The Ranch Girls' Pot of Gold. Vandercook Margaret

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СКАЧАТЬ without a fight when all your forces are drawn up for action is unsettling.

      "Oh, well, I didn't exactly say I would agree to this caravan trip," Jim hedged. "I don't know that it is a good plan for you to give up your home and take to the woods; but I did say that the idea was worth considering if Miss Ruth favors it. The thing that troubles me most is who is to be the leader of this female cavalcade?" Jim frowned and buttered his fourth hot biscuit. "Don't tell me, Jack Ralston, that you can go it alone, for you can't. It is a good thing you were born in Wyoming, the first state to declare for woman's suffrage, for if ever I met a real natural born female suffragette, it's you. There isn't a thing on this earth that a man does that you wouldn't try if you could. I don't know, Miss Drew, but that we are a little more advanced on the woman question out here than you are in Vermont," Jim drawled slowly. "Kind of seems like it ought to help reconcile you to living among us."

      Ruth laughed girlishly. She had on a white piqué frock and looked as dainty as a Dresden china shepherdess; she had plenty of color now and her lips had lost their disapproving curve. "I don't need the vote to reconcile me to living with the ranch girls, Mr. Colter," she insisted sweetly. "And please understand I am just as anxious for the caravan trip as I can be."

      Jim looked thoughtfully at his plate without answering, until Jack gave a little tug at his sleeve. "See here, Jim, dear," she argued quickly, "even I haven't suggested that we undertake our trip without a man for our guide. You know we want to follow one of the old, almost forgotten trails across the state to the Yellowstone Park, and of course we don't want to get lost; but Jean and Olive and I planned the whole thing out this morning just perfectly. We know some of the horses we want to take with us and we have chosen the very man for our escort."

      Jim shook his head obstinately. "You know I am not talking against the boys on our ranch," he answered solemnly; "they are as good a set of fellows as can be found anywhere in the business. But there isn't one of them that's fit to trust with the finest girls in this country."

      "Oh, our guide is all right; don't worry about him, Jim," Jean announced, with the calm assurance of a priestess of the Delphic oracle. "I know you will thoroughly approve of him as soon as you hear who he is." Jean tried her best to wink at Ruth, so that she might guess their meaning, but Ruth was completely in the dark.

      "I am pretty sure not to approve of him, you mean," Jim interrupted gloomily. "I have thought of every man on the place, and there isn't one of them I would even consider."

      "Oh, yes, there is one, Jim; just one, and you haven't thought of him yet," Jack argued unhesitatingly.

      Frieda snickered, Olive smiled and Jean shrugged her shoulders, but Ruth looked as puzzled as Jim.

      "Well, out with your man's name, children," Jim demanded firmly. "You must not set your heart on this excursion until I know who he is. I am sorry now that I ever listened to your scheme."

      Jean, who was sitting next Ruth, leaned over and whispered something to her, and Ruth gave a happy laugh and then blushed furiously without rhyme or reason.

      "Jim, there is but one person in the world we want to go with us, and you certainly ought to know who he is," Jack suggested at this moment. "Surely you know that it's you. Of course it couldn't be anyone else."

      "Me – me!" Jim Colter exclaimed helplessly, the tired, thoughtful expression which his brown face had worn all morning changing suddenly to one of joy at Jack's proposition. "Why, you are mad as a March hare, Miss Ralston. I know you thought of renting Rainbow Lodge for the magnificent sum of one hundred dollars a month, but I took it that bargain did not include a thousand or more acres of good Wyoming land, and I would like to know who would look after the ranch while I was away."

      "Oh, Jim, you are tiresome," Jean protested. "Do you think the ranch would go to rack and ruin if you left it for a little while? You know one of the other men could take charge of things for you. Why, you haven't taken a holiday from this place in years, and when you went away last time I suppose it was business, for you never said where you went nor what happened to you while you were away."

      Jim's face turned so red that Jack was afraid Jean's idle speech had hurt his feelings, for he probably did not like the idea that they thought anyone as capable of running their ranch for them as he was. She slipped away from her place at the table and put her arm over Jim's shoulder as simply as though she were six instead of sixteen. Jim had always been a kind of big brother to the ranch girls. "Dear old Jim," Jack whispered affectionately, "don't be offended. Of course, Jean does not mean that anybody can really manage the ranch except you, but she does think, and indeed we all do – Cousin Ruth most of all, though she hasn't said anything yet – that you could come away with us for a while, even if you just take the trip with us to Yellowstone Park and then return to the ranch as you think best. O, Jim!" Jack's words tripped over each other in her eagerness, "you know you would love our caravan excursion better than anything in the world! It was just because you knew how much you would adore it yourself that you agreed so readily to our scheme when we proposed it to you. Don't you remember how we used to plot and plan just such a journey years and years ago, when Jean and Frieda and I were little girls? You used to tell us stories about your long ride all alone across the great desert when you had no one but your horse for company, no money, no friends, and no place to go until you found us." Jack paused for an instant.

      Jim Colter was looking out the window, but his eyes were not on the landscape before him.

      "Don't you recall, Jim, how you said that even then you learned to love the romance of the silent places, even the great loneliness that made you feel as though the world were created just for you?" Jack went on pleadingly. "And you said that some day you would take us for a trip across the prairies, and father promised that we might go when we grew up. Now everything is getting so civilized out west, do let us start on our pilgrimage while there is some of the wilderness left." Jack's next words to her friend were spoken in such a low tone that no one else could guess what she was saying: "I think father would like you to keep the promise to us, if you could, Jim, and it would be the most wonderful opportunity in the world for you with Ruth."

      Jim gazed slowly about the group of girls without the least indication that he had understood Jack's suggestion. "Well, I will think things over for a few days and kind of see how the land lies," he announced aloud, "and if there is anybody around who can look after the ranch for me, I think maybe I had better see that you don't come to harm."

      Jack gave Jim a little shake and Jean pulled him up from the breakfast table. "Don't talk in that tiresome, dutiful fashion, Jim Colter; we will not stand it," Jean protested; "for you know perfectly well that you are as crazy about our jaunt as the rest of us and you wouldn't miss it now for worlds!"

      The entire breakfast party had gotten up from the table and were fluttering about the room. A little pine fire burned in the fireplace, but the windows and doors were wide open. Some one walked across the front porch and knocked, and when no one answered, followed the sound of the voices indoors. Frieda gave the first exclamation of surprise at their visitor, tripped over a rocking chair in running to him and landed in the arms of Frank Kent. "Oh, I am glad to see you!" she exclaimed happily. "Why, we thought you were at home in England. What can you be doing here?"

      "I have come to see you, Frieda," Frank answered immediately, "but besides you, every single other person at the Rainbow Ranch." Frank must have had half a dozen arms to have shaken hands with all his friends in the room at the same time, yet somehow, in spite of their greetings, he managed to give both his hands to Jack and to grasp hers in the warm friendliness to which she was accustomed from him.

      "I declare, I feel like I hadn't seen you in a hundred years," he said simply; "and yet it has been only about six months."

      "What are you doing in this part of the world again, Mr. Kent?" Jim Colter inquired rather coolly. He liked Frank СКАЧАТЬ