sister fondly. What would they do without Elizabeth's strong heart and capable head for planning? It was Elizabeth who hunted up a Mexican boy sufficiently reliable to be trusted with a lard-can full of the 'pies 'n things' which found a good market at the round-ups. This was not the season for them, but there is always something of the sort taking place in the cattle country, and Juan was willing to drive an absurd number of miles for a modest share in their profits. Never a cowboy passed the Spooners' attractive sign without galloping up for a purchase, and the early receipts from the bakery were astonishingly good.But after awhile the McGregors secured a cook, and there were no more round-ups in reach; the cowboys had all become surfeited with a rich excess of "Perishin' Martyrs," so that orders declined and finally fell off altogether on that commodity. The grocer was paid, there was nearly a barrel of flour on hand, and part of a large tin of lard, but there was only seventy-nine dollars earned. Thanksgiving was approaching, and the hearts of the girls began to sink, thinking of its nearness and of the insufficient money in the green box.And then, the very day before Thanksgiving, the unexpected happened, when Mrs. McGregor rode over, bright and early, from her ranch with a most unusual and imperative order for pumpkin-pies!It seemed that a lot of unexpected guests had arrived from the east to spend Thanksgiving at the ranch, and, to celebrate the occasion properly, the McGregors had decided to join forces with a neighboring ranch and have a big barbecue and picnic-dinner in the open, to which all the neighbors were invited. The other ranch was to furnish all the meat for the feast--fat mutton and beef and shotes, to be barbecued deliciously over pits of glowing coals, while Mrs. McGregor was to provide the bread, pies and vegetables."Of course you should have been notified days ago," said the pleasant little lady, with deprecating hands outspread, "only I didn't know myself 'till last night! Now my cook can manage the bread and vegetables, and you, my dears, must furnish the pumpkin-pies or I'm a forsworn woman: I've calculated and re-calculated, and I find that, allowing five pieces to a pie, it will take a hundred and six pies to give everybody plenty--you know how men eat! Now dears--" she put a persuasive arm around each girl--"canyou bake them?"Ruth gasped. "How in the world can we--in one day? Of course we have plenty of pumpkins--Jonah raised a big patch of them for cow-feed, and there's a barrel of flour and plenty of lard and sugar and things. But inoneday--""We'll do it, Mrs. McGregor," interrupted Elizabeth, smilingly. "We'll fill your order, and thank you very much. Jonah Bean shall deliver them early in the morning.""My dear girl, you've simply saved my life--I can never thank you enough!" Mrs. McGregor rose, fumbling in her pretty silver wrist-bag. "Twenty-six dollars and fifty cents, I believe. Here's your money--and thank you very, very much: And don't you forget that every single member of your family is expected at our Thanksgiving dinner.""Why did you take her order, Elizabeth?" wondered Ruth, when their guest was gone, "it will work us to death!""Not a bit of it, dear child. Listen, Ruth Spooner, there's just seventy-nine dollars in your green box. Twenty-six added makes a hundred and five. Five dollars is a great plenty for expenses, seeing that we have the pumpkins already. The odd fifty cents will buy a little present for the Babe, and leave you your full hundred to pay Maudie Pratt for her ring. 'Rah, 'rah, 'rah for the girls of the Silver Spur! Our debt's paid!""Glory!" Ruth's shouts suddenly wavered, the apron she waved aloft was thrown over her face as she burst into tears."O, Elizabeth--shut the door--I don't want anybody else to see me cry. I'm a wretch--and you're a genius--but--but--I can't help thinking about us all working so hard and Maudie Pratt getting all our money!""I know, honey," said Elizabeth, understandingly, "if I stop to think I feel that way myself. Let's not stop to think."Ruth choked down her tears, bathed her eyes and turned a resolute face from the washstand."I'm all right," she said in a determinedly cheerful voice.Elizabeth threw open the bedroom door and ran out among their helpers."Kindle a fire, Babe, while we get the pumpkins. Isn't it a mercy that Roy and Jonah are off the range to-day and can stay. Everybody'll have to get to work cutting up pumpkins--even mother."All day they baked. The stove in the house, the brick oven in the yard which had scarcely been allowed to get cold since Ruth began her enterprise, were both kept filled. The baked pies were lifted out of their tins as soon as cool enough and dropped into paper plates. But even so they could not get enough tins to keep the baking up to the volume required for getting out the hundred pies in that length of time. At last Ruth announced in tones of dismay:"There isn't a single tin left. What shall we do?""H'm, let me work my giant brain a moment," pondered Elizabeth. "How about tin shingles? There're a lot of new ones, you know, nice and clean. And plenty of lard-cans. Roy can cut rings from the cans, and lay them on the shingles. They'll be extra large pies, but they'll hold the dough all right."It was a good idea, and it worked out very well, with a little care in handling the bulky "tins," so that there was no more time lost in waiting for cooling pies.Jonah, who kept the fires going, became cheerfully loquacious under the influence of the strong coffee Mrs. Spooner insisted on making, to keep the workers awake at their tasks. He regaled them with thrilling stories of the war, and Munchausen deeds of bravery performed by himself while in service. Tales which served the twofold purpose of inspiring Jonah and amusing his hearers.The girls insisted upon their mother and the Babe going to bed, so as to be rested for the barbecue, which they determined to attend, as the ranch lay only a little way beyond Emerald. But they, with Roy and Jonah as able assistants, kept on baking till the last pie of the hundred and six was cooling on the shelf, and the voice of the oldest and most experienced rooster warned them of the coming dawn.However, every Spooner was up and dressed in time next morning, with the pies safely packed in the wagon, which Jonah was to drive, Roy and the girls acting as Mrs. Spooner's escort.When they started Ruth rode ahead. Nobody but Elizabeth knew what was behind her resolutely smiling face. Pinned in the pocket of her jacket there was a roll of bills--a hundred dollars. The thought of Maudie's exultation over its receipt pinched Elizabeth almost as much as giving up the money. She lagged behind a little and talked of it with Roy. They agreed that the money-earning fever had got into their blood, and that nothing less than a new enterprise to companion this old one, which they agreed must be carried forward, would satisfy either of them.They had reached Emerald when Ruth, trotting briskly along its one street, suddenly felt her pony go lame, and quickly dismounted to examine its hoof for a possible pebble or ball of clay.Suddenly, with a curious little choking cry, she sprang into the saddle and raced ahead, the pony now going quite easily.Roy and Elizabeth exchanged indignant glances. Evidently Ruth was overcome because she had to give up her precious money so soon."I guess it's got on her nerves," whispered Elizabeth. "I feel pretty much like crying, myself.""Ruth must be going ahead to let Cousin Hannah know we are coming," remarked her mother, placidly. "I hope it'll be so that they can all go. I haven't seen any of them since the Harvest Home festival."But Ruth had stopped a little way ahead, waving impatiently for her family to catch up, and hastening on they all arrived at the Pratt home together.Mr. Pratt and his wife came out, Maudie, very much dressed up, followed languidly."Have you got my money, Ruth?" she called in her high, shrill voice. "I bet anything you haven't--and I was depending on it to go to Chicago and study music.""No," answered Ruth, with emphatic clearness, "I'm never going to pay you for that ring. I want to keep the money for myself, and mother and Elizabeth, and the Babe. O, whatlovelythings we'll have out of a whole--hundred--dollars!"The Pratts stared, mystified by this mad speech. Elizabeth gasped--it did sound shocking. Mrs. Spooner was so little informed that she supposed there was a joke on hand, and laughed with motherly complaisance. Only Roy, pulling back close to Elizabeth's shoulder, muttered in an undertone."Ruth's got something up her sleeve. Hold on, don't make up your mind too quick about it.""What in time was Ruthie goin' to pay you a hundred dollars for?" Cousin Hannah demanded, at last."For my diamond ring," cried Maudie, "my lovely diamond ring that Grandma gave me, and that I wouldn't have lost for a thousand dollars.""It never cost to exceed twenty-five," snorted Mr. Pratt. "Ruthie's just right not to pay you more'n that--or half as much. It was partly your fault for lending the ring.""I'm not going to pay her a cent," repeated Ruth, with dancing eyes. "I've got the money--a hundred dollars--see here," and she flourished a sheaf of bills that made them gasp again."I guess I canmakeyou pay," stormed Maudie, "youpromised, and you've got to keep your word.""Well, youdidlose Maudie's diamond, you know. Ain't you goin' to replace it, Ruth?" asked Cousin Hannah, a little wistfully."You must do the right thing, daughter," cautioned Mrs. Spooner, taking a part in the conversation for the first time."I will, mother," said Ruth, suddenly sobered; and she went toward Maudie Pratt with the sheaf of greenbacks in one hand, and something which nobody could see clasped tightly in the other.CHAPTER VIThe Shiny Black BoxThe thing was like a scene in a play, almost. Maudie stood, half abashed, half eager, and wholly frightened. Ruth came forward with a confident, buoyant step that reassured her mother. A girl who was going to do something impudently wrong would never act that way."There," said the plump, smiling Spooner girl, dropping into Maudie's outstretched palm a little lump of adobe clay that looked considerably like a rough pebble. "I picked that out of my pony's hoof, right in the path where I'd lost your ring.""Wha--what is it?" faltered Maudie, afraid to look."Turn it over," prompted Elizabeth impatiently."O, Maudie's almost a paynim, or a caitiff," breathed the Babe, hiding a too sympathetic countenance against her mother's knee.The Pratt girl turned the little lump of clay in trembling fingers. Something glittered on one side of it; the clay parted and a circlet with a wee, shining setting lay in her palm."My diamond ring!" she gasped.Then before them all she flung it from her, so that it tinkled and skipped on the porch floor. This done she sat down on the step and burst into a tempest of wrathful tears."I always hated it," she sobbed. "It's such a miserable little diamond. I wanted that hundred dollars to go to Chicago and study music. How in the world am I going to go if