MMStfl HE HELD UP THE FLOWERS (Page 37.) THE GIRL RANCHERS OF THE SAN COULEE H Stors for iris MRS. CARRIE L. MARSHALL Author of "Two Wyoming Girls," Etc. ILLUSTRATED BY IDA WAUGH THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY PHILADELPHIA MDCCCXCIX COPYRIGHT 1897 BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I WE BUY A SHEEP RANCH 7 II FAREWELL TO ELM WOOD 22 III ACROSS THE PLAINS IN A PRAIRIE SCHOONER ... 39 IV A PERILOUS RIDE 57 V OUR NEW HOME 71 VI WHY MR. SEATON SOLD THE RANCH 84 VII A CHANGE OF OPINION 101 VIII A VISIT FROM THE MEXICAN SHEPHERDS .... 112 IX INEXPERIENCED HERDERS 126 X A STAMPEDED FLOCK 142 XI THE WHIP-POOR-WILLS 159 XII ROUNDING UP UNDER DIFFICULTIES 174 XIII ON THE PLAINS 189 XIV AN ODD ACQUAINTANCE 203 XV A WILD RIDE 215 5 6 CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE XVI A FRIKND IN NEED 231 XVII THE SHEARING OF THE SHEEP 246 XVIII NEWS FROM HOME 260 XIX A SECOND STAMPEDE 270 XX A SERIOUS ACCIDENT 280 XXI AMONG THE SNOW WRAITHS 293 XXII MR. SEATON is CORNERED 309 THE GIRL RANCHERS OF THE SAN COULEE CHAPTER 1 WE BUY A SHEEP RANCH "THERE must be a change made, and at once!" exclaimed Aunt Matilda firmly. She was rock- ing herself back and forth, as was her wont when excited, in the little cane-seated sewing chair that had been mother's, and the soles of her slippers struck the carpet with a soft thud at every forward swing. Father, who was just recovering from one of the frequent coughing fits that left him weak and exhausted, found breath to murmur : " Yes, yes ; I suppose so. No doubt you are right, Matilda," but his manner was so absent that Aunt Matilda immediately returned to the charge with added emphasis : 7 8 THE GIRL RANCHERS " There must be a radical change, Hugh ; I wish that you realized it more than you appear to." " Well, Matilda, perhaps I do realize it ; what then ?" father returned, settling back in his own chair and giving up the intention that he had evidently entertained of slipping into the study, the half-open door of which revealed a table littered with an alluring array of proof sheets. " But what good does that do, since we have no money for traveling purposes ? If that New York firm had bought the patent for my invention, as they more than half promised to do, there would be no occasion for saying that, but they didn't buy it, and I must wait until I can dispose of the patent for making wood in- combustible. The invention for building houses of earthenware is the one that has a fortune in it. The proof sheets of my book on the subject came by this morning's mail," he glanced again at the study table, " but that will take time to work up, the other will do to realize on for ready cash." WE BUY A SHEEP RANCH 9 Our big, bare, old-fashioned house that father had inherited from his father before him was littered from cellar to attic with the curious re- sults of father's inventive genius. There was not one of these that he had not counted confi- dently upon to procure plenty of ready money. Mother, who died when Vevie was a tiny baby, was a dainty, impatient little creature, prone to look around on the household shabbiness, daily growing more pronounced, and bursting into tears whenever father spoke of getting the money that was so sadly needed, through some of his inventions. But Aunt Matilda was of different stuff; she would have gone to the stake and suffered slow torment before she would have allowed her sensitive, ailing brother to suspect for an instant that she doubted the practicability of anything that he attempted. She had lived with us since mother's death, worked for us, made the most of our few suc- cesses, carried our burdens on her shoulders and our sorrows in her loyal heart. She would have gone on in the same way until her tireless 10 THE GIRL RANCHERS feet came to a final halt at the grave had it not been for the report that the great doctor whom she had induced father to consult, gave upon his case ; then she was aroused to activity in a new direction. Tender as she was of father's feel- ings, she yet gave him no peace upon this sub- ject, no opportunity to subside into his usual absent-minded, speculative content. She prod- ded him continually with merciless little re- minders of what the doctor had said, until, placidly indifferent as he was when the topic under discussion happened to be his own health, she did at last succeed in securing his attention, and that was half the battle, for his mind worked with unusual clearness and effectiveness when his interest was once enlisted. Aunt Matilda made no reply to his remark about the incombustible wood invention, but re- peated her previous declaration. " There's got to be a change, Hugh ; I shall not rest day or night until it is accomplished." Father crossed his legs, clasped his long, thin hands over one knee, and prepared to argue the WE BUY A SHEEP RANCH 11 case. The cough that had made an appeal to the doctor necessary stopped him for a moment, then he began persuasively : " My dear sister, we must all die sooner or later; it would seem that in my case if the doctor is right, and he may not be it will be a little sooner than " " There ! That's enough !" Aunt Matilda ex- claimed brusquely. " I don't want to hear any more talk of that sort ; and it's unkind in you to say such things, Hugh, when you know so well that there is a means of restoring your health, which will never be restored until that means is taken." Father sighed. "Granted, Matilda, that I am worth all the trouble that you are disposed to take in my behalf. I tell you, honestly, that I cannot go to the mountains alone ; my last estate would then be worse than my first, for I should die of homesickness, and if I must choose between two evils I greatly pre- fer to die comfortably of consumption here at home, than away off somewhere alone among 12 THE GIRL RANCHERS strangers. Here, I have you and the children about me." At that Florence, who had been sitting silent in the corner, biting her lips and winking back her tears, sprang to his side, threw her arms around his neck, and sobbed, " I don't want you to die at all, anywhere, papa !" Aunt Matilda stamped her foot. " Florence, I am ashamed of you ! Have you no self-con- trol ? Look at Elsie !" Here let me say that I who am writing this narrative, am Elsie. At the time Aunt Matilda spoke I was sitting very erect, gazing steadily out of the window and away from father, con- scious that the thread of my sorely tried en- durance might snap at any moment, and in fear lest Aunt Matilda might unwittingly give the final disastrous tug that should snap it. " Leave me out of the question, if you please," I said stiffly. Aunt Matilda glanced at me, dashed the back of her hand across her eyes she would have disdained to make use of a handkerchief at such a juncture and replied huskily: WE BUY A SHEEP RANCH 13 " Well, I will. Sit down, Florence, you are very inconsiderate." " Elsie is a stoic," father said, his kind, bright eyes twinkling. " You see, Mattie, I've got so little stamina that I couldn't get along without the tonic that such natures as your own and Elsie's furnish me." " You shall have that tonic, Hugh ; we will all go with you." " How, for instance ?" " Well, there's this place and my farm." " Yes ; if either could be set down in the midst of some delightful mountain valley one could ask for nothing more; but, unfor- tunately, they are here and the valley is there." " Their proceeds might easily be put there," returned Aunt Matilda, significantly. " You mean that we shall sell out ? Oh, I don't know. It would be hard to part with the old place, or " his voice sank very low " it would have been hard before Donald went away. There's a a sense of desolation about it now 14 THE GIRL RANCHERS that I never seemed to feel before ; it's getting shabby, I fancy." Florence had perched herself on one arm of his chair and he had an arm around her ; he pushed her aside gently, the better to lean for- ward and scan the large room and its old-fash- ioned, carefully mended furniture; its ceiling where the broken plastering would sag in the middle in spite of Aunt Matilda's various and ingenious experiments with tacks, muslin, and plentiful paste to keep it in place. Then his glance wandered out through the window to the shabby out-buildings, the weedy, unkempt lawn, and the crooked, gnarled old orchard trees un- der which Vevie and Calif, the greyhound, were at the moment playing. " It is deplorably run down ; it is dilapidated," he admitted, sighing ; " but," brightening up suddenly, " we needn't sell on that account, Mattie. When I begin to realize on some of my inventions we can make the old place as fine as you please." "I am not troubled about the old place, Hugh ; it does very well. What does trouble WE BUY A SHEEP RANCH 15 me is the state of your health ; we must go to the mountains, as the doctor said. We must begin to look about at once for some investment, some business, in a desirable locality where you can regain your health and we can do some- thing toward gaining our living at the same time." " The investment idea is all right, Mattie, but there is no occasion for troubling ourselves as to the future. I feel that that is secure." He was thinking of his inventions again, and I knew from the expression on her face that Aunt Matilda was asking herself des- perately what one could do in the face of such persistent hopefulness. After a moment's silence she continued: " Still, Hugh, I should feel more at ease if I could see a direct way of making money, or of making our living as we go along; that is all that I want. We the girls need the training that some kind of business responsibility will give ; even farming. You know that all women are expected to have a business training nowadays." 16 THE GIRL RANCHERS " The more the pity," responded the father, who, like his house, is old-fashioned. " But, of course, you are right ; you always are. We'll start an exploring party for the mountains on paper with as little delay as possible." As I said before, when father's interest is fairly aroused he is energetic enough, and now, hav- ing decided, or having allowed Aunt Matilda to decide for him, on emigration, he set himself industriously to work, with her assistance, to learn what he could of the West and the oppor- tunities it had to offer new-comers. The final outcome of much writing back and forth, here and there, was the purchase of a sheep ranch in the valley of the San Coulee, well up among the Wind River Mountains in Montana. The ranch, which comprised a big slice of the valley, was stocked with a flock of three thousand high grade sheep, and the pur- chase included corrals, sheds, water privileges, winter and summer range, a two years lease of a large tract of school land whatever that might be and a number of other things that I WE BUY A SHEEP RANCH 17 had never heard of before, neither, I am sure, had any of the others. Father and aunt were greatly pleased. " It will be a life of gentle activity for us all," father said, in talking over the purchase after the necessary transfer of papers and the pay- ment of the first instalment of the purchase- money, which we were to pay in four quarterly instalments, or, if we desired, were at liberty to make full payment at any time during the year. " We will naturally wish to look pretty closely after our flock, but the real hard work of the ranch will be done by the Mexican herders, who, Mr. Seaton says, may be hired for a trifle and are perfectly reliable." " I never knew much about any sheep except the one that Mary had and that was only a lamb," Florence remarked cheerfully ; " but I fancy it won't be much work to keep an eye on the merinos." " Sheep are such gentle things, too," chimed in Aunt Matilda ; " I remember, don't you, Hugh, those on grandfather's farm ?" 2 18 THE GIRL RANCHERS " Y es, yes, I do, Matilda. I remember that one of them tossed me nearly over the barn one day. I was stooping down inspecting an ant- hill in the barnyard when I was struck by some- thing back of me with such force that I seemed to have been suddenly fired from the mouth of a cannon. I landed upon the roof of a low shed in front of me, and to this day I don't know whether I was tossed up there or scram- bled up myself, but when I recovered sufficient presence of mind to look about me, there I was, and there below me was old Montague, the big merino ram, pawing the ground with one foot and entreating me to come down and give him another chance at me." " Did you go ?" asked Vevie, with interest. " Not that day, my dear ; I had had enough." " We can cull out any ill-tempered or vicious sheep from our flock," Aunt Matilda said, with a business-like air. " I feel sure that we will enjoy giving the creatures whatever attention we may feel necessary." I am always the one who produces the WE BUY A SHEEP RANCH 19 proverbial wet blanket in our hopeful family, so now I ventured, " We know so little about the business it may be quite an undertaking, as much, perhaps, as it would be to run a cattle ranch." Aunt Matilda looked at me reproachfully. " I don't know how you can think that, Elsie. I should be terribly afraid to attempt the management of a cattle ranch. But there is nothing more tractable, more easily led than a sheep." Months afterward, in the light of bitter ex- perience, I recalled and revised that remark of Aunt Matilda's. By that time I knew there was something more tractable, more easily led than a sheep, and that was a family of Eastern people bent upon Western achievements. We had purchased the ranch on the San Coulee after due investigation into its title by a lawyer in Belmont, the town nearest the valley. The price was so low compared with that of other properties of the kind that that alone should have made us suspicious of something wrong, 20 THE GIRL RANCHERS but it did not; we simply counted ourselves fortunate in discovering Mr. Seaton. As that gentleman was about leaving the valley he offered to sell us the furnishings of the ranch house also at a bargain, and the offer was eagerly accepted. Mr. Seaton further offered to meet us at Carston, the railway station most conve- nient to San Coulee, but, nevertheless, nearly one hundred miles distant from the valley. He was to pilot us to the ranch, and as his time was limited he hinted that it would be a good deal of an accommodation to him if we could manage to come out soon. Nothing could have suited us better, but a sale of the household goods that we would not now be obliged to transport was necessary before we could leave. It was finally decided to dispose of them at public auction, and a day for the sale was set. Father grew so in- terested in talking of the far-off sheep ranch and the novel experiences awaiting us that he really seemed to be already on the high road to recovery. I said to him one day, it was the day before the sale, I remember, " You seem so WE BUY A SHEEP RANCH 21 much better, father ; just the thought of going to the mountains has helped you." " I believe it has, Elsie, and then, do yoq know, there's a kind of clay in the Wind River region I read it in the Gazette that Seaton sent that if all that's claimed for it is true may prove to be the very thing I've been looking for these twenty years. It's fine, soft, non- porous, lends itself readily to treatment. It may be the very thing for hollow brick. If the sheep ranch fails there may be a fortune in that clay. I shall be deeply interested in examining and experimenting with it." Poor father ! It was for our sakes that he so persistently followed what seemed the will-o'- the-wisp of his invention, but my heart sank a little as I realized that the clay banks of the Wind River range if he could get to them would be likely to engage a greater share of his attention than the sheep ranch in which all of our own fortune, as well as Aunt Matilda's, had been invested. CHAPTER II FAREWELL TO ELMWOOD THE day of the sale came and went. In addition to our own desire to have the business of transplanting our home over with, we were anxious to gratify Mr. Seaton by detaining him as short a time as possible, and he made such a point of meeting us that it seemed he would not leave the valley until we came. We th ought ,it was very kind of him then to take so much trouble on our account ; afterward we had reason to believe that he had a purpose in wishing to help us to form our first impressions of the val- ley and its people, for these impressions might not have been flattering to him had any of his neighbors been our guide. The day after the sale our trunks were packed, our tickets purchased, and such household arti- cles as we had decided to take with us, includ- ing Florence's organ, were already shipped and 22 FAREWELL TO ELMWOOD 23 well on their way, but there were still a number of things to be done before we were ready to board the cars at four o'clock that afternoon. Florence had put off a decision as to which of her numerous oil paintings were worthy of being taken along until the last possible mo- ment, and now she was in the front room pull- ing over a pile of canvases, grumbling discon- tentedly at nearly every one. While I was waiting to help her pack those she might settle upon finally I stood beside the uncurtained win- dow, daring for the first time in many weeks to permit myself to think upon Donald. Donald was the only child of father's dearest friend, Mr. Arleigh. When he was twelve years old his parents both died, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world that the orphaned lad should come to us ; he had no near relatives, no place that seemed so much like home to him as the house of his father's friend, who had no son. It was before Vevie's birth that he became a member of our family, when Florence and I 24 THE GIRL RANCHERS were just wee girls. The little property that he had inherited from his father was sold and the proceeds put in the bank, to remain there at in- terest until Donald was twenty-one. He was educated at father's expense well educated and none of us realized how little father could afford to spare the money until Donald left us, for that was what he did. It was a terrible blow to father, though he made no complaint. Donald seemed to take a keen interest in the pursuits that father found so fascinating. Ap- parently he had more faith in the incombustible wood invention and the scheme for making earthenware houses than even father himself, and it was because he so sorely missed the young man's intelligent sympathy and quick under- standing that he failed so rapidly after Donald left. We all knew that his desertion was break- ing father's heart, but none of us said so. Ordi- nary matters seldom worried him, but when Donald disappeared the hurt went deep. It transpired also that Donald had drawn from the bank every cent of the money that belonged FAREWELL TO ELMWOOD 25 to him. He had done worse he had taken samples and models of all father's inventions, even to the descriptive letter press and the in- combustible formula which he would understand so well how to manipulate, and had gone, gone ! Father never uttered a word of complaint against him, and Florence and I dared not say to him that we thought Donald had probably seen the value of his inventions and stolen them. Youth is apt to be hard on youth. To think, then, of him had always given rise to bitter anger and grief, at least with Florence and me, but never at any time did it have this effect upon father and Aunt Matilda, who, it seemed to me, were more dazed than angered by Donald's desertion. Now that we were going away, if he ever returned it would be to an empty house, or to one occupied by strangers. So I fell to thinking more kindly of our foster brother. It was not very long after Donald's departure that Aunt Matilda induced father to consult a doctor in regard to his health, which was failing 26 THE GIRL RANCHERS so fast, but we all knew that Donald's re-appear- ance, no matter what explanation he might give of his strange conduct, would be a better medi- cine for poor father than any doctor's stuff or change of climate. I was aroused from the study of this sad puzzle by hearing the click of the gate latch. I looked out; a stately female figure was ad- vancing majestically up the short walk from gate to doorway. "Florence, Mrs. Elliot is coming," I said in a warning voice. Florence, who had been on her knees in rapt contemplation of one of her own creations, sprang up, turning the picture with its face to the wall, and murmuring in tragic improvi- sation : " My soul be strong ! It ain't for long, In San Coulee she don't belong." " You go to the door, won't you, Elsie ?" she added, as the bell rang. " Yes ; of course ; where's Aunt Matilda ?" " Upstairs ; she's got a bad headache and is FAEEWELL TO ELMWOOD 27 lying down for a few minutes. Vevie has gone over to Mrs. Lamb's to fetch a cup of tea for her." The bell rang again, and I made haste to answer it; my footsteps awakening a dreary echo that accompanied them down the length of the uncarpeted hall. I opened the door and Mrs. Elliot, entering, returned my greeting suavely, asking for Aunt Matilda. " She is lying down ; she has a bad headache," I said, mentally debating whether it was my duty to ask Mrs. Elliot in. She settled the matter herself by starting towarclJlie sitting-room where there were a few pieces 01 furniture left by their pur- chasers for our use. " Everything is in dreadful disorder, Mrs. Elliot ; I hope you will excuse it," I said, follow- ing her. " Certainly, certainly, and I can feel for you, too, my dear Miss Elsie ! It's a sad, sad busi- ness !" " Why, I don't know," I returned rather nettled by this view of the case. " Of course it 28 THE GIRL RANCHERS is sad that father's health should fail, but we hope" Mrs. Elliot shook her head. It was plain that she had small toleration for my poor little hopes. " It's kind in your family to try to shield Donald Arleigh, but I think we all understand the young man's status. Your aunt is ill, you say ? No wonder ! After what she has had to bear!" " I did not say she was ill, Mrs. Elliot, only that she has a headache and is tired." Mrs. Elliot shook her head again, shut her lips and sighed ; she had come prepared to con- dole, and condole she would. " It's a dreadful thing that she must be trans- planted at her age, and forced to pass the few remaining years of her life in a strange land." " Aunt Matilda isn't an old woman, and we are only going to Montana, which isn't a strange land," returned Florence with some heat. " You'll find it strange enough compared to this," our visitor insisted. " My nephew went through there once on the cars well, I have no FAREWELL TO ELMWOOD 29 wish to discourage you. No doubt it's all for the best. The Lord, He doeth all things well. I hope you'll remember that in times of dis- tress or danger. There's an Indian reservation close by your valley, I understand. My nephew told me but there ! I won't discourage you. And, no doubt, the Indians and cowboys are less wild than they used to be ; you are going into the region of cowboys, if I hear aright." She spoke as though they were a kind of wild animal, and Florence informed her perversely : " Oh, we're not all afraid of cowboys ; we've bought one that is, there was one thrown in with the ranch." Mrs. Elliot glared at her with such an unbe- lieving, yet shocked expression, that I thought it was no more than fair to set the matter right. " Florence means, Mrs. Elliot, that there was a poor fellow who had always lived on the ranch ; he doesn't seem to understand that it is pos- sible to live anywhere else, and whenever the place changes hands, he just stays. He is very good to help about the place, Mr. Seaton says, 30 THE GIRL RANCHERS but he will not leave it for any purpose what- ever." " Dear me ! What a strange whim. Have you any idea how he came by it ?" " Mr. Seaton said that he had been badly frightened once, when the ranch belonged to his father, from whom Mr. Seaton had obtained it, and since then he has stayed close by the ranch." " No doubt but that he has undergone some shocking experience. My nephew said never mind, I have no wish to discourage you, but what a comfort it must be to you all to reflect that your dear mother is spared the affliction of this removal. Give my regards to your aunt ; I feel for her as a sister might." " I wonder why some people always say the wrong things!" I thought, bitterly, while our visitor arose and made a stately step toward the door. Then her eye fell upon the pile of can- vases in the corner, and she stopped to look at them. " Pictures ! Ah, yes ; I paint a little myself, FAREWELL TO ELMWOOD 31 as perhaps you have heard. Oh, yes ; yes in- deed. Most expressive!" she remarked, as Florence, turning the canvases around, dis- played one after another. Mrs. Elliot had a word of criticism or of commendation for each, until, at last, Florence showed one that I knew to be a particular favorite of her own. It was a copy of an old engraving, called "Autumn Memories," and showed a torn straw hat lying half tilted on its side in the long grass of an orchard fence corner. From out its crown peeped a pile of rosy-cheeked apples, two or three of which had fallen on the grass beside it. In the dim distance was a vanishing view of an irate farmer with a club, chasing an active small boy who was making such good time that he appeared in no possible danger of capture. Mrs. Elliot put up her glass, the better to study this work of art. "Ah !" she exclaimed, after a careful inspection. " Pumpkins ! Very well done, very well indeed ! How it reminds me of Thanksgiving days and the dear New England cornfields ! No doubt you have read 32 THE GIRL RANCHERS those beautiful lines Cooper's I believe in which he so feelingly refers to the time ' When the frost is on the pumpkin, and the corn is in the shock.' Oh, a taste for art, and the ability to interpret it, is a wonderful gift. I trust that you will continue to improve your gift in your new home, Miss Florence. Vulgar associations and the companionship of cowboys need not tarnish that." She went on in the same strain for awhile, seeming to fancy that we were going out West chiefly for the purpose of sitting on the mountain peaks and looking down on the rest of the world. Then she made her stately adieus and swept out of the house and out of our lives. Indeed, her call would not have been worth the trouble of chronicling but for its effect on Florence. Scarcely had the door closed upon her when Florence jerked that un- fortunate copy of " Autumn Memories " out of the corner and sent it spinning across the room. "Ah, indeed ! Pumpkins," she muttered vi- ciously. " Very well done, v e ry well done, indeed !" I knew her well enough to understand FAREWELL TO ELMWOOD 33 that the picture was forever disgraced in her eyes, but I could not help protesting. " Don't, Flossie ; Mrs. Elliot is always mak- ing blunders ; you know that. Don't you recol- lect that time when she was introduced to poor Mrs. Leland, who is so dreadfully disfigured with small-pox, and who is so sensitive about it ? She told her the first thing that some people would look upon such a face as hers as some- thing repulsive, but that she had no such feel- ings. She looked beyond the hideous mask to the soul that it covered. As long as the soul was all right, what mattered it about the mask ! And Mrs. Leland cried herself sick thinking that that was the impression she must always make on strangers. And you remember when she saw that painting of Mrs. Weston's done when she was a girl she said she wouldn't have believed it possible that it could be her, and then she sighed, and added, 'Oh, well, being married and raising children will spoil any one's good looks.' And you remember the time when " 3 34 THE GIRL RANCHERS " That's enough," laughed Florence, though there were tears in her eyes. " Mrs. Elliot hasn't made a blunder this time ; she has taught me what not to take ; the pictures are all daubs ; nothing less. They are as much of a failure as my music, and what the organ was shipped for I don't know ; everything that I undertake is a failure." She looked gloomily at the pile of canvases, then pushed them contemptuously with her foot, and turning away said, " You may pick out any that you choose, Elsie, for, I dare say, you are just silly enough to think them fine because I did them." They were fine, and as she went out I called Aunt Matilda, who had got the better of her headache and had come down stairs on Mrs. Elliot's departure. With her help we packed them all. Florence has genius ; she does so quickly, so well, things that my unskillful hands and slower intellect must achieve if they are achieved at all by patient drudgery. There is this differ- ence between us, however. When I have mas- tered anything it stays by me, it continues to FAREWELL TO ELMWOOD 35 be a pleasure, but the very ease with which Florence does a thing seems to cause her to undervalue it. She has such a lovely voice and so much natural talent as a musician, but is so impatient of training and practice that Profes- sor Endicott himself advised her to give up music if she could not bring herself to do more conscientious work. She couldn't, and she gave it up ; but I don't believe she would have done so if she had fully understood what a blow her decision was giving to our family pride. And then her painting ! She has such an eye for color effects, such skill in shading! Father went to see an artist who would only give les- sons to the most promising pupils. After look- ing at some of Florence's amateur work he said that he should be proud to number her in his class. But she had a difficulty with him almost at once. He made it a point that she must begin at the very foot of the ladder, the very a, b, c of art, as she said, when she had already copied two or three landscapes so well ! She could not give in to his views, and he would not give in 36 THE GIRL RANCHERS to hers, so the lessons were soon given up, but she kept on with her painting in a desultory way because she is so fond of it. But she re- quired a good deal of well, perhaps if it were any one but Florence I might call it flattery ; still I don't know that that is any great fault. There are lots of people just like her; they make good students if only they have enough encouragement. The dray that was to carry the few remaining fragments of our household upheaval to the rail- way station came not long after we had finished packing the pictures, and, as the distance was short, we decided to walk down. It turned out to be a kind of farewell ovation. The townspeople, old acquaintances and life- long friends, were out in force. Father and Aunt Matilda walked on ahead, shaking hands and replying cheerily to the good wishes show- ered upon them. Aunt Matilda looked white and tired, and when I saw father's face I was thankful that the ordeal must necessarily be a brief one, yet even after we were all seated in FAREWELL TO ELMWOOD 37 the car it was not quite over with. Aunt Ma- tilda was sitting beside an open window, smiling bravely to the last, when a great bouquet of field lilies was thrust into view, and a shrill, small voice piped, " Ketch 'em, Miss Stanley ; they're for you." Aunt Matilda put out her head. There was that wretched little Jim Pearson, who so many people insisted should be sent to the Reform School ; his freckled face was red and streaming with perspiration, his clothing splashed with swamp mud, and he held up the flowers in both hands for aunt to reach. "Ketch 'em," he panted, "I most didn't git here in time." The cars were beginning to move. Aunt Matilda took the flowers ; she looked down into the gray eyes upraised to meet her own. " God bless and care for you, little Jim," she said, huskily. " Same to you, ma'am," piped Jim, as the cars slipped past the waiting groups, past the familiar stream, past the familiar fields, and then Aunt Matilda sank back into her seat, covered her face with her hands and cried. Jim was a reprobate, but she had always 38 THE GIRL RANCHERS believed in him. She had on one occasion even taken his part, and his word, against that of a well-dressed boy when it came to a question of veracity between them. It happened accident- ally, I'm sure, that Jim was telling the truth, but no one save Aunt Matilda could have been convinced of it. Aunt laid the lilies on the seat opposite her, beside Vevie. As there were none to be had nearer than Weston's swamp-field, three miles from town, Jim must have run there to get these. After a farewell glance at the receding village, Vevie turned her eyes contemplatively upon the blossoms. " I s'pose God was thinking of Jim Pearson when He said ' Suffer little children to come unto me/ " she presently remarked, with grave thoughtfuluess, " 'cause he's awful little for his size, and so dirty that nobody but God and Aunt Matilda would want him around." CHAPTER III ACROSS THE PLAINS IN A PRAIRIE SCHOONER THREE days and nights of continuous travel took us to Carston, a rough, straggling frontier village, but of some importance on account of it being the outfitting point for miners and ranch- men going to the mountain valleys. As the train, late in the afternoon, rolled up to the bare platform a score or more of men in garb that we already knew to be distinctly Western, lined up along its edge and waited for the train to come to a standstill. "I wonder if it's a hold-up?" whispered Florence, glancing nervously along the pictur- esque line. " It's more likely to be a welcome," returned father, smiling. " There, do you see that small, bustling, stand -out -of- my -way -looking man next the tall cowboy in a white hat? Unless I miss my guess, that individual is on the 39 40 THE GIRL RANCHERS lookout for us, and answers to the name of Seaton." Father's guess was shown, as we left the car and reached the platform, to be right in every particular. Mr. Seaton greeted us cordially, piloted us to a hotel, and left us to our own de- vices for the remainder of the evening, but he warned us that he would be on hand at an early hour the next morning, and that if we " looked alive " we might get started for San Coulee that day. My impression is that we looked very much alive, but, nevertheless, there were so many purchases to be made that we did not get under way for the valley until nearly noon of the second day. Then we might have been seen by any interested observer starting out on the last stage of our journey to our future home. Under Mr. Seaton's direction and selection father had bought four of the tough little native horses, all of them well broken to wagon or sad- dle. He had rather fancied a span of tall American horses that were brought to the hotel for our inspection, but Mr. Seaton so decidedly ACROSS THE PLAINS 41 negatived the idea of purchasing them that father yielded to his judgment, and it is but fair to say that in the matter of selecting our outfit and stock, we afterward saw good reason to con- gratulate ourselves that his skill and experience had been at our service. Our four horses were hitched to the serviceable wagon that father bought. Into it were piled our trunks, the house- hold goods that we found already awaiting our arrival, three side-saddles, a man's saddle, the organ, some bedding and mattresses a big load. Away we drove, following in the wake of Mr. Seaton, who had taken aboard his own lighter conveyance some of our household goods. The weather it was about the middle of May was delightful. It was well that it was, for we were inexperienced drivers, and I have my doubts as to our ability to have gotten through at all but for the fact that Mr. Seaton's team took the lead, and about all we had to do was to follow. Father was, ostensibly, our driver, but I sat beside him, ready at any time to give him the full benefit of my inexperience, and Aunt 42 THE GIRL RANCHERS Matilda and Florence from their seats in the back of the wagon bestowed upon us both an amount of advice that would have been disas- trous enough had either of us made any attempt to follow it. Our horses were small, but the strength of the little creatures was prodigious. They trotted off blithely with the heavy load that seemed so cruelly big for them, so that we had no trouble in keeping up with Mr. Seaton, who, leaving his own well-trained team to walk on alone, would occasionally come back to our wagon and give us what he designated as " pointers " on the management of a broncho quartette. We were traveling straight toward the low mountain range that loomed up in the northwest with hourly increasing distinct- ness and majesty. The road stretched over the plains in a long white ribbon, until long before reaching the base of those far mountains its converging lines met, becoming an indistinct, misty blur on the verge of a horizon that never before had seemed so distant. At the close of the first day out we camped ACE08S THE PLAINS 43 beside the road, where a tiny stream gave an economical supply of water, but those moun- tains, save that they were constantly growing in impressiveness, were as far off, as unchanged in appearance, as on the hour that our eyes first rested upon them. But before noon of the second day out, the mountains began to proclaim their individuality. Forests of ever- greens rose rank on rank, or scattering out toward the mountain tops in long, regular lines, seemingly advanced up and beyond the crests, giving the weird effect of columns of marching soldiery disappearing into an un- known land. Colonies of prairie dogs greeted us with shrill yapping as our wagons rolled by, or went scampering out of sight with a disdain- ful flirt of their stubby little tails whenever we halted the team to get a better view of them. A dingy yellow brown coyote thrust his alert head and sharp-pointed ears out from a hole in the bank of an arroyo over which we had just passed by means of a very uncertain bridge, and barked derisively when we stopped to study 44 THE GIRL RANCHERS him. He disdained to retreat to his hole, and slunk around in the rear of our wagon, crossed the road, made a swift detour, and coming out ahead, took his position on the top of a little hillock. From that coign of vantage he ap- peared to be, in his turn, studying us. I doubt if the study inspired him with much respect, for his derisive bark presently changed to a note so much like mocking laughter that Calif, who had ignored the prairie dogs, and had re- garded the antics of the wolf with stately indif- ference, could stand it no longer. Wrenching himself free from Vevie's detaining hand he bounded from the wagon like a flash, and took after the wolf, which, discovering the greyhound for the first time, gave a howl of dismay and turning tail, fled with as little apparent effort, and as lightly, as though blown by the wind. Calif's blood was up. He kept on after the Ishmaelite of the plains at a pace that would soon have overtaken him had he not suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. " He's taken back to the arroyo ; that's the ACROSS THE PLAINS 45 last we'll see of him," remarked Mr. Seaton, who, like father, had halted to watch the chase. " That was a purty run," he continued approv- ingly. " Them long-legged greyhounds is about the swiftest things on earth, I reckon, but yours is soft." Vevie, whose face was white with apprehension for her pet's safety, could not endure what she took to be an aspersion of his character. " Calif isn't any more softer than you are, Mr. Seaton," she flashed out. " He knows just as much as anybody, don't he, Aunt Matilda ?" but without waiting for aunt's comforting corroboration, she covered her face with her hands and sobbed. " He's lost, now, I know he is. He can never find his way back to us." " Then this is his very handsome white ghost that I see trotting toward us, little daughter," said father, smiling ; and, as she scrambled up to take a look in the direction indicated, Mr. Seaton explained : " I wasn't alludin' to his intellec', which I make no doubt is strong- enough for all the uses 46 THE GIRL RANCHERS he'll ever be called on to put it to. I just meant that he wasn't in practice for runnin'. But speakin' of clogs, that dog I sold you with the flock is the best one and the smartest that ever I saw. Hated to part with him, I did, though I've no use for him unless I keep sheep. Tears like Felix couldn't live without he had a flock of sheep to tend to." " He ought to be a good dog, considering the price we paid for him," Aunt Matilda could not forbear saying. The price of the collie had seemed to her Mr. Beaton's one outrageous de- mand ; indeed, she had said that that gentleman probably wished to make up on the sale of the dog what he lost by the low price of the sheep. Mr. Seaton knew his own business. He laughed: "Miss Stanley, I sold you that dog for one hundred dollars ; sounds like a big price, I know, when you can git dogs 'most anywhere for the trouble of totin' 'em home. But them dogs ain't Felix, and say, if you think at the end of the year, when you've had him long enough to git acquainted with him, that a hundred dollars ACROSS THE PLAINS 47 was too much to give for him, I'll take him off your hands at that very figure ; I will so." " That sounds reasonable," Aunt Matilda admitted, and from that moment I never heard the collie spoken of as an extravagant purchase. As we neared the mountains we saw herds and herds of cattle on the plains, but no sheep, which seemed to me so odd that I spoke of it to father, who, at our next halt, passed the observation along to Mr. Seaton. "Lots of cattle but no sheep !" exclaimed our mentor, glancing toward the dun herds with an air of surprise. " Does seem to be so just here, don't it?" and then he changed the subject. As we broke camp and took the road on the morning of our third day out, we seemed to be driving straight into a high triangular peak, which Mr. Seaton said guarded the entrance to San Coulee valley. Furthermore he informed us that the long black rents in the mountain side were wild, rocky cafions, the sources of streams and the chosen home of the larger and fiercer kinds of game. 48 THE GIRL RANCHERS " Do cowboys live there, too," asked Vevie with interest. The child seemed somehow to have imbibed Mrs. Elliot's idea of the nature and attributes of a cowboy. " Well, they ain't a livin' in the caflons very much, just now," returned our guide dryly, " I re'clect heariu' that Johnny and his father dwelt amongst the rocks up in Coulee cafion for quite a spell once, but I don't reckon you'll ever be called on to take to the cations." Ambig- uous words ! Full of sinister meaning, had we but known it. Johnny was the cowboy who had been, as Florence told Mrs. Elliot, thrown in with the ranch. On this last morning Mr. Beaton suggested that, as his load was much lighter than ours, he should drive on ahead and make such prepa- ration as he could at the ranch house, for our comfort when we arrived. " But," objected father, " Johnny, as you call him, knows that we are likely to be there to-day ; won't he do all that is needful ?" " Johnny is a good feller, but he needs to be ACROSS THE PLAINS 49 directed; he'll do anything on earth that he's told to do save and except leavin' the ranch but he needs to be told. I ain't sure that he'd das't to set down and eat a meal o' vittles unless he was told that he might." " Very well," assented father, who did not fancy the arrangement, "just as you say, Mr. Seaton, we can certainly follow along after you." " Not too long after me, either," Mr. Seaton warned him, with a weather-wise glance at the sky. " It's thickening up ; that bank of clouds over on the Wind River range ain't hangin' 'round there for nothin'. I'm lookin' for a mighty wet spell of weather before night ; storms, in this country, and at this time o' year, come up sudden and do business whilst they are up ; so don't let the grass grow under your feet, but keep the bronchos humpin'." He drove away at such a pace that his entire outfit was a van- ishing speck within an hour, and within two hours was indistinguishable from the clumps of Spanish bayonet or yucca plants that strewed the plains for miles ahead. 