JEAN MURRAY, RANCHER
For a minute or two there was silence in the quiet old room. Jean Murray
drew the shell pins from her hair deliberately, and shook out its thick,
curly waves. Then she went to the wardrobe, and took out her dinner
dress before she answered. And Polly noticed that this was the simplest
dinner gown she had ever seen. In fact, to Polly’s practiced eye, it was
made of cream cotton voile, with a yoke of baby Irish crochet lace, and
the same around the short sleeves. That was all. Yet when Jean slipped
it on, and puffed up her hair, with a wide bank of black velvet tied
about its reddish gold waves, and a narrow band of black about her
girlish throat, Polly thought that she looked every inch a thoroughbred
as the Admiral had declared.
“Miss Diantha lives on the next ranch to ours out home,” Jean said
finally, and there was a curious note of rebellious contradiction in her
voice, as if she were offering apologies against her will for Diantha
Calvert. “She is my mother’s dearest friend, and we all love her more
than I can say.”
“But why doesn’t she ever come back home to Queen’s Landing?” asked
Polly wonderingly. “Grandfather has told us what a dear girl she was
years ago, and how she was one of the belles here and up at Washington
in those days. But that must be thirty years ago.”
“It surely was, and do you realize how old that makes her now? She is
fifty her next birthday, I know, and she lives at the Alameda Ranch,
about seven miles from us.”
“She does!” Polly’s brown eyes opened wide in amazement. “What’s her
name, Miss Murray? What will the girls say?”
“Her name is Mrs. Alexander MacDowell, but we call her Mrs. Sandy,” and
as Jean said it, even a casual observer could have told from the little
tender smile on her lips, and the light in her eyes, what one member, at
least, of the Murray outfit thought of Mrs. Sandy.
Polly pushed back her hair from her forehead quickly, as she always did
when she was a little bit excited or surprised, and sat down on the
window seat.
“Oh, dear, I came expressly to talk about Crullers, Miss Murray, and now
I’ve found out about Miss Diantha. And it’s so interesting, I don’t know
which to talk of first—and it’s getting late, and Aunty Welcome said I
must hurry home.”
Jean laughed.
“Well, you are in a tangle, aren’t you?” she said. “I can tell you of
Jane Daphne in a minute, but it would take days and days to make you
understand our Mrs. Sandy. That is what we all call her out home.”
“Where is your home, please, Miss Murray? I don’t believe I ever heard
you say.”
“I don’t believe that any of you girls ever asked, did you?” Jean’s blue
eyes looked quizzically at Polly. Then she, too, sat down on the window
seat, and looked out towards the West, where the sun was reddening the
distant hills, and her face caught some of its radiance, as she went on,
quietly. “My home is yonder, Polly, west of the hills. It is away, ’way
out West in Wyoming, up in the northeastern corner, under the shoulder
of Bear Lodge.”
“Is there a large family?” asked Polly, wistfully. “I love lots and lots
of children in a family.”
“We think it is large. Let’s count up. There’s mother and father, first
of all. Then I am the eldest, and I am twenty-eight. Neil is next to me.
He is taking a post-graduate course at the State University. Then come
Archie and Don. Arch is in his Soph year, and Don is only sixteen, so he
helps father on the ranch, and goes to school winters. Then Margaret is
the baby. She is twelve, and we call her Peggie. That is all of the real
family, but besides there is old Sally Lost Moon, a half-breed Shoshone
woman that mother took in one winter, and she has stayed ever since.
Then father has about five men who work for him. They are mostly out on
the range with the cattle. That is all the humans we have, as Sally
would say. But there are horses, and dogs, and Prometheus, Don’s pet
bear—”
“A real live one?”
“Yes, indeed, he is very much alive. I guess you would think so if you
lived there. He is only a youngster now, but so full of mischief, you
never can tell where it will crop out next. We have called him
‘Prometheus Unbound’ ever since the Sunday when the Missionary Bishop
came to the ranch to dinner, and to hold service. That bear got loose
somehow, Polly, and found his way into the cook house, and ate up
everything in sight, and when Sally and mother went to set the table for
dinner, you should have seen their faces!” Jean stopped and looked at
her watch. “Child of mortality, as Miss Calvert would say,” she cried,
“do you know the time of day? It’s after six now. Don’t ask me another
question about home or Mrs. Sandy. I must hurry down to dinner, or I’ll
be late for grace, and Miss Calvert never forgives that.”
“May I come and hear some more after school Monday?” asked Polly, as she
followed the figure in white downstairs.
“Why, of course you may, and I shall be ever so glad to have you, Polly.
Sometimes, this winter, I’ve wondered whether you girls really liked me
or not.”
“We’ll like you better if you give us a chance to get acquainted,” said
Polly, with her merry frankness. “I think the ranch is the most
interesting place I’ve heard about in a long time. Oh, I forgot all
about Crullers, Miss Murray.” She stopped short outside the dormitory
door. “What did she do this time, please?”
“Broke her parole. She must stay in bed until to-morrow as a punishment.
Just at noon to-day, she was found climbing out of the back hall window
to the porch roof, and she dropped down to the other side of the garden
wall, and made for the side street. Oh, she confessed. It was for
pickled limes and doughnuts. Good-bye, Polly.” She went down the
staircase, and turned to wave her hand at the bottom. And all at once an
idea occurred to Polly.
“Couldn’t you come down to Glenwood to-morrow, and have dinner with
grandfather and me, Miss Murray?” she asked eagerly. “We’d love to have
you.”
