As Ruth was fond of quoting, “The quicker ’tis done, the better ’tis done.” Polly watched for a good opportunity when Jean was alone, and broached the subject without waiting.

“Peggie go to Calvert?” exclaimed Jean, in surprise. “Why, Polly, what made you think of such a thing?”

“I wanted her. We all want her to be one of us this year. It would do her good, and she would be with you, Miss Murray dear.”

“But the cost—”

“Let the dinosaur pay for it,” said Polly, hastily. “Of course I know she couldn’t go unless something did happen to open the way for her, but this will, won’t it? The Chief told her to-day she was to have a third of whatever he received, because she is the true discoverer.”

“But you and the other girls are the promoters.”

Polly flushed quickly.

“Oh, we don’t want anything. All we did was to encourage Peggie.”

“I think you were what you are so fond of, the gift-bringers of opportunity. It is very dear and thoughtful of you, anyway, and I will promise to talk it over with father and mother soon. That is what you want me to do, isn’t it?”

Polly reached up, and gave her a quick, forcible hug, and kissed her cheek, for answer. Jean watched her as she went down the creek path to join the other girls at the swimming pool. Someway the thought would not be banished, and she found herself considering it seriously. Peggie a Calvert girl? Peggie, her little, wild ranch girl, to turn into one of Miss Calvert’s pupils, at a “select academy for young ladies,” as the fall circulars always said. Jean caught herself laughing softly at the picture. Still, after all, she decided, it depended on Peggie.

Every day found the Chief and the Doctor over in the gulch, planning and exploring. The girls did not accompany them. They felt that their share in the labor was accomplished. It only remained to see results. So they spent the last of the week having a good time on the ranch, and riding around, bareheaded, merry, and just “full of fun,” as Mrs. Murray said, comfortably.

“Land o’ rest, let them enjoy themselves while they can,” she would say, standing at the low doorway, to watch them at play down in the lower field below the corral. Don and Peggie were giving an exhibition of trick-riding and Ted and Polly were trying to imitate them. “I wish sometimes that I could turn loose hosts of young ones like these out here in our beautiful land, and let them find the world as young as they are. Yes, I know what Doctor Smith said, that that lot of bones yonder had been there maybe ten million years. I don’t pretend to know those things. Maybe the world was made in six days, and maybe it was made in sixty million. The Lord knows, and that suffices. I never did hold with this promiscuous poking after what doesn’t concern us. First thing we know, an airship will bump an angel down, and then there’ll be more excitement. The world is young still, bless it, and it’s fresh and green and very beautiful, and I do love to see young things playing on it, whether it’s lambs, or children, or rabbits. They’re a wonderful lot alike.”

Jean listened, sitting on the lower step of the little porch, sewing on a new dress for Peggie, that she needed for camping. It was a strong, tan khaki, like the other girls wore, with a divided skirt, and middy blouse. Someway, as she heard what her mother said, it seemed like the propitious moment for Peggie, and she unfolded Polly’s plan.

Mrs. Murray listened in silence, her plain, motherly face a little bit sad, though the smile did not leave her lips. Jean waited a minute when she had finished, before she asked:

“Could you let her go, mother dear?”

“She’s but a bairn yet, Jeanie, lass.”

“She’s twelve, mother. I could take care of her.”

“She’s needing good schooling since they closed ours over at the Forks. I’d have to let her go to town anyway this fall, and then she’d be with strangers. You’d write often, wouldn’t you, Jeanie, and let me know just how she took to it all?”

“Twice a week regularly, mother,” Jean promised.

“And you don’t think it would be harming her any, being with girls of her own age that have all they want. We’re only plain people, Jean, lass.”

“Oh, mother, the girls at Calvert are not what the world calls wealthy. They seem so to us because we have so little in a way. We are rich in land and stock, and love, but very little real cash. It’s only a different scale of values, dear. What difference does it make whether father gives one of us a yearling or a new pony for a birthday gift, and down yonder, the Admiral gives Polly a new camera, or a necklace. It all comes to the same thing. Peggie will hold her own among them all, dear, and they will love her too. She is old enough to start in the first year. If she does realize her hopes from the discovery in old Zed’s gulch, I should let her go.”

Mrs. Murray sighed thoughtfully.

“I’ll ask father about it, Jeanie, to-night,” she said, finally, and Jean knew the fight was won already, for whatever her mother advocated, Mr. Murray unhesitatingly accepted.

Monday morning, even before the first long amber rays of sunlight pierced the clouds over towards Bear Lodge, the girls were up and dressed. The sheep wagon was ready, well-provisioned, and made comfortable as could be for the trip. Behind it was the grub wagon, loaded with the tents, stove, bedding, and heavier camp supplies. Mr. Murray drove this wagon, and Jean or her mother took turns at the sheep cart. It was quite a formidable pack-train that went slowly out by the valley trail at sunrise. Sally Lost Moon stood in the doorway, with the sheepdogs around her, waving good-bye with her apron till they passed out of sight, and Don, too, waved a last salute. Archie and Neil were at work up beyond the buttes, and they could not see them.

