The Ranch Girls' Pot of Gold Part 20

Ten minutes later Donald and Mrs. Harmon found Olive still on the porch ready to receive them. Mrs. Harmon took Olive's hand and then dropped it and stared at her curiously. The image of a half-forgotten face came back to her; somewhere in her past had she not seen a girl who looked like this Olive Ralston? Yet when and where had she seen her?

"Olive," Mrs. Harmon questioned, for a moment losing her reserve and caution, "have you any Spanish or Italian ancestors? I have no right to be curious about you, but you are so unlike the other ranch girls, and I remember Jack said you were only an adopted sister."

Olive shook her head; but she looked straight at the older woman and there was something in her timid, appealing gaze that gave another pull to the chords of memory.

"I don't know anything about my people, Mrs. Harmon," Olive answered with quiet dignity. "Since you seem interested to know, I was brought up by an old Indian woman and her son, until Jack and the other girls found me and brought me home to live with them. I don't even know my own name."

A hundred questions came to Mrs. Harmon's mind and almost forced themselves from her lips, but she was resolutely silent. Why should she care to know more of this stray girl's past history; what could it mean to her? If she knew nothing she could always a.s.sure herself that the suspicion that had just crossed her mind was an absurdity. Without another word, followed by Olive and Donald, they entered the rancho.

At ten o'clock the party was going successfully. But Ruth found her interest waning; it seemed almost time for Jim to come home.

She _must_ see him alone to tell him that life was worth while to her now only because of his love. Jim was not like other men, he was better and braver and stronger; the woman who loved him believed she trusted him utterly.

It was a clear, starlit night without a moon. Silently Ruth slipped away from the familiar company, and wrapping a white shawl around her, stole from the house along the trail.

A man came down the path toward her and she ran forward with hands outstretched to meet him. Then she stopped short, her heart fluttering and her knees trembling.

CHAPTER XXIII

"THEIR LAST RIDE TOGETHER"

"Good evening, Miss Drew," some one said politely.

Ruth drew in her breath. "Good evening," she returned coldly.

"Kind of surprised to see me?" "Gypsy Joe" inquired. "You have been having great goings on about the ranch lately. I could have told you about your gold mine in the early part of the summer, but I knew this man Harmon would give me a better show than your overseer if I put him on to my discovery and he got your ranch away from you."

Ruth turned irresolutely and then faced the man again. "Please don't talk to me of your dishonesty," she protested, "and do get off the ranch right away. You know what Mr. Colter told you." Ruth had a frightened vision of Jim's returning to find this tramp lurking about the rancho, and knew she would have small chance for a quiet evening with her lover after such a catastrophe.

"Look here, Miss Drew, don't you think you might speak a good word to your overseer and the young ladies for me?" Dawson whined. "Seems like it isn't fair for me to have been the first to discover that gold mine and not to have any share in it."

Ruth shrugged her shoulders. "We really can't help that. If you had told Mr. Colter of it first I am sure he would have been fair with you.

Surely it is not our fault that you have cheated yourself in trying to cheat us. I really don't see how we owe you anything!"

"Jim Colter, as he calls himself, owes me a whole lot. Say, I'm hard up.

Do you think you could get Colter to give me a job as a miner?" "Gypsy Joe" urged. "They say the men are making a pretty good thing out of that."

Slowly Ruth shook her head, knowing that Jim, who was the most gentle of men and the most yielding in little things, was like adamant once his mind was made up.

"I don't know what there is between you and Mr. Colter," Ruth answered hurriedly, "but I'm sure I could not make him change his opinion of you even if I wished to try. Do, do go away from here."

"I won't," the man replied. "You've got to hear something first." Ruth made a movement, but he caught at her skirts. "I'm all-fired tired of this man Colter's being so hard on me and having all the people around here treat him like a tin G.o.d. I am not living under an a.s.sumed name and he is. I have never done anything to make me proud of being called Joe Dawson, but I don't have to hide it. Colter!" Joe Dawson laughed. "Your friend is no more named Colter than I am. His name is Carter, John Carter, and he hails from Virginia the same as I do. Colter was a pretty good name to select when he came west, since a man named Colter happened to be one of the first settlers in Wyoming."

"Be quiet and let me go, Mr. Dawson!" Ruth commanded, white with anger.

"Of course you understand I don't believe a word you have said, but you sha'n't force me to listen to your slander."

"Oh, don't take my word for it," Dawson sneered. "Ask Carter if he didn't run away from home because he stole a lot of money and broke his mother's and father's hearts. The Carters are a proud lot and not forgiving, and I expect they weren't sorry to have him change his name to Colter. He and I were school-fellows together, and we have never been friendly."

The man let go of her skirts, and Ruth ran back toward the rancho while he walked off in the other direction. There could not be a word of truth in what he had told her, yet the girl felt sick and trembling and dared not go in where her friends could see her. Crying softly, Ruth dropped down in the gra.s.s by the side of the road. Suddenly it occurred to her that Jim had never told her one word of his past history and that the ranch girls knew nothing of him before his coming to Wyoming; yet she had confided every detail of her own narrow story to him, her school days in Vermont and the teaching afterward, and then there was nothing else until she came out west to him.

