FIVE TENDERFEET

The trail led upward from the valley over the buttes, winding in and out between rocks that formed natural buttresses and fortifications. Only the scrub pines and low spruces found a foothold on them, but the crevices were filled with mosses and stray flowers. Finally, they came to a small plateau, or stretch of tableland, and on its brink, overlooking the ranch and valley, was Council Rock. It was an immense, natural formation of stone, and as the girls stood there, they could almost see the circle of chiefs sitting around it, listening in stolid mistrust to the parleyings of their white brothers.

“There are steps in the rock on this side, girls,” Jean said, showing them how the stones had been hewn into stairs at one side. “Father has said he did not doubt that at some far-off age, the Indians offered sacrifices here to the Sun god. That was the highest worship up here in our corner of the State, the worship of the Sun god. They used to hold the great ceremonial here each year, over on Sundance Mountain. Isn’t that odd? Think how at almost the same time, nations were worshiping the Sun god in Persia, and Japan, and Peru, and here.”

“I think it was better than praying to three-faced images and totem poles,” said Ruth, in her grave, unsmiling way. “I suppose the sun seemed warm and good to them, and they thought it made the world beautiful.”

“‘And the Sun of Righteousness shall rise with healing in His wings,’” quoted Jean, softly. “It is a beautiful thought, Ruth. Let us sit down here like the old-time chiefs, and talk of our Wyoming.”

“Why do they call it that, Miss Murray?” asked Isabel. “I always like to know about names.”

“Do you? This name is a rather sad one. After the massacre of 1866, it was called Wyoming, in memory of the terrible massacre of settlers in the old Wyoming valley in Pennsylvania. The first white explorer who found us, was the Chevalier de la Verendrye, back in the early part of the eighteenth century. He took up fur trading with the natives, and lived eleven years among them. Later came John Colter—”

“He discovered the Yellowstone,” put in Ruth, “and then the trappers and traders all came up here. We had that, girls, in Irving’s story about Captain Bonneville, don’t you remember?”

“And the first white settlement was at Fort Laramie,” went on Jean, dreamily. Her chin was uplifted. She looked off over the valley with its winding creek bed, fringed with cottonwoods, and almost forgot the girls. Dearly had she always loved the story of Wyoming’s upward fight to statehood. “Then a few more settlements were made. But it was always hard and dangerous, because there was no protection from the Indians, and no guarded line of travel. Sandy loves to tell stories of the old Bonzeman trail, and Conner’s march in which he participated, back in ’65. But finally the needs became so urgent that the railroad decided to push through an overland route following the old trail.”

“What did the Indians say to that?” asked Sue, eagerly.

“They said little, but waited. Up this way, there were Sioux, and Arapahoes. South were the Cheyennes, and west the friendly Crows. They called them Upserokas, then, ‘from the land of the crows.’ And in 1866, these tribes all met at Laramie to hold a council with the government commission about the road. They seemed to be acting in good faith, and willing for the country to be opened up. Forts were established, and posts here and there, but in December of that same year, without warning, the Indians decoyed three officers and over seventy men into ambush, and killed them. And for years after that, it is one long story of brave men trying to hold point after point against odds, with long delays in government relief, until finally General Grant ordered the forts demolished for lack of troops to keep them up. Think of that, girls.”

“But there was Custer,” Polly broke in.

“Indeed there was, Polly,” agreed Jean, warmly. “You want to hear Sandy tell of Custer. He was one of his scouts. Custer gave his heart to Wyoming, and his life. I think that Sandy always feels he was most unjustly treated by fate because he did not go with Custer on his last journey, when the Sioux killed the entire command on Little Big Horn River.”

“All of them?” asked Ted, in almost a whisper, her gray eyes wide and startled.

“All, dear. So you see why Wyoming seems to me like the girl state. She is so young and so willing and eager, and she has suffered greatly. We who have been born here, and know her, realize her growth in the past twenty years. There, I see Don waving to us from the corral, now. Who wants to ride?”

“Riding skirts, girls, first,” Polly cried, and away they went down the path to the cabin to change for the first ride. It had been Jean’s first warning to them, the riding skirts. Out west, side saddles were a thing of the past, she told the girls. There must be divided skirts, made very much like their regular outing skirts of khaki, but giving perfect freedom in the saddle.

“I must remember and show you my buckskin skirt that Archie made for me when I was about your age,” she had said. “It was my first riding skirt, and I felt like a real squaw in it.”

Don had five ponies ready for them when they returned to the corral, and Jean’s own broncho besides. Saddled and bridled they waited, and Mrs. Murray came down from the main cabin to see the first try-out. Even Sally watched them from her cook-house, and smiled in her stolid, close-lipped way as Polly and Ted took the lead, and mounted their ponies.

Isabel and Ruth hesitated, but Sue followed the others, and Jean last of all, on Ginger.

“We named him that for two reasons,” she said, as they rode down the trail towards the creek. “He’s the color of ginger, and he has a temper that is gingery too.” She turned in her saddle to see if the last two girls were mounted safely. Very stiffly and anxiously they both sat in the saddles, Isabel with her back stiff as a poker, Ruth precise and resolute, her knees gripping the pony’s sides as though she had been on a pony express. “Don’t be afraid, girls,” she called to them. “They won’t bolt or kick a bit. Let them take the trail, and they’ll follow after the rest like sheep. Just hold them up a bit when you come to a steep incline, that’s all.”

