“MRS. SANDY”
Mrs. Murray did not think it wise to take the long ride the following
day.
“Better rest up a wee bit, or you’ll be tired out before you’ve played,”
she told them. “Jeanie had better get out the tent, and see if it needs
any mending, if you’re going camping. I think there’s a rent on one
side.”
“We can’t all mend tents,” said Ruth, when the tent was carried out of
the shed, and unfolded. “Suppose Miss Jean and I mend this, and the rest
write home letters. I heard Archie say he had to drive to Deercroft in
the morning, so that would be a good chance to send them off. Sue, you
put in a post-card for Annie May, will you? I promised her we’d send
one.”
“I think that Isabel ought to take our pictures with her kodak, and then
we’d send them in, and have them printed on post-cards, and let them be
scattered among all interested and loving friends,” said Polly.
“Oh, wait, girls, and I’ll do it,” cried Isabel. “The light is fine this
morning.”
So away she went after her kodak, and the morning was spent taking
snap-shots. Isabel was photographer in chief, and she was especially
good on composition, and getting attractive backgrounds.
Don led Jinks out, and three of the girls mounted him, and were taken
with heads up, all laughing. Then Peggie was persuaded to put on her
buckskin suit and sombrero, and with a rifle in her hand she made a
splendid picture of a ranch girl. Then Prometheus was led forth, and
obligingly stood up and begged with his head coaxingly on one side.
“Just as if he was begging for the Bishop’s dinner, the rogue,” said
Peggie.
Sally Lost Moon, after much explaining and pleading, finally came out of
the cook-house, and was stationed where the buttes loomed up behind her,
and everything looked unsettled and primeval, Isabel said impressively.
Then just as all was set, Isabel levelled the camera, and Sally turned
and ran as if a bear were at her heels.
“Shoot, shoot,” was all she would say, and shook her head vigorously.
“No shoot me; no shoot me!”
“Oh, Sally, please,” begged Polly. “Look, I’ll give you my silver
bracelet if you’ll let us take you.”
She drew off the bracelet from her own wrist, and Sally looked at it
longingly, jingling its silver bangles happily. Finally, she put it on
her wrist, and went out to try again.
“I’ll stand near, Sally,” called Mrs. Murray encouragingly, and so,
surrounded by reserve force, Sally faced the camera for the first time
in her life.
“Won’t it be fun to show her a real picture of herself?” laughed Polly,
when it was over.
“I don’t know whether it will or not,” Jean answered. “The Indians are
so suspicious and superstitious that they are easily scared. She might
think you were making bad medicine for her. Two years ago, some tourists
took snap-shots of some Shoshone babies, and the squaws grabbed the
camera, and smashed it. They said the white women were drawing out the
spirits, and shutting them up in the black box to carry away with them.”
“Oooo!” cried Sue, “‘An’ the gobble’uns will get you if you don’t watch
out!’”
“Now, all of you group around Miss Jean, and look happy,” ordered
Isabel, so the last picture of all was the group, and a jolly, care-free
lot of vacationers they looked, too.
“Let’s go down for a swim, then back to dinner, then write all our
letters this afternoon,” Polly suggested, and they carried out this
programme for the day.
It was worth resting up for, they all declared the next morning, when
Peggie called them before five. Breakfast was ready by the time they
were dressed, and a little past six, they were all in the saddle, ready
for their long ride overland to the Alameda ranch. It was quite an
imposing cavalcade that started out, two by two at first, and then
Indian file as the road narrowed in places. This time they rode due
west, along the river road, through willows and tall cottonwoods.
After about four miles, Jean led the way up a rocky defile, and they
struck an irregular ridge of tableland. Here the rocks began to assume
all kinds of queer, fantastic shapes, and Peggie told the names of them,
as they came to each—Jumping Rabbit, Columbus, Praying Chief, Sleeping
Bear, Double Towers, and so on.
“We used to take a lunch when we were little, and come here to play for
a day in the summer,” Jean said. “See those rocks away over yonder?
Don’t they resemble some wonderful eastern city? They look like the
cliff cities of Arizona and New Mexico, too.”
