The Girl from Arizona Part 1

The Girl from Arizona.

by Nina Rhoades.

CHAPTER I

MAKING THE BEST OF THINGS

"MARJORIE."

The clear call rang out, breaking the afternoon stillness of the ranch, but there was no response, and after waiting a moment Miss Graham gave her wheeled chair a gentle push, which sent it rolling smoothly across the porch of the ranch house, down the inclined plane, which served the purpose of steps, to the lawn. It was very hot, the sun was blazing down as only an Arizona sun can blaze, and not a breath of air was stirring.

But Miss Graham was accustomed to the heat and the glare. She paused for a moment, gazing off over the vast prairie to the California mountains, nearly a hundred miles away. She generally paused on that same spot for one look, although the landscape was the only one she had seen in twelve years. Then she moved on again, across the lawn, now parched and dry from the long summer's heat, toward the stables and out-buildings. It was before the smallest of these out-buildings, a tiny log cabin, that she finally brought the chair to a standstill.

"Marjorie, are you there?"

There was a sound of some one moving inside, and a girl of fourteen, with a book in her hand, appeared in the doorway. She was a pretty girl, with soft light hair that curled over her temples, and bright, merry blue eyes, but just now the eyes were red and swollen, and there were unmistakable tear-marks on the girl's cheeks. At sight of the lady in the wheeled chair, however, Marjorie's face brightened, and she hurried forward, exclaiming remorsefully:

"Oh, Aunt Jessie dear, did you come all this way by yourself? I'm so sorry. Do you want me to do something for you?"

"You needn't be sorry," said her aunt, smiling. "The exercise will do me good, and I am quite proud of being able to manage this chair so easily.

I called you from the porch, but you didn't hear. Your mother and Juanita are busy in the kitchen making jam, and I wasn't of any use there, so I thought I would come and see what you were about. I felt pretty sure of finding you in the old playhouse."

"Come in," said Marjorie, eagerly. "You haven't been in the playhouse in ages; not since I grew too big to invite you to 'make-believe' tea, but the door is just wide enough for the chair; don't you remember? Let me help you in?" And springing to Miss Graham's side, Marjorie seized the handle of the chair, and carefully guided it through the narrow entrance, into the little house her father had built for her own special use, and which had always been known as the playhouse. It might still have been regarded as a playhouse, although its owner had grown too old to play there. A couple of battered dolls reposed upon a toy bedstead in one corner, and an array of china dishes, all more or less the worse for wear, adorned the shelves. Marjorie loved her few possessions dearly, and in a place where one's nearest neighbor lives five miles away, there are not many people on whom to bestow things which have ceased to be useful to one's self, and they are therefore likely to be preserved.

"Now we're all nice and cosy," remarked Marjorie, seating herself comfortably on the floor at her aunt's feet. "There wouldn't be room for another person in here, even if there were anybody to come. What good times we used to have here when I was little, didn't we, Aunt Jessie?"

Marjorie spoke fast and nervously, but there were pink spots in her cheeks, and Miss Graham was not easily deceived.

"What's the matter, Marjorie?" she asked simply. She and her niece had no secrets from each other.

Marjorie tried to laugh, but her lip quivered, and the tears started to her eyes.

"There isn't anything the matter," she said, frankly. "I've been a goose, that's all. It was all the fault of the book I was reading."

"What book was it?" Miss Graham inquired curiously, glancing at the volume Marjorie was still holding in her hand.

"It's called 'The Friendship of Anne,' and it's one of those in that box Father had sent from Albuquerque. It's all about a big boarding-school full of girls, and the good times they had there, but somehow it set me thinking, and--and, I don't know why, perhaps because it's been so hot and still all day, but I began to feel as if I wanted to cry, and so I came out here to have it out." Suddenly Marjorie dropped her head in her aunt's lap, with a sob.

For a moment Miss Graham was silent. She stroked the soft, fluffy hair with her thin fingers, and a look of comprehension came into her face.

When she spoke her voice was very gentle.

"I understand, little girl," she said tenderly. "You haven't said much about it, but I know it was a big disappointment that Father couldn't afford to send you to school at Albuquerque this winter. It was a disappointment to all of us, much as we should have missed you, but it is one of those things everybody has to bear sometimes."

"I know it," said Marjorie, checking her tears, and making a great effort to speak cheerfully. "It wasn't poor Father's fault that so many of the cattle died this year, or that the drought spoiled the alfalfa crop. I try to think that perhaps it's all for the best, and that if I really left you all, and went away to school, I might have died of homesickness. But when I read that story, and thought of all the people and things there are in the world that I've never seen, it was just a little bit hard to feel cheerful. Mother teaches me all she can, and so do you and Father, but I'm fourteen and a half, and I hate to think of growing up without any real education. If I were well educated, I might teach, and be a real help to you all, but there isn't anything I can do now but just sit still and make the best of things."

"Making the best of things is what we all have to do," said Miss Graham, smiling rather sadly. "You do it very well, too, Marjorie dear. Your father and I were talking last evening of how bravely you have borne this disappointment. We all realize what it has meant to you, but we are not a family who are much given to talking about our troubles."

"I know we're not," said Marjorie, "and I'm glad of it. How uncomfortable it would be if you and Mother were always saying you were sorry for each other, and if Father looked solemn every time a cow died.

I should hate to be condoled with, and treated as if I needed pity, but still I can't help wishing sometimes that I could do some of the things other girls do. Why, just think, Aunt Jessie, I've never had a friend of my own age in my life. I've never been on a train, or seen a city since I can remember."