A horse trotted along the road and shied at the white figure in the gra.s.s.

"Ruth, is anything the matter?" Jim asked in astonishment, recognizing her at once.

"Nothing, only I was waiting for you," Ruth answered.

Jim had ridden close up to her. Now he leaned down from his horse and lifted her up in the saddle with him. "Let's don't go in to the house now, Ruth," he whispered. "I want to ride with you, alone."

Ruth did not have to speak, for she yielded herself utterly to Jim's strength and tenderness. With a touch to his horse the man and woman rode on, feeling the night wind of the prairies with its thousand fragrances blow over them; seeing the sky with its ten million stars above them and the great wide sweep of the open country beneath.

"It has been more than a week, Ruth, and I am weary of waiting," Jim said, when his horse grew tired and they were moving toward home.

She turned her face toward him, flushed now with the joy of the night and the stars and the new love that enthralled her. "You know I love you, Jim," she murmured caressingly, "and I would rather be your wife than any man's in the world."

After this there did not seem to be need for speech; but the man walked his horse slowly, hoping that it might take forever before they reached home.

Then Ruth said carelessly, because the tramp's story had pa.s.sed out of her thoughts until this moment: "Jim, don't be angry--I didn't want to listen, but you must make that fellow, Joe Dawson, stop telling dreadful stories about you. Why, I met him to-night and he told me such absurd things. He said----"

Suddenly the man's arm stiffened about the woman he loved. "He said what, Ruth?" Jim Colter inquired with a new note in his voice.

Ruth laughed nervously and clung more closely to him, as though she feared to slip from her seat. "Just that your name was John Carter and not Jim Colter. Please don't make me tell you any more of his stories,"

she begged.

"I would like to hear all, Ruth; it will be better for us in the end,"

Jim insisted.

"But I'm ashamed," the girl argued, "because it is so utterly unlike you or anything you could do. You know, I believe you are the soul of honor, Jim, yet this man said you had stolen money when you were a young man, and run away from home to hide."

"The man told you the truth, Ruth," Jim Colter answered. "Don't be frightened. I have done wrong, for I should have told you before. My name is John Carter under the law, though I have borne the name of Jim Colter for fourteen years and it seems far more like my own name than the other, for I have learned to be a man under it."

Ruth drew herself away, clinging to the horse's mane, her body rigid and her tears dry.

"You mean you have been deceiving me and have asked me to marry you without my knowing your real name?" she asked, all her fear and suspicion of men returning. If Jack had once hated what she called "Ruth's schoolmarm manner," Jim Colter was now to know her in the light of an upright judge.

"Of course I meant to tell you my story some day, Ruth," he replied almost top humbly. "I thought things over a long time and I didn't see how I was doing you any harm to keep my old name and past a secret from you until you learned to love me. Maybe I was mistaken, but I didn't want you to love the man I used to be, I wanted you to love the man I am now. I could see that you were growing more understanding every day about little things, and not so hard and narrow, and I thought maybe if you loved me you'd be able to forgive something that happened so many years ago it seems almost like a bad dream."

"I never could marry anyone who deceived me," the girl returned frigidly.

"I wasn't deceiving you, I was just waiting to tell you. Maybe you will listen to the story now?" Jim asked. "It won't take long." Then before Ruth could reply he went on: "My father and mother had two sons, and I was the older. We were an old Virginia family and had been rich before the war. I was a good-for-nothing fellow, never studied, had no ambition and used to spend all of my time out of doors. My brother Ben was a different sort, a brilliant, studious chap, and we believed he would some day restore the family fortunes. After graduating at the high school he went to Richmond to study law, but as I had never studied anything there was nothing for me to do but to get a job as clerk in a store in our town. Both of us were boys at this time, Ben twenty and I only a little older. One night pretty late I was alone in the store, and Ben appeared, saying he had come down from Richmond because he had to have three hundred dollars quick, that very night. Well, I knew that father and mother and I didn't have thirty dollars between us. Ben suggested that I borrow the money from my employer, as I knew the combination of his safe. In a few days Ben was sure he would have the money to pay back and I could explain the whole situation. I am not excusing myself, Ruth. I knew I was sinning when I borrowed another man's money without his consent. Ben couldn't pay back, and I told the man I worked for what I had done. I offered to take any punishment the law ordered and then to come back to his shop and work until I paid him the last cent. The man forgave me, Ruth, and was willing to let me work out my salvation; but there was one thing I had not counted on, and that was family pride. When my father and mother learned what I had done they asked me to leave town, change my name and never to come home again."

"Did they know you took the money for your brother?" Ruth queried.

Jim shook his head. "What was the use? My sin was just the same. I paid the man back years ago, Ruth. Now can you forgive me?"

"I am sorry, Jim," Ruth answered kindly, but in a manner as remote from him and his need as though she had been a thousand miles away. "I am sure you will understand, but I must take back my promise. I can't be the wife of a man who has done wrong, no matter how much he has repented. Has no one ever known of what you did in all these years?"