“MRS. SANDY”

Mrs. Murray did not think it wise to take the long ride the following day.

“Better rest up a wee bit, or you’ll be tired out before you’ve played,” she told them. “Jeanie had better get out the tent, and see if it needs any mending, if you’re going camping. I think there’s a rent on one side.”

“We can’t all mend tents,” said Ruth, when the tent was carried out of the shed, and unfolded. “Suppose Miss Jean and I mend this, and the rest write home letters. I heard Archie say he had to drive to Deercroft in the morning, so that would be a good chance to send them off. Sue, you put in a post-card for Annie May, will you? I promised her we’d send one.”

“I think that Isabel ought to take our pictures with her kodak, and then we’d send them in, and have them printed on post-cards, and let them be scattered among all interested and loving friends,” said Polly.

“Oh, wait, girls, and I’ll do it,” cried Isabel. “The light is fine this morning.”

So away she went after her kodak, and the morning was spent taking snap-shots. Isabel was photographer in chief, and she was especially good on composition, and getting attractive backgrounds.

Don led Jinks out, and three of the girls mounted him, and were taken with heads up, all laughing. Then Peggie was persuaded to put on her buckskin suit and sombrero, and with a rifle in her hand she made a splendid picture of a ranch girl. Then Prometheus was led forth, and obligingly stood up and begged with his head coaxingly on one side.

“Just as if he was begging for the Bishop’s dinner, the rogue,” said Peggie.

Sally Lost Moon, after much explaining and pleading, finally came out of the cook-house, and was stationed where the buttes loomed up behind her, and everything looked unsettled and primeval, Isabel said impressively. Then just as all was set, Isabel levelled the camera, and Sally turned and ran as if a bear were at her heels.

“Shoot, shoot,” was all she would say, and shook her head vigorously. “No shoot me; no shoot me!”

“Oh, Sally, please,” begged Polly. “Look, I’ll give you my silver bracelet if you’ll let us take you.”

She drew off the bracelet from her own wrist, and Sally looked at it longingly, jingling its silver bangles happily. Finally, she put it on her wrist, and went out to try again.

“I’ll stand near, Sally,” called Mrs. Murray encouragingly, and so, surrounded by reserve force, Sally faced the camera for the first time in her life.

“Won’t it be fun to show her a real picture of herself?” laughed Polly, when it was over.

“I don’t know whether it will or not,” Jean answered. “The Indians are so suspicious and superstitious that they are easily scared. She might think you were making bad medicine for her. Two years ago, some tourists took snap-shots of some Shoshone babies, and the squaws grabbed the camera, and smashed it. They said the white women were drawing out the spirits, and shutting them up in the black box to carry away with them.”

“Oooo!” cried Sue, “‘An’ the gobble’uns will get you if you don’t watch out!’”

“Now, all of you group around Miss Jean, and look happy,” ordered Isabel, so the last picture of all was the group, and a jolly, care-free lot of vacationers they looked, too.

“Let’s go down for a swim, then back to dinner, then write all our letters this afternoon,” Polly suggested, and they carried out this programme for the day.

It was worth resting up for, they all declared the next morning, when Peggie called them before five. Breakfast was ready by the time they were dressed, and a little past six, they were all in the saddle, ready for their long ride overland to the Alameda ranch. It was quite an imposing cavalcade that started out, two by two at first, and then Indian file as the road narrowed in places. This time they rode due west, along the river road, through willows and tall cottonwoods.

After about four miles, Jean led the way up a rocky defile, and they struck an irregular ridge of tableland. Here the rocks began to assume all kinds of queer, fantastic shapes, and Peggie told the names of them, as they came to each—Jumping Rabbit, Columbus, Praying Chief, Sleeping Bear, Double Towers, and so on.

“We used to take a lunch when we were little, and come here to play for a day in the summer,” Jean said. “See those rocks away over yonder? Don’t they resemble some wonderful eastern city? They look like the cliff cities of Arizona and New Mexico, too.”

