The Ranch Girls' Pot of Gold

There was no answer out of the grim darkness. Jack could give no sign of her presence, and the black shadow into which she had fallen hid the outline of her prostrate body.

Suddenly a boom of distant thunder sounded from the far side of the world, and Jim Colter sprang quickly to his feet, for he knew how swiftly storms travel across the western plains, and he feared Jack and Carlos might wait for him in the dangerous shelter of the trees. Faster than he had run in many a long day he left the neighborhood of the unlucky mine.

A little later Carlos appeared at the opening of the pine woods, his brown face scratched, his breath coming unevenly, with his gun on his square, lean shoulder, and a little bunch of a feathery or furry something tucked under his arm. He did not linger as Jim had; he believed at once that his companions had given him up, and sped on as fast as his weary brown legs could carry him along the path which had brought them to the place of the pine cone hills. Carlos had wandered too far into the woods and had lost his way, but now he hoped to overtake the other adventurers and in some way to make his peace.

When Jack opened her eyes it was nearly dark outside the mine as well as in. She lay quite still, feeling a dull pain in her head and an aching numbness in her body. "Olive! Jean! Ruth!" she called fretfully. "I'm ill. Why don't somebody come to me?" She thought she had wakened in the middle of the night in her bed at Rainbow Lodge. Poor Jack put out her hand to touch Jean, who usually slept with her, and her fingers closed on some loose mud and gravel. She held it for a moment and struggled to sit up, but her head ached harder than ever, and she reached back to find her lost pillow. There was only the earth to touch again, and slowly her consciousness returned. Jack stumbled to her feet and made for the faint light at the tunnel entrance. She took a few uncertain steps and sank down in a little heap on the outside at the foot of one of the hills. Drops of rain were falling, and the wind whistled through the tops of the tallest pine trees and swirled around the crests of the lonely hills. "Jim! Jim! surely you haven't left me!" Jack cried aloud. She was not usually timid or nervous, but the deserted place had alarmed her when she came to it early in the afternoon. Now she was alone in it, and about to face a fierce summer storm. Dulled by the pain in her head and by hunger and thirst, for Jim had carried the food and water bottle away in his pockets, she was uncertain as to how she had come to the mine and whether she would ever be able to keep to the return trail.

Jack's face was white and her expression unusual, while just over her temple there was an ugly bruise, and she did not feel able to think clearly. Once she put her hand to her head and was surprised to find her hair damp with wisps of wet curls streaking her forehead. Then she wondered what had become of her hat. An instant later she knew she had dropped it off her head when she fell inside the mine, but nothing would have induced her to go in again to find it. If Jim came back, perhaps he or Carlos would get it for her. Sometimes she was not certain of whether Jim and Carlos had just gone away for a few minutes or whether she had been waiting for them a great many hours. Then she pictured them back at their tent in the green place by the quiet stream, and wondered what they would do when she did not come.

It began to rain harder and faster in big pelting drops; lumps of hail beat down on Jack's shoulders and unprotected head. She ran to the woods to hide, but the place was so sodden and wet and ghostly in the twilight that she would not enter it. There was nothing to do but to try to find her way back to camp alone. Jack thought her head ached less and her decision a wise one. She did not realize that her friends could return to the old mine for her, but once missing the trail back to them she would be utterly lost in the wilderness. Jack recalled that several miles ahead there was a deep gorge with high walls on either side of it, and that she and Jim and Carlos had followed a path at the side of this ravine for a part of their journey. She would strike out across the open country, feeling sure that its high walls could soon be seen rising like a wall of mist beyond the rain.

Flying along on feet unconscious of fatigue, fighting through the storm and darkness and calling aloud when she had the strength, in about an hour Jack reached the ravine. No actual sight of the trail had guided her, but an instinctive feeling for the right direction. Now she sat down for a few minutes in the shelter of an overhanging rock, hoping the storm would blow over or that Jim would find her. But the thunder crashed on, and the wind in the jagged rocks of the ravine moaned and sighed like lost souls wandering in the walled chambers of the canyons, crying for release. Had she ever been rash enough to say she loved the splendid western storms? Jack asked herself. Yes, even in her terror and loneliness she realized there was something magnificent and awe-inspiring in their sudden fury and abandon, as though nature, yielding to a burst of elemental passion, poured forth her anger on the earth in the sweeping rain and furious charges of electricity.

