THE WET BLANKET.
"JACK, how are we ever going to quit using slang?" Jean groaned.
"Oh, we do worse things, Jean Bruce," Jack answered unfeelingly. "Little we know how many crimes we do commit! Just wait until a straight-laced old maid gets hold of us! And what will Cousin Ruth say about Jim's grammar? You know she is a B.A. from some woman's college. Do you know Jean, I often wonder if Jim talks in the careless way he does simply because he has lived so long out here with the cowboys. He must have had some education when he was young, he seems to have read a great many books."
"Jim Colter is a clam," Jean remarked impatiently, forgetting her resolution to speak only "English, pure and undefiled." "He would rather die than to let us learn anything of his past. I do declare, Jack, that if he were anybody in the world except Jim, I should think he had something in hislife he wished to conceal. I wonder if he ever had a tragic love affair?"
"Oh, Jean, you are a romantic goose," Jack exclaimed. "What was it you had to show me?"
Jean and Jack were giving a thorough cleaning to the living-room; Aunt Ellen had shaken the rugs and polished the pine floor, but the two girls were dusting vigorously in every crack and corner and rubbing the brass candlesticks with an unaccustomed ardor.
Through the entire Lodge there rioted a sense of preparation, as before the approach of some great event.
Jean flung down her dust cloth, seized Jack by the hand and marched her over to the corner lined with their book shelves.
Jack discovered an entirely unknown row of books. "Why, Jean Bruce!" Jack exclaimed in amazement. "Where did you ever find these old things and what do we want with them anyhow?"
Jack was staring at Congressional reports, a few ancient law books and a treatise on medicine. But there also were eight volumes of Gibbon's "Rome," Greene's "History of TheEnglish People," and several other valuable old histories, arranged in a conspicuous place on the book shelves. Jean's most cherished novels had been stuck out of sight.
Jean smiled a superior smile. "I found the books upstairs in Uncle's trunk, of course, and I brought them down here to impress our new chaperon or governess, which ever you choose to call her. I was determined she should not think we were perfect dunces when she arrived at Rainbow Lodge."
Jack appeared to reflect. "I don't see how it will do much good," she argued, half laughing. "Cousin Ruth will soon find out that we don't know anything in the books worth mentioning."
But Jean was not in the least discouraged. "First impressions are always the most important, Jacqueline Ralston," she announced calmly. "My advice to this family is to let Cousin Ruth get her shocks from our wild behavior by degrees so that she will have time to rally in between."
"Do you think she is going to find us so very dreadful?" Jack inquired quite seriously, without the trace of a smile. She was climbing up on a ladder to try to straighten abeautiful golden lynx skin, which was slipping off the wall.
"Worse than wild Indians," Jean replied, unmoved, "just you mark my words, Miss Ralston. For instance, Miss Drew is going to announce that it is a perfect shame for any one to shoot a poor dear wildcat. Uncle ought to have reasoned with that cat when it jumped at him. She is going to hate us and all our ways forever and want to go back to her blessed New England in a week."
Jack sighed, "you are a Job's comforter, Jean. But you don't have to worry, I know Cousin Ruth will hold me responsible for our wicked ways. You see I wrote her that we did not want her to come out to us when she first said she would. Then I had to eat humble pie and say we did. But even if she does not like you or me, Jean, she can't help caring for Olive and Frieda. Olive is the prettiest, shyest girl in the world."
Jean nodded. "Jack," she asked more sympathetically, "is Cousin Ruth horribly old?"
"She is twenty-eight and a dreadful old maid," Jack confessed sadly. "Jean, you have simply got to ride over to the station with Jim to meet her this afternoon."
Jean shook her head and dropped languidly into a large reclining chair. "I am not at all well, Jack," she answered, "I forgot to tell you this morning, but I feel a bad cold coming on. If I should take a long ride I am sure I should be quite ill."
Jack stared at her cousin searchingly. "You don't show the least sign of a cold, Jean," she argued.
"That is because appearances are deceiving, sweet coz," Jean murmured. "How is our dear lady cousin going to get over to the ranch?"
"Oh, Jim is going to lead a horse over for her to ride back on," Jack announced quite unconscious of breakers ahead. "You see the train gets in so late that we couldn't get home until after dark, if we drove over, and I thought it would be kind of nice to have Cousin Ruth arrive at Rainbow Lodge just at twilight. You didn't think to look among father's books for a stray paper, did you, Jean?" Jack asked, trying to appear indifferent.
"Yes, I did, Jack," Jean returned quickly. "There wasn't anything. Let's don't talk about it. I promise to have everything atthe Lodge to-night in ship-shape order, when you arrive. We have cleaned up the whole house and we will put on our best clothes and stand out on the veranda to meet you; we might even sing, 'Hail, the conquering hero comes,' if you think it would be appreciated."
