THE RIDE TO THE RANCH

“We reach Deercroft at four forty-five,” Jean had said; but long before the scheduled time, suit-cases were strapped and waiting, and hats pinned in place, while the girls watched from the open windows eagerly, as the train swung out over the broad stretches of land.

“Who was it said, ‘My heart loves wide horizons’?” Ruth asked once. “They’re out here, aren’t they, Miss Murray? I just think we’ve caught up with one range of hills, and we make a turn and find a lot more waiting for us.”

Now, it was long, swinging miles of rolling land without a living thing in sight; then suddenly they would pass a hill-slope covered with masses of sheep, yellow and gray like time-worn rocks, and as motionless, apparently. Then again, the train would dip into a bit of sparse woodland, unlike the forests back in Virginia. As Polly said, the trees out here all looked lonesome.

“They don’t seem to be friendly, or even related to each other. Each has its own little patch of earth, and stands alone.”

“I think they are all settlers,” Ruth declared.

“How far must we travel after we reach Deercroft?” asked Ted. Jean smiled and shook her head.

“Miles, and miles, Ted. We won’t be home before ten anyway, and perhaps it will be later. The roads are dry and good, and father or Don will meet us with the surrey, or maybe with two teams. It’s moonlight, too. You don’t know how near the sky seems out here in Wyoming; the night sky, I mean, when the moon shines, and you are driving. Here we are.” She leaned forward suddenly, her gray eyes alight with happiness and expectancy. The train was approaching Deercroft. Lying in the valley below them was the little town. It looked small and barren, somehow, to the girls, accustomed as they were to the Virginia towns with their backgrounds of abundant verdure and foliage. But there was little time for any fixed impression. Before they fully realized that the journey was at an end, they were standing on the platform, and the westbound train was giving out its final call as it slipped through the hill break on its way to far Vancouver.

Jean marshaled her forces and the suit-cases, but before she had a chance to look around, there was a rush of somebody right into the midst of the little group, somebody who fairly flung herself on Jean, and held her in a royal bear hug.

“Jeanie, Jeanie, you dear old sis. Father and Don are here too. They had to hold the ponies. When the train came through the cut, they danced right up in the air,” she explained, too excited to be explicit.

“Girls, this is Peggie,” Jean said, as soon as she could get in a word. “Polly, Sue, Ruth, Isabel, and Ted, Peggie. You must pick them out for yourself, and get acquainted.”

“I’m glad to see you,” Peggie said, smiling rather shyly at the girls. She seemed like Jean at first sight, with her gray eyes, and quick smile, but her hair was short and curly and brown. “Jeanie’s stopping to say hello to Jim Handy, the station agent,” she added presently. “Let’s go to father.” She led the way around to the far side of the small pine depot, where two teams waited with a couple of ponies to each.

“These are Jeanie’s girl friends, father,” she said, happily. “Polly and Sue and Ruth and Ted and Isabel.”

“How could you remember our names so soon?” Ted asked impulsively.

“I’ve known them for a long time from Jean’s letters. I know the names, but I can’t fit them right yet.”

This made them all laugh, and Mr. Murray beamed down on the little group with a broad smile of welcome. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a lean, tanned face, and eyes that twinkled out at the world from under shaggy brows.

“We’re mighty pleased to see you up in this corner of the land,” he said, heartily. “Where’s Jeanie, Peg? Whoa, there, Clip. Don, lad, put the suit-cases under the seats.”

“They’re both of them talking to the boys with Jim, father,” Peggie declared. “Jean’s holding a reception of honor.”

“She always does,” replied her father comfortably, lifting in the baggage himself. “She has the ‘come hither’ in her eye. Like this lass.” He smiled down on Polly’s eager, upturned face. “You needn’t blush over it, either, for it’s nothing one can be acquiring, nor can one say ‘shall one have it, or not.’ It’s born in some. Where I came from, in the north isles, they call it the kiss o’ the sun. Don, will you be coming soon?”

“He’s shy of the girls, maybe,” Peggie said merrily.

But just then Jean and Don, her youngest brother, came towards them. He was about fifteen, this tall, overgrown brother of hers, with a boyish, tanned face, and bright blue eyes. And Jean, knowing how embarrassed he was before this group of smiling Eastern girls, introduced him with a general motion of her hand.

