CHAPTER XIII
ENTERING WONDERLAND
"THE Forest of Arcady, Jim," Jean called gayly from her seat on the back of her pony. She and Olive, with Ralph Merrit walking beside them, had just climbed a steep road that led across the Continental Divide into the great park of the Yellowstone, called Yellowstone by the Indians many years ago, because its river ran like melted gold between massive stone walls, shading from palest lemon to a deep orange glow.
Behind its outriders the ranch girls' caravan moved slowly upward. They had been passing through tall pine forests that shut them in to a cathedral gloom, but beyond and farther down the hill Jean had just caught sight of a grove of quaking aspen trees with the sky above them shining as bright as sunny Italy. The grove looked like a great umbrella shop with its parasols open on parade, for the trees had circular green tops growing high above the ground, and their straight, slender trunks were like white umbrella handles.
Jim cracked his whip in answer to Jean's speech and Jack waved her hat from the place next him; just behind them Ruth clutched at Frieda and Carlos to keep them from falling into the road in their efforts to see everything at once. Away to the right they could catch a faint glimpse of one of the long arms of Yellowstone Lake, and they meant to reach a hotel on its northern banks by twilight.
For the past ten days the caravan party had been moving almost steadily onward. Twice only had they stopped at small towns for mail, to buy fresh provisions and to get rid of some of the stains of travel. However, the entire party looked like a troupe of Spanish gypsies, some of them fair-haired and blue-eyed as the old Castilians, others dark as the Moors, but all with their complexions tanned to varying shades of brown from their weeks in the open air.
"Nature's Wonderland!" Jack spouted rapturously in the language of a guidebook. "Really, Ruth, the Park is even more beautiful than we dreamed, isn't it?"
But Jack ceased talking abruptly and Jim reined in his horses on a stretch of level road, while Olive and Jean slid gently down from their ponies' backs. The noise of their approach had frightened a band of almost a hundred antelopes, who were browsing in a near-by forest, and now they started off in a long, galloping run single file through the trees to a fertile green valley below.
When the deer were out of sight, Frieda flung a dimpled brown arm about Jim's neck. She wore a yellow straw bonnet with a blue ribbon on it, tied under her chin. Ruth had purchased the bonnet in one of the towns where they spent the night, for each member of the expedition was weary of crawling down from the wagon to pick up Frieda's lost hat. "Do let's rest here a few minutes, Jim," Frieda urged. "The horses have stopped, anyhow, and my legs are so tired dangling from the seat."
Ruth had let go her hold on the children for a few minutes, and without waiting for Jim's consent, by some sort of silent signal they both slipped over the wagon wheels and danced away. For hours they had been passing by every variety of beautiful wild flower, but this minute Frieda and Carlos discovered an isolated hill crowned with jagged rocks and covered with bitter-root, whose delicate blossoms made the ground look like a carpet studded with small pink stars, leading to a giant's castle in the air.
It was not yet time for luncheon, but the caravaners were always hungry, and Ruth, Jean and Olive dragged a basket of sandwiches out of the wagon, while Jim Colter and Ralph Merrit led the horses away to search for water.
"Better look after the children, Jack," Ruth suggested carelessly.
Jack moved slowly toward the pink hill. She could see that Carlos had run lightly up it and was now crowing proudly from the peak of one of the highest rocks, while poor Frieda was crawling laboriously after him, fired with ambition and envy. Jack stopped a minute to laugh. Her small sister was so round and chubby, that even though she clung to the shrubs as she struggled upward, every now and then she would slip back almost as far as she had gone on.
"Don't try to go any farther, Frieda; come back to me," Jack cried warningly. But Carlos had leaped to another higher crag and was beckoning his companion to follow him, so Frieda either didn't hear or wouldn't heed her elder sister; neither did she look upward toward the goal "to which she would ascend." Carlos vanished around another rock and was out of sight; he did not think to mention that there was a flat platform back of the first big rock and that it was already occupied. Suddenly from her position near the bottom of the hill, Jack saw an old goat thrust his head out over this rock and survey Frieda, with the long gray beard and the glittering eye of "The Ancient Mariner." He was evidently an old time resident of the Park and had no intention of sharing his retreat with an outside intruder.
"Frieda!" Jack halloed, now frightened and running up the hill as fast as she could, but she could hardly hope to come to the rescue in time.