"Do you suppose Jim could meet Cousin Ruth without me?" Jack queried, as a forlorn hope.
Jean shook her head decidedly. "Most certainly not, Jack; never in the world! The lady would think Jim was trying to kidnap her and he would be scared to death." Jean kissed Jack apologetically. "I know I am horrid, Jack, to put all the hard things off on you because you are a little bit the oldest, but really, if I had to meet Cousin Ruth at the station, I'd shiver and shake until I fell off my horse. I will do the next hard thing that has to be done on this place, I will honestly, cross my heart and body," Jean argued penitently.
Three weeks had passed since Jim Colter's and Jack's eventful ride across the ranch. It was late October, but unusually mild and warm. Cousin Ruth had been written to on the very evening of the decision, so that therecould be no chance for a change of purpose on the part of the ranch girls, for they felt that they were in for it and were determined to do their best.
Miss Ruth Drew was entirely alone in the world except for one good-for-nothing brother and had just enough money to eke out a bare existence in a dull little Vermont town. She wanted an object in life and believed that the ranch girls needed her. So soon as Jack's letter arrived, she had telegraphed that she would come to them at once. Since then, the days at Rainbow Lodge had slipped by like magic until the fated day arrived. Jim Colter and Jack, with many inward misgivings, mounted their ponies and leading an extra one for Miss Drew, rode to the station.
The express from the East would be due in an hour.
Jack and Jim paced restlessly up and down the station platform, with their arms locked. Jim looking even more wretched and unhappy than Jack. He wondered how in the world he was to treat the old lady cousin when she came out to them, and whether she would shut off from caring for his adored ranch girls.
Jim had not the remotest idea of Miss RuthDrew's age. The name had an elderly sound to it and Jack had described her as an old maid; consequently Jim's mental picture showed a small, grey-haired woman with corkscrew curls, somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty, with thin lips and a penetrating eye. She would probably reduce him to powder with a single glance, but he meant to be as polite to her as he humanly could and to speak to her only when it was absolutely necessary.
"Jim," Jack suggested finally, "you have sighed like a human bellows three times in the past five minutes. If you meet Cousin Ruth with that expression, she'll think we are sorry she has come. Please go over into the town and buy yourself some tobacco or something to cheer you. I'll get on Tricks and ride up and down near the track for a while, and then we will both be in a better humor when the train finally does get in."
Miss Ruth Drew sighed. She was sitting in the Pullman car with her eyes closed and an expression of supreme fatigue on her sallow but not unattractive face.
It seemed to her that she had been traveling ever since she could remember. Werethere people in the world idiotic enough to think there was beauty in the western prairies? For days she had looked out on bare stretches of endless brown plains rising and falling in one monotonous chain. The sand was in her eyes, in her ears, in her mouth; worst of all, it had piled up in a great mass of homesickness on her heart.
How could she have turned her back on dear New England villages, with their sleepy, green and white homesteads and trim gardens, for this vast desert? "Of course, she was doing her duty in coming to look after four motherless girls," Ruth remembered, with a pang, but her duty at the present moment did not appear cheerful.
When the conductor announced that the next station was hers, Ruth sat up and arranged her hat and veil neatly. She adjusted her glasses on her thin nose and put back the single lock of hair that had strayed from its place. Her heart began to flutter a little faster. Was she actually arriving in the neighborhood of Rainbow Ranch? It didn't seem possible!
If you can imagine a very prim, grey mouse kind of girl, who looked a good deal older thanshe was, with ash brown hair and eyes and a neat tailor-made suit to match, you will get a very good impression of Miss Ruth Drew. Her figure was very good and her mouth might have been pretty, except that it looked as though she disapproved of a great many things, and that is never becoming. But she was tired and homesick and it was not a fair time to judge her.
It would be another fifteen minutes before she would get into Wolfville, and Ruth closed her eyes again. There was nothing to see out of her window that was in the least interesting and she preferred to think about the ranch girls. She wondered if they would be very hard to get on with, if they were very wild and reckless. It made her shudder: the idea of her cousin's children growing up with only a common cowboy for their friend and adviser.
There was a little stir in the car, the engine had slowed down. Ruth opened her eyes; what had made her traveling companions' faces brighten with interest? Three or four of them rushed across the aisle and pressed their noses up against the window panes on her side of the coach. One man threw up thecar window, leaned out and shouted: "Hurrah!" A woman waved her handkerchief.
Ruth's curiosity was aroused and she gazed languidly out her window. Flying along the road that followed the line of the track, was a Western pony. The horse was running like a streak, his nostrils quivering with excitement, his feet pounding along the hard sand.