4 50 THE GIRL RANCHERS " I don't see just why Seaton was so bent on leaving us," father said at last, after some miles of silent reflection ; " that excuse of his that he wished to make preparation for our reception was trivial, in view of the fact that the house is already furnished and there is a man on hand who certainly will know enough to unharness and care for horses, whatever else he doesn't know." " Don't worry, Hugh, we'll get through all right." " I'm not doubting that, Matilda, and, after all, Seaton has been very kind ; I ought not to grumble." None of us suspected his real reason, which, months afterward we had learned enough to believe, was because he did not care to be seen driving into San Coulee valley with the owner of a sheep ranch. The firm, gravelly soil made an ideal road-bed, and Florence, who had sold her bicycle, began to regret that she had not kept it. " It looks as if all one would have to do ACROSS THE PLAINS 51 would be just to get on to the wheel and coast down to those mountains," she remarked on that last afternoon as the triangular peak, now close at hand, rose before us in quiet majesty. Father smiled as he said : " You'd find it hard coasting here, Flossie ; this is up." Florence had, by this time, graduated from the seat on the flour sack which had satisfied her first humble aspirations, to one on the hearth of our new kitchen stove, and leaning forward the better to study the angle of the road. She announced at last : " It is up. See how the horses are pulling on the traces ; it's up ; but it looks down." "A common illusion, I am told, when one nears the mountains," father said. " What I'm afraid of is that we'll receive more practical proof that it's up than we care for ; if you'll notice, the clouds have crept over from that further range and are rolling down upon us fast. See ! our sentinel peak is half obscured, and I'm" pretty sure I heard thunder." 52 THE GIRL RANCHERS " I heard it," Aunt Matilda confessed, " but I daresay it's only a passing shower." " I hope so ; we cannot be many miles from the mouth of the valley now. I would hate to stop for a shower so near our journey's end." "So near to the promised land," remarked Florence, stretching her arms upward with a long yawn, and Vevie struck lightly into the old Methodist hymn that the words called up : " I have a crown in the promised land, My Father calls me, I must go, To wear it in the promised land." " You've got a crown here," father informed her, laying his hand for a moment on the child's shining hair, " be content with that." Vevie has the most wonderful hair ; not yellow, like Florence's, nor brown, like mine, but a shimmering, flaxen, misty mass, like noth- ing so much as moonlight on still water ; like a trailing white wreath of glory. That wonderful abundant fair hair, with the thoughtful, spirit- ACROSS THE PLAINS 53 uelle face and the deep unchildish eyes often made me pause and look at her involuntarily. It seemed, with that white, ethereal presence that there should be a rustle of wings. The child shook her head, smiling faintly at father's words, but the song ceased, and she fell to watching the advancing, descending clouds with an expression of rapt interest. The black wall advanced and drooped rapidly ; if we had known then as much of the danger from waterspouts in these wild mountains in storms as we afterward learned we should have stopped at once and made preparations to meet the oncoming deluge of wind and rain ; but, igno- rant of the possibilities of danger for us in that ad- vancing black wall with its sullen roll of thunder and quivering flashes of light, we urged the tired ponies on the faster and pressed forward into the clouds until we found ourselves enveloped in a hissing, blinding torrent of rain. Rain? It was water, driven in a solid sheet before a fierce wind, that in an instant caught the white canvas top of our prairie schooner, and, swelling it out 54 THE GIRL RANCHERS to balloon-like dimensions, made the stout oak wagon bows creak and groan as the struggling canvas pulled upon them. For a moment there seemed imminent danger of the wagon overturning; then the frightened horses, re- fusing to face the storm, whirled short around, and in doing so righted the wagon, but in rescuing it from the danger of being capsized by the wind they cramped it dangerously on their own account. Father and I, both tugging frantically at the reins, succeeded in getting them partly back to place, but a wilder gust of wind just then tore one end of the canvas cover loose and frightened Chris, as we had named the yellow broncho. In a delirium of excitement he began to buck, and the rest of the team were fast becoming unmanageable, inspired, I sup- pose, by the yellow broncho's example. Father sprang out, regardless of the rain and of Aunt Matilda's appeals for him to put on his mackin- tosh, and made his way to the heads of the leaders, where I instantly joined him. Between us, by much pulling and coaxing we quieted ACROSS THE PLAINS 55 the horses and succeeded in getting them around with their backs to the storm. Then, wet and shivering we crept into the wagon again, pulled off our drenched outer garments and put on those that Aunt Matilda had got in readiness for us. We sat there, waiting in awed silence for fully an hour, while the storm raged around us. It was our first, never-to-be-forgotten ex- perience with a mountain storm. The peals of thunder were terrific; the echoing and re- echoing reverberations rolled away and away among the mountain peaks until at last the sound seemed to roll out of hearing over the edge of the universe. We were very thankful for dry quarters and at the end of something over an hour the storm, as far as active manifestations were concerned, ceased almost as suddenly as it began. The trailing skirts of the black cloud swept over us ; there was a sudden, delicious lighting up of the drenched landscape, and the setting sun came out for one farewell glance before leaving his wild Western principality to darkness and night. 56 THE GIRL RANCHERS But, although now less than eight miles from the cottage where rest and welcome awaited us, our adventures were by no means over ; indeed, the latter part of that last half day held for us more hair-breadth escapes by land and water than all the rest of our journey put together. CHAPTER IV A PERILOUS RIDE WE turned the team around and started for- ward the moment the last vestige of that black skirt of clouds swept over us, but as we advanced we saw with a kind of helpless concern that the horses were wading in water that was constantly growing deeper until the road-bed seemed the bed of a stream through which we were making a perilous passage. The mountain before us had served as a watershed for a veritable cloud- burst. The water swept down its sides in constantly increasing volume and with augmenting force. " I've heard of such a thing as swimming on dry land," father said, eying the moist prospect ap- prehensively, " but I never thought that I should care to try it." Then, looking at Florence, he asked : " Does the road to the mountain lead up or down ?" 57 58 THE GIRL RANCHERS " The water leads down," she returned promptly. " You'll see it turn directly," he said, " and then we'll sail into the valley on the current ; just wait until we round the shoulder of this giant and you'll see." "This giant" was the triangular peak that guarded the entrance to the valley. " The road from the mountain into the valley makes a fall of something over a thousand feet in less than a half-mile," father continued, and at that moment we rounded the first curve and caught a passing, beautiful glimpse of a still green valley, far beneath. We girls uttered in- voluntary exclamations of delight, but it was no time for sight-seeing, the exigencies of the road demanded our undivided and not very capable attention. The roadway was cut along the side of the mountain, and, as we swung around the first curve, the volume of- water turned with us and went roaring down the path ahead. Sud- denly, above the rush of water, a sharp whistle sounded, twice and thrice repeated. It came from a bit of the road that we could not see, A PERILOUS RIDE 59 around the mountain shoulder, and father stopped the team, saying, " I wonder what that means, some kind of a signal, I'm sure." We all listened anxiously while we waited, in no little danger, as it seemed, of being washed down by the increasing torrent into the valley that shone so bright below us. Then the whistle was shrilly repeated ; this time father echoed it ; another silence, then a big masculine voice shouted, " Well, why don't you come on then ; I can't hold my team here all day." Father started up our horses remarking, in a somewhat crestfallen tone, " I ought to have thought of that. This road is cut, as you see, along the side of the mountain and there are probably niches scooped out at intervals for the convenience of passing wagons ; as we are going down we have the right of way." We were now so close to the niche in question that his ex- planation was unnecessary. Rounding the curve we came upon a man who was holding a yoke of oxen against the side of a too shallow niche by literally pressing them, broadside, 60 THE GIRL RANCHERS up close to the rocky wall by main strength, while the water poured from the overhanging rock above full upon his head and shoulders and the water below ran in a swift muddy current reaching well up on his boot legs. It turned out to be the worst point on the road at which to meet at outgoing team. Luckily the man had no wagon ; if he had had one I doubt if we could have passed him. As it was our frisky horses, true to their usual habits of investiga- tion, pricked up their ears at the strange specta- cle of cattle bearing a yoke and, with dilating eyes and nostrils, evinced an intention to back. To back up-hill was not feasible, and the wagon began slowly to slew around. "Say," shouted our new acquaintance from out his impromptu shower bath, " you want to look out ! Water's softened the road until it's jest mush on the edge ; if your team backs off there they won't never back off nowhere else." Father drew the reins with all his feeble strength while I lashed the wheelers frantically. Instead of going on the yellow broncho began to ONE WHEEL HAD SLIPPED OVER THAT AWFUL VERGE (Page 61.) A PERILOUS RIDE 61 rear. A stifled cry from Florence told us that one wheel had slipped over that awful verge. Without a word the man with the oxen aban- doned them to their own devices and sprang for Chris' head, pulled fiercely on his bit and brought him to place with a sharp word of com- mand ; then, as the horses sprang forward he stood aside for them to pass, giving to each a few impartial cuts with his heavy whip and so exciting them to speed. " Don't stop for anything I" he shouted, as we swept past. " If you meet any one else drive through 'em. The river bridge was trembling when I come up ; it'll be gone before you git there if you don't hurry." " I wonder what he means ?" queried Aunt Matilda anxiously. " I'm afraid that he means just what he says," returned father whose face was pale with ap- prehension, as well it might be, for the horses were now going at a terrific rate, the heavy wagon swaying and lurching behind them, threatening at every instant to overturn or be 62 THE GIRL RANCHERS hurled bodily from the narrow track into the gulf below. Our tugging at the lines had no more effect in checking the flying horses than if they were held with wisps of straw. A backward glance showed me Aunt Matilda and Florence clinging with colorless lips to whatever they could lay hands upon, but making no outcry, while Vevie, with an arm around Calif 's neck, gazed, wide-eyed, into the depths beneath us, apparently unconscious of the danger in our terrible descent. The wagon had gained such an impetus that I do not suppose it would have been possible for the team to check it. On, on, we went, as helpless to stay our progress as some gigantic missile hurled from a catapult. To this day I shudder when I recall the peril of that terri- ble descent, and yet the danger incurred by a slower, more cautious progress would have been nearly as great, only we did not then know it. Down the mountain we thundered, throwing mud and water in all directions ; down, until A PERILOUS RIDE 63 by a merciful providence we reached the slight stretch of rising ground fronting the approach to the bridge over the swollen, turbid river. A swift brown stream, the overflow from the river channel, ran across this approach ; into and over it on to the bridge, we thundered with scarcely slackening speed ; through the like overflow on the farther side and so upon a stretch of muddy road where the blown horses presently came down to a walk, and then Vevie's calm voice broke the silence. " Father, why don't you put your foot on the iron thing that Mr. Seaton showed us, and make it bite the wheels ?" Neither of us had before thought of the brakes with their convenient rod running within easy reach of the driver's foot. We had not had occasion to use the brakes in crossing the plains, and as the rod had a tendency to fall forward when the wagon was going down-hill, and as we had an equal tendency to forget to remove it when going up-hill, father had com- promised matters by fastening it securely back with a chain and then forgetting all about it. 61 THE GIKL RANCHERS Of course our friend of the ox-team, when he started our horses up so briskly, supposed, as he afterward told us, that our brakes were ready for use. An experienced freighter would as soon think of managing his team without lines as of attempting the descent of a mountain without brakes ; that, however, was not only what we attempted, but what we did, and in safety. Father and I sitting on the front seat, were as wet as if we had been in the river. He stopped the horses and, wiping the mud and water from his face with his coat sleeve, glanced back at Aunt Matilda, remarking, " That was a narrow escape, Mattie." " E-ather," assented Aunt Matilda, who was evidently indisposed to talk about it, but Vevie said gravely, " I think we corned down too soon, papa ; I would like to ride after oxens better when we go down-hill." " It was the fault of the driver, and not the horses, that we came down the mountain like a cannon ball let loose, little daughter," lie A PERILOUS RIDE 65 returned, gathering up the lines ; then he said, looking over his shoulder for Florence who had not yet spoken, " Are you all right, Flossie ?" There was no reply, and Aunt Matilda, turn- ing her head, uttered a wild cry, " Hugh, stop ! stop ! she's gone ; she has been thrown out ! Oh, Florence ! Florence !" Such an outburst from self-contained Aunt Matilda, who seldom gave way to emotion lest she might distress some one else, was nearly as startling as the in- formation itself. "Hush, Matilda," father cried, halting the team, "she has probably jumped out; she could not get out any other way." "I'm sure she was thrown out, and she's probably lying back in the road helpless," sobbed Aunt Matilda, whose overstrained nerves had given away. " That's nonsense, Matilda ; she might, if she was spry and active enough, have crawled to the end of the wagon and dropped out behind. That would have been a way of saving herself if the wagon went over the precipice." 5 66 THE GIRL RANCHERS "And Florence would like to save herself always," said Vevie, seriously. " Elsie," father continued, " go back to the river and see if you can find any trace of her ; I'll stay with the team and get the brake ready for use, too, before we start again." This he did, and we used it when necessary for the remainder of our journey. When we got out of the wagon and looked back toward the river that we had but just crossed, a new and terrible surprise awaited us. Brief as had been the interval since our cross- ing, it had been long enough to complete the work of destruction. The bridge was gone ! Aunt Matilda and Vevie had got out of the wagon to go with me, and I do not know which one of us, or if all together, gave the startled cry that caused father to thrust his distressed face out from the wagon cover and inquire anxiously : "What now?" " The bridge is gone, Hugh I" " Is it ?" A PERILOUS RIDE 67 He could say no more for a moment. I think that the same thought occurred to all three of the older ones, " What if she were on the bridge when it went down ?" Then Aunt Matilda whose courage always rose with emer- gencies, prepared herself for action. " Come, Elsie, are you coming ?" We reached the water's edge and were stand- ing staring blankly at the place where the bridge had been, when, to our delight, Florence came in sight on the other side, accompanied by the owner of the oxen and the oxen themselves. Halting at the farther bank she shouted to us, but the voice of the water was so much the stronger that we could not make out a word. Then the man took up the explanation and hal- looed in a mellow, distinct voice that seemed to have the carrying power of a great bell. " She wants to tell you that she ain't hurt a bit ; she jumped out of the wagon ; I seen her ; I come down here to help her acrost the river, but she can't git acrost now less'en she goes up to McCarthy's mill, two miles further up." 68 THE GIRL RANCHERS Aunt Matilda put her hands to her mouth and screamed across, " Oh, she can't walk so far in this mud !" " She won't have to walk," roared our friend, " I'm going with her ; she can ride one of the oxen ; they're broke to ride," and as if to show how little cause we had for apprehension on her account he pulled off his coat, spread it carefully over the broad back of the nearest ox, said a word or two to Florence, and then lifted her to the creature's back as lightly as a feather. He then turned the clumsy team around on the back track, but paused once more to give us a word of cheer. " I know who you be ; you're goin' to Seaton's ranch ; don't you worry about the little girl ; I'll fetch her along all right, but it may be a little late ; oxen ain't fast," As the unique steeds with their long-legged driver be- side them started up the mountain road again, Florence turned to wave her hand to us; she was laughing. " What did he say ?" asked father as we rejoined him. " I saw what was going on, A PERILOUS RIDE 69 but I couldn't make out anything that he said." Aunt Matilda recited what had taken place while Vevie, with a hand over her mouth, giggled hysterically. "Flossie's going to ride a ox !" she explained as Aunt Matilda concluded. We who better appreciated the situation could only smile faintly at the child's merriment. It was certainly better under the circumstances, to laugh than to cry, but I was in my heart very sorry for poor, proud Florence, making her entry on the scene of her future home by a detour of four miles, and perched upon the back of an ox at that, if she came at all. Wild visions of kidnapers, of Indians, even of Mrs. Elliot's wild cowboys flashed through my mind as we again clambered into the wagon and started on at a pace slow and difficult enough to atone for any previous haste. For my part I did not care to make haste since every step was taking us farther and farther away from Florence, and who could tell into what danger she might be going. Father presently discovered that Aunt 70 THE GIRL RANCHERS Matilda was crying quietly and set himself to try to comfort her. " Florence will get around all right before many hours, Mattie ; you know what good fellows these mountaineers are ; they'll take no end of trouble to help a neighbor, and I hope our tall friend is a neighbor in fact as well as sentiment. It's going to be a bright moonlight night, too." " Oh, I know there isn't any danger," re- turned Aunt Matilda in a voice that plainly betrayed that that was just what she had been thinking of, " but I'm afraid it will be dread- fully uncomfortable riding on an ox, anyway, and Florence isn't used to riding." " She will be before she gets through," father responded rather grimly, " and I don't suppose that riding an ox is any more uncomfortable than riding a camel, and, you know, people willingly cross the ocean and dislocate their joints for the sake of being able to say that they have bestrode a ' ship of the desert/ " CHAPTER V OUR NEW HOME THE late summer dusk was struggling with the light of the rising moon when, wet, weary, and more disheartened by the manner of our introduction to San Coulee than any of us would have admitted at the time, we drew up before the welcome door of the ranch house. Lights shone in the windows, an odor as of a warm meal in process of preparation was wafted to our nostrils, and all at once, our world, even to Florence's unended adventure, took on a more cheerful aspect. Mr. Seaton came hurrying out to meet us as the wagon stopped, and was pro- fuse in his expressions of regret when he found what a moist condition we were in. While he helped us out father told him what had befallen Florence. Mr. Seaton chuckled : " That's all right, only, of course, it's a pity to put the young lady to so much trouble, but 71 72 THE GIRL RANCHERS you needn't feel a mite uneasy about her getting here ; she'll be along as soon as Rome can make them oxen of his git over the road. He's all right ; he's one of the best fellows in the valley, and I ain't gittin' no pay for sayin' that, 'cause I've got a purty strong idea that he ain't over 'n' above fond of me." "It was fortunate for us that he happened to be on the mountain," father said. " Yes, it was ; I saw him as he went a-past here ; he said he was goin' to git a wagon out- side and go down to Belmout for supplies. Belmont is the town nearest us, 'round the corner of that high mountain, Mount Kenneth, that is ; Indian Reservation's on the other side. But come in, come in ; Johnny, here, will take care of the horses, and supper's all ready." He led the way briskly into the house everything that the man did was done with a rush, as though he were always bent on making up time that he had lost somewhere in his progress through life. Sure enough, the table was neatly set, and the bright, cozy room was full of the OUR NEW HOME 73 delicious odors of the warm meal that had appealed to our nostrils already. " Set right down," advised Mr. Seaton, hos- pitably, " no use waiting until everything's cold. Johnny and me we've eaten our supper already so as to be ready to tend to things when you got here." " I think, perhaps, we had better wait for Florence," Aunt Matilda suggested doubtfully. " There ain't a grain o' use in doing that," insisted our late guide. " You would only be putting yourselves out and not helpin' her ; for, I tell you, she's just as safe to git here all right as if she was com in' on a special car that was built a purpose for her." This was so re- assuring, and we were so hungry, that we has- tened to follow his advice as soon as we had divested ourselves of our damp garments, while he devoted himself to the task of helping Johnny unload what he designated as our " plunder." Johnny was another surprise. I, at least, had somehow imbibed the notion that our at- tache was a bent, timid, retiring, pale-faced boy, 74 THE GIRL RANCHERS and I was partly right, but could not have missed the mark more thoroughly as far as physique went. Tall, broad shouldered, straight as an arrow, with a shock of curling, light- brown hair, he was as attractive to look upon as some perfect statue. But, poor Johnny, there it ended. There was no speculation in those deep blue eyes, no emotion betrayed by the loose, expressionless lips. The whole effect of his personality if I may use such a term in speak- ing of him, for he did not really seem to have a personality was saddening, as of a misfit of nature ; a child's mind in the strong body of a man ; a soul too small for its environment look- ing out vacantly from a man's eyes. As we be- came acquainted with this helpless waif, who had been " thrown in with the ranch," we grew warmly attached to him. Never was a more faithful, willing, obedient aid than Johnny, within his limitations ; his limitations were the boundaries of the lower San Coulee valley. He was not timid, nor forward, but regarded us at the table, as he passed back and forth through the OUR NEW HOME 75 room, with the frank, impersonal curiosity of an untrained child. Calif did not like Mr. Seaton ; he had made that manifest ever since first meeting him, and now, feeling, I suppose that he was at home and so entitled to an expression of opinion, he was not backward in expressing it. He followed the object of his animosity back and forth and kept growling until father took a piece of rope and tied him ignominiously to the leg of the lounge. Still he continued to voice unfavorable comments upon the alert, little man, who was dodging back and forth through the room. Vevie's eyes filled with tears at her favorite's disgrace, but she made no protest, except to explain Calif's behavior to Mr. Seaton. Vevie displayed at times a talent for truthfulness little short of appalling, added to which she credited Calif with a degree of intelligence possible only to the illimitable credulity of childhood ; so now she stopped Mr. Seaton in one of his hurried dashes to say : " Calif don't like you. It was real good in 76 THE GIRL RANCHERS you to sell papa this little house with a fireplace in it, and to frow our things into it so quick you've broke Aunt Matilda's cut-glass pitcher, too, that she thought so much of, but I guess she won't mind but I s'pose, maybe, you've done something bad some time and Calif re- members it. I'll tell him you're good now, anyway." "That's right, little lady, that's right," exclaimed Mr. Seaton, with undiminished cheerfulness, but he did not " frow " the next articles into the room with quite so much vehemence. Oddly enough Calif had already signified his solemn approval of Johnny, and it was Johnny, on one of his trips back and forth, who called attention to Vevie. "Why don't you eat?" he asked, paus- ing before her and regarding her with calm in- terest. For answer the child threw up her arms and burst into a wild fit of sobbing. Father set down the cup that he was just raising to his lips and hurried to her side. " Vevie, child, what is the matter ?" he cried, anxiously. " What are you crying about ?" He knelt on the floor OUR NEW HOME 77 by her side it was so strange to see Vevie in tears, she who never complained and whose sky was always sunny, no matter what the weather. She leaned her head on father's shoulder, her silvery, flaxen hair straying over it like a shin- ing mist. " Calif is hungry, too," she sobbed, " and he is tied up ! He thinks nobody cares for him !" " I'll tie him here by you," father told her, " then he will know better." He did so, and not long afterward, supper being over, I looked for Vevie and found her fast asleep under the table where she and Calif had both crept, her head pillowed on the greyhound's white shoulder. The wagon load of " plunder " being disposed of, our friend pulled out an immense silver watch and consulted its face inquiringly. "Time I was getting on," he announced; "I'd like first-rate to stay and see Miss Florence come in ; she'll be here in a few minutes now, but I've got some ways yet to go to-night." 78 THE GIRL RANCHERS " Surely you will stay here," Aunt Matilda interposed. " It's late, and you must be tired." " Not very late, and I never get tired ; the horses have had a good rest whilst you was comin' on, and we must be movin'." " Are you leaving the valley soon ?" asked father. " Why, I've left it already ; that is to say, the boys have driven the cattle over beyond Wind River, and there's nothing left to go but wife and I and a little plunder ; wife is waiting for me at Wilson's, ten miles out ; I'll drive out there to-night, and it'll be so much of a start for to-morrow." He made his adieus to us all ; father thanked him warmly for his services in our behalf, but he did not offer to pay him for coming to meet us, a sad oversight, as it afterward turned out. Father took his coming since he had proposed it himself as an act of courtesy which it would be offensive to place upon a money basis. He had gained the porch when an idea seemed to OUR NEW HOME 79 strike him and he put his head in at the door again. " Oh, by the way, Stanley, I don't rec'- lect as we come to any agreement about hay ; I knew you would want some, of course, so I took the liberty of puttin' a couple o' tons in the barn against your comin'." " That was very kind and thoughtful in you," father assured him. " How much does it come to?" " Thirty dollars ; hay is fifteen dollars a ton." Father could not suppress a start of surprise ; hay at that price would be as expensive for us as if grown on the uplands of Arcadia. " Say, say, Mr. Seaton," interposed Johnny who had been listening open-mouthed to the conversation, " Seth Jones he brung that hay only yis'tday ; he said he'd " " Hark !" cried Seaton with uplifted hand, " ain't them horses kickin', Johnny ?" Johnny sprang up and hurried out to the barn. In his absence father paid Mr. Seaton the price that he suggested for the hay, and that thrifty ranch- 80 THE GIRL RANCHERS man, pocketing the money, walked out to where his team and wagon were already waiting, climbed to the seat and with a final, "Good night, and good luck," disappeared. It was many mouths before we saw him again. The sound of his wagon wheels had scarcely died away when a clear whistle sounded from the road in the opposite direction, and soon, in the patch of moonlight beyond the gate, Florence and her escort came in view. " Here we are, safe and sound," cheerily cried the person whom Mr. Seaton had desig- nated as " Rome," as he rounded his team up before the gate and helped Florence to alight. " Hope you didn't get uneasy," he continued as we crowded out on the porch to meet them. " Oxen is slow, but then again, they're safe." "You'll come in and have some supper, surely," Aunt Matilda cried suddenly as Rome picked up his whip and made a movement as if to go. " Not to-night ; you're all tired enough with- OUR NEW HOME 81 out settin' out refreshments for stragglers to- night, I reckon," and he stuck to his resolution inflexibly in spite of our protests. " I want to thank you for bringing my niece," Aunt Matilda told him by way of further per- suasion. The handsome giant shook his head and smiled. "Now you're jest sending me on my way hot-footed ; if there's one thing I can't stand it's being thanked." " Where will you go then ?" asked Florence, who was leaning against the door post, looking worn out. " I'll stop with Davis to-night ; he keeps the store and post-office down here a piece but I'll be comin' along back this way day after to- morrow, and I'll stop then and see how you're getting along." He checked himself again as he was about starting to speak to Johnny, who had been looking on, lingering respectfully in the background. " How's times, Johnny ?" he demanded cheer- fully. 