The Ranch Girls at Home Again

"We are awfully pleased, Ralph, that affairs are straightening out so comfortably," Ruth began. "I think we owe you a vote of thanks." She had not known what had been making Ralph Merrit so unlike himself for the past few months, since neither Jim nor Jean had seen fit to confide Ralph's weakness to any one else; but she did recognize the change for the better in him today. She had never before thought of Ralph as specially handsome, yet he looked so fine and capable; his expression was so full of energy and ability that instinctively Ruth held out her hand.

"Go in and win, Ralph," she added, half laughing and half serious. "I don't just know what it is that you are fighting for, except to make more money for the girls who don't deserve it. But whatever it is I am going to put my money on you, even though betting is against my Puritan traditions; for you'll win in the end. Why, Ralph, you look like the famous statue of 'The Minute Man' near Boston, except that you have not his gun or knapsack. You're just as typical an American fighter and just as ready for action."

Crimsoning like a small boy at unexpected praise, Ralph crushed Ruth's hand in reply until she had to repress a cry of pain.

"I'm not worth the powder to blow me up if you really knew the truth about me, Mrs. Colter; but just the same any kind of fellow likes a compliment now and then, and I don't remember when I have had one," he returned.

A movement of Jean's graceful shoulders and a single glance from her demure dark eyes made the young man swing half-way around to face her.

"You are not disputing that statement, are you?" he demanded. "Why shouldn't a fellow like a compliment as well as a girl?"

Jean slipped off the big pink straw hat she had been wearing and with the velvet ribbon about it, swung it on her arm like a basket.

"Oh, I am not disputing that part of your statement if you please, sir," she answered. "I am only regretting that you have forgotten all the other compliments which you have received in the past. For when I remember how many I have bestowed upon you lately, it is discouraging to think what a failure I have been in trying to make myself agreeable."

Just why recently, indeed ever since their conversation together that afternoon on the veranda at the Lodge and later here in the shadow of one of the great rocks, Jean Bruce had been trying to make herself particularly agreeable to Ralph Merrit and to win back his former attention and friendship, the girl herself did not know. On her return from Europe, after a few months at home, she had certainly discouraged Ralph's devotion, feeling instinctively that his affection for her had now become more serious than in the past when he had looked upon her as only a half-grown girl. For Jean did not wish to be unkind or unfair, and assuredly Ralph had none of the things to offer her which she desired. Perhaps because of this she had talked more of wealth and of worldly ambitions than she might otherwise have done. And Ralph had either understood her intention or else had recovered from his former affection, for in the past few months, during his foolish and futile struggle for money through speculations, he had entirely ceased making love to her or treating her in any way differently from the other girls.

At heart Jean was essentially a coquette, one of those girls and women who, having once gained a man's admiration, cannot bear to find themselves losing it. And surely Jack and Frieda and Olive had often accused her of this vice.

Now, knowing that Ralph cared at present more for the successful working of the Rainbow Mine than for anything else, Jean pointed with apparently the deepest concern toward the group of new men.

"Tell us about the new miners, won't you please, Ralph," she asked, "their names and where some of them came from – anything you know? They are a splendid-looking lot of fellows!"

But at this moment Frieda interrupted the conversation to ask a question. "Who is that thin man over there all by himself in the blue overalls and old hat? Why isn't he with the others who are being introduced to Jim and Frank and Jack? I wonder if Jim knows him?"

Then, quite unaccountably, Ralph Merrit appeared extremely uncomfortable.

"See here, Frieda, I might as well tell you, for you would be sure to find out anyhow if I didn't. That fellow isn't one of the new miners. He is Russell, the friend I brought up to the Lodge with me to dinner the other night. You see – "

But Frieda's eyes were widening and in truth the other three women seemed almost equally surprised.

"But I thought Professor Russell had gone away from Rainbow Ranch," Frieda protested, "why he told us good-by the night he left and said that he would have to be off so early the next morning that he could not see any of us again."