"Beat it! beat it!" cried the excited stranger. "Did anybody ever see such riding before?" The man addressed the entire car.
Ruth could see that there was someone on the horse, running a race with the express train. The rider was in brown and Ruth could not observe very distinctly. She supposed that it was an Indian boy.
"That girl is a wonder!" the man exclaimed, who had been traveling next the prim young woman from the East for four days without daring to look straight at her. He leaned over his seat and smiled.
"Girl!" Miss Drew repeated in surprise. "Was the figure on horseback a girl?" Ruth was quite willing to admit that she had never seen such horsemanship in her life. The girl was perfectly graceful and at times she leaned over to urge her pony on, or bent sideways asthough she swayed with the motion of the wind. She seemed to rest on her horse so lightly that she added no burden to him but was like the spirit of motion carrying him on.
The engine ahead whistled three times. The train was moving slowly, still it was remarkable how the rider kept up with the passenger coach.
Just as the car rolled into the station, the girl on horseback flashed a smile at the people watching her from the car windows, and Ruth had a brief glimpse of a shaft of sunlight caught in a mass of bright, bronze hair and a pair of radiant cheeks and eyes. Then she seized her suit case and umbrella, slipped into her overshoes and hurried out of the train. She had read that it rarely rained in Wyoming, except in the spring, but she wished to run no risk of taking cold.
AN UNFORTUNATE ARRIVAL.
THERE was no one on the platform when Ruth dismounted, but a tall man, who was not looking for her. He was oddly handsome in spite of his queer Western clothes, and Ruth wished for an instant that he might be Mr. Colter. Evidently he was not. He stared at her curiously for a few seconds, then searched anxiously along every other exit of the train.
Cousin Ruth could discover no one else. The madcap girl, who had run her wild race with the train, was a little distance off. She was holding three ponies by their bridles, and as one of them was dancing with nervousness on account of the noise of the engine, the girl had her hands full.
Ruth Drew's heart sank to ten degrees below zero. Had she traveled across the continent to a wild Western town to find no one to meet her? The ranch girls could not be so rude; and Ruth determined to ask the good-looking man with the worried expression, what she ought to do.
"Can I Do Anything For You, Ma'am?""Can I Do Anything For You, Ma'am?"
Jim was gazing sadly after the departing coaches. You see he was looking for a white-haired woman of about fifty, and supposed that the old lady hadn't known enough to get off the train at the right station, and had gone on to the next stop. How in the world would he be able to connect with her?
Jim saw the young woman on the platform, but she wasn't as large and didn't seem to him to be much older than Jack. He supposed she had come to visit some of their ranch neighbors, yet she looked unhappy, as though she wanted to cry. Jim's heart was touched.
He took off his broad Mexican hat, and Ruth thought with a sudden gasp that she had never seen such blue eyes and such black hair before.
"Can I do anything for you, ma'am?" Jim inquired politely. "It 'pears like your folks haven't come to meet you."
Ruth shook her head. She was too full of tears to trust herself to speak for a moment. "I am afraid not," she answered finally. "Will you be good enough to tell me how I can get over to the Rainbow Ranch? I have come to live with the Ralston girls. I am their cousin—"
"Not Ruth?" Jim exclaimed, forgetting his shyness in his surprise. "You can't be Cousin Ruth, because the girls told me she was an old maid." Jim stopped abruptly, conscious that he had put his foot in it with his first remark to their new visitor.
Cousin Ruth drew herself up a little stiffly. She did not like to be called "an old maid," perhaps because she knew she often acted and looked like one, but she was too tired to care much about anything at present. She only longed with all her heart to be driven home to Rainbow Lodge.
"I am Cousin Ruth just the same," she answered feebly, trying to smile.
Jim grabbed her suit case, carried her umbrella like a shot gun, and marched her toward the girl who was holding the three horses, the same girl who had shocked and entertained her from the car window.
Jacqueline slid off her pony and passed the three bridles to Jim. She did not know whether she ought to kiss her cousin or only to shake hands with her, for there was something in Ruth's expression that froze Jack's first affectionate intention. Ruth was truly horrified at Jack's behavior. She didn't seehow a girl could be so reckless of appearances.
Jack held out a slim, cool hand. "I am awfully glad to see you, Cousin Ruth. It was very good of you to come out to us. I hope you are not tired," Jack remarked, as though she had learned her greeting out of an etiquette book. She was as stiff as a wooden Indian, because she felt so abominably shy.
Ruth's feelings were hurt. She did not think of her own manners, merely of Jack's. "Yes, I am tired," she replied coldly. "Is the carriage waiting for us in the town?"
