THE GIRLS
OF
SILVER SPUR RANCH
BY
GRACE MACGOWAN COOKE
AND
ANNE MCQUEEN
THE GOLDSMITH PUBLISHING COMPANY
Chicago
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
LIST OF CHAPTERS
- [A Question of Names]
- [Roy Rides to Silver Spur]
- [A Package and a Leather-Brown Phaeton]
- [A Jewel of Great Price]
- [The Silver Spur Bakery]
- [A Shiny Black Box]
- [The Wire Cutter]
- [A Partner of the Sun]
- [The Rose by Another Name]
THE GIRLS OF
SILVER SPUR RANCH
CHAPTER I
A Question of Names
The girls of Silver Spur ranch were all very busy helping Mary, the eldest, with her wedding sewing. Silver Spur was rather a pretentious name for John Spooner's little Texas cattle-farm, but Elizabeth, the second daughter, who had an ear attuned to sweet sounds, had chosen it; as a further confirmation of the fact she had covered an old spur with silver-leaf and hung it over the doorway. The neighboring ranchers had laughed, at first, and old Jonah Bean, the one cowboy left in charge of the small Spooner herd, always sniffed scornfully when he had occasion to mention the name of his ranch, declaring that The Tin Spoon would suit it much better. However, in time everybody became used to it, and Silver Spur the ranch remained--somehow Elizabeth always had her own way.
This young lady sat by the window in the little living-room where they were all at work, and carefully embroidered a big and corpulent "B" on a sofa-pillow for Mary, who was to marry, in a few days, a young man from another state who owned the euphonious name of Bellamy--a name Elizabeth openly envied him.
"I do think Spooner is such a horrid, commonplace sort of name," she declared with emphatic disapproval. "Aren't you glad you'll soon be rid of it, Mary?"
"Um-m," murmured Mary, paying scant heed to Elizabeth's query; she was hemming a ruffle to trim the little muslin frock which was the last unfinished garment of her trousseau, and she was too busy for argument.
"As if," continued Elizabeth, "the name wasn't odious enough, father must needs go and choose a spoon for his brand! And he might so easily have made it a fleur-de-lys--fairly rubbing it in, as if it was something to be proud of!"
Just then Mary, finding that the machine needle kept jabbing in one place, looked about for a cause, and perceived Elizabeth tranquilly rocking upon one of the unhemmed breadths of her ruffle.
"I'll be much obliged if you'll take your chair off my ruffle, Saint Elizabeth," she laughed, tugging at the crumpled cloth, "and just don't worry over the name--try and live up to your looks."
Elizabeth blushed a little as she stooped to disentangle the cloth from her rocker; she was a very handsome girl, altogether unlike her sisters, who were all rather short and dark, and plump looking, Cousin Hannah Pratt declared, as much alike as biscuits cut out of the same batch of dough. Elizabeth was about sixteen, tall and fair and slim, with large, serious blue eyes and long, thick blond hair, which she wore plaited in the form of a coronet or halo about her head--privately, she much preferred the halo, as best befitting the character of her favorite heroine, Saint Elizabeth, a canonized queen whom she desired to resemble in looks and deportment.
"One would have to be a saint to bear with the name of Spooner," she said, rather crossly, as she tossed Mary her ruffle.
Cousin Hannah Pratt, rocking in the biggest chair, which she filled to overflowing, lifted her eyes from her work and regarded Elizabeth meditatively. "How'd you like to swap it for Mudd, Libby?" she asked tranquilly.
Elizabeth shuddered--she hated to be called Libby, it was so commonplace; and Cousin Hannah persisted in calling her that when she knew how it annoyed her. Elizabeth was thankful that Cousin Hannah--who kept a boarding-house in Emerald, the near-by village, and had kindly come over to help with the wedding--was only kin-in-law, which was bad enough; to have such an uncultured person for a blood relation would have been worse.
"Mudd! O, poor Elizabeth!" giggled Ruth, the third of the Spooner sisters, a merry-hearted girl of fifteen, who looked on all the world with mirthful eyes. "Cousin Hannah, what made you think of such an awful name?"
"Don't be so noisy, Ruth," cautioned Mary, with what seemed unnecessary severity. "Mother's neuralgia is bad to day. You can hear every sound right through in her room. Cousin Hannah, won't you please make her a cup of tea? I think it would do her good; you make such nice tea."
"Sure and certain!" agreed Cousin Hannah, heartily. Rising ponderously from her chair, she moved on heavy tiptoes out into the kitchen, the thin boards creaking as she walked.
"I might also remark that a person would have to be a saint to bear with Cousin Hannah," said Elizabeth, "she doesn't intend it, maybe, but she does rile me so!"
"I don't see why anybody would want to be a saint; I'd heap rather be a knight," spoke up little Harvie, nicknamed by her family "the Babe." She lay curled up on a lounge in the corner, ostensibly pulling out bastings, but really reading a worn old copy of Ivanhoe, which was the book of her heart. There were no children living near the lonely little ranch, and the Babe, who was only ten, solaced herself with the company of heroes and heroines of romance--much preferring the heroes.
"I'd rather be 'most anything than a 'mover'," declared Elizabeth, emphatically. "And if you want to know the reason, just look out of the window and watch this procession coming up from the road."
Ruth and the Babe ran to the window; Mary, leaving her machine, slipped quietly out of the room to see about her mother. Also Mary desired to have a little private talk with Cousin Hannah.
It was a pitifully ludicrous spectacle that the girls beheld. Up the driveway leading to the house came a dreary procession of those unfortunates known in western parlance as "movers," family tramps who follow the harvests in hope of getting a little work in the fields; always moving on when the crops are gathered, or planted, as the case may be--movers never became dwellers in any local territory.
These movers were, in appearance, even more wretched than usual. In a little covered cart drawn by a diminutive donkey, sat a pale woman with a baby in her arms, and two small and pallid children crouching beside her. Behind the cart the father of the family pushed valiantly, in a kindly endeavor to help along the donkey, while just ahead of that overburdened animal walked a small boy, holding, as further inducement, an alluring ear of corn just out of reach of the donkey's nose. Certainly the family justified Elizabeth's declaration that 'most anything was preferable to being a mover!
Ruth and Elizabeth both laughed at the comical procession, but the Babe's eyes were full of pity. "The poor things are coming up for water," she said sorrowfully. "Father always let them get water at our well--I'll go show them the way." And she ran out to meet the movers and show them the well at the back of the house, where they filled their water-jugs and quenched the thirst of the patient and unsatisfied donkey.
"I wish to goodness Father never had gone to Cuba," sighed Ruth, as she turned from the window to take up her button-holes, "it is so awfully lonesome without him."
"I think it was splendid," said Elizabeth, with shining eyes, "to be among the very first of the volunteers. And maybe he'll do some deed of daring and be made an officer. Think how nice it will be to say, when the war is over, that our father figures in history--maybe as one of the foremost heroes of the Spanish-American war."
"You're always dreaming of things that never happen, Elizabeth," scoffed practical Ruth. "Of course he won't be made a big officer. If he comes back just a plain Captain I'll be mighty glad."
"O, well, the world's greatest men and women have always been dreamers," asserted Elizabeth, cheerfully, "I can't help being born different from the rest of you, can I?"
"H'm, I reckon not--but you can start a fire in the stove. People must eat, no matter how great they are. It's your time to get supper."
"O, dear, it's bad to be born poor!" sighed Elizabeth, as she arose reluctantly. "Especially when there's a longing within you to do perfectly fine things, and not mere drudgery. I wish I were a princess--it seems to me I was born to rule. I'm sure I would be a wise and capable sovereign. Well, even queens stoop to minister to the lowly, like Saint Elizabeth, so I'll go get supper for the Spooners!"