“Maybe they have been, sometime,” Polly exclaimed, reining up a minute
to take a good look at the strange sight. “It’s like discovering a dead
petrified city, isn’t it?”
“I wish you had the time and money too, girls, to visit the Yellowstone
this trip. If the vacation were longer, we could take the time, and
drive across country to it. Father took us that way once. I remember
when we came to the great Absoraka Range, with forty snow-capped peaks,
like a tremendous wall from north to south. It makes you feel so little
just to look at those wonders.”
There was silence for a minute, then Ruth said, soberly:
“I heard a story once in church, and I never forgot it. Our rector at
Queen’s Ferry told it. It was about two very old mountains that wakened
once in a thousand years, and wished each other good-morning. And they
would say it this way.
“‘Good-morning, brother, how goes the world?’
“‘Well, brother, well,’ the other mountain would say, and after a time
they would fall happily to sleep. But one day they wakened, and one
mountain noticed a lot of little specks running around the ground at his
base, so when his brother greeted him, he was disturbed, and said:
“‘I cannot say if it goes well or not, brother. There are a lot of
little ants or some kind of insects running around me. They seem to be
building things of little pieces of trees. And they fight, and make a
lot of useless noise. I do not like them.’
“‘Never mind,’ said the other one. ‘They are bothering me too, but let
us go to sleep and maybe they will be gone when we wake.’
“And it went on like that for ever so long, thousands of years, and
every time the mountains wakened, they were troubled by the little
specks that were always building and fighting, and making a noise. Then
one morning the mountains awakened, and all was very quiet and happy.
“‘Good-morning, brother, how goes the world?’ said one, and the other
was so glad to be able to answer:
“‘Well, brother, well. All those little fretful specks they call people
have gone from the face of the earth, and the world is at peace with God
again.’ That’s all, but doesn’t it make you respect the everlasting
hills, Miss Jean?”
“Indeed it does, Ruth,” Jean replied. “That is a lovely story. I think
that Mrs. Sandy would enjoy it, too. Be careful when you come to the
terraces here. Keep the ponies close to the side of the bluff.”
They had come to great natural terraces of rock and sandstone,
graduating down from the trail, far to the river bed below; and here the
quiet river that flowed past the ranch had turned into a turbulent,
dashing torrent between narrow bluffs. From the road, they could not see
it, but the sound of its rushing came booming up to them. All at once
Ted cried out:
“Oh, there’s a cat in that tree, Miss Jean. Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!”
“Never mind calling it, Ted,” laughed Jean. “That’s a bobcat. There it
goes now. Did you see its tail? They’ll hardly ever hurt any one unless
attacked first, although the boys watch for them at night, if they have
to go up through the piney trails. I think we’ll see some deer when we
start down the next hill. They are usually out in numbers here. Don’t
talk, because they can scent us and hear us very far off.”
Quietly, the little band rode on, eyes on the alert for the turn in the
road, and view of the deer, and they were rewarded by such a sight as
they had never seen before. Below them stretched beautiful fertile
fields. A mountain cascade in the distance fell like a gorgeous,
captured cloud, so filmy and pearly white it looked. And down in the
grazing ground was a herd of deer. The girls watched them for some time,
delighted at the gentle beauty of the does and little ones, and the
stately buck, who every now and then would rear up his many pronged
horns, and listen, nose to the wind.
“I don’t think they will mind us, if we ride on, girls,” Jean said, but
the deer had a different opinion. As soon as they caught sight of the
ponies and riders, they were off over the fields and into the forest.
It was nearly ten when they reached the Alameda ranch. Peggie and Polly
rode ahead of the rest, and let out a clear, gay shout when they came in
sight of it. It lay in the valley far below, in a nest of trees.
“How did they ever find enough trees in one spot to make it so pretty?”
asked Ruth.
“Sandy planted them there years ago, before he went East after his
bride,” Jean told her. “He used to call it his Honeymoon Lodge in those
days. How glad Mrs. Sandy will be to see us.”
And she was, too, more full of pure gladness than she had been in years,
she told the girls. They found her down at the corral with Sandy
himself, both of them busy with some calves. They heard the shouts from
far off, and Mrs. Sandy hurried to meet them.