you don't--""Hush, Maudie," Mrs. Pratt cautioned, and her father seconded the admonition rather more sternly.The Spooner young folks had closed in around Mrs. Spooner's vehicle and were helping her out and explaining all about the earning of that hundred dollars. While they did so the Pratts managed to get Maudie straightened up with the assurance that she should be permitted somehow to go to Chicago; and by the time the two groups came together they were ready to drop the subject, Maudie looking self-conscious if not hang-dog, whenever anything remotely concerning a ring was mentioned.They went on harmoniously enough to the Thanksgiving dinner at the McGregor ranch. Coming home after they had passed Emerald and the Pratt house, the matter was again brought up by the Spooners. The sky was all a delightful lavender, with the big, white stars of the plains country beginning to blossom in it, and there was still light enough to travel very comfortably over the winding, level road."I'm proud of the enterprise and persistance you all showed in earning that hundred dollars," said Mrs. Spooner fondly. "But it hurts me to think you could keep a secret from mother as long as that; and such a hard secret, too. I'd have been so glad to help you, dears.""It was my fault," Elizabeth said, "that part of it. I wouldn't let Ruth bother you because I felt that you had worries enough. Of course if I'd dreamed for a minute that Maudie Pratt would tell a story about the value of her ring, and that twenty-five dollars was the real price of it, I should have let Ruth tell you; but a hundred dollars--why, Mother, until we tried, I wouldn't have believed it was possible for us to come anywhere near earning a hundred dollars. Would you?""No," said Mrs. Spooner. "That's why I say I'm proud of you. It's an achievement any three young persons of your age may well be proud of--and none of you neglected your other duties for it.""It waslovely," sighed Elizabeth, reminiscently. "I think making money is almost more fun than spending it. Ruth can always earn with her cooking. I wish I had a special gift. What do you think I can do best, mother?""You do almost anything you do a little better than other people," declared Mrs. Spooner. "But there's one thing you can excel at, and that nobody else around here attempts, and that's photography. Why not try to make a profession of it."Elizabeth thought it over."I suppose I'd have to go to some big town and study," she ruminated."Ruth didn't go to a big town to take cooking lessons," prompted Mrs. Spooner, smilingly. "And you were just admiring the fact that it was her good cooking that made the earning of the hundred dollars possible.""Wise little mother," said Elizabeth, touching her heel to her pony and riding ahead, blowing back a kiss as she passed, and cantering on for some distance."I think that's a splendid idea," said Roy eagerly. "I knew a boy who worked his way through college almost entirely by camera work. And he was just an amateur photographer, too.""I'd help her all I could," put in Ruth, loyally. "She helped me--you all did. I didn't near earn that hundred dollars alone."Here Elizabeth came dashing back to announce to the family that there was an insuperable obstacle. If she went into the simplest kind of photography she would have a new camera--and oh, quite a lot of things."A camera is easy," said Mrs. Spooner, "since you've all agreed to give me the keeping of the hundred dollars, I intend to put it in the bank as a reserve fund to draw on in case of an emergency. I'll consider this case of yours as one, and buy you a camera with some of it.""And I'll fix up a dark-room all right, Elizabeth," promised Roy, who was always intensely interested in all the Spooners' affairs. "I can do it easily; just board up an end of the back porch, fix a red lantern in it for a light, with some shelves and a sink, same as the kitchen. I can make it. It won't cost much, and you can do your own developing. Say, Elizabeth, that's easy!"So it came about that, after some persuasion, Elizabeth finally accepted the camera--a small one, with chemicals, films and everything necessary for a start, all of them to be paid for out of the hundred dollars in the bank. Roy fixed up the darkroom with all the needed apparatus, and, thus equipped, Elizabeth declared herself ready for business, and let the public know it by adding to the sign down at the road gate another line, in smaller letters, which read:"Photographs made to order.Horseback pictures and views of places aspecialty."Ruth still kept up her baking in a small way. She no longer undertook such strenuous jobs as baking for ranches or festivals, but people passing by usually dropped in for a bag of doughnuts or a pie, knowing that they were always kept on hand. Some of these customers patronized Elizabeth's "studio," as she named the little boarded-up corner of the porch, and had their pictures taken. More often she was asked to go and make a card-picture of somebody's home, or she tried snap-shots of cattle handling which sold well to the boys who could identify themselves or their friends in a chance group.Elizabeth made her charges in accordance with her work, which, being an amateur, could not command professional rates. She studied hard her manual of photography, and finally after considerable debate, took a correspondence course in the art. Still, living on a ranch, she could barely make enough to pay for her materials, and indeed was doing well to accomplish this much."When I get so I can earn, and have enough money to buy a bigger camera, I might try a place in town, or maybe I'll put up my prices," she said. But she resisted all suggestions that a finer camera be purchased from the reserve fund. "If anything happens we'll need that to live on," was her wise conclusion.Let nobody think that there were not days of discouragement, when Elizabeth spoiled her films or the simple drudgery of the work weighed on her. Nothing worth having is got without effort. Whatever this girl's ancestry, she had inherited pluck and persistance, and after a failure she always went back to work with renewed energy."Iwilldo it!" she would say to Ruth and Roy. "I am going to try to make myself the very best photographer I can,--and then maybe the next higher profession will come along and invite me in."The Babe, being the only idle inmate of the Silver Spur, continued to devour unchecked her books of romance, until an incident occurred that made Mrs. Spooner decide that the time had come for her reading to be a little more varied. It happened one day in the following summer, when old Jonah, with a worried look on his face, sought her for a little private conversation."It's about the Babe, ma'am. Have you noticed anything pertickler wrong with her lately?" he asked anxiously."Why no, Jonah; what makes you think there's anything wrong? What has she been doing?" asked Mrs. Spooner in alarm. She arose from her seat hastily. "I must go and find her--where is she?""Jest down at the corral, unsaddlin' of her pony," soothed Jonah. "No need to be skeered--at the present. You set down, Mis' Spooner, and I'll tell ye. A while ago I come acrost her out on the range, a-gallopin' along on that little rat-tailed cayuse o' her'n, and I'm blest if she didn't have a broom-handle over her shoulder, and a old fire-shovel helt out right straight in front! She looked out'n her eyes like--well, like she wasseein'things. I calls to her: 'Babe, whar ye gwine?' But law, she looks at me pine-black like I was a stranger, hits Queen Beren-jerry, as she calls that reedic'lous cayuse, and hollers back over her shoulder: 'Avaunt thee, villain!' and a heap o' other lingo I couldn't make sense outer."Mrs. Spooner's face relaxed, she dropped back in her rocking-chair and began to laugh. The old man seemed to resent her mirth."Now Mis' Spooner, you may take it that-a-way, but 'tain't like the Babe to be miscallin' nobody, let alone me what's raised her. My opinion is the child's comin' down with fever, or got a tetch o' the sun, and you better go to dosin' her mighty quick!""No, Jonah," laughed Mrs. Spooner, much relieved, "it's just Ivanhoe gone to her head--not the sun. She reads too much, and is too much alone, I'm afraid. She was only playing she was a knight--a person out of that book she's always reading. But thank you for telling me, all the same.""I'd be glad to think it was no wuss; but--" Jonah shook his head doubtfully, "a-misscallin' me a villian don't seem natchul. I'll go send her in to you, so's you can look at her tongue. My notion is she needs doctor's truck."As he hobbled out in quest of the Babe, Mrs. Spooner sighed a little, feeling that she had a problem to cope with. The lonely child was living too much in a world of dreams. "I'll speak to Elizabeth," the mother mused, thankful that she had Elizabeth's wise young head and Ruth's willing hands to rely upon. The older pair must take little Harvie more into their hearts. "What on earth would I do without my girls to help me!"Both girls were spending the day in Emerald, with Cousin Hannah Pratt, who--now that Maudie was away in Chicago, studying music, and Mr. Pratt up in Wyoming with a herd of fattening cattle--was very lonely, and begged earnestly for some of the Spooners to come in whenever it was possible, and keep her company.When the affair of the ring occurred, Mrs. Pratt for once found it in her heart to give her adored daughter some much needed plain speech, declaring that she was thoroughly ashamed of the way Maudie had treated her cousin, and insisting upon taking the girl out to the Silver Spur, to apologize to Ruth--a deed that was very ungraciously done.Mr. Pratt went even farther, for he took the ring into his own keeping, depositing it in the bank with his papers, and declaring that it should stay there until Maudie learned to value the truth more than diamonds.Still, from that very day Cousin Hannah began to put by a little money every week, with the view in end of gratifying Maudie's wish to study music. Grandma Pratt added to this fund till at last there was enough, and with high hopes Maudie had gone to Chicago, quite sure of becoming a world-famous musician.Elizabeth and Ruth returned rather late, as they had waited for the last mail, which came in the afternoon. Mrs. Spooner heard their merry young voices down at the corral as she moved about the kitchen, getting the early supper ready. Soon they came hurrying in at the back door, their arms laden with bundles, followed by the Babe, now wide-eyed and alert; knights and paynims had faded away before the present-day delights of a box of candy the girls had brought her--an extravagance for which their mother could not find it in her heart to scold them, knowing that, next to her books, the Babe loved sweets."I declare you've gone and got supper ready--you bad mammy!" scolded Ruth, "didn't you know your big daughters would be back in time to save you from such extra work?""Yes, and you must stop right now and go out on the porch, where there's still light from the afterglow, and read your letters--two of 'em, and