And with her head in the clouds, the throneless queen marched majestically kitchenward, to engage in the humble occupation of cooking supper for her family.
Voices from her mother's closed door reached her ears as she passed. Elizabeth would have scorned eavesdropping, but--the ranch being located in the prairie region of Texas, where lumber is so scarce that just as little as possible is used in building, and the walls being merely board partitions, she could not help hearing Cousin Hannah's voice, always strident, rising above her mother's and Mary's lower tones.
"Fiddle-diddle! What's the use of mincin' matters anyway? She's bound to know, sooner or later--ought to know without--tellin', if she had a grain o' common sense. Ain't a single, solitary thing about her favors the rest of you all."
The words sounded very clearly in Elizabeth's startled ears, arousing a train of troubled thoughts in her mind, as she moved mechanically about the kitchen. She felt quite certain that they were talking about her, and that Cousin Hannah wanted to tell her something that Mrs. Spooner and Mary didn't want known.
"I wonder what it can be," pondered Elizabeth, as she slowly stirred the hominy pot. "Whether Cousin Hannah thinks so or not, I've always known I wasn't like the rest."
This was quite true; Elizabeth, though she dearly loved the parents and sisters who had always, Cousin Hannah declared, spoiled her, yet could not help feeling that she was, mentally and physically superior to them, "made of finer clay," she would have put it. People often remarked on this lack of resemblance to the others, and when they did so in Mrs. Spooner's presence she always hastily changed the subject. Elizabeth had often wondered why. Somehow there seemed always to have been a mystery surrounding her--something that, if explained, would prove very thrilling indeed.
Occupied with these thoughts, she moved from cupboard to table, and from table to fire, preparing the evening meal with deft skill, for anything Elizabeth Spooner did she did a little better than other people.
Outside the window stretched a vast brown-green plain, bounded by a horizon line like a ring. There was monotony in the prospect, and yet a curious sense of adventure and romance, as there is about the sea. Elizabeth delighted in the mystic beauty of the prairie, yet to-day her fine eyes studied the level unseeingly as she glanced through the window, looking to see if Jonah Bean was in sight; the glories of sunset that flooded the plain passed almost unnoticed. She was thinking too earnestly on her own problem to observe the outside world.
"If I were by chance adopted, I certainly have a right to know who I am," Elizabeth pondered, as she set the table beautifully, with certain artistic touches that the clumsier hands of the other girls somehow could never manage. "It won't make any difference in my feelings for father and mother and the girls if I should happen to be born in a higher station of life than theirs--though I can easily see how poor mother could think it might; I trust I'm above being snobbish--" Elizabeth's eyes began to glow with a resolute purpose--"I'm going to find out, that's what! I'll make Cousin Hannah tell me. She's so big it's awful to sleep with her, and she snores like thunder. Mary knows how bad it is, and how I hate it, that's the reason she made me sleep with Ruth, when one of us had to give up our place. To-night I'll make Mary take the Babe's place with Mother, who might need her in the night, and I'll sleep with Cousin Hannah--and find out what she knows about me!"
Jonah Bean came stamping up the steps just then to wash up for supper at the water-shelf just outside the kitchen door; informing anybody who chose to listen that he was mighty tired--there was two men's work to do on the Spooner ranch, anyhow, and he was gittin' old, same's other folks. Glancing in at the open door he observed who was the cook.
"Humph! So it's your night for gittin' supper? Well, I hope the truck'll taste as fancy as that air table looks."
"Sure, Jonah," answered Elizabeth, critically observing the effect of her handiwork. "If you'll just step outside and get me a big bunch of those yellow cactus-blooms to put in this brown pitcher it'll be perfect, and I'll see that you get a big painted cup full of coffee."
"Never could see no use in weeds--full o' stickers at that," grumbled Jonah, as he turned to go out for the flowers that were growing on the great cactus in the fence corner. "Hope that air coffee'll be strong and hot, though."
The coffee was strong and hot, and the hominy was white and well-cooked; the bacon was brown and crisp and the biscuits light as feathers. Elizabeth dished the supper in the flowered dishes kept for company, because she could not bear the heavy earthenware they used every day. She filled the squatty brown pitcher with the big bunch of golden blooms old Jonah bore gingerly, careful of the thorns, and then lighted the lamp with the red shade. Really they didn't need a lamp, but the glow from the red shade was so pretty that she lighted it anyway--she so loved beautiful things.
She arranged her mother's tray daintily, laying a cactus-bloom, freed of its thorns, beside the plate--somehow she felt as if she was preparing for some extra occasion.
"I declare Libby always cooks like she was fixin' for company," said Cousin Hannah, admiringly, as she sat at the gracefully arranged table. "Oughter keep boarders, and she wouldn't find no time for extra kinks."
Elizabeth shuddered a little as she poured Jonah's coffee in the biggest cup, with the painted motto on it--how she would hate to do such a sordid thing as keep boarders!
But she smiled very affably on Cousin Hannah, and asked if she wouldn't tell her how to make spice cake--she always noticed that Cousin Hannah's cake was so good. She wished to get the recipe to write in her scrap-book.
"Shore and certain," said Cousin Hannah, amiably, pleased at Elizabeth's praise, "I'll be glad to write it off. You're 'bout as good a cook as Ruth, though I always did say she was the born cook o' the family--you seemin' to be a master hand at managin'."
That she was indeed a master hand at the art, Elizabeth proved that night, when with a few energetic commands, she sent Mary obediently to her mother's room, to take the Babe's place, who in turn was put to sleep with Ruth.
"Why in the world don't you let Ruth sleep with Cousin Hannah?" argued Mary, "you know how you hate to--and she doesn't mind."
"Because it isn't fair that I shouldn't have my turn as well as the others--it's disagreeable to all of us. Now you just let me have my way, and say nothing else about it!" declared Elizabeth with authority, and as usual, she was allowed to have her way.
While Cousin Hannah undressed, moving ponderously about the little room, Elizabeth sat on the side of the bed, brushing her long blond hair, watching with critical admiration of the beautiful, the gleams of red and gold the lamplight cast upon its glittering strands, and formulating in her mind a plan to find out the secret of her birth--if secret there was.
She finally decided that plain speech was better than beating about the bush, and spoke in a carefully suppressed tone.
"Cousin Hannah," she said, with whispering decisiveness, "I want to know what you, and Mother and Mary were talking about in her room."
"Why, Libby!" exclaimed Cousin Hannah, plumping down upon the bed in her astonishment, "did you go and listen to what we was sayin'?"
"Indeed I didn't! But I couldn't help hearing you--and I think it's my right to know, if you were talking about me."
"But your Ma--but Jennie said she didn't want you should know," argued the bewildered Cousin Hannah, "land o' livin', girl, ain't you got a home, and people to care for you? Why in tunket can't you be satisfied with that?"
Certainty made Elizabeth calmly triumphant.
"I have felt, for a long time--ever since I can remember, that I was different from the rest of my family, though you didn't give me credit for having sense enough to see it. Of course, I love them all dearly but I can't help feeling that it's my right to know the truth, whatever it is. Cousin Hannah, is or is not my name Spooner?"
"Well," Cousin Hannah evaded the question, "what would you get out of it if your name wasn't Spooner?"
Elizabeth leaped up softly, she held her hairbrush as though it were a scepter; her long hair flowed and billowed about her as she walked with majestic tread, up and down the tiny room--she was seeing visions!
If her name was not Spooner! That would mean that her birth was, she felt sure, indefinitely illustrious some way. Of course she would never desert the people who loved her, and whom she would always love, but--might not something come of it that would be grand for them all?
