The Ranch Girls' Pot of Gold Part 11

The lad had made himself a whistle from a stalk of wild gra.s.s that grew like a reed. He was wandering along searching everywhere for Jack, yet beguiling his way with wonderful woodland noises which he made through his whistle. A robin sat perched on his black hair, several other birds fluttered over his head, afraid to alight and yet unwilling to leave him. If Jack had suggested the huntress Diana, Carlos looked like a follower of Pan. Surely in mythological days just such red-brown boys had accompanied the old wood G.o.d, making the weird and eerie music that caused a smile to hover ever on his wild face.

The caravan party, except Jim and the truants, were eating luncheon when Jack and Carlos burst in upon them. Jack flew to Ruth, flinging her arms about her and giving her a breathless hug. "It was all my fault, as usual," she explained, "but there is nothing the matter with me except a bruise on my forehead and an empty feeling in another place." Jack stopped, suddenly discovering the presence of the stranger, Ralph Merrit.

Hugging Jack with one arm, Ruth respectfully shook hands with Carlos with the other. The small lad tried not to show emotion, but a light of triumph shone in his eyes. He and not the "Big White Chief" had found "The Girl Who Was Never Afraid." Now surely he would be forgiven the sin of his failure to keep faith.

Worn and haggard, Jim returned a few hours later to find his fellow-travelers engaged in cheerful conversation and seemingly forgetful of the strain.

"I hope nothing will happen to me again while we are on this trip," Jack remarked carelessly. "I thought last night in the storm that the gypsy who came to our ranch had surely put her curse on me. You know she announced that something would happen to me that would force me to depend on other people, and as I had to depend on Carlos to show me the way home to the caravan, perhaps the spell is past."

Olive, sitting next Jack, gave a shudder. She had never confessed how much she had thought of the woman's evil words to her, but Frieda, who was playing with the stones Jack had brought back from the gold mine, made a quick turn in the conversation.

"Jean," she announced indignantly, "you told me you'd give me the gold Jim and Jack brought from the mine with them, and now they haven't brought any, because Ralph Merrit says these rocks are no better than other pebbles. I really did think they might find some gold, though I said I knew they wouldn't," she ended mournfully.

Jean laughed. "Same here, baby. I confess I thought maybe they would come home with a grand discovery and we would all be as rich as cream forever afterwards. Did you have any such idea in your head, Jack?"

Jack blushed. "Not really," she conceded; "but of course as soon as one hears anything about a gold mine, one goes quite crazy. Remember how we used to plan, when we were little girls, to run away and find the 'Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow' as soon as we grew up?"

Jean and Frieda nodded, but the entire party was soon busy with their plans for resuming their trip in the early morning. Jim asked Ralph Merrit to go along to the Yellowstone Park with them. The young man had been through the western reserve once before, and since his experience with Jack, Jim thought it might be just as well to have another man to divide responsibilities for the remainder of the trip.

By nine o'clock the next day the caravaners had moved away from the quiet oasis in the desert, their tent had been folded up and the horses reluctantly driven from the fresh gra.s.s. The little place had become but a memory to its dwellers by the wayside.

CHAPTER XIII

ENTERING WONDERLAND

"The Forest of Arcady, Jim," Jean called gayly from her seat on the back of her pony. She and Olive, with Ralph Merrit walking beside them, had just climbed a steep road that led across the Continental Divide into the great park of the Yellowstone, called Yellowstone by the Indians many years ago, because its river ran like melted gold between ma.s.sive stone walls, shading from palest lemon to a deep orange glow.

Behind its outriders the ranch girls' caravan moved slowly upward. They had been pa.s.sing through tall pine forests that shut them in to a cathedral gloom, but beyond and farther down the hill Jean had just caught sight of a grove of quaking aspen trees with the sky above them shining as bright as sunny Italy. The grove looked like a great umbrella shop with its parasols open on parade, for the trees had circular green tops growing high above the ground, and their straight, slender trunks were like white umbrella handles.

Jim cracked his whip in answer to Jean's speech and Jack waved her hat from the place next him; just behind them Ruth clutched at Frieda and Carlos to keep them from falling into the road in their efforts to see everything at once. Away to the right they could catch a faint glimpse of one of the long arms of Yellowstone Lake, and they meant to reach a hotel on its northern banks by twilight.

For the past ten days the caravan party had been moving almost steadily onward. Twice only had they stopped at small towns for mail, to buy fresh provisions and to get rid of some of the stains of travel.

