HEART’S CONTENT
“Let’s call this Camp Expectancy,” said Polly, the next morning, when
they were ready to move on. “It is our first base of action in a way,
and we ought to name every camp so as to remember it.”
So Camp Expectancy it was, and the next one they found was so delightful
that they decided it must be called Camp Delight. And the last camp was
Camp Regret. Three nights they spent here, in the great, silent
mountains. And three days of fishing in the clear mountain streams, and
enjoying the freshly-cooked trout afterwards. Every day they had game of
some sort, but no bear showed up, and the girls were secretly just as
well pleased. These were happy, restful days. At first the constant
riding in the saddle tired them in spite of their long practice, but the
three days rest at Camp Regret fitted them for the home trip.
“Oh, dear,” sighed Ted. “It’s just an aggravation staying such a little
while. I wish I were grown up. I think I’d take up a government claim,
and settle out here.”
“We’d welcome you,” Mr. Murray said heartily. “If ever a beautiful,
healthy State needed good settlers it’s our Wyoming.”
“And we’d come and visit you every summer, Ted,” promised Sue, happily.
“Wouldn’t it be fun?”
“It sounds like fun, but you’d find out there was work to be done before
you got through,” laughed Mr. Murray. “There’s a lot of Easterners come
out and take up claims, and think that’s the end of it. Free land, and
plenty of game. Then they find out the difference when they have to
prove up their land, and work it, and pay for irrigation. But it’s a
great hopper. It sure sifts the grain from the chaff. Only the people
with hope and grit and good intentions stick to their claims, and win
out.”
Once, away up in the timber belt, they came on a nester and his family,
building their first house. All the family were helping. There was the
wife up on a ladder, helping fit cross beams, and two boys were sawing
planks. Even a little three-year-old girl had her apron full of nails,
holding them up for her father to take what he needed.
“Coming along, eh, neighbor?” said Mr. Murray, and the stalwart young
homesteader smiled cheerfully.
“We’ll raise the pine tree on the chimney the first of September, God
willing!”
“That’s the spirit that’s making our western states grow like their own
pines,” said the old rancher, as they drove on, after a good drink of
fresh water at the spring near the new home. “The pioneer days are still
with us, mother, and for those who love the land of promise, the pillar
of fire and the cloud wait on the border to lead them forward. By
jiminetty, it makes the blood stir, even in my old veins, to hear that
hammer and saw in the woods.”
Another time they met a sheepman from Idaho, driving his flocks eastward
towards the fall markets. It was a strange sight. Hundreds of sheep
grazing as they went, with the dogs skirting the bunch, and the
grave-eyed, unsmiling herders staring at the campers.
“When did you start, friend?” called out Mr. Murray.
“Last of May,” came back the answer. “We’re going easy. They’ll be good
and fat by fall.”
“Isn’t that funny,” exclaimed Polly, when they drove on. “Four months to
go a few hundred miles.”
“They camp out when they come to a good feeding ground, and let the
flocks get all they want. Then by fall when they reach the market, or
where they weigh up, they are in fine condition and the sheepman has
saved his freightage on them. That’s the way they used to bring up
cattle over the Long Trail from Texas.”
At one homestead, with evenly irrigated fields all around it in a pretty
valley, there were two young girls out with a yoke of oxen, working over
their alfalfa crop. They turned and waved to the Murrays and the girls.
“That is Nell Wilson and her sister,” said Mrs. Murray. “They came from
Illinois last year, and took up a claim. The sister was real poorly, I
heard, but she’s picked up all right, and they’re doing well. Sandy went
over in the spring to see that they got along all right.”
“Are they all alone?” asked Ruth, wonderingly. “They look so young.”
“Oh, they’re both in the twenties. Yes, they’re alone. Nell was a
stenographer, I believe, and Grace, the sister, tried one thing after
another. Then they took what money they had, and came out here. A family
called Jimpson had taken that section, and couldn’t seem to make it pay.