“Maybe they have been, sometime,” Polly exclaimed, reining up a minute to take a good look at the strange sight. “It’s like discovering a dead petrified city, isn’t it?”

“I wish you had the time and money too, girls, to visit the Yellowstone this trip. If the vacation were longer, we could take the time, and drive across country to it. Father took us that way once. I remember when we came to the great Absoraka Range, with forty snow-capped peaks, like a tremendous wall from north to south. It makes you feel so little just to look at those wonders.”

There was silence for a minute, then Ruth said, soberly:

“I heard a story once in church, and I never forgot it. Our rector at Queen’s Ferry told it. It was about two very old mountains that wakened once in a thousand years, and wished each other good-morning. And they would say it this way.

“‘Good-morning, brother, how goes the world?’

“‘Well, brother, well,’ the other mountain would say, and after a time they would fall happily to sleep. But one day they wakened, and one mountain noticed a lot of little specks running around the ground at his base, so when his brother greeted him, he was disturbed, and said:

“‘I cannot say if it goes well or not, brother. There are a lot of little ants or some kind of insects running around me. They seem to be building things of little pieces of trees. And they fight, and make a lot of useless noise. I do not like them.’

“‘Never mind,’ said the other one. ‘They are bothering me too, but let us go to sleep and maybe they will be gone when we wake.’

“And it went on like that for ever so long, thousands of years, and every time the mountains wakened, they were troubled by the little specks that were always building and fighting, and making a noise. Then one morning the mountains awakened, and all was very quiet and happy.

“‘Good-morning, brother, how goes the world?’ said one, and the other was so glad to be able to answer:

“‘Well, brother, well. All those little fretful specks they call people have gone from the face of the earth, and the world is at peace with God again.’ That’s all, but doesn’t it make you respect the everlasting hills, Miss Jean?”

“Indeed it does, Ruth,” Jean replied. “That is a lovely story. I think that Mrs. Sandy would enjoy it, too. Be careful when you come to the terraces here. Keep the ponies close to the side of the bluff.”

They had come to great natural terraces of rock and sandstone, graduating down from the trail, far to the river bed below; and here the quiet river that flowed past the ranch had turned into a turbulent, dashing torrent between narrow bluffs. From the road, they could not see it, but the sound of its rushing came booming up to them. All at once Ted cried out:

“Oh, there’s a cat in that tree, Miss Jean. Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!”

“Never mind calling it, Ted,” laughed Jean. “That’s a bobcat. There it goes now. Did you see its tail? They’ll hardly ever hurt any one unless attacked first, although the boys watch for them at night, if they have to go up through the piney trails. I think we’ll see some deer when we start down the next hill. They are usually out in numbers here. Don’t talk, because they can scent us and hear us very far off.”

Quietly, the little band rode on, eyes on the alert for the turn in the road, and view of the deer, and they were rewarded by such a sight as they had never seen before. Below them stretched beautiful fertile fields. A mountain cascade in the distance fell like a gorgeous, captured cloud, so filmy and pearly white it looked. And down in the grazing ground was a herd of deer. The girls watched them for some time, delighted at the gentle beauty of the does and little ones, and the stately buck, who every now and then would rear up his many pronged horns, and listen, nose to the wind.

“I don’t think they will mind us, if we ride on, girls,” Jean said, but the deer had a different opinion. As soon as they caught sight of the ponies and riders, they were off over the fields and into the forest.

It was nearly ten when they reached the Alameda ranch. Peggie and Polly rode ahead of the rest, and let out a clear, gay shout when they came in sight of it. It lay in the valley far below, in a nest of trees.

“How did they ever find enough trees in one spot to make it so pretty?” asked Ruth.

“Sandy planted them there years ago, before he went East after his bride,” Jean told her. “He used to call it his Honeymoon Lodge in those days. How glad Mrs. Sandy will be to see us.”

And she was, too, more full of pure gladness than she had been in years, she told the girls. They found her down at the corral with Sandy himself, both of them busy with some calves. They heard the shouts from far off, and Mrs. Sandy hurried to meet them.

