Steptoe Lodge in the morning was very different from Steptoe Lodge at
night. The dark courtyard, full of shifting shadows, was now a clean and
open space bright with new light.
Miss Campbell alone of the motor party had not slept well because she
had been afraid to open her windows. She had cautioned the girls against
opening their's, but Billie had flatly rebelled.
"I cannot sleep in a vacuum, Cousin Helen, and if anyone were tall
enough to crawl in the window, we could among us make enough noise to
raise the roof off the house."
But the night had been peaceful and the cheerfulness of the June morning
with the sweet scents of the innumerable wild flowers which starred the
plains, dispelled Miss Campbell's fears.
Someone was singing in the courtyard, a song which Elinor knew and
loved.
"Hark, hark, the lark from Heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin to ope their golden eyes:
With everything that pretty is, my lady sweet, arise,
Arise, arise."
"It's Mr. Wins----," she broke off, "Mr. Blackstone, I mean."
"Isn't it strange that he should be here among these rough uneducated
people," observed Mary, thoughtfully. "Did he tell you anything about
himself last night, Elinor?"
But Elinor kept her own counsel. She was not one to tell the secrets of
others even to her own particular, intimate friends and she knew that
what Algernon Blackstone de Willoughby Winston had confided to her the
night before, he had meant for her ears alone.
A tap on the door, however, interrupted her guarded reply.
It was Barney McGee. Would any of the young ladies like a gallop on the
plains before breakfast?
"I would, I would," cried Billie, instantly in a state of joyous
anticipation.
"Now, Billie, dear," interrupted her cousin, "I am desperately afraid to
have you ride one of those wild untamed horses. Remember those animals
we saw in Buffalo Bill's Show. They were Western horses, all of them,
and they jumped around like so many contortionists."
"We'll give her the tamest beast in the stable, ma'am," Barney assured
her.
"Not one of those frightful bronco creatures, Barney, I hope?"
"No, no, ma'am, a gentle little Texas horse that goes like the wind and
never balks or kicks----"
"How fast a wind, Barney? A cyclone?"
Barney laughed.
"He's a first rate little horse, ma'am and any lady could ride him--who
knows how to stick on," he added in a lower voice.
But Barney knew he could trust Billie on a Texas pony, having seen her
take a canter on his own lean animal.
"I haven't any habit," announced Billie.
"Rosina keeps this one for the ladies who stop here," said Barney,
disclosing a khaki divided skirt which had been in a bundle under his
arm.
Ten minutes later, Billie was waiting at the long low shed which
answered for a stable, while Barney led forth a small gray horse called
Jocko. Two little impish devils peeped from the depths of Jocko's eyes,
but he flicked his tail lazily and lowered his head in a deceivingly
humble manner.
Rosina was to ride with them. Miss Campbell would on no account permit
Billie to ride unchaperoned on the plains, even with the trustworthy
Barney as a companion.
The mistress of the rancho presently emerged from the stable, leading a
small sorrel horse. She also wore divided skirts, and with one bound
leapt into the saddle, a feat Billie had not expected from her awkward,
rather dumpy appearance. But it was very evident Rosina enjoyed the
sport. With a curious cry, not unlike that given by her brother,
Blackthorn Hawkes, the night before, when he danced the Indian war
dance, she flew over the plains, followed by Barney and Billie.
Never had Billie enjoyed anything so much as that wild morning ride. The
air was cool and crisp. The sky intensely blue, and everywhere, as far
as the eye could see, were the rolling purple prairies, dotted with wild
flowers.
She forgot Miss Campbell, forgot her three friends, indeed her mind was
filled only with the joy of the moment.
Perhaps an Arabian horse on the desert might outstrip him, but indeed
Jocko's feet seemed hardly to touch the earth as he skimmed along.
Soon he was ahead of the others. Billie looked back over her shoulder
and saw Barney making wild gesticulations as the distance between them
widened. But Jocko's mouth was as hard as steel, and when the young girl
began presently to draw him in, she made no more impression on him than
the wind along the waste.
"Whoa, Jocko," she cried. "Stop, stop, you little beast."
On went Jocko, swifter than the wind, swifter than anything Billie had
ever imagined. Leaning far over, like a jockey, she pressed her knees
into his sides and held to his mane for dear life.
"Perhaps he will tire out," she thought. "In the meantime, the best I
can do is to stick on."
Only once, did she give an upside-down, backward glance through the
crook in her elbow, but her companions were nowhere in sight. Just how
long Billie gripped the pony's neck in this manner and kept her seat,
she hardly knew. It might have been five minutes and it might have been
thirty. She felt as a shooting star must feel as it flashes through the
universe; a secret, blind exhilaration and an immense vacancy of space
which seemed to surround her, and withal an overpowering fear.
