The Girl from Sunset Ranch: or, Alone in a Great City

Big Hen was a generous-handed administrator and guardian. Of course, the foreman of the ranch was, perhaps, not the best person to be guardian of a sixteen-year-old girl. He did not treat her, in regard to money matters, as the ordinary guardian would have treated a ward.

Big Hen didn’t know how to limit a girl’s expenditures; but he knew how to treat a man right. And he treated Helen Morrell just as though she were a sane and responsible man.

“There’s a thousand dollars in cash for you, Snuggy,” he had said. “I got it in soft money, for it’s a fac’ that they use that stuff a good deal in the East. Besides, the hard money would have made a good deal of a load for you to tote in them leetle war-bags of yourn.”

“But shall I ever need a thousand dollars?” asked Helen, doubtfully.

“Don’t know. Can’t tell. Sometimes ye need money when ye least expect it. Ye needn’t tell anybody how much you’ve got. Only, it’s there– and a full pocket is a mighty nice backin’ for anybody to have.

“And if ye find any time ye want more, jest telegraph. We’ll send ye what they call a draft for all ye want. Cut a dash. Show ’em that the girl from Sunset Ranch is the real thing, Snuggy.”

But she had only laughed at this. It never entered Helen Morrell’s mind that she should ever wish to “cut a dash” before her relatives in New York.

She had filed a telegram to Mr. Willets Starkweather, on Madison Avenue, before the train arrived, saying that she was coming. She hoped that her relatives would reply and she would get the reply en route.

When her father died, she had written to the Starkweathers. She had received a brief, but kindly worded note from Uncle Starkweather. And it had scarcely been time yet, so Helen thought, for Aunt Eunice or the girls to write.

But could Helen have arrived at the Madison Avenue mansion of Willets Starkweather at the same hour her message arrived and heard the family’s comments on it, it is very doubtful if she would have swung herself aboard the parlor car of the Transcontinental, without the porter’s help, and sought her seat.

The Starkweathers lived in very good style, indeed. The mansion was one of several remaining in that section, all occupied by the very oldest and most elevated socially of New York’s solid families. They were not people whose names appeared in the gossip columns of the papers to any extent; but to live in their neighborhood, and to meet them socially, was sufficient to insure one’s welcome anywhere.

The Starkweather mansion had descended to Willets Starkweather with the money – all from his great-uncle – which had finally put the family upon its feet. When Prince Morrell had left New York under a cloud, his brother-in-law was a struggling merchant himself.

Now, in sixteen years, he had practically retired. At least, he was no longer “in trade.” He merely went to an office, or to his broker’s, each day, and watched his investments and his real estate holdings.

A pompous, well-fed man was Willets Starkweather – and always imposingly dressed. He was very bald, wore a closely cropped gray beard, eyeglasses, and “Ahem!” was an introduction to almost everything he said. That clearing of the bronchial tubes was an announcement to the listening world that he, Willets Starkweather, of Madison Avenue, was about to make a remark. And no matter how trivial that remark might be, coming from the lips of the great man, it should be pondered upon and regarded with awe.

Mr. Starkweather was a widower. Helen’s Aunt Eunice had been dead three years. It had never been considered necessary by either Mr. Starkweather, or his daughters, to write “Aunt Mary’s folks in Montana” of Mrs. Starkweather’s death.

Correspondence between the families had ceased at the time of Mrs. Morrell’s death. The Starkweather girls understood that Aunt Mary’s husband had “done something” before he left New York for the wild and woolly West. The family did not – Ahem! – speak of him.

The three girls were respectively eighteen, sixteen, and fourteen. Even Flossie considered herself entirely grown up. She attended a private school not far from Central Park, and went each day dressed as elaborately as a matron of thirty.

For Hortense, who was just Helen Morrell’s age, “school had become a bore.” She had a smattering of French, knew how to drum nicely on the piano – she was still taking lessons in that polite accomplishment – had only a vague idea of the ordinary rules of English grammar, and couldn’t write a decent letter, or spell words of more than two syllables, to save her life.

Belle golfed. She did little else just now, for she was a creature of fads. Occasionally she got a new one, and with kindred spirits played that particular fad to death.

