The Girl from Sunset Ranch; Or, Alone in a Great City

THE GIRL FROM SUNSET RANCH

“CAB, MISS? TAKE YOU ANYWHERE YOU SAY.”
Frontispiece (Page 67).

Made in the United States of America

Copyright, 1914, by

GROSSET & DUNLAP

The Girl from Sunset Ranch

CONTENTS

THE GIRL FROM SUNSET

RANCH

CHAPTER I

“SNUGGY” AND THE ROSE PONY

“Hi, Rose! Up, girl! There’s another party making for the View by the far path. Get a move on, Rosie.”

The strawberry roan tossed her cropped mane and her dainty little hoofs clattered more quickly over the rocky path which led up from the far-reaching grazing lands of Sunset Ranch to the summit of the rocky eminence that bounded the valley upon the east.

To the west lay a great, rolling plain, covered with buffalo grass and sage; and dropping down the arc of the sky was the setting sun, ruddy-countenanced, whose almost level rays played full upon the face of the bluff up which the pony climbed so nimbly.

“On, Rosie, girl!” repeated the rider. “Don’t let him get to the View before us. I don’t see why anybody would wish to go there,” she added, with a jealous pang, “for it was father’s favorite outlook. None of our boys, I am sure, would come up here at this hour.”

Helen Morrell was secure in this final opinion. It was but a short month since Prince Morrell had gone down under the hoofs of the steers in an unfortunate stampede that had cost the Sunset Ranch much beside the life of its well-liked owner.

The View—a flat table of rock on the summit overlooking the valley—had become almost sacred in the eyes of the punchers of Sunset Ranch since Mr. Morrell’s death. For it was to that spot the ranchman had betaken himself—usually with his daughter—on almost every fair evening, to overlook the valley and count the roaming herds which grazed under his brand.

Helen, who was sixteen and of sturdy build, could see the nearer herds now dotting the plain. She had her father’s glasses slung over her shoulder, and she had come to-night partly for the purpose of spying out the strays along the watercourses or hiding in the distant coulées.

But mainly her visit to the View was because her father had loved to ride here. She could think about him here undisturbed by the confusion and bustle at the ranch-house. And there were some things—things about her father and the sad conversation they had had together before his taking away—that Helen wanted to speculate upon alone.

The boys had picked him up after the accident and brought him home; and doctors had been brought all the way from Helena to do what they could for him. But Mr. Morrell had suffered many bruises and broken bones, and there had been no hope for him from the first.

He was not, however, always unconscious. He was a masterful man and he refused to take drugs to deaden the pain.

“Let me know what I am about until I meet death,” he had whispered. “I—am—not—afraid.”

And yet, there was one thing of which he had been sorely afraid. It was the thought of leaving his daughter alone.

“Oh, Snuggy!” he groaned, clinging to the girl’s plump hand with his own weak one. “If there were some of your own kind to—to leave you with. A girl like you needs women about—good women, and refined women. Squaws, and Greasers, and half-breeds aren’t the kind of women-folk your mother was brought up among.

“I don’t know but I’ve done wrong these past few years—since your mother died, anyway. I’ve been making money here, and it’s all for you, Snuggy. That’s fixed by the lawyer in Elberon.

“Big Hen Billings is executor and guardian of you and the ranch. I know I can trust him. But there ought to be nice women and girls for you to live with—like those girls who went to school with you the four years you were in Denver.

“Yet, this is your home. And your money is going to be made here. It would be a crime to sell out now.

“Ah, Snuggy! Snuggy! If your mother had only lived!” groaned Mr. Morrell. “A woman knows what’s right for a girl better than a man. This is a rough place out here. And even the best of our friends and neighbors are crude. You want refinement, and pretty dresses, and soft beds, and fine furniture——”

“No, no, Father! I love Sunset Ranch just as it is,” Helen declared, wiping away her tears.

“Aye. ’Tis a beauty spot—the beauty spot of all Montana, I believe,” agreed the dying man. “But you need something more than a beautiful landscape.”

“But there are true hearts here—all our friends!” cried Helen.

