CROSSBAR RANCH

Polly was the first to awake the following morning. She heard the oddest sound right under her window, a sharp cry of “Come back, come back, come back!”

Then came Mrs. Murray’s voice, hushed, but agitated.

“Get away from there! Shoo, with you, shoo!”

Polly jumped up from her cot, and looked out. A flock of speckled guinea hens fluttered away from a waving apron, and vanished behind the old blacksmith shop. It was early morning. Polly dressed quietly, and went out, leaving the rest of the girls sleeping, for she knew how tired they were after the long overland journey.

Once outdoors, she stood still, and looked around her. The Murray ranch lay in a pleasant valley, with foothills and buttes surrounding it. Polly’s first thought was, where could the trees be? Excepting for the cottonwoods that fringed the creek bed, and the spruces rising spire-like in every place they could find a foothold, there seemed to a Virginia-bred girl, to be a dearth of trees. The ranch was built facing the south, and almost backed into the buttes at the north for shelter. The main log cabin was only one story high, but broad and long, and home-like looking. A hammock swung under its porch shelter, and there were some flower borders around it, with geraniums and mignonette growing in them, and some pansies, but precious little else. Just across the valley rose a mountain. Patches of pines covered its sides, with here and there the white line of the wagon road showing around the slopes. Straggling away from the main cabin were various buildings, all low, and built also of logs. Farther back, under the shelter of the shelving sandstone butte, was the corral, a round enclosure of rails, and ponies within. Down in the valley where the creek wound in and out, were some sheep, their heads bent down as they grazed, their backs stone-gray like rocks.

Eastward, the sun was just showing above the hills, and everywhere was heard the songs of birds.

Polly hesitated between the main house, and the corral, but the call of the ponies was too strong to be resisted, and she went down to the corral. When Don and Jean came down from the kitchen, they found her perched up on the topmost rail, at one side, talking to the ponies, and trying to coax them to her.

“We thought you were still asleep,” Jean said. “Good-morning.”

“Good-morning,” answered Polly, happily. “The rest are. I wanted to get up and take a look out. Oh, Miss Murray, isn’t that pony over there a dear, the one with the white nose? He’s the only one that notices me, and when I call him, he lays back his ears, and shakes his head.”

Don went into the corral, and threw a halter over the pony’s head.

“This is Jinks,” he told her. “Used to be called High Jinks, but we cut it short to Jinks. Don’t you want to ride him?”

It was a temptation. Polly looked longingly at the pony, but someway, it did not seem loyal to the others to start the fun before they were ready.

“No, thank you, Don, I think I’ll wait,” she said. “But could I have that one to ride, when we start?”

“Guess so,” responded Don, in his stolid way. When he talked he got off each sentence first, and rested before he took up the next. “Father said he was going to let each of you have the use of the same pony all the time you stayed; then you’d get used to the pony, and the pony’d get used to you. He has five safe ones picked out, and Jinks is one of them.”

“Well, I’d love to have Jinks unless one of the other girls wants him too.”

“Finding’s keeping,” said Don, placidly. “I’ll put your brand on him, Miss Polly.”

“Father’s gone to Deercroft after the boys,” Jean said, as they walked back to the house. “Archie and Neil, you know. He is very glad to have them home to help him too. It’s hard to get good ranchmen on these smaller places, for they are nearly all snapped up by the large outfits. Oh, Polly, look here.” She stopped short, and pointed off at the mountain. “Can you see that great wooden cross way up there on the rock ledge, half way up the mountain. That is where the first church service was held here in Uwanda Valley. It was before father took up the claim even, when the Shoshones still wandered freely over these ranges. Now, they are all gathered into the same reservations with the Arapahoes. It seems strange, when they have always been hereditary foes, that now they have to settle down, and live in peace side by side as Uncle Sam’s good children.”

“But how did the cross come there?” asked Polly, eagerly, shading her eyes so that she might see it plainly. “It looks like a bare pine tree with a piece nailed across it.”

“That is just what it is. The Indians were encamped in the valley here, where the water was good and hunting fine, and one of our missionaries traveled on horseback over seventy miles to reach them. They wouldn’t allow him down in the camp, not even to enter it. So he went up the mountain to that rock ledge, where he could overlook them; put on his vestments, and read the service. Before he was half through, ever so many of the Indians had stolen gradually nearer and nearer until they were close to him. He stayed here after that nearly a week, as their guest, and always held the service on the same spot. They grew very fond of him, and when they left the valley, they erected that cross in memory of him.”

Just then Sue and Ted came out of the cabin, and joined them.

“Good-morning. Ruth’s waiting to button Isabel’s waist,” Sue explained.

“Button what waist? Is she daring to dress up out here? Wait till I find out.” Polly sped back to the cabin, and found Isabel just slipping on a fresh white blouse.

“Young lady, where’s your khaki skirt and blouse? If we are to ‘rough it,’ and not have a stack of washing, we must be careful. Put on that middy blouse, and come along.”

Isabel obeyed, but a bit ruefully. She stood before the little oblong mirror that hung on a nail above the washstand, and fluffed out her hair with her side-combs, while Ruth and Polly watched her, laughingly.