Ralph nodded. "I know," he conceded in some embarrassment. "And you're still to think he has gone if you please. Don't any one of you go near enough to Russell to speak to him or he will probably die of confusion before your eyes. I am afraid I forgot he was around and he is under the impression that he is safely disguised. You see the truth of the matter is this. When Russell got me away from the Lodge the other night there is nothing he did not say to me for having taken him unprepared to a place where he had to meet four girls. He declared it nearly killed him and he had every intention of sneaking away from the Ranch house the next morning on foot rather than suffer the chance of meeting any one of you again. He is an awful ass, but just the same he is a tremendously clever fellow and I was awfully anxious to show him the mine and he wanted to see it almost as much. So I persuaded him that he could just stay on at the Ranch house with me for a few days, letting you believe he had disappeared until he saw how things down here looked and worked. I assured him no one of you ever came near the men's quarters, but now he is hanging around the mine waiting for me as I promised to take him down into the pit as soon as we start work. Don't scare him to death beforehand."

Ruth and Jean and Olive laughed, and Olive said sympathetically:

"Poor fellow, I can feel for him. I used to feel so shy that nearly all strangers made me wretched. But I don't see just why he should be so specially severe upon girls?"

"Because he is a goose," Frieda returned so sententiously that every one else laughed. So plainly was she offended at her own failure to charm their strange guest a night or so before.

It was time for Ralph to say good-by. Arrangements at the pit shaft had been made so that the first elevator could be lowered into it. He then waved his hand in farewell to his friends, as he and the new foreman of the mine and the odd-looking figure of Henry Russell climbed on to the elevator.

"I shall go away before they come up again, so that foolish fellow won't even have to look at me," Frieda remarked scornfully, as without any hitch or delay the car slowly disappeared into the bowels of the earth.

CHAPTER XIV

THE EXPLOSION

THE new crowd of miners were anxiously waiting about the mouth of the pit shaft, which led down into the deepest excavation that had yet been dug in the neighborhood of the Rainbow Creek.

There were other openings, but because this was the largest, Ralph Merrit had desired that his workmen begin their labor here. For by extending and deepening the passages in the lower part of this shaft he hoped to make important discoveries of new veins of ore. And once convinced that a quantity of new gold was actually to be found under this ground the young engineer had no idea of giving up before he had devised some intelligent and not too expensive method of bringing more wealth to the surface of the earth.

Not many feet from the company of men Jack Ralston and Frank Kent were standing together talking of some detail in connection with the work, while Jim Colter was hanging over the pit opening in company with the men who had charge of the lowering and raising of the mine elevator.

Evidently Ralph Merrit and his two companions had made a safe landing below, for shortly after their disappearance there was a signal, and slowly the lift traveled up into the daylight again, now ready to take on another lot of passengers.

"Steady, no crowding," Jim Colter called out as the next relay stepped hastily forward. "Merrit will want to start things going in the tunnel before you descend."

One man had already gotten aboard, while another had one foot extended toward the platform, when suddenly from underneath them there came a tearing, splitting noise and then a muffled roar like the instantaneous explosion of a thousand guns.

The passengers in the elevator fell on their knees and all around the opening of the pit there was powder and blackness and a fall of stones like a swift rain of meteors.

By accident Ruth Colter's back happened to be turned away from the scene at the mine, so that the first sound she remembered hearing was her husband's hoarse shout of horror and then as she turned the sight of his great form lying prostrate on the ground with Jack and Frank trying to drag him away from danger.

But when Ruth would have rushed toward him, Olive and Frieda held her fast, and the next instant a wave of weakness and darkness so overwhelmed her that she had no strength to move.

When she opened her eyes she could see Jean's face, white as a sheet, dancing before her and hear her saying:

"Jim isn't hurt, dear; only stunned by his fall. See, he is on his feet again giving orders. And Jack and Frank must be all right, they were not so near. But what could have happened, what caused the explosion? It's the men down inside the mine who must be horribly hurt. Ralph – "

But Jean shook with such nervous terror that Frieda's arm encircled her, and the next moment the four women moved nearer the place of the disaster.