When half an hour passed, the young girl crept out of her hiding place. Perhaps the storm was less severe; anyhow, she would rather face any fate than remain in the gorge all night. It was now too dark to see anything except the vague outlines of rocks and bunches of low shrubs. For a moment Jack stood still, trying to remember whether she should turn to the right or left, and straining her eyes to catch sight of a familiar object that might help her to decide. Then she moved off in exactly the wrong direction, with each step getting farther and farther away from her friends and shelter.

Trained to a knowledge of animal life in the plains of the great West, Jacqueline knew the call of almost every wild beast that is still native to the uncivilized portions of the western states. After walking for another hour, a sound filled her with horror. It was the low cry of a cougar! A thicket of trees and underbrush bordered one side of her path; on the other, lay the deep hollow of the ravine. And it had just begun to dawn on Jack that she was going in the wrong direction; she had passed by no such dense shrubbery in her morning journey. But this was not the time to turn back, nor must she show hesitation or fear, well knowing that the wild creature behind her would dog the footsteps of a solitary traveler, keeping only a short distance away, like a hungry wolf, and though a coward at heart, spring upon her if she showed weakness or defeat.

Digging her nails in the palms of her hands, Jacqueline crashed on, shouting when she could. A little while before, she had felt ill and deadly tired; now, forgetting both, her old courage revived. In the tragedies of the afternoon, her rifle had been forgotten and left outside the mine, but the big cat back of her would never dare attack her if she kept steadily on, frightening it by loud shouting and trampling.

How far Jack walked that night she never knew. There were times when the cougar kept back of her, then he seemed to be walking along by her side in the shelter of the thicket. Now and then Jack believed he slipped in front of her, crouching in a clump of underbrush, but she never once caught sight of the big furtive cat, though she was always conscious of the presence slinking near her. If it is necessary to prove that the modern American girl still has the nerve and fortitude of her pioneer grandmother, Jacqueline Ralston proved it that night. Not for a moment did she falter in her long march in the darkness.

A few hours before daylight the rain suddenly ceased and the stars came out as though the storm had not interrupted the usual hour of their appearance. Now Jack could rest at last! Having come through the wooded place, her enemy no longer pursued her. There were no more rocks ahead. She had reached the end of the gorge; the country beyond was a well-nigh unbroken plain.

A few yards farther on the young girl spied, like a dim sentinel, the outline of a solitary tree with its close, low branches sweeping the ground. Even in the darkness of night she knew a comfortable shelter could be found in it, for its beautiful boughs extended in a solid mass of foliage from its crown to its base, so the rain could scarcely have soaked through them. Jack crawled into the cradle-shaped branches and lay down to wait for the dawn and whatever the new day might bring forth, wondering if she were too tired to care what happened to her or if she had earned any shadow of right to the title Carlos had once given her: "The Girl Who Was Never Afraid."

It never dawned on her that sleep could come; but before the lamps in the sky went out she had journeyed to that dim country where we find strength for the next day's need.

CHAPTER X

BY THE WAYSIDE TENT

HARDLY had the three more adventurous members of the caravan party turned their backs on their wayside tent for their trip to the far-off gold mine, when Ruth, Jean, Olive and Frieda were seized with a furious attack of housewifely energy. Everything was routed out of the tent and wagon. A flapping line of blankets hung on Jim's best lasso, which was stretched from a tree to a tent pole. Then the girls collected their laundry and carried it down to the brook. The water of the stream was so clear that every pebble shone under it like a jewel, and the sand was as white as the sand of the sea. Over a shimmering pool a broad, flat rock formed a comfortable platform.

Jean and Ruth got down on their knees on this stone, swashing their clothes up and down and smearing them with big bars of soap, like the laundresses in Holland, until the clear water of the brook was a mass of iridescent soap bubbles.