“And so they are—God bless them!” responded Prince Morrell, fervently. “But, Snuggy, you were born to something better than being a ‘cowgirl.’ Your mother was a refined woman. I have forgotten most of my college education; but I had it once.

“This was not our original environment. It was not meant that we should be shut away from all the gentler things of life, and live rudely as we have. Unhappy circumstances did that for us.”

He was silent for a moment, his face working with suppressed emotion. Suddenly his grasp tightened on the girl’s hand and he continued:

“Snuggy! I’m going to tell you something. It’s something you ought to know, I believe. Your mother was made unhappy by it, and I wouldn’t want a knowledge of it to come upon you unaware, in the after time when you are alone. Let me tell you with my own lips, girl.”

“Why, Father, what is it?”

“Your father’s name is under a cloud. There is a smirch on my reputation. I—I ran away from New York to escape arrest, and I have lived here in the wilderness, without communicating with old friends and associates, because I did not want the matter stirred up.”

“Afraid of arrest, Father?” gasped Helen.

“For your mother’s sake, and for yours,” he said. “She couldn’t have borne it. It would have killed her.”

“But you were not guilty, Father!” cried Helen.

“How do you know I wasn’t?”

“Why, Father, you could never have done anything dishonorable or mean—I know you could not!”

“Thank you, Snuggy!” the dying man replied, with a smile hovering about his pain-drawn lips. “You’ve been the greatest comfort a father ever had, ever since you was a little, cuddly baby, and liked to snuggle up against father under the blankets.

“That was before the big ranch-house was built, and we lived in a shack. I don’t know how your mother managed to stand it, winters. You just snuggled into my arms under the blankets—that’s how we came to call you ‘Snuggy.’”

“‘Snuggy’ is a good name, Dad,” she declared. “I love it, because you love it. And I know I gave you comfort when I was little.”

“Indeed, yes! What a comfort you were after your poor mother died, Snuggy! Ah, well! you shall have your reward, dear. I am sure of that. Only I am worried that you should be left alone now.”

“Big Hen and the boys will take care of me,” Helen said, stifling her sobs.

“Nay, but you need women-folk about. Your mother’s sister, now—The Starkweathers, if they knew, might offer you a home.”

“That is, Aunt Eunice’s folks?” asked Helen. “I remember mother speaking of Aunt Eunice.”

“Yes. She corresponded with Eunice until her death. Of course, we haven’t heard from them since. The Starkweathers naturally did not wish to keep up a close acquaintanceship with me after what happened.”

“But, dear Dad! you haven’t told me what happened. Do tell me!” begged the anxious girl.

Then the girl’s dying father told her of the looted bank account of Grimes & Morrell. The cash assets of the firm had suddenly disappeared. Circumstantial evidence pointed at Prince Morrell. His partner and Starkweather, who had a small interest in the firm, showed their doubt of him. The creditors were clamorous and ugly. The bookkeeper of the firm disappeared.

“They advised me to go away for a while; your mother was delicate and the trouble was wearing her into her grave. And so,” Mr. Morrell said, in a shaking voice, “I ran away. We came out here. You were born in this valley, Snuggy. We hoped at first to take you back to New York, where all the mystery would be explained. But that time never came.

“Neither Starkweather, nor Grimes, seemed able to help me with advice or information. Gradually I got into the cattle business here. I prospered here, while Fenwick Grimes prospered in New York. I understand he is a very wealthy man.

“Soon after we came out here your Uncle Starkweather fell heir to a big property and moved into a mansion on Madison Avenue. He, and his wife, and the three girls—Belle, Hortense and Flossie—have everything heart could desire.

“And they have all I want my Snuggy to have,” groaned Mr. Morrell. “They have refinement, and books, and music, and all the things that make life worth living for a woman.”

“But I love Sunset Ranch!” cried Helen again.

“Aye. But I watched your mother. I know how much she missed the gentler things she had been brought up to. Had I been able to pay off those old creditors while she was alive, she might have gone back.

“And yet,” the ranchman sighed, “the stigma is there. The blot is still on your father’s name, Snuggy. People in New York still believe that I was dishonest. They believe that with the proceeds of my dishonesty I came out here and went into the cattle business.