“Girls, this is Don.”

“Are you all dressed warmly enough for the drive?” asked Mr. Murray. “There are blankets in the back of the wagons if we need them. It gets pretty cool as we go higher into the hills after dark. Your mother put in a lot of stuff to eat, Jeanie. She thought maybe you’d all be starved out by the time you got here. I had hard work keeping it for you, though. We left home about eight this morning, and Don and Peg almost finished it.”

“Don’t you believe him, Jeanie,” Peggie protested. “We had our own lunch.”

“Wasn’t it thoughtful and dear of mother to remember lunch?” Jean said. “Indeed, we will enjoy it. I am the only one who brought a trunk along, father. Can we take that with us, now?”

“I’m thinking we’ll leave it for Archie to bring up with him. He’ll be home day after to-morrow. We’ve got all we can manage to-night for the horses. Jeanie, you climb up beside Don, and I’ll take Peggie with me. Let three of the young ladies go with you, and we’ll take a couple and the suit-cases. Look after those groceries at your feet, Jeanie, or the mother’ll be having something to say to you if you spill out her sugar and oats.”

Laughing and calling to each other, the girls finally were packed away safely in the two wagons, and away they went, the ponies shaking their heads, and “sneezing,” as Peggie said, as they cut out of town into the open country.

“We have seventeen miles ahead of us,” Jean said. “Better take off your hats, and settle down to enjoy the drive.”

The girls took the suggestion, and, bareheaded, let the soft night breeze blow in their faces. Deercroft lay in the valley, and the road northward climbed the hills. Jean was busy talking to Don, not with him, but at him, as Polly said afterwards. Nobody ever really talked with Don, for he had nothing to say; but he was a splendid listener, and would smile, and nod his head, until you felt that he agreed with you perfectly. It was easy to see what close friends the two were. Polly, Sue and Ted were in the same wagon with them, so they could laugh and listen too.

“How fast the ponies go,” said Ruth, in the forward team.

“They know they’re homeward bound,” Mr. Murray returned. “Wait till you see them with Archie’s hand on them. He’s broken in nearly all of them. I suppose you’ll be riding, before many days. You will if you’re like our girls. Has Jeanie told you of the day she rode from Pegtop Mountain down to the ranch to give the alarm? No? I’ll wager not. She isn’t the kind to go about telling of her doings, and praising herself. Pegtop lies around yon knuckle.” He pointed with the whip at a jut of hillside ahead. “You’ll see it when we turn eastward again. The sheep grazed on that upper range those days, and we have no forest rangers up in our corner of the state. If there’s trouble in the hills, we get out and do our own fighting. This day in September, I know, it was dry as codfish, in the hills. The grass was burnt low, and every twig ready for the snapping. Somehow Pegtop caught fire on its southern slope, midway up where the spruces commence to fringe it. And around on its other side I had eight hundred or so sheep, and only one herder to the lot. Jeanie was a lass of fifteen then, about like this young lady,” pointing to Isabel. “The boys were helping me down in the valley, and she started out for a ride over Pegtop, and found the fire creeping through the brush. Have you ever seen one? No? First there’s the smell of it, and you can’t seem to find out where it belongs. Then you see the thin white streaks of smoke curl up and settle in a cloud above the spot, and you don’t waste time then.”

“But, what could you do way out here without anything to fight fire with, Mr. Murray?” asked Isabel.

“Do, lass? We did what we could, and no one can do more. Jeanie came riding back. You should have seen her, riding astride and laying over the pony’s neck like a slip of an Indian boy. Neil and myself went back when we heard her news.”

“To stop the fire?” asked Ruth.

He shook his head.

“To save the sheep, lass. We had no time to stop the fire. We rode straight around the crag there, and up to the hill range where the sheep were, then drove them down into the coulee, the cut in the hills, mind, and so to the valley.”

“And the fire just burned until it stopped of itself?” asked Ruth, again. “Think of all the young trees, and everything.”

