Kitabı oku: «The Ranch Girls at Rainbow Lodge», sayfa 7

CHAPTER XIII
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.

CHAPTER XIV
AN UNFORTUNATE ARRIVAL

THERE was no one on the platform when Ruth dismounted, but a tall man, who was not looking for her. He was oddly handsome in spite of his queer Western clothes, and Ruth wished for an instant that he might be Mr. Colter. Evidently he was not. He stared at her curiously for a few seconds, then searched anxiously along every other exit of the train.

Cousin Ruth could discover no one else. The madcap girl, who had run her wild race with the train, was a little distance off. She was holding three ponies by their bridles, and as one of them was dancing with nervousness on account of the noise of the engine, the girl had her hands full.

Ruth Drew's heart sank to ten degrees below zero. Had she traveled across the continent to a wild Western town to find no one to meet her? The ranch girls could not be so rude; and Ruth determined to ask the good-looking man with the worried expression, what she ought to do.

Jim was gazing sadly after the departing coaches. You see he was looking for a white-haired woman of about fifty, and supposed that the old lady hadn't known enough to get off the train at the right station, and had gone on to the next stop. How in the world would he be able to connect with her?

Jim saw the young woman on the platform, but she wasn't as large and didn't seem to him to be much older than Jack. He supposed she had come to visit some of their ranch neighbors, yet she looked unhappy, as though she wanted to cry. Jim's heart was touched.

He took off his broad Mexican hat, and Ruth thought with a sudden gasp that she had never seen such blue eyes and such black hair before.

"Can I do anything for you, ma'am?" Jim inquired politely. "It 'pears like your folks haven't come to meet you."

Ruth shook her head. She was too full of tears to trust herself to speak for a moment. "I am afraid not," she answered finally. "Will you be good enough to tell me how I can get over to the Rainbow Ranch? I have come to live with the Ralston girls. I am their cousin – "

"Not Ruth?" Jim exclaimed, forgetting his shyness in his surprise. "You can't be Cousin Ruth, because the girls told me she was an old maid." Jim stopped abruptly, conscious that he had put his foot in it with his first remark to their new visitor.

Cousin Ruth drew herself up a little stiffly. She did not like to be called "an old maid," perhaps because she knew she often acted and looked like one, but she was too tired to care much about anything at present. She only longed with all her heart to be driven home to Rainbow Lodge.

"I am Cousin Ruth just the same," she answered feebly, trying to smile.

Jim grabbed her suit case, carried her umbrella like a shot gun, and marched her toward the girl who was holding the three horses, the same girl who had shocked and entertained her from the car window.

Jacqueline slid off her pony and passed the three bridles to Jim. She did not know whether she ought to kiss her cousin or only to shake hands with her, for there was something in Ruth's expression that froze Jack's first affectionate intention. Ruth was truly horrified at Jack's behavior. She didn't see how a girl could be so reckless of appearances.

Jack held out a slim, cool hand. "I am awfully glad to see you, Cousin Ruth. It was very good of you to come out to us. I hope you are not tired," Jack remarked, as though she had learned her greeting out of an etiquette book. She was as stiff as a wooden Indian, because she felt so abominably shy.

Ruth's feelings were hurt. She did not think of her own manners, merely of Jack's. "Yes, I am tired," she replied coldly. "Is the carriage waiting for us in the town?"

Jack's face reddened. Jim gave a hasty glance of embarrassment toward the two women. There was an awkward silence.

Jack found her voice first. "We didn't bring a wagon over for you, Cousin Ruth. We don't own a carriage," Jack explained. "It is so late that we didn't think we would get to the ranch before night, if we drove. We brought a horse for you to ride."

Ruth Drew sank limply on the ground. "A horse to ride!" she exclaimed faintly. "I have never been on a horse in my life. How far is it to the ranch?"

"Ten miles," Jack acknowledged shame-facedly. Ten miles did sound like a great distance to a stranger, although the ranch girls had always thought that they lived very close to town; but the idea of a full-grown, able-bodied woman not knowing how to ride horseback had never entered Jacqueline Ralston's head. What on the face of the green earth were they to do? "You had better go over into the town and see if you can get a carriage, Jim," Jack advised. "I never thought of Cousin Ruth's not liking to ride. I can lead the two horses home, if you will drive her over."