“You see, my dear? Even the settling with our old creditors—the creditors of Grimes & Morrell—made suspicion wag her tongue more eagerly than ever. I paid every cent, with interest compounded to the date of settlement. Grimes had long since had himself cleared of his debts and started over again. I do not know even that he and Starkweather know that I have been able to clear up the whole matter.

“However, as I say, the stain upon my reputation remains. I could never explain my flight. I could never imagine what became of the money. Somebody embezzled it, and I was the one who ran away. Do you see, my dear?”

And Helen told him that she did see, and assured him again and again of her entire trust in his honor. But Mr. Morrell died with the worry of the old trouble—the trouble that had driven him across the continent—heavy upon his mind.

And now it was serving to make Helen’s mind most uneasy. The crime of which her father had been accused was continually in her thoughts.

Who had really been guilty of the embezzlement? The bookkeeper, who disappeared? Fenwick Grimes, the partner? Or, Who?

As the Rose pony—her own favorite mount—took Helen Morrell up the bluff path to the View on this evening, the remembrance of this long talk with her father before he died was running in the girl’s mind.

Perhaps she was a girl who would naturally be more seriously impressed than most, at sixteen. She had been brought up among older people. She was a wise little thing when she was a mere toddler.

And after her mother’s death she had been her father’s daily companion until she was old enough to be sent away to be educated. The four long terms at the Denver school had carried Helen Morrell (for she had a quick mind) through those grades which usually prepare girls for college.

When she came back after graduation, however, she saw that her father needed her companionship more than she needed college. And, again, she was too domestic by nature to really long for a higher education.

She was glad now—oh! so glad—that she had remained at Sunset Ranch during these last few months. Her father had died with her arms about him. As far as he could be comforted, Helen had comforted him.

But now, as she rode up the rocky trail, she murmured to herself:

“If I could only clear dad’s name!”

Again she raised her eyes and saw a buckskin pony and its rider getting nearer and nearer to the summit.

“Get on, Rose!” she exclaimed. “That chap will beat us out. Who under the sun can he be?”

“HELEN CREPT ON HANDS AND KNEES TO THE EDGE OF THE BLUFF.”
(Page 14)

She was sure the rider of the buckskin was no Sunset puncher. Yet he seemed garbed in the usual chaps, sombrero, flannel shirt and gay neckerchief of the cowpuncher.

“And there isn’t another band of cattle nearer than Froghole,” thought the girl, adjusting her body to the Rose pony’s quickened gait.

She did not know it, but she was quite as much an object of interest to the strange rider as he was to her. And it was worth while watching Helen Morrell ride a pony.

The deep brown of her cheek was relieved by a glow of healthful red. Her thick plaits of hair were really sunburned; her thick eyebrows were startlingly light compared with her complexion.

Her eyes were dark gray, with little golden lights playing in them; they seemed fairly to twinkle when she laughed. Her lips were as red as ripe sumac berries; her nose, straight, long, and generously moulded, was really her handsomest feature, for of course her hair covered her dainty ears more or less.

From the rolling collar of her blouse her neck rose firm and solid—as strong-looking as a boy’s. She was plump of body, with good shoulders, a well-developed arm, and her ornamented russet riding boots, with a tiny silver spur in each heel, covered very pretty and very small feet.

Her hand, if plump, was small, too; but the gauntlets she wore made it seem larger and more mannish than it was. She rode as though she were a part of the pony.

She had urged on the strawberry roan and now came out upon the open plateau at the top of the bluff just as the buckskin mounted to the same level from the other side.

The rock called “the View” was nearer to the stranger than to herself. It overhung the very steepest drop of the eminence.

Helen touched Rose with the spur, and the pony whisked her tail and shot across the uneven sward toward the big boulder where Helen and her father had so often stood to survey the rolling acres of Sunset Ranch.

Whether the stranger on the buckskin thought her mount had bolted with her, Helen did not know. But she heard him cry out, saw him swing his hat, and the buckskin started on a hard gallop along the verge of the precipice toward the very goal for which the Rose pony was headed.