from the folks you love best--father and Mary." Elizabeth fished the letters from the mail-pouch at her side. "And we've got a heap of mail-magazines, and a letter from home for Roy, that pamphlet on photography that I sent for, and the new films and developer. Ruth had a letter from father, too. He's all right, but make haste and let us hear from Mary.""And here's a candied fig for you to eat while you're readin' your letters, mother," added the Babe, generously, as she held out the particular dainty her heart loved best. "Now I'll go find Jonah and Roy--I want to give them some of my candy, too."Mrs. Spooner looked rather grave when she returned from reading her letters in the afterglow of the summer twilight. "Father's well, and sends love, and wants letters more than anything in the world, he says he hopes we'll all remember. But Mary--the letter's from John--is not so well--." Mrs. Spooner's voice trembled a little--"he sends me a check, and begs that I'll go out and spend a few weeks with her. But how in the world can I leave you all?""Mary not well?" Elizabeth's tones were filled with anxiety--"O, Mother, you must go; we'll get on somehow. If Mr. Bellamy sent a check for you to pay your way, there's nothing at all to prevent.""We can go in and stay with Cousin Hannah," put in Ruth, "she needs us, really--she hasn't got a cook, and there are so many boarders that we'd be a great help, I know."Yes, you would--and I think it would do you both good, being in the village a little while. But what about the Babe?" asked Mrs. Spooner. "You and Elizabeth could help, but she would only be in the way. Jonah was just telling me about seeing her out on the range, galloping along pretending she was Ivanhoe, or somebody else out of her books. I'm afraid the poor little thing needs company.""Take her with you," suggested Elizabeth promptly. "A change would do you both a lot of good. Just take enough money from that reserve fund in the bank to pay her fare, and both of you hustle off just as quick as possible. We can get you ready by day after to-morrow, easily."This plan, after a little consultation with Roy and Jonah, was adopted, and Mrs. Spooner and the delighted Babe set off for Oklahoma, while Elizabeth and Ruth, much to Cousin Hannah's delight, went in to stay with her. Jonah and Roy--who declared that he was just pining to get a taste of Jonah's boasted cookery, were left alone on the ranch.Cousin Hannah, who was naturally a very loquacious person, had become decidedly reticent on the subject of Maudie and her musical studies, though in the beginning the boarders had found the repeated and detailed information about the matter rather wearisome. Even to Elizabeth and Ruth she said little, though more than once, they surprised her wiping away tears as she went about her work."I don't believe that ungrateful Maudie Pratt writes to her mother!" said Ruth, indignantly. "I found Cousin Hannah crying in the parlor just now; she said it wastoothache--when I know she has a full set of 'uppers and unders,' as she calls them. You see, she'd forgotten. I believe she was crying about Maudie.""Ruth," said Elizabeth in reply--they had been at the Pratts three days, "do you remember that a week from to-morrow is Cousin Hannah's birthday?""Why, so it is," said Ruth, "and she hasn't said a word about it. She always used to have a big dinner, didn't she? I know what the trouble is--it's Maudie. She can't bear to have a big birthday dinner because Maudie won't be here. Maybe that's what made her cry.""Yes, because Maudie isn't here, and because she hasn't heard from her in two weeks and is frightened to death about her--I just chanced to find that out. Let's make Cousin Hannah get up a big dinner, and telegraph an invitation to Maudie. The telegraph operator'll send it for nothing. He always gives as much as ten dollars for a birthday present for Cousin Hannah.""A birthday present," repeated Ruth. "I know what she'd like--she told me yesterday. Say, Elizabeth, I believe we could get one for her, too. The Revingtons are going away, and they'd sell theirs cheap, rather than ship it east.""What on earth are you talking about?" demanded Elizabeth."Big secrets!" exclaimed the younger sister exultantly. "Come on and let's run down town to Meeker's store and see if Roy's in from the ranch, I want to talk to him about it. Pretty nearly everybody in town'll join us. Hurry up!"The two girls ran down the street, stopping in at the insurance office to speak to little Miss Thorpe, a new boarder of Cousin Hannah's, a stenographer who had recently come to Emerald. They went on, cheered by this interview, and consulted the station agent, who agreed that Mrs. Pratt, who had made him comfortable for many years, must be given a birthday which would raise her drooping spirits."I'd sure do anything that would bring Maudie home, andkeepher home," he said, rather grimly, "because I know that's what her ma wants--though I'm not so certain that it'll make her or any of the rest of us any happier. If we're all to throw in together, for one present you can count on me to double the ten dollars if it has to come."Roy had joined them by this time, and was taking down what he called "subscriptions" with pencil and paper. As the three young folks went out the door Mr. Rouse called after them:"But you must give us a mighty good dinner, Miss Elizabeth. A good dinner always goes with a celebration of any kind, and to my notion it's the best part of one. So you and Ruth put on your studyin' caps, and get out your cook-books.""We'll promise to give you a good dinner, Mr. Rouse," agreed Ruth, heartily, and Elizabeth added: "If you'll all tell us what particular dishes you like best, we'll try to have them, just as a little token of our appreciation."This was a happy thought, and it pleased the boarders immensely to have such consideration shown them. Ruth got her own pencil and note-book, and gravely made entries of each boarder's favorite dish. It was a funny bill-of-fare that she made out: Chicken-pie and turnip-greens, potato-pone and apple-dumplings, cold-slaw and Waldorf salad, and other equally incongruous dishes, all of which were faithfully and painstakingly prepared by the conscientious little cooks, with certain additions of their own, making a very palatable "company dinner."Elizabeth sent word to Jonah by Roy; he was to come over bright and early on the morning of the birthday, bringing along the wagon to fetch home the gift for Cousin Hannah.Many hands, we know, make work easy. The week went by swift-footed. If Cousin Hannah had heard from Maudie she did not mention it, and if the girls had any reply to their telegram they were equally reticent. The difference was that Mrs. Pratt, in spite of the birthday preparations became more and more doleful, while the girls went out on errands that involved that subscription paper of Roy's, and beamed with joyous anticipation.The great day came. Ruth and Elizabeth helped till the dinner was all on and cooking beautifully, the table set, ready to dish up the dinner when the time came, then they both disappeared in a very mysterious manner, leaving Cousin Hannah bustling about her kitchen all alone.Everything went smoothly till the kettle became dry, and she found there was no water in the pipes. Calling Elizabeth and Ruth repeatedly and finding that they were both out, Cousin Hannah decided that she would go herself and see what was the matter with the wind-mill, as there was nobody else at hand."I know in my mind it's caught," she muttered, "and only needs a tap with a hammer to start it a-goin' again. Well, I justgotto have water, so I reckon I might's well go try to skin up that ladder."Taking a hammer to loosen the refractory sails, she climbed slowly and cautiously up the creaking ladder, and soon had the water flowing again, as the sails began to work; they had needed only a slight jar to loosen them.On top of the ladder she paused, and looked wonderingly over the vast plains that surrounded Emerald."My me! I ain't had such a good look at the country since I used to live in the foothills," she exclaimed. "I feel like I was standin' on top of one of 'em now, viewin' the scenery. O, pity on me--whatis that!"With a gasp of horror she clung to the ladder, her eyes fixed on the object that had attracted her startled attention. It was a wagon driven by a man whom she recognized as Jonah Bean, and containing something long, and black and shiny--a box-like object that made her heart grow cold to look upon. She got a mere glimpse since a horse-blanket had been thrown over it, evidently for the purpose of concealment--as ifanythingcould hide that awful shiny black box:The wagon was coming slowly--very slowly, up the road toward her house, and walking beside and around it was a group of young people whom she knew for her own household--Elizabeth and Ruth, and some of the younger of her boarders, with Roy and one or two other boys from the neighborhood. They seemed excited, and had apparently one stranger with them, since she could see an unfamiliar dress of vivid plaid on the other side of the wagon."O me! O my!" moaned the poor woman, as she started hurriedly to descend from her high perch. "I ain't heard one blessed word from her in a month! And I thought she was just too careless to write to me: My poor, poor girl!"Near the bottom, one of the rungs broke under the weight of her foot, and she barely saved herself from a dangerous fall by clinging with both hands and drawing up her foot to the rung above.Sitting thus she waited for them to come; her eyes shut because she did not want to see, drawing her breath in heavy, muffled sobs, praying for strength to bear the blow that was coming, trying to find courage to look upon that grewsome, shiny black box when the time arrived.The wagon drew up in front of the house, but Roy and Elizabeth came creeping softly round to the kitchen. Cousin Hannah could hear them whispering:"Let's find out exactly where she is, so's we can get it in without her knowing--it might frighten her." How heartless the best of young people were!"Children," quavered poor Cousin Hannah from the ladder, "come and help me down--I know what you're bringing--I saw it away off--and I knew right away--how could I help knowing!""O,didyou!" exclaimed Roy and Elizabeth, dejectedly. They stopped below and stared up. "That's too bad. We'resosorry, Cousin Hannah. We tried our best to get it in before you saw what it was.""What difference does that make?" moaned Cousin Hannah--Roy and Elizabeth thought she must have sprained her foot, and the pain made her groan--"take me to her--my poor, poor child! You shan't call herit!"Roy and Elizabeth laughed rather sheepishly, and Mrs. Pratt glared at them. Had they no feelings!"How on earth did you find out?" asked the mystified young people, as they helped her down and supported her between them into the house.They steered her straight for the parlor, where a crowd stood around the black box."Am I to break the news?" asked Mr. Rouse. But instead of the serious mien proper to such an occasion he was smiling broadly.