82 THE GIRL RANCHERS " They's purty good," Johnny returned, grin- ning with pleasure. " That's right ; take good care of these folks, won't you, Johnny ?" " On the ranch ?" Johnny questioned with a quick change of voice. " Why, of course on the ranch ; what are you thinking of?" He bade us good-night again, and we went with poor tired Florence into the house, intent on ministering to her comfort, but the cowboy who would not leave the ranch remained on the porch, watching the oxen and their driver as they went down the road in the moonlight. When he came in some minutes later he found a seat in a dark corner of the room and from that unobtrusive standpoint made a startling observation. " Seaton lied to you ; he's the biggest liar in Coulee ; that hay cost but seven dollars a ton ; I seen him pay Seth Jones for it ; I guess he was mad 'cause you didn't pay him for goin' to meet you 'stead of just thankin' him ; thankin' OUR NEW HOME 83 won't buy no cattle ; he's buyin' cattle. I like Koine Beaumont. I wish't he'd a bought me and the ranch. Seaton says I might be turned away ; but Rome, he wouldn't turn me away. I most wouldn't be afraid to ride as fur as the river bridge with Rome ; he ain't a coward, he wouldn't let no cattle men hurt me." That was a long speech for silent Johnny to make, but our coming had unconsciously excited him. He got up presently and went off to his bed in the attic, leaving us to puzzle over his words while we cared for Florence. CHAPTER VI WHY MR. SEATON SOLD THE RANCH WITHIN a week we were fairly installed in our new home, and ready to make the acquaint- ance of our valley neighbors; but, contrary to all our preconceived ideas of the welcome extended to new-comers by the western people they seemed to avoid us ; not only that, but on the occasions when we chanced to encounter any of them, as we often did in going to the store or post-office, they seemed disposed to treat our advances toward a more intimate acquaintance with a cavalier curtness that bordered on con- tempt. The settlers were all, or nearly all, ignorant and primitive. Except that our lot was cast among them it did not much matter how they took us, but nevertheless it was any- thing but pleasant to find that the feeling toward us was distinctly unfriendly. Aunt Matilda and we two girls felt it the more keenly 84 WHY MR. SEATON SOLD THE RANCH 85 for the reason that we were again sorely troubled about father's health. He had, as might have been expected, contracted a violent cold during that last exciting afternoon of our journey and, unable to go out himself, he was prone to spec- ulate on the possible causes of his isolation. " I'm pretty sure that these folks would like us if they'd give us a fair trial," he would declare humorously, between spasms of coughing. But they never gave us a trial ; and we were let se- verely alone by nearly all save Rome Beaumont, who proved himself so true a friend that I know we never could have done what we did but for the aid and counsel that he furnished. Johnny was a great help, too, although it certainly was inconvenient at times that he could not be in- duced even to drive to the store or to a neighbor's to do an errand. He took care of the horses and was always ready to harness or saddle them for our use; never by any chance for his own. The horses were turned into a pasture near the house, so that we were not obliged to con- sider ourselves extravagant in keeping four 86 THE GIRL RANCHERS of them, although to keep one, with hay at fifteen dollars a ton, had at first appeared too great a luxury for our limited means. There was enough money still in hand to pay our way until the first shearing of the sheep, when we hoped to realize enough from the "clip " as it was called, to make the next quarterly pay- ment on the ranch and flock. Florence and I fully understood just how matters stood with regard to the ranch and the way in which it was to be paid for, and it troubled our young heads not a little. Father sometimes complained that so much business worry would cause us to grow old before our time, and, lamenting the failure of the incombustible wood invention, said he was a useless log, weighing his children down with cares that did not belong to their age, but these dark moods were too foreign to his sunny nature to be of long duration. As for Aunt Matilda, she averred that the youth or maid did not exist who had ever been injured in health or spirits by taking too much care for others, or for the future. "Young folks are selfish," she pro- WHY MR. SEATON SOLD THE RANCH 87 claimed oracularly. "Look at the unconcern with which a young girl more especially if she's pretty and knows it, as they mostly do or a young man, will remain idle and see careworn father or mother attend to the thousand and one little duties that could just as well, indeed better, be laid upon younger shoulders. They do not seem to realize until old age and feebleness have come palpably upon them that it is possible for their parents to become tired. The common excuse is that youth should have its fling ; but since the fling can last but a short time at the best, it would be wiser to provide something else while youth is passing, instead of after it has passed, as is the usual way ; a little business discipline will not hurt our girls, Hugh." " A little. No, Mattie, what I am afraid of is that they will get too much." " If we do," was my mental resolution, " you shall never hear of it from me." Rome, who was working something that he denominated " a prospect," somewhere up above us in the mountains, was a pretty frequent 88 THE GIRL RANCHERS visitor to the cottage from the first, and it was on his advice that Florence and I began to take lessons in riding almost at once. " You've got three good saddle horses," he informed us on his second visit. "I don't go much on that yellow broncho, but the others are good, 'specially the one that you call Luck " Whereat, I am ashamed to say I showed my ignorance of horseflesh by laughing. " Why, Mr. Beaumont, he's the homeliest one of the lot!" Rome smiled wisely. " Handsome is that handsome does, they used to tell me when I was a boy and inclined to envy others their good looks" he must have been awfully conceited if he wanted to be handsomer was my secret thought, while he went on : " Luck is an odd name, too " " There's luck in odd numbers, says Rory O'More!" sang Florence, who was listening. " He looks so different from the others that he seemed an odd number, so we took Mr. O'More's word for it that he should be called Luck." WHY MR. SEATON SOLD THE RANCH 89 " Well, it's a good name and you was in luck to get him, because even if he is an odd number you'll find that he ain't a back number like the buckskin." " How do you know ?" asked Florence with a saucy smile. " How do I know ?" Rome scratched his head. " See here, Miss Florence, you've seen folks that show, without ever speaking one word, that there's something uncommon in 'em ; it shows in their faces ; it kind of lights 'em up ; I s'pose likely it's what folks mean when they speak of anybody's having expression. Why, your father, now, he's just that kind of a man ; and Luck, he's that kind of a horse. You girls want to pick out your horses and always ride the same ones ; then you'll know each other. The time may come when well, you better learn to be good riders soon's you can. Johnny can teach you all you want to know a plumb sight better than a fancy riding master could. I can rec'lect when there wasn't a better rider in all the Coulee country than Johnny was." 90 THE GIRL RANCHERS " Has he no name but Johnny ?" asked Flor- ence, indifferently; she was not greatly inter- ested in our cowboy. " Yes ; his name's John Alton, but the whole valley knows him as Johnny, now." " How long has it been since he became as he is?" I inquired, but Rome did not appear to hear the question. He urged us again to lose no time in learning to ride, and not long after took his departure. I do not think that I am at all given to suspicion, but I was positive in my own mind that there was some powerful reason, and one that he did not wish to disclose, for wishing us to learn to ride, and, as he said, lose no time in doing so. We had been nearly two weeks in Sail Coulee, and, riding every day, were already fairly good riders, when I found out what that reason was. Our flock of three thousand sheep we had not yet seen, owing partly to father's illness and partly to the fact that we did not yet feel quite confidence enough in our equestrian powers to visit them. The flock was in the upper San WHY MR. SEATON SOLD THE RANCH 91 Coulee valley, a small, mountain- walled basin of limited area, in charge of two Mexican herders and the sheep dog, Felix. Our cottage lay con- veniently in Rome's way as he made his semi- weekly journeys to the store. It was while on his way back from the store that he stopped one Saturday evening to inquire for father. As he had already stopped when going down, his solicitude appeared rather marked. He sat and talked with father awhile and then took leave of him, but on his way to the door he made a slight beckoning gesture to Aunt Matilda, who, being quick witted, readily understood that he wished to speak with her where father could not hear what was said. She nodded for me to come, and making an excuse that we wished to walk a little way with Mr. Beaumont, we stepped out into the soft, spring night. Rome led the way to the bench under the big pine, a few yards from the house, and while aunt and I sat down he stood with one hand upon the rough bole of the tree. " Miss Stanley," he began, " it's got to that 92 THE GIRL RANCHERS pass that I feel jest plumb compelled to ask you a few questions. I been a telling myself all along that it ain't none o' my business, but I guess it is. Here you be, three women folks and a baby, so to speak, with a sick man on your hands. Well, I don't suppose you would want to worry that sick man ?" he added, inter- rogatively. " No," returned Aunt Matilda, decidedly. " No ; I didn't suppose you would ; 'twouldn't do no good and might hurt him. Besides, you've got me to help you. I'm going to help you, come what may." There was a thrill in the man's voice, a wild energy as if he defied some danger. He went on hastily, evidently fearing that his earnestness might have alarmed us. " Now the question I want to ask is this : When Abel Seaton sold you this ranch and the sheep, did he say anything, did he let on in anyway, that there was like to be trouble in store for you?" "Trouble!" echoed Aunt Matilda. "No, certainly not ; what trouble could there be ?" WHY MR. SEATON SOLD THE RANCH 93 " There could be and is a good deal ; and an almighty mean man Seaton is to entrap a lot of women and a sick man into such a hornets' nest as a sheep ranch in San Coulee is now ; but he wanted to sell and he ain't the man to lose a good trade for want of keeping his mouth shut, I'll say that for him. Well, to cut the matter short, the sheep business ain't exactly pop'lar in San Coulee ; it's so unpop'lar, in fact, that Seaton would a pretty nigh given his flock to any one that would take it a couple o' months ago. Since then he has been a holding off, making excuses and promising to run the stock out, or that he wouldn't own a head of sheep inside of thirty days if they'd only give him time to turn around. They gave what he asked for because it was Seaton and he's a dangerous man to offend. He turned 'round by dumping his stock onto you." " I don't understand you ; whom did he promise ? Why is sheep ranching so unpopu- lar?" " He promised the cattlemen ; the rustlers, 94 THE GIRL RANCHERS who claim to run this part of the country. They've sworn that they won't allow anybody this side of Wyoming to keep sheep, if they can help it, and I reckon they can." " How ?" demanded Aunt Matilda with spirit. " How ? With shotguns, with stripes, with fire; sometimes with death," was the solemn answer. In the pause that followed, the voice of the river, less turbulent now than when we had first heard it, arose in a swelling murmur above the low music of the pines. In the open doorway of the cottage Johnny's figure ap- peared ; he was looking inquiringly in our direction. " Johnny's always uneasy if every- body that he's interested in isn't safe under shelter when night-time comes," observed Rome, folding his arms and leaning against the trunk of the pine tree. " I reckon maybe this is a good time to tell you how he came to be what he is now. As the preachers say it will serve to illustrate my text. It was five years ago, come fall, that the cattlemen got on a tear similar to what they're getting on now, and WHY MR. SEATON SOLD THE KANCH 95 made proclamation that there should be no sheep in San Coulee. The sheep men were mostly Mexicans then and easy to handle be- cause they were afraid of the white men. So they readily agreed to make themselves scarce ; and they did, in short order. " The leader of the anti-sheep movement he'd been elected sheriff of the county for no other purpose than to work out the will of the cattle- men made his boast that within ten days from the time that he took the oath of office there wasn't but one sheep ranch left in the county ; that one was the one that you have bought. It belonged then to Ralph Alton, Johnny's father. The leader then declared that within ten days more even this one wouldn't be left. And he kept his word. Alton was a determined kind of man. He got his title to the lower valley from the government; took it up as a homestead claim. The upper valley, where your sheep are now, is, as you prob'ly know, leased school lands. Alton leased it to begin with and Seaton has had it since. Well, the ' Regulators/ as 96 THE GIRL RANCHERS the sheriff's posse called themselves, called on Alton and told him he might have just twenty- four hours in which to get out of Coulee. You see he had put all he had and the labor of five years into the ranch ; to leave meant finan- cial ruin ; to stay, as it turned out, meant death. Alton stayed ; he paid no attention to their notice. " The next day he and Johnny were up in the upper valley watching the sheep as usual, when a score or more of masked men suddenly dashed out from the shelter of the rocks and yelling and firing off their guns, charged on the sheep. They brought on a wicked stampede. The sheep fairly ran and piled over each other in their eagerness to get away ; lots of them were killed in that way. Alton stood in the natural gateway that blocks the lower entrance to the valley and tried to stop them, and Johnny, up on the hillside with his dog, did his best to help. Maybe the Regulators were angry because they did that; they might a' took it as a kind of defiance. Anyway, they shot Alton. Then, as WHY MR. SEATON SOLD THE RANCH 97 they stood over his father's body they ordered Johnny to come to them. He came, and there not two feet from the poor fellow, who would have died a second time before he would have seen his son hurt, they stripped Johnny and beat him unmercifully. Then they made him kneel down by his father's body and swear that he would never again set foot outside of San Coulee ranch, as his father's place was called ; and he never has. He was sick for a long time after that day's bad business ; he was the only child ; his mother sold the ranch to Seaton, thinking that new scenes and experiences would maybe bring Johnny around again ; but nothing short of force could get him off the ranch. The doctor that Mrs. Alton consulted said that he'd go raving mad if she persisted in trying to get him away, so there he is ! Mrs. Alton died, broken-hearted, in less than a year after they killed Ralph." " What became of the sheep ?" I asked. " The sheep ? Oh, they were scattered to the four winds ; mutton was cheap all over the 7 98 THE GIRL RANCHERS country for some time after. Every one was free to kill a sheep wherever he came across it ; nobody'd dare lay claim to a herd of sheep that the Regulators had stampeded." " How came it that Mr. Seaton engaged in the business if it is so dangerous ?" asked Aunt Matilda. " He didn't for a year or two ; but then came a season or two when wool was uncommon profitable, and he chanced it because the feel- ing in regard to it had died down a good deal. I reckon more than one of the Regulators had to tussle hard with their consciences to make what they had done to Johnny and his folks seem right. Anyway, not much objection was raised to Seaton's bringing in a flock, until within the past year, when the old trouble began to sizzle again." " But why is it ? I don't understand," said Aunt Matilda. " Why ? The cattlemen want the range for their cattle ; cattle raising is more profitable than sheep raising." WHY MR. SEATON SOLD THE RANCH 99 " But surely, surely, there is room for both !" " No, begging your pardon, there ain't. Cattle can't live on a range that sheep have grazed over ; sheep are mighty destructive to grass, they will eat it clean down to the roots and kill it out ; sheep can live after cattle all right, but not cattle after sheep." " But the sheep are now on ground that be- longs to us," said Aunt Matilda. " Yes ; and mighty hard on 'em it is to be kept penned up in that bare little upper Coulee valley. Seaton never would have allowed it so long if he had not been holding 'em to sell." " Do you mean that there is nothing for them to eat in that valley ?" " That's exactly what I mean." " But Mr. Seaton said that the two Mexican herders who have the flock in charge would see that they had good grazing ground." "Most times they would; now they are afraid, so they hold them where, in case of an attack, they themselves can escape among the rocks." 100 THE GIRL RANCHERS Aunt Matilda stood up. " I must think this over," she said. "It'll bear thinking over. You see, I wouldn't have told you all this without good reason ; I heard something at the store there's some move on foot, I don't know just what but I do know that I wish you hadn't bought a sheep ranch in a cattle country. There's Mr. Stanley calling and I must be going." Aunt Matilda took his hand; her face was very white in the moonlight. " I know you will be our friend ; but I don't want you to put yourself into danger on our account." The stalwart miner held her hand closely in his for a moment, looking down into her face, and as he replied the very air seemed charged with his earnestness. " I shall put myself into death on your account if I choose." In an- other moment he was gone, striding away in the moonlit shadows of the trail. " I do not believe life in San Coulee will be very monotonous," said Aunt Matilda, grimly, as we returned to the house. CHAPTER VII A CHANGE OF OPINION IT was a good thing for us and our future prospects that Aunt Matilda had always been consistent in her idea that young people should learn to carry their share of the burdens of life in the days of their youth. If she and I had been accustomed to a less heroic attitude we might have been staggered by the problem pre- sented by Home Beaumont's communication, but to neither of us did the notion of selling off the sheep appeal favorably, as we looked to them for a means of paying off our indebtedness to their former owner. Our courage, as is so often the case, rose to the occasion. Selling the sheep when their new owners would drive them farther south where sheep ranching was a less dangerous occupation was what Rome anx- iously advised in an interview that we had with 101 102 THE GIRL RANCHERS him a few days after he first told us of the dan- ger in which we stood. " No," Aunt Matilda told him, " I shall not do that ; Elsie and I have talked it over. Try to think, rather, how best we can keep them. You don't understand our situation, Mr. Beau- mont ; to lose them, to part with them at all, would mean simply ruin for us. We have put all we possessed in the world my brother and I into this sheep ranch. We shall be home- less if this place goes back to Mr. Seaton again, as it must if we do not realize something from the sheep." " That's settled then. But I'm terribly afraid you will be obliged to part with them, whether or no. There ain't a better shepherd in all Montana than old Antonio Martinez, who, with his son, Jose, has charge of your flock, and he scents danger or he wouldn't keep the flock where the only thing that there's plenty of is water. Oh, Seaton knew what he was about when he slid out of the valley like a scared coyote. He was fleeing from the wrath to come, A CHANGE OF OPINION 103 and I'm afraid that's what the Mexicans will do. When they are afraid to keep sheep on their own account they won't be apt to tend any one's flock long for wages." " We must hope for the best," returned Aunt Matilda, firmly, "and whatever happens, Mr. Beaumont, we must keep this trouble from my brother ; he's more apprehensive for the girls than I am. I know what stuff they are made of, and what they or what Elsie, at least, can do if worst comes to worst." " I heard when I was down at the store last night that you folks had been over to see Roy Jones's wife," remarked Rome with seeming irrelevance. " Why, yes ! She's very sick, poor thing, and no one but her husband to care for her. He seems very fond of her, and does his best, but that isn't any too good when a woman is as sick as she is ; she was so glad to see Florence and me. She'd heard some way of Florence's singing curious how much the people seem to know about us when we know so little about 104 THE GIRL RANCHERS them," Aunt Matilda added in parenthesis, " and wanted to hear her. Florence sang ' My old Kentucky home,' and then ' Nearer my God to Thee,' and Mrs. Jones just laid there and cried, poor thing !" Rome chuckled. " Was Roy Jones there ?" "Yes; I am bound to say that his manner was far less cordial than that of his wife ; but he was present, and was civil, at least." We were sitting in the house ; father and Vevie being out for a stroll. " I ain't asking very many questions nor calling any names," Rome said, eying the toe of his old, worn boot attentively, " but I am bound to say that the credit of bearding the lion in his den belongs to Miss Florence. I hope that Mrs. Jones's sick- ness may continue until after we harvest the clip. And if you are sensible you'll keep on visiting Mrs. Jones, and keep up the singing." After Rome was gone that morning Aunt Matilda said, "Come, Elsie, let's go out and join Hugh and Vevie. I feel as though some- thing would happen before long and I want to A CHANGE OF OPINION 105 get acquainted with our surroundings before it comes. While we are out I shall stop to investigate every anthill and bit of clay that Hugh gets his eyes on, so you know we won't get tired from too long a walk." Aunt Matilda was a model housekeeper, and it was quite unusual for her to propose such a thing as leaving the house while the unwashed breakfast dishes remained on the table, as they did at that moment. I gladly accompanied her, and we spent a pleasant hour in wandering up and down the river bank with father and Vevie. It was so bright and pleasant out-of-doors that the unknown danger threatening us seemed for the time being scarcely more than some wild dream. We all returned to the house together, where, to our surprise, we found Florence busily en- gaged in washing the breakfast things. We had left her swinging comfortably in the hammock under the big pine, and she had declined to ac- company us on the ground of weariness. Now, Aunt Matilda believes in young people fitting 106 THE GIRL RANCHERS themselves for the exercise of their own especial gifts if they have any. Florence's gift re- quires a light touch and a dainty hand, hence it had come to be an unwritten law of the family that she was never to be called upon to do any work that would blemish those useful members, so Aunt Matilda at once entered a protest : "Now why do you do that?" she exclaimed, at- tempting to take the dish-towel from Florence, who laughingly resisted. " You'll spoil your hands," Aunt Matilda continued. Florence clung to the towel with one hand, lifting the other reddened member from the water, gazed at it contemplatively : " Those hands, those little, little parboiled hands. Is there not cold water enough in San Coulee to make them white again ?" she cried tragically ; then, plunging her hands again into the water and continuing her task briskly, she continued more earnestly, " Aunt Matilda, I've had a rev- elation. It came to me partly through Mr. Rome's talk not by it, but through it like sun- light through a rift in the clouds and partly A CHANGE OF OPINION 107 because the mountains are so great and I am so little. While I was journeying to this valley of blessing on the back of his ox, the revelation made itself clear ; it ran something like this : ' Florence, you have always insisted on having the rough places made smooth to your feet before you would go forth ; you have thrown away golden opportunities for improvement rather than yield an inch of your own ignorant, stiff- necked pride ; you have taken the cream of daily life and left to the unselfish ones the skim milk. It has become customary in your family to give up the best of everything to you because the poor creatures have deluded themselves into the idea that you are a genius. In other words," she continued, seizing the skillet and plunging it vigorously into the water though she ought to have washed the coffee cups first " my sel- fishness, my laziness, my general worthlessness, have all been condoned, excused, forgiven, because you are all so good and have a faith in me that no act of mine has ever justified. I don't be- lieve hand me the glasses, Vevie, dear ," and 108 THE GIRL RANCHERS she did wash the glasses, after the skillet, while Aunt Matilda shuddered but said nothing " that I'd ever have waked up enough to realize it all if we had stayed in the East. It has been coming to me, bit by bit, ever since we came in sight of the mountains ; there's something up- lifting about them. One is ashamed to be small and self-seeking and vain in their presence. I'd hate to have that monarch," she waved one red- dened hand toward the white peak gleaming against the eastern sky " see me making cari- catures of him in the holy name of art, while my tired Aunt Matilda and quiet, uncomplaining Elsie drudged away at the housework. I think I have it in me to become a capable housemaid, and I shall confine my ambition to that here- after." She concluded with a flourish of the dish-towel, but, for all that, so much in earnest that there were tears in her bright eyes. Father, who seldom pays any heed to our household talk, had been listening intently to her words. Now he spoke, and with as much earnestness as she herself had shown : A CHANGE OF OPINION 109 "Florence, do not make the fatal mistake of attempting to subordinate your own espe- cial talents to the unceasing petty demands of daily life. You may have been selfish, as you say ; selfishness is a common fault of youth ; you have, perhaps, allowed bur- dens that you should have helped to carry to fall heavily upon other more yielding should- ers, and you have turned in distrust from the things that belong especially to you, things that you can do more than well, that with a little conscientious effort you might become pre-eminent in. And why ? Just because you could not, at a bound, do what those who at- tempted to instruct you, only acquired the skill to do by long and patient practice. You have not had the courage and perseverance to attempt to reach your own high ideal. For that I blame you, and for nothing else. The monotonous round of household tasks that you now claim shall be the goal of your ambition, can be done just as well by other hands ; will be done, next week, next year, a century hence when we are 110 THE GIRL RANCHERS all in our graves ; and that you have done them once will be of no more moment than that last summer a vagrant wind played among our pine trees. But the picture that you might paint, the song that your voice might give to the world may be an inspiration, an incentive to a better life long after we have moldered into dust. A strain of music, a beautiful picture, may become the ministers of consolation that will lift a stricken heart as high as heaven. You might, from your new standpoint, say with equal justice that we are selfish since we have always done all in our power to encourage you, to leave you free for the exercise of your beautiful gifts ; our sel- fishness consisted in the expectation that we would be entertained and cheered by them. I do not undervalue those small necessary house- hold tasks, which, if left undone, would render us all miserable. You do not decry painting ; you do not, as I have heard you claim, murder music, but you do do both when you say that you will give them up in order to " " I'll do both, papa," interrupted Florence, 4 CHANGE OF OPINION 111 earnestly. " I'll be a good, helpful girl and a faithful student, too, you see if I don't." " As for giving up your music," put in Aunt Matilda, briskly, as she possessed herself of the dish-towel. " You can't do that ; not while Mrs. Jones is sick ; Mr. Beaumont makes it a point that you shall sing to her often." " Why ?" asked Florence. " He didn't say why ; I suppose he has his reasons." And I, recalling Rome's chuckle, remembered at the same time the old saying anent the power of music over the savage breast. Father, smiling at Florence's vehemence, took up a book and was soon lost to all outward im- pressions ; but Aunt Matilda presently remarked to me in a kind of glorified aside : " I doubt if our venture will prove an entire failure, Elsie, even if the sheep ranch does dis- appoint us." CHAPTER VIH A VISIT FROM THE MEXICAN SHEPHERDS THE book that father was poring over was an old botany. He had found a very curious flower during our walk, and was intent on classifying it. It was a beautiful blossom, not unlike a day lily in structure and odor, but very much smaller; and, if possible, of a more pearly whiteness. The flower springs directly from the sod, dispensing with the usual accessories of stem and leaf. Seeing him so absorbed in his congenial task I was thankful enough that only Aunt Matilda and I knew why poor Johnny Alton's intellect had not kept pace with his bodily growth, and that it was on our hearts alone that the thought of the sheep starving in the upper valley rested so heavily ; for, in spite of all Aunt Matilda's devices to cheat herself into cheerfulness, we thought of little else. Along in the forenoon, while Florence was 112 A VISIT FROM THE SHEPHERDS 113 devising some picture canvases, and Vevie was seriously engaged in helping father to dissect the new flower, she said to me : " Do you remember, Elsie, Rome said that we could get a glimpse of that valley and probably of the sheep if we cared to climb to the top of that low mountain north of us. ' Top of the hogback,' he called it. I've been thinking that I'll go up this afternoon." " It will be a rough climb," I said, looking up at the elevation in question, with its acres of rocks and dwarfed jack oaks, " but I'll go with you." I said it would be a rough climb, but rough was a mild word to use in describing it. The way would not have been quite so fearfully beset with poison oak, jack oak, briers, loose shale, and cactus, if we had taken the short, steep path that the herders sometimes used, although even they greatly preferred to follow the winding upward trail along which it was possible to ride a horse, notwithstanding it was some two miles longer. But we did not know of it. There were many 8 114 THE GIRL RANCHERS things that we poor Eastern ignoramuses were left to learn through bitter experience. Half- way up the steep ascent, which from the valley did not look to be half so steep or so high as it really was, we came upon an inviting looking bed of low green vines. It appeared so soft and tempting that aunt, who was a few steps in advance, called back to me : " I'm going to sit down here and rest awhile, Elsie." Imme- diately I heard a cry of anguish : " Elsie ! Oh, it's nettles ! I plucked some and oh, my poor hands !" Her hands were bare and the palms were so full of stings that they seemed suddenly to have clothed themselves in a new kind of fine hair. " We'd better go back," I said, staring at her helplessly while she waved her burning hands in agony. " I won't go back, for a little thing like this. I'll know a nettle next time I see it, though, and I'll know another thing. There's an old saw that runs : A VISIT FROM THE SHEPHERDS 115 'Tender handed stroke a nettle, And it stings you for your pains ; Grasp it like a man of mettle, And it soft as silk remains.' I grasped them like a man of mettle, but they didn't feel like silk. There's this virtue in a nettle sting, though, it doesn't last long; it's like putting one's hands into fire while it does last. We'll be more careful after this !" We were so very careful that our caution re- tarded our progress, for, scenting danger now in the most innocent shrubs, we dared not avail our- selves of the strong branches of the jack oaks as we had been doing, to help us in climbing, but worked our way upward laboriously on hands and knees when we could keep our footing in no other way. At length, with the last remain- ing bit of strength we reached the craggy sum- mit together, and, looking down on the other side, we both uttered a startled "Oh!" We had ascended the northern side of the mountain which had from a Montana point of view a good deal of vegetation, but the opposite, 116 THE GIRL RANCHERS southern slope seemed to our unaccustomed eyes as bare of everything as the palm of one's hand, save a chaotic jumble of rocks, scrub oaks, and scraggy pines. How could any grazing animal live in such a barren spot ? Something did live there, however. It seemed to me in the first moment of amazed contemplation, that the little walled-in valley held millions and millions of sheep ; they were everywhere. They swarmed up the hillsides and were only restrained from swarming over it, I quickly observed, by the vigilant watchfulness of a shaggy, rough looking dog, who went dashing hither and thither, bringing back to the lower slope any animal that strayed farther away than he thought ad- visable. Presently we descried two swarthy looking men lounging in the shadow of a huge rock, near what was probably their camp, a rude little cabin of unhewn logs ; sometimes one or the other of them shouted a word of direction or command, I suppose, for I observed that the collie altered his course, or stood obediently listening whenever either spoke. Fortunately, IT SEEMED AS IF THE VALLEY HELD MILLIONS OF SHEEP (Page 116.) A VISIT FROM THE SfiEfHERDS 117 the odd foreign words stuck in my memory, though I did not understand their meaning. Aunt Matilda, standing by my side, watched the scene with kindling eyes. " Shall we give them up to the rustlers, Elsie ?" she whispered. " Not until we've tried keeping them, aunt." " I don't believe matters are quite so bad as Rome would have us think, anyway," she said after a thoughtful pause, during which we had both been attentively studying the situation. " But, Elsie, we must get the poor things out on the plains ; to the summer range that we have leased. I wonder if you and Florence could stand it to ride up here to-morrow and make those men understand that we want the sheep taken to better pasturage ?" " We can certainly ride up here, Aunt Ma- tilda. You know we've been riding every day for three weeks now, but I very much doubt our being able to make the Mexicans under- stand that we want the sheep taken outside the valley, or anything else." " That is an objection. I wish we understood 118 THE GIRL RANCHERS Spanish ; we might buy a Spanish grammar, or a conversation book." " We'd better buy a pair of them ; then we can hand one to the herder while we study the other ; it wouldn't seem just right to hurl our new-made Spanish at him when he has nothing at hand to defend himself with." " You may laugh ; but, I tell you, one of us must begin taking lessons at once." " Aunt Matilda, have you ever noticed that everything we have undertaken since we first heard of Mr. Seaton has been ' at once '?" " That is true ; we have been forced to keep up a pretty lively pace, and tfrere is no drawing back now." " No ; I'm not feeling as though I wanted to draw back, either." " It's bound to be a hard experience for you two girls, Elsie. If only Donald had been as true to us as we to him what a blessing he would be to us now ! But it's useless to regret Donald. We have to depend solely on our- selves." It was the first reference she had made A VISIT FROM THE SHEPHERDS 119 to Donald's perfidy, and it was not made with- out emotion. We stood in silence for some minutes longer watching the scene below us, and then, turning homeward, made our toilsome way down the mountain. The downward path is, however, proverbially easier to travel than the one leading upward, and so it proved in our case ; still we were so weary and disheveled when we reached home that father observed in- quiringly : " You have been for a long walk ?" " Yes/' we replied. " Don't exert yourselves beyond your strength ; we shall have plenty of time for exploration." Our little sitting room was a cozy and invit- ing place. I was thinking so that evening as father and Vevie sat by the table carefully placing between sheets of wrapping paper some flowers that they had gathered, intent on pre- serving them by pressing. Florence, in the dusky corner by the organ, was softly touching the keys, making a low accompaniment to the pleasant silence for little was said. Johnny, 120 THE GIRL RANCHERS whom one was apt to forget until he spoke his silent presence was so unobtrusive said suddenly : " Some one knocked." Another of Johnny's traits was a fear to open the door for a stranger. He knew Rome's frequent knock well enough to distinguish it from all others. I opened the door. Two swarthy men in picturesque dress were standing on the threshold. I recognized them as our herders even before the elder, speaking in halting English, proclaimed the fact. In response to father's invitation they entered the room timidly, and with furtive glances like the shy, half-tamed dwellers of the wilderness that they were, unheeding, or at least ignoring, the seats offered them, the elder began : "Me I come to say at you; sheep no more; no more." The younger and smaller herder appeared to indorse this speech, whatever it might mean, by twisting one leg around the other and writhing uneasily as he stood. A VISIT FROM THE SHEPHERDS 121 " Oh, is it possible !" cried father, much shocked. " Why, Matilda, I gather from what this man says that our sheep are all dead !" Apparently the herder understood English much better than he could speak it. " No, sefior ; no dead," he said, gravely. " The sheeps, they live ; but of them we no more watch we what you would say, vamose." " And if I said it I'm sure I shouldn't know what it meant; what does it mean?" father asked him. " It means " the Mexican studied a moment in perplexity, " no more we stay at the tail of the sheep ; we go." "Why?" father asked, and Aunt Matilda leaned forward with whitening cheeks, more afraid of what might be revealed to father than of the thing itself, but with no possible excuse for interference. The younger Mexican who had been holding his hat deferentially in one hand, now grasped it tightly in both, holding it over 122 THE GIRL RANCHERS his heart as if fearful that that organ might jump out while his senior replied: " It is no good for any man to keep the sheeps." " The man is probably dissatisfied with the wages ; let him go. There are plenty of others, Hugh," advised Aunt Matilda, who could hold her peace no longer. " Well, but, Matilda, they must stay until we can engage some one else ; why, it's absurd, the idea of their leaving in this way ! See here," he continued in a tone of remonstrance, turning again to the Mexican. " You'll have to stay with us a few days longer, my friend, whether or no. You must give us time to get another herder before you leave us in the lurch." The Mexican shook his head gently but in- flexibly. " There was no more herder as you could get; no more at all." " Now see here," father said in rising excite- ment, " I paid you, through Mr. Seaton, who advised it, and very ill-advised it seems to have been two months' wages in advance ; only five weeks of that time has passed. I don't propose A VISIT FROM THE SHEPHERDS 123 to allow you to keep your money and desert your place in this way." For answer the herder slowly drew near the table, and thrusting his hand into a pocket hid- den somewhere within his fluttering garments, pulled out a roll of grimy bills, and, unrolling it, proceeded to count it out on the table, divid- ing it into two heaps as he did so. " Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis," he counted slowly and with careful deliberation ; then he again rolled ttp one diminished pile, pocketed it, and shoved the other two toward father. " That much we have not work ; here it is." Father counted the bills. " That's right ; but why do you leave ?" "Sefior," returned the Mexican, with great ear- nestness, "it is that we must. Me? I was sor- rowful to leave the senor in difficult', but my hermosa my brother and me not yet were we ready to die." The younger herder nodded his head in solemn corroboration of this statement, and the elder went on, " To keep the sheeps it is not now best if that one wishes to live." 124 THE GIRL RANCHERS Father had nothing to say in answer to this remarkable statement, and the herder made his adieus with punctilious politeness the adieus being repeated by the younger with the grave accuracy of a parrot reciting a lesson. Then turning toward the door, they opened it and disappeared. " I dare say it's some heathenish idea of pen- ance, or making a pilgrimage, or a flagellation that they've got into their heads," father was saying, vaguely, when the door again opened and the elder Mexican thrust his face and one hand into the room. The extended hand held out the soiled but picturesque garment that we had seen but a moment before upon his shoul- ders. " Felix, he guard ; guard against all. White man, no man touches sheep while Felix live unless he show this at him and tell him, Felix, perlita, it is well ; then he obey all that a white man say." He tossed the poncho at father's feet and again vanished. A VISIT FROM THE SHEPHERDS 125 " Felix is the dog," observed Aunt Matilda, touching the not too cleanly garment with the toe of her slipper. " Well, I only hope he'll prove more faithful than the men have done." She gathered up the poncho after a moment's silent contemplation. I thought she was about to hang it out on the porch, but instead she hung it carefully behind the door of the room in which she slept. " I hope he has another," she remarked ; " the nights are cold." CHAPTER IX INEXPERIENCED HERDERS FATHER'S health had so much improved during our few weeks' stay in the valley that he had been able, with Johnny's help, to con- struct a kind of kiln Johnny would persist in calling it an oven for testing the various kinds of clay that he found in his daily walks. He was so interested in the manufacture of his bricks, literally bricks without straw, hence the patent for " earthenware houses," as he called the ultimate design of all this experimenting that I am afraid we counted quite confidently upon his forgetting all about the starving sheep without a shepherd in that lonely valley, three miles away, but we did him injustice. After a hasty breakfast, Florence and I, very early in the morning, hurried out to the barn to super- vise the saddling of our respective ponies. Father was there before us. We had supposed 126 INEXPERIENCED HERDERS 127 he was still in bed. " I got the start of you, didn't I ?" he said smiling. " I have a shrewd suspicion that you two meant to steal away and leave your useless old father behind, but he's going with you." " It'll be such a hard ride for you, Hugh," protested Aunt Matilda, who had discovered his absence from the house, and advanced to the rescue. " Any harder for me, Matilda, than for these girls?" " Why, yes, of course it will be ; they're used to riding, and you are not." " I was once a good rider, and I think the old skill will come back with a little practice." "But, Hugh, it looks like rain; see those clouds hanging around Mount Kenneth ! You are not able to go ; what if you should get wet ?" " What if Florence and Elsie should get wet? Come, Matilda, I'm pretty obedient, as a gen- eral thing, but you can't always coddle me as you would a year-old baby. Johnny, get Chris saddled while I'm eating breakfast." 