“The foolish fellow! He’ll be killed!” gasped Helen, in sudden fright. “That soil there crumbles like cheese! There! He’s down!”

She saw the buckskin’s forefoot sink. The brute stumbled and rolled over—fortunately for the pony away from the cliff’s edge.

But the buckskin’s rider was hurled into the air. He sprawled forward like a frog diving and—without touching the ground—passed over the brink of the precipice and disappeared from Helen’s startled gaze.

CHAPTER II

DUDLEY STONE

The victim of the accident made no sound. No scream rose from the depths after he disappeared. The buckskin pony rolled over, scrambled to its feet, and cantered off across the plateau.

Helen Morrell had swerved her own mount farther to the south and came to the edge of the caved-in bit of bank with a rush of hoofs that ended in a wild scramble as she bore down upon the Rose pony’s bit.

She was out of her saddle, and had flung the reins over Rose’s head, on the instant. The well-trained pony stood like a rock.

The girl, her heart beating tumultuously, crept on hands and knees to the crumbling edge of the bluff.

She knew its scarred face well. There were outcropping boulders, gravel pits, ledges of shale, brush clumps and a few ragged trees clinging tenaciously to the water-worn gullies.

She expected to see the man crushed and bleeding on some rock below. Perhaps he had rolled clear to the bottom.

But as her swift gaze searched the face of the bluff, there was no rock, splotched with red, in her line of vision. Then she saw something in the top of one of the trees, far down.

It was the yellow handkerchief which the stranger had worn. It fluttered in the evening breeze like a flag of distress.

“E-e-e-yow!” cried Helen, making a horn of her hands as she leaned over the edge of the precipice, and uttering the puncher’s signal call.

“E-e-e-yow!” came up a faint reply.

She saw the green top of the tree stir. Then a face—scratched and streaked with blood—appeared.

“For the love of heaven!” called a thin voice. “Get somebody with a rope. I’ve got to have some help.”

“I have a rope right here. Pass it under your arms, and I’ll swing you out of that tree-top,” replied Helen, promptly.

She jumped up and went to the pony. Her rope—she would no more think of traveling without it than would one of the Sunset punchers—was coiled at the saddlebow.

Running back to the verge of the bluff she planted her feet on a firm boulder and dropped the coil into the depths. In a moment it was in the hands of the man below.

“Over your head and shoulders!” she cried.

“You can never hold me!” he called back, faintly.

“You do as you’re told!” she returned, in a severe tone. “I’ll hold you—don’t you fear.”

She had already looped her end of the rope over the limb of a tree that stood rooted upon the brink of the bluff. With such a purchase she would be able to hold all the rope itself would hold.

“Ready!” she called down to him.

“All right! Here I swing!” was the reply.

Leaning over the brink, rather breathless, it must be confessed, the girl from Sunset Ranch saw him swing out of the top of the tree.

The tree-top was all of seventy feet from its roots. If he slipped now he would suffer a fall that surely would kill him.

But he was able to help himself. Although he crashed once against the side of the bluff and set a bushel of gravel rattling down, in a moment he gained foothold on a ledge. There he stood, wavering until she paid off a little of the line. Then he dropped down to get his breath.

“Are you safe?” she shouted down to him.

“Sure! I can sit here all night.”

“You don’t want to, I suppose?” she asked.

“Not so’s you’d notice it. I guess I can get down after a fashion.”

“Hurt bad?”

“It’s my foot, mostly—right foot. I believe it’s sprained, or broken. It’s sort of in the way when I move about.”

“Your face looks as if that tree had combed it some,” commented Helen.

“Never mind,” replied the youth. “Beauty’s only skin deep, at best. And I’m not proud.”

She could not see him very well, for the sun had dropped so low that down where he lay the face of the bluff was in shadow.

“Well, what are you going to do? Climb up, or down?”

“I believe getting down would be easier—’specially if you let me use your rope.”

“Sure!”

“But then, there’d be my pony. I couldn’t get him with this foot——”

“I’ll catch him. My Rose can run down anything on four legs in these parts,” declared the girl, briskly.

“And can you get down here to the foot of this cliff where I’m bound to land?”