They were just in time, for at the moment of their approach, although Jim Colter's face was so black that you could hardly distinguish him, with his forehead bleeding from an ugly wound and his clothes torn and burnt, he was giving orders like the general of an army and like trained soldiers the miners were obeying him.

"I'll take four of you men who will volunteer to go down inside the mine with me. I don't know what has happened, but we are pretty apt to find things serious. It sounded like a dynamite explosion and there may be another. Fortunately for us the elevator is above ground and we can lower it. Some of you see that stretchers are brought here. Jack, keep your head and get hold of a doctor at once. I hope we may need him," the man added grimly, as he swung his great length aboard the small car, his companions crowding close against him.

Unmindful of the awed silence that had followed the noise of the explosion, unmindful of the two score of rough strange men, Ruth breaking away from the girls now ran forward crying:

"Jim, you can't go down into the mine first. I can't let you. There is the baby and me, you must think of us and of the girls. You may be horribly hurt."

She was near enough now so that she could look straight into her husband's blue eyes and something in Jim's expression calmed her instantly. Then for the time he too seemed conscious of the presence of no one else.

"Don't be frightened, Ruth, I shall be all right, dear, and back again with you in ten minutes perhaps. But in any case, girl, don't you see I have got to go down before the others? This is our mine and two of the men down there are almost boys."

Some quiet order Jim then gave and slowly for the second time the lift sank down toward the dark abyss under the earth. For Ruth had made no other sound or protest, only keeping tight hold on Frieda's and Jean's hands. Olive had gone with Jack and Frank Kent in the direction of the Rainbow Lodge.

To the watchers at the pit opening after the elevator had landed the second time there was a moment when they believed that they could hear voices below. Then the waiting seemed interminable. In point of fact only a few moments more had passed before the signal indicated that the car must be drawn up again.

And this time it was Jean Bruce who covered her eyes with her hands.

There was a grinding of the cables and then an unmistakable groan, so it was not only the faces of the women that blanched whiter. Many of these miners were middle-aged men who had been in mining disasters where many hundreds of lives were at stake. Now, since no further disturbance had followed the first brief explosion, they realized that only the three men who had first gone down into the pit had been injured. Yet it was nerve-racking not to be able to foretell whether these three men would be brought up alive or dead.

Jim Colter and one of his helpers were standing upright in the car and Jim held in his arms a limp, crumpled figure, unconscious, his blue overalls charred and blackened, his absurd old hat quite gone. Indeed, the grave and learned professor of ancient languages looked like a broken slip of a boy in the big man's keeping.

There on the floor of the car another figure was resting. The face was upturned to the light and though the eyes were closed the expression of the mouth showed that the man had not fainted but was suffering great pain.

Frieda touched Jean Bruce on the arm.

"It is not Ralph, but the new foreman who seems to be very badly hurt," she whispered. "Look, the other men are carrying him off. I can't tell about Ralph's friend, Mr. Russell. But where is Ralph? Why hasn't he come up with the others?"

And this last question of Frieda's was being echoed in the minds of the waiting woman and girl.

Why had Jim brought up two of the wounded men and left the third, their oldest friend, still in the depth of Rainbow Mine? It was impossible not to believe that Jim had done this because these men were not too badly injured to be helped.

For he had now placed his burden on the ground and was examining the young man with the skill and care of a surgeon, while some one else bathed the face. A stretcher had been secured for the foreman who was now being taken to his own quarters to await the coming of a surgeon.

"Jim," Ruth Colter put her hand on her husband's shoulder and her face was almost as white and strained as it had been during her last speech with him, "the elevator is going down again and you are not going with it. Tell us, please, what has happened to Ralph?"

Without waiting to hear her guardian's answer Frieda suddenly burst into tears. Of course she had been dreadfully unnerved by the recent accident and now this uncertainty about their friend, besides the sight of their new acquaintance stretched out there at her feet as though he were dead when the last time she had seen him he had been eating his dinner, was more than she could bear.