She might have found a much worse hobby to ride. Getting up early and starting for the Long Island links, or for Westchester, before her sisters had had their breakfast, was not doing Belle a bit of harm. Only, she was getting in with a somewhat “sporty” class of girls and women older than herself, and the bloom of youth had been quite rubbed off.

Indeed, these three girls were about as fresh as is a dried prune. They had jumped from childhood into full-blown womanhood (or thought they had), thereby missing the very best and sweetest part of their girls’ life.

They had come in from their various activities of the day when Helen’s telegram arrived. Naturally they ran with it to their father’s “den” – a gorgeously upholstered yet small library on the ground floor, at the back.

“What is it now, girls?” demanded Mr. Starkweather, looking up in some dismay at this general onslaught. “I don’t want you to suggest any further expenditures this month. I have paid all the bills I possibly can pay. We must retrench – we must retrench.”

“Oh, Pa!” said Flossie, saucily, “you’re always saying that. I believe you say ‘We must retrench!’ in your sleep.”

“And small wonder if I do,” he grumbled. “I have lost some money; the stock market is very dull. And nobody is buying real estate. I – I am quite at my wits’ ends, I assure you, girls.”

“Dear me! and another mouth to feed!” laughed Hortense, tossing her head. “That will be excuse enough for telling her to go to a hotel when she arrives.”

“Probably the poor thing won’t have the price of a room,” observed Belle, looking again at the telegram.

“What is that in your hand, child?” demanded Mr. Starkweather, suddenly seeing the yellow slip of paper.

“A dispatch, Pa,” said Flossie, snatching it out of Belle’s hand.

“A telegram?”

“And you’d never guess from whom,” cried the youngest girl.

“I – I – Let me see it,” said her father, with some abruptness. “No bad news, I hope?”

“Well, I don’t call it good news,” said the oldest girl, with a sniff.

Mr. Starkweather read it aloud:

“Coming on Transcontinental. Arrive Grand

Central Terminal 9 P.M. the third.

“Helen Morrell.”

“Now! What do you think of that, Pa?” demanded Flossie.

“‘Helen Morrell,’” repeated Mr. Starkweather, and a person more observant than any of his daughters might have seen that his lips had grown suddenly gray. He dropped into his chair rather heavily. “Your cousin, girls.”

“Fol-de-rol!” exclaimed Belle. “I don’t see why she should claim relationship.”

“Send her to a hotel, Pa,” said Flossie.

“I’m sure I do not wish to be bothered by a common ranch girl. Why! she was born and brought up out in the wilds; wasn’t she?” demanded Hortense.

“Her father and mother went West before this girl was born – yes,” murmured Mr. Starkweather.

He was strangely agitated by the message. But the girls did not notice this. They were not likely to notice anything but their own disturbance over the coming of “that ranch girl.”

“Why, Pa, we can’t have her here!” cried Belle.

“Of course we can’t, Pa,” agreed Hortense.

“I’m sure I don’t want the common little thing around,” added Flossie, who, as has been said, was quite two years Helen’s junior.

“We couldn’t introduce her to our friends,” declared Belle.

“What a fright she’ll be!” wailed Hortense.

“She’ll wear a sombrero and a split riding skirt, I suppose,” scoffed Flossie, who madly desired a slit skirt, herself.

“Of course she’ll be a perfect dowdy,” Belle observed.

“And be loud and wear heavy boots, and stamp through the house,” sighed Hortense. “We just can’t have her, Pa.”

“Why, I wouldn’t let any of the girls of our set see her for the world,” cried Flossie.

Their father finally spoke. He had recovered from his secret emotion, but he was still mopping the perspiration from his bald brow.

“I don’t really see how I can prevent her coming,” he said, rather weakly.

“What nonsense, Pa!”

“Of course you can!”

“Telegraph her not to come.”

“But she is already aboard the train,” objected Mr. Starkweather, gloomily.

“Then, I tell you,” snapped Flossie, who was the most unkind of the girls. “Don’t telegraph her at all. Don’t answer her message. Don’t send to the station to meet her. Maybe she won’t be too dense to take that hint.”

“Pooh! these wild and woolly Western girls!” grumbled Hortense. “I don’t believe she’ll know enough to stay away.”