“Yes. I know the way in the dark. Got matches?”

“Yes.”

“Then you build some kind of a smudge when you reach the bottom. That’ll show me where you are. Now I’m going to drop the rope to you. Look out it doesn’t get tangled.”

“All right! Let ’er come!”

“I’ll have to leave you if I’m to catch that buckskin before it gets dark, stranger. You’ll get along all right?” she added.

“Surest thing you know!”

She dropped the rope. He gathered it in quickly and then uttered a cheerful shout.

“All clear?” asked Helen.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m all right,” he assured her.

Helen leaped back to her waiting pony. Already the golden light was dying out of the sky. Up here in the foothills the “evening died hard” as the saying is; but the buckskin pony had romped clear across the plateau. He was now, indeed, out of sight.

She whirled Rose about and set off at a gallop after the runaway. It was not until then that she remembered she had no rope. That buckskin would have to be fairly run down. There would be no roping him.

“But if you can’t do it, no other horsie can,” she said, aloud, patting the Rose pony on her arching neck. “Go it, girl! Let’s see if we can’t beat any miserable little buckskin that ever came into this country. A strawberry roan forever!”

Her “E-e-e-yow! yow!” awoke the pony to desperate endeavor. She seemed to merely skim the dry grass of the open plateau, and in ten minutes Helen saw a riderless mount plunging up the side of a coulée far ahead.

“There he goes!” cried the girl. “After him, Rosie! Make your pretty hoofs fly!”

The excitement of the chase roused in Helen that feeling of freedom and confidence that is a part of life on the plains. Those who live much in the open air, and especially in the saddle, seldom think of failure.

She knew she was going to catch the runaway pony. Such an idea as non-success never entered her mind. This was the first hard riding she had done since Mr. Morrell died; and now her thoughts expanded and she shook off the hopeless feeling which had clouded her young heart and mind since they had buried her father.

While she rode on, and rode hard, after the fleeing buckskin her revived thought kept time with the pony’s hoofbeats.

No longer did the old tune run in her head: “If I only could clear dad’s name!” Instead the drum of confidence beat a charge to arms: “I know I can clear his name!

“To think of poor dad living out here all these years, with suspicion resting on his reputation back there in New York. And he wasn’t guilty! It was that partner of his, or that bookkeeper, who was guilty. That is the secret of it,” Helen told herself.

“I’ll go back East and find out all about it,” determined the girl, as her pony carried her swiftly over the ground. “Up, Rose! There he is! Don’t let him get away from us!”

Her interest in the chase of the buckskin pony and in the mystery of her father’s trouble ran side by side.

“On, on!” she urged Rose. “Why shouldn’t I go East? Big Hen can run the ranch well enough. And there are my cousins—and auntie. If Aunt Eunice resembles mother——

“Go it, Rose! There’s our quarry!”

She stooped forward in the saddle, and as the Rose pony, running like the wind, passed the now staggering buckskin, Helen snatched the dragging rein, and pulled the runaway around to follow in her own wake.

“Hush, now! Easy!” she commanded her mount, who obeyed her voice quite as well as though she had tugged at the reins. “Now we’ll go back quietly and trail this useless one along with us.

“Come up, Buck! Easy, Rose!” So she urged them into the same gait, returning in a wide circle toward the path up which she had climbed before the sun went down—the trail to Sunset Ranch.

“Yes! I can do it!” she cried, thinking aloud. “I can and will go to New York. I’ll find out all about that old trouble. Uncle Starkweather can tell me, probably.

“And then it will please father.” She spoke as though Mr. Morrell was sure to know her decision. “He will like it if I go to live with them a spell. He said it is what I need—the refining influence of a nice home.

“And I would love to be with nice girls again—and to hear good music—and put on something beside a riding skirt when I go out of the house.”

She sighed. “One cannot have a cow ranch and all the fripperies of civilization, too. Not very well. I—I guess I am longing for the flesh-pots of Egypt. Perhaps poor dad did, too. Well, I’ll give them a whirl. I’ll go East——

“Why, where’s that fellow’s fire?”