However, the entire party looked like a troupe of Spanish gypsies, some of them fair-haired and blue-eyed as the old Castilians, others dark as the Moors, but all with their complexions tanned to varying shades of brown from their weeks in the open air.

"Nature's Wonderland!" Jack spouted rapturously in the language of a guidebook. "Really, Ruth, the Park is even more beautiful than we dreamed, isn't it?"

But Jack ceased talking abruptly and Jim reined in his horses on a stretch of level road, while Olive and Jean slid gently down from their ponies' backs. The noise of their approach had frightened a band of almost a hundred antelopes, who were browsing in a near-by forest, and now they started off in a long, galloping run single file through the trees to a fertile green valley below.

When the deer were out of sight, Frieda flung a dimpled brown arm about Jim's neck. She wore a yellow straw bonnet with a blue ribbon on it, tied under her chin. Ruth had purchased the bonnet in one of the towns where they spent the night, for each member of the expedition was weary of crawling down from the wagon to pick up Frieda's lost hat. "Do let's rest here a few minutes, Jim," Frieda urged. "The horses have stopped, anyhow, and my legs are so tired dangling from the seat."

Ruth had let go her hold on the children for a few minutes, and without waiting for Jim's consent, by some sort of silent signal they both slipped over the wagon wheels and danced away. For hours they had been pa.s.sing by every variety of beautiful wild flower, but this minute Frieda and Carlos discovered an isolated hill crowned with jagged rocks and covered with bitter-root, whose delicate blossoms made the ground look like a carpet studded with small pink stars, leading to a giant's castle in the air.

It was not yet time for luncheon, but the caravaners were always hungry, and Ruth, Jean and Olive dragged a basket of sandwiches out of the wagon, while Jim Colter and Ralph Merrit led the horses away to search for water.

"Better look after the children, Jack," Ruth suggested carelessly.

Jack moved slowly toward the pink hill. She could see that Carlos had run lightly up it and was now crowing proudly from the peak of one of the highest rocks, while poor Frieda was crawling laboriously after him, fired with ambition and envy. Jack stopped a minute to laugh. Her small sister was so round and chubby, that even though she clung to the shrubs as she struggled upward, every now and then she would slip back almost as far as she had gone on.

"Don't try to go any farther, Frieda; come back to me," Jack cried warningly. But Carlos had leaped to another higher crag and was beckoning his companion to follow him, so Frieda either didn't hear or wouldn't heed her elder sister; neither did she look upward toward the goal "to which she would ascend." Carlos vanished around another rock and was out of sight; he did not think to mention that there was a flat platform back of the first big rock and that it was already occupied.

Suddenly from her position near the bottom of the hill, Jack saw an old goat thrust his head out over this rock and survey Frieda, with the long gray beard and the glittering eye of "The Ancient Mariner." He was evidently an old time resident of the Park and had no intention of sharing his retreat with an outside intruder.

"Frieda!" Jack halloed, now frightened and running up the hill as fast as she could, but she could hardly hope to come to the rescue in time.

Blue-eyed Frieda had crawled up the side of the crag toward the spot where the goat awaited her. Instead of a shout of triumph she gave a horrified gasp of terror, never having intended to invade the castle of the particular ogre she now beheld.

At this moment a tourist, who had been wandering idly around surveying the scenery, saw the little girl and the goat. He laughed and moved quickly in their direction. Jack was also doing her level best to arrive before the tragedy, but the old goat preferred not to wait. He took a few steps forward, hunching his shoulders and sidling along, then with a snort of dignified rage and a shove of his s.h.a.ggy gray head, he struck poor Frieda in the middle of her small person and sent her over the side of the rock down the hill, where she landed in a bed of the coveted bitter-root blossoms.

"If you won't cry, little girl, I'll give you something I have in my pocket," a strange gentleman said hurriedly, just as Frieda opened her mouth to bewail her misfortune. Not only was she injured in her feelings; she was hurt in other places as well, and her new bonnet hopelessly smashed in on one side. Too surprised to do anything but choke for a few seconds, Frieda let her preserver set her up on the ground and brush off some of the sand and twigs. He seemed a middle-aged man, quite as old as Jim, with iron-gray hair and dark eyes, and such a funny expression through his gla.s.ses, it was hard to tell whether he was smiling or sympathetic.

Jack now appeared and saw that her small sister was not seriously hurt.

Just as she started to thank her rescuer a vision of what they had just seen flashed between them. Swiftly Jack's gray eyes darkened, her lips curved and she burst into a peal of gay laughter, which the stranger echoed until he had to take out his handkerchief to wipe his eyegla.s.ses.