The first thing that startled the girls was her marked resemblance to
the old oil painting at Calvert Hall. There was the same happy, inviting
face, surrounded by little bobbing curls, and though the curls were gray
now, you hardly noticed it, they formed so pretty a frame to the sweet,
pink-tinted face.
“I’ve been looking for you every day, dears,” she said, kissing each one
of the girls, as they slipped from their ponies to greet her. “And this
is Isabel Lee, Phil Lee’s daughter. You have your father’s mouth and
chin, dear. I knew him well. What did you say, Jeanie—Sue Warner? The
Warners of Colebrook? Bless my heart, I have danced at many of your
grandmother’s parties there, Sue. Ruth, and Edwina, I’m sure I’ve met
some of your families too, for you both look familiar to me, although
Sandy would declare it was the rose-colored glasses of memory I was
using.” Tears sparkled on her lashes as she turned last of all to Polly.
“Oh, my dear,” she said, tenderly, “do the lilies still bloom as fair at
Glenwood as they did forty years ago? They were gold-colored with ruby
hearts.”
Polly nodded her head eagerly.
“Uncle Peter told me you loved them. There’s just Uncle Peter and
grandfather left now of the ones who can remember you at our place.
Mandy and Aunty Welcome are both pretty young, you know.”
“I know,” laughed Mrs. Sandy. “Welcome must be about forty-five, isn’t
she? And Mandy I don’t remember at all.”
“I’ll look after your horses, Jeanie,” Mr. MacDowell said. “You won’t do
anything now but talk Queen’s Ferry, and it’s a bully thing that Mrs.
MacDowell can at last.”
They went slowly up to the home that Sandy had built so many years ago
for the home-coming of his bride. It was prettier than the other ranch
houses the girls had seen, more like a bungalow. There was a deep
foundation of gray rocks, and the porch was built on columns of the rock
too, and crimson ramblers grew all over it just as they did South. There
was a piano in the big living-room, and everywhere an indefinable touch
of something that seemed alien to this great, happy-go-lucky new land: a
quiet elegance and air of repose, something that made the girls think at
once of the atmosphere of Calvert Hall.
“We have lots to tell you, dear,” exclaimed Peggie, reaching up to give
Mrs. Sandy a hearty bear hug. “We’ve discovered something in old Zed’s
gulch, and we’ve got a new name for Sandy.”
“The Chief,” Ted added.
“Hail to the Chief!” began Polly, merrily. “Doesn’t it suit him?”
“It will please him greatly,” said Mrs. Sandy, proudly, and when the
girls saw how her face brightened at his name, they began to understand
somewhat, one very good reason why Diantha Calvert had come out West to
be a rancher’s wife.
There were so many things to see that day, the time passed before they
realized it. Ted and Sue rambled around with the Chief, as they called
him, at his heels from the corral to the wagon sheds and back again,
while the other girls stayed with Mrs. Sandy, and listened as she told
stories of the early days.
“Were you never afraid at all?” asked Ruth.
“Dear, what would you think of an Old Dominion girl who dared to be
afraid? Besides, the Indians trusted Sandy. He never betrayed their
confidence, nor misled them. Many times he acted as peacemaker between
them and the army, trying to make the way free from war for them, and
trying to make them understand how resistless the march of progress was.
Many of the settlers had been murdered, and their places burned, but we
were not molested, even by the Sioux. I can remember one day, I was
alone here. Sandy had been south at Fort Washakie for several weeks. It
was early spring, and the kitchen door was open. I was making bread, I
know, and had just opened the oven door to take out the loaves when I
heard a step on the doorsill, and saw a shadow on the floor.”
“Indians?” exclaimed Polly.
“Yes. It was an Indian. He stood looking around for a minute, and I
didn’t act frightened at all. I thought he might have a message from
Sandy for me. Then he grunted, and held out his hand for the bread.
There were about eight loaves in all. I held them out to him, and he
took every single one. And he gave me this in exchange.”
She went over to an old dresser and took from a drawer a belt, beaded
richly, with elk teeth dangling in short fringes from it.
“Isn’t it lovely,” the girls cried. “Why did he do it?”
