THE WET BLANKET.
"JACK, how are we ever going to quit using slang?" Jean groaned.
"Oh, we do worse things, Jean Bruce," Jack answered unfeelingly. "Little
we know how many crimes we do commit! Just wait until a straight-laced
old maid gets hold of us! And what will Cousin Ruth say about Jim's
grammar? You know she is a B.A. from some woman's college. Do you know
Jean, I often wonder if Jim talks in the careless way he does simply
because he has lived so long out here with the cowboys. He must have had
some education when he was young, he seems to have read a great many
books."
"Jim Colter is a clam," Jean remarked impatiently, forgetting her
resolution to speak only "English, pure and undefiled." "He would rather
die than to let us learn anything of his past. I do declare, Jack, that
if he were anybody in the world except Jim, I should think he had
something in his life he wished to conceal. I wonder if he ever had a
tragic love affair?"
"Oh, Jean, you are a romantic goose," Jack exclaimed. "What was it you
had to show me?"
Jean and Jack were giving a thorough cleaning to the living-room; Aunt
Ellen had shaken the rugs and polished the pine floor, but the two girls
were dusting vigorously in every crack and corner and rubbing the brass
candlesticks with an unaccustomed ardor.
Through the entire Lodge there rioted a sense of preparation, as before
the approach of some great event.
Jean flung down her dust cloth, seized Jack by the hand and marched her
over to the corner lined with their book shelves.
Jack discovered an entirely unknown row of books. "Why, Jean Bruce!"
Jack exclaimed in amazement. "Where did you ever find these old things
and what do we want with them anyhow?"
Jack was staring at Congressional reports, a few ancient law books and a
treatise on medicine. But there also were eight volumes of Gibbon's
"Rome," Greene's "History of The English People," and several other
valuable old histories, arranged in a conspicuous place on the book
shelves. Jean's most cherished novels had been stuck out of sight.
Jean smiled a superior smile. "I found the books upstairs in Uncle's
trunk, of course, and I brought them down here to impress our new
chaperon or governess, which ever you choose to call her. I was
determined she should not think we were perfect dunces when she arrived
at Rainbow Lodge."
Jack appeared to reflect. "I don't see how it will do much good," she
argued, half laughing. "Cousin Ruth will soon find out that we don't
know anything in the books worth mentioning."
But Jean was not in the least discouraged. "First impressions are always
the most important, Jacqueline Ralston," she announced calmly. "My
advice to this family is to let Cousin Ruth get her shocks from our wild
behavior by degrees so that she will have time to rally in between."
"Do you think she is going to find us so very dreadful?" Jack inquired
quite seriously, without the trace of a smile. She was climbing up on a
ladder to try to straighten a beautiful golden lynx skin, which was
slipping off the wall.
"Worse than wild Indians," Jean replied, unmoved, "just you mark my
words, Miss Ralston. For instance, Miss Drew is going to announce that
it is a perfect shame for any one to shoot a poor dear wildcat. Uncle
ought to have reasoned with that cat when it jumped at him. She is going
to hate us and all our ways forever and want to go back to her blessed
New England in a week."
Jack sighed, "you are a Job's comforter, Jean. But you don't have to
worry, I know Cousin Ruth will hold me responsible for our wicked ways.
You see I wrote her that we did not want her to come out to us when she
first said she would. Then I had to eat humble pie and say we did. But
even if she does not like you or me, Jean, she can't help caring for
Olive and Frieda. Olive is the prettiest, shyest girl in the world."
Jean nodded. "Jack," she asked more sympathetically, "is Cousin Ruth
horribly old?"
"She is twenty-eight and a dreadful old maid," Jack confessed sadly.
"Jean, you have simply got to ride over to the station with Jim to meet
her this afternoon."
Jean shook her head and dropped languidly into a large reclining chair.
"I am not at all well, Jack," she answered, "I forgot to tell you this
morning, but I feel a bad cold coming on. If I should take a long ride I
am sure I should be quite ill."
Jack stared at her cousin searchingly. "You don't show the least sign of
a cold, Jean," she argued.
"That is because appearances are deceiving, sweet coz," Jean murmured.
"How is our dear lady cousin going to get over to the ranch?"
"Oh, Jim is going to lead a horse over for her to ride back on," Jack
announced quite unconscious of breakers ahead. "You see the train gets
in so late that we couldn't get home until after dark, if we drove over,
and I thought it would be kind of nice to have Cousin Ruth arrive at
Rainbow Lodge just at twilight. You didn't think to look among father's
books for a stray paper, did you, Jean?" Jack asked, trying to appear
indifferent.
"Yes, I did, Jack," Jean returned quickly. "There wasn't anything. Let's
don't talk about it. I promise to have everything at the Lodge to-night
in ship-shape order, when you arrive. We have cleaned up the whole house
and we will put on our best clothes and stand out on the veranda to meet
you; we might even sing, 'Hail, the conquering hero comes,' if you think
it would be appreciated."
"Do you suppose Jim could meet Cousin Ruth without me?" Jack queried, as
a forlorn hope.
Jean shook her head decidedly. "Most certainly not, Jack; never in the
world! The lady would think Jim was trying to kidnap her and he would be
scared to death." Jean kissed Jack apologetically. "I know I am horrid,
Jack, to put all the hard things off on you because you are a little bit
the oldest, but really, if I had to meet Cousin Ruth at the station, I'd
shiver and shake until I fell off my horse. I will do the next hard
thing that has to be done on this place, I will honestly, cross my heart
and body," Jean argued penitently.