Blue-eyed Frieda had crawled up the side of the crag toward the spot where the goat awaited her. Instead of a shout of triumph she gave a horrified gasp of terror, never having intended to invade the castle of the particular ogre she now beheld.
At this moment a tourist, who had been wandering idly around surveying the scenery, saw the little girl and the goat. He laughed and moved quickly in their direction. Jack was also doing her level best to arrive before the tragedy, but the old goat preferred not to wait. He took a few steps forward, hunching his shoulders and sidling along, then with a snort of dignified rage and a shove of his shaggy gray head, he struck poor Frieda in the middle of her small person and sent her over the side of the rock down the hill, where she landed in a bed of the coveted bitter-root blossoms.
"If you won't cry, little girl, I'll give you something I have in my pocket," a strange gentleman said hurriedly, just as Frieda opened her mouth to bewail her misfortune. Not only was she injured in her feelings; she was hurt in other places as well, and her new bonnet hopelessly smashed in on one side. Too surprised to do anything but choke for a few seconds, Frieda let her preserver set her up on the ground and brush off some of the sand and twigs. He seemed a middle-aged man, quite as old as Jim, with iron-gray hair and dark eyes, and such a funny expression through his glasses, it was hard to tell whether he was smiling or sympathetic.
Jack now appeared and saw that her small sister was not seriously hurt. Just as she started to thank her rescuer a vision of what they had just seen flashed between them. Swiftly Jack's gray eyes darkened, her lips curved and she burst into a peal of gay laughter, which the stranger echoed until he had to take out his handkerchief to wipe his eyeglasses.
Frieda gazed at them both indignantly, then the tears which had been nobly held back rushed down her pink cheeks like the streams from a spouting geyser.
"Oh, dear me, now you are crying and I told you I would give you something if you wouldn't!" the tourist remarked hastily. Down in his pocket went his hand, and before Frieda's and Jack's amazed eyes were displayed a handful of bright jewels, topaz and jasper, agate and garnets.
Jack shook her head decisively. "No, thank you," she said. "You are very kind, but they are much too valuable for Frieda to accept. We must say good-by; our friends are signaling us."
Mr. Peter Drummond laughed good-humoredly. "Please let her have one – they are not of value," he begged. "I just have a fancy for pretty stones, like a small boy, and these have all been found in the state of Wyoming." Frieda's small hand closed suddenly over a shining bit of yellow jasper. Jack blushed, but there was no time for argument. Carlos had already sped down the hill and Jim was shouting to them. From the top of their caravan, as it took up its forward march, Jack and Frieda beheld the distinguished stranger still watching them, and waved their handkerchiefs to him in farewell.
Just before sunset the caravaners arrived in front of the hotel where they intended to spend the night. Yellowstone Lake lay a wonderful sheet of clear water at one side of them, but the travelers were weary of scenery and far more interested in the guests who crowded the hotel verandah. The women wore pretty afternoon toilets and the men white flannels, as though they were visitors at fashionable Newport homes instead of travelers in the heart of a wilderness.
"Great heavens, Ruth!" Jean murmured, as they dismounted and stood close together in a frightened group, "my legs feel as though they were going to give way under me and I am as bedraggled as any beggar maid. However are we going to have the courage to march across that wretched porch with all those people staring at us?"
"I don't know myself, Jean. I had no idea we would find so many visitors here," Ruth replied, vainly trying to straighten her traveling hat, which was considerably the worse for wear. Indeed the caravan party did look almost as disreputable as they felt in their dusty, travel-worn clothes, now brought into sudden contrast with well-dressed people.
Jack lifted her chin in her usual haughty fashion, assuming a courage she did not feel. "Oh, well, we can't stand here in the road all evening," she argued. "Jim and Mr. Merrit must see that the horses and wagon are put up somewhere, so come on, Olive, let's lead the way. At least we can be grateful that we don't know anyone here and no one knows us."
Elderly ladies raised their lorgnettes to stare at the newcomers and some young people whispered together.
"There they come, mother," a young girl cried excitedly. "I told you we would get here before they did!"
Jack and Olive had just mounted the verandah steps with Carlos, and Ruth and Jean, each holding Frieda's hand, were following close behind, when there was a soft rustle of silk across the piazza and Mrs. Harmon and her son Donald, whom the caravan party had left safe at Rainbow Lodge, stood before them. A minute later a servant wheeled Elizabeth over in a big chair.