128 THE GIRL RANCHERS " Chris no good," said Johnny, surveying the yellow buckskin with marked disfavor. " Why do you say that ?" asked father, paus- ing on his way to the house. Johnny was seldom able to give a reason ; he could not now, but shook his head dolefully, repeating, " Chris no good." " I'll risk him; get him ready," and he went into the house. " It will be so nice to have father go," said Florence, who did not yet understand how mat- ters stood, although Aunt Matilda and I, in secret council, had decided that she was to be enlightened as soon as an opportunity offered. I had hoped that it would offer while we were riding to the upper San Coulee, but father's going put an end to that, and, as it was, I was rather glad that she did not yet know. We mounted our horses at the barn and then rode up to the house with Johnny, who was leading Chris. Father came out with a book in his hand, which he thrust into the pocket of his saddle. " Herding sheep is rather a monotonous INEXPERIENCED HERDERS 129 business," he remarked, after we were fairly on the road. " A shepherd would have plenty of time to get a good education if he could only manage it himself." " Well, I don't know that I would care to try for an education in that way," returned Flor- ence saucily ; " besides, while I was studying, what would my sheep be doing ?" " Oh, the sheep ! It's not much trouble to watch them ; the shepherd sits on a rock " " or a camp chair, if there's no rock handy," interpolated Florence "on a rock with his faithful dog beside him, and if any member of the flock is inclined to stray from the fold the obedient animal, at a given signal " Florence laughed outright. " Papa, you've got a good memory ; that's in the ' Swiss Mountaineers.' " " Is it ? Well, I wasn't quite sure myself that it was original." The trail was a plain one, although rough, and father rode very much better than we had thought lie could. It was a beautiful morning, 9 130 THE GIRL RANCHERS so early yet that the jack oak thickets through which we brushed showed a single great dew- drop, like a sparkling diamond, at the tip of each sharp-pointed leaf, and, as we journeyed higher up, passing underneath the overhanging branches of the pine trees, the stiff pine needles rained down a cool, balsamic shower upon us. From the nearer cafions heavy clouds of white vapor ascended, the tribute of the always chilly night to the approaching warmth of day. The trail wound upward steadily ; it was longer than I had supposed three miles of upward climb- ing is a very much longer distance than the same measure laid out on the level plains. Our progress was slow, but it was to all so strange, so new, so beautiful, that at every little park-like opening we stopped to look about us. From the dark depths of a canon on our left the Voice of the rushing river sounded, foaming and fret- ting at the obstructions that came in its way on its tumultuous rush to the plains. The sun, as we could see from our airy outlook, was shining lull upon the plains, though the valley was still INEXPERIENCED HERDERS 131 in shadow. As we looked, first one long shaft of golden light, then another and another, touched the higher peaks and dropped softly down and down into the valley, a growing, expanding sheen of glory, dispersing and put- ting the shadows to flight. The combinations of shifting, changing color, as the sunlight fell upon the clouds of vapor rolling up from the canons were wonderful, ethereal, elusive, in- describable. " Up to the hills will I lift mine eyes ; will lift mine eyes !" sang Florence, jubilantly. She stopped abruptly, her rose-tinted cheeks blanch- ing. " What was that ?" It was the sound made by hundreds of small, sharp little hoofs as they went scurrying away in a panic. With the sound was mingled the angry, excited barking of a dog, as, judging from the sound, he darted hither and thither among the hurrying hoofs. "That, I judge, is a little commotion among sheep," said father, pressing forward, " and, yes, here they are." 132 THE GIRL RANCHERS There they were, truly ! The rocky shoulder around which we had just ridden had its counterpart on the other side. The long, flank- ing spurs of two near mountains coming close together and ending abruptly in perpendicular walls of rock, formed a narrow, natural gateway to the valley. The encircling mountains rose sheer and close on every hand, and this narrow pass was the only practicable outlet to the lower valley, although there was a wider outlet on the farther, southern extremity. All this we learned later ; just now we were being strongly urged to define our position. The sheep were scattering up the mountain sides in all directions, bleating in terror, for such was the effect that Florence's exquisite voice had had on the foolish creatures, and the disgusted dog, abandoning a futile but heroic attempt to reduce them to order, turned his attention to us, the intruders who had stolen upon his charges while the shepherds were absent. He was thus called upon to decide, according to the light of experience, whether we were to be regarded as friends or foes. INEXPERIENCED HERDERS 133 Apparently his experience had not been favora- ble to confidence. He regarded us as enemies, and conducted himself accordingly. Father, whose long legs dangled dangerously near the ground as he sat upon the small yellow broncho, pulled his grizzled mustache, thoughtfully contem- plating the dog, who had taken his position beside a rock a few feet in advance of us, and was evidently prepared to maintain that position with the sacrifice of his life if need be. Father then remarked in a tone more of sorrow than of anger : " This is a queer predicament ; the dog thinks we've no business here ; he may be right, but I wish we could hit upon some way of explaining the situation to him. Didn't the man say his name was Felix ?" There was no occasion for a reply from either of us. At the sound of his own name the collie dropped his defiant tail and bristling hair, stopped barking, and looked inquiringly, yet doubtfully in father's face. " Good dog ! Good Felix!" said father, urging Chris to take 134 THE GTRL RANCHERS another step forward. But Felix was not to be taken off his guard ; he growled angrily, his eyes gleaming fiercely, and father stopped. Then, suddenly, I thought of the Mexican's poncho that Aunt Matilda had rolled into a compact little bundle and tied to my saddle. Untying it, I shook it out and sprang from my horse, and cautiously advanced toward the collie, who, ceasing his warlike demonstrations, was silently observing my movements. Now it is not given to all people to be under- stood and beloved by dogs, but I am proud to say that I have never failed in securing their friendship when I tried. So now, as I con- tinued, in spite of the whispered remonstrance of the others, to walk toward poor Felix, I was not at all afraid, in spite of his angry eyes. I held the poncho out to him, saying, "Felix, come ! Good Felix, come !" The poor fellow advanced a step ; smelled of the garment, and looked up at me appealingly, it seemed to my excited fancy, even reproachfully, and I won- dered whimsically if he suspected me of having INEXPERIENCED HERDERS 135 made way with the missing shepherds. Then, laying his body on the ground, he writhed up to my feet, and, with his nose on his paws, whined imploringly. I stopped and patted his head. " Good Felix !" was all that I could say, it was enough ; henceforth he recognized my right to command, while he simply accorded a cold toleration to the others, who had disdained the Mexican's card of introduction. Thrilled with my success with the guardian of the flock, I recalled the uncomprehended words that had floated up to my ears as I gazed down into the valley the day before ; they were directions to the dog which the herder issued at his indolent ease, but with instant effect. I reasoned sagely that the collie would under- stand their meaning if I did not. The sheep were still scattering wildly up the mountain slopes. " Ve alia ! ve alia, Felix !" I cried, plunging recklessly into Spanish. The effect was electrifying. Away and up the mountain the collie darted, scrambling over rocks, through brush and fallen trees until he had circled 136 THE GIRL RANCHERS around the fleeing sheep and brought them to a standstill ; then he stopped, perched on a rock high above, and peered inquiringly at me. " He's waiting for further orders, Elsie," cried Florence, laughing. " Come, you've won his allegiance, and now air your Spanish a little more I suppose it's Spanish, though I doubt if one of the hidalgos would admit it and tell the poor fellow what to do next." " They are only the calls that I heard the shepherds using when Aunt Matilda and I were up in the mountain yesterday. I remembered the sound ; I think perhaps I'd better try an- other." " Do," urged father. " We may learn some- thing if the collie don't, and of the lot of us we stand the most in need of enlightenment." " Cuidado !" I cried imperatively, but that was plainly a mistake. Felix bounded from his post, running to and fro along the outer edges of the flock, evidently in anxious search of some fancied danger, that I made haste to hurl an- other Spanish morsel at him. " Reloj, Felix !" INEXPERIENCED HERDEES 137 Instantly the dog, abandoning his air of strained attention, sat down upon his haunches and dis- posed himself to keeping watch comfortably. "That was right, I'm sure, whatever it meant," said father. " It's a pity the poor brute don't understand English at all." " I don't think he's a brute, father," I could not help saying reproachfully, " and I'm sure he can learn anything he wishes. I'll undertake his education in English," which I did from that day and with such success that, before the season was over, I reckoned my collie an accomplished linguist, as collies go. We decided, as the sheep were now grazing peaceably, to leave them to Felix while we amused ourselves by investigating the herder's cabin. The herders had left in haste, but they had taken all of their few personal effects with them. There was not, seemingly, a scrap of anything left in the cabin save a dirty water bucket, a few rusty tin cans, and a small pile of firewood. In one corner was a fireplace, built Mexican fashion, and in this we 138 THE GIRL RANCHERS were presently making a fire, not that we needed it, but as a kind of provision for the future. The sunny sky had already become overcast, and the rain that Aunt Matilda presaged, seemed imminent. We had brought long ropes, or lariats, with which to tether the horses, intending to stake them out on the grass, but there was no grass for them. They would not even make a pretense of eating, but looked after us expectantly wherever we went ; evidently longing to take the homeward trail. We had brought lunch for ourselves and a substantial dinner for Felix. We ate our lunch outside the cabin at noon for even the attrac- tive little fireplace could not reconcile us to the too pronounced smell of the cabin and then I called Felix down to eat his meal. He came, reluctantly and with an apologetic air as though doing something unusual. He knew, as I did not, that he ought not to leave the flock, but he had just sworn allegiance to me and he came. Soon a warning peal of thunder came from a cloud hanging over the mountains, and great INEXPERIENCED HERDERS 139 drops of rain began to fall. Florence and I made haste to bring our saddles into the cabin, and, throwing them down before the fire, we used them as seats while father occupied the stool that the Mexicans had left just outside the door. He had placed the stool near the open doorway and was soon lost to all else in rapt con- templation of the alternately darkening and brightening crest of the opposite mountain, as the storm of wind and rain swept over it. I was secretly worried by the behavior of the dog, who lingered just outside the door, occa- sionally looking in at us wistfully and whining. "I don't believe our cookery agrees with Felix," remarked Florence at last; "he acts as if he were sick." She picked up a billet of wood as she spoke and tossed it on the fire. Underneath the stick a fragment of soiled writ- ing paper was lying, and she picked that up, too, tendering it to me daintily. " Here, here's something with writing on it ; perhaps it's in Spanish ; shall we call the dog in to help trans- late ?" But the happy laughter died out of her 140 THE GIRL RANCHERS eyes as she looked at me and observed my face, which I felt was blanching. I read the note and knew why the herders had been in such haste to leave : " To Juan and Antonio Baca," it began, for it was written in English, " Take notice, you two Mexican coyotes ! If either of you are found in this valley twenty-four hours from now you'll be shot at sight ; take notice and govern your- selves accordingly." I passed the note to Florence. " What does it mean ? Do you know ?" she whispered. I nodded yes. Just then father's voice broke the silence: " The mountain heights ! How wild, how mys- tical they seem ; now hidden by ragged clouds, now standing out clearly in the sunlight ; even those small white animals that seem to be going up among the clouds in an endless procession add to the wildness of the scene." With a startled cry I broke into his day dream. Those small white animals that gave wildness to the scene were our sheep, fleeing INEXPERIENCED HERDERS 141 wildly as if in fear, and disappearing over the mountain's rocky crest like the mist that had so lately hung there ; and all, I told myself bit- terly in the first moment of self-abasement, be- cause I had forgotten to put on guard poor faithful Felix, who had for the last two hours been begging for orders. CHAPTER X A STAMPEDED FLOCK DARTING by father, I ran out and poured into Felix's willing ears all the orders that I could recall in one disjointed, passionate volley. " Ve alia! De una Vex! Cuidado! Reloj !" I shouted wildly. Fortunately Felix knew what to do all he had waited for was the permission to do it. Half the flock were by this time out of sight. Even to our unaccustomed eyes the task before Felix appeared so hopeless that we made no move to go to his aid. "If we could only get around on the other side and shoo them back !" exclaimed Florence, hopelessly. Father thought a moment. "I believe that is the only feasible thing to do," he said, presently. " We'd better saddle up and get after them as soon as possible." We were presently on the trail again, looking carefully along either side for some place in which to get 142 A STAMPEDED FLOCK 143 down and make the detour around the moun- tains that father suggested. Felix had not at- tempted to drive the sheep that were yet in sight down to the valley again, but was after the runa- ways. We could hear his bark growing faint and fainter as we rode down the trail. "This will never do," father said at last, drawing rein. " We must take the first break in the hills that we come to and get to that dog's assistance." The break came soon in the form of an innocent seeming gully that, dipping downward at a pretty sharp angle, lost itself in a tangle of poplar and quaking aspens. Down it we rode, and forced our way through the pop- lar thicket, getting drenched to the skin by the water that still dripped from the overhanging boughs. It seemed so reckless for father to allow himself to get wet in this way that both Florence and I urged him to go back, but he would not listen to us. 4< Push on, children," he insisted ; " we'll be out of this soon." We soon were out of it, and we found ourselves at the bottom of a gorge with rocky, nearly 144 THE GIRL RANCHERS perpendicular walls, towering higher and higher at every step. " This does not seem to be a very popular route to the other side," remarked Florence, who was in the lead, as she urged the unwilling broncho slowly forward. " Wait !" cried father. " Listen ! I'm afraid we are going away from the sheep rather than toward them. Do you hear the dog !" We did not, but decided to press forward a few steps farther. The way soon grew so difficult that father again called a halt. The gorge was dark, damp, and cold, and he was shivering. " Really, girls, I'm afraid we'll have to give it up ; we are so unused to the mountain trails that" "Hello! hello, down there! What you doin'," called a voice from above. The voice was harsh, there was a suspicion of a sneer in it, but Florence brightened. " It's our friend, the husband of Mrs. Jones," she ejaculated, while father, lifting his own voice explained our position and purpose. A STAMPEDED FLOCK 145 " Where does this gorge lead to, anyway ?" he asked in conclusion. " It don't lead ; it loses," returned the hoarse tones of the saturnine Jones. " If you keep right on you'll find out for yourselves before long. You'll be traveling out to the plains on the current of the Rio San Coulee, for there ain't room for a horse to get down airy other way; but you won't know it. There hain't nothing ever got through that cafion alive that ever I heard of." We had by this time located the voice, or the owner of it. He was standing on the verge of a cliff; the vegetation was so dense that only his head and shoulders were visible, against the gray background of a sky that was still half disposed to shed rainy tears he looked not unlike a colossal, ill-natured cherub. We turned our horses about, and rode as straight homeward as the very crooked trail would admit of. Felix and the sheep were for the nonce left to their fate. We hoped that Rome might call that evening, and our hopes were realized. He was 10 146 THE GIRL RANCHERS plainly very much disturbed by what he heard, but he wasted no time in lamentations. No sooner was the story told than he arose from his chair, saying, " I'll go out to the stable with Johnny and tackle up one of your horses if you don't mind. I reckon the sooner some one is on the trail of those sheep the more of them there will be left." " Why, but surely, you won't think of going to-night?" objected father. " I feel your kind- ness deeply, but it seems to me it is imposing upon it to ask you to go out to-night after a flock of runaway sheep." " You haven't asked me ; I'm going whether or no," returned Rome, sturdily. "You see, Mr. Stanley, what between wolves and mountain lions, and other things, there won't be four hundred hoofs left if we let 'em run loose a few hours longer." " You don't mean that wild animals would destroy over three thousand sheep in one night !" exclaimed father, aghast. " No ; but I do mean that they'd scatter four A STAMPEDED FLOCK 147 times that number to the four winds, so that it would take weeks to get together again what there was left of them. Sheep that are kept on a mountain range have got to be watched," he concluded, with significant emphasis. " I'll take your horse, Luck, if you don't mind, Miss Elsie." Now I was very anxious for an opportunity to speak to Rome alone, for I was sure, from his manner and worried looks, that he saw some- thing besides an accident in the stampede of our sheep. His electing to take Luck gave me the chance I was waiting for. " Then I'll go out to the barn with you and tell him that he mustn't hurt you." " All right ; I reckon you can get that into his head better than I can." As he strode out at the front door I followed him ; but I had time to observe that Aunt Ma- tilda had suddenly disappeared into the kitchen, whence another door opened in the direction of the barn, and it was no surprise to find her already awaiting us when we got there. Rome 148 THE GIRL RANCHERS dismissed Johnny when he saw Aunt Matilda. " You may go in, Johnny ; I'll get along all right." And Johnny, who had heard and un- derstood just enough of what had occurred to render him more timid than usual, gladly obeyed. " I've been wondering how I could get to speak to you and not let your father know," Rome said, as Johnny got out of earshot. " I wanted to ask you again about the way the sheep went. Did you say they seemed fright- ened?" " Yes ; and there was nothing to frighten them that I could see." " That you could see. That's right, I reckon ; but if some one who wanted to put 'em in mo- tion had been crawling along among the bushes and in the shadows of the rocks the sheep would a been apt to see it ; that was what was done. You said that the dog was angry. What was there for him to be angry about in the sheep just getting a little out of bounds? It's been a good day's work, Miss Elsie, that you folks went A STAMPEDED FLOCK 149 up there to-day. I hain't a doubt but what it saved the life of the dog." " How so ?" asked Aunt Matilda. " The dog is a good deal in the way when it comes to running the sheep off quietly ; if you hadn't a gone up and got there in good season, too, the skulking cowards as their first move would a shot him, but finding you there they had to be more cautious." " Oh, I think you must be mistaken ; I think it must have been an accident," said Aunt Ma- tilda, almost imploringly. " We might jest as well face the truth first as last," declared Koine, and that big helpful " we " thrilled my heart, although I felt that it was selfish to allow this man to take our troubles upon his shoulders only because they were will- ing ; we had no claim on him, but we were in desperate need of his aid. I had not yet told Aunt Matilda of the note we found in the herder's cabin ; now I told of it, to her dismay, but Rome was not at all sur- prised. " I was just as sure that the cattlemen 150 THE GIEL RANCHERS had a hand in this day's work before you told of that, Miss Elsie, as I am now. They are trying to drive you out quietly ; I reckon they don't want to be too savage with a lot of women folks. I hope, Miss Florence, and you, Miss Stanley, keep on visiting Mrs. Jones," he added in an irrelevant parenthesis, " and I'm afraid you won't get any herders either." Father had told him that we proposed looking for some the next day. "Antonio and Juan Baca would take more risk for a flock of sheep than any other Mexicans that ever I saw ; if they have thrown up the job, it's thrown up for good as far as the Mexicans are concerned ; they are all afraid, as well may they be, but, Miss Stanley, I'm going to tell you something now that'll make you think I'm a coward, sure." " While you are saddling up to go out into the mountains in search of a flock of sheep that you think have been stampeded by murderous cattlemen, alone, and at night ?" queried Aunt Matilda, smiling faintly. " Well, I ain't a coward ; I only said you'd A STAMPEDED FLOCK 151 think I was. I'm just as sure that you will not be able to hire a herder, black or white, brown or red, to take the place of those that left you as I would be if I followed Mr. Stanley to- morrow from one Mexican's 'dobe to another and heard them all tell him, as polite as so many dancing masters, ' No sabe, no sabe.' And he'll go away discouraged, thinkin' he can't make them understand. They understand fast enough, but he'll never find it out. It'll be perfectly safe, Miss Stanley, for him to go shepherd hunt- ing, for he'll never learn anything you don't want him to know from them. But what I was going to say was this : the only persons who can herd them sheep in safety are the young ladies themselves. There ain't a cattleman in Mon- tana, to my notion, that would touch a hair of their heads, while they'd shoot down a man en- gaged in the same business and be glad of the chance. They'll try to run off the stock, like enough time and again ; but they'll do it on the sly, as they tried to this time. If it hadn't chanced that you got up there before they got 152 THE GIRL RANCHERS to work, your sheep would a' been gone, and you none the wiser. When I said that you'd think me a coward, I was goin' on to say further that while I wouldn't be a mite afraid to have the young ladies take charge of the herd as far as their safety went, I'd be some afraid to do it myself. You see herding and cattle ranching ain't my business and they all know it. They'd be uncommon blazing mad at me if I was known to take a hand in this ; not but what I'm going to, all right, and I'll take my chances, too. Roy Jo the cattlemen don't own all of Mon- tana yet." Rome had the horse saddled and ready by this time ; he swung himself into the saddle with the last words, gathered up the reins, but waited to say, " Felix may have the sheep corralled some- where in the mountains so that it won't be much trouble to get them ; it all depends on whether he was followed or not " And instantly there flashed upon my mind a lonely, touching pic- ture of the collie holding his charges by sheer force of will somewhere off in the mountain A STAMPEDED FLOCK 153 fastnesses and watching through weary hours for the help that did not come " if they were followed far and scared bad it may take two or three days to gather up what is left ; anyway, don't look for me till you see me." What a change came over Luck with this stalwart rider on his back ; the subdued, care- ful air, the painstaking planting of the feet where there was no possible danger of slipping was cast aside. With a man's knees gripping his sides, caution was no more for him ; he tossed his head and defied the trail. I was ob- serving this rather enviously as horse and rider started, when Aunt Matilda called suddenly, " Wait, wait !" Home came cantering back. " The Mexican's blanket," she said ; " Felix may take you for an enemy." I had brought the poncho home and was bringing it out from the kitchen by the time aunt's explanation was finished. Rome tied it securely to the saddle. "That was a mighty good thought, Miss Stanley. You've got too good a head to be 154 THE GIRL RANCHERS driven from the country by a lot of low-down sneaks that want the earth for themselves." As horse and man clattered out of sight down the trail, a voice from the shadow of the adjoining haystack inquired, " Isn't he good ?" It was Florence, who had been listening quietly to our talk, and had received a large share of enlightenment. " I suppose it comes of living in the mount- ains; he's like me, ashamed to be small and mean before them ; not but what I'm all of that, but I am often ashamed of it." " It's a pity that their companionship don't affect some others in the same way," I said, thinking of the note we had found in the cabin and of the stampede. " As to that," put in Aunt Matilda, pausing, with her hand on the door-knob we had reached the house " it's another illustration of the old saying, ' Except the Lord do build the house, the builders build in vain.' If there's nothing in a person to be brought out, it's a waste of time to fish for it." A STAMPEDED FLOCK 155 When we went in father was crouching over the kitchen stove, and in answer to aunt's in- quiry if he were cold, he admitted that he was, decidedly. " It's an uncommonly chilly night, I believe," he added. It was not, but aunt did not say so ; instead, she brought out a bundle of boneset that she had taken pains to procure a few days before, and set a quantity of the leaves to brewing ; presently the pungent, pene- trating odor of boneset tea filled the room. " Come to the fire and get warm, girls," father called to us, as we were about going into the next room. " I'm not cold," said Florence, going to his side. " Are you cold yet, papa ?" "Cold all the way through, Flossie; I'm afraid I'm as unfit for a shepherd physically as I seem to be mentally." Florence threw back her head with a burst of soft laughter. " Papa, I'm so sorry that you got so wet and uncomfortable, but I'm just wicked enough to think it was perfectly delightful to see you gazing up into the 156 THE GIRL RANCHERS clouds and admiring those small white animals disappearing over the mountain top, when those small white animals were the very things we were there to watch and keep within limits." " I'm glad if you can extract any amusement out of it, child," said father ruefully, as he stretched his hands over the stove. " I begin to fear that we will find sheep ranching a far more serious business than we had at first thought it to be." " Don't get discouraged, Hugh, over one afternoon's mishaps," aunt advised him cheer- fully. " Come ; here's your tea," she extended a bowl of the unpalatable smelling decoction toward him ; he stretched out his hand for it reluctantly. Father hated medicine, and Flor- ence and I, knowing what a struggle was prob- ably before Aunt Matilda, lingered in the doorway, watching them. It would have been better to go. " Stay," cried father, struck with a sudden thought. " Matilda, the girls had better drink A STAMPEDED FLOCK 157 that ; they need it more than I, they were wet, too, you know. Elsie, Florence, come and drink this. It's a tonic, a corrective, that you both need." " I really I don't feel that I need it to- night, father," I said, edging away, " if Flossie feels that she needs it " " I don't ; and it would be selfish to take it from you, father," Florence declared virtuously. " As to that ; I made a whole potful. There's enough for you all," said Aunt Matilda. "I think it would be well for you to drink some, too." So that was what we got for our curiosity. Father, who must have hoped when he pro- posed our drinking the nauseous mixture, that there was no more of it, and that he would thus escape, watched with sympathetic interest while we gulped down the horrid mess, and then, with a shudder, hastily swallowed his own portion. Vevie, who had been viewing the little comedy with solemn interest, suddenly snatched up a towel and began wiping the feet of the grey- 158 THE GIRL RANCHERS hound, who was, as usual, stretched out beside her. " There, aunty," she cried, desisting from her labors. " Now Calif won't have to take any of that stuff. He gotted his feet wet, but they are all dry now." " Don't worry about him," father counseled her with a groan which seemed but the outward expression of the bitterness he had just swal- lowed. " Any self-respecting dog like Calif would prefer death to boneset tea." CHAPTER XI THE WHIP-POOR-WILLS IN the seclusion of our own room that night I told Florence of what we had heard from Rome as to the difficulties and dangers of sheep ranching in a cattle country. " Well, if that is all true, Elsie, he is putting himself into a good deal of danger by siding with us." " I suppose he is, Florence ; ne says as much himself. But what can we do ?" "We can try not to be cowards, Elsie. We know how much depends on keeping this ranch ; I believe that father's life, as well as our home, depends on it. We must take care of the sheep." " It will be a hard task, Flossie, it would be that, even if we knew anything about the busi- ness ; which we don't." " We can learn ; here we are, two healthy, active, fairly well-educated girls. Can't we 159 160 THE GIRL RANCHERS learn to care for the sheep, to superintend the shearing, to market the ' clip,' as I heard Rome call it, to look out pasturage, to provide shelter in bad weather, just as well as a lot of ignorant Mexicans?" demanded Florence, whose spirit was aroused. " The Mexicans have been bred to the busi- ness for generations," I reminded her feebly. "This is an age of progress; I mean to assimilate all the sheep lore of the shepherds in one working season." " Where shall we find the shepherd to act as teacher ? We have no really competent author- ity to apply to save Felix." " And Rome," she reminded me quietly. " Yes, and Rome ; what he doesn't know already he will find out for us in some way if he has to perch on a Mexican's roof to learn it. You make me feel stronger, Flossie ; I had not for a moment thought of giving up, but it is such a comfort to know that you feel as you do about it." We were silent after that, but I knew that her thoughts as well as mine were THE WHIP-POOR-WILLS 161 going out prayerfully toward the lost sheep and the wandering shepherd in the wilderness. Father was so much worse in the morning that he decided to remain in bed instead of getting up for breakfast and, in the end, he stayed there all day. It was a dismal day. We watched and listened anxiously, hour after hour, from sunrise to sunset for some sight or sound that should tell us how Rome was faring, but no tidings came. Father was made so much worse by the anxiety and uncertainty although he knew nothing of the actual danger in which our friend stood that by nightfall his thin cheeks were flushed with fever. It was in vain that we reminded him of what Rome had said about the difficulty of gathering together a flock of frightened sheep ; and that Rome had said he might be long delayed. I suppose his illness rendered him more nervous than usual, but again, and yet again we saw cause to be thankful for Aunt Matilda's tender foresight in keeping the knowledge of the bitter truth from him. 11 162 THE GIRL RANCHERS Vevie had her share of trials on that unhappy day as well as the rest. To divert her attention from too strict inquiry into the cause of the cloud that, ohviously, hung over the rest of the family, aunt had told her how to make a cake, and father, always singularly watchful of Vevie and all that concerned her, no matter what else he might have in mind, had awakened to a well- simulated interest in the prospective dainty. It was worth while to see the pretty creature's en- thusiasm over the task, the solemnity of her childish face, and the frequent whispered con- sultations with aunt, for the triumph of cookery was to be a secret from Florence and me she would not even pretend to a secret from father and Calif but late in the afternoon she came in from a series of frequent dashes out-of-doors, with a downcast air and quivering lip. " What's the matter with my blossom ?" asked father. " Not much, papa ; they needn't think I care," nodding her head in defiance of some invisible enemy, " but when I had got the cake all done THE WHIP-POOR-WILLS 163 and it looked so nice, I wanted it to get cool quick so I put it out on that big rock and some of those long-tailed birds that are always flying around and making fun of Calif and I, flew down and ate it there was nothing left but crumbs." " Nothing left but crumbs ?" repeated father with an involuntary sigh " credit that on the side of experience, my darling; you'll know better than to place your feast within range of a magpie next time." Florence and I went out a little after nightfall to listen again for some sound on the upper trail. The stars were shining in a cloudless sky ; seeming very near and large, at that high alti- tude. The swirling rush of the hurrying river was distinctly audible above the long sigh of the night wind that played a never-ceasing melody in pine forests up on the mountain sides. A beautiful, peaceful scene it all made but with an underlying note of melancholy, which became more pronounced as a new sound broke the stillness. A far, faint, lonely call, the evening 164 THE GIRL RANCHERS song of the mountain night-hawk, "whip- whip- will, whip-whip-will I" it whistled plaintively. "That's different from our Eastern night- hawks," remarked Florence, listening. " Do you notice, Elsie, the Eastern bird says ' whip-poor- will,' but this one doesn't own up to any sym- pathy for Will ; he only insists on his being whipped." " How many of them there are to-night, and all in different directions," I said. " It sounds almost as though they were signaling to each other, doesn't it?" When we re-entered the house we found father asleep and Aunt Matilda stepping softly to and fro, intent on household tasks, while Vevie sat before the open fire, into which she gazed, appa- rently lost in thought. There was not an evening, even in midsummer, when that cheerful blaze was not welcome. " What are you thinking of, Vevie ?" asked Florence. " I was wondering what God let us come to this place for," she replied sadly. " I s'pose He THE WHIP-POOR-WILLS 165 could have stopped us if He hadn't wanted us to come, but I don't believe He really knew how lonesome it is." " Yes He did, Vevie, He has something for us all to do in this valley as well as in the crowded city," Aunt Matilda told her, pausing on her way to the kitchen, with a tray in her hand. " But there were peoples to do for, back home, Aunt Mattie," persisted Vevie, " and I don't be- lieve God cares very much for the peoples out here, anyway ; I wouldn't if I was Him !" " Why, Vevie, child ! What a speech !" " Is it what a speech ?" she asked wistfully. " I didn't mean it to be ; I was thinking of the man that stopped and talked to me to-day, I didn't like him a bit; and Calif growled and growled." " What man, who talked with you, child, and where and how?" demanded Aunt Matilda, startled. " Down on the footbridge." "Vevie, did you go on that shaky bridge with no one in sight ?" 