Olive and Frieda rinsed and squeezed and spread the clothes out on the grass or hung them picturesquely over the low bushes. At the end of their labors, Frieda and Jean started a shadow dance with a big red tablecloth which Ruth had washed none too clean. Jean flapped it from one end, Frieda swirled it from the other; it flew up in the air like a red balloon and collapsed just as suddenly. Ruth and Olive rested in a patch of sunshine watching them. Suddenly Jean attempted to twist her unwieldy scarf into graceful curves about Frieda, but instead, tripped her up, and the little girl lay in a heap of helpless laughter on the grass. Straightway, Jean flung herself down beside her, beginning to unwind her long braids of hair.

"Ruth, make Frieda let me wash her hair," Jean urged. "She doesn't look like our pretty blond baby any more, but a poor, neglected 'orfling.' I am sure if she lies down flat on the rock, I can manage so she won't tumble into the brook."

Frieda crawled out of Jean's embrace, looking quite unresigned to the experience ahead of her. "You shan't do any such thing, Jean Bruce," she protested; "you'll get gallons of soap in my eyes and make me all sandy."

Jean struck a dramatic attitude. "Frieda Ralston, if you will let me make you beautiful, I will give you all my share of the gold that Jim and Jack bring back from the mine," she exclaimed.

Frieda shook her head. "They won't bring any gold," she said firmly.

"But you'll feel lots better, Frieda," Ruth begged.

Frieda saw that the weight of opinion was against her, and, besides, she was vain of her hair and did wish it to look pretty again, so she gave in graciously.

"All right, Jean, if you will ride horseback with me all day to-morrow and make Olive and Jack ride in the wagon, I guess I will let you," she conceded.

Jean had the sleeves of her shirtwaist rolled up past her dimpled elbows and the collar of her white blouse tucked in at the neck. She felt as much at home by the wayside pool as she did in Rainbow Lodge. Frieda was wrapped in a white towel like a shawl. Only once, toward the end of the washing operation, did she utter a squeal of indignation, and Ruth and Olive immediately ran to her rescue.

"Jean's caught a minnow in my hair," she insisted wrathfully, with her face very red. "I saw the tiniest one sailing down the brook by me, and then all at once it disappeared, and I am sure I can feel it wriggling on my neck."

Ruth made a careful examination of the clean yellow hair before Frieda would be reconciled. Then she led the small girl away to a sunshiny spot, spreading her hair over her shoulders to dry, until she looked like the original "Miss Goldilocks" in the old fairy tale. Frieda was given a piece of scalloping, which she had been working on for weeks, to keep her quiet.

"Jean," Ruth called a minute later, "do you mind staying here with Frieda for a little while? Olive and I have to go foraging for some chips before we can make the fire burn for luncheon, naughty Carlos having deserted us. Do you think you can make yourself lovely and keep an eye on things at the same time?"

Jean nodded peacefully from her throne of rocks, though a minute before she had been hot from her exertions and angry at Frieda's ingratitude. "Sure, as my name is Jean Bruce, I can," she answered cheerfully, letting down the masses of her dark-brown hair. She made such a pretty picture that Ruth watched her smilingly for a few minutes. She thought she loved all the girls alike now, but Jack and Olive were her friends and Jean and Frieda her children. She guessed her business of playing chaperon to the ranch girls would not be an easy one, if ever Jean got away from their western life into the gay society world of which she dreamed and talked.

But no frivolous ideas of a society existence now engaged Miss Bruce's attention, and she had no more idea of being disturbed than if she had been the original lady in the Garden of Eden. Jean was indeed the nut-brown maid of whom old-fashioned poets loved to write. Her hair had no golden tones in it; only the rich browns of the autumn woods, and her eyes matched it in color. She was paler than the other ranch girls, with a soft, healthy pallor, although to-day a little tanned and rosier than usual from her week's trip in the caravan.

Frieda glanced around to see Jean leaning over the water with her hair covering her face. It did not seem worth while to disturb her, so without a word, Frieda slipped away to their tent to search for more thread for her sewing.

Jean could not hear very well at this time had she spoken, for the brook made a roary, gurgling noise of its own in her ears, and her head swam from being held upside down so long.

"Crunch, crunch, crunch." Some one was marching along the side of the stream right in her direction. Jean did not trouble to take her hair out of the water or to look around. Of course it could be no one but Frieda!