"Libby," Cousin Hannah's eyes followed the moving figure with a distressed look in them, "your ma--Jennie Spooner--your true ma, if love and tenderness count for anything, never wanted you told. Mary knows, and she don't want you should know. When I watch your uppity ways I tell 'em it's high time they explained the situation to you."
"The situation--" Elizabeth hung breathlessly on her words with shining eyes, and an eager tremble of her lips.
"Yes, the situation," repeated Cousin Hannah heavily. "Jennie Spooner had a tough time raisin' you--a troublesome young'un as ever I see. You teethed so hard that it looked like she never knew what a night's rest was till you got 'em through the gums. I used to come over here many a time and help her; what with Ruth bein' so nigh the same age, she had her hands full. It was kept from you for fear of hurtin' your feelin's, if you must know."
"How could it hurt my feelings?" questioned Elizabeth, a little puzzled. "I love them all--but they should have told me. They ought to have known they couldn't change--" a swan to a duckling had been on the tip of her tongue, but she stopped in time, "me to a Spooner, even by their love and kindness."
"Change you to a Spooner?" slow wrath mounted to Cousin Hannah's face. She caught Elizabeth's arm as the girl passed by. "I reckon they couldn't make a Spooner out o' you, that's a fact. The Spooners, bein', so far's known to me, respectable householders--"
"But not what my people were," suggested Elizabeth, her whole face alight, her eyes shining with eagerness. "You must tell me who they were--what my rightful name is."
Cousin Hannah groaned. "Looks like I've let the cat out of the bag--don't it? Well, what I've got to tell ain't nigh what you think I've got to tell," she asserted doggedly. "You'll be sorry for askin'."
Through Elizabeth's mind flashed visions of a wonderful ancestry; to do her justice these dream parents did not in any way displace the father and mother she really loved with all her young heart--they were only that vision which comes to us all in some shape when we feel we are misunderstood--different.
Mary's step was heard approaching in the little corridor. She had undoubtedly been disturbed by the sound of their voices, and was uneasy for fear Cousin Hannah would be teased into making in judicious revelations.
"Tell me--tell me quick--" whispered Elizabeth, shaking her room-mate's arm. "Tell me before Mary gets here."
"Well, I will," gasped Cousin Hannah. "You ought to know it--but I warn you it's not what you're expectin'!"
CHAPTER II
Roy Rides to Silver Spur
When Mary stepped into the little bedroom Cousin Hannah Pratt had already spoken.
"Your pa and ma was movers that come here sixteen years ago--movers, like the folks you seen to-day and made such fun of. The name was Mudd."
These whispered words sounded in Elizabeth's ears, and the girl crumpled up on the bed sobbing just as Mary opened the door. Mrs. Pratt pulled the elder sister into the room.
"I've told Libby--she ought to have been told long ago--with you marryin' and goin' away and Ruth not havin' a bit of faculty and her bein' the one to take your place I think she was obliged to know it."
Mary came across the room with a rush, and took slim Elizabeth in loving arms.
"Go away, Cousin Hannah, please," she said. "You can sleep with Ruth and I'll stay with Elizabeth."
Mrs. Pratt, glad enough to be relieved from sight of the misery she had caused, hurried away and the two sisters were alone together. Mary knew very little of what Cousin Hannah had seen fit to reveal, a child herself at the time, she had but vague remembrances of it, and indeed Elizabeth asked no questions--she only needed to be comforted, and this Mary did as best she could.
The next day but one was the wedding day, Mr. Bellamy was expected in the morning and they would probably have no other chance for private talk, but Mary urged Elizabeth to go to their mother for comfort when the wedding was over, and some time late in the night they both fell asleep.
In the days that followed the wedding, when everything was strange, and they were settling slowly back into the usual routine Elizabeth found no opportunity to speak with her mother of that trouble which had come now to haunt every waking hour, and even pursued her into dreams.
Mary and her euphoniously named Mr. Bellamy had gone on their way to Oklahoma, where the bridegroom owned a ranch. Cousin Hannah Pratt, having helped with the wedding sewing and the packing, had gone back to Emerald and her own overflowing boarding-house. Mrs. Spooner, the three girls, and old Jonah were left alone, face to face with the problem of getting along.
Everything had settled into the usual routine at the Silver Spur; Mrs. Spooner, rather weak from her neuralgia and the strain of the wedding, sat on the front porch in a big chair which Elizabeth had endeavored to make comfortable with rugs and pillows.
"Are you perfectly sure I can't do anything else for you, Mother?" she asked anxiously. "Mary always waited on you so beautifully, while--it seems to me I've never done one little thing for you, when you've done so much for me!"
A big tear slipped from the long lashes and splashed on Mrs. Spooner's little hand, fluttering among the cushions. In a minute the mother-arms had pulled the girl's head down to the mother-breast, the thin fingers patting the blond braids and the mother-voice crooning comfort into the crumpled little ear buried upon the maternal shoulder.
"Don't cry, daughter, Mother loves you just the same! Haven't you been our own since you were, O, such a wee baby! It was cruel of Cousin Hannah to tell you, but we won't let it make one bit of difference. You're ours and we are yours. A thing like that can't matter to people who love each other as we do."
"It--it doesn't matter, Mother," gasped Elizabeth, as she mopped her reddened eyes, "if I can just take Mary's place to you. I am going to try, my very level best."
"Then you'll be sure to succeed," said her mother, confidently. "You always succeed in everything you undertake--hadn't you noticed that, dear? Now, really, I'm just as comfortable as hands can make me, so you run on down to the corral and help Ruth and the Babe with the ponies. You ride with them to Emerald, and get the mail--it'll do you good. And be sure you bring me a letter from father."
Cheered by her mother's words, Elizabeth gave one more pat and pull to the pillows, kissed her, and ran down to the corral, where the girls were roping the ponies. She and Ruth could each rope a little, missing about three out of five throws, but the Babe usually flourished so reckless a loop that she entangled herself, and had to be helped out; in spite of which old Jonah Bean insisted that she was the only one who showed any signs of learning the art.
Poor Elizabeth! Her castle of dreams had fallen, leaving her wide awake to the fact that she was no princess of romance but the humble offspring of miserable movers, such as had always been the objects of her shuddering contempt. Even Cousin Hannah's heart was touched with pity, and she tried with clumsy but hearty kindness to make amends for the grief she had caused by her disclosure. Nothing had been said to Ruth and the Babe, of course--they still believed her to be their born sister. However, deep down in her heart, Elizabeth was walking in the Valley of Humiliation amid the dust and ashes of dead hopes; and, as most people know, when one enters the Valley it is very, very hard to find the way out again!
Mrs. Spooner, watching the girls ride down the road, sighed softly. "Poor child," she murmured pityingly, "I can hardly forgive Cousin Hannah. But in the end it may prove the best thing. I'm afraid we were spoiling her. This may bring out the fine nature that I know she possesses."
Texas is a land of far horizons; Mrs. Spooner could see all the vast, brown-green circling plain until it lost itself in the hazy distance.
Away up the trail that led to her brother's distant ranch, twenty miles further from Emerald, she noticed a moving cloud of dust which resolved itself into an oscillating speck--two--a man on a pony, with a led horse.
For some reason which she could not have explained, Mrs. Spooner felt that the approaching rider was going to turn in at the Silver Spur. There was no pleasant feeling between herself and Harvey Grannis. John Spooner had bought the Silver Spur ranch from his brother-in-law when he came to this part of Texas, and there had been trouble over the transaction, due, Mrs. Spooner felt, to Harvey's disposition to take too much authority. He was a bachelor, and the rich man of the community--excepting the English rancher, McGregor, who did not live so far away. He would have liked to do a good deal for the family of his only sister, but he wanted to do it in his own way, asserting that John Spooner couldn't take care of them, and treating them, Elizabeth fireily said like paupers. A hard man, with his good qualities, yet full of the "rule or ruin" spirit, and liable to go to great lengths to make his point.