166 THE GIRL RANCHERS " Yes, auntie, you didn't tell me not to." "No, I didn't; I never thought of such a thing as your going there alone. Why it makes me tremble to think of it !" " The man told me I'd better not stand there," Vevie admitted, with her eyes again on the fire, " he said that I would fall in and get drown- ded " " Drowned, Vevie," corrected Florence. " No ; drownded ; that was what he said ; I guess it's drownded out here then he asked if I wasn't one of the Stanley kids, and I said if you mean, am I Mr. Stanley's little girl ; yes, I am. Then he kind of laughed not a nice laugh, and said, ' Wai, you'd better come offen that bridge, Missy, it's tolerable unsafe, and your folks is going to have considerable trouble ; they'll have enough to keep 'em busy without throwin' in a drownded young one,' I wouldn't have come off the bridge then if it had dropped from under me," the child added, with a sparkle in the brown eyes " I wondered what he meant by saying that my folks was goin' to have THE WHIP-POOR-WILLS 167 trouble ; but I wouldn't ask him ; so I just held on to Calif's collar to make him let the man alone, until finally he rode off. I guess I know now, though, what he meant by saying that this wasn't a healthy altitude for a man like papa ; he prob'ly knew that papa got wet and took cold." " He might have said that the altitude wasn't healthy," observed Florence, with a firm, straight line cutting across the soft curve of her red lips. " But I am quite sure we will be able to convince him of his mistake, whoever he may be." " No ; Flossie, the man was right ; I hope papa will be better to-morrow." " I guess he will ; and we must coax him to stay at home with you after this." " Yes ; I always take such good care of him," she said, with a tired little yawn. "I did want to hear you sing some to-night, Flossie," she continued, " but I s'pose you are too tired." This was so often Florence's excuse for not gratifying poor Vevie, who was passionately 168 THE GIRL RANCHERS fond of music, that it was an agreeable surprise when she answered readily though to-night, if ever, she might well have pleaded weariness " I think I've got strength enough for a song or two, Vevie, unless papa is asleep and the singing will disturb him." "He is asleep," announced Aunt Matilda, re-entering at this moment with a tray of untouched food, and carefully closing the door after her, " but your singing won't disturb him. You know he never awakes for any unusual noise." " Unusual noise !" murmured Florence, taking her seat at the organ and running lightly over the keys. " What shall it be, Vevie ?" "That man to-day made me think of the song I want ; only, I can't remember its name," replied Vevie, knitting her baby brows in per- plexity. "I shouldn't have thought he'd have re- minded you of anything pleasant," Florence told her. " It wasn't anything that he said ; it was what THE WHIP-POOR-WILLS 169 he whistled as he was riding away. Wait ! I can whistle it." As she could whistle any tune, bird song, or unusual call that she had ever heard we listened with interest to hear what note of the rough stranger had so attracted her attention. Hark ! Was that really the child whistling, or was it the faint, far-heard cry of a night bird in the lonely dusk of the mountain twilight. " Whip- whip-will, whip-whip-will." Florence looked at me, over Vevie's head, with startled eyes, and I recalled the words I had so lately spoken : " It seems almost as though they were signaling to each other." " The song you are thinking of is this," said Florence, breaking abruptly into it. Vevie took up the air and whistled a low accompani- ment to " When I hear the first whip-poor- will's song." " Now the ' Ninety and Nine/ please," she said as the song ended. Florence sang it magnificently, gloriously, as she always does, until she came to the words 170 THE GIRL RANCHERS "Away in the mountains, wild and bare, Away from the tender Shepherd's care," then she stopped suddenly. Vevie did not ask her to continue ; instead, she went to the window and looked out. " It's a nice night," she said. " I hope Mr. Kome won't get lost in the moun- tains ; I don't s'pose he will ; he told me one day that he knew them real well. He said he could find his way along a trail the darkest night that ever was, just by feeling with his feet. He's got such great big feet ; they'll last a long time. I said to him, when he told me that, that he had got awful nice great feet, and he said he'd have been a good deal taller if there hadn't been so much of him turned up to make them. I told him I should think he'd be glad there was ; he's so tall now. I'm going to kiss papa good-night and go to bed," she concluded abruptly. " Don't wake him," Aunt Matilda cautioned her. " Oh, no ; I'll kiss him so softly he'll dream it's thistle down drifting over his cheeks, see." She THE WHIP-POOR-WILLS 171 caught up a handful of her long fair, misty look- ing hair in each hand, and, spreading her arms out and upward, like a pair of wings, danced lightly across the floor and into the adjoining room. " I didn't wake him," she said, reappearing a mo- ment after. " I'm tired, auntie, I guess I'll rest in your lap a little while." She climbed into Aunt Matilda's lap, and, in less than half a minute was fast asleep with her head pillowed on her aunt's shoulder. Aunt put her to bed and Florence and I soon followed. Florence was soon asleep, as I could tell from her regular breathing, but I was too anxious, too much alarmed, and lay awake, finding a new cause of uneasiness in the careless notes that Vevie's rough visitor had accidentally whistled. Was it an accident ? It might be a mere coin- cidence. We knew so little of the mountains. It might be quite the usual thing, so far as we could tell, for a band of night birds to call to each other in the mountain solitudes, but, some- how, the wild notes, coupled with the inexplic- able stampede of the sheep, the ominous letter 172 THE GIRL RANCHERS found in the herder's cabin, the desertion of the herders themselves, and the threatening proph- ecy of Vevie's unknown interviewer seemed to have a sinister significance. I tossed from side to side, unable to sleep, longing feverishly for morning. I became aware, too, as the night wore on, that Aunt Matilda was passing an equally restless night. At length, unable to bear the silence longer, I slipped on a wrapper and crept softly into Aunt Matilda's room. She was lying down, although I had so lately heard her moving about. Vevie, who slept with her, was prone to awaken in terror if left alone, so Aunt Matilda said in a whisper : "Is that you, Elsie?" " Yes ; I cannot sleep." " Neither can I ; it's silly, I'm sure to be so distressed ; we'll wear ourselves out for nothing ; it will do Rome no good for us to lie awake, but it's of no use to try to sleep. I can think of nothing else. Oh, I'm so thankful that your father doesn't know he must know, though if we don't get the sheep again ; it will ruin us. THE WHIP-POOR-WILLS 173 But there ! I will not worry. God will care for us ; sheep or no sheep." " And the stars are so near up here in the mountains ; God doesn't seem very far away," I whispered, going to the window and pushing up the shade as I spoke. The window faced toward the mountain that she and I had so re- cently climbed. It loomed before me, black and vague as to its base, but with the outlines of its crest startlingly distinct against a vivid, lurid glow that revealed the stunted firs and ragged jack oaks fringing its rocky head. Even the jumbled masses of rock were silhouetted in sharp black lines upon the ominous background. I uttered a low exclamation that brought Aunt Matilda to my side. " There's a fire over on the other side of the mountain," I whispered. " Yes ; it's certainly in the valley where we kept our sheep ; pray God that Rome is safe, whatever becomes of them." I thought of the song of the whip-poor-wills, and doubted it. CHAPTER XII ROUNDING UP UNDER DIFFICULTIES THE next day Florence and I rode over to the store to inquire of Mr. Davis who knew everybody and where they lived as to where we should go to find a Mexican herder on his native heath ; and while he was giving us minute, but extremely confusing direction as to " draws," " canofis," " blind trails," and " the far side of yon hogback," his daughter Etta, a bright girl of sixteen, came out and joined in the conversation. "Can either of you talk Mexican?" she asked. We were obliged to confess that we could not. The little moun- tain maid laughed as gleefully as Florence her- self might have done had our positions been reversed. " How do you expect to make them understand you, then ?" she demanded. " I thought we might come across some one among them who could interpret for us," I said 174 ROUNDING UP UNDER DIFFICULTIES 175 feeling the weakness of the admission, which was a virtual acknowledgment that we expected more of these ignorant people than we could do ourselves. " You might ; then again you might not," Miss Etta declared frankly. " I'll tell you how we'll fix it ; I'll go with you ; may I, father ?" The question appeared to be an after- thought ; she was so sure of doing as she pleased in the matter. Mr. Davis scratched his rough head, and displayed a hesitation that evidently amazed his daughter. " You won't need me in the store to-day," she reminded him ; " Don is at home, and he's worth two of me any day, you know." " No, I don't know it. Of course, you can go if you want to. I am willing to oblige a neighbor, of course." " You don't show it very plain to-day," his daughter informed him with perfect candor. "Well, I am," the storekeeper insisted. " You don't know everything in the world yet, Etta. But never mind ; you'll learn. Here, Jim, 176 THE GIRL RANCHERS saddle up Etta's pony, and be lively ; company's waiting." We had met Etta Davis several times. She was a gay, good-hearted girl, seemingly always ready for a frolic. Perhaps she regarded the enterprise that we could not help looking on as little short of tragedy as a kind of frolic, too, for she laughed and chatted as blithely when we rode away from the tenth Mexican house, burdened with the tenth polite refusal to work for us, as when we first started. She was a ready interpreter, and, of course, understood quite well that we were meeting with nothing but disappointment. However, if she felt any sympathy for us she was careful not to put it in evidence. Mr. Davis had suggested that we should call on Roy Jones' wife on our way back from the Mexican settlement. "You'll be riding right by the house, and it won't be noth- ing more than neighborly to drop in," he urged. Florence and I did not feel much inclined for missionary work that day, but as Etta reminded us, on coming in sight of Mr. Jones' cabin, of BOUNDING UP UNDER DIFFICULTIES 177 her father's request, we could do no less than dismount and ask admission. The door was opened by Mr. Jones himself. He appeared to be rather backward about asking us in, but the feeble voice of his wife called from the adjoin ing room, "Ain't one o' them that Miss Stanley that sings, Koy ?" " Yes, it is," replied the man, eying that Miss Stanley who sang with anything but a welcom- ing expression. " Oh, do tell her to come right in ; I want her to sing; I'm so tired, 'pears like I shall die. I want her to sing !" There was something hysterical in the plaintive reiteration. The black-browed ranch- man loved his wife. He invited us in with surly courtesy, and Florence sang song after song for the woman who lay listening with closed eyes, her starved soul lifted for the time far above the wearing anguish of her suffering body. Etta Davis even listened without a com- ment, though, as we made a move to go, she observed, " You can sing awful pretty ; I never 12 178 THE GIRL RANCHERS heard any one sing so good before. I'd be most afraid to have such a nice voice, for fear that something would happen to it." " I reckon I'd cry my eyes out if anything should happen to hurt that voice," put in Mrs. Jones, feebly. We parted with Miss Davis at her own door, thanking her warmly for her assistance and offering to pay her, which was as much of a mistake, in its way, as it had been not to offer to pay Mr. Seaton on another occa- sion. Etta drew herself up with an air of offended dignity. " I never thought of such a thing as your paying me," she declared, her cheeks flushing. " I just went to oblige you, and for fun." Florence made a suitable and becoming apology for misunderstanding her, and Etta, appeased, said, " I've had an awful good time. I think you're real good company, both of you, and I'll go with you again to-mor- row if you want me to." " Would it be of any use ? Are there any more Mexicans to visit ?" I asked. Mr. Davis had drawn near as we rode up, ROUNDING UP UNDER DIFFICULTIES 179 and we had already told him where we had been. He replied in his daughter's stead. " There are a few more families in the valley, but it won't do no good to go to them ; you'll only be wasting time. I'll tell you what to do. You want a couple of sheep herders. Well, now, lots of Mexicans come to my store ; that's how Etta here come to talk their lingo. We had to have some one who could do it, and she could be spared as easy as any one," with a humorous glance at the girl, who, conscious of her value, smiled, but said nothing. " You just leave notice here at the store that you want a couple of herders, and they'll all get wind of it before a week's out. Then, if any of them want the job they'll call and see you about it." This was such sensible counsel that we agreed to it at once. And that ended our search for a herder and insured our own initiation into the business, for no one ever came to apply for the "job," as the storekeeper was probably quite confident that they would not. In the dusk of the evening, two or three IftO THE GIRL RANCHERS hours after our return, Rome rode up to the door, tossed the reins of jaded-looking Luck to Johnny, who hastened out to meet him, and strode into the sitting-room to give his report. " I got most of 'em," he said briefly. " Yes, they're all right ; jest as right as can be," he continued, as the door of father's room opened and he came out wrapped in his dressing-gown, and with an anxious flush on his cheeks, to hear the report. "There ain't many lost, and we didn't have much trouble ; not any to speak of." He went on at some length, detailing the route he had taken, and leading father to infer that what he had been doing was scarcely more than a little pleasure jaunt. But later, when father, whose cough was troublesome again, had gone to bed, he admitted to us that things were not quite so rose-hued as he would have father believe. " We've got 'em corralled up there in that valley again, Felix and me," he said, " and Felix is about as nigh starved to death and worn out as a dog can be and live ; but he'll ROUNDING UP UNDER DIFFICULTIES 181 keep them sheep all right to-night. He must have help early in the morning." " I will help him," I said in the pause that followed. " I am not afraid, if you are not afraid for me, Rome." It was the first time that I had called him " Rome " to his face, though he was so much to us that we seldom spoke of him in any other way among ourselves. The good fellow embarrassed me by rising from his chair, crossing the room, and grasping my hand. " Elsie, you've got something that ain't generally given to women leastways, we don't generally look for it in them. You've got courage, courage, and you need it." He dropped my hand as Florence, coming swiftly to my side, leaned on my shoulder and looked up at him with that sparkling gleam of humor that ran through all her moods like a golden thread. " Rome," she said smilingly, " you might squeeze my hand, too ; I'm Elsie's sister, and she hasn't a monopoly of courage ; I'm going with her in the morning." 182 THE GIRL RANCHERS " I'm glad to hear it," declared Home, possessing himself of the offered hand. " I reckon you're a pair." He resumed his seat, rud Aunt Matilda looked puzzled at his next question. " Did you ever hear any birds sing- ing early in the evening?" he asked. " Yes," returned Florence quickly, " the wh i p-poor- wills." " Well, them birds was two-legged and wore whiskers instead of feathers. That night-hawk call was the signal they had given out for col- lecting in the upper valley which they did." There was a dark meaning in Rome's short but significant pause. " I knew that them calls meant mischief," he went on. " You see it ain't the way of night-hawks to mix up in promis- cuous company ; they're a shy bird. Maybe, along in the edge of the evening, you'll hear one, jest as the stars begin to shine out, still and solemn. Beyond the top of old Mount Ken- neth, a single, far-away note'll come stealing down the mountain, for all the world like a voice wandering alone without any body to it ; ROUNDING UP UNDER DIFFICULTIES 183 and, later on, the note may be repeated from some other place, say a half-dozen times, but I've lived in the San Coulee going on to ten years and I never yet heard the whip-poor-wills going on as reckless as they did last night ; so, as I said, I was on the lookout for mischief. You see, I had had a whole day to round up the flock before the night-hawks let themselves loose. I found Felix up in the mountains standing guard over a thousand of 'em the first night, and I jest stayed there with him. By nightfall of the second day we had gathered in nearly three thousand, which we were getting back to the valley, when the night-hawks started up. I passed the word to Felix, and we concluded to let the flock look out for themselves for awhile, whilst we looked out for ourselves. I knew it wasn't going to be healthy for me to be found herding them sheep. But it turned out later that Felix wasn't wasting much time in thinking of his health. Him and the horse and me jest set- down where we were and waited. It was so dark up in the cedar patch that no one could see us, 184 THE GIRL RAXCHERS and it wasn't long before there was a commotion down in the valley where the sheep were hud- dled. I couldn't make out anything except that they were plumb scared again, scattering in all directions and scurrying away like so many jack rabbits. Whoever 'twas that was after 'em must a made up their minds that they might as well have some of the mutton as for the lions to be getting it all ; at any rate, they opened fire on the fleein' critters. Whether they killed any or not I couldn't tell, but they didn't keep up that game long. I'd had hard work to keep the collie still when thesheep first began to scatter,and when the night-hawks begun firing into 'em, he tore him- self loose from me I was hanging to his collar and launched himself down that mountain and into the gully same's if he was shot out of a cannon. He went right at the night-hawks, regardless, for in a minute I heard some one yell out, ' Look out ! There's a mountain lion !' I've heard that voice before, and another voice that I ain't quite so knowing to, hollered, ' It's a sheep dog ! shoot him ! shoot him !' and he EOUNDIXG UP UNDER DIFFICULTIES 185 blazed away at Felix. I reckon I could locate that voice, too, on a pinch, when him and I get ready for the settlement that's coming. But the other voice yelled, ' Let up on that ! Whoever hurts that dog is going to git hurt bad himself, now I tell you.' When I have my reckoning up with them songsters I'll remember that in his favor, too. There wasn't any more firing after that, but Felix didn't come back. I was terrible afraid that he was hurt, but I couldn't do any- thing until it got light enough to see, and then I made him out, standing guard over the little remnant of the flock, like a soldier alone on the battle-ground." " And that's the dog that I begrudged pay- ing a hundred dollars for !" murmured Aunt Matilda. "And you stayed in that uncom- fortable place all night," she exclaimed sym- pathetically. "No, Miss Stanley, I didn't. Not in that uncomfortable place. I wasn't out looking for comfortable places. I said that I stayed there till it got light enough to see ; it got light 186 THE GIRL RANCHERS enough for that long before morning." Into our minds flashed the picture of the wild red glow beyond the mountain top that we had seen last night. Aunt Matilda nodded. "Yes, I understand ; we saw the fire ; go on." " When the fire began to make us more visible than I thought was good for us, I took hold of the pony's bridle and sneaked down into the gully where Felix was. I reckoned that the sheep wouldn't be disturbed again that night, because, you see, them that set the fire would want to be getting home and to bed about that time." " And the fire ?" "It was the cabin where the herders had lived lucky they wasn't in it ; 'twould a' been all the same to them warblers if they had been, I reckon." "They mean to drive us out, that's certain," said Aunt Matilda, her face pale with anxiety. "Well, they hain't done it yet. Now I'll tell you what to do next. You say you couldn't get no herders ?" BOUNDING UP UNDER DIFFICULTIES 187 " No ; we tried to-day so that if we did have any sheep left the shepherd would be ready, but we could not find one." " You never will ; give up that idea and buckle down to the next best thing. To-morrow we three will drive the flock out on the plains where they ought to have been taken two months ago. There'll be no chance for whip- poor-wills to creep up on 'em unbeknown out there." " See here, Rome," in her earnestness Aunt Matilda laid her hand lightly on the tall moun- taineer's shoulder. " You said that you recog- nized the voices of those men who were down in the gully firing at the sheep ; now if you could swear to their identity " Rome shook his head. " No, Miss Stanley. Your idea would be all right back East ; it ain't here. We don't want no swearing to identities. But as long as I know and can threaten 'em with my knowledge, it gives me a kind of hold over 'em. I can make 'em dance to the tune I whistle, and I'm allowing to do considerable 188 THE GIRL RANCHERS whistling from this on. Now I must be a get- ting on up to my cabin and tend to some little matters so that I can leave to-morrow. I shall be on hand as soon as it's light enough to see ; I don't want to have the job of collecting them sheep again jest for the sake of a morning CHAPTER XIII ON THE PLAINS ROME was as good as his word ; he was on hand before we had finished breakfast next morning, although we were breakfasting by lamp light. Aunt Matilda entreated him to come in and have a cup of coffee, but he declined, on the plea that he had had his breakfast, and " did not want to make any one trouble." It was not the first time that we had had occasion to notice how strongly implanted in his breast was the rustic's shy distaste for personal serv- ice ; or, perhaps it would be more correct to say the solitary's man's dislike to being waited on. It was not yet light enough to enable one to distinguish a sheep from a boulder when we mounted our ponies and took the trail for the upper valley. I confess, that notwithstanding I had valiantly declared my readiness on the night before to go to Felix's aid, alone, if need be, 189 190 THE GIRL RANCHERS yet, since my heart was literally in ray mouth at every slight noise, it was infinitely comfort- ing to have this strong, courageous man beside us. From the pallor of Florence's face as it gleamed white against the background of her wide-brimmed hat, I knew that she, too, was suffering tortures of apprehension. The ride seemed wild and weird enough of itself at that gray hour, without the added uncertainty as to what we might find when we reached the upper valley. Rome rode on ahead in absolute silence, glancing back now and then to make sure that we were following all right. Suddenly the silence was broken by a sharp staccato call, not unlike a high, gurgling laugh. In an instant the call was taken up and repeated from all directions until the dewy aisles of the pine forests seemed to echo and re-echo with peals of mocking laughter. The footfall of Florence's pony, that had been following close behind me, ceased. I glanced back. She had stopped her horse and was crouching half-bent over the ON THE PLAINS 191 saddle, staring about her with blanched face and parted lips, a very picture of helpless, unreason- ing terror. Of course I stopped my horse the instant that I perceived her distress, and I suppose Rome missed my following footfall, as I had hers. He looked back inquiringly, then turned and made his way to Florence's side. " I'm afraid you're scared of the boomers, Miss Stanley," he said, laying his big hand with a reassuring touch on the small cold one that was desperately clutching Now Then's bridle ; " I ought to a' told you, but I'm so used to the sassy little rascals that I plumb forgot it. The noise you hear is nothing but the pine squirrels. There's millions of 'em, I reckon, and they're so loud and talk so big, 'long about daylight, that folks has give 'em the name of boomers, same's if they was land site speculators. They've got their circus in full blast now." " I think, if you don't mind, Elsie, that I'll ride next to Home," Florence said, quivering. " Do, Flossie ; my nerves are stronger than yours." 192 THE GIKL RANCHERS "That's all right," Rome assured us, in a very low voice ; " but you'll excuse me if I don't talk much. You, see Felix's nerves is kind of unstrung, too, and he ain't used to your voices, so I thought it best to come on him as gentle as possible. I expect he's strainin' his eyes by this time to see what's comin'." " How can that be ?" murmured Florence. " I'm sure that no dog that ever lived could hear or see us at the distance we are now from the valley, and around the shoulder of a moun- tain, at that?" It was, by this time, light enough for us to see objects with more or less distinctness. Rome lifted a hand, pointing upward. " See there ?" he said, briefly. There was nothing to see save a couple of small, dingy-looking birds that had been flitting along above the tree-tops in advance of us for the past twenty minutes, clamoring and calling incessantly. The birds were, as I said, small, but their voices were not. " That's what you might call a good, compe- tent screech, ain't it?" he whispered, as one of ON THE PLAINS 193 them gave out a peculiarly piercing cry. " Well, them birds are what we call camp-robbers. They're sociable little fellers ; always hovering over the trail and yelling their approval I reckon it's approval when a party comes up into the mountains, especially if they come kind of quiet, and the birds think they don't want to be seen." "Why do you think that their cries mean that they are glad to have people come ?" I asked. "They're kind o' used to seein' folks that come up this way make camp ; making camp means somethi g to eat; something to eat means a feast for Mr. Camp Robber, who will flit around the outskirts of the camp, screechin' and scolding ; afeard there won't be anything left for him if he don't let folks know he's there. Felix knows that there's some one comin',or the birds wouldn't be makin' all this fuss. Follow close and keep still now." We came upon Felix sitting quietly at the natural gateway at the entrance to the valley. He greeted us with a somewhat reserved, doubt- 13 194 THE GIRL RANCHERS ful manner. It appeared to me that he was questioning the propriety of two young girls being abroad in the mountain wilderness at that hour of the morning. The sheep were huddled together, showing, even to us, unmistakable signs of alarm and distress. " It's too bad," muttered Rome, as I slipped off Luck's back and laid before Felix the break- fast that I had brought. " It's just too bad that these sheep have been hounded and chased and bamboozled as they have ; it'll take 'em a week to quiet down and get over this scare, even on the outside range ; I misdoubt if they'd do it at all in here now." " I don't believe many have been lost, do you?" asked Florence, her eye ranging hope- fully over the broad expanse of woolly backs. " Something like two hundred, as near as I make it ; and you'll find that two hundred makes a sizable hole, even in three thousand. Now I reckon Felix is ready, and we'll get 'em in motion." Getting them in motion was not at all a ON THE PLAINS 195 difficult task ; the difficulty was, rather, in turn- ing the motion in the right direction and keep- ing it there. It was in the way that he did this, and the intelligence and discrimination that he showed in doing it, that my admiration for Felix grew apace, until I was more than half in- clined to agree with Vevie in her oft-expressed opinion of the greyhound : " Calif knows just as much as I do, only he won't talk about it," she would declare, earnestly. " Sometimes he knows more, for he knows enough to keep still when that's the best thing to do." But, after all, it was not very high praise of the shaggy, faithful collie to say that he knew more about the sheep business than I did. Down into the lower valley we filed at length, some two hours after the start from the upper one, and along the roadway past our cottage, where father, Aunt Matilda, Vevie, Calif, and Johnny witnessed the exodus with much in- terest. We kept on through the length of the valley, over the bridge successor to the one that had been washed out behind us on the day 106 THE GIRL RANCHERS of our entrance into the valley up the moun- tain road and so out upon the plains, where the abundant herbage so tempted the half-starved creatures that it became almost impossible to urge them along. " We must get 'em nigh enough to the corral, over yon on the San Coulee," Kome said, point- ing to a large enclosure on the river bank, " so that we can drive 'em in there and get the gate closed and locked by sundown ; they won't be so ravenous after a day or two." As we slowly approached to within a half mile or less of the big corral, we allowed the sheep to scatter out and graze at will, then Rome took off his hat and wiped his streaming face with a look of intense relief. "Tin thankful that's done!" he ejaculated. " I don't know when I've been feelin' more nervous 'bout a thing. I don't mind sayin' to you now that I have been havin' my doubts about our gettin' here unmolested; we never should had it not been that the two prettiest girls in Coulee were drivin' the flock." ON THE PLAINS 197 " I'll try to forgive you for making fun of our looks, Rome, if you'll tell me why you say that," I replied. " Why, you don't for a minute s'pose, do you, that them songful night birds that run the sheep off before don't know what's goin' on to-day ? They know just as well as we do. And they ain't right well pleased, either. You see," he continued, drawing nearer to me, for he seemed to regard me as the active working partner in the sheep business, " there's a short cut from the upper Coulee through the Wind River range down into Wyoming, and whenever a herd, either of cattle, horses, or sheep is stampeded in the Coulee valleys stampeded purposely, like this one was why, it's easy to keep the scat- tered bands kind of drifting toward the pass where they'll all come together again where they can be rushed down into the south and sold if any one wants to take the risk of buyin' stolen herds, and lots of fellows do especially sheep. Sheep ain't so easy identified as cattle they can be turned over to some dealer who is too 198 THE GIRL RANCHERS obliging to ask questions. He claps another brand on over the one he finds already on cat- tle or horses, and gives a new cut to the crop ear of a sheep, and he's all right. He can swear to his own brand if any questions are ever asked, which they most gen'lly are not. Now, seein' that we've got the flock out here, if they want to run it off again into Southern Colorado or New Mexico they've got to drive them back again through the same valley that we've took 'em out of. They won't feel like doing that for awhile yet. So I reckon our travels are over with for the time being, but there's another big job on hand I s'pose you know." " You mean watching the flock ?" I asked doubtfully. " No ; that's settled. You two can watch it ; though I ain't saying that it's going to be fun for you. The thing that you can't do is to shear the sheep; and it ought to be done just as quick as they get a little over this scare. It ought to have been done a month ago ; yes, a week before they ever came into your hands ; ON THE PLAINS 199 but now, every day that you lose decreases the value of the clip and makes it just so much harder for the critters themselves. But we won't worry about that till we have to. The thing to do now is to get hold of a lot of Mexicans, app'int a day for the shearin', and see that it's done." " If the shearers are no easier to find than the herders, I don't see what we are to do," I said sadly enough. " It's goin' to be an uphill job ; I ain't doubt- in' that ; but you've had worry enough for one day. Let's talk of something besides sheep for awhile." As he seemed to think that we were quite up to his own cheerful philosophy of dis- missing a troublesome subject when no good could be achieved by discussing it, we tried to comply, but I know that through my mind there trooped nothing but long processions of impossible Mexicans armed with sheep shears. "You'll have a nice healthy gallop home every night," Rome went on cheerfully. " I bet you your cheeks'll be brown enough before the summer's over." 200 THE GIRL RANCHERS " It's a good ways from home," I said thought- fully. " Not so very far ; the road is so good that you can make twice the time over it that you could in gettin' to the upper Coulee." " It's a lovely bicycle road," observed Flor- ence, wistfully. Rome was riding the buckskin that day he had no horse of his own. He flecked the broncho's shoulder absently with the tip of his heavy quirt as he said : "I seen one of them beesickles one day ; a man down to Carston had one. He was ridin' it, kind o' humped up, like a grasshopper gettin' ready to jump, and the sweat was pourin' off of him prodigious. Looked to me like he had to pay for all the riding he got. I like bronchos better myself." We had dismounted and were loitering along by the side of our grazing horses as we talked. Rome began telling us of that " prospect " of his. He appeared to have high hopes of it. " I've been looking into it and I find that I can get water around to the mouth of the mine from ON THE PLAINS 201 the Coulee by a little work, well, by a good deal of work, for it's goin' to take some blasting and a power of dynamite, but it can be done, and when it is Rome Beaumont ain't a poor man any longer. I've been carryin' the placer sand as I dug it out, to the river before this, and it's slow work ; there'll be a change when old Coulee sends a stream sparklin' past the door of my cabin." " Are you so anxious to get rich, Rome ?" " Not a bit ; I care more for it now than ever I did in my life before, though. Folks is queer about riches. Now, look at me ; I've got good health, good eyes, ears, and feet look at 'em " he glanced down at the members in question with a humorous twinkle " seem a good deal like a pair of them Kentucky push-boats, don't they? but all the gold between here and the Pacific Ocean couldn't buy me another pair as good if anything was to happen to these. So I can't help feelin' that I'm pretty rich already, but that prospect of mine'll jest be pavin' the way for something that this kind of riches 202 THE GIRL RANCHERS couldn't bring me, that's all. Cuidado ! Felix ! Say, what you thinking of?" " I'm going to teach Felix English," I in- formed him, as Felix, thus reminded of his duty, promptly brought up a half-dozen laggards. "Are you? Poor little feller! I bet his head'll ache worse'n ever his feet have after ranging the hills all day in search of a stam- peded flock. I know mine would if I had to learn it right." Late in the afternoon our charges were cor- ralled within the high-walled enclosure not far from the river bank, and, discovering that a snug little kennel had been built close outside for Felix, we left him on guard and rode home- ward in the gathering dusk. CHAPTER XIV AN ODD ACQUAINTANCE ROME proved a true prophet. The aggressive cattlemen, baffled in their first attempt to scat- ter our flock, molested us no more. Day after day passed, and we could find in the whole length and breadth of the Coulee country no man, white, black, or brown, willing to under- take, for love or money, the task of herding our sheep ; more than that, and infinitely worse, we could find no shearers. Rome was our stronghold and defense in that time of need. He conscientiously gave to Flor- ence and me the credit of " holding down the ranch," as he expressed it, but we all knew that without his unselfish aid all our efforts to " hold it down " would have been useless. We dared not appeal to him or accept of his freely-prof- fered services oftener than was absolutely nec- essary, not only for the sake of his own safety, 203 204 THE GIRL RANCHERS but because he would accept no payment for anything that he did. Aunt Matilda ventured to broach the subject to him once, and he ap- peared so deeply hurt that she never had the courage to mention it again. The change of