"Well, I never in all my life!" she heard a perfectly strange masculine voice exclaim. "I know I have walked straight into fairy land, and you must be the queen who has brought all this magic to pass over night, for I passed this stream just two days ago and there wasn't a sign of a tent or a caravan or a princess anywhere around."

Jean flung back her long, brown hair with a gasp of sheer surprise, and the drops of crystal water showered around her like the diamonds that fell from the mouth of the good sister in the fairy story.

"I have been washing my hair," she announced to the strange youth, and then because her explanation was so obvious, they both laughed. "You see, I hadn't the faintest idea anybody could turn up in this wilderness except us," she explained, not very grammatically. "We are making a caravan trip through the state."

"I suppose I ought to say I am awfully sorry I intruded," the young fellow answered. "Of course, you know, I would say it if I had bobbed into a lady's boudoir unexpectedly, but I am so glad to see some one in this out-of-the-way place that I haven't a social fib at my disposal. Don't you think you could let me stop to rest and perhaps talk to you a few minutes?"

Jean drew herself up in an effort to look as dignified and unapproachable as she felt sure Jack and Olive would have done under the same circumstances. Far be it from either of them to engage in a friendly conversation with a stranger, even in a trackless waste; but to save her life Jean couldn't keep her eyes from shining mischievously. The water was trickling down her back until her shoulders were damp through her shirtwaist. Knowing she looked dreadfully foolish, she could not make up her mind to do anything so unattractive as deliberately to squeeze the water out of her hair or roll up her head in a towel before this handsome young fellow.

He was somewhat older than Donald Harmon or Frank Kent, and his eyes were as blue and his hair as golden as Siegfried's, thought romantic Jean, if only he were dressed in a suit of silver armor instead of dust-covered corduroys. The traveler had a knapsack strapped over his shoulders and a gun in his hand; his whole appearance suggested a long tramp.

Jean gazed at him meaningly. Ordinary intelligence might suggest to him that he turn his back for a few minutes while she repaired her damaged toilet, but the young fellow evidently had no such amiable intention. He seated himself by the edge of the brook a few feet from Jean. "My name is Ralph Merrit. I'm a mining engineer," he announced briefly.

Jean slightly inclined her wet head. "If you don't mind, I must beg you to excuse me?" she returned as haughtily as even Jack could have desired. Suddenly she made up her mind to snub this uncomfortably stupid acquaintance. Off she marched in as stately a fashion as possible, when one considers her damp, flowing locks and the fact that she had to pick her way through their various articles of laundry spread on the grass.

Inside the security of the tent Jean rubbed her hair vigorously and waved it energetically through the opening at the door, so it might dry as soon as possible. Frieda stationed herself outside the tent so as to communicate all possible information about the intruder to Jean.

"Has he gone yet?" Jean inquired for the fifth time in ten minutes.

Frieda shook her head. "He isn't going for a long time, Jeanie, I believe," she returned. "He is sitting by our brook just as though he never means to leave it. Now he has gotten up and is drinking some water. Now he is washing his face," she whispered excitedly, "and is taking a mirror out of his pocket to prink."

Jean and Frieda giggled and Jean joined her little cousin out of doors. She had piled her hair in a loose, damp mass on top of her head, for she was now determined, with Frieda for a chaperon, gently but firmly to persuade the young man to leave their Adamless Eden.

"Oh," said Jean, as, holding fast to Frieda's hand, she got within speaking distance of the stranger, "are you still here?" As there was nothing in the world to interrupt Miss Bruce's vision of the young man, even if she had been hopelessly near-sighted, he was obliged to understand her meaning. Coloring hotly under his already rosy skin, he got up.

"I thought you wouldn't mind if I rested a bit," he explained. "I have been tramping around this neighborhood for the last two days and I was counting on slowing up when I got back to this place. I need to fill my water bottles. And look here, I wonder if you would give me something to eat. You don't know it, but it is a custom for travelers of the open road to help each other out."

Ralph Merrit knew he had never seen a girl whose expression changed as swiftly as Jean's. A minute before, her eyes had been cool and reserved, and now they were brimming pools of kindness.