She was descending the trail into the pall of dusk that had now spread over the valley. Far away she caught a glimmer of light—a lantern on the porch at the ranch-house. But right below here where she wished to see a light, there was not a spark.

“I hope nothing’s happened to him,” she mused. “I don’t believe he is one of us; if he had been he wouldn’t have raced a pony so close to the edge of the bluff.”

She began to “co-ee! co-ee!” as the ponies clattered down the remainder of the pathway. And finally there came an answering shout. Then a little glimmer of light flashed up—again and yet again.

“Matches!” grumbled Helen. “Can’t he find anything dry to burn down there and so make a steady light?”

She shouted again.

“This way, Miss!” she heard the stranger cry.

The ponies picked their way carefully over the loose shale that had fallen to the foot of the bluff. There were trees, too, to make the way darker.

“Hi!” cried Helen. “Why didn’t you light a fire?”

“Why, to tell you the truth, I had some difficulty in getting down here, and I—I had to rest.”

The words were followed by a groan that the young man evidently could not suppress.

“Why, you’re more badly hurt than you said!” cried the girl. “I’d better get help; hadn’t I?”

“A doctor is out of the question, I guess. I believe that foot’s broken.”

“Huh! You’re from the East!” she said, suddenly.

“How so?”

“You say ‘guess’ in that funny way. And that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Your riding so recklessly.”

“My goodness!” exclaimed the other, with a short laugh. “I thought the whole West was noted for reckless riding.”

“Oh, no. It only looks reckless,” she returned, quietly. “Our boys wouldn’t ride a pony close to the edge of a steep descent like that up yonder.”

“All right. I’m in the wrong,” admitted the stranger. “But you needn’t rub it in.”

“I didn’t mean to,” said Helen, quickly. “I have a bad habit of talking out loud.”

He laughed at that. “You’re frank, you mean? I like that. Be frank enough to tell me how I am to get back to Badger’s—even on ponyback—to-night?”

“Impossible,” declared Helen.

“Then, perhaps I had better make an effort to make camp.”

“Why, no! It’s only a few miles to the ranch-house. I’ll hoist you up on your pony. The trail’s easy.”

“Whose ranch is it?” he asked, with another suppressed groan.

“Mine—Sunset Ranch.”

“Sunset Ranch! Why, I’ve heard of that. One of the last big ranches remaining in Montana; Isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Almost as big as 101?”

“That’s right,” said Helen, briefly.

“But I didn’t know a girl owned it,” said the other, curiously.

“She didn’t—until lately. My father, Prince Morrell, has just died.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the other, in a softened tone. “And you are Miss Morrell?”

“I am. And who are you? Easterner, of course?”

“You guessed right—though, I suppose, you ‘reckon’ instead of ‘guess.’ I’m from New York.”

“Is that so?” queried Helen. “That’s a place I want to see before long.”

“Well, you’ll be disappointed,” remarked the other. “My name is Dudley Stone, and I was born and brought up in New York and have lived there all my life until I got away for this trip West. But, believe me, if I didn’t have to I would never go back!”

“Why do you have to go back?” asked Helen, simply.

“Business. Necessity of earning one’s living. I’m in the way of being a lawyer—when my days of studying, and all, are over. And then, I’ve got a sister who might not fit into the mosaic of this freer country, either.”

“Well, Dudley Stone,” quoth the girl from Sunset Ranch, “we’d better not stay talking here. It’s getting darker every minute. And I reckon your foot needs attention.”

“I hate to move it,” confessed the young Easterner.

“You can’t stay here, you know,” insisted Helen. “Where’s my rope?”

“I’m sorry. I had to hitch one end of it up above and let myself down by it.”

“Well, it might have come in handy to lash you on the pony. I don’t mind about the rope otherwise. One of the boys will bring it in for me to-morrow. Now, let’s see what we can do towards hoisting you into your saddle.”

CHAPTER III

THE MISTRESS OF SUNSET RANCH

Dudley Stone had begun to peer wonderingly at this strange girl. When he had first sighted her riding her strawberry roan across the plateau he supposed her to be a little girl—and really, physically, she did not seem much different from what he had first supposed.