Jack's face reddened. Jim gave a hasty glance of embarrassment toward the two women. There was an awkward silence.
Jack found her voice first. "We didn't bring a wagon over for you, Cousin Ruth. We don't own a carriage," Jack explained. "It is so late that we didn't think we would get to the ranch before night, if we drove. We brought a horse for you to ride."
Ruth Drew sank limply on the ground. "A horse to ride!" she exclaimed faintly. "I have never been on a horse in my life. How far is it to the ranch?"
"Ten miles," Jack acknowledged shame-facedly.Ten miles did sound like a great distance to a stranger, although the ranch girls had always thought that they lived very close to town; but the idea of a full-grown, able-bodied woman not knowing how to ride horseback had never entered Jacqueline Ralston's head. What on the face of the green earth were they to do? "You had better go over into the town and see if you can get a carriage, Jim," Jack advised. "I never thought of Cousin Ruth's not liking to ride. I can lead the two horses home, if you will drive her over."
Jack was really miserably embarrassed at her own failure as a hostess. She knew that they were making a dreadful first impression on Cousin Ruth, and Jean had warned her that first impressions were most important. But Ruth Drew thought she caught something in Jack's tone that sounded supercilious. There was nothing so extraordinary in Ruth's being ignorant of horses, she had never been rich enough to own one; yet it was quite impossible for the Eastern girl and the Western one to understand each other's points of view.
Jim Colter came back utterly crestfallen; there was no carriage to be had in the town.
With the courage of despair, Ruth let herself be swung up on the homely broncho. She was horribly frightened, although Jack assured her that she was riding the gentlest pony on the ranch, one that belonged to little Frieda. It made no difference, Ruth slipped and slid. She clutched the pony's mane in her hands and let Jim lead her, yet every time the pony went out of a walk, Ruth wanted to shriek with fear. She had traveled hundreds and hundreds of miles from Vermont to Wyoming, but the distance was as nothing to her ten-mile horseback ride to Rainbow Lodge.
Every muscle in Ruth's body ached; she had a horrid stitch in her side and swayed uncertainly in the saddle. Each moment she expected to fall off.
The ride home seemed almost as long to Jack and Jim as it did to their guest. They were so ashamed of themselves, and Jack's cheeks were hot with blushes every time she looked at her new cousin.
After about an hour of slow traveling, Jack caught sight of Ruth. Her face was grey with pain and fatigue.
"Stop, Jim," Jack called sharply. "Cousin Ruth is going to faint."
Ruth had a dim recollection of being lifted off her horse and for the rest of her journey she felt herself being held up by a strong arm. Now and then a man's voice spoke to her, as if she were a little girl and he were trying to comfort her. He was a haven of refuge and Ruth did not think or care who or what he was, and finally he brought her safely to Rainbow Lodge.
Jack thought she had never seen her home so lovely. There was a golden glow behind the house and the wind stirred through the quivering yellow leaves of the cottonwood trees. RainbowCreeklay on one side of them and on the other the broad sweep of the plains. Jack gazed wistfully at Ruth who was riding in front of Jim; surely their new cousin would show some interest in her new home!
Jean, Frieda and Olive ran out in the yard to meet the cavalcade. Jack waved her hand, but Cousin Ruth did not open her eyes.
"We are about home, now, Miss Drew," Jim found courage to say.
"Heaven be praised!" Ruth sighed. She could barely speak.
Aunt Ellen was waiting on the porch in a starched white apron, and took in the situationwith quick sympathy. She saw her girls' disappointed, embarrassed faces and their cousin's worn one.
Aunt Ellen gathered Ruth in her arms. "Leave her alone, honies, she is just tired out," she explained to the ranch girls. And without the least effort from Ruth, Aunt Ellen got her in bed, fed her some broth and told her to go to sleep and not to worry.
In the big living-room with its splendid pine fire, Jack, Jean, Frieda and Olive ate their feast of welcome alone.
It was hardly worth while to have taken so much trouble to get ready for a guest who looked neither at you nor your house when she came in to it.
Jack was plainly cast down. Jean, Frieda and Olive were almost as discouraged.
"I think Cousin Ruth is tiresome," Jean exclaimed petulantly. "I don't see why she couldn't have spoken to us."
Frieda's blue eyes filled with tears. "I don't believe she is going to like us very much," she added disconsolately.
"I am dreadfully afraid of her already," Olive sighed. "Are you sure, Jack, that you explained to her about me? Shenot like my living with you at the ranch."
Jack put her arm about Olive and drew her toward the fire. "Of course Cousin Ruth will care for you as much as she does for any one of us, Olive; she has to," Jack insisted. "Remember that while you haven't any name of your own, you are Olive Ralston. Isn't it splendid that old Laska and Josef have left us in peace? I wonder if they do intend to give you up to us without any more fuss!"