The approaching rider was now seen to be a young fellow, scarcely more than a big boy. He came up the long bare drive, stopped at the porch edge and took off his hat before he spoke to the woman in the rocking-chair. She noted that the pony he rode stumbled with weariness, while the led horse trotted briskly, unencumbered with saddle or rider. She saw, too, that while the tired pony bore a brand unfamiliar to her, the led one was marked with a G in a horse-shoe--Harvey Grannis's brand.
"Good morning, ma'am," the newcomer greeted her. He was a handsome lad of perhaps sixteen, but just now in a woeful plight, dusty, shaking, haggard with weariness. "I stopped to ask if you'd like to buy a pony at a big bargain."
Mrs. Spooner leaned forward in her chair with a little gasp. She was afraid of what was coming.
"I don't know," she replied evasively. "Which one of them do you want to sell?"
"O, mine's played out," the boy returned never noticing the admission his words contained. "I've ridden pretty hard, and besides I've got to have her to carry me to Emerald, so I can take the train there. It's the other one. He's a mighty fine pony, and I'll let him go for enough to buy me a ticket back home."
"Won't you come in and rest a minute?--you look tired," said Mrs. Spooner, sympathetically. Somehow she could not bring herself to ask if he was from her brother's ranch, though she felt quite sure something was wrong about the pony that would go so cheap.
"I am tired, but I've got to go on so as to catch the six o'clock train," the boy smiled wanly. "I guess I can stop in for a drink, anyhow."
He dropped the lines, and the two ponies stood, cattle country fashion, as though they had been tied.
Mrs. Spooner got up from her chair, forgetting, in her excitement, any weakness or weariness.
"Just come right in and lie down on the lounge," she invited him. "It's cool and shady. I'll make you a pitcher of lemonade in a minute. You'll gain time by resting."
She smiled that reassuring mother-smile of hers as she opened the door of the quiet living-room. The boy followed in, his spurs clinking on the boards, and dropped wearily down upon the lounge. When she came back he was sitting with his head in his hands, but he drank the cool lemonade thirstily, finally draining the pitcher.
"It's awfully good," he sighed, his eyes speaking his gratitude. "Mother always made us lemonade in the summer time at home. You--you make me think of her, someway."
As if the resemblance had been too much for him, he turned from her with an inarticulate sound, and buried his face in the cushions. Mrs. Spooner sat down beside him, and after awhile his groping hand caught hers. She spoke to him in whispers, though there was nobody in the house to hear.
"I'm afraid you're in trouble, my poor boy," she said gently. "Don't you want to tell me all about it? Maybe I can help you."
After a time he found strength to face her, and tell the poor, pitiful little story.
His name was Roy Lambert. He was, indeed, one of Harvey Grannis's cowboys, and had come west fascinated by the stories of frontier life. He had made a contract with Grannis to work for him for one year. Then came a letter, telling him that his mother was desperately ill, and he must hurry to her. Grannis refused to advance him money or to annul the contract. He treated the matter with contempt, pretending to believe that the boy was simply homesick, and the letter a ruse to get away. At last, frantic at the treatment he received, and determined to reach his mother, Roy got up before daylight, took his own pony and one of Grannis's which he hoped to sell for enough money to get home, and set out for Emerald and the railroad.
"I couldn't walk it, it would take too long to get to Emerald that way," he said, "besides, Grannis owes me more than the chestnut's worth, if I sold it for full value. I didn't expect to get only just enough to buy my ticket."
"Two wrongs won't make a right, Roy," said Mrs. Spooner, gravely. "Mr. Grannis was wrong--very wrong, not to advance you the money, or let you off your contract. But did you stop to think he could have you arrested for horse-stealing when you took his pony?"
"No!" blazed Roy, "I didn't steal it. If I had, I don't care. He's a hard-hearted old skinflint. I'd like to wring his neck, but even Harvey Grannis can't say I'm a horse thief. And I must get home!"
"Of course you must," soothed Mrs. Spooner, well aware as she looked at his flushed face, that Roy himself disapproved of what he had done. "I have a little money, and I will try and manage it, someway."
"Would you?" cried the boy. "I'll pay you--I'll send you a check as soon as I get home."
"Jonah Bean, the only cowboy I keep now, can ride on with you to Emerald, and bring your pony back. I'll try to sell it for enough to repay myself, or I might keep it--I think we could use one more gentle animal."
"You're awfully good," choked the poor fellow. "If all the folks in the world were like you--such a man as Grannis makes me distrust everybody. Do you know him?"
"Yes. I think you're a little mistaken," said gentle little Mrs. Spooner. "Harvey Grannis isn't really a villain, he's just a hard-headed, high-tempered man, that was spoiled by having his own way when he was a boy."
"You don't know--" Roy was beginning, when she interrupted him.
"I think I do. Harvey Grannis is my only brother. My baby child is named after him--little Harvie."
"Your brother?" Roy Lambert leaped to his feet, looking about with terrified eyes.
Mrs. Spooner divined his thought at once.
"I'm not going to give you up to Harvey," she said firmly. "But I'm going to make you let me lend you the money, and leave Harvey's pony here. The laws calls what you've done horse-stealing, and you can't make laws for yourself. You lie down and try to get a little sleep, now, my child. I'll wake you in an hour."
He thanked her with trembling lips, turned on his side, and, secure in his trust of her, fell at once asleep. When she saw that he really slept, Mrs. Spooner once more took her seat on the porch, this time to look for her brother, being quite certain that Harvey would follow hot-foot on the trail of his stolen pony.
She didn't have long to wait; in less than an hour a buckboard drawn by a pair of good sized grade horses turned in at the gate; in it sat Harvey Grannis and one of his men. They were tracking the lost pony. She saw them long before they reached the house, recognize it, as it grazed on the bit of sunburned pasture which Elizabeth hopefully called a lawn.
"Hello, Jennie," her brother called out, ignoring any coldness there had been between them, as Mrs. Spooner walked rapidly out to meet him. Grannis was a loud-spoken individual, and she did not care to have the boy awakened. "I'm after the thief that stole this pony of mine. Is he on your place?"
"He's asleep in the house," said Mrs. Spooner, quietly, though her voice was shaking a little. "He's very tired, and he's going to ride to Emerald tonight. I don't want him disturbed."
"You bet he's going to ride to Emerald!" blustered the ranchman. "I'll have him in jail there before supper-time! Come on, Tom, we'll go in and wake the young gentleman. Fetch your rope. Keep your gun handy. You never know what a young, dime-novel-crazy idiot like that will do."
He sprang from the buckboard, and both men were starting for the house when Mrs. Spooner barred their way.
"You can't go in there, Harvey," she told him. And now she was trembling so that Tom, of the rope and gun, was sorry for her, and heartily sick of his errand. No doubt Harvey Grannis was too, which merely made him talk louder and more harshly.
"Well, I'd like to know why I can't?" he demurred, pretending to laugh at her a bit. "Who's going to stop me? Now see here, Jennie, you always were a simple-hearted, soft-natured little goose. Anybody can bamboozle you. Look at the way John Spooner--"
"We won't go into that," warned Mrs. Spooner, with a flash in her eyes that made Grannis's cowboy chuckle inwardly.
"What's your reason for defending this boy?" Grannis argued. "He's a thief."
"I'm not defending Roy Lambert alone," said Mrs. Spooner. "I'm defending my brother--a brother I used to be very fond of--from doing a thing he'll be sorry for all the days of his life."