But she handled this situation with all the calmness and good sense of a much older person. She spoke like the men and women he had met during his sojourn in the West, too.

Yet, when he was close to her, he saw that she was simply a young girl with good health, good muscles, and a rather pretty face and figure. He called her “Miss” because it seemed to flatter her; but Dud Stone felt himself infinitely older than this girl of Sunset Ranch.

It was she who went about getting him aboard the pony, however; he never could have done it by himself. Nor was it so easily done as said.

In the first place, the badly trained buckskin didn’t want to stand still. And the young man was in such pain that he really was unable to aid Helen in securing the pony.

“Here, you take Rose,” commanded the girl, at length. “She’d stand for anything. Up you come, now, sir!”

The young fellow was no weakling. But when he put one arm over the girl’s strong shoulder, and was hoisted erect, she felt him quiver all over. She knew that the pain he suffered must be intense.

“Whoa, Rose, girl!” commanded Helen. “Back around! Now, sir, up with that lame leg. It’s got to be done——”

“I know it!” he panted, and by a desperate effort managed to get the broken foot over the saddle.

“Up with you!” said Helen, and hoisted him with a man’s strength into the saddle. “Are you there?”

“Oh! Ouch! Yes,” returned the Easterner. “I’m here. No knowing how long I’ll stick, though.”

“You’d better stick. Here! Put this foot in the stirrup. Don’t suppose you can stand the other in it?”

“Oh, no! I really couldn’t,” he exclaimed.

“Well, we’ll go slow. Hi, there! Come here, you Buck!”

“He’s a vicious little scoundrel,” said the young man.

“He ought to have a course of sprouts under one of our wranglers,” remarked the girl from Sunset Ranch. “Now let’s go along.”

Despite the buckskin’s dancing and cavorting, she mounted, stuck the spurs into him a couple of times, and the ill-mannered pony decided that walking properly was better than bucking.

“You’re a wonder!” exclaimed Dud Stone, admiringly.

“You haven’t been West long,” she replied, with a smile. “Women folk out here aren’t much afraid of horses.”

“I should say they were not—if you are a specimen.”

“I’m just ordinary. I spent four school terms in Denver, and I never rode there, so I kind of lost the hang of it.”

Dud Stone was becoming anxious over another matter.

“Are you sure you can find the trail when it’s so dark?” he asked.

“We’re on it now,” she said.

“I’m glad you’re so sure,” he returned, grimly. “I can’t see the ground, even.”

“But the ponies know, if I don’t,” observed Helen, cheerfully. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

“I guess you think I am kind of a tenderfoot?” he returned.

“You’re not used to night traveling on the cattle range,” she said. “You see, we lay our courses by the stars, just as mariners do at sea. I can find my way to the ranch-house from clear beyond Elberon, as long as the stars show.”

“Well,” he sighed, “this is some different from riding on the bridle-path in Central Park.”

“That’s in New York?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I mean to go there. It’s really a big city, I suppose?”

“Makes Denver look like a village,” said Stone, laughing to smother a groan.

“So father said.”

“You have people there, I hope?”

“Yes. Father and mother came from there. It was before I was born, though. You see, I’m a real Montana product.”

“And a mighty fine one!” he murmured. Then he said aloud: “Well, as long as you’ve got folks in the big city, it’s all right. But it’s the loneliest place on God’s earth if one has no friends and no confidants. I know that to be true from what boys have told me who have come there from out of town.”

“Oh, I’ve got folks,” said Helen, lightly. “How’s the foot now?”

“Bad,” he admitted. “It hangs loose, you see——”

“Hold on!” commanded Helen, dismounting. “We’ve a long way to travel yet. That foot must be strapped so that it will ride easier. Wait!”

She handed him her rein to hold and went around to the other side of the Rose pony. She removed her belt, unhooked the empty holster that hung from it, and slipped the holster into her pocket. Few of the riders carried a gun on Sunset Ranch unless the coyotes proved troublesome.

With her belt Helen strapped the dangling leg to the saddle girth. The useless stirrup, that flopped and struck the lame foot, she tucked up out of the way.

