The Ranch Girls at Home Again Part 4

Jean's hand shook a little, so that she first set down her teacup.

"You mean that you are having to go home for a visit. I hope nothing has happened to your mother or sister; I was afraid you were feeling troubled," the girl answered.

With the old decision that she remembered the young man shook his head.

"No, it is not that," he returned, "but simply that I am going to resign my position as engineer of Rainbow Mine. Fact of the matter is, I am not making good. The men don't like me, don't want to work under me, and things are in a muddle anyhow. My staying on would only embarra.s.s Jim and Miss Ralston." (Ralph only called Jack by her grown-up t.i.tle when he was considering her as his employer.)

"So you are going to quit just because things at the mine are no longer plain sailing. Is it because you have had a better position offered you?

Then of course I am sure, even though it makes everything much harder for them, Jack and Jim would neither of them wish to stand in your way,"

Jean answered with intentional cruelty.

And the young man understood her. "That is not fair, Jean; you know those are not my reasons," he declared. "I am leaving to _save_ Jim and Jack the trouble, not to make things more difficult. If I clear out the men will quiet down and perhaps they will get hold of some other engineer who will understand the present situation better. The truth is our old gold supply is giving out and we have got to find a different method of getting at the gold deeper down. I have been away studying how this might be done for the past ten days, but I have not yet made up my mind."

"Then stay on until you can decide, Ralph," Jean replied quietly, "or at least until you are certain that you don't know what to do. Surely you must know the situation at the Rainbow Mine better than any one else. I have been guessing that both Jim and Jack were worried, but you know they won't go back on you until the very last minute and not then unless you say the word. So I don't think I would let the other miners frighten me away. It seems to me that a man will never be able to manage other men if he turns and runs at the first approach of a storm. I should never have believed this of you, Ralph, of all people!"

With a little, quickly suppressed sound that was almost a groan Ralph suddenly dropped his head. "But a man isn't fit to govern other men if he can't govern himself, Jean," he answered.

Even the color of her pink gown did not now hide the pallor of the girl's cheeks.

"What are you talking about, Ralph Merrit?" she demanded a little unsteadily. "You behave as though you had robbed a bank or taken more than your share of gold out of the mine. I wish you would not be so absurd--I do hate uncomfortable people."

The man got up. "I am sorry, Jean, and I did not mean to trouble you with my personal confession," he went on, "though I thought it only fair that I should tell Jim Colter. No, I have not been robbing anyone except myself and my own family, though the men may be saying even that of me soon," he added bitterly. "But the truth is that I have been speculating until I have lost every red cent that I have earned and I don't think a man who has been as big a fool as I have has the right to try and hold down a job the size of mine."

"You have been speculating!" The girl repeated the words almost foolishly, as though not understanding at first what they meant. Then she flushed angrily. "Ralph, what a perfect goose you have been! For goodness sake tell me what ever induced a sensible, level-headed fellow like we all believed you were to do such a stupid thing?" Jean demanded.

But this was the one question which of all the questions in the world Ralph Merrit could never answer Jean truthfully.

"Hush, never mind!" Jean interrupted hurriedly, for she could see what her companion had evidently not yet observed and that was that another man was at this moment approaching the house. His face had looked ugly and forbidding, but at the sight of Jean he raised his hat.

The girl recognized him as John Raines, a man of about fifty years of age and a kind of leader and spokesman among the other miners.

"Beg your pardon, Miss," he began stiffly, "but having just heard that Mr. Merrit has returned to the ranch, I want to ask him if he will come and have a little talk with some of us men. We've been waiting for this talk for a considerable time."

Ralph stepped down from the porch at once. "Certainly, I will come along with you now," he answered quietly. And then turning to Jean and with a gesture asking that she excuse him, the young man followed the older one. And Jean could not but notice how slender and boyish and, yes, how spent he looked as he walked behind the big, heavy miner, with arms and chest so powerful that he seemed able actually to have crushed the slighter man like a great bear, had he so desired.

What could the miners be wishing with Ralph that they must see him at once, now when they knew that Jim Colter was not on the ranch?

Without trying to answer the question herself and only lingering long enough to fasten a dark coat over her light frock Jean hurried after the two figures, taking care, however, that neither of them became conscious of her presence.

CHAPTER VI

"COURAGE MAKES THE MAN"

THERE were as many as twenty men waiting to talk to Ralph Merrit within the vicinity of the Rainbow Mine. And they chanced to be standing close together near one of the big rocks that rose like a miniature fortress beside Rainbow Creek. After Ralph had entered the group, Jean managed without being observed to slip behind this rock where she was in safe hiding.

But just why she had followed the two men and what her motive was for concealing herself she did not try to explain to herself. Simply she had yielded to an impulse of fear, of curiosity and perhaps to some other instinct that was partly protective. One young fellow among so many older, rougher and more lawless characters! What might not happen to him?

And yet Jean Bruce had not her cousin Jacqueline's physical bravery nor determination of purpose, and moreover she had an openly expressed dislike of mixing herself up in the things which she did not consider essentially feminine. However, she had no idea now of letting anyone guess her nearness, not even Ralph Merrit himself.

Sitting down on the ground in a kind of scooped-out cave in a rock she could occasionally manage to get a glimpse of the miners, although at present while they were talking quietly she could only rarely catch a word or so of what they were saying, and not a sound from Ralph, who seemed the calmest and most self-controlled of them all. After a while she realized that John Raines, the man who had been sent to summon her companion, must now have been chosen as spokesman for the lot and was evidently making his voice sufficiently loud for them all to hear distinctly. And this of course included the unknown listener.