"Ralph? Great Scott, I am a brute, Ruth, Jean, Frieda!" Jim Colter exclaimed. "Why didn't I tell you at once? Ralph isn't badly hurt at all; he is bruised and burnt and shaken up, but nothing more, so far as I could tell. So of course he insisted that we bring up the two other fellows first. It's a plain miracle that there's anything left of the three of them. So far as I could understand somebody had fixed a bomb down at the end of the pit shaft, but the thing was clumsily made and only half went off. Ralph said they were blown about a good deal and the atmosphere was pretty thick, but unless the new foreman has been injured internally there was no great harm done. I think this young man has nothing more serious the matter with him than a broken leg. And I expect we shall be able to mend that for him at Rainbow Lodge."

At these words Henry Russell opened his eyes, but whether because of Jim's suggestion or the pain he was enduring, or whether because the sight of the girls, he groaned aloud and then closed his lips again.

"I don't think he wants to be taken to the Lodge," Frieda suggested mournfully. "You see he wants us to think he has gone away."

Then possibly because Ruth's and Jim's nerves had both been strained almost past endurance for the past half hour they laughed aloud at Frieda's speech.

Jean had slipped away and it was her white and yet happy face that Ralph Merrit saw first as he came back into the world of daylight again. There, though he was staggering and nearly blind and covered with blood and grime from the shock he had just received, he found Jean's hands before any others and held them close for a moment while she murmured:

"I am so glad, so glad; it is because you have some big work to do in the world that you have been saved, I am sure, Ralph."

A moment later Ralph was quietly accepting the congratulations of his workmen, while he tried to explain to them just how the explosion had taken place. That the bomb had been placed down the shaft by one of the former miners there could be no shadow of doubt.

CHAPTER XV

AN UNFORTUNATE DISCUSSION

"BUT why won't either Jean or Frieda come with us?" Olive asked a week after the unfortunate accident at the Rainbow Mine. With a surprise that she did not pretend to hide Jack Ralston turned to look at her friend.

"I thought I had explained to you, dear," she protested, "that Jean said she felt it her duty to write a long letter of sympathy to the Princess Colonna. You see she only heard yesterday of the death of the old Prince and though she does not feel that the Princess will be exactly inconsolable (he was so much older and they thought so differently about many things), yet of course Jean has to say that she is dreadfully sorry and is there anything she can do and all that. It would not surprise me in the least if the Princess came west and made us a visit. I told Jean to invite her. She was born in this part of the country and I rather think she will be glad to get away from Rome while she is in heavy mourning. It is a pity she did not have a son, isn't it? The title will have to go to her husband's nephew, Giovanni Colonna. You remember he and Jean were such good friends."

But although the two girls were walking along side by side toward the stables back of the Rainbow Lodge, it was plain that Olive Van Mater was not listening with any real interest to what her companion was saying.

"Then why won't Frieda ride with us?" she expostulated. "I am sure it has been ages since we four girls had a long ride together and it is a wonderfully beautiful morning. What has become of Frieda lately anyhow – I almost never see her except at meal times?"

With a laugh Jack Ralston laid her arm lightly across her friend's shoulder.

"Poor Olive, to have only my poor society! But, dear, we have not had but one other ride together, the one that we took to the Indian village soon after your arrival. Does it bore you so dreadfully to have only me as a companion? You must not come with me then, simply because I asked you. I can get one of the boys to ride over the ranch with me; perhaps Carlos would be willing to do that much! I don't know what has happened to Frieda, but the child is making a perfect martyr of herself. That poor young Professor seems not to wish anyone to do things for him except Frieda or Ruth. You know he perfectly hates the sight of the rest of us. And as Ruth is so busy with Jimmikins and the house she can't nurse him a great deal. So he just lies in his room, which is Frieda's by the way, and moans and groans until Frieda comes to amuse him. What do you think I beheld our baby doing the other day? Reading him some dreadful article on Egyptian Hieroglyphics from a learned magazine. She hadn't the faintest idea what it was all about and she looked like a big yellow butterfly imprisoned in a dark place. I am sure I am awfully sorry the erudite young professor had to break his right leg in the depth of Rainbow Mine and that we have him on our hands for six weeks or more – almost as sorry as he is I expect. Still I am not going to have Frieda sacrificing herself to him much longer. I mean to tell her tomorrow that it is quite unnecessary. He is a dreadfully spoiled person."