Then there came a sudden and utterly unexpected halt. At the same moment
she unconsciously loosened her grip on the horse's mane. Head over heels
she went, straight over the pony's head, and lay huddled on the ground,
limp and inert.
Jocko sniffed at her an instant and then turned and trotted away. The
two little imps in his eyes had retired, and he was once more a
mild-mannered demure gray pony.
Imagine yourself the one small human speck in a great vast wilderness of
prairie and you can form a vague idea of Billie's sensations when she
opened her eyes.
Trying to collect her scattered senses, she pulled herself together and
stood up. Her head swam and she had a shaky sensation in her knees.
"Let me see," she said out loud in a puzzled voice. "Cousin Helen and
the girls are--well where are they? And----Oh," she cried, pressing her
hands to her head as memory came back to her and she perceived herself
to be alone on the plains. Then she looked about for the treacherous
Jocko, but he had disappeared over the horizon.
When Billie's blood had resumed its normal tempo and her head had ceased
to throb, she began to walk in what she judged from the sun to be a
Southerly direction. She walked for a long time but nowhere could she
see signs of her friends.
"I might as well be a canoe in the middle of the ocean," she said at
length, sitting down on the ground in despair. "I don't seem to get
anywhere, and--Oh, dear, how hot and tired and thirsty and hungry I am!"
Once she tried calling, but her voice seemed to her only a small piping
sound in the great emptiness.
"I declare, I feel about as large as a microscopic insect," she
exclaimed with a little sobbing laugh.
Then with a sudden resolution, she began to run.
"I won't be lost," she cried. "I won't! I won't! Haloo-oo-o,
Barney--Rosina--where are you?"
Perhaps you have heard of the madness of people lost in a great forest
or in the desert. It is a terrible growing fear which often turns into
insanity unless it is held in check. Billie had heard of this madness.
Her father had once told her of the sad case of a man lost in the
Adirondacks who ran round and round in a circle, and when at last he was
found, he was still running in a circle, completely out of his senses.
Checking her impulse to give way to this delirium, the young girl sat
down and began to think.
"Now, Billie," she said out loud, as if she were addressing some one
else, "don't go and make an idiot of yourself. Be silent and go quietly,
or you'll be a raving lunatic in five minutes. Of course the whole ranch
will set out to find you as soon as they know you are actually lost. And
of course they will find you. There can be no doubt of that. You are not
going to die yet. You are far too young and strong and fond of life
and--and hungry," she added with a little quaver in her voice.
But not again did Billie give way to the delirium of the lost. With her
back to the sun she hurried on, not even a village of prairie dogs
attracting her absorbed attention. As the sun began his afternoon
course, she became conscious of an intense, unconquerable thirst. At
first she fought against it, but at last she sat down and indulged in
memories of spring water. All the cool bubbling wells she had ever seen
came back to her mind. Memories of a little trickling brook on Seven
League Island beside which she had once knelt and taken deep long
draughts; then there was Cold Spring, where she had been on a picnic.
What a spring that was! A perfect fountain of delicious clear water. She
recalled a swim she had had in a mountain lake where the water was as
clear as crystal and very cold. She had swallowed quite a mouthful when
she dived off a rock, and she could still feel the coolness on her lips.
"But best of all," she murmured, "best of all was the water in that
sunken barrel spring on Percy's place. Oh, for a drop of it now," she
cried.
She lay down on the ground and pillowed her head on her arms. Through
the tall grasses she could see someone still a great way off coming
toward her so rapidly that the figure loomed larger and larger on the
landscape. She sat up and waited.
"Here I am," she heard herself calling. Then she laughed wildly. What
she had taken for a dumpy squat lady in a bonnet trimmed with two
pointed velvet bows, turned out to be a great stupid jackrabbit with
ears as big as a mule's, who leaped on his hind legs with incredible
rapidity.
"Silly old thing," exclaimed Billie irritably. "I thought you were a
nice, kind, fat old person bringing me a glass of water."
The truth is the rabbit did bear a striking resemblance to the janitress
at West Haven High School.
Billie fell asleep and dreamed she was in a fiery furnace calling to her
father, when suddenly a delicious wetness touched her lips and a few
drops of water trickled down her parched throat. She opened her eyes.
Buckthorne Hawkes, Rosina's brother, was leaning over her with a flask
of water in his hand.
Was she still dreaming or did she hear him say:
"Next time you will buy an opal of me, eh?"
She opened her eyes again and looked into the face of the peddler who,
ages back, had cursed them and their ancestors.
But old Mrs. Jack Rabbit had come back. There she was, dark and black
and squat.
"Good day, Mrs. Jack Rabbit," Billie called, "did you bring the water?"
and then she went to sleep with a feeling of security and peace.