Olive shivered a little in Jack's grasp. "I hope so," she answered fervently. "Laska and the old Indian life seem hundreds of years away. Yet I have been at the ranch only a little less than a month."
"Don't worry, Olive," Jack returned thoughtfully. "Let us just be glad to-night that we have one more evening alone;" which shows how Jack felt about the arrival of the new chaperon.
The girls sat up quite late. Frieda went to sleep with her head in Jack's lap, Jean fell to nodding, but Olive and Jack were wide awake. Olive was older than the ranch girls had thought her at first. She must have come next to Jack, although old Laska had never told Olive her exact birthday.
ALL SAVE JACK!
IT was nearly noon next day when the latest comer to Rainbow Lodge awoke. She still felt sore and stiff from her long journeyings, but she could never remember such a blissful sleep in her life.
Out her bedroom window, Ruth thought she caught the sound of the girls' voices and dipping into her wrapper, threw up her window blind. The sun flooded her room with a curious radiance. Ruth felt she had never known what real sunlight was before. It certainly cleared away the mists from her heart and brain.
Ruth gazed around her room. It was a joy to her in its wide sunlit emptiness. The girls had hung white muslin curtains at the windows, the little pinewood table, chair and bureau were painted white and the bed was white iron. A little fire burned in the low grate, for Aunt Ellen had stolen in and laid it, without wakening their guest. There was no color in the room except the soft brown stainon the walls and floor, and one bright, red and black Indian blanket.
Ruth understood that the girls had made the place lovely for her. She began to feel that perhaps they did want her with them after all. Unconsciously she yielded to the cheerful spirit of Rainbow Lodge and hurrying into her clothes, found Aunt Ellen ready with her toast and coffee.
Aunt Ellen explained that the ranch girls had disappeared somewhere about the ranch. They had waited for their visitor, but when it seemed that she was going to sleep all day, they vanished.
"You mustn't mind, Miss," Aunt Ellen murmured apologetically, "but they can't somehow stay indoors, so long as the good weather holds."
Cousin Ruth went shyly out on the ranch-house veranda. She was thinking regretfully of what a bad impression she had made on her cousins the night before, because she, too, had planned a very different kind of meeting. No recollection remained of any one of the girls, except Jack, whom she would always remember as the young Centaur she saw racing across the plains.
Ruth strolled slowly down the path through the cottonwood trees. She was beginning to feel lonely, and hoped one of the girls would turn up soon. Above her head the yellow leaves rustled softly and the brown landscape no longer looked uninteresting. It was all new and strange, she thought, but some day she might learn to care for it.
If Miss Drew had not been so deep in her reflections, she would not have been so terrified a moment later. For suddenly in her way there loomed a big shaggy animal and a pair of huge paws clung to her shoulders.
Ruth screamed.
"Down! Shep, down!" cried a merry voice. "I am so sorry, Cousin Ruth. Shep is our watchdog. He never realizes that visitors don't understand his friendly intentions."
Jean slipped through an opening in the trees, carrying a tin bucket on her arm. "I have been for some milk," she explained. "The cows Jim keeps for our use have their stable near Jim's house and Aunt Ellen wanted some extra milk and sent me for it. I hope you feel quite rested."
Jean sometimes tilted her head, with its mass of heavy brown hair, a bit to one side,when she was deeply interested. She surveyed their new chaperon with such a merry, friendly sparkle in her wide-open brown eyes that Ruth was charmed with her at once. She couldn't have guessed that Miss Jean Bruce was making a rapid inventory of Miss Ruth Drew's character, inside and out.
"Manner, stiff and old maidy; complexion, bad; hair pretty, if she fixed it differently; mouth looks like she has eaten something acid, except when she smiles, then mouth and eyes quite nice; figure small, but distinctly good."
Ruth was patting old Shep, for as usual Jean was talking in a steady stream. "Hope you didn't mind our going off and leaving you," she apologized. "You see we have a good many small duties about the ranch. Jack probably won't be back until luncheon, but I am sure we will soon find Frieda and Olive."
Ruth leaned over. "Won't you kiss me, Jean?" she asked unexpectedly. "I have an idea you and I may be good friends." She guessed that Jean was mischievous and full of fun, but not nearly so hard to influence as headstrong Jack.
Jean's manner softened. She put down her milk pail and gave the much-discussed cousin an affectionate hug. "I hope you are going to be happy with us at Rainbow Lodge," she exclaimed. "You know we are used to doing pretty much what we like, but remember, if things go wrong, you are going to tell us how to behave," and she ended her advice with such a funny expression that Cousin Ruth laughed and slipped her hand through Jean's arm.