"Oh, I am so sorry you are hungry. I'll get you something to eat right away," she replied sympathetically. "If you will stay until Cousin Ruth and Olive come back I know they will invite you to lunch. I am sure you will tell how you happened to turn up here, and, of course, I can see you are a gentleman," she ended.

Ralph's face flushed gratefully, "You are awfully kind," he murmured, and then all at once Frieda saved the situation from further embarrassment. Suddenly she thrust into the young man's hand a large, red apple and a cracker, which she had concealed in her apron pocket. She had been foraging on her own account inside their tent, but had forgotten her provisions in the interest of Jean's discovery.

Ten minutes later Ruth and Olive appeared on the scene, swinging a large basket of chips and pine cones between them. In amazement they set down their basket and stared at a three cornered group composed of Jean, Frieda and a strange young man, seated comfortably on the ground, laughing and talking and lunching on their best jam and pickles and bread.

CHAPTER XI

"WHERE'S JACK?"

RALPH MERRIT explained his unexpected appearance to Ruth in a far more conventional fashion than Jean had required. He was a native of Chicago, a graduate of a mining school, and had come west to see if he could make his living by testing the gold deposits in the mining camps in the northwest states. Two miners had induced him to go with them to an old mine not far away to see if their discoveries of gold deposits were of value. When the find turned out to be no good, the men had slipped away, leaving him, and not only refusing to pay what they had promised for his services, but stealing all the money he had with him. For the past two days the young man had been scouring the country for the thieves, but he now believed they had gotten to some town and were safely out of his reach.

"I should be awfully grateful to you, Miss Drew, if you would tell me the way to the nearest village," Ralph Merrit said at the end of his story. "I am green about this part of the country and don't know in what direction to move on."

Ruth shook her head. "I am afraid I don't know either," she confessed, "but if you will spend the day here with us until our guide, Mr. Colter, comes back, he will tell you anything you wish to know."

Ralph accepted the invitation gratefully, although he hardly guessed what a concession it represented. A year before, when Ruth Drew left Vermont, she had never spoken to a man in her life without a formal introduction, and now she was inviting a stranger to spend the day with her and the three girls in the woods. But Ruth never doubted the story Ralph Merrit had told her for a moment, although it was an unusual one. No one who was a judge of character ever doubted Ralph. He was a straightforward, manly, determined fellow, with a strong will and a sense of humor – one of the most delightful combinations in the world – and from the first hour of their acquaintance he was a special favorite with Ruth and later with Jim Colter.

For several hours, Ralph made himself a useful visitor, insisting on bringing in fresh stores of wood, as he assured his hostesses their stock would never last over night, and they would desire to keep up a particularly brilliant fire as a beacon light to the wanderers from camp.

About four o'clock in the afternoon Ruth suggested that the five of them take a walk to find out the source of the little stream, which made such a wonderful oasis in the stretch of sandy desert. After a few miles, Ruth, Olive and Frieda sat down to rest, while Jean and Ralph carried on their explorations. They had caught a splendid lot of fish, but Ralph had his gun with him and hoped to get some game for their supper. The young man and girl had talked to each other for the past few hours, but now they seemed to feel well enough acquainted to keep silent and enjoy the exquisite beauty of the scenery. They had wandered to the source of the brook. Trickling down from the base of a low hill, it was circled by a grove of cottonwood and spruce trees. Jean and Ralph hid in the underbrush and got softly down on their knees so as to make no possible noise, for they saw a few yards ahead a delicate, dappled fawn, with its nose deep in the clear water. Its sides were of a light gray and brown, its legs like slender staves, and its long ears as soft and sensitive as any created thing. The scene was so beautiful that Jean's eyes grew suddenly misty with tears.

Ralph also felt a quiver of excitement stiffen his arm. His companion was behind him and out of any possible danger, the fawn was in direct range of his gun and as yet unconscious of his presence.

The young man lifted his gun, took direct aim, and his fingers pressed the trigger. At the same instant the gun kicked up in the air, exploded and the shot went wide of its mark. For one quivering instant the fawn gazed at the hunter, its big brown eyes full of terror and reproach, and then with a bound was off through the trees and out of sight.