Three weeks had passed since Jim Colter's and Jack's eventful ride
across the ranch. It was late October, but unusually mild and warm.
Cousin Ruth had been written to on the very evening of the decision, so
that there could be no chance for a change of purpose on the part of
the ranch girls, for they felt that they were in for it and were
determined to do their best.
Miss Ruth Drew was entirely alone in the world except for one
good-for-nothing brother and had just enough money to eke out a bare
existence in a dull little Vermont town. She wanted an object in life
and believed that the ranch girls needed her. So soon as Jack's letter
arrived, she had telegraphed that she would come to them at once. Since
then, the days at Rainbow Lodge had slipped by like magic until the
fated day arrived. Jim Colter and Jack, with many inward misgivings,
mounted their ponies and leading an extra one for Miss Drew, rode to the
station.
The express from the East would be due in an hour.
Jack and Jim paced restlessly up and down the station platform, with
their arms locked. Jim looking even more wretched and unhappy than Jack.
He wondered how in the world he was to treat the old lady cousin when
she came out to them, and whether she would shut off from caring for his
adored ranch girls.
Jim had not the remotest idea of Miss Ruth Drew's age. The name had an
elderly sound to it and Jack had described her as an old maid;
consequently Jim's mental picture showed a small, grey-haired woman with
corkscrew curls, somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty, with thin lips
and a penetrating eye. She would probably reduce him to powder with a
single glance, but he meant to be as polite to her as he humanly could
and to speak to her only when it was absolutely necessary.
"Jim," Jack suggested finally, "you have sighed like a human bellows
three times in the past five minutes. If you meet Cousin Ruth with that
expression, she'll think we are sorry she has come. Please go over into
the town and buy yourself some tobacco or something to cheer you. I'll
get on Tricks and ride up and down near the track for a while, and then
we will both be in a better humor when the train finally does get in."
Miss Ruth Drew sighed. She was sitting in the Pullman car with her eyes
closed and an expression of supreme fatigue on her sallow but not
unattractive face.
It seemed to her that she had been traveling ever since she could
remember. Were there people in the world idiotic enough to think there
was beauty in the western prairies? For days she had looked out on bare
stretches of endless brown plains rising and falling in one monotonous
chain. The sand was in her eyes, in her ears, in her mouth; worst of
all, it had piled up in a great mass of homesickness on her heart.
How could she have turned her back on dear New England villages, with
their sleepy, green and white homesteads and trim gardens, for this vast
desert? "Of course, she was doing her duty in coming to look after four
motherless girls," Ruth remembered, with a pang, but her duty at the
present moment did not appear cheerful.
When the conductor announced that the next station was hers, Ruth sat up
and arranged her hat and veil neatly. She adjusted her glasses on her
thin nose and put back the single lock of hair that had strayed from its
place. Her heart began to flutter a little faster. Was she actually
arriving in the neighborhood of Rainbow Ranch? It didn't seem possible!
If you can imagine a very prim, grey mouse kind of girl, who looked a
good deal older than she was, with ash brown hair and eyes and a neat
tailor-made suit to match, you will get a very good impression of Miss
Ruth Drew. Her figure was very good and her mouth might have been
pretty, except that it looked as though she disapproved of a great many
things, and that is never becoming. But she was tired and homesick and
it was not a fair time to judge her.
It would be another fifteen minutes before she would get into Wolfville,
and Ruth closed her eyes again. There was nothing to see out of her
window that was in the least interesting and she preferred to think
about the ranch girls. She wondered if they would be very hard to get on
with, if they were very wild and reckless. It made her shudder: the idea
of her cousin's children growing up with only a common cowboy for their
friend and adviser.
There was a little stir in the car, the engine had slowed down. Ruth
opened her eyes; what had made her traveling companions' faces brighten
with interest? Three or four of them rushed across the aisle and pressed
their noses up against the window panes on her side of the coach. One
man threw up the car window, leaned out and shouted: "Hurrah!" A woman
waved her handkerchief.
Ruth's curiosity was aroused and she gazed languidly out her window.
Flying along the road that followed the line of the track, was a Western
pony. The horse was running like a streak, his nostrils quivering with
excitement, his feet pounding along the hard sand.
"Beat it! beat it!" cried the excited stranger. "Did anybody ever see
such riding before?" The man addressed the entire car.
Ruth could see that there was someone on the horse, running a race with
the express train. The rider was in brown and Ruth could not observe
very distinctly. She supposed that it was an Indian boy.
"That girl is a wonder!" the man exclaimed, who had been traveling next
the prim young woman from the East for four days without daring to look
straight at her. He leaned over his seat and smiled.
"Girl!" Miss Drew repeated in surprise. "Was the figure on horseback a
girl?" Ruth was quite willing to admit that she had never seen such
horsemanship in her life. The girl was perfectly graceful and at times
she leaned over to urge her pony on, or bent sideways as though she
swayed with the motion of the wind. She seemed to rest on her horse so
lightly that she added no burden to him but was like the spirit of
motion carrying him on.
The engine ahead whistled three times. The train was moving slowly,
still it was remarkable how the rider kept up with the passenger coach.
Just as the car rolled into the station, the girl on horseback flashed a
smile at the people watching her from the car windows, and Ruth had a
brief glimpse of a shaft of sunlight caught in a mass of bright, bronze
hair and a pair of radiant cheeks and eyes. Then she seized her suit
case and umbrella, slipped into her overshoes and hurried out of the
train. She had read that it rarely rained in Wyoming, except in the
spring, but she wished to run no risk of taking cold.