"See here, Mr. Merrit," John Raines began quietly, "us men have been talking things over among ourselves for some time past and we have done come to the pretty positive conclusion that we don't like the way you're running things at Rainbow Mine. And we thought it might be fairer to you, all told, just to mention this little fact and to let you quit without any kind of rumpus or trouble for n.o.body."

Jean could not see Ralph Merrit's face or even his figure, he was so closely surrounded, but because he too was speaking so that his entire audience might hear, Jean understood every word.

"What's the trouble with me, Raines, as a boss?" he asked with such self-control and apparent lack of anger that Jean was both amazed and pleased.

Then there was a kind of low muttering among the other men and finally their spokesman went on:

"I guess you know most of our complaints pretty well by this time--we've been tellin' 'em to you long enough and hard enough. If this is a profit-sharing business, as you and Jim Colter and Miss Ralston said it was goin' to be, then you ain't gettin' gold enough out of the Rainbow Mine to suit us."

"But we are getting all we can, aren't we? You men aren't loafing with the work?" Ralph interrupted.

John Raines scowled. "That's senseless talk! You know what the trouble is; we have already gotten out most all the gold there is near the surface of the earth around here. Now what we have got to do to make it pay big again is to get more machinery and try different ways of working. And we want a boss to tell Miss Ralston and Jim Colter to get busy buying the new machinery and then to show us how to run it. We are not going to waste any more time around here on a few dollars pay a day."

From her hiding place Jean did her best to hear Ralph. Here of course was the time and place for him to make the same confession to the miners that he had recently made to her. For he did intend to do just what the men had demanded of him, resign his work and give way for a better man.

Nevertheless, he evidently intended delaying a bit longer before making the confession.

"But I have explained to you men before this why I have not done what you ask," he went on, still in a reasonable tone of voice. "I told you that I did not feel certain that it was the _best_ thing to do. We are by no means sure that there is enough gold below the present mine to make it worth while to go deeper. You men know what a lot of money the machinery for certain kinds of gold digging takes. It would probably eat up pretty much all the capital that the owners of the Rainbow Mine have. And I don't want to tell them to buy this machinery until I am a lot surer that the gold is down there waiting to be hauled out."

John Raines glanced about at the faces surrounding him. It was easy enough to take his tone from their expressions.

"Then there is no use wasting any more of our time and yours in talk, Merrit," the older man announced in a rougher manner than he had before employed. "Your sentiments was pretty well known to us before you spouted them forth. And that's just the point! You don't know what ought to be done about things and we do. And we want a man to boss us that knows same as we. Now, young man, you just get out pleasant and the quicker the better."

All over her body, to the very tips of her ears, Jean felt herself tingling with sudden, overpowering anger. Why had Ralph Merrit not said what he intended saying before now? To resign at this moment in the face of this other man's insolence, which represented the same feeling in his companions, was to behave like a small boy at school who had been stood up in a corner and soundly thrashed by his schoolmaster and then made to apologize for his pains. Jean felt that she would never care to look Ralph in the face again. But he was speaking now for the third time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SHE HAD HEARD THAT MASTERFUL TONE BEFORE"]

"Have Miss Ralston and Mr. Colter told you that they wanted me to quit?"

he inquired. "It seems like they would have mentioned the matter to me first. I have usually taken my orders from them and not from the men _under_ me."

There was quite a different ring in Ralph Merrit's voice during this speech that made the girl behind the rock unexpectedly put up her cold hands to cool her hot cheeks. She had heard that masterful tone before, but not in some time.

"No, they ain't said nothing yet," Raines admitted. "But it don't matter; you got to quit just the same. You can't run a gold mine by yourself with all your 'book larnin,' and it's either you or us that gets out."

"Then it'll be you," Ralph replied in such a matter-of-fact and undisturbed fashion that Jean could hardly believe she had heard him aright, or else she must have been dreaming less than an hour before.

"Look here, fellows, don't be fools," Ralph went on, still showing no loss of temper. "The hour Mr. Colter and Miss Ralston tell me they want me to give up my job at the Rainbow Mine, that hour I go. And the minute I am really convinced that another man is able to do my work better than I can, that man gets my position, if I can persuade the Rainbow Mine owners to try him. But I've got to study things out here a little longer, I've got to make some new experiments and maybe kind of feel my way slowly toward deciding what had best be done. I have been away for the past ten days studying conditions at other mines and trying to find out some of the latest ideas in mining machinery."

But the other men were making no pretense of listening and were muttering and talking among themselves as a direct and intentional insult to the speaker. Ralph waited in silence, and Jean had an intuition that the end of the discussion was about to take place. The noises that the miners were making were ugly, vicious sounds entirely unfamiliar to the girl's ears and she had no conception of what they might portend. She had a sudden fear that they might mean some bodily injury to the younger man. Then would she have the courage to rush out to his defense as Jack undoubtedly would have, no matter what overtook her?

But she was mistaken in the form of her present uneasiness.

"You can talk that way here, if it makes you feel better, young fellow,"

one of the other miners announced contemptuously, "but it ain't goin' to make a mite of difference in the way things has to go. We give you thirty-six hours' notice to get clear of Rainbow Mine, and if you don't, why you can stay around here and play by yourself as long as you like provided your bosses are willing to give up the gold-mining business.