"We just couldn't bear not to see the Yellowstone Park too," Elizabeth explained fervently. "Don and I talked of nothing else after you went away in your wonderful caravan, and at last father said mother could bring us here. It took us only a day to make the trip that has taken you more than two weeks. Aren't you glad to see us?"
Jack kissed Elizabeth hurriedly, while the rest of the party shook hands with Mrs. Harmon and Donald. The girls were too dazed with surprise and fatigue to know whether they were glad or sorry to see the acquaintances to whom they had rented their beloved home. Ruth thought Mrs. Harmon's manner a little constrained when she spoke to them.
"We don't want to haunt you, Miss Drew," she apologized, "but we were so close to this marvelous park it seemed a pity for us to miss it, and Don and Elizabeth are so in love with your ranch girls they believe they will enjoy it twice as much with you here. We came on after Beth had a letter from Miss Ralston telling her about the time you expected to arrive."
There was one member of the caravan party who had no hesitation in expressing his views of the unexpected appearance of the three members of the Harmon family. Jim was frankly displeased. "It wasn't enough to rent them our Lodge for the summer and have them drive me plumb crazy with questions before I got away," he complained to Ruth as soon as she broke the news to him, "but now we have got to tote 'em over the whole of the Yellowstone. I guess they must think I'm the original Cooks' Tour man," he growled, forgetting his newly acquired English in his bad temper.
But Ruth laughed sympathetically. "Never mind, Mr. Jim," she returned. "I am sorry myself that we can't have our trip to ourselves, but I hope pleasure will somehow come out of the presence of the Harmons here."
So far as Ruth or any member of the Rainbow Ranch family could see for many months to come not good, but great evil grew out of the entrance of these new acquaintances into their lives.
CHAPTER XIV
MR. DRUMMOND AND RALPH CHANGE PLACES
THE ranch girls, Jim and Ralph Merrit were at supper later that evening when some one walked down the length of the long dining room, glancing for an instant toward their table as he passed by.
Frieda nearly choked over her soup. "Look, Jack, there's the man who gave me the pretty yellow stone this afternoon!" she exclaimed in a loud whisper.
Jack look up quickly and blushed. Then to hide her confusion, she smiled and bowed in an unexpectedly friendly fashion, surprising the others, as she was usually shy with strangers. Mr. Drummond returned her greeting cordially, smiling at Frieda; and straightway the social position of the caravaners reached the high-water mark. He was said to be a wealthy bachelor from New York, but as no one actually knew anything about him and he had refused to associate with the other guests, his reserve caused him to be regarded as a very important person.
After dinner, as the girls went out on the verandah, they looked as though they had dressed to illustrate the name of the Rainbow Ranch. Weary of their traveling costumes they had put on their best summer muslins. Jack wore a violet organdie, Jean a red one, Olive was in pale yellow and Frieda in blue. Ruth never dressed in anything except white in the evenings. Jim went off to inquire for his mail, asking Ruth to wait for him. He was beginning to feel anxious to hear how things were going on at the ranch in his absence.
Peter Drummond stood a short distance off watching the little group. In coming west, he had made up his mind to have nothing to do with the people he ran across in the course of his travels. He saw too much of society in New York. Wealthy, of an old Knickerbocker family, with a home on the south side of Washington Square, life had given him everything he desired until three short months before. Then, when he was forty years old, for the first time in his life he had fallen in love, and the woman he cared for refused to marry him for what seemed to Peter a perfectly absurd reason. Therefore Mr. Drummond had determined forever to forswear the company of women. He was wondering if girls need be included in his decision, when Frieda solved the problem for him. Slipping away from the others she crossed the piazza. Peter suddenly discovered a pair of serious blue eyes gazing straight into his.
"If you want that stone back that you gave me this afternoon you may have it," she said. "You see I did cry a little bit when I fell, so perhaps it isn't exactly fair of me to keep it."
Mr. Drummond's face was quite as serious as Frieda's.
"I should hardly like to be called an 'Injun giver', would you?" he asked. "I don't know how girls feel about it, but when I was a boy if another fellow tried to get back a thing he had given away he was thought to be a pretty poor kind of person."
"Girls feel the same way," Frieda felt compelled to answer honestly.
"Then, for my sake, won't you please keep it? – and shaking hands makes it a bargain," Peter returned, extending his hand to clasp Frieda's. With her fingers still in his, he joined Ruth and the other girls, who had been trying not to laugh at the little scene.