climate proved very beneficial to father, but every indiscretion or exposure was pretty sure to bring on an acute reminder that he must take no liberties with his precarious health. No change of climate, however, could efface the memory of Donald Arleigh's treachery; Donald, the practical, to whom the dreamy, silent inventor looked as to another, and possi- bly, a more masterful self, who would demon- strate the value of those pursuits to which he had dedicated his life, and for which his life had, as far as he could judge by tangible results, been wasted. Instead of this sad ending, if Donald had been true, the world would have been his willing debtor. In losing him, he was doubly, trebly wounded, in his love, his ambition, and his pride. Into the life of this hurt, but patient recluse, came Rome, with his cheery good fellowship, his AN ODD ACQUAINTANCE 205 loyal friendliness, his unfailing interest in those about him, and his presence was as balm to father's sore heart. His sad eyes brightened, the hopeful tone gradually returned to his con- versation ; his faith in humanity slowly reas- serted itself, and in the same ratio, his health improved. Donald was not forgotten, but the whole world was no longer false because one beloved had fallen short of his expectations. He was never prone to look much into details, and since we assured him that it was best for us to attend to the sheep herding, he believed it, and let it go at that. At first we were in some fear lest he should again offer his services, but his first attempt had been such a dismal failure that he had not the courage to repeat it. He believed the stampede and all the subsequent trouble to have been the direct result of his own heedlessness, and, of course, we could not tell him otherwise. The long, lonely days on the range passed uneventfully. Florence and I settled down to the conviction that there was no one to help us in 206 THE GIRL RANCHERS the herding, but oh, the shearing ! the shearing! To lose the clip was to lose that for which the sheep were kept. And we could find no shearers. Florence, who, in the pleasant, idle days that we spent in our Eastern home, would never go very far out of her way to help another, now realized fully the importance of all connected with our daily task. I recall especially the close of one rainy day when we came galloping home with the raindrops beating in our faces and the wild, sweet mountain wind tossing our loosened hair like silken streamers. Father stood on the little porch watching for us, and he burst out vehemently as we drew rein before him, " This is an outrage, nothing less than an outrage, that two young girls like you should be compelled to do work that obliges you to ex- pose yourselves like this. We will sell the sheep if no one but you can be found to watch them." Florence is much more ready of speech than I; she has her arguments all ready while I am slowly marshalling the words to clothe mine in, and I always have a depressing sense that they AN ODD ACQUAINTANCE 207 don't half fill out their clothes at that. Brush- ing the hair from her damp cheeks, she sprang from the saddle and ran into the house, saying : " Come in, papa ; I want to talk that over with you." She began as soon as we entered the house, the house that could never seem otherwise than cozy and warm as long as Aunt Matilda pre- sided over it and father and Vevie awaited us. " Father," began Florence, turning her bright face, flushed with rain and sparkling with health, toward him, " this work that you think it such an outrage for us to do is good for me ; I need it. Elsie never needed such discipline. She was always good enough without under- going any experience to make her better ; but I never was very good, and you all know it. These long, still days on the range for, of course, Elsie and I are seldom together except when we round up at night are giving me a chance to get acquainted with myself. Why, papa, I am growing ! I have never had a chance to grow before ; all the things that I had in life, all that 208 THE GIRL RANCHERS I loved or hoped for, was for something that should redound to the benefit or glory of Flor- ence Florence, the selfish, ungrateful little wretch ! Well, there, papa, I won't abuse her ; you love her, and it makes you uncomfortable to hear the truth about her ; but I know it now. I begin to see that there is something else in the world. I think it's good for me to get away for awhile from the crowding, the hurry, and the self-centered thoughts of civilization. I'm getting acquainted with myself, with my soul out here a pretty small one, it's true, ' a poor thing, but mine own.' " Father was silent a long time after she ceased speaking. He glanced out of the window and up at the heights that the misty night was fast oblitering, with a far-off, seeking expression ; finally, " You may be right," he said. " I re- member that the Bible tells us that when God desired to fit a man to become the leader of His chosen people, He sent him, not into the crowded city for an education, but into the wilderness." However, I who seldom soar above the com- AN ODD ACQUAINTANCE 209 monplace, became so skilled a shepherdess that, in the course of two or three weeks, I often took entire charge of the flock for days at a time, thus leaving Florence free to make a better use of her time, and to keep up the music that father and Mrs. Jones, for Florence continued to visit her delighted in. Musicians were natur- ally scarce in San Coulee and the fame of Flor- ence's singing and playing gradually spread abroad. She was wont to accuse herself of self- ishness in leaving me to take the burden of the range work so entirely on my own shoulders, but, as it turned out, she was doing good service, even when she least realized it. Why is it, I wonder, that people are so prone to believe that the path of duty is always set with thorns? Because she loved to paint and sing, and could do both so well, her conscience, being rather aggressively active since this life of solitary self- communing began, troubled her, insinuating that, since she loved these occupations and did not really love the role of shepherdess, the latter was the thing that she should devote herself to. 14 210 THE GIRL RANCHERS It took a great many arguments to convince her that there would be no harm in giving a portion of her time to each. Father and Vevie, accompanied always by Calif, spent a good deal of time in wandering over the hills. They were industriously making a collection of the wild flowers of the region, and also of various kinds of clay, good, bad, and indifferent, with which father experimented impartially, leaving a trail of clay on every- thing that he touched, and, seemingly, touching everything in the house, for the evidence of his work spoke on every hand. Coming home from their rambles they occasionally met an Indian, or Indians, strays from the Red Cliff Agency on the other side of Mount Kenneth, the white crest of which signaled the traveler for a hundred miles away. I doubt if any one of us would ever have thought of visiting the Agency, however, had it not been for the chance acquaintance that father and Vevie made during one of their walks with old Running Wolf. He was a grim yet amiable savage whom they over- AN ODD ACQUAINTANCE 211 took as they were hurrying home, rather late, one evening, laden as usual with the spoils of the forest in the form of roots, blossoms, and knobby chunks of clay and colored ochre. It was rather startling, as a first experience, and in the twilight to come upon a bronzed old warrior in the mountain wilds, but, after an in- voluntary pause, during which Vevie clung tightly to his hand, and Califs shining eyes began to gleam ominously, father quickened his steps and overtook the Indian saying, in white man's fashion, " Good evening, sir." " Ugh, ugh ! white man," grunted the Indian, and although he stepped aside to give them room to pass on the narrow trail, it was not re- assuring to observe that he gave, what seemed to father, unmistakable signs of having indulged too freely in liquor ; yet he was a pitiful figure, too, old, far from home, alone in the shades of coming night. If father had not been in the habit of looking below the surface of things, he would not have seen and thought of all this ; and our attempts to conduct a successful sheep 212 THE GIRL RANCHERS ranch in San Coulee would have ended in dis- aster. Instead of passing on, he stopped and looked at the Indian, who, waiting patiently for him to proceed, minded his scrutiny as much, and no more, than he would that of a rabbit. " You are tired and a long way from home, I see," father remarked at last, " and I doubt if you can go much further," which was intended as a gentle reminder that he had been drinking overmuch, but the Indian took it differently. " Lame," he said, laconically, pointing to his left foot which was clumsily bandaged. "Slip on trail away yond', rock roll on foot, smash," he explained with no waste of words but with sufficient clearness. " Where are you going ?" The Indian glanced up to where the rose-col- ored pennons and clouds of snow danced along the crest of Kenneth. These, driven from the snow-fields by the fierce wind that sprang up with the going down of the sun, were already streaming along in weird procession. Then he said, stoically, " Reservation." AN ODD ACQUAINTANCE 213 " The Reservation !" father echoed. " With your lame foot? Why, man it's twenty-five miles to the Reservation ! Thirty-five miles by Agency road ; twelve miles less over the moun- tain. Do you mean that you intend to cross the mountain to-night?" " Got to. No camp, no fire ; no eat ; got to," the Indian replied, with dogged patience. " You come home with me, and I'll see about all that, and look after that wounded foot into the bargain," replied father, walking forward with Vevie's hand in his, and Calif, contrary to his wont at times, made no objections to the pro- ceedings, but followed sedately behind the In- dian, who hobbled painfully along in father's wake. Florence was at home that day. When they reached the house and father stopped on the threshold she was playing and singing. The Indian, just at father's back, laid his hand sud- denly on his shoulder, compelling him to pause, while he thrust his copper-colored face close to father's, gazing at the singer steadfastly, bre'ath- 214 THE GIRL RANCHERS lessly, as though spellbound, as, indeed, he was. Fortunately Florence did not see the strange, wild face, with its glinting black eyes, regard- ing her with such fascinated interest. If she had, I dare say she would have screamed, and thereby wrecked our fortunes, for Running Wolf, as we presently found his name to be, was as sensitive as any other shy, half-tamed creature of the mountains. When the last ringing notes of the song died away father stepped forward. He understood and liked poor old Running Wolf from that moment. " Flossie," he said, " I've brought you and Ma- tilda a patient." He threw the door wide open, so that the red light of sunset lit up Running Wolf in all his barbaric ugliness. " His foot is hurt, and he needs attention," he continued. When I came home an hour later his foot had been carefully dressed, he had been fed, and was lying on a pile of blankets before the fireplace, sleepily blinking at the genial warmth of the fire that was seldom allowed to die out on our hearth. CHAPTER XV A WILD RIDE WHEN we became somewhat accustomed to the range work it did not so completely ab- sorb all of our thoughts, although it certainly did occupy all of the time of one or the other of us. As our own anxieties became a trifle less overwhelming we were able to take some interest in our neighbors, neighbors still, even if they were disposed to have none of us. Aunt Matilda not only discovered that the wife of our morose friend, Roy Jones, was sick, but she promptly made Mrs. Jones her particular charge, so that it was not unusual especially before aunt became the fairly good horsewoman that she did in time for Florence or me to find on returning from our day's work on the range, that she had an errand for one or the other of us in behalf of Mrs. Jones. These errands took the form of a late ride over to the 215 216 THE GIRL RANCHERS Jones's residence oftener than was pleasant for a tired sheep herder, but I hope that it was partly good feeling, as well as a recognition of the fact that it was well for us to place any cattleman under a debt of obligation to us whenever the opportunity offered, that made us refrain from making any objections to these supplementary rides. As a matter of fact it was usually I who took them if they came late, because I was supposed to be much more courageous than Florence, and it was on account of my being credited with so much courage that Aunt Matilda said to me one evening about nine o'clock, " Elsie, I de- clare, I'm most ashamed to ask it of you, but I just wish you would go and take this basket of grapes over to Mrs. Jones. You wouldn't be afraid to go, would you." " No." "You see," aunt continued in explanation, " Mrs. Jones wasn't quite so well when I was over there day before yesterday ; she was long- ing for some fruit, so I went over to the store A WILD RIDE 217 and asked Mr. Davis to have some grapes sent up from Carstou first chance he got. They came late this afternoon, and I've been waiting all the evening hoping that E-ome would call and take them around for us, but I guess he isn't coming to-night. Of course Mrs. Jones can wait if you don't feel like going." "I'll go, Aunt Matilda. Johnny," I con- tinued turning to the motionless figure that always established itself safely in the chimney corner with the coming of night and darkness, " please go and saddle Chris for me." Johnny arose obediently, but paused on the threshold. " Better take Luck," he said. " No ; Luck is tired. I'll take Chris." " I'm afraid Luck's little rider is tired, too," father interposed, with an affectionate glance at me. "Isn't it asking a good deal of Elsie, Mattie, to ask her to add a six-mile ride late in the evening to what she has already done ?" " I don't mind it at all," I hastened to say, seeing a look of concern on aunt's face. " It does not follow that I ana tired because my horse 218 THE GIRL RANCHERS is ; I have only had to sit 011 his back and "be carried around." But I did not tell them that I had no notion of taking a six mile ride when the errand could be done by going three. I knew that there would be an outcry if they sus- pected my intention of making use of the trail through the canon. Although late in the evening late for us sober valley folk it was not very dark, a crescent moon hung low in the west, and it was by its doubtful light that I caught a glimpse of Florence's anxious face, as she came noiselessly to my side after Johnny had brought Chris up to the horse block in front of the cottage, and I was seated in the saddle with the basket of grapes across' my lap. " Elsie," she whispered, " I wish aunt hadn't asked you to go ; it's so dark " "Not at all dark, Florence, when one gets used to being out." " Well ; suppose you were to meet some one, or something, on the road? I just wish you would take this." " This " was a big revolver A WILD RIDE 219 that had been left in the cottage from the time of the Seaton occupancy. " Do you mean, Flossie, that if I meet any one you would like to have me shoot them ?" " You know what I mean," she retorted, with a vexed laugh. " Do take it." " No ; you know very well that I couldn't hit the side of a house if one should attack me. I'll have to trust to luck or rather to Chris." " Don't stay a minute later than you must," she persisted, as I touched the shoulder of the yellow broncho, who responded by breaking into a trot that racked every bone in my body. It was in vain that I tried to induce him to lope. His repertoire consisted, apparently, of a walk and a trot alone. Trees and shrubs were nothing more than mere vague outlines, black shadows, peopled with all sorts of dreadful possibilities in the way of wild animals, when we began to descend the rocky and difficult slope along which the trail that formed a short cut between the Jones ranch and the rest of the valley wound in 220 THE GIKL RANCHERS tortuous course. Chris's slow walk became even slower as lie picked his unwilling way down into the depths whose dense shadows the scant moon- light did not penetrate. It was very quiet. Only Chris's footfall, or the rattling of a pebble displaced by his step and sliding away down the slope, and the weird, uncanny voice of the water as it seemed, in the darkness, to pause and listen, and then to hurry on the faster for its brief stay, broke the intense silence. I was not afraid, yet it was a relief when we emerged safely from the canon to find that the lights of the Jones resi- dence were shining before us. There was neither fence nor gate in front of the dreary little cabin of the cattleman, and so I rode close to the door, tapping upon it with the toe of my boot, for want of a free hand. It was promptly opened, and Mr. Jones himself relieved me of my load. I declined his invitation to alight on the score of the lateness of the hour, and he admitted : " It is ruther late. Some gals would be afraid t' ride 'round alone along the road so late in the evening." A WILD RIDE 221 " I wouldn't be afraid to ride along the road ; but it is so much further that way that I came through the canon." "Through the canon ! Did ye? Wai' I swan ! Ye've got a consid'able pluck. Goin' back that-a-way ?" " Yes ; if my horse could find the way here I guess he'll find the way back all right." " It ain't a matter of a hoss' findin' his way, altogether," Mr. Jones insisted, and then he added politely : " Tell Miss Stanley that my wife is much obleeged for the grapes. She's gittin' real sot on Miss Stanley, my wife is." Leaving my messages and inquiring for the in- valid I again turned my horse's head toward the canon, but Mr. Jones's remark, " It ain't a matter of a hoss' findin' his way, altogether," seemed, as we again dropped down into the shadows, to have a sinister significance. I knew that hunters told some wild stories of this particular canon a mere savage rent in the high mountains flanking the northern side of the valley which, broadening and deepening 222 THE GIRL RANCHERS as it neared the plains, became a formidable obstacle to travel. According to these disquiet- ing legends its pecularity was that it afforded beasts of prey a safe runway from their moun- tain fastnesses to the plains, where they might gratify their taste for beef or mutton, whichever came handiest, and return to the mountains secure from molestation. I had the carelessness of ignorance so far as any fear of wild animals went, still, it was any- thing but pleasant at that hour of the night, to find myself involuntarily recalling some of those stories. It was in vain that I resolutely told myself I would not think of such things. I could think of nothing else and was in the midst of a most thrilling recollection when Chris suddenly stopped. Chris was staring, as though fascinated, at the low branches of a spreading oak that overhung the trail a few yards in front, and was trembling as with an ague. If it had been Luck, cowering and cring- ing under me, I should have been terribly frightened, but I had so poor an opinion of A WILD RIDE 223 Chris's intelligence that, after the first start of alarm, I was not greatly concerned. Chris was never reliable, and Rome, who had ridden him more than any of us, declared that the horse saw ghosts. He could account for the little broncho's unreasonable fits of terror on no other ground, so now I struck him sharply with the riding whip, urging him forward. Instead of obeying, he literally sat down upon his haunches, like a dog. I was sure that he would have howled if he could, and sure, also, that he was looking at something as yet invisible to me. I bent forward, studying the oak tree with in- quiring eyes and presently I made out a curious phenomenon. Something was hanging sus- pended from one of the lower limbs of the oak ; something with a thick-set, tapering body, that was writhing and twisting slowly with a half circular motion. I naturally thought of snakes, and then remembered that there were no snakes in the valley ; at least that was what the people told us. Straining my eyes, I looked up into the dense 224 THE GIKL EANCHEES foliage of the tree, following the swaying thing that was not a snake. I made out a long, lithe, indistinct shape crouching motionless, save for the tail, along the length of the oak limb, and a pair of yellow eyes glared down into mine like two points of flames. I had never before seen a mountain lion but I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I saw one now. The knowl- edge seemed, for the time being, to deprive me of my senses ; if I had studied to do the worst thing possible I do not see how I could have succeeded better. Raising my whip I struck frantically in the direction of those gleaming eyes. The crazed, aimless blows fell sharply across the face of the broncho, who, roused into action whirled more swiftly than he had ever before moved in his life, gave one long leap on the backward trail, and flung me headlong to the ground. If I had been less unnerved by terror I should not have been unseated ; as it was, I lay on the ground, under the oak, stunned, but yet, not wholly unconscious, for I heard and recognized the clatter of Chris's flying hoofs as A WILD RIDE 225 he scattered a shower of loose shingle in his mad flight from the canon, but the recognition was too faint to concern me much. I suppose that I really was benumbed with terror rather than actually stunned, for I knew when something fell with a soft, heavy thud beside me, knew when it stood over me and glared into my face with those two points of yellow flame so close to my own half-closed eyes that their vivid rays seemed to scorch and burn, while the hot, heavy breath sent a fetid blast into my face, but I did not move, and the merciful trance of terror probably saved my life. Hunters say that lions will not, for the mere pleasure of the thing, rend any creature that they believe to be dead. A cat, discovering a dead mouse, will dine off it daintily, but unless she is a kitten, and, therefore, frivolous, she dis- dains to play with it. Probably my lion was not, just then, pressed by hunger. I even think that but for the accident of Chris's throwing me I might have passed safely under the oak limb. The creature walked around and around me as 15 226 THE GIRL RANCHERS I lay prone on the ground. The night wind was beginning to sweep fitfully down its accus- tomed path from the mountains to the plains ; a stray gust caught and fluttered the skirt of my dress, and the lion, halting instantly in its slink- ing promenade, laid a heavy paw upon the fab- ric, while its fierce eyes again sought my face. As I made no movement it withdrew a few steps, occasionally giving vent to a low growl. Finally it stretched itself upon the ground in a position favorable for watching, and lay there as still as the immovable rocks around us. Minutes passed how many I could not know, but so many that I had time to wonder, in a half paralyzed, impersonal way, how long it would take a person to die of fright, for it did not occur to me to make any effort to save myself; I only hoped, dimly, that I might die before the lion attacked me. Suddenly there was again a sound of hurrying hoofs, and a big voice the voice of Roy Jones now neither sullen or reserved shouted my name, " Elsie ! Hel lo oo ! he 11 oo ! Elsie!" The lion, A WILD RIDE 227 springing up, stood its ground uncertainly for an instant, but the cat-like habit of caution pre- vailed, and it slunk noiselessly back into the shadow of the oak. In a second more Chris, unwilling, terrified, and going at a rate that no one familiar with his previous record would be- lieve possible, burst into view, bearing Roy Jones on his back. Chris sprang aside, snort- ing and trembling again at sight of me lying beside the trail, and Mr. Jones leaped from the saddle and hastened to my side. He knelt down, lifting me up with an arm like that of a prize-fighter. "I swan! I hope you ain't killed, Miss Stanley !" he ejaculated, fer- vently. " What's happened ? Horse throwed ye?" I sat up, pushing the hair back from my face. " Where did the lion go ?" I asked, stu- pidly. " The lion ? Hey, that's it, is it ?" " Yes," I said ; " and it went under that tree." Mr. Jones, still supporting me with one arm, pulled a heavy revolver the cowboys all call 228 THE GIRL RANCHERS them " guns " from its sheath attached to his belt, and peered inquiringly into the oak shadows. "If the lion went in there he's prob'ly there yet," he said, cocking the weapon ; " but if he'll let me alone I won't trouble him ; I ain't lost no lion, not to-night. Here, let me help you on the hoss, and we'll perceed out o' here kind o' cautious like. The lion won't tackle us as long as he thinks we're on the watch for him." All this time Mr. Jones had clung to Chris's bridle, and Chris had been pulling mightily, in a transport of fear, to get away from him. In- stead of slackening on the bridle, and thereby giving the broncho a chance as he lifted me to the saddle, Mr. Jones put one foot on the bridle reins, holding the horse's nose down close to the ground while he swung me up. It was a little thing to notice at such a time, but it was so effective that I could not help but observe it. Once in the saddle my courage returned to me. I did not think it at all likely that Chris would be able to dismount me again, whatever he might A WILD RIDE 229 do. But it was evident that Mr. Jones intended to take no risks. " Sure you're all right ?" he asked, as I settled myself securely. "Yes, I think so." " Very well, then ; now, you make it your business to stay right there, and I'll do the rest." He stepped forward cautiously as he spoke, gun in hand, but we passed the tree in safety, and, before we were out of the cafion I was giving him the details of my encounter with the lion. " You had a close squeak for it, no mistake," was his candid summing up. " You see, that there canon ain't never over'n above safe, not after night it ain't ; but I didn't want to tell you that after you'd jest been through it, so I thought I hang 'round out-doors, after you started for home, until I was sure you had had time to git through the cafion all right, and whilst I was loitering 'round, what should come a-tearing up to the door but your hoss ! I knowed that that meant something wrong, of course. I hope you won't lay it up agin me 230 THE GIRL RANCHERS that I was a-hollering your name that-a-way back yon. I had to yell the name that I thought would git to you quickest." I hastened to reassure him on that point, and, his tongue, perhaps, loosened by the strangeness of the adventure, he went on to tell me of vari- ous encounters that he had had with the wild creatures of the mountains, creatures that he classified under the one generic title of " brute beasts." He kept his place by my bridle rein until we had nearly reached the door of our cottage. Then he stopped abruptly in the midst of a bear story to say : " Wai, I reckon you'll git home the rest o' the way all right, but don't ye make a short cut of the Devil's Furrow any more after dark. Good-night." An instant more and he was out f*f sight. CHAPTER XVI A FRIEND IN NEED RUNNING WOLF'S hurt proved to be rather a serious matter. He stayed with us nearly a week, during which time father, who had taken a silent man's fancy to another equally silent, dressed his wound and asked no questions, but, at the close of the fourth day, the patient him- self developed an unexpected vein of curiosity. When alone with Aunt Matilda he began ask- ing questions. He inquired in quite fair English, for all that he was so taciturn, where the " Light of Day " meaning Florence, as aunt made out with some difficulty, and the little dark squaw, meaning me, as she made out with no difficulty at all went every morning. Aunt Matilda ex- plained at length about the sheep, and Running Wolf nodded silent comprehension. He made no comments, not even when aunt, glad of the opportunity to pour the tale of her troubles into 231 232 THE GIRL RANCHERS an ear that she believed to be friendly, told of our increasing anxiety about the sheep-shearing, which, in common humanity, must be attended to next week if at all. " Bet' not 'tall ; bet' sell 'em," said Eunning Wolf, and said no more, but, later in the day, he asked,! "Light of Day goin' wash 'em sheep?" "I don't know," said Aunt Matilda, help- lessly, and instantly added, "Why, no. How could she? Poor child!" " Light of Day can sing," the Indian resumed calmly, " her sing ; that all right." "Singing won't shear the sheep," Aunt Matilda informed him irritably. Running Wolf looked as though he had a different opinion, but he said nothing. He was anxious to get back to the Reservation, explaining that this continued absence might tell against him. Indians absent from the Reservation without leave were pun- ished by being deprived at the Agent's dis- cretionof a portion small or large as the case might be of the monthly allotment of beef and A FRIEND IN NEED 233 clothing, and often suffered imprisonment in the guard-house for such offenses. " I goin' kill what man tries to put me in the guard-house," Running Wolf told us with quiet decision, as he recited this schedule of Agency rules to us : "I never been in no more prison than Reservation ; that 'nuff. Not goin' stay in no white man's wick-i-up less'n I want to." " I should suppose that there would not be the least danger of your being treated with such severity," father said. " Your accident is excuse enough for your absence." " Been a good many away from Reservation without leave. Agent say he goin' to make 'samples of 'em when they come in. Agent say to me, I go to Louisiana Medina's wick-i-up ; talk at him, buy some blankets. Say I go two . days ; not say I smash foot and go five day already." " Well, but a glance at your foot is enough. He can see how impossible it would have been for you to proceed after getting such a hurt." 234 THE GIRL BANCHERS Running Wolf shook his head. "Indian bad," he said candidly. " Agent think maybe I make smash ; stay away longer." The old man's distress so plainly increased as the hours went by that father bethought himself of a means by which he might not only get him home but also explain the reason of his stay in order to avert any threatened punishment. " I'll lend you a horse, Running Wolf, and ride over with you to-morrow ; then I'll tell the agent just how it is," he said. Running Wolf heard of this plan in stolid silence, but early the next morning, glancing out of the window as I was dressing, whom should I see limping away down the road but Running Wolf! He had slipped quietly out of the house and started on the long and painful tramp alone, rather than have any discussion as to the propriety of the move with the white man who was so bent on befriending him. I must confess to having taken a fancy to him myself, and the sight of him limping resolutely away from us sent a pang to my heart. A FRIEND IN NEED 235 Twice during the season, and before I had taken up the arduous life of a shepherdess, I had joined a party of young people valley residents bound on a picnic in making the ascent of Mount Kenneth. To picnic on that grand peak seemed to me little short of sacrilege, but my scruples did not deter me from going. After all, the gay riding party went no farther than the timber line, and I felt that I had learned the trail without belittling the mountain that I so respected. I had never descended the trail on the farther side, but Running Wolf would know the way. If Florence would take charge of the flock for the day what was to hinder my taking the Indian over to the Agency? I felt all the more eager to help him since his quiet departure told more plainly than words could have done, what he thought of father's attempting such a feat. I did not want him to suffer for his consideration to a sick man. I finished dressing in haste and ran out after him. "Wait, Running Wolf, wait, I'll take you over the mountain." 236 THE GIRL RANCHERS "Little squaw take? All right. Lots of squaw. Not many good white mans," and with these uncomplimentary words the old man sat down in the dust by the roadside, " Bring on horse," he said. " Well, but you must come back to the house and get some breakfast, so must I, then we'll start right off." " Little squaw go back V eat ; me stay here ; me got breakfas'." He produced a leathery look- ing string of venison from the pouch under his blanket, and began chewing at one end of it with stolid determination. I knew by this time that it was quite useless to argue with him, but I could not forbear saying : " I think you had better come back, Running Wolf." " Me go on ; me not go back. Good white man sick. Cough, cough, laugh, say ' all right, me got a little tickle in windpipe/ No say he sick. If Running Wolf go back to get on pony, white man get on one, too, ride, ride, tire all out; cough, cough, no more laugh. Me no go back." A FRIEND IN NEED 237 " I am afraid you are right ; stay here and I'll come in a few minutes." Father, who had had a bad night, raised no special objections to my taking his place in going over the mountain. I knew very well that he was far from understanding what an undertaking it really was, and was thankful that there was small chance of his being enlight- ened. Florence, who appreciated the situation better, objected strenuously to my going on such an errand. " You'll get lost ; you'll never find your way home alone after you get the Indian safe to the Reservation." " Florence, the horses will know the home- ward trail whether I do or not. I'll leave it to them if I get confused. Don't worry, be a prac- tical Bo-peep, and expect me home not much later than usual." The trip, which was so formidable to look at was accomplished in perfect safety. I saw the agent, a gentlemanly man with a rather stern face, who politely commended what he was 238 THE GIRL RANCHERS pleased to call my courage and kindness in bringing Running Wolf into the fold. I be- spoke his clemency for the silent victim who disdained to make any explanations himself, and, having taken dinner with the agent's wife, and made a number of pleasant acquaintances, I was in the saddle and on my homeward way before two o'clock. The road led past the tepee or lodge or whatever he called it, of Running Wolf, whom I found seated outside his abode waiting to give me a parting word, which I ac- cepted in the same spirit of friendliness in which it was offered, although I had not the faintest conception of its meaning. "Two suns, we come, Light of Day. Little squaw be there," he said. I was home before Florence, and a good deal elated at having added another route to my list of mountain trails. I was anxious to become acquainted with the country in all directions. Rome was unusually busy with his irrigating ditch about this time and we saw less of him than usual, but he happened to call that even- A FRIEND IN NEED 239 ing. He had been down to Mr. Davis' store and stopped to regale us with some bits of valley gossip on his return. " Wool's gone up ; way up," he told us, among other things. " If you can get your sheep sheared all right, Miss Stanley, you'll make a pile of money, over 'n' above expenses ; there's been some kind of a disease among the sheep down South, and the clip don't amount to more'n half as much as it gen'lly does. That shortage has sent the price of wool up booming. Your stock is in prime condition now, and if we can get the shearing done and the clip marketed while the price is up, you'll get a snug pile for your summer's work, girls. But, gracious, I wish't some one would tell us how the shearing's to be done. When this business does pay it pays big ; when it don't it makes one feel creepy. I wish I could shear the sheep myself, but I can't, and there's no use talking, it needs about forty good, active men. They would get it all done in one day. I reckon it would take me single- handed, with what I don't know about the 240 THE GIRL RANCHERS business, all the rest of my natural life, and I expect to live to be pretty old, too." The next day, while I watched the flock, Florence rode about the valley again in hopeless quest of the shearers that, apparently, did not exist. The swarthy sons of Mexico whom she interviewed blessed her going and her coming, but work for her they would not. I am afraid that we began to feel unreasonably bitter toward them. Our need of their services was so great, we offered them alluring wages, but they were afraid; the shadow of the cattlemen's wrath was heavy upon them. The fire of that wrath was smoldering, not dead, by any means, although, save social and commercial ostracism, we had not felt its fury since driving the sheep out on the plains. The shearers knew very well that their poor homes, their lives, even, were in danger if they were caught giving aid to us, the innocent owners of some sheep that these cattlemen had said should not remain in the valley not even upon land that belonged to their owners. When it came to the rights A FRIEND IN NEED 241 of property considered from that standpoint, the cattlemen insisted that a principle was at stake. Beside, the land outside on the plains where the sheep were now grazing was only leased school land, and some of the cattlemen said that the land agent had no right to lease land for sheep-grazing purposes. It gradually dawned upon us that in his haste to be rid of his troublesome stock Mr. Seaton had even suffered the financial loss entailed by not shearing the sheep when they were in his hands ; for it was a thing that should have been done before they came into our possession. That seemed strange at first ; afterward it did not. It resolved itself into another instance of Mr. Seaton's far-reaching shrewdnesSo But it was quite by accident that we discovered that, and this is not the time to tell it. There was a sort of outer pen built in connec- tion with the plains' corral, into which sheep were driven after washing, the washing pen it- self being built out into the San Coulee at a spot where the rugged, precipitous banks happened 16 242 THE GIRL RANCHERS to give way, allowing an easy outlet to the plains. From this water pen two walled lanes diverged, the one leading to the large corral, the other to the outer pen where they were penned after washing to await the work of the shearers. It was with heavy hearts and downcast faces that Florence and I approached the scene of our daily labors on the morning of the third day after I had helped Running Wolf to reach the Reservation. Florence was in tears. She had worked under the relentless strain of a newly awakened sense of duty during all these weeks of exposure to the blazing sun on fair days or the cold, misty rain on the infrequent dark days, and now saw the whole profit of those days of toil, and all that we hoped to gain by that profit, slipping through our helpless fingers, all for the want of a few men for a few hours. " They will ruin us ; they will drive us away, Elsie," she said, brokenly. " We cannot stand up against them. The failure to get shearers is just as bad for us in every way as the stampede, and more discouraging. They mean to keep A FRIEND IN NEED 243 the Mexicans terrorized so that they will not work for us. I don't mean about the herding we can manage that, I suppose, even in winter,," The question of the care of this great herd of sheep in winter had troubled me not a little, but I had not spoken of it, for the reason that I was trying to live up to the homely wisdom embodied in President Lincoln's reply to the timid fellow -traveler who was anxiously won- dering as they journeyed toward it how they were to cross the Sangamon River, the stream being at flood and the bridges gone. Lincoln said impressively, " My dear sir, I make it a rule never to cross the Sangamon River until I get there." I told myself that I would not allow the thought of any of our possible bugbears to worry me until they actually confronted me, but in the case of the sheep shearing the bug- bear was already confronting and staring us menacingly in the face. As we surmounted the last gentle swell that brought us in sight of the corral where we had left the sheep safely penned the night before, 244 THE GIRL RANCHERS we drew rein and stared in speechless amaze- ment at the scene before us. The sun was just rising, sending long, level shafts of light straight from his throne in the east until their flaming glory touched and transfigured for an instant a line of large rounded objects strung along the river bank close by the sheep-washing pen, making them look, for the nonce, like symmet- rical golden haystacks. Then the glory faded, became diffused, and we saw that the golden haystacks were only a half-dozen dingy, smoke- stained Indian tepees. But that was not all ; the sliding gate at the back of the corral, open- ing upon the water lane, had been unlocked and a line of reluctant sheep were being urged along the narrow way toward the water pen by two or three swarthy men. Already it seemed im- possible, but we had the evidence of our own eyesight for it a score or more of shorn and bleating victims looking ridiculously small and foolish without the heavy fleeces to which we, and they, had become accustomed were venturing timidly out toward their usual feed- A FRIEND IN NEED 245 ing grounds. And Felix ? Felix with his alert, official air, was here, there, and everywhere, urging on the unwilling candidates for a bath, and scattering the shivering, silly creatures who hung about bewildered by the transformation they had undergone out upon the plains. He was evidently upon the best of terms with each and every member of the swarthy host that had encamped beside his charges. " What, what does it mean ?" gasped Flor- ence. " I'm not quite sure, Flossie ; but I think it means that our sheep shearing is well under way," I replied. CHAPTER XVH THE SHEARING OF THE SHEEP WE rode nearer, but very slowly. Presently out from the entrance to one of the tepees, a dusky figure hobbled, stared at us a moment, and then advanced to meet us. It was Run- ning Wolf, his face one broad smile of satisfac- tion. " Light of Day sing ; Indians wash sheep, shear sheep, all done soon," he proclaimed, waving his hand toward the scene of activity where, it appeared to me, an entire Indian tribe were industriously working. " Why but but Indians ! I never knew that they could would do such things !" stammered Florence. " These good Indians ; not war-path Indians. No." There was a grave dignity in the manner in which he spoke of the virtues of this par- ticular tribe that seemed to forbid further in- 246 THE SHEARING OF THE SHEEP 247 quiry. Florence and I, dazed with astonishment, rode down to the river pen, where more than a dozen men were washing the struggling sheep. I looked attentively at the Indians in the water and shearing-pen. They were smaller, as a rule, than any Indians I had ever before seen ; their faces were brown, their white teeth gleamed through lips parted in frequent good- natured smiles ; their voices when they spoke, which was seldom were mellow, and the few low words that they used were Spanish, but their costume what there was of it was unmistakably, indeed, rather obtrusively, In- dian. They worked fast, with a certain air of sec- recy and furtive watchfulness. One slender, brown-limbed brave whom I saw scrubbing away at a sheep, up to his hips in water, had a face so like that of our own vanished Mexican herder that he might save for the dress, have been his twin brother, but he was plainly an Indian, for he wore an eagle's feather dangling loosely from his long black locks. 