The Ranch Girls' Pot of Gold. Vandercook Margaret
name, children," Jim demanded firmly. "You must not set your heart on this excursion until I know who he is. I am sorry now that I ever listened to your scheme."
Jean, who was sitting next Ruth, leaned over and whispered something to her, and Ruth gave a happy laugh and then blushed furiously without rhyme or reason.
"Jim, there is but one person in the world we want to go with us, and you certainly ought to know who he is," Jack suggested at this moment. "Surely you know that it's you. Of course it couldn't be anyone else."
"Me – me!" Jim Colter exclaimed helplessly, the tired, thoughtful expression which his brown face had worn all morning changing suddenly to one of joy at Jack's proposition. "Why, you are mad as a March hare, Miss Ralston. I know you thought of renting Rainbow Lodge for the magnificent sum of one hundred dollars a month, but I took it that bargain did not include a thousand or more acres of good Wyoming land, and I would like to know who would look after the ranch while I was away."
"Oh, Jim, you are tiresome," Jean protested. "Do you think the ranch would go to rack and ruin if you left it for a little while? You know one of the other men could take charge of things for you. Why, you haven't taken a holiday from this place in years, and when you went away last time I suppose it was business, for you never said where you went nor what happened to you while you were away."
Jim's face turned so red that Jack was afraid Jean's idle speech had hurt his feelings, for he probably did not like the idea that they thought anyone as capable of running their ranch for them as he was. She slipped away from her place at the table and put her arm over Jim's shoulder as simply as though she were six instead of sixteen. Jim had always been a kind of big brother to the ranch girls. "Dear old Jim," Jack whispered affectionately, "don't be offended. Of course, Jean does not mean that anybody can really manage the ranch except you, but she does think, and indeed we all do – Cousin Ruth most of all, though she hasn't said anything yet – that you could come away with us for a while, even if you just take the trip with us to Yellowstone Park and then return to the ranch as you think best. O, Jim!" Jack's words tripped over each other in her eagerness, "you know you would love our caravan excursion better than anything in the world! It was just because you knew how much you would adore it yourself that you agreed so readily to our scheme when we proposed it to you. Don't you remember how we used to plot and plan just such a journey years and years ago, when Jean and Frieda and I were little girls? You used to tell us stories about your long ride all alone across the great desert when you had no one but your horse for company, no money, no friends, and no place to go until you found us." Jack paused for an instant.
Jim Colter was looking out the window, but his eyes were not on the landscape before him.
"Don't you recall, Jim, how you said that even then you learned to love the romance of the silent places, even the great loneliness that made you feel as though the world were created just for you?" Jack went on pleadingly. "And you said that some day you would take us for a trip across the prairies, and father promised that we might go when we grew up. Now everything is getting so civilized out west, do let us start on our pilgrimage while there is some of the wilderness left." Jack's next words to her friend were spoken in such a low tone that no one else could guess what she was saying: "I think father would like you to keep the promise to us, if you could, Jim, and it would be the most wonderful opportunity in the world for you with Ruth."
Jim gazed slowly about the group of girls without the least indication that he had understood Jack's suggestion. "Well, I will think things over for a few days and kind of see how the land lies," he announced aloud, "and if there is anybody around who can look after the ranch for me, I think maybe I had better see that you don't come to harm."
Jack gave Jim a little shake and Jean pulled him up from the breakfast table. "Don't talk in that tiresome, dutiful fashion, Jim Colter; we will not stand it," Jean protested; "for you know perfectly well that you are as crazy about our jaunt as the rest of us and you wouldn't miss it now for worlds!"
The entire breakfast party had gotten up from the table and were fluttering about the room. A little pine fire burned in the fireplace, but the windows and doors were wide open. Some one walked across the front porch and knocked, and when no one answered, followed the sound of the voices indoors. Frieda gave the first exclamation of surprise at their visitor, tripped over a rocking chair in running to him and landed in the arms of Frank Kent. "Oh, I am glad to see you!" she exclaimed happily. "Why, we thought you were at home in England. What can you be doing here?"
"I have come to see you, Frieda," Frank answered immediately, "but besides you, every single other person at the Rainbow Ranch." Frank must have had half a dozen arms to have shaken hands with all his friends in the room at the same time, yet somehow, in spite of their greetings, he managed to give both his hands to Jack and to grasp hers in the warm friendliness to which she was accustomed from him.
"I declare, I feel like I hadn't seen you in a hundred years," he said simply; "and yet it has been only about six months."
"What are you doing in this part of the world again, Mr. Kent?" Jim Colter inquired rather coolly. He liked Frank Kent well enough, but the young man had gone home to England, when the affairs of the ranch girls were safely settled with his cousin Daniel Norton, who had tried to steal their home from them, and Jim had not expected nor desired to see the English fellow again. He didn't care much for foreigners, even Anglo-Saxon ones.
"I am only here for a little while, Mr. Colter," Frank Kent explained, answering the question in Jim's words and in Jack's eyes. "I came back to America on a short business trip. My father heard of some mines in Colorado, and as I was so enthusiastic about the West he sent me out to investigate them for him. As Colorado is a sister state to Wyoming, I had to slip across the border, you know," he ended shyly.
Olive had let every one else in the room finish their welcome to Frank Kent before she attempted to speak to him. Now she put out her slender hand and held his only for a moment while her face flushed and her dark eyes shone with a soft radiance. "I am truly glad to see you again," she declared with more real feeling than any one of the other girls had yet revealed. Jack, who adored Olive, and was a little jealous of any affection she might show for other people, stared at her curiously.
"O Frank, do let's all go out of doors," Jack suggested. "We have the most wonderful scheme we want to tell you about and we want to know everything about your people in England, your father and mother and two sisters and your wonderful estate in Surrey."
The entire party was just leaving the living room when Aunt Ellen's tall form blocked the door. Her face showed anger and she held the small Indian boy by his uninjured arm. Carlos' eyes were larger and more mournful than ever and his lips set in an obstinate curve.
"This boy says he won't eat with Zack and me," Aunt Ellen announced angrily. "He says he is the son of a chief and the grandson of one and that he should be fed first; and I won't put up with such nonsense."
"O Carlos!" Olive came across the room and dropped on the floor in front of the lad. "How can you be so silly and ungrateful?" she asked pleadingly. "Aunt Ellen, his people are all dead; they were killed in a fight on the plains, and I don't know whether Carlos is a chief's son or not. But of course we can't keep him at the ranch if he is troublesome."
Olive was such a lovely picture as she knelt on the floor gazing up into the Indian boy's face that Frank Kent looked at her closely for the first time since he entered Rainbow Lodge. She was more changed than any one of the ranch girls in the six months of his absence, and seemed older and somehow more graceful and elusive than ever.
Jim Colter took several great strides across the room toward small Carlos, without apparently heeding Ruth's little cry of remonstrance nor Olive's plea for patience; he seemed so big and fierce and strong and the Indian boy so little and weak and defiant, that it was like a great eagle pouncing down on an impudent sparrow. Jim swooped Carlos up in his arms, but instead of devouring him, put the lad down in a chair by the breakfast table, poured out a glass of milk for him and made him drink it, for he saw what no one else had, that the boy was almost dying of hunger.
"Leave us to ourselves, please," Jim demanded, smiling at Aunt Ellen apologetically. "I want to see after this boy myself for a few minutes. Who knows but we may need just such a little scout in our trip across the prairies."
Ruth