Few eastern people, who have had no experience of life in the West, realize how much more unconventional and informal it is. Strangers meeting on a train talk as freely during the journey as though they had been formally introduced; friendliness is in the very atmosphere.
So, though Mr. Drummond was surprised at his own behavior, the ranch girls accepted his approach quite simply. First, he inquired of Ruth if Freida had really been hurt in her accident of the afternoon; ten minutes later he knew the names of the five girls, something of their history, had heard of Jim Colter and Ralph Merrit, and had given a brief account of himself in exchange, and for the first time in three months was actually enjoying himself.
The moon was just rising behind the dark circle of evergreen forests that bordered the Yellowstone Lake on three sides. Going out on the lawn, Olive was first to discover a dark figure with his hands in his pockets strolling quietly up and down. Perhaps because in the early days, when first brought home to Rainbow Ranch, she too had sometimes felt like an alien, now she was the only one of the caravaners to guess why Ralph had gone away from them wishing to be alone.
Ralph Merrit was having a fight with himself. In the past ten days, as a guest of the caravan party, he had learned to care for them very deeply. If he preferred one of the girls to the others he had not said so nor showed it in any way. During the trip he felt he had been able to make himself useful, but since their arrival at the hotel Ralph had felt shy and ill at ease. Jack had told him they were poor, and in the gay camaraderie of the open air he had thought little of wealth or poverty; now he was acutely conscious of his own lack of money. With hardly a dollar in his pocket and only a change of clothes in his knapsack, he could not remain one of the travelers through the Yellowstone Park. It was hard to say farewell to his friends and to start out again to look for work, but harder to remain and not do his share in the entertainment. The ranch girls evidently had richer friends than he dreamed, the Harmons were evidently wealthy people, and Ralph had been told this Mr. Drummond was a millionaire.
"What's the matter, Ralph?" Jack's friendly voice asked. Olive had drawn her and Jean over in Ralph's direction, while Mr. Drummond, Ruth and Frieda walked slowly on.
"We have been wondering what had become of you ever since dinner?" Jean added.
Ralph cleared his throat a bit huskily.
"I've got a bad case of blues," he said, "but I am glad you found me out. I have got to be off from here early in the morning, and perhaps it is better to explain to you to-night."
Jean pouted, Jack gave a surprised exclamation, Olive believed she understood.
"But I thought you told Jim you would make the trip with us, Ralph," Jack argued. "Has anything disagreeable happened? Surely no one of us has hurt your feelings."
Ralph shook his head emphatically. "No people have ever been so good to me in my life," he answered. "Look here, don't you think the best thing to do is to make a clean breast of things? I am going away because I haven't any money, and I'm not going to be a snide and stay on here as your guest. I told you that the little money I had was stolen from me by the two miners who took me out to 'Miner's Folly' to see if their claims were any good. It wasn't much, because I came west to earn a fortune, not to spend one, but it was all I had. Now I have to clear out and look for a job. I don't think we are 'Ships That Pass in the Night', I believe we are going to meet again, some day," Ralph ended. "And if ever there is anything I can do to show you my gratitude and appreciation – "
"Oh, do hush, Ralph Merrit!" Jean burst out impetuously. "I don't see what you have got to thank us for. But if you really were having a good time you wouldn't go off and leave us."
"That isn't fair, Jean," Ralph answered hotly. Then he laughed at himself, for Jean's speeches had a fashion of provoking him, although he was so much her elder.
"I don't believe that, Jean," Jack interrupted. "But I don't see why Ralph can't finish the trip with us and then go after his fortune."
"I am so sorry nobody understands," Ralph said slowly, "but I must be off just the same. I'll see you again in the morning, but our real good-by is to-night."
As Olive shook hands she said quietly: "I understand why you are going. And don't worry, please, because I feel sure I can make the others understand." Jack's good night was cordial, but Jean refused to change her opinion of Ralph's desertion.
Ruth suggested that the girls go back to the hotel for their wraps, as the evening was growing chilly. As Jean and Jack disappeared on their way to their rooms, Mrs. Harmon drew Olive and Frieda to her end of the porch, Mr. Drummond had said good night, Ralph Merrit had again vanished, and still Jim had not returned. Ruth could not make up her mind whether to be angry with Jim for being so long in keeping his appointment with her, or to feel worried for fear something had happened to him.