Miss Graham continued to stroke the fluffy hair, and a troubled look came into her eyes.

"I understand, dear," she said, "and I don't blame you in the least. I know the feelings of loneliness and longing too well for that."

"Do you really, Aunt Jessie?" questioned Marjorie, looking up in surprise. "I didn't suppose you ever longed for anything; you're such an angel of patience. I suppose it's wrong, but I can't help being glad you do, though, because it makes it so much easier to explain things to you. I can't bear to have Father and Mother think I'm not perfectly happy and contented; it makes Father look so sad, and I know Mother worries about my education. I never thought of it before, but you were a girl, too, when you first came here, weren't you?"

Miss Graham smiled. She was only twenty-eight, and girlhood did not seem so much a thing of the past, but Marjorie was fourteen, and to her twenty-eight seemed an age quite removed from all youthful aspirations.

"I was just sixteen when we came out here," she said, "and it seemed very strange at first to be away from all my friends, but girl-like I enjoyed the change, and it was not for a year or two that I began to realize what life on an Arizona ranch really meant. Your father and mother were very good to me, but they were absorbed in each other, and in their work, and you were too little to be any real company to me.

There was plenty of work to be done, and I tried to do my share, but there were many lonely times when I rebelled bitterly against fate. I used to think of those times later on, after the accident, and then it seemed strange that I should ever have fretted over such foolish trifles, but they were very real to me once."

Marjorie took her aunt's hand and kissed it. Demonstrations of affection were rather rare in the Graham family, but the girl could never think of that accident without a lump rising in her throat. She had heard the story dozens of times. She had even a dim recollection of the day it had happened--the day on which her pretty, merry young aunt had started for a canter over the prairie, on a wild young bronco, and had been carried home white and unconscious, never to ride, or even walk again. Just how it had all happened n.o.body ever knew. An Indian boy, coming suddenly out of a cabin, had shouted and waved his hands to a companion. The noise had frightened the bronco, and he had dashed off at full speed, and Jessie Graham, experienced horsewoman though she was, had lost her balance, and been thrown violently to the ground, striking her back against a sharp stone. That was eight years ago, and during all that time her life had been pa.s.sed, first in bed, and then in a wheeled chair.

Marjorie rose suddenly. There were some things it wasn't possible to make the best of, and it was wisest not to talk about them.

"It's getting a little cooler," she said irrelevantly; "I think I'll saddle Roland, and go for a ride before supper. You're an angel, Aunt Jessie, and I'm glad you told me how you used to feel. I'm ashamed of myself, but it makes the disappointment easier to bear because you understand. Shall I wheel you back to the house, or is there anything else I can do for you before I go?"

Fifteen minutes later, Marjorie mounted astride her bay pony, was trotting briskly out over the prairie. Her aunt watched her from the porch of the ranch house.

"Poor little girl," she said, with a sigh, as horse and rider disappeared from view in a cloud of dust, "she bears her disappointment bravely, but it's hard--hard for her, and for us all."

A footstep was heard, and her sister-in-law, Marjorie's mother, came out on the porch. Mrs. Graham had once been very pretty, but twelve years of hard work, and constant anxiety as to ways and means, had brought a careworn expression into the eyes that were so like Marjorie's, and the hand she laid on the back of Miss Graham's chair was rough and hardened from housework.

"It's been a hot day, hasn't it?" she said, "but it's cooler now," and she smiled the brave, cheerful smile she had never lost through all their troubles and anxieties. "Juanita and I have put up six dozen jars of blackberries to-day; not a bad day's record, is it? Have you heard the whistle of the East Bound?"

"I am not sure; I thought I heard a whistle about half an hour ago, but I have been with Marjorie in the playhouse. We have been having a talk."

"Has she said anything about her disappointment?"

"Yes, a little. She is bearing it splendidly, but it is a real grief to her, notwithstanding."

Mrs. Graham sighed.

"I was afraid it would be," she said. "It would almost have broken my heart to part from her, but Donald and I had made up our minds to let her go. It seemed the only way of giving the child a chance in life, and now this disease among the cattle has put an end to everything. Donald says we may be able to send her next year, but she will be nearly sixteen then, and time is precious. I wish I knew more myself, so that I could help my little girl, but, like so many other girls, I wasted my time at school. O dear! if children only realized what an education might mean to them some day, they wouldn't fritter away their time, as half of them do."

"Susie," said Miss Graham, impulsively, "have you ever thought of writing to your brother Henry about Marjorie?"

The sensitive color rose in Mrs. Graham's cheeks, and for a moment she looked almost as pretty as in the days when Jessie, in the rapturous devotion of her teens, had considered her "the loveliest sister-in-law in the world."

"Yes, I have thought of it," she said, "but--but somehow I haven't been able to make up my mind to do it. You know my family never approved of Donald's coming out here. My brother offered him a position in his office in New York, but Donald said he had no head for business, and he loves this wild life, hard as it has been. I have never let my people know of our difficulties; they would have been kind, I daresay, but one hates to ask favors."

"I know," said Miss Graham, comprehendingly; "still, for Marjorie's sake--"

Mrs. Graham looked troubled.

"Donald and I were talking about it only last night," she said. "It isn't right to deprive the child of advantages she might have, but think of sending her all the way to New York, even if Henry and his wife were willing to take her. Albuquerque would have been different; she could at least have come home for the holidays, but New York--why, think of it, Jessie, she has never been away from us for a night in her life!"

Mrs. Graham paused abruptly, her face contracted with pain. The tears started to Miss Jessie's eyes, but her voice was still quite firm when she spoke again.