CHAPTER III
All night Jeanette had been unable to sleep more than half an hour at a time. Never in her life before could she recall such an experience.
Tired after their long excursion and the finding of the silver arrow, the excitement of meeting her father and the new stepmother, she had expected to fall into a sound slumber as soon as her head touched the pillow.
This had not happened and now it was dawn.
Getting out of bed, Jeanette walked over to a window.
Her room, which she occupied alone, was at the back of the big house. The view showed the carefully tended kitchen garden, the stables at some distance away, and beyond the long sweep of their own fields. One could catch a dim outline of a distant rim of hills.
The window was open. Thrusting out her head, Jeanette drew in a deep breath of the sweet morning air.
No one else on the place was yet astir.
Yawning, she glanced toward her bed and then outside again. Which called to her most? She was sleepy and yet felt she would be unable to sleep.
A ride before breakfast perhaps would put her in a better frame of mind to meet the new day. She dressed quickly in an old riding suit of blue corduroy.
Outside her window there was a long tangle of heavy vines supported by a lattice and twisting about the posts of the porch.
Wishing no one in the house to know of her departure, Jeanette crawled out of her window and clambered carefully down to the porch railing. This was not her first descent. By her own efforts the vines had been arranged to form a kind of natural stepladder.
Outdoors she hurried off to the stables. Here she saddled one of the ranch ponies. Her own had been too wearied by the long journey the day before.
She was about to ride away when she observed some one else slipping out of the house alone. She looked not a great deal older at this distance than Lina.
Jeanette recognized that she was the one person she did not wish to meet and talk with at the present time.
Without a sign she hurried off.
Not until she was a mile from home had she a sense of freedom.
Her stepmother she knew to be one of the most famous riders in the state.
Jeanette's fear had been that she might follow and ride with her.
She turned into a little-traveled bridle-path.
On ascending from the ravine the day before the four new Ranch Girls had found themselves not so great a distance from home as they feared. Near the ranch was an opening into the ravine which must for years have been closed with a thick tangle of underbrush. Of late some one had thrust the way through.
If she were pursued, Jeanette's idea was to hide behind the shrubs and thick sagebushes until she could safely emerge from shelter.
This was unnecessary.
Instead of concealing herself, she rode on a mile or so more. She planned to be back in time for breakfast.
The morning was too lovely to waste now that she had given up the hope of sleep.
Leaving the path, Jeanette set off across an open field.
Overhead the western larks were soaring and singing. The early spring wild flowers had gone, but the summer hedges of wild roses were in full bloom.
A few trees dotted the landscape, carefully planted and tended by the ranchmen. The pungent odor of the eucalyptus tree, an occasional scrub pine and tall bushes of sage alone broke Jeanette's view of the country.
Her pony swerved sharply before an object in his path.
Jeanette looked quickly down. Lying on the ground in a comfortable relaxed position was the figure of a boy about fifteen years old.
He had been asleep, but now sat up, looking indignant and rubbing his eyes.
"Your horse nearly ran over me! Why, you might have killed me!" he protested angrily.
Your Horse Nearly Ran Over Me.
Your Horse Nearly Ran Over Me.
Without intending to be disagreeable, Jeanette smiled. The following instant she slid off her horse.
"I am sorry to have alarmed you. Please explain to me why you are lying here in one of our fields asleep at this hour of the morning? I don't think we have seen each other before. Perhaps you are visiting one of our neighbors?"
Jeanette's sense of humor conquered her good manners.
This time she laughed aloud. Visitor or no visitor, why was he not in bed if he wished to sleep?
Seated in as disconsolate an attitude and wearing as aggrieved an expression as if he had been a child, Jeanette beheld a tall, thin boy with light hair curling close about a high, blue-veined forehead. He had blue eyes, a well-cut nose. It was his mouth, Jeanette decided, which gave him the infantile appearance. The lips were full and pouting as a spoiled girl's.