"But wouldn't Frank have enjoyed this long ride with you this morning, Jack?" Olive repeated, still refusing to take any interest in what Jack was saying, but instead clinging obstinately to her own train of thought. "I am sure Jim would have let Frank off from the trip with him if he had known that you had to take this long ride to hunt up the lost mares and colts."

Jack nodded, but her expression was hurt and puzzled. "Of course Jim would have let Frank come with me or would have come himself if he had known of the trouble. But both Jim and Frank were away before I heard of the loss. Besides, it does not make any difference, for I am sure I have ridden over Rainbow Ranch looking up our lost horses and cattle ever since I was fourteen or fifteen years old. But if you think the ride may be too long for you, please don't come, Olive. I shan't be in the least hurt if you don't feel like it. Kiss me good-by and go back to the Lodge. Ruth will be overjoyed at your return and I'll be perfectly all right with Carlos."

But although Jack Ralston spoke so cheerfully and in such good temper she was not truthful in pretending that Olive's present attitude was not hurting her feelings. The truth is that she felt that Olive had not been exactly the same toward her since Frank Kent's arrival. And if Jack had needed any further proof to add to her past conviction this was sufficient. Always before, Olive had loved her better than any one else, even more than she did her friend, Miss Winthrop. And Jack was certain that she had done nothing to make Olive angry or to wound her – she herself was so utterly unchanged in her own affection.

What a hopeless, horrid puzzle it all was and of all persons was not Jacqueline Ralston the most inadequate for straightening it out? She had no methods but those of frankness. If only she dared ask Olive how she actually felt.

But Olive would hardly have been able to explain to her, because in these last few weeks the girl had not understood herself. Before Frank Kent's coming to the Rainbow Lodge she had been sure of having entirely recovered from her past fancy for him. Had she not fought it all out in those final weeks in England when she had realized the extent of Frank's devotion to Jack and the impossibility of her own position? And now – well, whatever turn events might take, Olive felt the fault would be largely Jacqueline's. For why did Jack fail to return Frank's affection? Why did she continue to treat him with such disregard and yet keep him lingering on at the ranch? Really Olive wondered if her own emotion was not now one more of sympathy for Frank and impatience with Jack. Surely Frank was too fine a fellow from every point of view to be trifled with. And no one would ever have suspected Jack of being a girl of such a character.

Olive again looked closely into her friend's face and what she saw there for the moment disarmed her. Of course she was more angry with Jack than she had ever dreamed it possible that she could be and yet she had not meant to wound her over this small question of their having another ride together to search for lost stock. Perhaps this very morning Jack might be in a humor to confide in her the cause of her mysterious conduct. She must have some vital reason, it was so unlike her to be cruel or not to know her own mind.

"Of course I won't go back to the Lodge," Olive finally protested. "For I do wish the ride immensely; it was only that I thought it might be a pleasure for the others too."

And to this half-hearted apology the other girl made no reply.

A few moments later, having arrived at the beautiful new stables built within the past year at the Rainbow Ranch, Jack and Olive found their two horses already saddled. And a little while after, finding the Indian boy, Carlos, at his own tent door, the three of them mounted and rode away.

Now riding with Jacqueline Ralston over their great thousand-acre Wyoming ranch to seek for cattle or horses that had gone astray was apt to be fairly strenuous, and no one unaccustomed to riding should ever have thought of attempting it. Yet Olive had done the same thing dozens of times in the years when she had first came to live at Rainbow Ranch, and on starting out this morning had no idea of growing tired before her friend did.

The first part of their trip was easy enough, for although Jack cantered along fairly rapidly she made no detours, only keeping a careful lookout in all possible directions. For she had no thought of finding the lost mares and their young colts anywhere within the immediate neighborhood of that part of the ranch which was apt to be ridden over oftener than the more distant fields. And Carlos had been asked to make the few necessary excursions whenever a rise in the landscape or a group of trees or rocks made a possible hiding place.