CHAPTER V
The Silver Spur Bakery
"Elizabeth," whispered Ruth, tragically, "I have done something too awful to tell--and I've got to tell it."
"I just knew you were dreadfully worried," whispered back Elizabeth, sympathetically. "I knew it as soon as you came back this morning. Mother thought you were just plain tired, but I felt in my bones that there was worse. What is it?"
The two girls were in their room getting ready for bed, tiptoeing and whispering to avoid waking Mrs. Spooner, who was sleeping in the next room.
"It's this, Elizabeth--" Ruth's whisper was a wail of despair--"I've lost Maudie Pratt's--diamond--ring: And I've promised to pay her for it by Thanksgiving! Elizabeth, it cost--a hundred--dollars! And you know I've got just thirty-five cents in all the world!"
Then, Elizabeth remaining dumb from astonishment, she went on to tell the whole story.
"And, O, Elizabeth, howwillI ever get the money?" she ended, despairingly.
"You mustn't tell mother, Ruth," warned Elizabeth, with that sweet, elder-sister air that had grown on her since Mary went away; "she's got worries enough already with father away, and everybody afraid it's going to be a dry year. I can't think just now of any way to earn a hundred dollars quick. I'll sleep on it--maybe I'll dream of a way. One thing's certain; you've got to keep your word, for the credit of the family."
"I was just sure you'd feel that way about it, Elizabeth. What on earth would we do without you!" sighed Ruth, gratefully.
Secure in Elizabeth's ability to find a way, she nestled down among her pillows and went peacefully to sleep. And indeed she needed it sorely, after the miserably wakeful night she had spent with Maudie Pratt.
Elizabeth did not dream at all. She lay awake so long trying to think up some miraculous way by which Ruth and she might earn a hundred dollars, that when she did fall asleep her slumber was entirely too deep for dreams to enter--so deep indeed that it took the warning rattle of the alarm-clock to wake her in time to get the early breakfast necessary for Roy and Jonah.
"Did you think of anything, Elizabeth?" asked Ruth anxiously, as she, too, sprang out of bed at the alarm-clock's warning. And Elizabeth was obliged to confess that she hadn't yet.
"But don't you worry," she soothed, "I'll think of a way. Let's ask Roy, as soon as we get a chance; somehow I feel sure he could help."
It was evening before they found an opportunity to take Roy into their confidence, down at the milk-pen. Milking had been one of the girls' recognized duties before he came, since then he had forbidden them to interfere with the chores, declaring them to be men's work.
Roy set the foaming pails on the fence, turned out the little bunch of milk-pen calves kept to lure home the cows from the open range, and regarded the girls with a grave face.
"I should call that a tough proposition," he said thoughtfully, "but not impossible. In fact it seems that 'most anything's possible if you work hard enough for it. How about cooking, Ruth? You're a dandy on 'pie'n things'. Every ranch round here would buy your truck if it was properly advertised."
"That's just it!" jubilated Elizabeth, "advertise! Ruth, we'll put up a sign-board at the road gate: 'Bread, Doughnuts and Pies for Sale.' Every cowboy that passes will see it, and every single one will buy. I never saw a boy or man that wasn't hungry."
"Elizabeth has a great head," nodded Roy, approvingly, "that's the ticket, Ruth. I'll paint the sign-board to-night and to-morrow you begin baking--money!"
Ruth breathed a sigh of relief. "I just can't thank you enough, Roy," she declared gratefully. "I'll bake day and night if I can just pay Maudie Pratt for that hateful ring!"
Mrs. Spooner was rather bewildered when her young folks--the Babe excepted, begged earnestly for permission to make some money by going into the bakery business.
"We can't tell you just now what it's for, mother," explained Ruth. "Only that it's for something important. You'll know all about it when the right time comes."
"It seems to me that every one of you does as much work as possible, now," doubted Mrs. Spooner. "But as Ruth's heart seems to be set upon this extra labor, I promise not to interfere. And I won't ask any questions about it until you see fit to tell me of your own accord."
The Babe, who had listened carefully to this conversation, beamed hopefully upon them, seeing in the plan certain possibilities.
"I'llhelp you, Ruth," she volunteered magnanimously. "And maybe if you make a whole heap of money, youmighthave enough left over to buy a new Ivanhoe. Mine's got seven leaves lost out, right at the most exciting part."
"Done!" agreed Roy heartily, "I promise that you shall have a new Ivanhoe if you help. The bargain's between you and me, Baby. We'll leave the girls out of it."
"Except to see that you earn your book," laughed Elizabeth.
That night when they were all gathered around the evening lamp, Roy painted the sign on a smooth white board, with some of the brown paint left over from the phaeton. Bread, he declared, was Ruth's "long suit," but as cowboys would scarcely like dry bread, it was cut out of the list. Pies, however, were always acceptable. Custard being objected to as too "squshy," they decided on mince and apple as being best for cooks and customers. Doughnuts, of course, because everybody liked the little fried cakes, and they could be conveniently handled. Completed, the sign read:
"HOME-MADE DOUGHNUTS.APPLE PIES.MINCE PIES.FOR SALE ATSILVER SPUR RANCH."
"Now," decided Roy, after all the family had duly admired his handiwork, "I'm going to Emerald early in the morning, and I'll fetch back all your necessary supplies, down to the paper bags to hold 'em, by noon. The McGregor ranch is shipping cattle--they'll pass here Thursday, one of their punchers told me; that'll be day after to-morrow. You can spend the afternoon baking and be ready for them, for I'm certain they'll buy you out. Their range-cook's quit, and Chunky Bill's cooking for the outfit, so they're about starved for something good to eat."
"We'll be obliged to have the first groceries charged to you, mother," apologized Ruth, "but we promise to pay for them ourselves."
"Very well--only don't buy too much at a time," warned Mrs. Spooner, who was doubtful of the success of the enterprise, "until you are sure of making sales."
"We'll succeed all right, never you fear, mumsy," asserted Roy, with cheerful confidence. "I'll drum up trade, and Ruth's good cooking'll do the rest."
Fuel in that woodless country was quite an item; Roy, realizing this, brought home the next day a load of coke along with the other supplies, all, it was agreed, to be paid for out of the proceeds of the sales.
Also he brought good news from Emerald, where he had met one of the cowboys from the McGregor ranch, who not only confirmed the report of the cattle passing next day, but told him that the ranch cook had quit out there, as well as the man hired to go with the shipping outfit. He offered to get Ruth the job of baking for the ranch until a new cook could be procured.