First came the sheep wagon, then a line of ponies and girl scouts, as the Chief would have dubbed them. They looked it too, in their trim khaki suits, and lightweight felt hats with turned-back brims. Every brim bore the class pin of Calvert, the big C on a shield of deep maroon, with silver quarterings.

They took the straight road west from the ranch, instead of turning off over the bridge, or north towards the gulch.

“Isn’t this the way we go to the Alameda?” asked Sue.

“We pass the MacDowells’ place on our way to the mountains,” said Peggie. “Father said we would let out a hail at them but we’d best not stop, for it delays us. We want to reach a good place to camp to-night.”

“Does he know where he’s going?” asked Ted, interestedly. “I mean, does he know all the roads and trails ahead?”

“I guess he does,” laughed Peggie. “He’s traveled them often enough. Every year some of us go camping, you see, and we like to go over the same trail.”

“Shall we meet bears?” asked Isabel, thoughtfully, but without any sign of pleasurable anticipation.

“I hope so,” Peggie said, very cheerfully. “I like bear meat. I never had a chance to shoot any, but Don did last year. He’s got the pelt now, up in his room. You didn’t see his room, did you, girls? It’s the garret over the main cabin. You have to climb up a ladder to get to it, and even Don can’t stand upright, but he’s got all his pet things up there.”

“I’m finding out the queerest thing about life,” Isabel said, in a low voice to Ruth. “The less you have, the more you love it.”

Ruth laughed, and nodded her head.

“I found that out long ago. I just had to.”

Isabel said no more. She was too busy thinking. The idea of a big boy like Don being satisfied with an attic room, and of a girl like Peggie being perfectly happy away out here in the hill country, puzzled her. She felt that these two had found the secret of contentment someway. Riding slowly along the up grade behind Peggie now, she caught herself remembering an old fairy tale that had perplexed her when she was a little girl, one about a king who sought the Land of Heart’s Content. He had traveled to the kingdom of Yesterday first, and had found it to be the Land of Heart’s Regret. Then he had gone to the far country of To-morrow, and had found that it was the Land of Heart’s Desire. So, finally, weary and travel-worn, he returned home, and found there in his own land of To-day, the Heart’s Content he longed for. Isabel wondered if perhaps the secret of happiness at the little Crossbar ranch was that the Murrays had all found the land of Heart’s Content.

Up and up they rode, after passing Sandy’s ranch, a little speck far below in the broad valley, then along a great tableland, covered with scattered spruce, like little watch-towers. Once they saw an eagle winging its course southward. It looked like a hawk at that distance. Mr. Murray pointed out to them its nest in the top of a great old pine, nearly dead, with only a few scattered branches towards the top that showed green.

Every once in a while a gray squirrel or young rabbit would stand still to watch their approach, then scud away into the underbrush in sudden alarm. Sometimes they caught sight of deer, and the girls wondered at their tameness.

“They’ve not been hunted much up this way,” Jean told them. “And you’re not allowed to kill any that have no horns, so that protects the does and the young. The open season lasts only from September fifteenth to November fifteenth.”

When the shadows pointed north, a stop was made at the first brook they came to, and lunch was spread.

“Oh, how good everything does taste!” exclaimed Polly.

“Wait till you’ve had bacon and corn cakes every morning for nearly a week,” laughed Jean. “Father used to have an old herder working for him, and he would say, ‘Bacon and corn cakes is the staff of existence for any man in the open.’”

“I know what I’d love to do,” Polly exclaimed. “I’d like to start off with a wagon like this, one that you could live in like gypsies, and just go and go, and take any road you liked best, until you were tired out.”

“But, goose, don’t you know that you’d never be tired?” said Jean. “We are all gypsies at heart when it comes to the love of the open.”

“But I should like to chase summer,” went on Polly. “Just keep following the trail of summer in a gypsy wagon. Yes, and I think one could, too. Girls, let’s take a gypsy-wagon cruise next year.”

quoted Ruth.

“Now, girls, girls, fill up good, for we’ve a long stretch ahead, and no lagging behind,” called out Mr. Murray, going over to look after the ponies. “We want to make the Soup Bowl to-night.”

“What is the Soup Bowl?” asked Ted, as they all helped to pack up the dishes after they had washed them in the brook.

“A place up in the hills that is sheltered, and has good feeding ground for the horses,” Jean told her. “We’re to camp there to-night.”

Steadily ahead they went, with the wall of the mountains fronting them. Not a break could they see in it, but Mr. Murray held as steadily to his trail as a sailor does to his course, and the wall grew ever nearer.

“I can’t get used to the trees here,” said Ruth once. “There doesn’t seem to be anything worth speaking of as you go higher excepting these funny, straight, skinny-looking pines.”