With tender fingers she touched the wounded foot. She could feel the fever through the boot.

“But you’d better keep your boot on till we get home, Dud Stone,” advised Helen. “It will sort of hold it together and perhaps keep the pain from becoming greater than you can bear. But I guess it hurts mighty bad.”

“It sure does, Miss Morrell,” he returned, grimly. “Is—is the ranch far?”

“Some distance. And we’ve got to walk. But bear up if you can——”

She saw him waver in the saddle. If he fell, she could not be sure just how Rose, the spirited pony, would act.

“Say!” she said, coming around and walking by his side, leading the other mount by the bridle. “You lean on me. Don’t want you falling out of the saddle. Too hard work to get you back again.”

“I guess you think I am a tenderfoot!” muttered young Stone.

He never knew how they reached Sunset Ranch. The fall, the terrible wrench of his foot, and the endurance of the pain was finally too much for him. In a half-fainting condition he sank part of his weight on the girl’s shoulder, and she sturdily trudged along the rough trail, bearing him up until she thought her own limbs would give way.

At last she even had to let the buckskin run at large, he made her so much trouble. But the Rose pony was “a dear!”

Somewhere about ten o’clock the dogs began to bark. She saw the flash of lanterns and heard the patter of hoofs.

She gave voice to the long range yell, and a dozen anxious punchers replied. Great discussion had arisen over where she could have gone, for nobody had seen her ride off toward the View that afternoon.

“Whar you been, gal?” demanded Big Hen Billings, bringing his horse to a sudden stop across the trail. “Hul-lo! What’s that you got with yer?”

“A tenderfoot. Easy, Hen! I’ve got his leg strapped to the girth. He’s in bad shape,” and she related, briefly, the particulars of the accident.

Dudley Stone had only a hazy recollection later of the noise and confusion of his arrival. He was borne into the house by two men—one of them the ranch foreman himself.

They laid him on a couch, cut the boot from his injured foot, and then the sock he wore.

Hen Billings, with bushy whiskers and the frame of a giant, was nevertheless as tender with the injured foot as a woman. Water with a chunk of ice floating in it was used to reduce the swelling. The foreman’s blunted fingers probed for broken bones.

But it seemed there was none. It was only a bad sprain, and they finally stripped him to his underclothes and bandaged the foot with cloths soaked with ice water.

When they got him into bed—in an adjoining room—the young mistress of Sunset Ranch reappeared, with a tray and napkins, with which she arranged a table.

“That’s what he wants—some good grub under his belt, Snuggy,” said the gigantic foreman, finally lighting his pipe. “He’ll be all right in a few days. I’ll send word to Creeping Ford for one of the boys to ride down to Badger’s and tell ’em. That’s where Mr. Stone says he’s been stopping.”

“You’re mighty kind,” said the Easterner, gratefully, as Sing, the Chinese servant, shuffled in with a steaming supper.

“We’re glad to have a chance to play Good Samaritan in this part of the country,” said Helen, laughing. “Isn’t that so, Hen?”

“That’s right, Snuggy,” replied the foreman, patting her on the shoulder.

Dud Stone looked at Helen curiously, as the big man strode out of the room.

“What an odd name!” he commented.

“My father called me that, when I was a tiny baby,” replied the girl. “And I love it. All my friends call me ‘Snuggy.’ At least, all my ranch friends.”

“Well, it’s too soon for me to begin, I suppose?” he said, laughing.

“Oh, quite too soon,” returned Helen, as composedly as a person twice her age. “You had better stick to ‘Miss Morrell,’ and remember that I am the mistress of Sunset Ranch.”

“But I notice that you take liberties with my name,” he said, quickly.

“That’s different. You’re a man. Men around here always shorten their names, or have nicknames. If they call you by your full name that means the boys don’t like you. And I liked you from the start,” said the Western girl, quite frankly.

“Thank you!” he responded, his eyes twinkling. “I expect it must have been my fine riding that attracted you.”

“No. Nor it wasn’t your city cowpuncher clothes,” she retorted. “I know those things weren’t bought farther West than Chicago.”

“A palpable hit!” admitted Dudley Stone.