“Don gave me a quirt,” said Polly, holding up the short braided whip.

“You’d better not wave it over Jinks’ head, young lady,” Jean laughed. “He objects strongly to violent persuasion of any sort. Just be content to jog along easily for a while.”

“Oh, where’s Peggie?” asked Sue suddenly. “I thought she was coming with us.”

“She started out long ago, goose,” Ted told her. “I saw something go ‘sky-hooting’ along this road right after breakfast, and at first I thought it must be a deer, or an Indian, but I saw Peggie’s pigtails flying, and knew it was just she. Does she always ride that way, Miss Murray?”

Jean laughed, and her eyes grew tender.

“I think she does. She rides to school all winter on that pony. Father gave it to her when she was about eight, for her very own, and she talks to it as though it understood everything. I presume it would seem strange to you girls to have the birthday presents we two have been accustomed to. Sometimes father gives us a pony, sometimes a yearling, or even a calf of our own, and we help look after them ourselves. He says that one of the finest ways to teach yourself self-reliance and responsibility is to have a living creature dependent on you. Take the turn to your left, Polly, where you come to the fork in the road over the bridge.”

Polly was leading, or rather Jinks was leading. He had a most authoritative way of throwing up his nose, and jerking the bridle as he went along, and a reckless swing to his gait that was enchanting, Polly thought. She only wished the Admiral might have seen her then. Down the road from the ranch, and over the plank bridge at the creek, they went. On the other side, at the fork, Jean told them one road led over the way they had come from Deercroft, and the other one led due west towards the Alameda ranch, where Mrs. Sandy lived.

“It is too far to go to-day, girls, when you are not used to riding, but we can try it in a few days, I think. Elspeth has gone over there now, to let them know you came yesterday.”

“I wonder, Miss Murray,” called back Polly over her shoulder, “why it was that Miss Calvert didn’t send any message to Miss Diantha by us.”

“I don’t know anything about it, Polly, any more than you do,” said Jean, simply. “Mother knows what the trouble is between the two sisters, because Mrs. Sandy told her herself, but we don’t know. Mother has that way always. Sometimes father will tell what he thinks is a great piece of news, and mother will say very gently, ‘Land o’ rest, David, I knew that six months ago. You mustn’t go ’round telling all you hear.’ Mrs. Sandy had always told Peggie and me about her stately sister at the old Southern home in Queen’s Ferry, and when I gave up the school over at Beaver Ford and told her I wanted to get into an upper class school, or preparatory for college, she said that she would write to her sister in my behalf at Calvert Hall, and, well—I got the appointment.”

“But Miss Calvert never talks about her, and she didn’t send her love by us,” put in Isabel, decidedly. “Has she lived out West here long, Miss Murray?”

“Before father took up his claim. I really am not sure how long it is. I know that Sandy was born East, but did most of his fighting out here, and then he went back home, and married Miss Diantha. Perhaps, before you go back home, you may find out all about it.”

“Oh, girls, look,” cried Polly, turning around eagerly. They had come to a turn in the road, skirting the base of the mountain. On one side was the sheer, precipitous cliff, with straight trunks of pines and spruce rising like ship masts higher and higher, until the tops were lost to sight. Below were the pines too, and the ground grew more and more rugged, as they rode upward. Far beneath them lay the valley, and in the distance was the ranch, its buildings and corrals looking almost like toys. Ahead the wagon road wound around the face of the mountain, and disappeared.

“We call this the Delectable Mountain,” Jean told them, as they all halted, to look at the gorgeous panorama outspread before them. “Mother named it years ago. It was a long and weary trip for her out here. They came by wagon from Iowa, the nearest shipping point. Mother has often told us of the long trip, and how kind people were at the ranches they passed along the route, but how very few there were. Father had taken up the claim, and then had sent for her to bring the goods on, and he met her. And she says that when, at last, after days and days of travel, they finally came around this curve of the old trail, and the valley lay before her, she just looked and looked at it, and smiled. ‘Davy, it’s the Delectable Mountain, isn’t it, dear heart, and yonder lies our Promised Land.’ That is what she said, girls. I think it was, too.”

The girls were silent. It was about eleven, and the sunlight flooded the valley with its golden glow. About it, the mountains grouped shelteringly. For miles and miles, in all the vast view, the only spot of human life was the ranch. And for the moment there came to the girls, even in their own careless pleasure, a realization of what that long journey had meant to the bride of thirty years ago, and what simple heroism there lay in the story of the valley home.

“How brave she was,” said Ruth, gently. “What did she do when the Indians came around?”

“She gave them bread,” Jean replied, smiling. “Mother doesn’t believe much in bullets. Now, ride along, girls. We’ll go as far as the spring cave for this morning, then back home to dinner, and you’ll have done very well. I think even the Admiral would say that much.”

They kept on for another three quarters of a mile, until the road broadened out, and there, at the side, was a spring tumbling and trickling out of the rocky ledge. A granite cup was tucked into one of the crevices, and they all dismounted, and had a good drink, then rode back to the ranch with keen appetites for one of Mrs. Murray’s famous dinners.