“We can try it,” persisted Flossie.

“She ought to realize that we’re not dying to see her when we don’t come to the train,” said Belle.

“I – don’t – know,” mused their father.

“Now, Pa!” cried Flossie. “You know very well you don’t want that girl here.”

“No,” he admitted. “But – Ahem! – we have certain duties – ”

“Bother duties!” said Hortense.

“Ahem! She is your mother’s sister’s child,” spoke Mr. Starkweather, heavily. “She is a young and unprotected female – ”

“Seems to me,” said Belle, crossly, “the relationship is far enough removed for us to ignore it. Mother’s sister, Aunt Mary, is dead.”

“True – true. Ahem!” said her father.

“And isn’t it true that this man, Morrell, whom she married, left New York under a cloud?”

“O – oh!” cried Hortense. “So he did.”

“What did he do?” Flossie asked, bluntly.

“Embezzled; didn’t he, Pa?” asked Belle.

“That’s enough!” cried Flossie, tossing her head. “We certainly don’t want a convict’s daughter in the house.”

“Hush, Flossie!” said her father, with sudden sternness. “Prince Morrell was never a convict.”

“No,” sneered Hortense. “He ran away. He didn’t get that far.”

“Ahem! Daughters, we have no right to talk in this way – even in fun – ”

“Well, I don’t care,” cried Belle, impatiently. “Whether she’s a criminal’s child or not; I don’t want her. None of us wants her. Why, then, should we have her?”

“But where will she go?” demanded Mr. Starkweather, almost desperately.

“What do we care?” cried Flossie, callously. “She can be sent back; can’t she?”

“I tell you what it is,” said Belle, getting up and speaking with determination. “We don’t want Helen Morrell here. We will not meet her at the train. We will not send any reply to this message from her. And if she has the effrontery to come here to the house after our ignoring her in this way, we’ll send her back where she came from just as soon as it can be done. What do you say, girls?”

“Fine!” from Hortense and Flossie.

But their father said “Ahem!” and still looked troubled.

CHAPTER VI

ACROSS THE CONTINENT

It was not as though Helen Morrell had never been in a train before. Eight times she had gone back and forth to Denver, and she had always ridden in the best style. So sleepers, chair cars, private compartments, and observation coaches were no novelty to her.

She had discussed the matter with her friend, the Elberon station agent, and had bought her ticket through to New York, with a berth section to herself. It cost a good bit of money, but Helen knew no better way to spend some of that thousand dollars that Big Hen had given to her.

Her small trunk was put in the baggage car, and all she carried was a hand-satchel with toilet articles and kimono; and in it likewise was her father’s big wallet stuffed with the yellow-backed notes – all crisp and new – that Big Hen Billings had brought to her from the bank.

When she was comfortably seated in her particular section, and the porter had seen that her footstool was right, and had hovered about her with offers of other assistance until she had put a silver dollar into his itching palm, Helen first stared about her frankly at the other occupants of the car.

Nobody paid much attention to the countrified girl who had come aboard at the way-station. The Transcontinental’s cars are always well filled. There were family parties, and single tourists, with part of a grand opera troupe, and traveling men of the better class.

Helen would have been glad to join one of the family groups. In one there were two girls and a boy beside the parents and a lady who must have been the governess. One of the girls, and the boy, were quite as old as Helen. They were all so well behaved, and polite to each other, yet jolly and companionable, that Helen knew she could have liked them immensely.

But there was nobody to introduce the lonely girl to them, nor to any others of her fellow travelers. The conductor, even, did not take much interest in the girl in brown.

She began to realize that what was the height of fashion in Elberon was several seasons behind the style in larger communities. There was not a pretty or attractive thing about Helen’s dress; and even a very pretty girl will seem a frump in an out-of-style and unbecoming frock.

It might have been better for the girl from Sunset Ranch if she had worn on the train the very riding habit she had in her trunk. At least, it would have become her and she would have felt natural in it.

She knew now – when she had seen the hats of her fellow passengers – that her own was an atrocity. And, then, Helen had “put her hair up,” which was something she had not been used to doing. Without practice, or some example to work by, how could this unsophisticated young girl have produced a specimen of modern hair-dressing fit to be seen?