"I am glad you consider me amusing," he replied, a little sullenly. "I am not sure whether I am a visitor, or whether I have to live for some time in this plagued western country. I'd almost rather be dead than stay here many months. There is nothing to see, nothing to do. I feel as if I were a thousand miles from anywhere."
Jeanette glanced upward.
The sun had risen and was shining in the full golden glory of early summer morning. The fields planted in alfalfa or in grains were purple and green, the rolling prairies were velvet swards, the edges of the desert lines of silver.
Awake and about the business of their day were droves of sheep and cattle. Not far away young colts were frisking about their mothers.
On this occasion Jean showed no indication of laughter. Instead she frowned, a straight line appearing between her dark eyebrows.
"What an extraordinarily stupid and rude thing to say! Do get up off the ground, you look so absurd. Isn't that your pony grazing over there? I had not noticed before. By the time you ride back to your friends you surely will wish your breakfast. I only hope you are not so rude to them about their part of the country as you have been to me. I adore the West and everything about our ranch lands. Good-by, I must be off toward home."
Starting to turn away, Jeanette felt the skirt of her dress, tightly clutched.
Surprised and angered, she swung around. She discovered that her new acquaintance had risen to his feet and was blushing hotly.
"I beg your pardon, I did not intend being rude. Please do not go away at once. I don't suppose you have ever known what it means to be desperately homesick, so homesick it makes one actually ill. That is the way I feel at present.
"My home is in New York. I have never been anywhere else, except once to Europe and to our summer place on Long Island. My father is dead and I am the only child. Before I have been with my mother always.
"This summer for some strange reason she decided to go to Europe and not to take me with her. She said I was growing older and needed to become more manly. As my health has not been good the doctor advised I be sent West to live outdoors and ride and fish and hunt. I hate every outdoor sport.
"I am staying with Mr. Stevens—Peter Stevens. He is a lawyer and an old friend of my father's. They went to school together, I believe, so dad made him my guardian. I don't like him, either. If he had not come East on a visit and said I was growing up a mollycoddle, I should not have played in such poor luck as to be cast out here to live in the desert! Why, there isn't a theater, or a shop, or a human being worth looking at.—Oh, I say, I do beg your pardon honestly this time. Won't you have some candy?"
The boy put his hand into his pocket and drew forth a small box of French chocolates.
"Perhaps you will tell me your name and let me tell you mine?"
Jeanette shook her head.
"No, thank you, no candy at this hour of the morning. I confess I love it far too much at other times. Oh, I'll tell you my name gladly enough. It is Jeanette Colter. This is our ranch, the Rainbow Ranch. Mr. Stevens is a friend of my father's and my new stepmother's."
Unconsciously the girl's expression changed to one only a little less gloomy than her companion's had been a short time before.
At this he whistled sympathetically.
"Have you a stepmother? Is she new or have you had her some time? I tell you I never mean my mother to marry again. I have told her any number of times how I should hate it. She has promised never to marry without my consent—and that she will never receive."
"You strike me as being extremely selfish," Jeanette contemplated saying and then desisted. After all, her new companion was only expressing the sentiment she felt. Her wishes had not been consulted.
"You have not told me your name," she remarked more amiably than she so far had spoken.
"Cecil Perry. You won't like it. Mother prefers that people pronounce 'Cecil' in the English fashion."
Jeanette shrugged her shoulders.
"Oh, very well; I never heard the English pronunciation before. Good-by once more, Mr. Cecil Perry. I would ask you to tell Mr. Stevens to bring you to call on my father and sisters and me, and oh, yes, on my stepmother as well, if you did not find everybody in Wyoming so tiresome."
Again the young fellow flushed.
"I told you I was sorry. I don't understand why you pretend to be an angelic character. One can guess from seeing you that you often say and do the wrong thing. You have a lot of temper. If you were homesick in New York I should not be half so disagreeable to you."
Jeanette was annoyed by the truth in the strange boy's speech. She was also pleased that he was possessed of more spirit than she had suspected.
"Why not ride home to breakfast with me instead of waiting to have Mr. Stevens bring you? I shall be delighted not to have our breakfast this morning a strictly family affair."