The Ranch Girls' Pot of Gold Part 9

Jean struck a dramatic att.i.tude. "Frieda Ralston, if you will let me make you beautiful, I will give you all my share of the gold that Jim and Jack bring back from the mine," she exclaimed.

Frieda shook her head. "They won't bring any gold," she said firmly.

"But you'll feel lots better, Frieda," Ruth begged.

Frieda saw that the weight of opinion was against her, and, besides, she was vain of her hair and did wish it to look pretty again, so she gave in graciously.

"All right, Jean, if you will ride horseback with me all day to-morrow and make Olive and Jack ride in the wagon, I guess I will let you," she conceded.

Jean had the sleeves of her shirtwaist rolled up past her dimpled elbows and the collar of her white blouse tucked in at the neck. She felt as much at home by the wayside pool as she did in Rainbow Lodge. Frieda was wrapped in a white towel like a shawl. Only once, toward the end of the washing operation, did she utter a squeal of indignation, and Ruth and Olive immediately ran to her rescue.

"Jean's caught a minnow in my hair," she insisted wrathfully, with her face very red. "I saw the tiniest one sailing down the brook by me, and then all at once it disappeared, and I am sure I can feel it wriggling on my neck."

Ruth made a careful examination of the clean yellow hair before Frieda would be reconciled. Then she led the small girl away to a sunshiny spot, spreading her hair over her shoulders to dry, until she looked like the original "Miss Goldilocks" in the old fairy tale. Frieda was given a piece of scalloping, which she had been working on for weeks, to keep her quiet.

"Jean," Ruth called a minute later, "do you mind staying here with Frieda for a little while? Olive and I have to go foraging for some chips before we can make the fire burn for luncheon, naughty Carlos having deserted us. Do you think you can make yourself lovely and keep an eye on things at the same time?"

Jean nodded peacefully from her throne of rocks, though a minute before she had been hot from her exertions and angry at Frieda's ingrat.i.tude.

"Sure, as my name is Jean Bruce, I can," she answered cheerfully, letting down the ma.s.ses of her dark-brown hair. She made such a pretty picture that Ruth watched her smilingly for a few minutes. She thought she loved all the girls alike now, but Jack and Olive were her friends and Jean and Frieda her children. She guessed her business of playing chaperon to the ranch girls would not be an easy one, if ever Jean got away from their western life into the gay society world of which she dreamed and talked.

But no frivolous ideas of a society existence now engaged Miss Bruce's attention, and she had no more idea of being disturbed than if she had been the original lady in the Garden of Eden. Jean was indeed the nut-brown maid of whom old-fashioned poets loved to write. Her hair had no golden tones in it; only the rich browns of the autumn woods, and her eyes matched it in color. She was paler than the other ranch girls, with a soft, healthy pallor, although to-day a little tanned and rosier than usual from her week's trip in the caravan.

Frieda glanced around to see Jean leaning over the water with her hair covering her face. It did not seem worth while to disturb her, so without a word, Frieda slipped away to their tent to search for more thread for her sewing.

Jean could not hear very well at this time had she spoken, for the brook made a roary, gurgling noise of its own in her ears, and her head swam from being held upside down so long.

"Crunch, crunch, crunch." Some one was marching along the side of the stream right in her direction. Jean did not trouble to take her hair out of the water or to look around. Of course it could be no one but Frieda!

"Well, I never in all my life!" she heard a perfectly strange masculine voice exclaim. "I know I have walked straight into fairy land, and you must be the queen who has brought all this magic to pa.s.s over night, for I pa.s.sed this stream just two days ago and there wasn't a sign of a tent or a caravan or a princess anywhere around."

Jean flung back her long, brown hair with a gasp of sheer surprise, and the drops of crystal water showered around her like the diamonds that fell from the mouth of the good sister in the fairy story.

"I have been washing my hair," she announced to the strange youth, and then because her explanation was so obvious, they both laughed. "You see, I hadn't the faintest idea anybody could turn up in this wilderness except us," she explained, not very grammatically. "We are making a caravan trip through the state."