248 THE GIRL RANCHERS "Elsie," whispered Florence, riding up to my side, " they are Mexicans." Running Wolf, who had hobbled quickly after us, laid his hand on her pony's mane. " They are Indians, Light of Day, they are Indians !" he declared, almost fiercely. En- lightenment was slowly dawning upon us. " They are Indians for to-day," I said. Running Wolf looked at me, his keen eyes flashing. " Mexican shearer 'fraid of cattleman ; git out here ; git shot," he said slowly. " Traid to shear 'em sheep for white squaws. Indian not 'fraid. Agency officers goin' make it hot for any man what hurt Indian. Cattleman let Indian 'lone. Cowboy ride 'long past corral ; see Indian shearin', scowl, say nottin', go 'bout their business " which was, in fact, a thing that had already happened. "See Mexican shearin'," continued Running Wolf impres- sively, " ride up, say, ' Ho, you scoundrels ! git out o' that or I shoot !' Mexican then git out, sheep no shear." THE SHEARING OF THE SHEEP 249 " But what if the cowboys go to the Mexican houses and find them gone ?" I asked. Running Wolf chuckled. "No fin' 'em gone ; all men 'roun' home. Mexicans to-day ; Indians to-morrow." This, then, was Running Wolfs strategic scheme, as well as the explanation of his last words to me. There were fifty or more men at work in and around the corral, which meant that Running Wolf had been able to install as many Indians for the day in the various Mexican houses up and down the Coulee. The plan was as safe as it was shrewd, for, even if, as was not very likely to happen, an inquisitive rider should stop at one of the Mexican houses, the head of the family had but to show himself at a safe distance out of talking range and slink away, leaving the burden of conversation to be carried on by the women. This was customary, as the women were, almost without exception, much better linguists than the men. " Running Wolf," I said in a burst of grat- itude, " your plan is glorious ! glorious ! But 250 THE GIRL RANCHERS how in the world did you get permission to bring so many men from the Reservation ?" " Indian police bad Indians, been drinking much firewater las' two day," replied Running Wolf with a gravity that repelled the suspicion that he himself might have been instrumental in furnishing the betraying firewater to the mounted police whose duty it was to patrol the Indian village and make sure that none were missing. " You goin' give two wage for dis' ?" Running Wolf asked suddenly. " You mean double pay ? Yes, we will." He shook his head. " No mean two pays for one man. One day wage for mens here ; one day wage for mens in houses." " Oh, yes ; yes indeed. I see now. It shall be just as you say, Running Wolf, and we are, oh, so grateful to you besides. You are the general who planned all this, and have taken so much risk with your lame foot and all, you will let us pay you " "Yes," interrupted the Indian quickly. "You THE SHEARING OF THE SHEEP 251 goiii' pay me big, big !" There was a sudden lighting of his saturnine countenance, "you goin' pay me now." " How ?" I asked in some alarm. " Light of Day goin' sit on yon' rock near wash-pen and sing, ' In the fair-hy li-hight, of a sum-mah ni-ght, on 'e ba-hanks of 'e bl-hue more-shell!'" There was something inexpress- ibly ludicrous in the old man's attempt made in absolute good faith to imitate Florence's voice and even the little affectations of her pronunciation. Flossie's face turned scarlet. I bit my lips and looked long at the mirage of spectre pine trees, gliding and breaking in endless procession at the base of the far-off Rattlesnake Buttes, before I could find voice to say steadily, " I think that is a very nice arrangement." " Yes, I make that 'rangement with shearers. They work. Light of Day sing. Little dark squaw look on. Come." We had already dismounted, letting our ponies' bridles trail cowboy fashion, while they 252 THE GIRL RANCHERS grazed at will. We followed Running Wolf to the place indicated. He had already spread a blanket on the rock. Florence seated herself and sang steadily for nearly two hours, Run- ning Wolf lying prone upon the ground at her feet and keeping his eyes closed in a state of blissful silence. He paid no attention what- ever to the shearers ; his business had been to get them there. They could do the rest. Florence, who was getting very tired, said at last, " My sister sings." "Ugh mebbe don't look like it. Sing," commanded our benefactor. I complied with the order to the best of my ability, and when I had concluded he complimented my performance by remarking : " Little dark squaw like mock bird ; not much to look at ; good to hear sing. Sing again." The poor old fellow's spiritual nature was starved, he was insatiable in his eagerness for music, yet he evidently did not intend to be at all hard on us, only, to an Indian, a woman of whatever color is always a squaw and no more. THE SHEARING OF THE SHEEP 253 When, later than usual, Florence and I mounted our ponies and started home that evening, there was no sign of an Indian en- campment anywhere in the vicinity, but the corral sheds were piled high with hundreds of pounds of clean, white fleeces, and inside the corral two thousand seven hundred and sixty- five newly-shorn sheep huddled, crouching to- gether for warmth. Felix, with the satisfied air of one who has done a good day's work, as, in- deed, he had, lay in his box beside the closed gates, his nose on his paws, his watchful eyes blinking drowsily. We were both so hoarse from much singing that we could scarcely speak, but our hearts were light, lighter than they had been since the night that the Mexican herders had come to tell us that they could no longer work for us, for the clip was saved, and the payment on our home assured. Running Wolf had stipulated that we should " make no talk " as he expressed it, but should put the pay for the day's work in a hollow rock beside the trail to the upper Coulee, the location of which he 254 THE GIRL RANCHERS minutely described. " Put it there to-night, then go home," he admonished us. The place that he mentioned was about a mile from our cottage. We got the money of Aunt Matilda, who fairly cried with joy when she found what had taken place, then rode to the rock, and were back again by the time twilight had fairly merged into early night. Rome called that evening, much troubled in mind over our un- shorn sheep it was an exquisite pleasure to tell him that the work was done. " Done by a band of roving Indians from the Reservation." " I'm all-fired glad it's done in some way," he said, " but it's the first time I ever knew a Reservation Indian to do anything so much like work." It really seemed disloyal to this good man, who had always been such a steadfast friend in time of need, not to tell him how the work had been done. I reasoned that Running Wolf himself would probably have made an exception in his favor, and so I told him, forgetting in the THE SHEARING OF THE SHEEP 255 interest of my story that father's door was open and that it was quite too early for him to be asleep. He had retired very early, being more than usually tired from the effect of a day's labor in which it had been impossible to make use of Johnny's willing but ignorant help. He had been enlarging his brick-kiln, and Johnny could not understand his directions, so, as I have said, father went to bed very weary, but my story woke him up most effectually. He arose, dressed in silence, and came out into the room where we were sitting. " Now tell me all about it," he said, sitting down quite heedless of our ill-concealed con- sternation. " Why was all this secrecy neces- sary about the sheep shearing? Why has it been so difficult all along for us to hire herders when there are scores of Mexicans out of work here in the valley ? Why did Mr. Seaton allow the herders that we did have to keep the flock penned in the upper valley until they were half starved ? Why " " Don't you think you have asked questions 256 THE GIRL RANCHERS enough for one evening, Hugh?" asked Aunt Matilda with unusual asperity. I think she was rather frightened as to the effect on him of the disclosure that she foresaw must come. " No, Matilda, I don't ; my only regret is that I have been too stupidly selfish to ask them before. Now I mean to find out. I mean to find out why a band of Mexican sheep shearers must masquerade as Indians before they can safely do their work, if I have to walk over the mountain to ask old Running Wolf himself, who seems to know all about our business." "I told him," confessed Aunt Matilda; "I was in sore distress, I had to tell some one." "And not having any brother handy you chose our red friend as a confidant ; your choice seems to have been a wise one." " Now, Hugh, we kept it from you lest it should worry you. You would not have been in such health as you are to-day if you had known all." " Perhaps not, Mattie. I do not question the unselfishness of your motive. You have all THE SHEARING OF THE SHEEP 257 sacrificed yourselves for me as usual. You have meant to spare me what ?" Evasion or concealment was now out of the question. " You tell him, Rome," said Aunt Matilda, with the air of one who yields against her better judgment. " We've got the wool clip, any way," she murmured, fortifying herself with that fact. " I have suspected for some time that all was not right," father said, when Rome had related at length the attitude and claims of the cattle- men, "but I am so proud of my girls, my two brave, unselfish girls, that it is almost worth while to have had this experience, hard as it is, just to know what they can do when the occa- sion calls for it. But it won't do to try even the highest mettle beyond a certain point, you know, and it appears to me we have quite reached that point." " Why, papa I" ejaculated Florence hoarsely, " when the clip is all wooled I mean when the wool is all clipped, and stored ready for 17 258 THE GIRL RANCHERS marketing ! And if you are going to talk of bravery, think of Running Wolf and his band of kidnapped followers ! May the Agency officers be good to them I" " The day's experience seems to have tried your voice as well as that of the little dark squaw," father said, laughingly. " But it's all too risky ; we had better give in to the cattle- men until such time as they think best to keep sheep themselves at least. You have, if you will forgive me for saying it, followed your noses too closely ; you have not even entertained the idea, it appears, that there can be any other business than sheep ranching." " Well, with wool at twenty-five cents a pound, as it is in Belmont to-day, there ain't much use in thinking of anything else," inter- posed Rome. "Your venture, thanks to your own kindness and the young ladies singing and old Running Wolf's "susceptibility, has turned out most uncommon well, or it will have turned out so if we get the clip marketed whilst the price is up, and I'll help you see to that. The THE SHEARING OF THE SHEEP 259 cattlemen make a big mistake in running all the sheep out of this country, but they'll stick to it for awhile now if it's only out of spite." Within three days the clip was marketed, the balance due Mr. Seaton for the ranch sent him, and a goodly sum left to our credit in the bank as the result of our summer's work. CHAPTER XVIII NEWS FROM HOME FATHER was so aroused by what he had heard of the dangers attendant upon sheep ranching in a country dominated by cattlemen, that the purpose he had declared of getting rid of the flock did not flag as the days went by. The necessity for- action, for arousing himself to an intelligent comprehension of the matter, so far from unduly exciting him, or making him worse, seemed, really, to do him good. The store, where we were in the habit of purchasing such supplies as were not brought in by the freight wagons by special arrangement, had become rather a favorite lounging place with him, and, it is probable, he would soon have found out all that we did not wish him to know in regard to the way our neighbors felt toward us had not Aunt Matilda taken the precaution to visit ths storekeeper and earnestly impress upon him the 260 NEWS FROM HOME 261 necessity of keeping such troublesome knowl- edge from the invalid. Mr. Davis promised to do his best in this particular, and he kept his word. He succeeded so well that father never so much as suspected the reason why Mr. Davis was so prone to direct his attention to some object of interest outside of the store when there was any one present whom he thought it best that father should not meet. But the time of blissful ignorance was past, now that the wool was sold and the last dollar of our indebtedness on the San Coulee ranch paid, he announced to Aunt Matilda that he was going to see Mr. Davis and have a talk with him as to what was best to be done with our woolly charges. Aunt Matilda no longer objected. " We've had such wonderful luck," she said, " it seems almost like tempting providence to ask that it should be continued." But afterward her sense of caution took alarm and she said, " I do hope, Hugh, that you're not thinking of buying Mr. Davis' store !" Since the ranch was paid for and money still in the bank she seemed to feel 262 THE GIRL RANCHERS that we were really another lot of Roths- childs. Father smiled. " I'll not buy it to-day, Mat- tie, unless he will sell for let me see " he felt in his pockets and presently fished out a nickel " for five cents, and I doubt if he'll do that." " He sells five sticks of peppermint for a nickel," Vevie informed him. Father tossed up the coin. " Get your hat and come with me, will-o'-the-wisp. We'll see if he can have any peppermint left at that price." When he returned in the afternoon he looked elated. " The difficulty is solved, Mattie," he said as he entered the house with the step that was still slow and feeble for all his buoyant spirit. " Well, you've earned a rest, then," aunt said, pulling an easy chair toward a sunny corner. " I just expect nothing else but that you'll be down sick with all this worry ; I wish we had never let you into our silly troubles that we ought to have borne alone." NEWS FROM HOME 263 " I shall never cease to wonder that you and the girls were able to bear them alone so long, Matilda ; but now that the ranch is paid for, I think we may safely embark in another business. Something in which we will need no help but such as Johnny can give and that will not oblige my poor girls to expose themselves to such perils as they have been doing." " Whatever it is, if it can do that, it will be a welcome change," Aunt Matilda admitted. " But, indeed, Hugh, I'm afraid there is nothing. If you you are thinking of some new invention," she went on hesitatingly. " I know, of course, that it will be a good one, but" " It will be a new invention in San Coulee, Mattie," father said, smiling. " Come, now, Matilda, these cattle kings have snubbed and hounded us, suppose we return good for evil by supplying them with fruit." Aunt Matilda's face fell. " If you mean that we are to start a fruit ranch, Hugh, it's the one thing I would like above all others. Poor 264 THE GIRL RANCHERS Johnny would be just as useful then as one with the brightest wits, but I'm afraid it's im- possible." " I see that you have given the matter some thought. Among other things have you ever thought of an irrigating ditch ?" "An irrigating ditch? Why, Hugh, it would take a fortune to bring the waters of San Coulee, deep as the stream is in its banks, up to the level of our acres !" " There is a singularly obliging fellow by the name of Rome Beaumont, who has succeeded in turning the San Coulee, or the south branch of it, which is, I am told, more tractable than the main stream, in the direction that he wishes it to flow. The ditch on which he has been so long working is completed. He was compelled to blast a tunnel through a half dozen yards of solid rock to get the water where he wants it, but he's got it. Instead of turning his ditch back into the main river, as he does now, after it has served his purpose, there can be nothing easier, Mr. Davis says, than to bring NEWS FROM HOME 265 it skirting along the edge of our valley. Then we can irrigate every inch of our land if we choose." " I'm thinking that's what we'll choose !" cried Aunt Matilda with sparkling eyes. " If we can really get water on this land, we never need trouble ourselves as to the future. I tell you now, Hugh, it has almost broken my heart to see our girls obliged to do the work they have done this summer. And they have done it so cheerfully, too, even Florence, and you know how she has always regarded any personal hardship hitherto." " Yes ; but it will break my heart if they are obliged to keep this up much longer." " I haven't seemed to mind their doing it," Aunt Matilda went on, " because I knew they had to do it ; there was no choice ; now it is different. We must see Rome and get his ad- vice about disposing of the flock. He'll be glad enough to do that ; he's always wanted us to sell." " Has he ? He's a good man." 266 THE GIRL RANCHERS "And so disinterested, too!" Aunt Matilda declared warmly. " Oh ! yes, yes ; but do you think, Matilda, that he's entirely disinterested ?" "Well, Hugh, I am surprised! You are usually the last person in the world to attribute a kindness to interested motives. I really, Hugh, it pains me to hear you speak in that way. He would never take any pay, and he never spared himself in our service. I own that I did think, along at first, that he might be attracted by Florence, but I'm quite sure that was a mistake. He is so much older than she, and " " He's just about your age, isn't he, Mattie ?" " Yes, I think he is ; just about." Father's eyes were twinkling. Aunt's face still very fresh and sweet to look upon, turned a glowing crimson. She sat for a moment in silence, considering the revelation that father's words afforded. Presently Vevie, who had been sitting at the table poring over a book with absorbed interest, brought the volume to her. NEWS FROM HOME 267 It was a drawing-book, filled with sketches for the benefit of the portrait painter. Vevie had been studying the page devoted to the delinea- tion of human mouths. " Do you think one of those might be a miner's mouth, auntie?" she inquired seriously. Aunt, grown suddenly sensitive on the sub- ject of miners, turned red. " I don't know, I'm sure ; why do you ask ?" " Mr. Davis said that we could raise straw- berries here big enough to fill a miner's mouth. I wanted to know how big that would be, but if you don't know, I'll ask Mr. Rome to let me measure his mouth when he comes again." Father laughed aloud at that. " Darling, we'll raise some large enough to fill your mouth, at all events. Oh, Matilda, I have a letter for you ; I had nearly forgotten it." He fumbled in two or three different pockets before finding it, but, just as aunt was resignedly coming to the conclusion that he had either lost or mislaid it, he brought it forth. " From our esthetic friend, Mrs. Elliot, I judge, from the style of 268 THE GIRL RANCHERS the envelope. You observe that there is a crest. What is it ? A small fairy with large wings ?" " They are the wings of a goose, if any. It puts me out of all patience to see such affecta- tion." Aunt Matilda tore the letter open with small regard for the crest. We had little time for letter-writing in those busy days, and news from our old home was eagerly welcomed, crest or no crest. The chief interest of Mrs. Elliot's letter lay in the closing paragraph. " By the way," it ran, " I met young Donald Arleigh on the street this afternoon. He is looking extremely well, even handsome " "As if he didn't always look handsome," mut- tered Aunt Matilda, indignantly. " It was quite a surprise to me to learn," the letter went on, " as I did when he addressed me that he had no knowledge of your removal from the city. He was desirous of obtaining your pres- ent address, which I took pleasure in giving him, for it may be that he is as the prodigal son returning to his husks I should say, from NEWS FROM HOME 269 his husks and a word of friendly greeting now may set the young man's wandering feet in the right path." Aunt read the paragraph aloud deliberately, then she laid the letter down softly with a low sigh. The mention of Donald's name was to tear a healing wound afresh. After an interval father said, in a quivering voice : " I could bear it better, Matilda, if the mys- tery of his disappearance could be explained ; if he had a reason for Oh ! Donald, Donald !" The words ended in a groan. "Don't, Hugh." Father got up and began to walk the room greatly agitated. Vevie, the spiritual echo of another's moods, went to his side, and, slipping her hand into his, gravely kept step with him. Then the greyhound rose and trailed solemnly after them. Father stopped, the black shadow lifted from his face as he sat down and took Vevie on his knee. " We make quite a circus, darling, you and I and Calif. Come, let us tell auntie some more of what Mr. Davis said about our fruit ranch." CHAPTER XIX A SECOND STAMPEDE I HAD formed the habit, since coming to Coulee valley, of awaking very early, and I usually treated myself, in consequence, to a few minutes silent listening to the chorus of mocking birds, as they sang their loudest in the hour just before dawn. In June they had nested in the cottonwood grove on the flat, just below the turn of the river, and their songs were enough to make one thankful that God had put such bits of feathered melody on earth. In Sep- tember they still haunted the grove, with a less jubilant song. I awoke as usual one morning and lay listening drowsily, knowing that when their more sleepy-headed rivals, the golden robins in the alder thickets along the river itself, took up the strain, it would be time to get up and begin preparations for the day's work. But I was destined not to hear the 270 A SECOND STAMPEDE 271 golden robins that morning, or, if I did, not to heed them ; I was thinking how like half- smothered musical laughter the songs of the mocking birds sounded, when a sharp, insistent whisper reached my ears. " Elsie, Elsie, Elsie ! come down, quick !" The whisper came from Aunt Matilda, and she was not speaking in that tone without reason. I dressed quickly, but silently, in order not to awaken Florence, and stole down to her side as she stood at the foot of the stairs. " Come here," she whispered, taking my hand and leading me to the outer door which stood slightly ajar. "What is that ?" she whispered. " I've been listening to it for the last twenty minutes ; what can it be?" I knew what it was. Had I not become familiarized to that sound through long, lonely days on the ranch, until it followed and haunted me, even in dreams? It was the soft thud, thudding, made by the feet of scores of sheep sheep that were being driven rapidly, yet with- out noise, along the sandy highway. " It's a drove of sheep, auntie," I whispered 272 THE GIRL RANCHERS back, my teeth beginning to chatter, for the hour before dawn is always cold in the valley of San Coulee. " Rome said that there was no drove but ours within a hundred miles," murmured Aunt Ma- tilda. " This may be a drove that is being driven down to the winter range in Southern Colorado from some place further up. You know Rome said that the shortest and easiest pass through the mountains, to the south, lies along the Coulee." " I wish I could get a glimpse of their ear- marks," aunt whispered, anxiously, without heeding my explanation. " Why, Aunt Matilda !" I exclaimed, startled. "You surely cannot think that these are our sheep! And Felix on guard, and the gates locked !" " A bullet would kill Felix as quickly as it would a man, Elsie ; and as for the gates " I caught up a shawl. "Aunt Matilda, I am going to find out whose sheep they are. I am A SECOND STAMPEDE 273 going to the top of that rock beside the readjust as it turns toward the upper valley. I can slip along the underbrush and no one will see me." " I suppose you can, but it's so dark you can make out nothing." " It's growing lighter every minute ; it will be quite light enough for me to see the sheep by the time I get there ; I shall know then whether it's worth while for me to go out on the range." " Go then, but be careful. Oh, Elsie, be careful ! Stay. I will go with you." " No, no, indeed, Aunt Matilda ! I shall be safer alone. I know the road so much better than you." " That is true ; go at once." The rock in question was fully a mile away, and the sheep were now nearly abreast of the house. We had closed the door and, screened by the darkness, were peering from a window. It was impossible to distinguish any separate form ; only a moving mass of lighter darkness as the sheep trotted swiftly past. If the 18 274 THE GIRL RANCHERS driving was legitimate it was merciless; the poor creatures were too hard-pressed to waste breath in making complaint. I made out faintly, one, two, three large, vague forms fol- lowing close in the rear of the sheep and knew that they were those of mounted men. But how still they were ! There was absolutely no sound of a horse's footfall ; it might have been, for all the noise they made, a spectral flock, fol- lowed by phantom riders. I stole to the back door, opened and closed it softly, made my way past the hay stacks and corral and so down into a ravine that ran for some distance nearly parallel with the road. I stumbled and fell a good many times, running in such haste and in darkness, but I picked myself up and ran the faster for every recurring delay. I tore my dress from the sharp branches of wait-a-bit thorns, and in doing so scratched my face until it bled. My hands were bruised and skinned from contact with sharp fragments of rock, as I flung them out wildly in the effort to break the force of my frequent tumbles ; but I ran on. A SECOND STAMPEDE 275 I must reach that rock and scale it before it was light enough for those advancing horsemen to see me, and the daylight grew apace. All the time that soft thud, thud, thud came swiftly along the road, but always a little farther behind me, so that I knew I was distancing the flock. I was spent and breathless, my knees shook under me, when, all at once, a blacker darkness loomed before me. I had reached the end of the ravine, and the barring darkness was the rock itself. I climbed it almost breathless, and lay along its top entirely concealed from the observation of any one be- neath, by a friendly fringe of bushes, yet having an unobstructed view of the road as it wound along below me. The windings of the road obliged the sheep drivers to cover a mile and a half to my one, so I had time to regain my breath, and to break off a branch or two from the friendly bushes and stick them up in front of me for a more effectual screen, before the foremost of the sheep came in sight. It was now quite light. I looked at them, 276 THE GIRL RANCHERS and the one look was enough. They were ours. I could not help thinking, even then, that if they were to be so mercilessly driven it was fortunate for them that they had not to carry the heavy fleeces that they had lately worn. I was bent on finding out who was driving them, and that proved an easy task. Safely past our house and out of earshot they had re- laxed their caution and were talking in low tones, but their conversation was anything but amiable. " I wouldn't a had it happen for the value of the whole denied flock," declared a voice that I knew, and that, heard now, brought my heart into my mouth. " The whole thing's been purty nigh a fizzle, jest on account of your bein' so everlastingly ready with your shootin' irons." The voice was that of Mr. Seaton. Another voice replied harshly : " What's the use of makin' such a fuss about that ? I couldn't help it ; it was him or me. I took him." A SECOND STAMPEDE 277 " I'd a liked it better if it had been t'other way," muttered Seaton, savagely. " Say," retorted the second speaker, drawing rein directly beneath my rock I now saw why the horses' feet made no sound, they were tied up in heavy folds of cloth " if you've got any more o' that kind o' talk keep it for your own use. Whose been so plumb crazy to make trouble for them tenderfoots all the time ? I know what's the matter with you ! You're mad 'cause they saved the clip in spite of ye, and 'cause Roy Jones give up tryin' to drive 'em out after what they had done for his wife. They wouldn't a had no trouble gettin' herders, nuther, if you hadn't a gone 'round among the Mexicans and " " Shet up ! What's the use o' hollerin' all that stuff so as it can be heard a mile ? Keep these sheep rovin' if you expect to git any pay for it out o' me !" They rode on out of sight and sound, still grumbling. I got down from my perch and walked slowly home, walked slowly into the 278 THE GIRL RANCHERS house and told the assembled family they were all up by this time what had happened and who had engineered the work. Not much was said. Seaton's treachery was too great for mere words to express. It was crushing ; it was be- yond belief. After breakfast I put up the sup- ply of food that we carried daily to Felix, and, tying on my hat, told Johnny to bring up my horse. I had not been able to touch a morsel myself, and Aunt Matilda remonstrated when she saw Luck at the door. " I don't see that there's any use in your going out to-day, Elsie, if the sheep are gone. You look like a ghost, and you have eaten no breakfast. Wait until you are feeling better." " I shall not feel better until I know what has become of Felix." " Very well ; if you do not come back soon I'll send Florence out with something for you. It may be that they have left us a few sheep." " That is not at all likely." It did not take long for fleet-footed Luck to reach the scene of our daily labors. I rode up 8 3 13 A SECOND STAMPEDE 279 to the corral that we had left all right the night before. It was not all right now. The gates had been beaten down and thrown aside as something that there would be no more use for. There were four or five dead sheep ; they had, seemingly, been trampled to death in the terrified rush out of the corral. Felix was nowhere in sight. I rode up and down, calling to him, until a little tawny mound, a few yards from the entrance to the corral, attracted my attention. The mound had not been there the day before. I rode close to it. I dismounted and fell upon my knees beside it. Only a dog ! Only a dog ! But the dog was Felix dead. CHAPTER XX A SERIOUS ACCIDENT NEARLY every one has noticed how, after a long lapse of time in which, apparently, nothing happens, events come crowding one upon an- other, seeming to culminate with startling rapidity, so much so that one is swept quite out of his ordinary routine by them and left at the mercy of circumstances beyond his control. Such was the stage of experience that we now entered on with the second stampeding of the flock. This stampede, unlike the other, was eminently successful; the sheep had vanished beyond our ken. I did not ride directly home after finding poor Felix's body, but made a detour that took me around by the mine where Rome was working. I found him engaged in washing out a pan of black sand. He was using a kind of rough rocker that he had built him- self, and the sparkling water of his newly-made 280 A SERIOUS ACCIDENT 281 ditch was doing the most of the work. He came to my side when he saw me, and when I told him my story his slow anger kindled as I had never seen it before. " You go home and say nothing," he told me. " I am going to get on the trail of those fellows ; I'm going to bring them to time, too. They're going to be surprised in more ways than one when I catch up with them. I won't try to get back the sheep ; but I reckon we can fix it so that the fellows who took 'em '11 think best to pay for 'em before they get through with it. Your folks '11 be willing to part with 'em I s'pose?" " I'm sure they will, Rome," I answered. I looked at the water of the San Coulee as it flowed past, clear, swift, and thought of the lower valley that was, through its ministry, to blossom as the rose. Rome shoved back the wooden rocker and straightened his bent shoulders. "Well," he said, " I guess I'll just get a bite to eat, then I'll look around a little and kind o* see what we can do for Mr. Seaton and his 282 THE GIRL RANCHERS friends." He turned expeditiously toward the cabin beyond the ditch, and I, glad to feel that his broad shoulders were bearing a share of this new burden, turned the pony's head homeward. There had been a change in the weather. The air was still, here in the sheltered valley, but cutting, and the cold increased as evening drew on. Canon and pine-clad slope were already dark with shadows, and up on Mount Kenneth the snow streamers, red as blood in the glow of sunset, danced like a wilder kind of Aurora Borealis. Throughout the day gray clouds had been hanging around the mon- arch's brow, without descending below timber line, and now as the rising wind scattered them a fresh fall of snow was revealed. The wind was making the most of it. The evening star had risen, and was shining above the serried peaks of the Wind River range. I rode onward slowly, thinking how much warmer the far mountains looked than those close at hand. I was aroused from my star-gazing and brought back to the cruel realities of the present A SERIOUS ACCIDENT 283 abruptly enough when I arrived in sight of the house. Although we were usually so careful of our invalid, on this chill evening of all others, doors were open, lights were flashing, as though carried in haste from room to room. My heart sank with a terrible premonition of what had