ENTERING WONDERLAND
"The Forest of Arcady, Jim," Jean called gayly from her seat on the back
of her pony. She and Olive, with Ralph Merrit walking beside them, had
just climbed a steep road that led across the Continental Divide into
the great park of the Yellowstone, called Yellowstone by the Indians
many years ago, because its river ran like melted gold between massive
stone walls, shading from palest lemon to a deep orange glow.
Behind its outriders the ranch girls' caravan moved slowly upward. They
had been passing through tall pine forests that shut them in to a
cathedral gloom, but beyond and farther down the hill Jean had just
caught sight of a grove of quaking aspen trees with the sky above them
shining as bright as sunny Italy. The grove looked like a great umbrella
shop with its parasols open on parade, for the trees had circular green
tops growing high above the ground, and their straight, slender trunks
were like white umbrella handles.
Jim cracked his whip in answer to Jean's speech and Jack waved her hat
from the place next him; just behind them Ruth clutched at Frieda and
Carlos to keep them from falling into the road in their efforts to see
everything at once. Away to the right they could catch a faint glimpse
of one of the long arms of Yellowstone Lake, and they meant to reach a
hotel on its northern banks by twilight.
For the past ten days the caravan party had been moving almost steadily
onward. Twice only had they stopped at small towns for mail, to buy
fresh provisions and to get rid of some of the stains of travel.
However, the entire party looked like a troupe of Spanish gypsies, some
of them fair-haired and blue-eyed as the old Castilians, others dark as
the Moors, but all with their complexions tanned to varying shades of
brown from their weeks in the open air.
"Nature's Wonderland!" Jack spouted rapturously in the language of a
guidebook. "Really, Ruth, the Park is even more beautiful than we
dreamed, isn't it?"
But Jack ceased talking abruptly and Jim reined in his horses on a
stretch of level road, while Olive and Jean slid gently down from their
ponies' backs. The noise of their approach had frightened a band of
almost a hundred antelopes, who were browsing in a near-by forest, and
now they started off in a long, galloping run single file through the
trees to a fertile green valley below.
When the deer were out of sight, Frieda flung a dimpled brown arm about
Jim's neck. She wore a yellow straw bonnet with a blue ribbon on it,
tied under her chin. Ruth had purchased the bonnet in one of the towns
where they spent the night, for each member of the expedition was weary
of crawling down from the wagon to pick up Frieda's lost hat. "Do let's
rest here a few minutes, Jim," Frieda urged. "The horses have stopped,
anyhow, and my legs are so tired dangling from the seat."
Ruth had let go her hold on the children for a few minutes, and without
waiting for Jim's consent, by some sort of silent signal they both
slipped over the wagon wheels and danced away. For hours they had been
passing by every variety of beautiful wild flower, but this minute
Frieda and Carlos discovered an isolated hill crowned with jagged rocks
and covered with bitter-root, whose delicate blossoms made the ground
look like a carpet studded with small pink stars, leading to a giant's
castle in the air.
It was not yet time for luncheon, but the caravaners were always hungry,
and Ruth, Jean and Olive dragged a basket of sandwiches out of the
wagon, while Jim Colter and Ralph Merrit led the horses away to search
for water.
"Better look after the children, Jack," Ruth suggested carelessly.
Jack moved slowly toward the pink hill. She could see that Carlos had
run lightly up it and was now crowing proudly from the peak of one of
the highest rocks, while poor Frieda was crawling laboriously after him,
fired with ambition and envy. Jack stopped a minute to laugh. Her small
sister was so round and chubby, that even though she clung to the shrubs
as she struggled upward, every now and then she would slip back almost
as far as she had gone on.
"Don't try to go any farther, Frieda; come back to me," Jack cried
warningly. But Carlos had leaped to another higher crag and was
beckoning his companion to follow him, so Frieda either didn't hear or
wouldn't heed her elder sister; neither did she look upward toward the
goal "to which she would ascend." Carlos vanished around another rock
and was out of sight; he did not think to mention that there was a flat
platform back of the first big rock and that it was already occupied.
Suddenly from her position near the bottom of the hill, Jack saw an old
goat thrust his head out over this rock and survey Frieda, with the long
gray beard and the glittering eye of "The Ancient Mariner." He was
evidently an old time resident of the Park and had no intention of
sharing his retreat with an outside intruder.
"Frieda!" Jack halloed, now frightened and running up the hill as fast
as she could, but she could hardly hope to come to the rescue in time.
Blue-eyed Frieda had crawled up the side of the crag toward the spot
where the goat awaited her. Instead of a shout of triumph she gave a
horrified gasp of terror, never having intended to invade the castle of
the particular ogre she now beheld.
At this moment a tourist, who had been wandering idly around surveying
the scenery, saw the little girl and the goat. He laughed and moved
quickly in their direction. Jack was also doing her level best to arrive
before the tragedy, but the old goat preferred not to wait. He took a
few steps forward, hunching his shoulders and sidling along, then with a
snort of dignified rage and a shove of his shaggy gray head, he struck
poor Frieda in the middle of her small person and sent her over the side
of the rock down the hill, where she landed in a bed of the coveted
bitter-root blossoms.