“I declare, Lady Vanitas, I do truly believe you’d stop to fix your hair if you were going to telephone,” said Polly. “Can’t you smell breakfast?”

“Did you all rest well, girls?” asked Mrs. Murray, smiling up at them from the kitchen table as they entered. “It’s only six now. I thought you’d be so tired you’d sleep late, but even Jeanie was out a little past five herself. Peggie, you may dish the porridge, and bring in the cream.”

Porridge. That sounded solid and Scotch, thought the girls, and they enjoyed it too, with plenty of cream, and fresh berries, and eggs. It was very pleasant in the long, low, ceiled kitchen. In the summer time, the cooking at the ranch was done at what they called the cook-house, a cabin half rock, half logs apart from the main house. This left the kitchen free from the warmth of the fire, and all its windows were open. The interior was unplastered. Here and there on the walls hung a pair of antlers, and over the fireplace was a pair of long, sword-like horns from a Rocky Mountain goat. On a homemade rack along one side of the room were several rifles, and one long, old-fashioned musket.

“That was father’s,” Jean explained, when the girls were examining the guns after breakfast. “He was in several of the Indian campaigns out here, along with Sandy MacDowell. Wait until you visit over at the Alameda ranch, and hear them talk together. Now, come out to the cook-house and meet Sally. She’s very anxious to see you all.”

“Who’s Sally?” asked Sue.

“Sally is Sally Lost Moon, mother’s standby on the work question. Sally wandered here years ago in a blizzard. She had lost her way somehow, trying to get over to Deercroft. She is a half-breed Shoshone squaw who worked at different camps as cook, until she came to us. If you want to hear all the old Indian legends of this part of the world, you want to start Sally talking when she has her supper work all finished, and is sitting out on the stoop resting.”

The girls trooped after Jean, as she led the way to the cook-house. Inside, they found Sally Lost Moon, and were formally introduced to her. She was very “blank” as Ted remarked afterwards, but scrutinized each young face with shrewd intent, and a curious, set smile, and shook hands deliberately with each one.

“Can she talk if she really feels like it?” asked Ruth interestedly, when they left her.

“Indeed she can,” returned Jean. “She is always very dignified with strangers. She has two little granddaughters at one of the mission schools, and sometimes they come out in vacation time to see her with their mother. Each time they bring Sally a gift, and she never uses it. She has everything that they have brought her sacredly put away. And she’s so proud that they belong to the Church, and are being educated. Nearly all the Indian women are that way. It is the men who sit back, and regret the days before the white men came and took away their hunting grounds.”

Peggie joined them, and said that Don was anxious for the girls to meet Prometheus. They went down past the corral, to the wagon sheds, and there they found Prometheus Bound, as Jean said. He was the most cheerful looking bear, with a way of holding his jaws open as if he were smiling, like a panting dog, and he sat up on his hind legs obligingly, and shook hands with each girl.

“What kind of a bear is he?” asked Polly. “I can’t tell the difference between the Rocky Mountain bears.”

“You would if you thought about it,” Don told her. “There’s four that we have up this way, Cinnamon, Silvertip, Grizzly and Common Brown bear. That’s what old Pro is, just a common brown Johnny bear. I got him when he was a cub. Some folks up at the Sweetwater ranch were out hunting, and they killed the mother, and right after it I found this little shaver trotting around looking for his mother, so I caught him, and brought him down home, and Peg helped me bring him up. He can dance, and walk on a pole, and play ’possum, and say his prayers, and do lots of tricks. We used to have him in the shed back of the house, but mother sent him down here after he’d eaten up the bishop’s Sunday dinner.”

“Poor old boy.” Sue sympathized with Prometheus, as she always did with a dumb animal. “I’d love to take you home with me.”

“I’d like to see your mother’s face when you appeared in Queen’s Ferry leading him,” laughed Ted gayly. “It would be worse than the tame crabs you caught at Lost Island last summer, Sue.”

“Oh, I don’t know, now. I think he’d make a very nice pet,” returned Sue reflectively.

“Let’s get Sue away from Prometheus right this minute, girls,” exclaimed Polly, “or he will surely go back home with us. Miss Murray, are there any real Indians around here nowadays?”

Jean slipped one arm around Polly’s waist, and they strolled up the narrow winding path that led to the buttes of sandstone back of the corral.

“We’ll go up to Council Rock, and there I can tell you about them,” she said. “And after that, we’ll have the first riding lesson.”

“Where’s Council Rock?” Ruth asked.

“It’s a great flat rock about half a mile up the trail, where the Indians used to meet under a flag of truce, and parley with the settlers, and hunters years ago. At one time, I believe it was the only neutral spot in this whole valley. That was long before Custer’s raid, back when they were trying to push the railroad through. Don’t you girls know anything at all about it?”

“Not a blessed thing,” the girls all chimed in.

“Then you must. For though our Wyoming is only one of the girl states as yet, she has been as great a heroine in her struggle for statehood and protection as any of the first colonies, I think. And if you are to love her and appreciate her, you must understand some of her history as well.”