"Of course I said Ruth would take the job, so he's to bring along the order in the morning. How's that for a beginning for The Silver Spur Bakery?"
"I see land ahead!" exulted Elizabeth, joyfully waving her big cook-apron. "Allow me to invest you with your uniform, Mademoiselle Chef: You will now proceed to mix the magic potions, while the Babe kindles the fire on the Altar of Cookery known to mere mortals as the kitchen range, and I complete the rites by rolling out the crust and filling the tins. Know all men by these greetings, the Silver Spur Bakery is ready for business, and Roy may go tack up the sign."
Inspired by the hope of reward, they made a frolic of the baking working with such zeal and enthusiasm that when evening came and the chief cook doffed her floury apron with a sigh of weary content, there were shelves full of pies and pans full of doughnuts as a result of their labors. Delicate pies, with crisply melting covers and toothsome "inwards," and doughnuts that were deliciously tender and flavory.
"Just for this once we'll let everybody have a treat," decided Ruth, generously. "We'll just make a big pot of coffee and have doughnuts and pie for supper. I want Roy and Jonah to have a taste; they'll relish sweets for a change."
"And I think we'd better let them fix the price, too," suggested Elizabeth. "Men always know more about such things than we do."
Roy and Jonah were most appreciative judges, declaring that twenty-five cents apiece was dirt-cheap for the apple, and--mincemeat costing so much more than dried apples--fifty cents for the mince pies. The doughnuts, being superlatively excellent, were valued at five cents apiece, or fifty cents a dozen.
The Babe could not be kept off the porch next morning, hovering there to watch for the McGregor outfit. Soon, like Bluebeard's sister-in-law, she reported a cloud of dust rising--the customers were coming!
Far ahead of the herd rode a single horseman who turned in at the gate and came galloping up to the house. The futile chuck-wagon, with its incompetent cook, slid past unnoticed while the message from Mrs. McGregor was delivered. She had sent a tin bread-box of ample size, and she wanted it filled with so much bread, cake and pie, that the Silver Spur Bakery was rather startled. She thought the amount she specified might last them for half the week, the messenger said, and at the end of that time she would return the empty tin box to be refilled. And the Spooner girls were to put their own prices on their wares.
While these things were being settled two other riders from the shipping herd came up for sample orders, and hurried into the kitchen with the Babe and Mrs. Spooner, eager to buy something to satisfy the pangs of hunger to which Chunky Bill's cooking had delivered them.
The stocky little Englishman who had brought Mrs. McGregor's note, and said he would be back from Emerald on his return trip next morning for the box, if they would have it ready for him, paused at the edge of the porch and negotiated a more personal errand.
"And I've a little order of my own, Miss," grinned he cowboy genially. "You see, I'm from the old country, myself, and I'm fairly longing for a taste of plum-pudding once more. Think you're equal to making one? I'm willing to pay your own price."
There was a note of wistful eagerness in his voice that touched Ruth's sympathies, but a plum-pudding was, she feared, beyond her powers. Elizabeth, seeing her hesitation, spoke promptly. "Certainly, we'll be pleased to fill your order," she said, with business like briskness. "And if it isn't as good as any you ever ate in England you needn't pay for it."
"I'm sure it'll be rippin' good pudding, if you make it, miss," politely assured the cowboy, and, with a sweeping bow, he mounted his pony and galloped away to join the approaching herd.
As the hundreds of cattle tramped slowly by, one after another of the attending punchers turned in at the Spooner's gate, a purchaser to the full extent of his pocketbook.
Doughnuts and pies fairly melted away; Mrs. Spooner and the Babe filling the bags in the kitchen while Ruth and Elizabeth delivered the goods and received the money.
And, when they counted up the receipts that night, they found that, deducting all expenses, there would be five dollars profit!
"Andthe McGregor ranch to bake for!" crowed Elizabeth, joyously. "Ruth, I plainly see land ahead!"
"I'm so relieved!" sighed Ruth, "But Elizabeth, are you sure you can manage the pudding?"
"'In the bright lexicon of youth there's no such word as fail', little sister," laughed Elizabeth. "Of courseI can bake--or boil--or steam a pudding as well as a born Britisher! In fact, being an American citizen, I don't see why I can't make even a better one. Let me take a look at that old cook-book of mother's."
All the next day they baked for the McGregor ranch, besides boiling the pudding for the Englishman. Elizabeth declared she wanted him to try it before he paid for it, but after one glance and a hearty sniff, he decided to pay in advance the two dollars and fifty cents which Elizabeth had figured out as a fair price.
That it was satisfactory was fully proven when he returned for the next baking, with orders for half-dozen more.
"I poured brandy over it and set it afire, like they do in England," he said. "And every bloomin' puncher that tasted it is wild for more! They call it 'The Perishin' Martyr Pie.' O, it's made a hit, all right."
After that there was quite a run on puddings, and hardly a day passed that the girls did not make a "Perishin' Martyr Pie"--a name that tickled them immensely. Even the Babe learned to mix the batter, and Roy declared he was quite an expert at boiling martyrs.
Money flowed into the little green pasteboard box, so that now there was plenty of company for the lonely thirty-five cents it had originally contained, when Ruth rashly decided she would pay Maudie Pratt for the lost diamond ring. It must be admitted that as the money tide rose Ruth's spirits fell.
"O, it would be so lovely if we were earning it for ourselves," she lamented. "Think of the things we could buy: If we could only give it to mother to help with the living I should be perfectly satisfied--but to go and hand it over to Maudie Pratt for a ring she just made me put on--"
"Now, Ruth," Elizabeth interrupted, laying a loving arm across her junior's shoulder, "we're all getting lots of fun out of the work. I think the whole family is finding that it is really play to earn money. Maybe we'll get into the habit and keep it up after Maudie's ring's paid for. Don't you worry. If we do the best we can, and do it every day, we are going to arrive at delectable places."
Ruth looked at her sister fondly. What would they do without Elizabeth's strong heart and capable head for planning? It was Elizabeth who hunted up a Mexican boy sufficiently reliable to be trusted with a lard-can full of the 'pies 'n things' which found a good market at the round-ups. This was not the season for them, but there is always something of the sort taking place in the cattle country, and Juan was willing to drive an absurd number of miles for a modest share in their profits. Never a cowboy passed the Spooners' attractive sign without galloping up for a purchase, and the early receipts from the bakery were astonishingly good.
But after awhile the McGregors secured a cook, and there were no more round-ups in reach; the cowboys had all become surfeited with a rich excess of "Perishin' Martyrs," so that orders declined and finally fell off altogether on that commodity. The grocer was paid, there was nearly a barrel of flour on hand, and part of a large tin of lard, but there was only seventy-nine dollars earned. Thanksgiving was approaching, and the hearts of the girls began to sink, thinking of its nearness and of the insufficient money in the green box.
And then, the very day before Thanksgiving, the unexpected happened, when Mrs. McGregor rode over, bright and early, from her ranch with a most unusual and imperative order for pumpkin-pies!
It seemed that a lot of unexpected guests had arrived from the east to spend Thanksgiving at the ranch, and, to celebrate the occasion properly, the McGregors had decided to join forces with a neighboring ranch and have a big barbecue and picnic-dinner in the open, to which all the neighbors were invited. The other ranch was to furnish all the meat for the feast--fat mutton and beef and shotes, to be barbecued deliciously over pits of glowing coals, while Mrs. McGregor was to provide the bread, pies and vegetables.
"Of course you should have been notified days ago," said the pleasant little lady, with deprecating hands outspread, "only I didn't know myself 'till last night! Now my cook can manage the bread and vegetables, and you, my dears, must furnish the pumpkin-pies or I'm a forsworn woman: I've calculated and re-calculated, and I find that, allowing five pieces to a pie, it will take a hundred and six pies to give everybody plenty--you know how men eat! Now dears--" she put a persuasive arm around each girl--"canyou bake them?"
Ruth gasped. "How in the world can we--in one day? Of course we have plenty of pumpkins--Jonah raised a big patch of them for cow-feed, and there's a barrel of flour and plenty of lard and sugar and things. But inoneday--"
"We'll do it, Mrs. McGregor," interrupted Elizabeth, smilingly. "We'll fill your order, and thank you very much. Jonah Bean shall deliver them early in the morning."
"My dear girl, you've simply saved my life--I can never thank you enough!" Mrs. McGregor rose, fumbling in her pretty silver wrist-bag. "Twenty-six dollars and fifty cents, I believe. Here's your money--and thank you very, very much: And don't you forget that every single member of your family is expected at our Thanksgiving dinner."
"Why did you take her order, Elizabeth?" wondered Ruth, when their guest was gone, "it will work us to death!"