Grannis flushed redly through the deep tan of his sunburned skin, while Tom, standing by and listening, enjoyed himself thoroughly over his employer's discomfiture.
"These boys come west crazy for ranch life," Grannis said dogmatically. "They soon get sick of honest work, and invent any kind of story to get away. This boy's lying to you, and he's stolen a pony from me. Move out of the way, Jennie, and let me handle him."
The men had been standing with their backs to the trail. Mrs. Spooner noted a little figure on a gaunt pony whose gaits were familiar to her approaching from the direction of Emerald. Now small Harvey rose in her stirrups and shouted, waving an envelope above her head. Mrs. Spooner was sorry she had not got rid of her brother before the girls returned. Grannis looked over his shoulder, and feeling unwilling that his beloved namesake should see him doing anything unkind rushed the matter hastily.
"Get out of the way, Jennie," he repeated. "Come on, Tom."
A figure appeared in the ranch-house door, Roy Lambert, flushed and trembling with the fever that Mrs. Spooner had been fearing for him. He carried his belt in his hand, and was fumbling at the holster to get his pistol.
"I won't go back alive," he said.
"Rope him, Tom," prompted Grannis in a low tone. "I don't want to shoot the crazy kid."
"Uncle Harvey--Uncle Harvey," came the Babe's thin, sweet pipe, "I'm glad you're here, 'cause I've got a telegram for somebody out at your ranch. Jonah was to take it on but now he won't have to."
The child's eyes saw nothing amiss. The three men were warily watching each other, Roy tugging desperately at the holster to get his weapon which had caught, and Tom half sullenly loosening and coiling his rope.
"It's for Mr. Roy Lambert," sang out the little girl, triumphant in her ability to read even bad handwriting.
CHAPTER III
A Package and a Leather-Brown Phaeton
The men stood rigid at little Harvey's announcement. Mrs. Spooner took the envelope from the child's hands, opened it and read aloud:
"Mother died last night. Funeral over before you can get here. Sister."
The boy on the steps wheeled and ran into the house. Grannis turned unwillingly.
"Well--that looks genuine," he muttered with the obstinacy of a high-tempered man. "I won't prosecute him for lifting my pony--But I want you to understand that it's on your account Jennie. I tell you to turn him out. He's a bad lot. If ever he sets foot on the Circle G he'll have me to settle with. If you insist on having him around your place I'll--I'll--" His eye fell on Harvie. "Take the halter there, Tom and tie Baldy on behind. He leads all right."
"Aren't you going to pay him the money you owe him," Mrs. Spooner asked as she saw the men preparing to depart.
Grannis would have paid the money if it had not been for the presence of Tom. He could not let one of his cowboys see a loosening of discipline.
"No, I'll not," he said bluntly and whipped his team around into the drive. "He can't collect a cent off me, and I'm done making concessions on your account."
"Where are the girls?" Mrs. Spooner asked as she and the Babe stood watching the Circle G rig depart.
"They're coming," answered the Babe. "I rode ahead 'cause they were carrying so many things and I could go faster. The man at the telegraph office paid us for bringing the message out. Are you going to keep Roy Lambert here, like Uncle Harvey said you ought not, mother?"
Mrs. Spooner nodded as she went back into the living-room, leaving little Harvie to start the fire in the stove. There she did her best to comfort the poor fellow, facing his first big sorrow.
"I won't go home now--there's no use," he declared, when he could speak. "But I'll never go back to Grannis! If you let me I'll stay here and work for you. And I'd do my best to do for you what a son would. Outside of heaven, I've got no mother now." And once more his grief overwhelmed him.
"I'll be happy to treat a good boy like you as a son," said Mrs. Spooner. "My husband is away with the troops, and we've had a pretty hard time to get along without him. I'm sure my girls will be glad to take you into our household as a brother. Maybe providence sent you to us, to-day. Maybe we need you as much as you need us."
With the relaxing of the terrible strain, and the exhaustion of his grief, the boy seemed to become really ill. She sat beside him, trying to soothe him with tenderly wise words, and bathing his hot forehead hi cool water till at last he slept, and she stole softly out to warn old Jonah, who came stumping in with a basket of cobs for the kitchen fire.
"Make as little noise as you can, Jonah," she whispered. "We have a boy in the house asleep--one of Harvey's cowboys--I'm afraid he has fever."
"O Lord!" groaned Jonah, in a doleful whisper. "Trouble comes double--never knowed it to fail yit! 'T ain't 'nough that you ain't right peart, and the boss gone, and me with the rheumatiz a-ticklin' my right foot ag'in, but we got to have a no-'count cowboy, sweater an' shirk, of course, laid up on us. Poor gals, I feel for 'em!--an' you've got nothin' but gals. Ef you'd 'a' had a right smart mess o' boys, now-- They'll have all the work to do--like enough have to ride and rope and brand, 'fore they are done, besides nussin' this here boy, and me'n you throwed in for good measure. Whyn't Grannis tend to his own sick cowboys? Plenty o' folks at his ranch."
"He's not Harvey's cowboy any longer, Jonah--he's ours, if we need him--and according to that, we do. Now don't say a word, just listen to me--" as the old man opened his mouth to remonstrate very forcibly on the utter folly of taking an unknown person into her home. Then, speaking in subdued tones, she told him the story of the boy from the Grannis ranch.
At the end old Jonah Bean, being tender-hearted if cantankerous, took out his bandanna and blew his nose with hushed vigor.
"If I warn't in the presence of a lady what's his sister, Mis' Spooner," he said with elaborate politeness, "I'd up an' say--Dad rat Harvey Grannis's hide! Manners an' behavior is all prevents me from usin' them same cuss-words."
"Thank you for not saying them, Jonah," approved Mrs. Spooner, gravely, but with twinkling eyes. "Now I'll go out and meet the girls--I hear them coming, and they'll be sure to wake him with their noise, if I don't warn them."
The two girls were riding up the path, and both shouted:
"A letter from Cuba Libre!"
"A fat letter--and we want to see what's in it so bad!"
Of course the precious letter was immediately read--that came before anything else; the girls, dismounting, the Babe running out, dish-towel in hand, with Jonah hobbling in the rear, and all grouping around Mrs. Spooner, to hear the news from Cuba.
It was a bravely cheerful letter, containing the best of all news; their father was well, the health of the army was good, there was no prospect of a battle. Then followed long messages to each member of the family, loving and jolly; advice to Jonah Bean about the ranch, winding up with impressive charges to everybody to be "sure and take good care of mother!"
"Three cheers for Cuba Libre--she's taking good care of our boys!" exulted Elizabeth, and Ruth declared fervently: "It's such good news that it makes me right hungry! Let's make muffins for supper Elizabeth, and celebrate."
"Maybe there won't ever be a real truly sure-enough battle like Ivanhoe and King Richard Sour-de-lion and Jonah Bean used to fight," suggested the Babe, hopefully, and Jonah added, sagely:
"I don't know nothin' 'bout them two folks you named over, honey, but I lay you the war o' the sixties was some punkin's! I misdoubt this here Cuban scrimmage is jest a play war."
"Truly, I hope so, Jonah," said Mrs. Spooner. "Now listen, children, I have some more news for you. We can't have father with us, but I believe I have found a 'real, truly sure-enough' brother--a regular big brother, like other girls have."
"O, Mother," put in the Babe, excitedly, "I didn't know that! Is he named after us, if he's going to be our own brother?"
"No, his name is Roy Lambert--but we don't care what it is," she added, hastily, remembering how poor Elizabeth had loved fine-sounding names, "if he is only a good boy, and I think he is."
Then she told them the story of poor Roy.