"Just let me get through with playing 'Molly the Milkmaid,' Cousin Ruth, and we will go find the other girls," Jean suggested when they got back to the ranch house. A minute later Jean reported that Aunt Ellen thought Olive and Frieda were somewhere near the creek. Olive had suggested that she would try to catch some fresh fish for Cousin Ruth's luncheon.
The waters of Rainbow Creek were no longer in danger of flowing into the Norton ranch. Jim and his men had built a dam at the end of Rainbow Lake, where the dynamite explosion had taken place. The Ralston Ranch had filed suit for damages against Mr. Norton, but the claim had not yet been settled.
Ruth and Jean crossed some stepping-stones to the wooded side of the stream and had walked only a short distance beyond, when Ruth spied a gleam of color a little farther on. It was Frieda, who wore a red Tam, a red sweater and her long blonde plaits tied with red ribbons. She was sitting on the stump of an old tree sewing some bits of ribbon together as calmly as though she had been in a little rocking-chair by the fire. She looked so like a little German mädchen, though she was so far away from theVaterland, that Ruth wanted to laugh aloud.
"Frieda!" called an unfamiliar voice.
Frieda glanced quickly up. She was making a pincushion for their new cousin and had not had time to finish, but hoped to be through with it before Olive landed her fish.
The bits of silk ribbon fluttered to the ground as Frieda caught sight of a stranger not much larger than Jean. She had her arms outstretched and such an eager look in her nearsighted eyes that Frieda flew straight to her.
"I am awfully glad to see you, I am really," Frieda announced, giving her new cousin an old-fashioned hug. "There are such a lot ofthings I want you to show me that Jack and Jean and Olive don't know a single thing about. And I am sure I shall like you in spite of what—" But a warning look from Jean cut short Frieda's confidences.
"Where is Olive?" Jean asked quickly.
"She is not very far away," Frieda answered, "but you must walk softly or you will frighten the fish."
Cousin Ruth tiptoed as softly as Frieda could wish. She was curious to see this new ranch girl whom Jack had written her about, and she would have been sorry to have missed her first vision of Olive.
Olive hung out over the water, where the creek deepened into a small pool, under the branches of a scrub pine tree. One slender arm clung to a limb of the young tree as she looked down into the muddy water in the shadow of the evergreen boughs. Ruth had a quick and vivid impression of her glossy black hair; her delicate figure, with its peculiar woodland grace, clothed in an old green dress the color of the autumn grass, and caught her breath in wonder. The girl looked like a dryad who had stolen out of the heart of a tree to catch an image of herself in the water.
"Olive, don't fall in the creek," Jean called out gaily. "Come and be introduced to Cousin Ruth; she would rather see you than have fish for her luncheon."
Olive gave a startled cry and Jean made a dive for her. But Olive did not tumble into the water. She gave a quick jerk to her fishing line, hooked and drew in a good-sized trout. Then Olive slipped up the bank to the others. Ruth looked curiously at the dark, rich coloring of her face; she did not seem like an Indian, and yet she certainly bore no resemblance to an American girl. Cousin Ruth felt that she would be an interesting study, although Olive was too shy to say more than a dozen words of greeting.
"Come on, let's walk a little farther along the creek, Jack won't be home for a while yet," Jean declared. "Jack thinks the ranch would go to rack and ruin unless she were around to boss things."
"Don't you think maybe it would?" Olive questioned gently.
Jean laughed. "Oh, I expect so, Olive; but how you do take up for Jack! Cousin Ruth, you will have to protect Frieda and me.Olive thinks Jack is perfection and agrees to anything she says."
"Look, look! Oh, please don't talk," Frieda cried in excitement, pointing up in the sky above the bed of the creek.
A weird troop of birds was flying toward them, uttering a queer, guttural noise. They were some distance off, but their short wings seemed to clack like Spanish castanets and their long legs looked like dangling bits of string.
"What on earth are those creatures?" Ruth asked helplessly. She was surely seeing interesting sights in what she had thought a barren and desert land.
"They are sand cranes," Olive whispered softly. "Let's be quite still. They are flying so low, I think they mean to alight. They must have mistaken the creek for a river."
Frieda snickered and put her hand to her mouth.
"Shsh, Frieda," Olive cautioned. "These funny birds are as shy as deer. If they do alight, they will probably come down in the cleared field."
The birds swept slowly down nearer theearth in a half circle, still uttering their curious cries. It was as Olive said, they were moving toward an open field.
The four girls crept breathlessly through the trees and bushes, until they could find peepholes.