"Not a bit of it, dear child. Listen, Ruth Spooner, there's just seventy-nine dollars in your green box. Twenty-six added makes a hundred and five. Five dollars is a great plenty for expenses, seeing that we have the pumpkins already. The odd fifty cents will buy a little present for the Babe, and leave you your full hundred to pay Maudie Pratt for her ring. 'Rah, 'rah, 'rah for the girls of the Silver Spur! Our debt's paid!"
"Glory!" Ruth's shouts suddenly wavered, the apron she waved aloft was thrown over her face as she burst into tears.
"O, Elizabeth--shut the door--I don't want anybody else to see me cry. I'm a wretch--and you're a genius--but--but--I can't help thinking about us all working so hard and Maudie Pratt getting all our money!"
"I know, honey," said Elizabeth, understandingly, "if I stop to think I feel that way myself. Let's not stop to think."
Ruth choked down her tears, bathed her eyes and turned a resolute face from the washstand.
"I'm all right," she said in a determinedly cheerful voice.
Elizabeth threw open the bedroom door and ran out among their helpers.
"Kindle a fire, Babe, while we get the pumpkins. Isn't it a mercy that Roy and Jonah are off the range to-day and can stay. Everybody'll have to get to work cutting up pumpkins--even mother."
All day they baked. The stove in the house, the brick oven in the yard which had scarcely been allowed to get cold since Ruth began her enterprise, were both kept filled. The baked pies were lifted out of their tins as soon as cool enough and dropped into paper plates. But even so they could not get enough tins to keep the baking up to the volume required for getting out the hundred pies in that length of time. At last Ruth announced in tones of dismay:
"There isn't a single tin left. What shall we do?"
"H'm, let me work my giant brain a moment," pondered Elizabeth. "How about tin shingles? There're a lot of new ones, you know, nice and clean. And plenty of lard-cans. Roy can cut rings from the cans, and lay them on the shingles. They'll be extra large pies, but they'll hold the dough all right."
It was a good idea, and it worked out very well, with a little care in handling the bulky "tins," so that there was no more time lost in waiting for cooling pies.
Jonah, who kept the fires going, became cheerfully loquacious under the influence of the strong coffee Mrs. Spooner insisted on making, to keep the workers awake at their tasks. He regaled them with thrilling stories of the war, and Munchausen deeds of bravery performed by himself while in service. Tales which served the twofold purpose of inspiring Jonah and amusing his hearers.
The girls insisted upon their mother and the Babe going to bed, so as to be rested for the barbecue, which they determined to attend, as the ranch lay only a little way beyond Emerald. But they, with Roy and Jonah as able assistants, kept on baking till the last pie of the hundred and six was cooling on the shelf, and the voice of the oldest and most experienced rooster warned them of the coming dawn.
However, every Spooner was up and dressed in time next morning, with the pies safely packed in the wagon, which Jonah was to drive, Roy and the girls acting as Mrs. Spooner's escort.
When they started Ruth rode ahead. Nobody but Elizabeth knew what was behind her resolutely smiling face. Pinned in the pocket of her jacket there was a roll of bills--a hundred dollars. The thought of Maudie's exultation over its receipt pinched Elizabeth almost as much as giving up the money. She lagged behind a little and talked of it with Roy. They agreed that the money-earning fever had got into their blood, and that nothing less than a new enterprise to companion this old one, which they agreed must be carried forward, would satisfy either of them.
They had reached Emerald when Ruth, trotting briskly along its one street, suddenly felt her pony go lame, and quickly dismounted to examine its hoof for a possible pebble or ball of clay.
Suddenly, with a curious little choking cry, she sprang into the saddle and raced ahead, the pony now going quite easily.
Roy and Elizabeth exchanged indignant glances. Evidently Ruth was overcome because she had to give up her precious money so soon.
"I guess it's got on her nerves," whispered Elizabeth. "I feel pretty much like crying, myself."
"Ruth must be going ahead to let Cousin Hannah know we are coming," remarked her mother, placidly. "I hope it'll be so that they can all go. I haven't seen any of them since the Harvest Home festival."
But Ruth had stopped a little way ahead, waving impatiently for her family to catch up, and hastening on they all arrived at the Pratt home together.
Mr. Pratt and his wife came out, Maudie, very much dressed up, followed languidly.
"Have you got my money, Ruth?" she called in her high, shrill voice. "I bet anything you haven't--and I was depending on it to go to Chicago and study music."
"No," answered Ruth, with emphatic clearness, "I'm never going to pay you for that ring. I want to keep the money for myself, and mother and Elizabeth, and the Babe. O, whatlovelythings we'll have out of a whole--hundred--dollars!"
The Pratts stared, mystified by this mad speech. Elizabeth gasped--it did sound shocking. Mrs. Spooner was so little informed that she supposed there was a joke on hand, and laughed with motherly complaisance. Only Roy, pulling back close to Elizabeth's shoulder, muttered in an undertone.
"Ruth's got something up her sleeve. Hold on, don't make up your mind too quick about it."
"What in time was Ruthie goin' to pay you a hundred dollars for?" Cousin Hannah demanded, at last.
"For my diamond ring," cried Maudie, "my lovely diamond ring that Grandma gave me, and that I wouldn't have lost for a thousand dollars."
"It never cost to exceed twenty-five," snorted Mr. Pratt. "Ruthie's just right not to pay you more'n that--or half as much. It was partly your fault for lending the ring."
"I'm not going to pay her a cent," repeated Ruth, with dancing eyes. "I've got the money--a hundred dollars--see here," and she flourished a sheaf of bills that made them gasp again.
"I guess I canmakeyou pay," stormed Maudie, "youpromised, and you've got to keep your word."
"Well, youdidlose Maudie's diamond, you know. Ain't you goin' to replace it, Ruth?" asked Cousin Hannah, a little wistfully.
"You must do the right thing, daughter," cautioned Mrs. Spooner, taking a part in the conversation for the first time.
"I will, mother," said Ruth, suddenly sobered; and she went toward Maudie Pratt with the sheaf of greenbacks in one hand, and something which nobody could see clasped tightly in the other.
CHAPTER VI
The Shiny Black Box
The thing was like a scene in a play, almost. Maudie stood, half abashed, half eager, and wholly frightened. Ruth came forward with a confident, buoyant step that reassured her mother. A girl who was going to do something impudently wrong would never act that way.
"There," said the plump, smiling Spooner girl, dropping into Maudie's outstretched palm a little lump of adobe clay that looked considerably like a rough pebble. "I picked that out of my pony's hoof, right in the path where I'd lost your ring."
"Wha--what is it?" faltered Maudie, afraid to look.
"Turn it over," prompted Elizabeth impatiently.
"O, Maudie's almost a paynim, or a caitiff," breathed the Babe, hiding a too sympathetic countenance against her mother's knee.
The Pratt girl turned the little lump of clay in trembling fingers. Something glittered on one side of it; the clay parted and a circlet with a wee, shining setting lay in her palm.
"My diamond ring!" she gasped.
Then before them all she flung it from her, so that it tinkled and skipped on the porch floor. This done she sat down on the step and burst into a tempest of wrathful tears.
"I always hated it," she sobbed. "It's such a miserable little diamond. I wanted that hundred dollars to go to Chicago and study music. How in the world am I going to go if you don't--"
"Hush, Maudie," Mrs. Pratt cautioned, and her father seconded the admonition rather more sternly.
The Spooner young folks had closed in around Mrs. Spooner's vehicle and were helping her out and explaining all about the earning of that hundred dollars. While they did so the Pratts managed to get Maudie straightened up with the assurance that she should be permitted somehow to go to Chicago; and by the time the two groups came together they were ready to drop the subject, Maudie looking self-conscious if not hang-dog, whenever anything remotely concerning a ring was mentioned.
They went on harmoniously enough to the Thanksgiving dinner at the McGregor ranch. Coming home after they had passed Emerald and the Pratt house, the matter was again brought up by the Spooners. The sky was all a delightful lavender, with the big, white stars of the plains country beginning to blossom in it, and there was still light enough to travel very comfortably over the winding, level road.
"I'm proud of the enterprise and persistance you all showed in earning that hundred dollars," said Mrs. Spooner fondly. "But it hurts me to think you could keep a secret from mother as long as that; and such a hard secret, too. I'd have been so glad to help you, dears."
"It was my fault," Elizabeth said, "that part of it. I wouldn't let Ruth bother you because I felt that you had worries enough. Of course if I'd dreamed for a minute that Maudie Pratt would tell a story about the value of her ring, and that twenty-five dollars was the real price of it, I should have let Ruth tell you; but a hundred dollars--why, Mother, until we tried, I wouldn't have believed it was possible for us to come anywhere near earning a hundred dollars. Would you?"
"No," said Mrs. Spooner. "That's why I say I'm proud of you. It's an achievement any three young persons of your age may well be proud of--and none of you neglected your other duties for it."
