AT THE RANCH
To the girls, that jolting ride was like an adventure straight from the
Arabian Nights. The fact that they were squeezed four in a seat which
was meant to accommodate only three, served to dampen their enthusiasm
not a trifle. Mrs. Nelson, riding in front with the bashful driver,
vainly sought to engage him in conversation. After repeated failures she
settled down to enjoy the ride in silence.
A dozen yards or so ahead of them Andy Rawlinson and Mr. Nelson cantered
up the dusty road, their horses' hoofs making the dust fly in a white
cloud.
"Goodness!" sneezed Betty, extracting a small handkerchief from her
pocket and applying it to her nose, "I do hope those two keep their
distance. We'll be simply choked with dust."
"I wonder," said Grace, as she rubbed her dust-filled eyes, "if they
don't have any rain in this part of the world."
"Of course they do; only this happens to be the dry season," said
Mollie, instructively, from the heights of her superior intelligence. At
least, that is what she called it.
"I'll say it's dry," grumbled Grace.
"Ooh, look," Amy interrupted ecstatically. "Isn't that a cactus over
there? Oh, I've wanted all my life to see some real cacti. Now I know
we're in the West."
The girls were silent for a moment, gazing out over the rolling plain--a
plain studded with stunted trees and sickly-looking bushes with here and
there a cactus plant for variety's sake--out to the hazy mountains
beyond, serene, calm, majestic, jutting jaggedly into the dazzling blue
of a cloudless sky.
"The mountains!" murmured Betty, half to herself. "How I love them. The
plains are fascinating in a cruelly romantic way, but somehow the
mountains make one think of hidden springs rushing swiftly into noisy
foolish little brooks, of bird songs, and the smell of cool damp earth,
of the crackling of dry twigs under one's feet, and the pungent woodsy
smell of camp fires--but there," she broke off confusedly, as she
realized the girls were regarding her with fond amusement. "I didn't
mean to wax so poetic."
"It's all right, honey," said Mollie, giving her hand a warm little
squeeze. "You rave right along. I know just how you feel, for I get that
way myself sometimes."
"There _is_ something mighty wonderful about the mountains," added Grace
softly.
"Oh, I love them, too," broke in Amy, adding with such earnestness that
the girls looked at her wonderingly. "They are everything that Betty has
said. And yet when Betty spoke of the plains as being cruel I couldn't
help wondering if the mountains weren't sometimes like that, too."
"What do you mean?" they queried, with quick interest.
"I was thinking," Amy continued slowly, "that the mountains might not
seem so kind to one who was lost in them--without a gun perhaps. I have
heard Will say that a person who had no knowledge of woodcraft would
find it almost impossible to recover his path, once he had lost it.
And," she added, with a shudder, her eyes fixed steadily on the distant
mountain range, "there are wild animals in those forests."
"Of course there are," agreed Betty lightly, as she saw how serious the
girls' faces had become. "Oodles of foxes and bears and raccoons and
things. Why, how would you expect to get pretty furs when you wanted
them if those things didn't exist? Cheer up, Amy dear. We're a long way
from being lost in the woods without a gun!"
A minute later the girls lost interest in everything but the immediate
present. For, in the distance, but distinctly visible, loomed a long low
ranch house which the silent driver beside Mrs. Nelson deigned to admit
was on Gold Run Ranch.
"You see it, girls?" cried the lady, turning a beaming face to the
girls. "You know, I feel just like a little girl with a beautiful new
toy."
"And we're awfully glad you've got the toy, Mrs. Nelson," said Grace,
fervently.
"Look," cried Mollie suddenly. "Your father and that cowboy are turning
off from the main road. That must be where the ranch begins. Oh, girls,
oh, girls, I'm glad I came!"
A few minutes later their jolting buckboard turned in after the two
horsemen, and since the new road proved to be nothing but two deep ruts
worn in the grass and as the ponies attached to the buckboard showed
considerable excitement at coming near home, the girls found themselves
holding on to each other convulsively to keep from being thrown out on
the stubbly grass at the side of the road.
"Whew, I'm glad that's over!" exclaimed Mollie, as the driver drew in
the rearing horses and spoke to them soothingly. "Come on, girls," she
added, making ready to jump out. "I'm going to remove myself from this
buckboard before one of those horses decides to sit in my lap."
The girls laughed and followed her with alacrity.
"Oh," cried Betty, hugging Amy ecstatically, simply because she happened
to be the nearest one to hug. "There are the horse corrals over there!
And, oh, girls! look at the cows, dozens and dozens and dozens of 'em.
Mother," she cried, turning wide-eyed to the latter, "do all those
'anymiles' really belong to you?"
"I presume they do, dear," said Mrs. Nelson, her own face flushed with
excitement. "I can't quite take in the amazing truth of it yet."
They were standing beside the first of a long line of low buildings that
seemed little more than glorified sheds and which the girls decided must
be the "bunk houses" for the ranch hands.
And while they were wondering if it would be possible to slip over to
the corrals for a closer look at the horses, Mr. Nelson sauntered up to
them, with handsome Andy Rawlinson keeping diffidently a little in the
rear.
