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JESSICA TRENT:
Her Life on a Ranch
BY
EVELYN RAYMOND
Author of
"Jessica Trent's Inheritance," "Jessica, the Heiress"
Whitman Publishing Co.
RACINE, WISCONSIN
Copyright, 1902, by Street & Smith
Jessica Trent
Printed in the
United States of America
By
Western Printing & Lithographing Co.
Racine, Wis.
JESSICA TRENT
CHAPTER I
ON THE CANYON TRAIL.
"Hello, there! What in the name of reason is this?"
The horseman's excited cry was echoed by a startled neigh from his
beast, which wheeled about so suddenly that he nearly precipitated both
himself and rider into the gulch below.
"Oh! I'm sorry----Hold on, Zu! Go! Do, please. Quick! It's so narrow
just beyond and I can't----"
The stranger obeyed, perforce, for his spirited animal having now headed
up the slope, continued on his course at breakneck speed, pursued at
equal pace by the unknown creature that had terrified him.
The race would not have been so even had the trail been wider, for
King Zulu could easily have beaten his contestant, but, as it was,
the fleeing bay bruised his master's leg against the canyon wall,
now and then, while bits of the bird's plumage were torn on the same
projecting rocks. There was no point of passage till more than a mile
higher on the mountain, and Jess knew this if Mr. Hale did not. He
knew nothing save that he was clinging and riding for his life, and
that this "Western horseback tour" which his doctor had prescribed
for him, seemed now more likely to prove his death than his cure.
But when a laugh rang out, close to his shoulder, he turned his head and
glanced angrily backward.
"Oh, I beg your pardon, but--it's so funny! I've often wanted to try
King Zu against a strange horse and now I have. Only, if we were up there
on the mesa, he'd show you!"
"Does this trail never end, nor turn?"
The laughter on the girl's face changed to anxiety.
"Not ill, exactly; only I'm not experienced at this business and it
shakes me."
"You ride too hard and stiff. That's why. Let yourself go--just be part
of your horse. He's a beauty, isn't he? Even the boys couldn't stand
that gait."
"And you. Who taught you to ride an ostrich? Where did you get it?
It's almost the first one I ever saw and quite the first that Prince
did. I was nearly as scared as he, meeting such a creature on a lonely
mountain trail."
"I never learned--it just happened. Zulu is 'patriarch' of the flock.
The only imported bird left alive. We just grew up together, he and I.
Didn't we, King?"
Speech was now easier, for the speed of both animals had slackened, that
of Prince to a comfortable trot. While the sidewise lurching motion
of the ostrich was enjoyable enough to Jessica, it turned Mr. Hale's
head dizzy, watching. Or it may have been the blinding sunshine, beating
against the canyon wall and deflected upon the riders in waves of heat.
"Whew! This is scorching. How far, yet?"
Jessica saw that what she minded not at all was turning the stranger
sick, and answered swiftly:
"You wouldn't be able to get further than 'five times' before we
reach the turn. There'll be a glorious breeze then. There always is."
"What do you mean by 'five times'?"
"Why, just the multiplication table. I always say it when I've
something I want to get over quick. You begin at one-times-one, and see
if it isn't so."
"What shall we find at the top; your home?"
"Oh, no, indeed. That is quite the other way. Down in the valley.
Sobrante ranch. That's ours. Were you going there?"
"I was going--anywhere. I had lost my way. 'Missed the trail,' as you
say in this country."
"I thought, maybe, you were just a 'tourist.'"
Mr. Hale laughed, and the laugh helped him to forget his present
discomfort.
"Perhaps I am, even if you do speak so disdainfully. Are all
'tourists' objectionable?"
Jessica's brown cheek flushed. She felt she had said something
rude--she, whose ambition it was to be always and everywhere "Our
Lady Jess," that the dear "boys" called her. But she remembered how
annoyed her mother was by the visits of strangers who seemed to regard
Sobrante and its belongings as a "show" arranged for their special
benefit.
"We--we are generally glad when the rains come," she answered,
evasively.
"To keep them away? Yet if, as I suspect, you have an ostrich farm, I
can't blame their curiosity. I'm hoping to visit one, myself."
"Ours is not a real 'farm.' It is just one of the many things our
ranch is good for. But I know my mother would make you very welcome.
You--but there! Look down, please. Yonder it is, Sobrante. That means
'richness,' you know. And now up. The next turn will land us on the
mesa, and I hope, I hope, I have come in time!"