"It waslovely," sighed Elizabeth, reminiscently. "I think making money is almost more fun than spending it. Ruth can always earn with her cooking. I wish I had a special gift. What do you think I can do best, mother?"
"You do almost anything you do a little better than other people," declared Mrs. Spooner. "But there's one thing you can excel at, and that nobody else around here attempts, and that's photography. Why not try to make a profession of it."
Elizabeth thought it over.
"I suppose I'd have to go to some big town and study," she ruminated.
"Ruth didn't go to a big town to take cooking lessons," prompted Mrs. Spooner, smilingly. "And you were just admiring the fact that it was her good cooking that made the earning of the hundred dollars possible."
"Wise little mother," said Elizabeth, touching her heel to her pony and riding ahead, blowing back a kiss as she passed, and cantering on for some distance.
"I think that's a splendid idea," said Roy eagerly. "I knew a boy who worked his way through college almost entirely by camera work. And he was just an amateur photographer, too."
"I'd help her all I could," put in Ruth, loyally. "She helped me--you all did. I didn't near earn that hundred dollars alone."
Here Elizabeth came dashing back to announce to the family that there was an insuperable obstacle. If she went into the simplest kind of photography she would have a new camera--and oh, quite a lot of things.
"A camera is easy," said Mrs. Spooner, "since you've all agreed to give me the keeping of the hundred dollars, I intend to put it in the bank as a reserve fund to draw on in case of an emergency. I'll consider this case of yours as one, and buy you a camera with some of it."
"And I'll fix up a dark-room all right, Elizabeth," promised Roy, who was always intensely interested in all the Spooners' affairs. "I can do it easily; just board up an end of the back porch, fix a red lantern in it for a light, with some shelves and a sink, same as the kitchen. I can make it. It won't cost much, and you can do your own developing. Say, Elizabeth, that's easy!"
So it came about that, after some persuasion, Elizabeth finally accepted the camera--a small one, with chemicals, films and everything necessary for a start, all of them to be paid for out of the hundred dollars in the bank. Roy fixed up the darkroom with all the needed apparatus, and, thus equipped, Elizabeth declared herself ready for business, and let the public know it by adding to the sign down at the road gate another line, in smaller letters, which read:
"Photographs made to order.Horseback pictures and views of places aspecialty."
Ruth still kept up her baking in a small way. She no longer undertook such strenuous jobs as baking for ranches or festivals, but people passing by usually dropped in for a bag of doughnuts or a pie, knowing that they were always kept on hand. Some of these customers patronized Elizabeth's "studio," as she named the little boarded-up corner of the porch, and had their pictures taken. More often she was asked to go and make a card-picture of somebody's home, or she tried snap-shots of cattle handling which sold well to the boys who could identify themselves or their friends in a chance group.
Elizabeth made her charges in accordance with her work, which, being an amateur, could not command professional rates. She studied hard her manual of photography, and finally after considerable debate, took a correspondence course in the art. Still, living on a ranch, she could barely make enough to pay for her materials, and indeed was doing well to accomplish this much.
"When I get so I can earn, and have enough money to buy a bigger camera, I might try a place in town, or maybe I'll put up my prices," she said. But she resisted all suggestions that a finer camera be purchased from the reserve fund. "If anything happens we'll need that to live on," was her wise conclusion.
Let nobody think that there were not days of discouragement, when Elizabeth spoiled her films or the simple drudgery of the work weighed on her. Nothing worth having is got without effort. Whatever this girl's ancestry, she had inherited pluck and persistance, and after a failure she always went back to work with renewed energy.
"Iwilldo it!" she would say to Ruth and Roy. "I am going to try to make myself the very best photographer I can,--and then maybe the next higher profession will come along and invite me in."
The Babe, being the only idle inmate of the Silver Spur, continued to devour unchecked her books of romance, until an incident occurred that made Mrs. Spooner decide that the time had come for her reading to be a little more varied. It happened one day in the following summer, when old Jonah, with a worried look on his face, sought her for a little private conversation.
"It's about the Babe, ma'am. Have you noticed anything pertickler wrong with her lately?" he asked anxiously.
"Why no, Jonah; what makes you think there's anything wrong? What has she been doing?" asked Mrs. Spooner in alarm. She arose from her seat hastily. "I must go and find her--where is she?"
"Jest down at the corral, unsaddlin' of her pony," soothed Jonah. "No need to be skeered--at the present. You set down, Mis' Spooner, and I'll tell ye. A while ago I come acrost her out on the range, a-gallopin' along on that little rat-tailed cayuse o' her'n, and I'm blest if she didn't have a broom-handle over her shoulder, and a old fire-shovel helt out right straight in front! She looked out'n her eyes like--well, like she wasseein'things. I calls to her: 'Babe, whar ye gwine?' But law, she looks at me pine-black like I was a stranger, hits Queen Beren-jerry, as she calls that reedic'lous cayuse, and hollers back over her shoulder: 'Avaunt thee, villain!' and a heap o' other lingo I couldn't make sense outer."
Mrs. Spooner's face relaxed, she dropped back in her rocking-chair and began to laugh. The old man seemed to resent her mirth.
"Now Mis' Spooner, you may take it that-a-way, but 'tain't like the Babe to be miscallin' nobody, let alone me what's raised her. My opinion is the child's comin' down with fever, or got a tetch o' the sun, and you better go to dosin' her mighty quick!"
"No, Jonah," laughed Mrs. Spooner, much relieved, "it's just Ivanhoe gone to her head--not the sun. She reads too much, and is too much alone, I'm afraid. She was only playing she was a knight--a person out of that book she's always reading. But thank you for telling me, all the same."
"I'd be glad to think it was no wuss; but--" Jonah shook his head doubtfully, "a-misscallin' me a villian don't seem natchul. I'll go send her in to you, so's you can look at her tongue. My notion is she needs doctor's truck."
As he hobbled out in quest of the Babe, Mrs. Spooner sighed a little, feeling that she had a problem to cope with. The lonely child was living too much in a world of dreams. "I'll speak to Elizabeth," the mother mused, thankful that she had Elizabeth's wise young head and Ruth's willing hands to rely upon. The older pair must take little Harvie more into their hearts. "What on earth would I do without my girls to help me!"
Both girls were spending the day in Emerald, with Cousin Hannah Pratt, who--now that Maudie was away in Chicago, studying music, and Mr. Pratt up in Wyoming with a herd of fattening cattle--was very lonely, and begged earnestly for some of the Spooners to come in whenever it was possible, and keep her company.
When the affair of the ring occurred, Mrs. Pratt for once found it in her heart to give her adored daughter some much needed plain speech, declaring that she was thoroughly ashamed of the way Maudie had treated her cousin, and insisting upon taking the girl out to the Silver Spur, to apologize to Ruth--a deed that was very ungraciously done.
Mr. Pratt went even farther, for he took the ring into his own keeping, depositing it in the bank with his papers, and declaring that it should stay there until Maudie learned to value the truth more than diamonds.
Still, from that very day Cousin Hannah began to put by a little money every week, with the view in end of gratifying Maudie's wish to study music. Grandma Pratt added to this fund till at last there was enough, and with high hopes Maudie had gone to Chicago, quite sure of becoming a world-famous musician.
Elizabeth and Ruth returned rather late, as they had waited for the last mail, which came in the afternoon. Mrs. Spooner heard their merry young voices down at the corral as she moved about the kitchen, getting the early supper ready. Soon they came hurrying in at the back door, their arms laden with bundles, followed by the Babe, now wide-eyed and alert; knights and paynims had faded away before the present-day delights of a box of candy the girls had brought her--an extravagance for which their mother could not find it in her heart to scold them, knowing that, next to her books, the Babe loved sweets.
"I declare you've gone and got supper ready--you bad mammy!" scolded Ruth, "didn't you know your big daughters would be back in time to save you from such extra work?"
"Yes, and you must stop right now and go out on the porch, where there's still light from the afterglow, and read your letters--two of 'em, and from the folks you love best--father and Mary." Elizabeth fished the letters from the mail-pouch at her side. "And we've got a heap of mail-magazines, and a letter from home for Roy, that pamphlet on photography that I sent for, and the new films and developer. Ruth had a letter from father, too. He's all right, but make haste and let us hear from Mary."
"And here's a candied fig for you to eat while you're readin' your letters, mother," added the Babe, generously, as she held out the particular dainty her heart loved best. "Now I'll go find Jonah and Roy--I want to give them some of my candy, too."
Mrs. Spooner looked rather grave when she returned from reading her letters in the afterglow of the summer twilight. "Father's well, and sends love, and wants letters more than anything in the world, he says he hopes we'll all remember. But Mary--the letter's from John--is not so well--." Mrs. Spooner's voice trembled a little--"he sends me a check, and begs that I'll go out and spend a few weeks with her. But how in the world can I leave you all?"