"I do think Uncle Harvey is the meanest old--" began Ruth, indignantly, but her mother's hand was laid lightly upon her lips, stopping further outburst.
"That's enough, daughter" she said, quietly, "they both did wrong, and I think they're both sorry. It is all over now, and we must try and think as kindly of Uncle Harvey and be as good to poor Roy as ever we can."
"Yes, and I'll lend him my own pony, if his is too bad off for him to ride," added the Babe generously--her own Rosinante being the joke of the ranch. "Uncle Harvey didn't mean to be bad, Ruth--he looked just as sorry when you read the telegram--didn't he, Mother?"
"I think he is sorry," agreed her mother, who wished her children to think as well of their uncle as possible, but Jonah, with a scornful snort, ejaculated: "Sorry--Harvey Grannis? O, Lord, that is a joke!" And muttering his opinion of Harvey Grannis pretty audibly, went stumping away, to his work.
Elizabeth said nothing, only she slipped her hand in that of her foster-mother and whispered: "I think the Lord sent him to you, Mother, because he was in trouble and needed you."
"Well, I hope he'll be a nice boy, and I hope he won't be sick. I'll go in and make up the muffin batter, Elizabeth, while you set the table. I bet he didn't get any muffins at Uncle Harvey's ranch," said Ruth, who believed in ministering to the sick by giving them good things to eat.
They had a very good supper, and the muffins were really gems, but Roy could not touch the dainty tray, saying that it looked awfully good, but he was too tired to eat--he'd be all right in the morning.
But next morning he was in a raging delirium, and Jonah Bean had to ride to Emerald and fetch the doctor, who said the boy was in for a pretty bad spell of fever.
For two weeks the Spooner household nursed him, then came a day of rejoicing when the patient was able to move shakily about, gaunt and hollow-eyed, but cheerfully assuring them he felt dandy! Recovery was swift after that, and it was not long before the boy from the Circle G, the outcast horse-thief, was a valued and almost indispensable member of the Silver Spur household.
"I don't see how we ever got along without him," declared Ruth, positively, as she poked the clothes that were beginning to bubble in the big wash-kettle out in the back yard.
"Particularly now that Jonah's laid up with the rheumatism," agreed Elizabeth, rubbing the white clothes on the wash-board with rhythmic strokes that, somehow, seemed to take a lot of the drudgery away from the task.
Ruth and Elizabeth were doing the week's washing; it wasn't a very hard thing to do, when one went about it with the right spirit--the determination to try, with cheerful energy, to get the clothes as clean as possible in as little time as possible:
"To sweep a room as for God's cause
Makes that and the action fine."
The Spooner girls had never heard these words of the old poet, but they practiced the spirit of them a good deal in their work.
It was astonishing how much Roy had helped to lighten the work for them, as well as for old Jonah Bean, who declared him to be nothing less than a God-send. For instance, he had filled the kettles and tubs with water, and fetched a big basket of cobs to make a fire under the wash-kettle, all before he had gone to Emerald on what he declared to be a very particular errand of his own.
"I wonder what it is," mused Ruth, curiously, "last week he went--said he had something very particular to do, you remember, and he came back late. He never brought anything back, that I could see."
"My private opinion is," said Elizabeth, confidentially, "that he is fixing up some sort of a surprise for mother's birthday, He heard us say we were looking for a package from father, and that we hoped it would get here in time for her birthday. I noticed it was right after that he went to town on business of his own."
"It would be just like him--he's always trying to think up something to do for us. Say, Elizabeth, I certainly appreciate this shelter he built for us, don't you?"
"I don't see how we ever got along without it: he's certainly a handy boy," declared Elizabeth, gratefully.
Heretofore the girls had washed with the glaring sun beating down upon their unprotected heads, but now Roy had built a shelter for the tubs. Timber was scarce, but he had managed to find enough for the posts and cross-pieces, and there were plenty of tin shingles left from re-shingling the house, so that he had managed to make a very neat job of it, and one that added greatly to their comfort.
"Have you all seen the Babe anywhere?" asked Mrs. Spooner, coming out of the kitchen. "I want her to hunt some eggs for me; I think I'll make some tea-cakes for supper."
"She's down at Jonah's shack--I'll call her," offered Elizabeth, but Mrs. Spooner demurred, saying she would rather go herself.
"I haven't enquired about Jonah's foot, today, and he may think I'm neglecting him," said the gentle mistress of the ranch, who never was known to neglect a living thing upon it, and was particularly solicitous about the welfare of her ancient cowboy.
Jonah Bean was a veteran of the sixties, much given to narrating tales of his own marvelous exploits; he was also a bachelor, who declared himself independent of the whole female sex, inasmuch as he could, if necessary, sew, cook, and "do for himself" generally. Though inclined to be a grumbler, he was really devoted to all the Spooner family, particularly little Harvie, whom he had been the first to nickname "the Babe," and he always found her an eager listener to the tales of adventure he delighted in telling.
Mrs. Spooner found him sitting in the doorway of his shack, which was near the corral, and had originally been intended for a bunk-house, when John Spooner's hand was on the helm, and Silver Spur promised to be a paying ranch. He was patching a pair of overalls and talking animatedly to the Babe, who was, as usual, a rapt listener. "So Giner'l Jackson sez, sez'e: 'Send me the pick o' your men from each company.' And, when he looks us over, he p'ints at me. 'What's that runty, tallow-faced little chap named? And what's he good for?' he asts the cap'n o' my company. And the cap'n ups and 'lows: 'His name's Jonah Bean, Giner'l, and he's a powerful hand at--"
"O, Jonah!" interrupted the Babe, sorrowfully, "Ivanhoe never ran--nor King Richard Sour-de-lion either. Nobody but caitiffs and paynims and folks like that ought ever to run."
"Why you see, honey," explained old Jonah patiently, "what the cap'n meant was that I was like the Irishman's pig--'mighty little but mighty lively', and could git over ground faster'n common."
"O," said the Babe in a relieved tone, "I'm glad you weren't a paynim or a caitiff, Jonah."
"No," hastily denied Jonah, "I warn't--I ain't no kin to none o' them sort of folks; I'm a Tennesseean, me'n all my forefathers before me. Well, the Giner'l calls me up, and sez, sez'e: 'Private Bean, your country is dependin' on you to do some mighty tall runnin' to-day. Kin I depend on you to run so fast the Yankees can't ketch you?'
"I s'luted, and sez I'd do my levelest. Then, as I was a-sayin' he gimme the papers and my orders. 'Twas a long way from the ferry, so's to save time I swum the Jeems river--high water, and twenty-five mile acrost, more or less, I disremember rightly, And then, man, sir! I everlastin' burnt the wind! Minie-balls was a-rainin' like hail, and I jest natchully had to kick the bombshells out'n my way. Right through the enemy's lines till I fetched up at Giner'l Lee's headquarters, s'luted and turned them papers over to him dry as powder--for I'd swum with 'em under my hat."
"King Richard would 'a' made you a knight!" breathed the Babe, in ecstatic admiration.
"They didn't have none o' them in our army, honey, or they mighter. I shore'd 'a' been promoted to sergeant anyhow, if Giner'l Jackson hadn't 'a' been killed before he could send in my recommend." The Babe murmured her regret over the General's untimely taking off.
"Mornin', ma'am," Jonah greeted Mrs. Spooner, who just then came up. "Me'n the Babe, here, was jest a-talkin' over old times. She was a-tellin' me the news from Cuby and I was mentionin' of a few things happened back yander in the sixties. I says this here Cubian war ain't no thin' 'tall but jest chillun's play-war."
"I hope and pray so, Jonah," said Mrs. Spooner, her voice trembling a little. "But--war is war, I'm afraid."