Jack was really miserably embarrassed at her own failure as a hostess. She knew that they were making a dreadful first impression on Cousin Ruth, and Jean had warned her that first impressions were most important. But Ruth Drew thought she caught something in Jack's tone that sounded supercilious. There was nothing so extraordinary in Ruth's being ignorant of horses, she had never been rich enough to own one; yet it was quite impossible for the Eastern girl and the Western one to understand each other's points of view.

Jim Colter came back utterly crestfallen; there was no carriage to be had in the town.

With the courage of despair, Ruth let herself be swung up on the homely broncho. She was horribly frightened, although Jack assured her that she was riding the gentlest pony on the ranch, one that belonged to little Frieda. It made no difference, Ruth slipped and slid. She clutched the pony's mane in her hands and let Jim lead her, yet every time the pony went out of a walk, Ruth wanted to shriek with fear. She had traveled hundreds and hundreds of miles from Vermont to Wyoming, but the distance was as nothing to her ten-mile horseback ride to Rainbow Lodge.

Every muscle in Ruth's body ached; she had a horrid stitch in her side and swayed uncertainly in the saddle. Each moment she expected to fall off.

The ride home seemed almost as long to Jack and Jim as it did to their guest. They were so ashamed of themselves, and Jack's cheeks were hot with blushes every time she looked at her new cousin.

After about an hour of slow traveling, Jack caught sight of Ruth. Her face was grey with pain and fatigue.

"Stop, Jim," Jack called sharply. "Cousin Ruth is going to faint."

Ruth had a dim recollection of being lifted off her horse and for the rest of her journey she felt herself being held up by a strong arm. Now and then a man's voice spoke to her, as if she were a little girl and he were trying to comfort her. He was a haven of refuge and Ruth did not think or care who or what he was, and finally he brought her safely to Rainbow Lodge.

Jack thought she had never seen her home so lovely. There was a golden glow behind the house and the wind stirred through the quivering yellow leaves of the cottonwood trees. Rainbow Creek lay on one side of them and on the other the broad sweep of the plains. Jack gazed wistfully at Ruth who was riding in front of Jim; surely their new cousin would show some interest in her new home!

Jean, Frieda and Olive ran out in the yard to meet the cavalcade. Jack waved her hand, but Cousin Ruth did not open her eyes.

"We are about home, now, Miss Drew," Jim found courage to say.

"Heaven be praised!" Ruth sighed. She could barely speak.

Aunt Ellen was waiting on the porch in a starched white apron, and took in the situation with quick sympathy. She saw her girls' disappointed, embarrassed faces and their cousin's worn one.

Aunt Ellen gathered Ruth in her arms. "Leave her alone, honies, she is just tired out," she explained to the ranch girls. And without the least effort from Ruth, Aunt Ellen got her in bed, fed her some broth and told her to go to sleep and not to worry.

In the big living-room with its splendid pine fire, Jack, Jean, Frieda and Olive ate their feast of welcome alone.

It was hardly worth while to have taken so much trouble to get ready for a guest who looked neither at you nor your house when she came in to it.

Jack was plainly cast down. Jean, Frieda and Olive were almost as discouraged.

"I think Cousin Ruth is tiresome," Jean exclaimed petulantly. "I don't see why she couldn't have spoken to us."

Frieda's blue eyes filled with tears. "I don't believe she is going to like us very much," she added disconsolately.

"I am dreadfully afraid of her already," Olive sighed. "Are you sure, Jack, that you explained to her about me? She not like my living with you at the ranch."

Jack put her arm about Olive and drew her toward the fire. "Of course Cousin Ruth will care for you as much as she does for any one of us, Olive; she has to," Jack insisted. "Remember that while you haven't any name of your own, you are Olive Ralston. Isn't it splendid that old Laska and Josef have left us in peace? I wonder if they do intend to give you up to us without any more fuss!"

Olive shivered a little in Jack's grasp. "I hope so," she answered fervently. "Laska and the old Indian life seem hundreds of years away. Yet I have been at the ranch only a little less than a month."

"Don't worry, Olive," Jack returned thoughtfully. "Let us just be glad to-night that we have one more evening alone;" which shows how Jack felt about the arrival of the new chaperon.

The girls sat up quite late. Frieda went to sleep with her head in Jack's lap, Jean fell to nodding, but Olive and Jack were wide awake. Olive was older than the ranch girls had thought her at first. She must have come next to Jack, although old Laska had never told Olive her exact birthday.