“Would you, truly?” Jean paused, and smiled back at her. “Then I shall
be glad to come. And I will have a chance to tell you more about the
ranch, and Mrs. Sandy, bless her.” She turned, and made a low curtsy
before the two girls in the oil painting, before she hurried down the
wide old hall to the dining-room.
Polly went on out into the front garden where Stoney waited for her. He
was half asleep on the grass by the gates, but roused up, and trudged
after her down the broad, shady street towards Glenwood. Polly could
hardly wait to reach home, and tell the Admiral that she thought his
“thoroughbred” was Jean Murray.
The dinner hour was always a ceremonial period, partly because Aunty
Welcome insisted on adhering to tradition in this regard, partly because
both Polly and the Admiral enjoyed this time most of all the day.
There were long, delicate sprays of flowering almond in tall, slender
vases at each end of the dining table, the only bright spot of color in
the quiet, high ceiled old room.
“Am I late, grandfather dear?” Polly asked contritely, pausing a moment
at the open doors. There was no reply, so she crossed the hall to the
study, and tapped gently.
“Come in, child, come in,” called the Admiral’s deep, cheery voice, and
she obeyed. There was some one in the room besides the Admiral. At first
she could not tell who it was, but when the person put out his hand, and
said, “Now, Miss Polly, have you forgotten your ‘smuggler’ so soon?” all
at once, Polly remembered.
“Oh, it’s Doctor Smith.”
It was indeed, the genial, merry doctor who had been the girls’ neighbor
at Lost Island on their vacation trip of the previous year. As Polly
laid her hand in his, she remembered all the fun of that summer, how the
doctor had lived alone at “Smugglers’ Cove,” and the girls had
discovered him, and thought him a pirate or a smuggler. How they had
gone to the Orienta Club’s reception, and had found that their smuggler
was no less a personage than Doctor Penrhyn Smith, the great naturalist
from Washington, D. C.
“Grown a trifle taller, Admiral, that is the only change. Where are you
to spend the summer this year, Commodore Polly?”
“Not as a Commodore,” Polly replied, shaking her head, and sitting down
on the broad arm of the Admiral’s chair. “We haven’t really decided yet,
but we want to do something different from last year.”
“The Doctor is on the same trail,” said the Admiral. “Why can’t you be
content, like I am, to let the summers drift along like the blossoms the
wind is blowing off those fruit trees yonder?”
“Because we are children,” returned the Doctor promptly, quite as though
his fifty-seven years were fifteen. “Last year I hunted a certain kind
of polypus, remember, Polly? This year, I am seriously thinking of
skipping away to Wyoming on a still hunt after a dinosaurus.”
“Oh, Doctor,” cried Polly, eagerly. “Are you? Those are the lizards that
were running around before the Flood, aren’t they? And they’re terribly
long, hundreds and hundreds—”
“Now, Polly,” warned the Admiral.
“Of inches,” finished Polly, mischievously. “Ruth was telling us about
them. Ruth reads all that kind of stuff, you know. She’s walked right
through a whale—I mean through the skeleton. She told us of some museum
of natural history where there is a whale hanging in mid air, and a nice
little gang plank is built through him so you trot across and feel like
Jonah.”
“Preposterous, Polly!” laughed the Doctor.
“Truly,” Polly insisted earnestly. “I think it was at Charleston. Ruth’s
been all around seeing interesting things, and she always remembers the
most interesting of all to tell us girls.”
“I should say she did,” said the Doctor, gravely. “Polly, that whale
story shall be preserved, and passed down to posterity. Now, I am really
going up to Wyoming, and I sincerely believe that I shall tap the
foothills and the buttes, and discover the long-buried remains of a
dinosaurus, yet I feel that Ruth has gone me one better as a
naturalist.”
“Wyoming,” repeated Polly, pushing her hair up from her forehead.
“Grandfather dear, there’s another sign-post.”
“What do you mean, child?”
“Why, don’t you know, when you are undecided about something, if you
watch, you will find sign-posts pointing the right way to go.” Polly’s
brown eyes sparkled with eagerness, as she explained one of her pet
ideas. “We want a good vacation this year, and a different kind of a
one, and this is the second sign-post that has said Wyoming.”
“What was the first?”
“Jean Murray, ranch girl, thoroughbred, Wyoming.” Polly counted off the
different heads on her finger-tips. “She is one of the Freshman teachers
at Calvert Hall, grandfather dear, and she’s coming to dinner to-morrow,
and we’ve got a wonderful surprise for you, I think.”
“Sign-posts?”
“Maybe.” Polly looked over at the doctor, and suddenly began to laugh.
“Oh, I do believe—I’m almost sure—that even the Doctor is a sign-post
pointing the way to Wyoming.”
“I am thankful it was not Kamchatka, for I verily think you would have
had a try for it, Polly.” The Admiral rose, one hand on Polly’s young
shoulder, and they went in to dinner, Aunty Welcome bowing and smiling
in the wide hall outside the door as though she were trying to live up
to her name.
And through the dinner, Polly listened with deepest interest to the
conversation between her grandfather and the doctor, all about the
recent researches throughout the Yellowstone valley, and following the
glacial drift, and about dinosauri and other prehistoric animals until
Wyoming seemed a veritable land of hidden enchantment. If it could be
managed, then and there Polly made up her mind, the vacation club should
have its summer outing in that far-off land of wonders.