The first thing that startled the girls was her marked resemblance to the old oil painting at Calvert Hall. There was the same happy, inviting face, surrounded by little bobbing curls, and though the curls were gray now, you hardly noticed it, they formed so pretty a frame to the sweet, pink-tinted face.

“I’ve been looking for you every day, dears,” she said, kissing each one of the girls, as they slipped from their ponies to greet her. “And this is Isabel Lee, Phil Lee’s daughter. You have your father’s mouth and chin, dear. I knew him well. What did you say, Jeanie—Sue Warner? The Warners of Colebrook? Bless my heart, I have danced at many of your grandmother’s parties there, Sue. Ruth, and Edwina, I’m sure I’ve met some of your families too, for you both look familiar to me, although Sandy would declare it was the rose-colored glasses of memory I was using.” Tears sparkled on her lashes as she turned last of all to Polly. “Oh, my dear,” she said, tenderly, “do the lilies still bloom as fair at Glenwood as they did forty years ago? They were gold-colored with ruby hearts.”

Polly nodded her head eagerly.

“Uncle Peter told me you loved them. There’s just Uncle Peter and grandfather left now of the ones who can remember you at our place. Mandy and Aunty Welcome are both pretty young, you know.”

“I know,” laughed Mrs. Sandy. “Welcome must be about forty-five, isn’t she? And Mandy I don’t remember at all.”

“I’ll look after your horses, Jeanie,” Mr. MacDowell said. “You won’t do anything now but talk Queen’s Ferry, and it’s a bully thing that Mrs. MacDowell can at last.”

They went slowly up to the home that Sandy had built so many years ago for the home-coming of his bride. It was prettier than the other ranch houses the girls had seen, more like a bungalow. There was a deep foundation of gray rocks, and the porch was built on columns of the rock too, and crimson ramblers grew all over it just as they did South. There was a piano in the big living-room, and everywhere an indefinable touch of something that seemed alien to this great, happy-go-lucky new land: a quiet elegance and air of repose, something that made the girls think at once of the atmosphere of Calvert Hall.

“We have lots to tell you, dear,” exclaimed Peggie, reaching up to give Mrs. Sandy a hearty bear hug. “We’ve discovered something in old Zed’s gulch, and we’ve got a new name for Sandy.”

“The Chief,” Ted added.

“Hail to the Chief!” began Polly, merrily. “Doesn’t it suit him?”

“It will please him greatly,” said Mrs. Sandy, proudly, and when the girls saw how her face brightened at his name, they began to understand somewhat, one very good reason why Diantha Calvert had come out West to be a rancher’s wife.

There were so many things to see that day, the time passed before they realized it. Ted and Sue rambled around with the Chief, as they called him, at his heels from the corral to the wagon sheds and back again, while the other girls stayed with Mrs. Sandy, and listened as she told stories of the early days.

“Were you never afraid at all?” asked Ruth.

“Dear, what would you think of an Old Dominion girl who dared to be afraid? Besides, the Indians trusted Sandy. He never betrayed their confidence, nor misled them. Many times he acted as peacemaker between them and the army, trying to make the way free from war for them, and trying to make them understand how resistless the march of progress was. Many of the settlers had been murdered, and their places burned, but we were not molested, even by the Sioux. I can remember one day, I was alone here. Sandy had been south at Fort Washakie for several weeks. It was early spring, and the kitchen door was open. I was making bread, I know, and had just opened the oven door to take out the loaves when I heard a step on the doorsill, and saw a shadow on the floor.”

“Indians?” exclaimed Polly.

“Yes. It was an Indian. He stood looking around for a minute, and I didn’t act frightened at all. I thought he might have a message from Sandy for me. Then he grunted, and held out his hand for the bread. There were about eight loaves in all. I held them out to him, and he took every single one. And he gave me this in exchange.”

She went over to an old dresser and took from a drawer a belt, beaded richly, with elk teeth dangling in short fringes from it.

“Isn’t it lovely,” the girls cried. “Why did he do it?”