"If you won't cry, little girl, I'll give you something I have in my
pocket," a strange gentleman said hurriedly, just as Frieda opened her
mouth to bewail her misfortune. Not only was she injured in her
feelings; she was hurt in other places as well, and her new bonnet
hopelessly smashed in on one side. Too surprised to do anything but
choke for a few seconds, Frieda let her preserver set her up on the
ground and brush off some of the sand and twigs. He seemed a middle-aged
man, quite as old as Jim, with iron-gray hair and dark eyes, and such a
funny expression through his glasses, it was hard to tell whether he was
smiling or sympathetic.
Jack now appeared and saw that her small sister was not seriously hurt.
Just as she started to thank her rescuer a vision of what they had just
seen flashed between them. Swiftly Jack's gray eyes darkened, her lips
curved and she burst into a peal of gay laughter, which the stranger
echoed until he had to take out his handkerchief to wipe his eyeglasses.
Frieda gazed at them both indignantly, then the tears which had been
nobly held back rushed down her pink cheeks like the streams from a
spouting geyser.
"Oh, dear me, now you are crying and I told you I would give you
something if you wouldn't!" the tourist remarked hastily. Down in his
pocket went his hand, and before Frieda's and Jack's amazed eyes were
displayed a handful of bright jewels, topaz and jasper, agate and
garnets.
Jack shook her head decisively. "No, thank you," she said. "You are very
kind, but they are much too valuable for Frieda to accept. We must say
good-by; our friends are signaling us."
Mr. Peter Drummond laughed good-humoredly. "Please let her have
one--they are not of value," he begged. "I just have a fancy for pretty
stones, like a small boy, and these have all been found in the state of
Wyoming." Frieda's small hand closed suddenly over a shining bit of
yellow jasper. Jack blushed, but there was no time for argument. Carlos
had already sped down the hill and Jim was shouting to them. From the
top of their caravan, as it took up its forward march, Jack and Frieda
beheld the distinguished stranger still watching them, and waved their
handkerchiefs to him in farewell.
Just before sunset the caravaners arrived in front of the hotel where
they intended to spend the night. Yellowstone Lake lay a wonderful sheet
of clear water at one side of them, but the travelers were weary of
scenery and far more interested in the guests who crowded the hotel
verandah. The women wore pretty afternoon toilets and the men white
flannels, as though they were visitors at fashionable Newport homes
instead of travelers in the heart of a wilderness.
"Great heavens, Ruth!" Jean murmured, as they dismounted and stood close
together in a frightened group, "my legs feel as though they were going
to give way under me and I am as bedraggled as any beggar maid. However
are we going to have the courage to march across that wretched porch
with all those people staring at us?"
"I don't know myself, Jean. I had no idea we would find so many visitors
here," Ruth replied, vainly trying to straighten her traveling hat,
which was considerably the worse for wear. Indeed the caravan party did
look almost as disreputable as they felt in their dusty, travel-worn
clothes, now brought into sudden contrast with well-dressed people.
Jack lifted her chin in her usual haughty fashion, assuming a courage
she did not feel. "Oh, well, we can't stand here in the road all
evening," she argued. "Jim and Mr. Merrit must see that the horses and
wagon are put up somewhere, so come on, Olive, let's lead the way. At
least we can be grateful that we don't know anyone here and no one knows
us."
Elderly ladies raised their lorgnettes to stare at the newcomers and
some young people whispered together.
"There they come, mother," a young girl cried excitedly. "I told you we
would get here before they did!"
Jack and Olive had just mounted the verandah steps with Carlos, and Ruth
and Jean, each holding Frieda's hand, were following close behind, when
there was a soft rustle of silk across the piazza and Mrs. Harmon and
her son Donald, whom the caravan party had left safe at Rainbow Lodge,
stood before them. A minute later a servant wheeled Elizabeth over in a
big chair.
"We just couldn't bear not to see the Yellowstone Park too," Elizabeth
explained fervently. "Don and I talked of nothing else after you went
away in your wonderful caravan, and at last father said mother could
bring us here. It took us only a day to make the trip that has taken you
more than two weeks. Aren't you glad to see us?"
Jack kissed Elizabeth hurriedly, while the rest of the party shook hands
with Mrs. Harmon and Donald. The girls were too dazed with surprise and
fatigue to know whether they were glad or sorry to see the acquaintances
to whom they had rented their beloved home. Ruth thought Mrs. Harmon's
manner a little constrained when she spoke to them.
"We don't want to haunt you, Miss Drew," she apologized, "but we were so
close to this marvelous park it seemed a pity for us to miss it, and Don
and Elizabeth are so in love with your ranch girls they believe they
will enjoy it twice as much with you here. We came on after Beth had a
letter from Miss Ralston telling her about the time you expected to
arrive."
There was one member of the caravan party who had no hesitation in
expressing his views of the unexpected appearance of the three members
of the Harmon family. Jim was frankly displeased. "It wasn't enough to
rent them our Lodge for the summer and have them drive me plumb crazy
with questions before I got away," he complained to Ruth as soon as she
broke the news to him, "but now we have got to tote 'em over the whole
of the Yellowstone. I guess they must think I'm the original Cooks' Tour
man," he growled, forgetting his newly acquired English in his bad
temper.
But Ruth laughed sympathetically. "Never mind, Mr. Jim," she returned.
"I am sorry myself that we can't have our trip to ourselves, but I hope
pleasure will somehow come out of the presence of the Harmons here."
So far as Ruth or any member of the Rainbow Ranch family could see for
many months to come not good, but great evil grew out of the entrance of
these new acquaintances into their lives.