“Because he was hungry, I think. We never knew. But if I had refused him
the bread, or cried out, or done anything that was not friendly, he
might have killed me. I don’t know, I may be wrong,” she went on,
gently, with a happy, faraway look on her sweet old face, “but I’ve
found it a truth, children; if you give kindness, you receive kindness,
if you give love, you get love in return, even with savages. It is the
brotherliness of humanity that is the most ancient law of all. It is the
law of the human pack, as Sandy says.”
“Oh, girls, pack!” exclaimed Polly suddenly. “That makes me think of
animals. We’re forgetting about the bones.”
“Bones? What does the child mean?” said Mrs. Sandy.
Then they coaxed her down to where the Chief sat explaining to Ted and
Sue the difference between the Sioux and the Crows. And they told of the
find down in Zed’s gulch. Sandy listened with steady, unblinking eyes,
and brows drawn together a little.
“It must be some bear skeleton, dear,” Mrs. Sandy said. “Or maybe a
buffalo, don’t you think so, Sandy?”
“Not if it’s embedded in the rock, lass. Show me how big it is, Peggie.”
And obediently Peggie measured off on the bar-post the height of the
bones as close as she could guess at it.
“If it is a dinosaur, or anything like it, Chief,” Ted said, “it must be
about ten million years old.”
“Don’t talk so, child, it sounds downright reckless,” hushed gentle Mrs.
Sandy, just as Miss Calvert herself might have done. “Was it a monster
of the deep before the flood, Sandy, dear, like the leviathan?”
“Now you’ve got me, Di,” cried the big old fellow, merrily. “How can I
say for sure? When they find a toad or a frog asleep in the middle of a
rock cliff, do they wake him up, and ask if he was one of the identical
brood that plagued Pharaoh? There’s things that lie close hidden in the
grand, still dawn of creation, and we small humanlings cannot hope to
pierce the veil, or to understand the how and the why of it. But if
there is a monster of the deep or of the plains either, that’s hiding
away in old Zed’s gulch, we’ll haul him out, girls, and find out what
he’s worth. I doubt not that he’d enjoy a sniff of fresh air at that,
eh, Polly?”
Polly leaned forward, her brown eyes sparkling.
“Then I had better send word to the Doctor to come and see what it is,”
she said. “I dug up a piece of the bone to-day, and sent it to him, and
some of the rock around it.”
“Good. I’ll ride over on Monday to look at it. You had better come too,
to show me where it lies.”
They gladly promised to meet him at the gulch on Monday, and after
another look around the ranch, they were ready for home. The Chief was
more proud of his horses than anything else. He had raised a special
breed from the pure bred wild horses of the plains, and crossed it with
pure Arab.
“And they’re the finest bred horses in America to-day,” he declared.
“When you come over next time, I’ll take you up and show you them. None
of these high-hipped Indian pony animals, with joints like soup bones—”
“Sandy, boy!” protested Mrs. Sandy.
Sandy’s gray eyes twinkled at the motherly reproof in her tone. It was
plain to be seen he was her big boy.
“Well, an’ they do look like it, too, Di—but forgive me. Come and see my
beauties, when you can.”
“Could we ride them?” asked Polly.
“I doubt it, Polly. Never a saddle have they borne on their backs. When
I came West forty years ago, I looked about me, and I saw three things
that made me worship in my soul the Maker of things, an eagle in its
flight, a mountain at sunrise, and a wild horse. I couldn’t catch the
eagle, and I couldn’t snare the sunrise, but I have some of the horses
for my own, and it rests my eyes to look at them.”
“Oh, girls, we have time, and we may not get over again,” began Isabel,
pleadingly, but it was so late that Jean said no. They would be over
before it was time to go back East, surely. So they all kissed Mrs.
Sandy good-bye, and only Polly caught the words that she said, as she
kissed Jean.
“Is Honoria well?”
“Very well,” said Jean.
“Did she send me any message, Jeanie, dear?”
The tears came in Jean’s eyes.
“No, ma’am, none.”
Mrs. Sandy sighed, and smiled.
“Ah, well, in His good time,” she said. “We must bide it. Good-bye,
dear.”
And all the way home Polly pondered.