They put in a lot of good farm implements too, and had the oxen, and a
horse, but they didn’t have any luck, they said. Well, I always contend
there’s no luck like pluck, and the Wilson girls came along, and bought
them out for a song, and they’ve had luck, but not without steady,
faithful work. Archie’s been over helping them now and then, and he says
Nell’s a dear girl.”
Polly looked up quickly at Jean, and saw that she was smiling, and she
wondered, for Polly sensed a story or a romance miles off, as the
Admiral said. Jean saw the eager inquiry in her glance, and nodded her
head.
“They are to be married when Archie finishes college,” she said.
“Oh, I’m glad,” cried Polly, and all the girls turned in their saddles,
and sent out a cheer back to the two in the field. “They’ll wonder what
that’s for, but we know,” she added, merrily.
Sunday they did not break camp at all, but stayed at their first
stopping place, Camp Expectancy, on the banks of the big lake. Mr.
Murray read service for them, and the girls enjoyed singing the old
familiar canticles out there in the green world. Monday night, just at
moonrise, the tired travelers turned down the road that led past old
Topnotch, and were glad enough to see the light in the cabin window, and
hear the dogs barking.
Sally Lost Moon stood in the doorway holding up a lamp, and smiling
broadly at them, and Archie and Neil took the ponies, while Don helped
unload.
“They’ve started digging over in the gulch,” Don found a chance to tell
Peggie. “Dr. Smith lives in Zed’s old shack now, and they say more
workmen are coming, and they’ll be there all summer.”
“Oh, Don, just after our old skeleton,” exclaimed Peggie. “Do you
remember how we laughed when we found it, and wondered what sort of a
bear had bones like that?”
“It would be there yet if Polly hadn’t known better.”
“I know it,” Peggie agreed. “The other girls say she’s the best starter
of things they ever saw. They say if I do go back east with them, I am
to belong to their outing club too. Polly’s the president. Won’t that be
fun?”
Don was very busy with the girth strap on Jinks, and she could not see
his face, but his voice sounded muffled and unwilling.
“It won’t be fun for us. Won’t you miss us, Peg?”
“Of course I will, goosie,” cried Peggie, “but it will help mother to
have me away, and I can get through school faster, Jean says, this way.”
“But you’ll stay down East there and teach, if you do.”
“No, I won’t, Don,” Peggie said, lovingly. “I’ll come home, sure. I love
Wyoming.”
The following day they all rode over to the gulch for the last time. The
Doctor was in his element, bossing a gang of workmen, and they met two
other famous men.
“What on earth did the Doctor call them, girls?” said Sue, on their way
back. “Paleo—paleo—”
“Paleontologists,” corrected Ruth, firmly. “Swallow first, and take a
deep breath, and you can say it, Sue.”
“Bone diggers,” added Ted, irreverently.
“More than that, Ted,” Jean interposed. “The other word is long, and
difficult to remember, but it means a lot. It comes from three Greek
words, and means a discourse on ancient life or beings on the earth.
That is more than bone digging, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry,” Ted said, penitently. “But I know I’ll never remember the
other word.”
“Yes, you will, young lady,” cried Jean, laughingly, “because the very
first time you need discipline this term, I shall have you write it
fifty times.”
“Help, help!” called Ted, woefully, but the girls only laughed too.
Their vacation was up on Friday. Wednesday Mrs. Sandy had invited them
all over to the Alameda to dinner, and for a visit. They went in the
surrey, for horseback riding was beginning to feel pretty tiresome.
“Such a tanned lot of young savages,” exclaimed Miss Honoria, when she
saw them. “I declare, Polly, what will Welcome say when she sees your
freckles?”
“Just look at Lady Vanitas, and her tanned face and arms. That comes
from trouting without a hat. But we’re all glad to be tanned. Nobody
will believe we have had a wonderful vacation in the sunshine and open
air unless we can show tan.”