The road had now broadened, and with a little chirrup to King Zulu, she
passed and forged ahead so rapidly that she was soon out of sight. The
great bird upon whose back she was perched was not, apparently, at all
wearied, but poor Prince was utterly winded, while a curious feeling of
loneliness stole upon his rider.
But, presently, the sound of voices came over the bluff, and Mr. Hale
urged his tired beast forward. The next he knew he was sprawling on the
plateau and his horse had fallen beside him. Prince's forefoot was in
a hole, from which he was unable to withdraw it.
"Oh! oh! The poor creature! And you, sir, are you hurt?"
"No, I think not. Rather a shake-up, though, and I was dizzy with the
heat before. Prince, Prince, lie still; we'll help you."
One glance had showed the stranger that they were near a shepherd's hut,
and that its occupant was at home. The man had been sitting quietly in
the shade of the little building and of the one pepper tree which grew
beside its threshold. He did not move, even now, till the girl called
impatiently:
"Pedro! Come! Quick!"
Then he arose in a leisurely fashion and, carefully depositing his osiers
in a tub of water, came forward.
"So? He can't get up, yes? A wise man looks where he rides, indeed."
Despite his anxiety over Prince, Mr. Hale regarded the shepherd with
amused curiosity. Pedro's swarthy face was as unmoved as if the visits
of strangers with disabled horses were daily events; but the man's
calmness did not prevent his usefulness. In fact, during every step
of his deliberate advance he had been studying the situation and how
best to aid the fallen animal, which had now ceased to struggle and lay
gazing at his master with a dumb, pitiful appeal.
Then Pedro bent forward and, with a strength amazing in a man of his
small build, seized Prince's head and shoulder and with one prodigious
wrench freed him from the pitfall. Then he stooped again and carefully
examined the bruised forefoot.
"A moon and a half he'll go lame. Yes. For just so long let him be left
with Pedro. Si?"
Then he led the limping beast toward the hut and began to bathe its
injured ankle with the water from the tub.
"Marvelous! I never saw anything done as easily as that!" cried Mr.
Hale, recovering from his astonishment.
"Ah; but you've never seen our Pedro before. And to think I was so
angry with him, I!"
With a remorseful impulse Jessica sprang forward and threw her arms about
the old shepherd's shoulders. He received her caress as calmly as he
did everything else, though a keen observer might have seen a fleeting
smile around his rugged lips.
Smiles did, indeed, spring to all three faces when, a moment later, the
rattling of tins discovered Zulu rummaging a heap of empty cans, even
in the very act of swallowing a highly decorated one.
The jingling startled Prince, also, from the repose into which he had
now settled, and, after one terrified glance toward his unknown enemy,
King Zu, he dashed across the mesa as if lameness were unknown.
At which Pedro smiled, well content.
"Good. He that uses his own legs spares his neighbors. Yes."
"Meaning that he would have to be exercised by somebody?"
The shepherd did not answer. He had lived alone so long amid the great
solitudes of nature that speech had grown irksome to him. He regarded
it a sin to waste words, and his young mistress understood this, if Mr.
Hale did not. To this gentleman the situation presented itself as a very
serious one. There was no habitation visible save the small hut, a place
barely sufficient to its owner's simple needs and utterly inadequate
to those of a lately recovered invalid. He was not strong enough to
make his way to the valley on foot, and even if Prince were now able to
carry him, he felt it would be brutal to impose so hard a task.
But Jessica came to his aid with the suggestion:
"If you'll come and rest behind the cabin I'll make you a cup of
coffee on Pedro's little stove. He often lets me when I come up to see
him, and then, when you've rested, we'll go home. I am so angry I
can hardly breathe."
"Indeed; I should never have guessed it," he answered, laughing, and
allowing the girl to lead him to the shelter proposed.
"Ah! but I am. And a gentlewoman never gets angry. Least of all with
such a darling as Pedro. You see, he ought to have been about dying, and
he hasn't even a single ache!"
"What an odd child you are!"
"Am I?" regarding him gravely. "I'm sure I don't want to be that.
I want to be just--perfect."
Mr. Hale sighed as he dropped upon the bench to which Jess had guided
him. "We are none of us that--ever."
"I suppose that's because 'none of us' ever try quite hard enough.
But I will be, if trying will fetch it."
Then she whisked inside the hut and presently there came to the
gentleman's nostrils the aroma of freshly steaming coffee. He had not
realized that he was hungry, but now could scarcely wait until the
little maid came out to him again with a tin cup of the liquid in one
hand and a can of condensed milk in the other.