"It's nearly supper time," he informed them smiling. "And Andy here," he
indicated young Rawlinson, who grinned an acknowledgment, "says that
everybody has supper sharp on the minute of six. So what do you say if
we go up to the house and have a little refreshment?"
The girls were not altogether reluctant to obey, much as they desired a
closer look at the bronchos, for they realized that they were pretty
hungry.
The ranch house was one of those quaint old structures which had begun
as a tiny, one-story frame cottage and had gradually been added to until
now it seemed, Betty said, to "spread all over the landscape." It had
porches and doors in the most unexpected places, but the whole house was
painted such an immaculate white and the shutters were such a friendly
green that the effect of the place was indescribably charming.
"If the house is as clean inside as it looks outside," whispered Grace
to Betty as Andy Rawlinson led them up on to one of the many porches,
"I'll never dare go in. I never felt so mussy and dirty in all my life."
"Never mind, we're all in the same boat," said Betty encouragingly, and
then they stepped into one of the pleasantest rooms they had ever seen.
It was big and cool and airy, in spite of the fact that supper
preparations were going on at one end of it. Rough picturesque looking
chairs were scattered about, and over near the windows a long table was
invitingly set for six. And oh, the delicious odor of cooking things
that was wafted on the air!
At sight of them a stout but immaculately neat and rosy-faced woman left
whatever she was doing with a frying pan on the stove and came over to
them, wiping her hands on her apron, her face wreathed in smiles.
"Go long with you, Andy Rawlinson," she cried as the youth lingered
rather awkwardly in the doorway. "There's no need for you to tell me who
these folks are, for I already know them for the new master and his lady
and the young ladies, bless their pretty sweet faces. Come right in, all
of you, and Lizzie here," turning to a wholesome-looking, mouse-haired
girl who had come in from the other room, "Lizzie will take you to see
the rooms and you can have your pick. But don't be long," she cautioned,
as they started to follow Lizzie and she turned back to her frying pan
on the stove, "for supper is all ready and you must be nearly famished."
If the girls had been impressed by the quaintness of this quaint old
house from the outside, they were even more delighted by its interior.
They passed down a rather dark and narrow hall at the end of which were
three low steps leading to such a series of rooms as the girls had never
seen before, each furnished neatly but plainly, the only touch of color
being the gay cretonne curtains at the windows. The rooms all seemed to
be connected by doors and to reach these doors one was obliged to go up
two steps or down three or up one, as the case might be.
"Goodness," cried Betty, when Lizzie had led the way through three of
these quaint little rooms and the open doors seemed to reveal several
others, "I wonder if all these rooms were really occupied."
"Yes, miss," said Lizzie, halting and speaking unexpectedly. "They was a
time when these rooms wuz all filled. Old Mr. Barcolm"--this being the
name of Mrs. Nelson's great uncle--"had a many children and
grandchildren an' seemed like he was sot on 'em all livin' with him. But
they got to quarrelin' and all left th' old man an' he was so mad he cut
'em all out o' his will. At least," she finished, as though warned by
the intent look of her listeners that she had said more than she had
intended to, "that's what they says. But mebbe it ain't the truth, fer
all I knows."
Then she led them on again through the maze of rooms while the girls
thought amazedly of what she had told them. Finally she came to a stop
in a room, larger than the rest, and turned her rather stolid gaze upon
Mr. and Mrs. Nelson.
"Miz Cummins," she announced, dully--the girls were afterward to find
out that Cummins was the name of the rosy-faced woman who had met them
so cordially at the door and who seemed to be general housekeeper for
the place--"Miz Cummins thought as how this would be a good room fer the
mister and missus. They is some nice rooms back of these fer the young
ladies. She sed, if you liked any of the other rooms better, to take
your pick. They's fresh water in the pitchers," indicating a washstand
with a bowl and two pitchers of gleaming water upon it, "an' if you want
anythin' else, you wuz please to tell me." And with these words, uttered
so precisely that it sounded like a rehearsed speech, which, in fact, it
was, Lizzie disappeared, leaving the travelers to themselves.
"Come on, girls," cried Betty, pushing them before her into the next
room. "Let's see what kind of rooms 'Miz Cummins' has picked out for
us."
They were not at all unusual rooms, being both about the same size and
nearly square and furnished about as simply as they could possibly be.
"If it weren't for the different colored cretonne at the windows," said
Mollie, with a chuckle, "these rooms might be twins. You and Grace can
have the lavender cretonne, Amy, and Betty and I will take the blue."
"Don't those beds look heavenly?" sighed Grace, as she pulled off her
hat and threw herself upon the big, snowy-sheeted bed.
"Goodness!" cried Amy, in dismay. "She's flopped. Get her up, somebody,
before she gets the bed so dirty I can't sleep in it to-night."
For answer Betty made a dash for Grace, pulled her to her feet, and
pushed her over to the washstand.
"See that water, Grace Ford?" she cried sternly. "Now use it!"
"And make it snappy," added Mollie slangily, as she and Betty
disappeared into the adjoining room. "I can smell 'Miz Cummins'' cooking
clear in here!"