It was all fully arranged that day about the return trip. Jean was to
accompany the girls back, and Peggie would go when Miss Honoria
returned. Nothing was said definitely about what the precious skeleton
represented in a monetary way, but from the smile on Mrs. Sandy’s face
when it was spoken of, and Peggie’s bubbling happiness, the girls knew
that all trouble in that line had been wiped away. The greatest surprise
of all was when the Doctor came down to the home ranch, Thursday
afternoon. He looked in the best of health, and was fairly radiant over
the dinosaurus.
“I have maintained for years that the Jurassic drift took in this
section,” he said, happy as a boy with a new toy. “And this confirms me
positively. Polly, as a relief to my conscience, I wish to hand over
some of the spoils to the club that had sense enough to know prehistoric
bones when it saw them. Here is one hundred, and I knew you’d like it in
gold. Girls always do. Five twenty-dollar gold pieces, one for each of
you, and you shall be honorary members anyway of my own private
geological society when I start it.”
“Oh, Doctor Smith,” cried Polly, flushing warmly at the unexpectedness
of the gift. “We don’t deserve this.”
“Don’t you? Wouldn’t the dinosaurus be lying right in its rocky tomb
this minute if it hadn’t been for your discernment? You take it, child,
and add it with my best thanks and good wishes to the general fund of
the Polly Page Club.”
“Girls,” said Polly, later, when she broke the glad news to the rest.
“Let’s take a stateroom on the train from Chicago to Washington. We
deserve that much, anyway, and it was hard sleeping all the way on the
seats.”
“Hear, hear!” cried the girls, gaily.
The start was to be an early one, but even before breakfast, Friday
morning, a solemn and regretful procession wended its way from the guest
cabin down to the corral, and each girl took mournful leave of her pony.
“Jinks is crying, I know he is,” said Polly. “See him droop his precious
head. I wish I could take him back with me.”
“Don’t we all wish the same about our ponies?” Ted exclaimed. “Where can
I ever find another horse like Calico Bill. He’s salmon-pink and brown
and white, and his eyes are so expressive.”
The ponies did seem to know that something wrong was going on, for they
lifted their heads, and whinnied wistfully as the two teams drove away
over the road southward. The two older boys stood with Mrs. Murray,
waving, and beside them was Sally too, stolid, and bright-eyed, watching
them out of sight.
“Four weeks of solid fun,” said Ruth, as she leaned back. “Hasn’t it
been just splendid, girls?”
“You’ve blazed a good trail for others to follow, too,” Jean replied.
“Better a suit-case and a khaki dress than white ruffles and a parasol,
girls, on a board walk, if you’re out for health and a good time.”
“And a dinosaurus,” added Polly.
At the railroad station in Deercroft, they saw Jimmy.
“Thought I’d ride down to say good-bye,” he said, shaking hands with
each. “Don’t forget what you promised about our mission, will you? They
say we can have the old Fork schoolhouse to use if we want it, and we’re
going to try to buy it in, and make a chapel out of it. I hope you’ll
help out.”
“We will, truly, we will,” the girls promised.
“Here she comes through the cut,” called out Don, holding the ponies.
“Good-bye all!”
Mr. Murray held Jean close in his arms.
“God bless you, my lass,” he said, gently. “Take good care of Peggie for
us this winter. Good-bye, girls. Come again when you’re up this way.”
Jimmie had sprung to his own saddle, and his black pony was doing a
waltz step all its own when the train pulled in. He swung his hat off in
one last salute, and let the bridle slacken, and the last the girls saw
of him, he was going like a rocket down the road towards the town,
singing at the top of his lungs, his old favorite,
“Guide me, Oh, Thou great Jehovah,
Pilgrim through this barren land!”
Polly leaned back from the window, her eyes wet with tears.
“Isn’t it a darling land?” she said, warmly.
“It’s Heart’s Content to us who love it,” Jean replied, and the girls
knew well what she meant.
* * * * *
The next volume in the Polly Page Series will be entitled:
THE POLLY PAGE MOTOR CLUB.