The cranes dipped down. One of them touched the ground, then another descended, and the third joined them; the birds stood each with a long thin leg drawn up out of sight, until the whole flock had landed in a circle on the ground. The leader must have squawked: "Bow to your partners, swing your corners," for the birds immediately started a stately dance. They flapped their wings, they twisted their long necks, they fanned their short tails and made strange signs to one another. They hopped together to a given spot and then hopped back again, never for a single moment losing their solemn dignity.
Ruth held in as long as she could. But really this dance of the sand-hill cranes was the funniest sight she had ever seen in her life! She laughed silently, until the tears ran down her cheeks, her glasses slid off her nose and she forgot she had ever thought of beinghomesick. Frieda chuckled softly at first. But finally Jean and Olive joined in, and the secret audience burst into a roar.
The leader of the cranes cast a shocked, horrified glance behind him, clacked a signal to his followers and the birds rose together in flight.
Olive ran out into the field and a long, light brown feather fluttering downward from the last bird in the flock, rested for a second in her black hair. Frieda skipped toward her. "Give the feather to me, Olive," Frieda begged. "It is exactly what I want to trim my doll's hat."
But Olive made no answer, and when she joined Ruth and Jean she looked a little pale.
"What's the trouble, Olive?" Jean asked. "You look so funny, just like you were frightened over something."
Olive shook her head. "Oh, I know I am silly," she explained, "and I don't really believe in it. But there is an old Indian legend, that when a bird drops a feather at your feet, it is to give you a warning of approaching danger. There is an Indian story of a young chief who was on his way to war. Three times an eagle cast down a featherbefore him. The chief knew what the signal meant, but he went on into battle just the same. Of course he and his men were killed!"
Jack was waiting at the ranch house when the girls returned. She tried to stifle the pang of jealousy she felt when Frieda clung to her new cousin, instead of racing to her in her usual fashion.
Jack and Ruth shook hands politely. Each one of them tried to be as friendly as possible to the other. But to save their lives they could not get rid of their first feeling of antagonism.
WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK.
"THERE is not the least harm in it, Cousin Ruth. It is only that you don't understand our Western customs," Jack announced sweetly.
She was standing in front of the living-room fire with her hands clasped behind her. Her head was up in the air, showing the firm line of her chin and the mutinous expression of her eyes, which were half closed.
It was after tea at Rainbow Lodge and, except for Jack and Cousin Ruth, the scene would have been a peaceful and beautiful one.
Jean was playing softly on a new piano which had lately been installed at the Lodge, for among other things the new governess was giving the ranch girls music lessons. Jean, who had studied before and had a good deal of talent, was rarely away from the piano when she was in the house. Frieda leaned against her cousin, watching her play, while Olive had a book in her lap, pretending toread. Cousin Ruth sat by the library table with a basket of mending beside her and a very uncompromising expression on her face. She was pale to-night, although she looked in better health and younger than she had when she first arrived at Rainbow Ranch three weeks before.
"I am sorry to differ with you, Jack," Ruth returned firmly. "But it would be very difficult to convince me that a round-up is any place for a young girl. If it is a western custom for girls to attend them, then I think the custom is shocking. In any case I am certainly not willing for you to go."
Jack's eyes flashed defiantly. For three weeks there had been a kind of armed neutrality between Jacqueline Ralston and her new cousin. Jack considered that she had been very patient with Cousin Ruth's bossing. Ruth believed that she had been very forbearing with Jack's pride. Jack had given up her beloved custom of riding over the ranch every morning, to spend three poky hours in the schoolroom with the other girls, but she did not intend to be interfered with any further in her plans for running their ranch.
"I am sorry, Cousin Ruth," Jack argued, still keeping her temper under control. "In anything else I should be quite willing to give up to your judgment, but you see I happen to know about our Wyoming round-ups and you don't. They are not nearly so wild and bloodthirsty as you imagine. I shall not go near the place where they are herding the cattle, though lots of times women drive over to the round-ups and stay on the outskirts of things just to see the cowboys and horses pass by. It's simply great!" For a moment Jack's eyes sparkled, but then she tried to appear more serious. "Besides, Cousin Ruth, it happens to be a matter of business for me to attend the round-up this fall. This is the last one until spring and, as I told you, it will be only a small one, but lots of our cattle have been disappearing for months and I want to consult with some of our neighboring ranchmen about it. Jean Bruce, do please stop making that noise," Jack demanded, her bad humor flashing out at Jean.
Jean brought her music to an end with a loud crash, and then came over and sat down cross-legged on a rug by the fire in front of Ruth.