"I suppose I ought to say I am awfully sorry I intruded," the young fellow answered. "Of course, you know, I would say it if I had bobbed into a lady's boudoir unexpectedly, but I am so glad to see some one in this out-of-the-way place that I haven't a social fib at my disposal.

Don't you think you could let me stop to rest and perhaps talk to you a few minutes?"

Jean drew herself up in an effort to look as dignified and unapproachable as she felt sure Jack and Olive would have done under the same circ.u.mstances. Far be it from either of them to engage in a friendly conversation with a stranger, even in a trackless waste; but to save her life Jean couldn't keep her eyes from shining mischievously.

The water was trickling down her back until her shoulders were damp through her shirtwaist. Knowing she looked dreadfully foolish, she could not make up her mind to do anything so unattractive as deliberately to squeeze the water out of her hair or roll up her head in a towel before this handsome young fellow.

He was somewhat older than Donald Harmon or Frank Kent, and his eyes were as blue and his hair as golden as Siegfried's, thought romantic Jean, if only he were dressed in a suit of silver armor instead of dust-covered corduroys. The traveler had a knapsack strapped over his shoulders and a gun in his hand; his whole appearance suggested a long tramp.

Jean gazed at him meaningly. Ordinary intelligence might suggest to him that he turn his back for a few minutes while she repaired her damaged toilet, but the young fellow evidently had no such amiable intention. He seated himself by the edge of the brook a few feet from Jean. "My name is Ralph Merrit. I'm a mining engineer," he announced briefly.

Jean slightly inclined her wet head. "If you don't mind, I must beg you to excuse me?" she returned as haughtily as even Jack could have desired. Suddenly she made up her mind to snub this uncomfortably stupid acquaintance. Off she marched in as stately a fashion as possible, when one considers her damp, flowing locks and the fact that she had to pick her way through their various articles of laundry spread on the gra.s.s.

Inside the security of the tent Jean rubbed her hair vigorously and waved it energetically through the opening at the door, so it might dry as soon as possible. Frieda stationed herself outside the tent so as to communicate all possible information about the intruder to Jean.

"Has he gone yet?" Jean inquired for the fifth time in ten minutes.

Frieda shook her head. "He isn't going for a long time, Jeanie, I believe," she returned. "He is sitting by our brook just as though he never means to leave it. Now he has gotten up and is drinking some water. Now he is washing his face," she whispered excitedly, "and is taking a mirror out of his pocket to prink."

Jean and Frieda giggled and Jean joined her little cousin out of doors.

She had piled her hair in a loose, damp ma.s.s on top of her head, for she was now determined, with Frieda for a chaperon, gently but firmly to persuade the young man to leave their Adamless Eden.

"Oh," said Jean, as, holding fast to Frieda's hand, she got within speaking distance of the stranger, "are you still here?" As there was nothing in the world to interrupt Miss Bruce's vision of the young man, even if she had been hopelessly near-sighted, he was obliged to understand her meaning. Coloring hotly under his already rosy skin, he got up.

"I thought you wouldn't mind if I rested a bit," he explained. "I have been tramping around this neighborhood for the last two days and I was counting on slowing up when I got back to this place. I need to fill my water bottles. And look here, I wonder if you would give me something to eat. You don't know it, but it is a custom for travelers of the open road to help each other out."

Ralph Merrit knew he had never seen a girl whose expression changed as swiftly as Jean's. A minute before, her eyes had been cool and reserved, and now they were br.i.m.m.i.n.g pools of kindness.

"Oh, I am so sorry you are hungry. I'll get you something to eat right away," she replied sympathetically. "If you will stay until Cousin Ruth and Olive come back I know they will invite you to lunch. I am sure you will tell how you happened to turn up here, and, of course, I can see you are a gentleman," she ended.

Ralph's face flushed gratefully, "You are awfully kind," he murmured, and then all at once Frieda saved the situation from further embarra.s.sment. Suddenly she thrust into the young man's hand a large, red apple and a cracker, which she had concealed in her ap.r.o.n pocket.