"My mother always lets her guests 'trim' their drink for themselves,
but I'll drop in the cream if you'll say how much. Enough? Now sugar.
One? How queer. And it's sugar of our own making, too; beet sugar, you
know."
The tin cup was decidedly rusty, the cheap spoon dingy, and "canned"
milk the aversion of Mr. Hale's dyspeptic stomach; yet despite these
facts he had never tasted a more delicious draught than this, nor one
served with a gentler grace. For Jessica was quite unconscious that there
was anything amiss with Pedro's dishes, and now offered the stranger
a tin of time-hardened biscuits, with the air of one proffering the
rarest of dainties.
"You would better eat one of these; they're quite fine, with the
coffee."
"I'll--I'll try, thank you, if you'll fetch your own cup and sit
beside me."
"All right. Only I'll have to wait till Pedro's finished. There's
only this and the egg, you know. He's rather stubborn, dear fellow. My
mother has offered him more dishes, but he says 'more care' and won't
take them. Excuse me."
With a dip and swirl of her short skirts, the little hostess ran into the
hut, to reappear, a moment later, bearing in both hands a drinking-cup
which made the guest exclaim in delight:
"What an exquisite thing!"
"Isn't it? But just wait until you see those which Pedro made for
mother! This is fine, but they're like cobwebs."
She did not offer to show him the cup more closely, for she had seen
the shepherd lay down his rushes and sit waiting, and Jessica would not
disappoint the old friend for the new. Still the less, because she had so
lately been vexed with him, and wholly without cause.
But when the silent fellow had emptied the cup she proudly gave it for
Mr. Hale's inspection.
"An ostrich egg, you see, cut off at the top. Pedro wove all this
lacelike outside, of just the common tule rushes. He splits them till
they are like threads, and see that handle! Nothing could break it,
nor can one tell just where it begins or ends--the joinings, I mean.
There are many wonderful weavers among the Indians, but none so deft as
our Pedro, my mother says.
"Now, will you not fill this again and drink it with me? For I see that
our speechless friend, yonder, has gone to work again as if his life
depended on his industry."
"He's always at work, like that. Yet he never neglects his flock. He
has been herding ever since he was a little boy. That must have been
years ago. He's so very old."
"He doesn't look it. I should guess he might be fifty."
"Fifty! Why, there's nobody anywhere around who remembers when our
Pedro was born. Not even Fra Mateo at the mission, yet even he is more
than a hundred," she answered, proudly.
"Possible? Well, this is all wonderful to me who have lived always in
a crowded city. This big West is like a romance, a fairy tale; not the
least of its marvels to find a little girl like you riding alone on such
a steed up such a desolate canyon, yet not in the least afraid."
"Why, why should I be afraid? Except, of course, I was, for a bit, when
I saw that Zulu made your horse rear. A step nearer and you'd have both
gone over."
Mr. Hale shuddered, and Jessica hastened to add:
"But the step wasn't taken and you're quite safe up here. Is the
dizziness all gone? Many are like that before they get used to the glare.
Some of the 'tourists' wear blue glasses, and veils, and things. They
look so funny."
Into her laughter burst Pedro's speech.
"'Ware Antonio. Is it plucking day, no? His third hand is Ferd, who
lies and steals. I know. The mistress' chest has many openings. _Nina_,
go home, and bid Antonio come himself when next he'd have me die. Yes."
Jessica sprang to her feet. These were many words for the shepherd
to utter, and was not to be disobeyed. Though the old man's age was
doubtless far less than was accredited him, he was commonly considered
a sage whose intelligence increased, rather than diminished, with the
passing years.
"I'll go at once, Pedro. Please forget that I was angry and--good-by."
Mr. Hale was unprepared for this sudden departure, which bereft the scene
of its fairest feature; for even while he listened to the brief speech
between this odd pair there was a flash of twinkling feet and a scarlet
Tam, and Jessica was gone.
"Why--why--what? Eh, what?" he demanded, rising.
His answer came with a crash and clatter which could never have been made
by one small, fleeing figure, and with the startling force with which
everything happened on that eventful day.
Over the bluff scrambled a shaggy piebald burro, from whose back there
tumbled at the stranger's very feet a brace of little lads, securely
lashed together; even their wrists and ankles bound beyond possibility
of their own undoing.
"Horrors! Indian captives!" cried the gentleman, aghast.