Even Dudley Stone could not have thought Helen Morrell pretty as she looked now. And when she gazed in the glass herself, the girl from Sunset Ranch was more than a little disgusted.

“I know I’m a fright. I’ve got ‘such a muchness’ of hair and it’s so sunburned, and all! What those girls I’m going to see will say to me, I don’t know. But if they’re good-natured they’ll soon show me how to handle this mop – and of course I can buy any quantity of pretty frocks when I get to New York.”

So she only looked at the other people on the train and made no acquaintances at all that first day. She slept soundly at night while the Transcontinental raced on over the undulating plains on which the stars shone so peacefully. Each roll of the drumming wheels was carrying her nearer and nearer to that new world of which she knew so little, but from which she hoped so much.

She dreamed that she had reached her goal – Uncle Starkweather’s house. Aunt Eunice met her. She had never even seen a photograph of her aunt; but the lady who gathered her so closely into her arms and kissed her so tenderly, looked just as Helen’s own mother had looked.

She awoke crying, and hugging the tiny pillow which the Pullman Company furnishes its patrons as a sample – the real pillow never materializes.

But to the healthy girl from the wide reaches of the Montana range, the berth was quite comfortable enough. She had slept on the open ground many a night, rolled only in a blanket and without any pillow at all. So she arose fresher than most of her fellow-passengers.

One man – whom she had noticed the evening before – was adjusting a wig behind the curtain of his section. He looked when he was completely dressed rather a well-preserved person; and Helen was impressed with the thought that he must still feel young to wish to appear so juvenile.

Even with his wig adjusted – a very curly brown affair – the man looked, however, to be upward of sixty. There were many fine wrinkles about his eyes and deep lines graven in his cheeks.

His section was just behind that of the girl from Sunset Ranch, on the other side of the car. After returning from the breakfast table this first morning Helen thought she would better take a little more money out of the wallet to put in her purse for emergencies on the train. So she opened the locked bag and dragged out the well-stuffed wallet from underneath her other possessions.

The roll of yellow-backed notes was a large one. Helen, lacking more interesting occupation, unfolded the crisp banknotes and counted them to make sure of her balance. As she sat in her seat she thought nobody could observe her.

Then she withdrew what she thought she might need, and put the remainder of the money back into the old wallet, snapped the strong elastic about it, and slid it down to the bottom of the bag again.

The key of the bag she carried on the chain with her locket, which locket contained the miniatures of her mother and father. Key and locket she hid in the bosom of her dress.

She looked up suddenly. There was the fatherly-looking old person almost bending over her chair back. For an instant the girl was very much startled. The old man’s eyes were wonderfully keen and twinkling, and there was an expression in them which Helen at first did not understand.

“If you have finished with that magazine, my dear, I’ll exchange it for one of mine,” said the old gentleman coolly. “What! did I frighten you?”

“Not exactly, sir,” returned Helen, watching him curiously. “But I was startled.”

“Beg pardon. You do not look like a young person who would be easily frightened,” he said, laughing. “You are traveling alone?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Far?”

“To New York, sir,” said Helen.

“Ah! a long way for a girl to go by herself – even a self-possessed one like you,” said the fatherly old fellow. “I hope you have friends to meet you there?”

“Relatives.”

“You have never been there, I take it?”

“I have never been farther east than Denver before,” she replied.

“Indeed! And so you have not met the relatives you are going to?” he suggested, shrewdly.

“You are right, sir.”

“But, of course, they will not fail to meet you?”

“I telegraphed to them. I expect to get a reply somewhere on the way.”

“Then you are well provided for,” said the old gentleman, kindly. “Yet, if you should need any assistance – of any kind – do not fail to call upon me. I am going through to New York, too.”

He went back to his seat after making the exchange of magazines, and did not force his attentions upon her further. He was, however, almost the only person who spoke to her all the way across the continent.

Frequently they ate together at the same table, both being alone. He bought newspapers and magazines and exchanged with her. He never became personal and asked her questions again, nor did Helen learn his name; but in little ways which were not really objectionable, he showed that he took an interest in her. There remained, however, the belief in Helen’s mind that he had seen her counting the money.