happened. The heart-breaking words of an old, old text flashed through my mind : " Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble ; he fleeth as a shadow and con- tinueth not and continueth not and con- tinueth not." It had been a hard day. I bowed my face over Luck's mane, shuddering. My heart contracted as it might if a merciless hand had suddenly closed upon it. Florence had seen me ; she came running out, crying, " Oh, Elsie ! Elsie ! Such a dreadful thing has happened !" My lips were stiff, but I managed to articu- late, faintly, " He is gone !" " Oh, no, no !" she exclaimed, with comfort- ing literalness, " he didn't get a chance to go at all ; the horse threw him, and " 284 THE GIRL RANCHERS But, in the revulsion of feeling that swept over me as she went on happily not realizing my mistake I did not, for the moment, compre- hend her words. It was but for an instant; then I understood. Far more alarmed by my long absence than he would have been but for the events of the preceding night, and alone with Vevie, father had decided that he must go in search of me. Aunt Matilda and Florence were away, having taken Now Then and Billy for a look around the valley in the quite useless expectation that they might come upon some knowledge of the agency through which our sheep had been spirited away. It was late in the afternoon that father told Johnny to saddle Chris for him. Now Chris, meek as he was to look upon, was, as all who had the pleasure of his intimate acquaintance knew, extremely treacherous. It was chiefly owing to that un- desirable trait that he had been allowed to spend his time in the pasture, growing fat, while his mates did the work. Johnny seldom expressed an opinion, but, as A SERIOUS ACCIDENT 285 he brought the horse to the door, in obedience to orders, he ventured to remonstrate against father's attempting to ride him. " I 'low this yeller broncho's goin' to buck," he said earnestly. " He's been on grass a long time. Sometimes good horses buck when they've rested more than they ought to; mean horse like this one will buck, sure." Father had not forgotten that he had insisted upon the purchase of the gentle-mannered, yel- low broncho against the advice of Mr. Seaton. It had already been demonstrated that Mr. Beaton's judgment in regard to horses was good, but Johnny's words touched his pride. " The horse is all right," he said. " Bring him up to the block and I'll mount. Vevie," he continued, walking toward the great smoothly-sawed section of a log that, placed on end, served the purpose of a horse block, " tell your aunt that I have gone out toward the gate- way to look for Elsie." The only horse that father had bestrode since that unlucky day's ex- perience as a sheep herder, was Luck, a horse 286 THE GIRL RANCHERS of principle, who trod as carefully with father on his back as he might have done with a basket of eggs. Vevie had seen him upon Luck, and, in her eyes all horses were equally trustworthy. " Don't go far, papa !" she called after him as he turned Chris's head toward the highway. " I won't, dear," he replied, and he did not. Aunt Matilda and Florence, riding toward the house, quickened their horses' speed into a mad gallop as the sound of a child's voice, rend- ing the air with wild shrieks, came to their ears. Father was discovered lying motionless, face downward, in the highway. Vevie was on the ground beside him, her arms thrown over him, and screaming wildly, while poor, lame Johnny, his feeble wits quite scared out of him, stood beside them wringing his hands and crying but making no attempt to render aid. And yellow Chris, with the saddle turned under him, stood at a little distance, composedly cropping the pansy-bed in the front yard. They managed, among them, to carry father A SERIOUS ACCIDENT 287 into the house, and to quiet Vevie, whose case had seemed for the time being nearly as critical as his. But all their efforts to restore him to consciousness had proved fruitless. " We must have a doctor, Elsie. You must find Rome and get him to go to the Agency for the doctor," exclaimed Aunt Matilda, as I ran into the house. I knew that it would be useless to go after Rome. I had already dispatched him upon another errand, in which direction I could not tell. Going to father's bedside I looked at him steadily " he fleeth as a shadow as a shadow and continueth not." The words tortured me. I pushed them aside by an effort of will so great that I seemed to have sud- denly and breathlessly performed some exhaust- ing physical labor, but they were gone and I could think. I would not let myself be fright- ened, though the face that I looked down upon was deadly white and still, and the closed eyes gave no gleam of life, for I knew that I must make the night ride to the Agency. There was no doctor nearer, no one but me to go. I had 288 THE GIRL RANCHERS been in the saddle all day and was, without knowing it, faint with hunger and fatigue. It would have been as reasonable to expect lame Johnny to brave the perils of the lonely way as to expect it of Florence ; besides no other mem- ber of the household knew the trail so well. There was no time to hunt for any other mes- senger. Father's life, perhaps, depended upon the passing moments. Aunt had ascertained that his heart was beating faintly, I must go before those feeble heart-beats ceased altogether. " Johnny, give Luck some oats ; be quick," I said. " Don't take off the saddle. I am going to the Agency for the doctor." " You !" cried Aunt Matilda. " Oh, no, Elsie ! You must not ; you have been out all day " " I am going, aunt, there is no one else ; I can get the doctor here before morning by going over the mountain." " Over the mountain ! Elsie, you shall not attempt that ; it has been snowing up there, the trail will be lost ; you shall not go." " I ain sorry to be obliged to disobey you, A SERIOUS ACCIDENT 289 aunt. But go I will ; please don't try to stop me. I can do it." Florence was chafing father's nerveless hands ; Aunt Matilda had been trying to force some stimulant between his closed teeth. I remem- ber how they both ceased their ministrations to turn and stare at me as I stood by the table in the lamplight. " You must have a cup of coffee," aunt said. Fortunately the half-filled coffee pot was on the stove. She poured out a cup for me and hastily cut a slice of bread and meat. " Eat," she said, thrusting them into my hands. "You must, Elsie; it is for strength." I ate and drank hastily, then, putting on a heavy coat of father's over my usual riding dress, and drawing on a pair of long fur gloves I went out to where Johnny was waiting with Luck. Florence, bending again over father, did not heed my going, but Aunt Matilda and Vevie followed me to the horse block. " God bless you for a brave girl, Elsie," aunt whispered, kissing me, and Vevie, throwing her arms around my neck, 19 290 THE GIRL RANCHERS sobbed. " There are white angels in the snow up on Mount Kenneth ; I have seen them play- ing at sunset. If you get lost, ask them to tell you the way." " I am sure the white angels of Kenneth will know one way, darling," I could not help say- ing, with a sickening sense of the loneliness and cold of those far-off heights, that, as I looked upward in the moonlight, seemed to pierce the heavens. " But I know the trail ; I shall not get lost; good-bye, and keep good courage." I shook the bridle reins and Luck struck into a swift lope that soon took us to the point where we turned from the highway into Mount Ken- neth trail. My eyes were keen or I could not have distinguished the blind pathway, hidden, as it was, among the shadows of the rocks and trees. Fortunately, the full moon, early to- night, had risen, and its mellow light showed the way clearly enough if one only kept a sharp lookout. One who had not been over the trail could scarcely have remembered its A SERIOUS ACCIDENT 291 landmarks. Now a blasted tree, weird and ghostly in the strange light, a jutting rock, an isolated patch of jack-oaks, a shelf of crumbling shale, or a bit of level sward. Up, up, still upward we toiled, brave Luck settling down to his task with an unflinching courage and perseverance, but speed was now out of the question. He could only climb. An hour passed ; two hours. The scattering belts of evergreens, the frequent park-like openings, where herds of half-wild cattle cropped the insufficient herbage, were left behind. The trail, always leading steadily upward into an atmosphere that grew as steadily colder entered a dark forest of cedars, and it was then that I remembered something that I once heard Rome say of the cedar forests of Mount Kenneth. I drew rein, and, leaning forward on Luck's neck, strained eyes and ears, striving to pierce the darkness, to catch some sound that should tell what was before us on the route that we must traverse. Luck, eager to have done with the night's work, pawed impatiently. How 292 THE GIRL RANCHERS loudly his iron-shod hoof clattered upon the rock. I shivered with something that was not cold. " Be quiet ! Luck. Be quiet !" I whispered imploringly in the alert ear bent back to catch the sound of my voice. " Luck," I whispered, scarcely knowing what I said or did, " I am afraid ! I am afraid !" The pony tossed his head, tugging at the bit. Somehow, the resolute action shamed me into fresh courage. I thought of father lying so still down there in the valley, and shook the bridle reins again. " Go on, Luck ; Vevie's angels are above us." I said it aloud, as, leav- ing the clear moonlight, we were instantly swallowed up in the black shadow of the cedar forest. CHAPTER XXI AMONG THE SNOW WRAITHS IT was only by a superhuman effort of self- control that I refrained from urging fleet-footed Luck at speed through the unknown terrors of the cedar forest. Knowing that his strength must be reserved, as far as possible, for the last, fierce, breathless scramble above timber line, which would bring us to the wide, white desolation of the snow-fields, I held him and tried to forget what Rome had said, at a time when the saying was of so little moment. ' He had told us that if ever he particularly wanted to get a bear he should go up into the cedar forests on Mount Kenneth. Bears, he said, were extravagantly fond of the small round cedar berries that covered the ground under the cedar trees so thickly in the fall of the year. " Night is their favorite time for feed- ing ; 'specially moonlight nights," he had said. 293 294 THE GIRL RANCHERS " I wouldn't be afraid to bet that I could get a bear 'most any time that I took a notion to lay in wait for him, up among the rocks there." An accident among those snow-fields that we were steadily nearing, or to be overcome with cold or fatigue, meant certain death, so I held Luck in and tried to think of other things than bears. I thought of father lying so still on the bed down there thousands of feet below ; of the sheep, wandering among these hills at the mercy of those brutish men, or of wild and roving animals ; of Rome and his noble help- fulness ; of Donald Arleigh and the shock that it must have been to him to find us gone supposing, always, that he still cared for us a little but all was of no use. Rome's careless words came as a refrain to which my throb- bing pulses and the pony's regular hoof-beats kept measure. Sick with terror, I leaned for- ward on Luck's neck, prepared, if I heard the slightest sound, to give him the word to go. And yet what madness to urge a horse to speed on such a trail as this ! AMONG THE SNOW WRAITHS 295 Half delirious as I was with the accumulat- ing terrors of the lonely way, I yet realized that I should not make such a demand upon the willing servant who carried me so bravely, as long as I could keep myself from it. The trail through the cedars was short. Bending low over the saddle and straining my eyes to pierce the gloom, I caught the gleam of moon- light on the trail ahead. At the same time there came to my ears the soft pit-a-pat, pit-a- pat of some creature who was following along through the dark trail behind me ; some crea- ture with padded feet, not hoofs. In the ex- tremity of my terror, instead of urging Luck to greater speed, as had been my previous impulse, I drew rein, and, wheeling sharply around, facing the back trail, waited. I had not the slightest doubt but that a bear was after me. I do not know why I simply sat and awaited his approach instead of flying, but that was what I did. It was then that a gleam of common sense came mercifully through the benumbing fog of fear that paralyzed my faculties. 296 THE GIRL RANCHERS I observed that Luck showed no uneasiness whatever ; on the contrary, his alertly-pointed ears and outstretched muzzle seemed to evince that he scented a friend. I had just comprehended this when a long, slender, white body emerged from the shadow of the cedars, and, pausing in front of my horse, looked up at me expectantly. "Calif! O Calif! Is it you? Is it you, dear Calif?" the relief was so great that I covered my face with my hands and sobbed aloud from sheer nervous re-action. Luck and Calif were the best of friends, as was natural between two such intelligent animals, and now, when Calif, distressed at my outburst, reared up beside him and put both forepaws in my lap, rubbing his slender nose sympathetically against my shoulder, Luck only turned his head, watching proceedings. "I don't know how you ever made up your mind to leave Vevie, Calif," I said, checking my sobs at last and patting his head thankfully, " but I'm glad you've come." AMONG THE SNOW WRAITHS 297 I found out afterward, on inquiry, that Vevie, and not Calif, was entitled to the credit of his brave following ; she told me about it, and these are her words : " When I went into the house," said Vevie, " and cried because papa was hurt and it was night, and you were going over the mountain, Calif came and looked at me, so sorry. I thought how Felix was dead, and how you loved him, and how he would have gone with you, maybe, if he had been alive, and how nothing could have hurted you then, and I told Calif all about it. I told him to follow you. He didn't seem to want to go at first. I don't think it was because he wasn't willing, though the rocks do cut his feet. Then I took him to the barn and showed him that Luck was gone, and I asked him to smell of your old riding glove, and of Luck's track, and I said, ' Go find them, Calif, find them !' and he started right off." I am sure that no one else could have made the greyhound understand what was wanted, but, indeed, it seemed at times as if he compre- 298 THE GIRL RANCHERS liended her every word. An hour afterward I was sorry that he had come, notwithstanding the comfort his presence had brought me. But it was only in a dazed way, for the strain upon my own endurance left little ability to feel for another's distress. We were climbing the heights now, and the air was piercingly cold. Luck knew the trail so much better than I that I left the matter of finding it entirely to him. We passed the last cluster of scattering firs, dwarfed and tortured into all sorts of grotesque shapes by the never-ending struggle with storm and cold. Sliding and stumbling, we scrambled up the loose shale rocks above timber line and entered upon the most perilous stage of the night's adventurous trip. I was by this time so numb with cold and fatigue that I frequently caught myself swaying in the saddle, but I rallied my sinking energies as I caught a glimpse of something whiter than moonlight beneath Luck's feet. We were entering upon the snow fields, white, wide, still, swung mid- way between the far-off earth beneath and the AMONG THE SNOW WRAITHS 299 steel-like glitter of the far-off stars above. It was a region of chaos, of death, where a silence that was never broken, a cold that never re- laxed, reigned supreme. The icy blast seemed, despite the thick, fur-lined gloves, to flay the skin from my stiffening fingers as Luck went steadily on, and I caught the full force of its merciless sweep. Calif, blinded by its savage fury, sought shelter beside the horse, growling and whimpering, but with no thought of desertion in his loyal heart. I tried to speak a reassuring word to him, but the wind, the night wind that always blows on Kenneth, and whose fantastic orgies I had so often watched with interest from the warm shelter of the valley, tore the words from my lips and beat in my face until, gasping and suffocated, I gave up all attempts to speak. The trail winds for three miles among the rocks and precipices that the snow treacherously con- ceals without robbing of their danger. Then it drops doAvn to timber line again, and so on through a dense pine forest to the outskirts of the Red Cliff Reservation. But, after a little, 300 THE GIRL RANCHERS the way did not seem long to me, or lonely. I heard, vaguely, as in a dream, a low voice crying. Was it Florence, bending over father ? No ; it was Felix Felix, as he had cried that day after his search in the mountains for the stampeded sheep, when I had pulled the cactus thorns from his torn and bleeding feet and bound them up in soft cloths. " Felix, Felix !" I gasped faintly ; " where are the sheep ?" The sound of my own voice steadied my reeling senses. I remembered that Felix was dead. It was Calif who was whimpering piteously at my side, but, in a moment, I no longer heard him, for before me, tall and white and whirling lightly over the snow, all about us in the moonlight, were the white angels of Mount Kenneth. They waved their arms, beckoning me, they beat the air with wide, noiseless wings ; their invisible buoyant feet spurned the snow beneath with a soft hissing sound. " They are calling us to follow them, Luck," I muttered. " They are saying, Come !" If I tried, as I think I did, to force Luck from the trail to engage in a stern AMONG THE SNOW WRAITHS 301 chase after the snow wraiths of Kenneth, he was too wise to obey me, but what he did, or I, or Calif, or when we left the white waste of death and dropped down into, the balsamic warmth of the pine forest, I have no means of knowing. My last confused, distorted recollections are of the driving snow wraiths, and the dim anguish of the thought that we must follow where they led. How the ride terminated was told me afterward, and I will tell it now. It was after twelve o'clock that night that my friend, Running Wolf, having finished his pipe, laid it aside with a prodigious yawn, and started to crawl into the pile of blankets lying on the floor, blankets being the Indian excuse for a bed. Just then he heard the sound made by slow, cautious footsteps as they stole past his dwelling. He stood still, with bent head, listen- ing. The slow footsteps that had lagged a little before his tepee, went on steadily. Running Wolf raised the flap of his tepee and peeped out. He was an Indian and not given to alarm, but his description of what he saw was : 302 THE GIRL RANCHEES " I have a piece of ice lay all 'long way down my back ; my hair grow stiff and stand up. Right before, going slow, slow, with his head hung down so that his nose was touchin' the ground, was my totem ! The great white wolf that goes through the village of th Indians when any of the people are to die. I had no fear. No. But the Indians are no more fit to die. They are sluggish cowards who eat the food the white man throws them, same like his dog eats. And the squaws ? When is a squaw ever fit for death ? Then I looked some more, hoping the wolf would go on, for whoever the white Manitou of the wolf looks upon, dies, and it was not a wolf at all, but the great white dog of the little mist squaw of the San Coulee. And he was following a pony that had something lying across his back, and I went out." It seems I had only consciousness enough left to cling to the saddle upon which I was lying, rather than sitting, when Running Wolf came to my aid. How slowly, with what infinite care Luck must have made the descent of the moun- AMONG THE SNOW WRAITHS 303 tain, not to have displaced the helpless rider swaying upon his back ! He remembered the Agency where we had been before, and, after a moment's indecision at the tepee of Running Wolf, had started to take me to the house where he and I had been during my former visit. It was hours afterward, and full daylight, when I recovered consciousness. There was an odor of drugs in the air, a murmur of low voices near me and a sense of warmth, of rescue. But where was Luck, and Calif, and the doctor ? I stirred, and every bone and muscle in my body promptly responded by adding the force of their strength to the one great ache that seemed to enwrap my bruised and tortured body like an all-enveloping garment. I groaned and opened my eyes. A delicate white head was thrust eagerly forward and laid upon my breast, and Calif's yellow eyes gazed solemnly into mine. "What has happened, Calif?" I whispered, faintly. Calif did not answer, nor object to being gently pushed aside, as some one bent over me. 304 THE GIRL RANCHERS A familiar voice said quietly : " You are iri the house of the agent of the Red Cliff Reservation, lying on a lounge in the front room where the sun can look at you." "Where is Luck?" " Luck," the voice repeated musingly, and added, " What more natural, under the cir- cumstances, than that she should be inquiring for the horse that saved her life? We'll chance it that Luck is the horse." In a louder tone the speaker continued, " Luck is in the barn." " I hope they gave him oats," I murmured ; " he doesn't like corn." " He shall have oats, then, the hero, he should have them if every grain were balanced against a grain of gold." I was still confused, and it did not lessen my confusion to look up, as I did, into the smiling, tender face bending over me ; the face of one who was, at last accounts, so many hundred miles away. "There were angels," I stammered, foolishly, AMONG THE SNOW WKAITHS 305 " tliey beckoned to me were you you with them or " with a sudden, awakening attempt to again grasp my lapsing senses " was it the snow wreath ?" " I think it must have been the snow wreaths, Elsie, dear, for I have not been in the company of any angels until now." All at once I remembered the ride and its purpose. I sat up, wildly throwing aside the coverings that had been put over me. " Oh, Donald, Donald ! I came for the doctor, father is hurt ; he may be killed !" Donald laid me gently back upon the pillows. " He's all right, Elsie. I came from there not long ago ; I came by way of the plains instead of over the mountain. You had been here, lying unconscious for three hours when I got here. Your father was not hurt; he was stunned by the fall ; when he came to as he did a few minutes after you left he was as well as ever. But he was wild when he heard what you had done. He said that you were always afraid when alone out-of-doors after nightfall, 20 306 THE GIRL RANCHERS and he seemed to think that night up on those snow fields wouldn't be a very comfortable place She's awake now, Doctor," he broke off suddenly, as a middle-aged, military looking gentleman stepped into the room and approached the lounge. The doctor felt my pulse, lifted one of my eyelids, and peered into the eye inquiringly, then nodded cheerfully. "She will be all right as soon as she gets well rested. But it's been something of a shock. It will take some time for her nerves to recover their tone." "What happened to me, Doctor?" The doctor smiled quizzically. " As nearly as I can make out you have been very fortunate. Your imagination and the stress you were under, added to the weirdness of your lonely ride, has played some odd pranks with you. But," lie has- tened to add as I felt a wave of color surging over my face, " you have no cause to blush for it. There are few men, let me tell you, who would take that ride at night, and that you are AMONG THE SNOW WRAITHS 307 alive to-day you may thank your faithful little pony for and no one else. If he had not kept the trail well, all I have to say is, let well enough alone ; don't try it again." The agent's wife herself brought me a de- licious breakfast on a tray and sat beside me, chatting of small, unexciting matters while I ate. Father was not hurt, and over there by the window was Donald Arleigh, Donald who had come back, and whose coming had flooded the world with sunshine. He was not ungrate- ful ; he could explain all. I looked at him with an exultant smile, I was so glad, so glad. Donald met my look and smiled too. " Poor Calif did not come off scot free," he remarked as I drank the last drop of my coffee and secretly longed for more; "his paws are badly cut, but he concluded to let me dress them." A memory of the sheep-fold, of Felix and a similar service that I had once performed for him, came over me in a wave of pain. " I washed Felix's feet and bound them up THE GIRL RANCHERS the day that he brought back the sheep," I said, inconsequently. " But the sheep are lost and Felix is dead." It seemed strange, at the moment, that Felix could not know what loy- alty, what devotion went out of my life when he died. CHAPTER XXII MR. SEATON IS CORNERED DONALD had hired Mr. Davis' son, Don, to bring him to the Agency, and Don, with his father's horses and carriage, was still waiting. I rallied from my stupor so quickly, and was so eager to return, that Donald decided to take me back with him, especially as the doctor declared that the journey would do me less harm than the impatient waiting. We took Calif into the carriage with us and Don rode Luck. It was during that long, delicious, restful homeward ride that Donald told why he left us so strangely, and from that day to this I have felt the pangs of remorseful shame because of my unworthy suspicions of him. " I know," Donald said, " that Uncle Hugh " there was no relationship between them, but he always called father " Uncle " and Aunt 309 310 THE GIRL RANCHERS Matilda " Aunt," " would never consent to my taking iny money to push his inventions. He would refuse to let me have the formula and the descriptive literature if he knew that I in- tended to embark in any such enterprise. I had absolute faith in the utility of his inven- tions more especially the incombustible wood formula but he had no money to spare in in- troducing it to the notice of the men whom he must reach and influence, the manufacturers. And, indeed, he is not at all the sort of man to go about espousing his own cause. I'm differ- ent, less sensitive, more practical. I knew that as long as Uncle Hugh furnished the brains I could carry out the other part all right." " Donald !" "It's true, Elsie. Why, your father is a wonderful man ; it's no disparagement to give him the credit of having more brains than I. He has more brains than a dozen ordinary men put together. I had to have money. I took mine, and also took his consent to my using his formulas for granted. If I failed, no one but MR. SEATON IS CORNERED 811 I would be the loser. If I won it would be something worth while for us all. I haven't failed, Elsie." I leaned back blissfully in the carriage, watching the fleecy white of the clouds beyond the far northern Buttes. They looked not unlike droves of sheep, and they were van- ishing, vanishing. I had no wish to call them back. " There is no occasion for my going into all the details," Donald went on. " More time was required than I had anticipated. I had resolved not to communicate with any of you until I could say definitely whether I had won or lost. I had no idea then that Uncle Hugh's health was in so precarious a state." " He grieved so for you, Donald," I could not help telling him. " I'm afraid he did, Elsie. I was doing evil that good might follow, and that is always a dangerous experiment. I ought to have writ- ten. I remember, Elsie, that you never cared to know how a thing was done ; it was only the result that interested you, so I will spare you 312 THE GIRL RANCHERS the technicalities, but you will not need to be a sheep herder any longer, Elsie." " Sheep herding has not hurt me, Donald," I said, truthfully. " It has been a strange, wild experience. I am glad if it's over with, but I am not sorry to have had it." "I gathered from what young Davis told me as we were coming over that it's been rather a romantic episode all through, and now that the unfortunate sheep have been burglarized " " That's true, if you call it burglary. They have been stolen." " Davis said that your friend, Beaumont, had organized a posse that was the impressive way in which he worded it and gone in pursuit of the thieves." " I don't know about the posse, I'm sure. I hope he got some one to help him, but he would have gone alone if he could not." " There may be some word from him awaiting us by the time we get home." There was none, however. Father, whom I had left lying white and still upon his bed the MK. SEATON IS CORNERED 313 night before, came to the carriage to help me out. His lips trembled as he looked at me. " Elsie, what am I to do with a daughter who will do such reckless things ?" he asked tremu- lously. " Ought I to scold, or bless you ?" " Neither, I guess, papa," I whispered, laying my head on his shoulder and giving way to weak tears for a moment. " But you may bless Luck." He took off his hat. " God bless and keep my brave little Elsie," he said reverently. Don Davis rode up with Luck a few minutes after our arrival. He had followed along the highway instead of obliging the pony to again make the trip over the mountain. Father, Donald, and Florence all went out to the barn with Johnny to see the noble fellow cared for, but I remained lying on the lounge where I had dropped wearily on entering the house. Aunt Matilda, who reproached herself quite cause- lessly for allowing me to go she could not have prevented it sat down by my side and told how Donald had come, just in the nick of 314 THE GIRL RANCHERS time. Father had recovered consciousness, and, none the worse for the rough usage he had had, was nearly beside himself with grief at the thing I had undertaken to do on his account. " He was declaring that he would take Now Then, who, you know, is safe to ride, and go after you, when Donald came to the door. When he heard the story he made Hugh sit down and keep still. 'I will go and bring Elsie back/ he said. And Hugh has such con- fidence in him he never even asked how he was going about it. He knew that Donald would do everything right. Dear me ! what a bless- ing that boy is, and always has been." " And always will be," I added remorsefully. Vevie was sitting on the floor beside Calif, who, it appeared to me, was more than willing to accept all the encomiums that she lavished upon him for his bravery. She wiped away some furtive tears when it came to examining his feet. "I'm not sorry that he went," she said quickly, in answer to my pitying look. " He MR. SEATON IS CORNERED 315 ain't sorry, either, but the cuts on his feet do hurt so !" " They will soon heal, dearest." " I know they will ; I was just telling him so." The others were returning from the barn. As they neared the house we could distinguish other voices mingling with theirs. Aunt Matilda sprang up. " There's Rome !" she cried. She threw the door open, and a striking group filed into the room in response to her " Come in." I sat up, and Vevie and Calif retreated to my side as Rome, the black-browed Roy Jones, and Mr. Seaton, followed by father, Donald, and Florence, entered, filling the little room to over- flowing. " You might as well all set down," observed Rome, constituting himself the master of cere- monies. " We've got a considerable business to transact, and might as well do it comfortably." His advice was taken and he proceeded, " You see, Mr. and Miss Stanley, and you, Mr. Arleigh, for they jest said you was one of the 316 THE GIRL EANCHERS family and proud you may be of belonging to it" " I am." " That's right and I s'pose I'd ought to in- clude the girls, sence it was them that " " Rome, do go on !" cried Florence, laugh- ingly. " If you are going to include all of us and our ramifications in your preface, you'll never get started." " I suppose you're right, Miss Florence," Rome declared, scratching his head ruefully, " for I find that I'm clean run aground now. I reckon I'd best tell the thing that you all want to know without tryin' to put in any frills," which he proceeded to do. The story, without frills, was that Rome and Roy Jones, who volunteered to help him, came up with Mr. Seaton and his helpers, late on the same night that they started out in pursuit. The sheep had been corralled, and the men were guarding them. Threatened with exposure to the whole coun- tryside, which could forgive a stampede, but not a theft, Seatoii had reluctantly consented to MR. SEATON IS CORNERED 317 accompany them back to the San Coulee and make terms with the owners of the sheep. The flock was left where it had been found, the two men agreeing to remain on guard until they should again hear from Mr. Seaton. " I told him," concluded Rome, summing up, "that sence he seemed to hanker after sheep, he could prob'ly get this flock by payin' a fair price for it ; sheep's gone up." " I ain't able to pay no fancy prices," mut- tered Seaton, the bitterness of defeat in his angry voice. He had not spoken before, and it was hard to say whether, looking at him, he seemed more angry or ashamed. " I didn't ask you no fancy price," he continued, appealing to father. " That's true," began father, when the hither- to silent Jones, interposed. "The reason he sold so cheap to you was that he was 'lowing to git 'em back fur nothing. Mr. Stanley, you needn't feel obligated to sell 'em back cheap to him, on that account." " You've changed yer tune some, about sheep 318 THE GIRL RANCHERS ranching since you 'n' your gang tried to stam- pede Stanley's flock in the spring," Mr. Seaton reminded his quondam friend, with a scowl. " Not 'bout sheep ranchin' but 'bout some ranchers," replied Mr. Jones, significantly. " I ain't denyin' that I think sheep is a cuss to the country, and I've done my best, 'long back, to drive 'em out. But I ain't no coyote, and, after we all seen how plucky them girls was, 'n' how they would keep the flock, or die try in', 'n' after what they done fur my wife, I gin it out, that fur's I was concerned, the Stanley sheep ranch would be let alone. I didn't 'low that we wanted no more sheep here, but that these wouldn't be teched. And you knew it. That's why you kep' a threatenin' the Mex- icans, so 'st they wouldn't work for Stanley. You wanted a chance to git them yourself. If it hadn't a been fur you, these young ladies wouldn't a been 'bliged t' take the trouble 't fetch a lot of Indians over from the Reserva- tion to shear their sheep." There was, as he said this, a gleam in Mr. Jones' solemn eyes, ME. SEATON IS CORNERED 319 that, in any one else, would seem to denote amusement. I wondered, and still wonder, if lie had doubts of the authenticity of our Indians. Mr. Seaton, looking the picture of humilia- tion and baffled enterprise, said miserably, as if in extenuation, " I've had hard luck this sum- mer. Two of my horses died, and the cattle business ain't provin' as profitable as the sheep, and I always liked it best, anyway. I wouldn't a sold out in the first place if it hadn't been for you, Roy Jones," who responded promptly, " That's not true, and you know it. Now you want to come to Mr. Stanley's terms without no more whining." . And that was what he did. He gave father, then and there, a check on the bank where his funds were deposited for the full value of the sheep at the market price. The profit accruing to us from the transaction was enough to make me open my eyes in amazement. " I s'pose you won't interfere now with my going back and tending to them sheep," Mr. 320 THE GIRL RANCHERS Seaton remarked, sullenly, at the close of the legal formalities. " No," father said. " You can go." " Wait," interposed Mr. Jones again. " See here, Seaton, I hain't never said nothing 'bout it before, but there's Johnny ; whilst you're settling, settle that !" Seaton, who had got upon his feet, sat down suddenly at these words ; his face turned of a chalky whiteness, but he tried to brave it out. " I I don't know what you mean !" he gasped. " You know it's a penitentiary offense. You got yourself 'pinted Johnny's guardeen a' pur- pose so that you could get a holt of the money that belonged to him from the sale of this place. In other words, you never paid for it. The money that Mr. Stanley paid you for the San Coulee ranch, belongs to Johnny. Now you fork over, or I'll know the reason why." Mr. Seaton was vanquished. He drew an- other check in Johnny's favor, and, in addition, a writing which Mr. Jones, who seemed rather MR. SEATON IS CORNERED 321 fond of legal phrases, designated as a " deed of relinquishment," giving over to Rome Beau- mont all the powers that he, Mr. Seaton, had hitherto possessed as " the legal guardian of the ward known as John Alton." I have no means of knowing whether the deed was, or would have been binding in the eyes of the law, but it served its purpose. Johnny, when the matter was explained to him, gathered the idea that he belonged henceforth to Rome, and was inordi- nately happy in consequence. The San Coulee fruit ranch is an assured success. Father's health is fully restored, but he is so interested in the fruit ranch that he leaves to Donald Arleigh the management of those other affairs that his heart was once so set upon. It took Rome a long time to persuade Aunt Matilda to forgive him for supposing, as she put it, that he must be gold-washed before he could venture to ask her hand in marriage, but, as the marriage subsequently took place, I 21 322 THE GIRL RANCHERS suppose she forgave him in the end. They are the active working principals of the fruit ranch, notwithstanding that Rome has amassed a large fortune from the sale of his mine. Florence, with leisure and opportunity to make use of her talents, dedicates them, not to money-getting, but to the nobler work of comforting, of uplifting the sick, the sorrow- ful, the heavy-hearted of all classes. Vevie and Calif still attend father as faith- fully as twin shadows, and I think that one reason why he finds it so hard to leave his chosen valley, for even the briefest absence, is that he so misses their companionship. THE END Illustrated Wise indeed is that teacher or parent who provides his child- ren with such healthful and entertaining reading as this book will prove to be. It is a pleasing story, full of base-ball and fishing experiences, with just sufficient " mystery " to add zest to the tale. The principal character is not called upon to perform any impossible feats, but he exemplifies his char- acter in the pursuits of daily life and always proves faithful to the confidence reposed in him. Harry r. Ed