"Mary not well?" Elizabeth's tones were filled with anxiety--"O, Mother, you must go; we'll get on somehow. If Mr. Bellamy sent a check for you to pay your way, there's nothing at all to prevent."
"We can go in and stay with Cousin Hannah," put in Ruth, "she needs us, really--she hasn't got a cook, and there are so many boarders that we'd be a great help, I know.
"Yes, you would--and I think it would do you both good, being in the village a little while. But what about the Babe?" asked Mrs. Spooner. "You and Elizabeth could help, but she would only be in the way. Jonah was just telling me about seeing her out on the range, galloping along pretending she was Ivanhoe, or somebody else out of her books. I'm afraid the poor little thing needs company."
"Take her with you," suggested Elizabeth promptly. "A change would do you both a lot of good. Just take enough money from that reserve fund in the bank to pay her fare, and both of you hustle off just as quick as possible. We can get you ready by day after to-morrow, easily."
This plan, after a little consultation with Roy and Jonah, was adopted, and Mrs. Spooner and the delighted Babe set off for Oklahoma, while Elizabeth and Ruth, much to Cousin Hannah's delight, went in to stay with her. Jonah and Roy--who declared that he was just pining to get a taste of Jonah's boasted cookery, were left alone on the ranch.
Cousin Hannah, who was naturally a very loquacious person, had become decidedly reticent on the subject of Maudie and her musical studies, though in the beginning the boarders had found the repeated and detailed information about the matter rather wearisome. Even to Elizabeth and Ruth she said little, though more than once, they surprised her wiping away tears as she went about her work.
"I don't believe that ungrateful Maudie Pratt writes to her mother!" said Ruth, indignantly. "I found Cousin Hannah crying in the parlor just now; she said it wastoothache--when I know she has a full set of 'uppers and unders,' as she calls them. You see, she'd forgotten. I believe she was crying about Maudie."
"Ruth," said Elizabeth in reply--they had been at the Pratts three days, "do you remember that a week from to-morrow is Cousin Hannah's birthday?"
"Why, so it is," said Ruth, "and she hasn't said a word about it. She always used to have a big dinner, didn't she? I know what the trouble is--it's Maudie. She can't bear to have a big birthday dinner because Maudie won't be here. Maybe that's what made her cry."
"Yes, because Maudie isn't here, and because she hasn't heard from her in two weeks and is frightened to death about her--I just chanced to find that out. Let's make Cousin Hannah get up a big dinner, and telegraph an invitation to Maudie. The telegraph operator'll send it for nothing. He always gives as much as ten dollars for a birthday present for Cousin Hannah."
"A birthday present," repeated Ruth. "I know what she'd like--she told me yesterday. Say, Elizabeth, I believe we could get one for her, too. The Revingtons are going away, and they'd sell theirs cheap, rather than ship it east."
"What on earth are you talking about?" demanded Elizabeth.
"Big secrets!" exclaimed the younger sister exultantly. "Come on and let's run down town to Meeker's store and see if Roy's in from the ranch, I want to talk to him about it. Pretty nearly everybody in town'll join us. Hurry up!"
The two girls ran down the street, stopping in at the insurance office to speak to little Miss Thorpe, a new boarder of Cousin Hannah's, a stenographer who had recently come to Emerald. They went on, cheered by this interview, and consulted the station agent, who agreed that Mrs. Pratt, who had made him comfortable for many years, must be given a birthday which would raise her drooping spirits.
"I'd sure do anything that would bring Maudie home, andkeepher home," he said, rather grimly, "because I know that's what her ma wants--though I'm not so certain that it'll make her or any of the rest of us any happier. If we're all to throw in together, for one present you can count on me to double the ten dollars if it has to come."
Roy had joined them by this time, and was taking down what he called "subscriptions" with pencil and paper. As the three young folks went out the door Mr. Rouse called after them:
"But you must give us a mighty good dinner, Miss Elizabeth. A good dinner always goes with a celebration of any kind, and to my notion it's the best part of one. So you and Ruth put on your studyin' caps, and get out your cook-books."
"We'll promise to give you a good dinner, Mr. Rouse," agreed Ruth, heartily, and Elizabeth added: "If you'll all tell us what particular dishes you like best, we'll try to have them, just as a little token of our appreciation."
This was a happy thought, and it pleased the boarders immensely to have such consideration shown them. Ruth got her own pencil and note-book, and gravely made entries of each boarder's favorite dish. It was a funny bill-of-fare that she made out: Chicken-pie and turnip-greens, potato-pone and apple-dumplings, cold-slaw and Waldorf salad, and other equally incongruous dishes, all of which were faithfully and painstakingly prepared by the conscientious little cooks, with certain additions of their own, making a very palatable "company dinner."
Elizabeth sent word to Jonah by Roy; he was to come over bright and early on the morning of the birthday, bringing along the wagon to fetch home the gift for Cousin Hannah.
Many hands, we know, make work easy. The week went by swift-footed. If Cousin Hannah had heard from Maudie she did not mention it, and if the girls had any reply to their telegram they were equally reticent. The difference was that Mrs. Pratt, in spite of the birthday preparations became more and more doleful, while the girls went out on errands that involved that subscription paper of Roy's, and beamed with joyous anticipation.
The great day came. Ruth and Elizabeth helped till the dinner was all on and cooking beautifully, the table set, ready to dish up the dinner when the time came, then they both disappeared in a very mysterious manner, leaving Cousin Hannah bustling about her kitchen all alone.
Everything went smoothly till the kettle became dry, and she found there was no water in the pipes. Calling Elizabeth and Ruth repeatedly and finding that they were both out, Cousin Hannah decided that she would go herself and see what was the matter with the wind-mill, as there was nobody else at hand.
"I know in my mind it's caught," she muttered, "and only needs a tap with a hammer to start it a-goin' again. Well, I justgotto have water, so I reckon I might's well go try to skin up that ladder."
Taking a hammer to loosen the refractory sails, she climbed slowly and cautiously up the creaking ladder, and soon had the water flowing again, as the sails began to work; they had needed only a slight jar to loosen them.
On top of the ladder she paused, and looked wonderingly over the vast plains that surrounded Emerald.
"My me! I ain't had such a good look at the country since I used to live in the foothills," she exclaimed. "I feel like I was standin' on top of one of 'em now, viewin' the scenery. O, pity on me--whatis that!"
With a gasp of horror she clung to the ladder, her eyes fixed on the object that had attracted her startled attention. It was a wagon driven by a man whom she recognized as Jonah Bean, and containing something long, and black and shiny--a box-like object that made her heart grow cold to look upon. She got a mere glimpse since a horse-blanket had been thrown over it, evidently for the purpose of concealment--as ifanythingcould hide that awful shiny black box:
The wagon was coming slowly--very slowly, up the road toward her house, and walking beside and around it was a group of young people whom she knew for her own household--Elizabeth and Ruth, and some of the younger of her boarders, with Roy and one or two other boys from the neighborhood. They seemed excited, and had apparently one stranger with them, since she could see an unfamiliar dress of vivid plaid on the other side of the wagon.
"O me! O my!" moaned the poor woman, as she started hurriedly to descend from her high perch. "I ain't heard one blessed word from her in a month! And I thought she was just too careless to write to me: My poor, poor girl!"
Near the bottom, one of the rungs broke under the weight of her foot, and she barely saved herself from a dangerous fall by clinging with both hands and drawing up her foot to the rung above.
Sitting thus she waited for them to come; her eyes shut because she did not want to see, drawing her breath in heavy, muffled sobs, praying for strength to bear the blow that was coming, trying to find courage to look upon that grewsome, shiny black box when the time arrived.
The wagon drew up in front of the house, but Roy and Elizabeth came creeping softly round to the kitchen. Cousin Hannah could hear them whispering:
"Let's find out exactly where she is, so's we can get it in without her knowing--it might frighten her." How heartless the best of young people were!
"Children," quavered poor Cousin Hannah from the ladder, "come and help me down--I know what you're bringing--I saw it away off--and I knew right away--how could I help knowing!"
"O,didyou!" exclaimed Roy and Elizabeth, dejectedly. They stopped below and stared up. "That's too bad. We'resosorry, Cousin Hannah. We tried our best to get it in before you saw what it was."
"What difference does that make?" moaned Cousin Hannah--Roy and Elizabeth thought she must have sprained her foot, and the pain made her groan--"take me to her--my poor, poor child! You shan't call herit!"
Roy and Elizabeth laughed rather sheepishly, and Mrs. Pratt glared at them. Had they no feelings!
"How on earth did you find out?" asked the mystified young people, as they helped her down and supported her between them into the house.
They steered her straight for the parlor, where a crowd stood around the black box.
"Am I to break the news?" asked Mr. Rouse. But instead of the serious mien proper to such an occasion he was smiling broadly.