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--"_can_ you 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
in _one_ day--"
"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, what _lovely_ things 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 can _make_ you pay," stormed Maudie, "you _promised_, and
you've got to keep your word."
"Well, you _did_ lose 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 was _lovely_," 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 a
specialty."
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.
"I _will_ do 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 was _seein'_ 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.