Frieda gazed at them both indignantly, then the tears which had been n.o.bly held back rushed down her pink cheeks like the streams from a spouting geyser.

"Oh, dear me, now you are crying and I told you I would give you something if you wouldn't!" the tourist remarked hastily. Down in his pocket went his hand, and before Frieda's and Jack's amazed eyes were displayed a handful of bright jewels, topaz and jasper, agate and garnets.

Jack shook her head decisively. "No, thank you," she said. "You are very kind, but they are much too valuable for Frieda to accept. We must say good-by; our friends are signaling us."

Mr. Peter Drummond laughed good-humoredly. "Please let her have one--they are not of value," he begged. "I just have a fancy for pretty stones, like a small boy, and these have all been found in the state of Wyoming." Frieda's small hand closed suddenly over a shining bit of yellow jasper. Jack blushed, but there was no time for argument. Carlos had already sped down the hill and Jim was shouting to them. From the top of their caravan, as it took up its forward march, Jack and Frieda beheld the distinguished stranger still watching them, and waved their handkerchiefs to him in farewell.

Just before sunset the caravaners arrived in front of the hotel where they intended to spend the night. Yellowstone Lake lay a wonderful sheet of clear water at one side of them, but the travelers were weary of scenery and far more interested in the guests who crowded the hotel verandah. The women wore pretty afternoon toilets and the men white flannels, as though they were visitors at fashionable Newport homes instead of travelers in the heart of a wilderness.

"Great heavens, Ruth!" Jean murmured, as they dismounted and stood close together in a frightened group, "my legs feel as though they were going to give way under me and I am as bedraggled as any beggar maid. However are we going to have the courage to march across that wretched porch with all those people staring at us?"

"I don't know myself, Jean. I had no idea we would find so many visitors here," Ruth replied, vainly trying to straighten her traveling hat, which was considerably the worse for wear. Indeed the caravan party did look almost as disreputable as they felt in their dusty, travel-worn clothes, now brought into sudden contrast with well-dressed people.

Jack lifted her chin in her usual haughty fashion, a.s.suming a courage she did not feel. "Oh, well, we can't stand here in the road all evening," she argued. "Jim and Mr. Merrit must see that the horses and wagon are put up somewhere, so come on, Olive, let's lead the way. At least we can be grateful that we don't know anyone here and no one knows us."

Elderly ladies raised their lorgnettes to stare at the newcomers and some young people whispered together.

"There they come, mother," a young girl cried excitedly. "I told you we would get here before they did!"

Jack and Olive had just mounted the verandah steps with Carlos, and Ruth and Jean, each holding Frieda's hand, were following close behind, when there was a soft rustle of silk across the piazza and Mrs. Harmon and her son Donald, whom the caravan party had left safe at Rainbow Lodge, stood before them. A minute later a servant wheeled Elizabeth over in a big chair.

"We just couldn't bear not to see the Yellowstone Park too," Elizabeth explained fervently. "Don and I talked of nothing else after you went away in your wonderful caravan, and at last father said mother could bring us here. It took us only a day to make the trip that has taken you more than two weeks. Aren't you glad to see us?"

Jack kissed Elizabeth hurriedly, while the rest of the party shook hands with Mrs. Harmon and Donald. The girls were too dazed with surprise and fatigue to know whether they were glad or sorry to see the acquaintances to whom they had rented their beloved home. Ruth thought Mrs. Harmon's manner a little constrained when she spoke to them.

"We don't want to haunt you, Miss Drew," she apologized, "but we were so close to this marvelous park it seemed a pity for us to miss it, and Don and Elizabeth are so in love with your ranch girls they believe they will enjoy it twice as much with you here. We came on after Beth had a letter from Miss Ralston telling her about the time you expected to arrive."

There was one member of the caravan party who had no hesitation in expressing his views of the unexpected appearance of the three members of the Harmon family. Jim was frankly displeased. "It wasn't enough to rent them our Lodge for the summer and have them drive me plumb crazy with questions before I got away," he complained to Ruth as soon as she broke the news to him, "but now we have got to tote 'em over the whole of the Yellowstone. I guess they must think I'm the original Cooks' Tour man," he growled, forgetting his newly acquired English in his bad temper.

But Ruth laughed sympathetically. "Never mind, Mr. Jim," she returned.

"I am sorry myself that we can't have our trip to ourselves, but I hope pleasure will somehow come out of the presence of the Harmons here."