And to this, Jonah, scoffer though he was, could only agree. War, even a play war, meant some danger.
It was after dark when Roy returned from Emerald, and--as he had done the last time, instead of riding up the front way and whistling a signal from the road, he came in at the back, surprising the whole family, who were all gathered in the kitchen.
"Howdy-do, folks! Gee, that fried chicken smells good, Ruth! Mrs. Pratt sent you a quarter of mutton, Mother Spooner--they had just killed a sheep. I hung it up on the peg outside the back door to keep sweet."
He smiled affectionately on the Babe, who was eyeing with much curiosity a big package under his arm. "And this, I reckon, must be that birthday bundle from Cuba; I found it at the express office."
There was a shout of joy from the Babe, and a satisfied exclamation from her sisters, who had about given up hope of the package's arriving on time, the mails from Cuba being very uncertain.
"Day after to-morrow is mother's birthday--just in the nick of time," they exulted. "Don't you dare take one little, little peep till then. Lock it up in your bureau-drawer, Ruth, so she won't have temptation before her eyes," laughed Elizabeth, and Ruth bore off the package, in spite of the Babe's protest that maybe father had sent a little present to Jonah--and he wouldn't like to wait!
"Maybe there's something in it for a little girl or so," laughed her mother, "but I think we can wait. For I'll be forty years old, and it needs pleasant things to make a fortieth birthday happy, I can tell you."
At this the Babe hugged herself in delight, to think there was still another pleasant thing in store for her mother. For to-morrow Elizabeth and Ruth had planned to make a wonderful cake, iced white like a real Christmas cake, which, on the birthday they intended to light with forty tiny pink candles, already bought and hidden away in Elizabeth's trunk. To console herself, she fell to dreaming over the lovely things shut up in the brown paper package--to think of anything real hard was nearly as good as seeing it.
"Mrs. Pratt's Maudie got back from her grandmother's last night," said Roy, as they all sat at supper--except Jonah, who, because of his foot, had had his supper carried to him by the Babe.
"They're planning for a big celebration and a Harvest Home festival in Emerald next week, and she wants the girls to go over and spend a few days. Mrs. Pratt particularly said both, if you can spare them."
"I wonder what Handle's grandmother gave her this time," said Ruth, rather wistfully. "She always has so many pretty things when she comes back from a visit out there. It must be lovely to have a grandmother who is well-off." She sighed a little, thinking of the many-times laundered cotton frocks that served Elizabeth and herself for all dress-up occasions. Maudie, no doubt, would have a challis, or maybe even a summer silk.
Elizabeth said nothing, but at the mention of a well-to-do grandmother she felt a blush of shame creeping over her face. It was such a little while ago that she had indulged in beautiful dreams of unknown and wealthy relations; stately grandmothers with high-piled white hair, gold lorgnettes and rustling silks; and haughtily handsome grandfathers of ancient lineage and great wealth, who would see that she was lavishly supplied with means to buy the beautiful clothes necessary for a girl who would move in the highest circles of society. Dreams that ended in such a sordid awakening--O, poor Elizabeth!
Mrs. Spooner's mother eyes saw what the girl tried so hard to conceal, and she said with quiet emphasis: "I wouldn't give any one of my three girls with their cotton frocks, for a dozen Maudies with a dozen silks apiece!"
It was next morning that Roy explained his mysterious trips to town.
"You know your mother can't walk much," he said, "and she can't ride a pony, like we do. So when I saw a second-hand phaeton for sale I made up my mind to buy it for her birthday gift. Shasta works fine in harness, so I rode her to town, hooked her up to the old phaeton, and, last week, brought it home and hid it out in the corral shed, where I've been putting in odd minutes painting it, while Jonah's cutting down the harness to fit Shasta. It's just shreds and patches now, and a mile too big. The phaeton's pretty rickety as to looks, so I went yesterday and got some cloth and fringe for the top, and you girls must help me fix up the curtains so's I'll get it done in time for her to take a drive on her birthday."
"I do think you are a wonder, Roy," admired Elizabeth, with sparkling eyes. "The very thing she needed most--and had no idea she'd get till father comes home."
"A package from Cuba, and a cake and a phantom!" exulted the Babe, who was present. "That's a cossal thing, Roy."
"She means colossal," explained Elizabeth, as Roy turned a bewildered look on her. And Ruth added: "She gets them out of books, those long words that she can't pronounce. I wish Mother could send her to school--she reads too much."
"People can't read too much, Ruth," said the Babe severely. "Some time, when I go to school I'm going to learn to read well enough to read all the books in the round world. Jonah says there ain't nothin' like eddication!"
"Sure--I agree with Jonah," laughed Roy. "Sorry I can't have a fine 'eddication,' I'd like it the best sort. But come on and let's have a look at the phantom."
It was a pretty rickety phaeton--as to cover and cushions; Roy had already made it spruce with a good many coats of leather-brown paint. He showed the girls the fringe and the lining he had bought to renovate the canopy-top.
"We'll cover the cushions right away," said Ruth, viewing the dilapidated affairs that had, in the distant past, been spick and spandy leather cushions.
"There, now--I knew I'd never recollect everything!" said Roy, ruefully. "I just got enough brown stuff to line the top--I clean forgot the cushions."
Elizabeth, as usual, solved the difficulty.
"Mother has an old brown broadcloth skirt she doesn't wear. It'll make perfect cushion-covers, just the right shade. I'll take the measures now and stitch up the covers in no time."
"Elizabeth always did have a head on her shoulders!" admired Ruth. "I'm willing enough, but I never could do anything but just cook. Anyway, I'll make the birthday cake."
"And I'll beat the eggs--I can beat eggs go nice and soap-suddy," boasted the Babe.
"That'll be a great help. We don't want any hit-or-miss cake. Everything's got to be properly weighed and measured and beaten. Now let's go see how Jonah's coming on with the harness."
Jonah, with the harness in a big cotton-basket which could be hidden from sight by throwing a horse-blanket over it if Mrs. Spooner happened along, was seated indoors, busily snipping and stitching and patching away at the rusty-looking leather.
"Now don't you-all come a-frustratin' me till I git th'ough with my job," fumed the old man, rather crossly, "'course, you'll 'low 'tain't much to look at--which I ain't a-denyin'--but jest wait till me'n the boy gits done--then jedge by ree-sults."
Roy sighed a little bit wistfully. "I did want to get something better, but my money barely held out for this."
"Something better?" scolded the girls, "who wants anything better?"
"A lovely, low-hung, leather-brown phaeton," added Elizabeth, alliteratively, "is a thing of beauty. Add brown cushions, brown harness and a perfectly-matching brown pony and it'll be too stylish for anything."
"That's sure 'seeing things', Elizabeth," laughed Roy. "Glad you believe in us. I'll work at the phaeton and try to have it looking as much as possible like your fancy picture by to-morrow. Jonah'll boss the harness job, and you girls can transform the cushions."
There were great preparations going on that day, right under Mrs. Spooner's unsuspecting eyes. The girls had ironed the clothes the day before, insisting that they required mending immediately, much to their mother's surprise, for they didn't usually bother about the mending.
There was indeed plenty of it to do, and, since Mr. Spooner's absence, very little money to buy new clothes, so that the best the patient mother could do was to mend and darn and patch, till, like the Cotter's wife, she "made old clothes look almost as well as new."
She sat on the front porch and darned and mended busily, while in the kitchen Ruth and the Babe--who did beat the whites into most wonderful soap-suds, made a marvelous silver-cake, which they iced thick and white--a regular Christmas-cake. And Elizabeth ripped up the old brown skirt, sponged and pressed the cloth, and made the cushions as neatly as any upholsterer could have done. Roy and Jonah Bean, at the same time, were transforming the harness and phaeton, to have it all done by the next morning. Roy, having his own and Jonah's work to do, had to snatch odd moments to rub down the paint and re-cover the ancient top.