“Ay, and we do think too, about it,” smiled back the old rancher, grimly. “My second lad, Archie, will be a ranger, some day. He’s swift after that sort of thing. Jean’s glad too. She’s like her mother. I can see my day’s work before me, and do it, but Mrs. Murray and Jeanie look out to the hill views, I’m thinking, and they see what the next generation will demand from us.”

“I know,” Ruth exclaimed, eagerly. “Miss Murray has told us that, too; how each of us adds our own little part to the building of the ages, and if it is weak, then the others suffer, more than we do, even.”

“That’s Jeanie,” he nodded his head slowly. “And it is a good builder she is herself.”

“Girls,” called Jean from the team behind them. “When we turn to the right next time, it’s the home road, and it used to be an old Indian trail, didn’t it, father?”

“Sandy will be telling them all about those things,” her father replied. “I’m a new settler when he’s about. I’ve only been here thirty years, and he came in the days of the gold digging up in the Hills. He was a scout with Custer, and long before. Get him well started any night, by the camp fire or just on the doorstoop with a good pipeful of tobacco, and it’s no sleep you’ll have for hours. He holds the stories of these hill ranges and mountain tops in his hand, and he loves a good audience, Sandy does.”

“Sandy? That is Miss Diantha’s husband, isn’t it?” asked Isabel.

“He is Mrs. Sandy’s husband, nowadays,” replied Mr. Murray, smilingly. “Nobody calls her anything but that. Mother told her you’d be coming out to us, and she will drive over next week some day. Ready for the fording, Don?”

“Ready, dad,” answered Don, and the ponies hit the down trail with a clattering of the swinging shafts and a thud of hoofs, as though they, too, enjoyed what lay ahead of them.

Every one of the girls gave a gasp of admiration and quick surprise, as the creek came in sight, winding, twisting here and there among the rocks. Before they knew what was coming, they were deep into it, up to the hubs, and more too.

“Oh, this is nothing,” laughed Jean, as they all called out, and held tightly to the seats. “We’ve been through here when the water surged up through the floor of the wagon, haven’t we, father?”

“Don’t be boasting that way, lass,” Mr. Murray called back to her, his gray eyes full of mirth. “Or I’ll be telling of the night when Neil and I left the wagon behind, and swam with the pony to the other side.”

“Father never likes to have me tell a bigger story than he can,” Jean exclaimed, merrily. They came up out of the water, the ponies with dripping flanks, and swung away again on the home road. This led more through the valleys, and was easier to travel. Once in a while they made a turn that brought out new vistas of beauty, quick glimpses into gullies, and deep, low stretches that were, as Jean said, almost like Scottish moorland. The sun vanished behind a distant range of mountains, lying like heaped up clouds against the western sky, and as the twilight deepened, the girls stopped their talk back and forth, for they began to feel the fatigue of the long journey.

“If Crullers were here now, she would fall sound asleep,” Sue said, sleepy herself.

“You will all feel sleepy until you get used to the air here,” Jean told her. “We are at a very high altitude, and the air is dry and clear. It will make you feel drowsy for a while.”

“It doesn’t make me feel that way, Miss Murray,” protested Polly, quickly. “It just makes me want to get out and run, and run. I love it all so.”

Peggie glanced at her with her quick, sideways smile of sympathy, over her shoulder.

“I love it too,” she said. “Do you like animals?”

“Dearly,” Polly answered. “You should see my dog, old Tan, and the cats. That is all I have, but I love them.”

“Maybe you’ll take more back home when you go,” said Peggie, seriously. “I’ll show you how to make them like you. And I think they would like you, and Ruth here too.”

“Why not us?” asked Ted.

“You’re too quick to move,” said Peggie, gently. “If you want animals and birds to like you, you have to keep quiet.”

“But I’m not quiet, Peggie,” protested Polly. “You don’t know what a flutterfly I am. That’s what my grandfather calls me, and he’s right.”

“But you don’t make a noise about it,” said Peggie. “I’ll show you what I mean when we get home.”

It was dark when they reached the ranch, but the moon was clear and cloudless overhead, with the stars about it like sheep, as Ruth said. All at once Don lifted his head, and smiled, and spoke for the first time during the long, weary drive.

“We’re home, Jeanie.”