“Because he was hungry, I think. We never knew. But if I had refused him the bread, or cried out, or done anything that was not friendly, he might have killed me. I don’t know, I may be wrong,” she went on, gently, with a happy, faraway look on her sweet old face, “but I’ve found it a truth, children; if you give kindness, you receive kindness, if you give love, you get love in return, even with savages. It is the brotherliness of humanity that is the most ancient law of all. It is the law of the human pack, as Sandy says.”

“Oh, girls, pack!” exclaimed Polly suddenly. “That makes me think of animals. We’re forgetting about the bones.”

“Bones? What does the child mean?” said Mrs. Sandy.

Then they coaxed her down to where the Chief sat explaining to Ted and Sue the difference between the Sioux and the Crows. And they told of the find down in Zed’s gulch. Sandy listened with steady, unblinking eyes, and brows drawn together a little.

“It must be some bear skeleton, dear,” Mrs. Sandy said. “Or maybe a buffalo, don’t you think so, Sandy?”

“Not if it’s embedded in the rock, lass. Show me how big it is, Peggie.”

And obediently Peggie measured off on the bar-post the height of the bones as close as she could guess at it.

“If it is a dinosaur, or anything like it, Chief,” Ted said, “it must be about ten million years old.”

“Don’t talk so, child, it sounds downright reckless,” hushed gentle Mrs. Sandy, just as Miss Calvert herself might have done. “Was it a monster of the deep before the flood, Sandy, dear, like the leviathan?”

“Now you’ve got me, Di,” cried the big old fellow, merrily. “How can I say for sure? When they find a toad or a frog asleep in the middle of a rock cliff, do they wake him up, and ask if he was one of the identical brood that plagued Pharaoh? There’s things that lie close hidden in the grand, still dawn of creation, and we small humanlings cannot hope to pierce the veil, or to understand the how and the why of it. But if there is a monster of the deep or of the plains either, that’s hiding away in old Zed’s gulch, we’ll haul him out, girls, and find out what he’s worth. I doubt not that he’d enjoy a sniff of fresh air at that, eh, Polly?”

Polly leaned forward, her brown eyes sparkling.

“Then I had better send word to the Doctor to come and see what it is,” she said. “I dug up a piece of the bone to-day, and sent it to him, and some of the rock around it.”

“Good. I’ll ride over on Monday to look at it. You had better come too, to show me where it lies.”

They gladly promised to meet him at the gulch on Monday, and after another look around the ranch, they were ready for home. The Chief was more proud of his horses than anything else. He had raised a special breed from the pure bred wild horses of the plains, and crossed it with pure Arab.

“And they’re the finest bred horses in America to-day,” he declared. “When you come over next time, I’ll take you up and show you them. None of these high-hipped Indian pony animals, with joints like soup bones—”

“Sandy, boy!” protested Mrs. Sandy.

Sandy’s gray eyes twinkled at the motherly reproof in her tone. It was plain to be seen he was her big boy.

“Well, an’ they do look like it, too, Di—but forgive me. Come and see my beauties, when you can.”

“Could we ride them?” asked Polly.

“I doubt it, Polly. Never a saddle have they borne on their backs. When I came West forty years ago, I looked about me, and I saw three things that made me worship in my soul the Maker of things, an eagle in its flight, a mountain at sunrise, and a wild horse. I couldn’t catch the eagle, and I couldn’t snare the sunrise, but I have some of the horses for my own, and it rests my eyes to look at them.”

“Oh, girls, we have time, and we may not get over again,” began Isabel, pleadingly, but it was so late that Jean said no. They would be over before it was time to go back East, surely. So they all kissed Mrs. Sandy good-bye, and only Polly caught the words that she said, as she kissed Jean.

“Is Honoria well?”

“Very well,” said Jean.

“Did she send me any message, Jeanie, dear?”

The tears came in Jean’s eyes.

“No, ma’am, none.”

Mrs. Sandy sighed, and smiled.

“Ah, well, in His good time,” she said. “We must bide it. Good-bye, dear.”

And all the way home Polly pondered.