"Don't waste your time arguing with Jack, Cousin Ruth," Jean advised. "When she says she ought to do a thing, she means she intends to do it. It is perfectly absurd for Jack to insist that she has any business at the round-up, for she knows perfectly well that Jim can attend to everything. It is nobody in the world but old Dan Norton who is stealing our cattle and it seems to me we had better not have any more trouble with him, until more important affairs are settled."
"I entirely agree with you, Jean," said Cousin Ruth severely. "Jack, you are not old enough to decide such matters for yourself."
Jack did not answer. She directed a single angry glance at Jean, but Jean was hard to quarrel with. She made the most irritating speeches and then looked as innocent as a lamb. Frieda had stolen up to Jack and slipped her hand in her sister's. It frightened Frieda terribly when people quarreled, and Jack saw that her little sister's eyes were full of tears.
Jack walked over and sat down in a big chair, drawing little Frieda up in her lap and there was an uncomfortable silence in theroom until feet sounded along the hall and a knock came at the living-room door.
"Why it's Jim!" Jean exclaimed in surprise, scrambling to her feet. "I wonder what brings him up to the ranch house to-night? We have seen hardly anything of him since Cousin Ruth arrived!"
Ruth bent her head lower over her work. It was true. She need not have feared Mr. Colter's influence with the ranch girls, for he had not been to the Lodge, except on business, since she undertook to chaperon them. He was very polite to her, but he seemed afraid to speak in her presence. Ruth wondered if she seemed as much of an old maid to him as he had thought her at first.
"Jim, what's up? You are a swell to-night," Jean teased. "Did you think we were giving a party?"
Jim did look different. He wore a stiff white shirt instead of a soft flannel one and could hardly turn his head in his starched linen collar.
Frieda flew to him with a little cry of welcome.
"What's the matter, baby?" Jim demanded, noticing Frieda's flushed cheeks. As hegazed slowly around the family group, he noticed Miss Jacqueline Ralston's haughty expression and Miss Ruth Drew's severe one; saw Olive's troubled face and Jean's mischievous one. "I guess I had better be going," Jim suggested, backing toward the door.
"Oh, no, Jim," Jack insisted carelessly. "There is nothing the matter, only Cousin Ruth does not wish me to go to the round-up with you in the morning. Will you please tell her that cowboys aren't all villains!"
Jim frowned. "If your Cousin don't want you to go, Jack, seems like you had better stay at home," he declared quietly.
A little flush of triumph spread over Ruth's face. This was her first trouble with any one of the ranch girls and their friend had sided with her. She gave him a grateful glance, then closed her lips more firmly than ever. With any one of the four girls save Jack, she would have tried persuasion instead of command. But it seemed to her perfectly useless to attempt to influence Jack.
Jack shrugged her shoulders. "I don't agree with you, Jim," she declared obstinately.
Jim brought his lips together with a snap and stared straight at the elder Miss Ralston."Look here, Jack," he said, "wasn't it you who asked your cousin to come out here to live with you, so as to have some one to tell you what was right? Now it seems to me that you only want her to tell you what you happen to want to do. I wasn't at all certain that you ought to ride over to the round-up with me, but I've been treating you like a boy so long, I can't somehow remember you're a girl. Stay at home and keep out of mischief." Jim laughed.
Ruth smiled, thinking the battle was won, but Jack got up calmly and marched out of the room and they heard her bedroom door close.
"I am afraid Jack is kind of hard-headed, but you mustn't mind," Jim murmured apologetically. "You see she has always had things pretty much her own way."
"Oh, let's don't talk about Jack," Jean expostulated. "Jim, I have been telling Cousin Ruth that it is perfectly absurd for her not to learn how to ride horseback and that she might as well be buried alive as not to know how to ride out here on the ranch. The very idea, we can't go to return Mrs. Simpson's and the lovely Laura's call withouthitching up our old mess-wagon. For goodness sake, won't you teach Cousin Ruth to ride? She won't be so scared with you."
"Sure Mike," Jim exclaimed heartily and then turned a dark mahogany from embarrassment. He had intended to use only copy-book language in his conversation with the new governess.
Ruth was surprised. Jim was a puzzle to her, but there was no doubt that he was very kind and very good-looking.
"I shall be horribly stupid and nervous, Mr. Colter," Ruth protested, "but if you are sure you won't mind the trouble?"
Jim did not leave the ranch house until ten o'clock that evening. He managed to have five minutes alone with Ruth, after the girls said good-night.
"Miss Drew," he whispered, "will you be good enough not to let Olive go away from the ranch alone? I came up to the Lodge to-night not knowing whether or not I should tell the girls, but I have received threatening notices from the Indians lately. They say they are going to have the girl back with them at any cost. I don't believe they have any rightto her. She is old enough to be a free agent, but the Indians are a queer, revengeful lot. They can bide their time and strike when you least expect it."