“I expect I’d like the old chap if he didn’t wear a wig,” thought Helen. “I never could see why people wished to hide the mistakes of Nature. And he’s an old gentleman, too.”

Yet again and again she recalled that avaricious gleam in his eyes and how eager he had seemed when she had first caught sight of his face looking over her shoulder that first morning on the train. She couldn’t forget that. She kept the locked bag near her hand all the time.

With lively company a journey across this great continent of ours is a cheerful and inspiring experience. And, of course, Youth can never remain depressed for long. But in Helen Morrell’s case the trip could not be counted as an enjoyable one.

She was always solitary amid the crowd of travelers. Even when she went back to the observation platform she was alone. She had nobody with whom to discuss the beauties of the landscape, or the wonders of Nature past which the train flashed.

This was her own fault to a degree, of course. The girl from Sunset Ranch was diffident. These people aboard were all Easterners, or foreigners. There were no open-hearted, friendly Western folk such as she had been used to all her life.

She felt herself among a strange people. She scarcely spoke the same language, or so it seemed. She had felt less awkward and bashful when she had first gone to the school at Denver as a little girl.

And, again, she was troubled because she had received no reply from her message to Uncle Starkweather. Of course, he might not have been at home to receive it; but surely some of the family must have received it.

Every time the brakeman, or porter, or conductor, came through with a message for some passenger, she hoped he would call her name. But the Transcontinental brought her across the Western plains, over the two great rivers, through the Mid-West prairies, skirted two of the Great Lakes, rushed across the wooded and mountainous Empire State, and finally dashed down the length of the embattled Hudson toward the Great City of the New World – the goal of Helen Morrell’s late desires, with no word from the relatives whom she so hoped would welcome her to their hearts and home.

CHAPTER VII

THE GREAT CITY

Helen Morrell never forgot her initial impressions of the great city.

These impressions were at first rather startling – then intensely interesting. And they all culminated in a single opinion which time only could prove either true or erroneous.

That belief or opinion Helen expressed in an almost audible exclamation:

“Why! there are so many people here one could never feel lonely!”

This impression came to her after the train had rolled past miles of streets – all perfectly straight, bearing off on either hand to the two rivers that wash Manhattan’s shores; all illuminated exactly alike; all bordered by cliffs of dwellings seemingly cut on the same pattern and from the same material.

With clasped hands and parted lips the girl from Sunset Ranch watched eagerly the glowing streets, parted by the rushing train. As it slowed down at 125th Street she could see far along that broad thoroughfare – an uptown Broadway. There were thousands and thousands of people in sight – with the glare of shoplights – the clanging electric cars – the taxicabs and autos shooting across the main stem of Harlem into the avenues running north and south.

It was as marvelous to the Montana girl as the views of a foreign land upon the screen of a moving picture theatre. She sank back in her seat with a sigh as the train moved on.

“What a wonderful, wonderful place!” she thought. “It looks like fairyland. It is an enchanted place – ”

The train, now under electric power, shot suddenly into the ground. The tunnel was odorous and ill-lighted.

“Well,” the girl thought, “I suppose there is another side to the big city, too!”

The passengers began to put on their wraps and gather together their hand-luggage. There was much talking and confusion. Some of the tourists had been met at 125th Street by friends who came that far to greet them.

But there was nobody to greet Helen. There was nobody waiting on the platform, to come and clasp her hand and bid her welcome, when the train stopped.

She got down, with her bag, and looked about her. She saw that the old gentleman with the wig kept step with her. But he did not seem to be noticing her, and presently he disappeared.

The girl from Sunset Ranch walked slowly up into the main building of the Grand Central Terminal with the crowd. There was chattering all about her – young voices, old voices, laughter, squeals of delight and surprise – all the hubbub of a homing crowd meeting a crowd of friends.

And through it all Helen walked, a stranger in a strange land.

She lingered, hoping that Uncle Starkweather’s people might be late. But nobody spoke to her. She did not know that there were matrons and police officers in the building to whom she could apply for advice or assistance.

Naturally independent, this girl of the ranges was not likely to ask a stranger for help. She could find her own way.

She smiled – yet it was a rather wry smile – when she thought of how Dud Stone had told her she would be as much of a tenderfoot in New York as he had been on the plains.