Mrs. Spooner was allowed to open her package from Cuba on her birthday morning, with the three girls crowding round to see--the Babe quivering with eager anticipation.
Mrs. Spooner unwrapped from its folds of tissue-paper the gift they all knew to be hers--a shawl or scarf of black, heavily-woven silk, embroidered in most wonderfully natural pansies; a regular Cuban mantilla, exquisitely made.
The girls were so delighted, draping their mother in its soft folds, and admiring the effect, that they quite forgot a smaller package which was still unopened--all but the Babe, who continued to gaze upon it with fascinated eyes.
"O, Mother, please open the little bundle," she begged at last. "I'm--I'm just on ten-pins to see what's in it!"
"Now where'd she get that word? What on earth does it mean?" laughed Ruth, who was often puzzled over her little sister's expressions.
"Tenterhooks," translated Elizabeth. "Only she got 'hooks' mixed up with pins and needles. Do open it, mother, and relieve the 'ten-pins'!"
"I'll let the Babe open it herself. I'm sure she can pick out her own present," smiled the mother, as she gave the smaller package to the child.
With awed delight the Babe removed the tissue-paper slowly, as befitting a solemn rite: three tantalizing little bundles were disclosed, tightly wrapped. She opened the first; it contained a painted Spanish fan.
"This must be for Elizabeth," concluded the Babe, with decision, and handed over the fan to Elizabeth, who waved it with languid grace, imagining herself to be a Spanish Senorita.
The next parcel held a pretty handkerchief, with a wide border of Mexican drawn-work; this the Babe promptly turned over to Ruth. "I don't want that--I can borrow mother's," she said, with fine assurance.
"O, but I do! I never had a real pretty handkerchief in my life. I don't believe even Maudie Pratt has one as pretty as this," exclaimed Ruth, happily.
On this little ranch where things were hard to get at best, the thrifty mother always cut up the flour sacks into neat squares, which she hemmed on the machine; these when washed and ironed were piled neatly in each girl's little handkerchief-box, for every-day use. For Sundays and extra occasions there was a little square of muslin, hemstitched and bordered with narrow lace. No Spooner ever dreamed of possessing a better handkerchief. No wonder that Ruth exulted over her gift.
The third was a little white box. When the Babe removed the lid she hugged the box to her bosom and pranced joyously about the room.
"My beads, my beads!" she crowed, ecstatically. "My own dear, beautiful pink necklace!" she held out a string of coral before her family's admiring eyes. "Put it on for me, Elizabeth, so I can run show it to Roy and Jonah," she begged. "O, mother--" with a sudden look of consternation, "suppose I didn't guess right?"
"You guessed exactly right," reassured her mother, "but Elizabeth, child, what are you pinning my hat on for?"
"Just walk out in front and behold another birthday gift," said Elizabeth, busily pinning on the hat. "There, now, you're all ready--hat, shawl and everything."
Wondering, her mother obeyed, and beheld drawn up at the door a spick and spandy looking little low phaeton, painted a beautiful leather brown; its fringed canopy-top fresh and neat, its cushions upholstered in handsome brown broadcloth, and harnessed to a perfectly-matching brown pony, in neatly fitting brown harness, already for taking a drive.
"O, my dears!" there was consternation in Mrs. Spooner's voice. "Did you go and buy a phaeton! How in the world did you manage? You know we simply must not go in debt."
A chorus of protest reassured her. The gift was none of theirs--they had not gone in debt. Roy had bought it for her with his own money.
"For just nothing at all, Mother Spooner," he hastened to assure her. "It was just junk. We, Jonah, the girls and I, fixed it up for you, so it's really a family gift. And you'll find Shasta gentle as a kitten. Now you and the Babe get in, and and Jonah and I'll escort you in style--we are going to take you over the ranch and come back in time for the birthday dinner Ruth and Elizabeth are going to fix up."
As the procession clattered down the driveway and out into the trail along the prairie, the Babe nestled close to her mother and sighed blissfully--she had in mind another surprise that was to help make the fortieth birthday a pleasant one. A big, Christmassy cake, iced white as snow and covered with forty tiny pink candles.
CHAPTER IV
A Jewel of Great Price
Every single member of the Spooner family with the exception of Jonah Bean, who declared he didn't have no time to waste a-pleasurin', were going to Emerald, to spend the day with Cousin Hannah Pratt and take part in the Harvest Home festival.
Cousin Hannah, having heard of the new phaeton, declared that now Mrs. Spooner didn't have an earthly thing to prevent her coming to town, and she had sent such urgent entreaties by Roy, that at last the mistress of the ranch was prevailed upon to accept the invitation.
"But I can only spend the day," she declared, "we can't all be spared at once; Jonah is just able to be about, we mustn't leave him too much work to do. The Babe and I will come back in the afternoon, and the girls can stay--and you, Roy?"
There was a little note of interrogation in her voice as she laid her hand affectionately upon the boy's shoulder. She was almost sure that he wouldn't want to go to a party that his grief was too recent.
Roy patted her hand, smiling a little sadly as he shook his head. "I don't feel equal to parties yet," he said.
"And as to both Ruth and me staying, that's out of the question," decided Elizabeth. "There'll be a hundred and one things to do, and you'll try to do them every one. Ruth's going to stay all night because it's her turn--Mary and I went last year. So that's settled, mother."
After some argument, Ruth--who really did want to stay very much, yielded. If Elizabeth wouldn't stay, why she would, and be glad to.
"And you may carry my fan," said Elizabeth generously, "nobody--not even Maudie, will have such a beautiful one. And you shall wear my pink girdle, too, it's newer than your sash."
The Babe sighed. She was having a mental struggle as to whether she could practise self-denial enough to lend her sister the string of coral beads that were the delight of her heart. The situation finally resulted in a compromise.
"And I'll lend you my beads--after I've wore 'em all day. But you mustn't forget to feel every now and then for the catch, to see if it's fastened," she warned.
"Thank you, Babe, I will," laughed Ruth, "and I'll take good care of your fan, too, Elizabeth. Dear me, won't I be fine! Pink coral, and pink girdle, a Spanish fan and my drawn-work handkerchief!"
"I don't approve of girls borrowing things from each other," said Mrs. Spooner, doubtfully. "I've known serious trouble to result from such practices. There's always danger of losing or injuring the things, you know. But, if you sisters want to lend, I won't object. Only be very careful, because you couldn't replace them if they were lost."
"I'll be careful as care, mother--don't you worry." And Ruth ran happily away, to pack her suit-case and get together her simple finery.
There were various attractions to be at the celebration. A brass band from a big town would play in the public square, between speeches by noted members of the State Grange. Pony-races by cowboys from the neighboring ranches, the inevitable roping match, a big open-air dinner for the public, and, to wind up with a dance at night in the town-hall, where the various exhibits from the farms--the grain, fruits and vegetables--were displayed.
As the Spooners desired to see all these spectacles, they started out bright and early; Mrs. Spooner, the Babe and Ruth's suitcase in the phaeton, the girls and Roy riding their ponies.
Cousin Hannah, whose husband--a mild little man, quite overshadowed by his big, bustling wife--was a rancher without a ranch, spending most of his time taking cattle to the fattening ranges above, or to market in other states, lived in a big, flimsily built frame house in the little prairie town of Emerald. Mrs. Pratt boarded the station-agent, the telegraph operator, the school-teacher, and nearly all of what might be termed the floating population of the town.