She had been foraging on her own account inside their tent, but had forgotten her provisions in the interest of Jean's discovery.

Ten minutes later Ruth and Olive appeared on the scene, swinging a large basket of chips and pine cones between them. In amazement they set down their basket and stared at a three cornered group composed of Jean, Frieda and a strange young man, seated comfortably on the ground, laughing and talking and lunching on their best jam and pickles and bread.

CHAPTER XI

"WHERE'S JACK?"

Ralph Merrit explained his unexpected appearance to Ruth in a far more conventional fashion than Jean had required. He was a native of Chicago, a graduate of a mining school, and had come west to see if he could make his living by testing the gold deposits in the mining camps in the northwest states. Two miners had induced him to go with them to an old mine not far away to see if their discoveries of gold deposits were of value. When the find turned out to be no good, the men had slipped away, leaving him, and not only refusing to pay what they had promised for his services, but stealing all the money he had with him. For the past two days the young man had been scouring the country for the thieves, but he now believed they had gotten to some town and were safely out of his reach.

"I should be awfully grateful to you, Miss Drew, if you would tell me the way to the nearest village," Ralph Merrit said at the end of his story. "I am green about this part of the country and don't know in what direction to move on."

Ruth shook her head. "I am afraid I don't know either," she confessed, "but if you will spend the day here with us until our guide, Mr. Colter, comes back, he will tell you anything you wish to know."

Ralph accepted the invitation gratefully, although he hardly guessed what a concession it represented. A year before, when Ruth Drew left Vermont, she had never spoken to a man in her life without a formal introduction, and now she was inviting a stranger to spend the day with her and the three girls in the woods. But Ruth never doubted the story Ralph Merrit had told her for a moment, although it was an unusual one.

No one who was a judge of character ever doubted Ralph. He was a straightforward, manly, determined fellow, with a strong will and a sense of humor--one of the most delightful combinations in the world--and from the first hour of their acquaintance he was a special favorite with Ruth and later with Jim Colter.

For several hours, Ralph made himself a useful visitor, insisting on bringing in fresh stores of wood, as he a.s.sured his hostesses their stock would never last over night, and they would desire to keep up a particularly brilliant fire as a beacon light to the wanderers from camp.

About four o'clock in the afternoon Ruth suggested that the five of them take a walk to find out the source of the little stream, which made such a wonderful oasis in the stretch of sandy desert. After a few miles, Ruth, Olive and Frieda sat down to rest, while Jean and Ralph carried on their explorations. They had caught a splendid lot of fish, but Ralph had his gun with him and hoped to get some game for their supper. The young man and girl had talked to each other for the past few hours, but now they seemed to feel well enough acquainted to keep silent and enjoy the exquisite beauty of the scenery. They had wandered to the source of the brook. Trickling down from the base of a low hill, it was circled by a grove of cottonwood and spruce trees. Jean and Ralph hid in the underbrush and got softly down on their knees so as to make no possible noise, for they saw a few yards ahead a delicate, dappled fawn, with its nose deep in the clear water. Its sides were of a light gray and brown, its legs like slender staves, and its long ears as soft and sensitive as any created thing. The scene was so beautiful that Jean's eyes grew suddenly misty with tears.

Ralph also felt a quiver of excitement stiffen his arm. His companion was behind him and out of any possible danger, the fawn was in direct range of his gun and as yet unconscious of his presence.

The young man lifted his gun, took direct aim, and his fingers pressed the trigger. At the same instant the gun kicked up in the air, exploded and the shot went wide of its mark. For one quivering instant the fawn gazed at the hunter, its big brown eyes full of terror and reproach, and then with a bound was off through the trees and out of sight.

"How could you, Miss Bruce?" Ralph demanded indignantly, turning on Jean. "If you hadn't struck the b.u.t.t of my gun I should have gotten that deer and we would have had fresh meat for a week." He stopped abruptly.

Jean's eyes were as wide open and brown and frightened as the fawn's and her body trembled just as delicately.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HOW COULD YOU, MISS BRUCE?" RALPH DEMANDED INDIGNANTLY.]