“The trees grow smaller as you go higher,” Jean answered. “Even these slender lodge-pole pines are shorter towards the heights. You can tell the spruce, girls, because it looks blue at a distance. And both the hemlock and Alpine fir love the banks of the trout brooks up here in the hills. Oh, to-morrow we’ll get splendid trout.”

Once, as they rode, they came to a hilltop that overlooked the country for miles and miles. Far away to the south, Peggie pointed out Deercroft, just a little clump of match boxes, it looked, at that distance. They could see homesteads too, here and there far below them, and now and then a ranch.

“You can tell the difference if you look carefully,” Jean told them. “Wait a minute. I have my field glasses.” She stopped the team, and reached back into the locker for them, and the girls enjoyed looking through them in turn. “The ranches all have corrals. And the homesteads always have gardens. Do you see the difference?”

Once, as they passed along the road, they came to a river crossing, the water cold and swift. Fording it was an old man with a thin, sunburnt face, and long, sandy moustache. He was mounted on a calico broncho, with a high Mexican saddle, and dressed in dingy yellow, with an old felt hat tilted over his eyes. He turned in midstream to shade his eyes, and look back at the camping-out cavalcade, and Mr. Murray let out a long hail at him. He answered with a wave of his hand, and rode on.

“That’s Dave Penfield,” he told the girls, “best scout in Wyoming, not barring out Sandy himself. He’s over seventy now, and when the President himself came to the Big Horn country to hunt, if they didn’t look up old Dave to steer him to the right spots. Dave said he didn’t mind a bit. Always had heard the President was a very respectable and sociable sort of man. That’s Dave all over.”

Sometimes wonderful black ravens swung lazily and majestically out of the woods, or a brilliant orange tanager would flash out of the green gloom across their path like a vivid bit of flame. The girls cried out at the beauty of the mountain flowers, too. It seemed as though the rougher the rocks became and the wilder the scenery, the more delicately beautiful the flowers were.

“It is that way as far as you can go up the mountains,” Jean told them. “Even at the highest altitudes they find tiny flowers growing. Eleven thousand feet is what we call timber line, and after you pass that, you will find these tiny flowers.”

“What is the tree that trembles all the time?” asked Ruth. “I read some place that it grows out here.”

“Not as far north as we are. It is in Colorado. The aspen, you mean. It is a very beautiful tree. They say it trembles because it is the wood the Cross was made of. Oh, girls, look—there goes a goat.”

Just for a moment they caught a glimpse of him, a fleeing shadow along the line of rocks far above their heads.

“By jiminetty, mother,” exclaimed Mr. Murray, drawing rein, regretfully, “I wish I’d had my rifle ready for those horns.”

“I wouldn’t shoot like that, if I were you, Rob,” said his wife, placidly. “Don’t it say in the Book that the hills are a refuge for the wild goat? Do you suppose it was intended for that refuge to be invaded?”

“But, mother,” protested Mr. Murray, boyishly, “did you get a good sight at his horns? I’d have made old Sandy’s eyes shine if I’d taken those back to him.”

Just a little before sunset, they reached the camping place. High up in the hills it was, with a little lake, shut in by masses of fir and spruce. They came to an open space overlooking it from the easterly side, and were glad enough to slip from the saddles, and unpack for the night. All about them, blending into the sky itself it seemed, were distant ranges. A flock of frightened water birds flew up from the tall reeds near the water edge, and off to the south Peggie pointed out some wild ducks flying to the pond.

“I’ll build the fire for you, mother,” Mr. Murray said, “and leave you to get supper, while the girls help me put up the tents and gather spruce boughs for the beds.”

“Ruth, Isabel,” Polly called, as she stood up on a rock overlooking the camping place. “Just come up here and see how glorious it all is. There are some rocks over there that look like a great castle piled up against the sunset.

Ruth stopped short, breathless from her climb up to the rock.

“I forget the rest, something about the horns of Elfland and the purple glens replying,” she said. “Isn’t it beautiful, Polly?”

Ted and Sue were busily unpacking bedding and tents, and refused to notice the sunset until the practical things were attended to. Peggie and her father looked after the horses. There was not much to do. Saddles and bridles slipped off, they were led down to drink, then hobbled, and left to munch the sweet, rich grass. The team horses had an extra feed of oats besides. By the time the girls had watched the sun tinge the last rim of the mountains with gold, smoke was curling up from the camp stove, and there was fresh water on to boil. It was a study in camp economy to watch Mrs. Murray make everything comfortable.

“Well, you see, child,” she said, when Isabel spoke of the ease with which it was all done, “we’ve camped out every summer since the children were old enough to enjoy it, and it’s second nature now. Don’t you want to cut the ham?”

“I want to do anything to help,” Isabel said, heartily, so when the others came down they found Lady Vanitas with a big apron tied around her armpits, slicing ham deftly for the crowd.

There were two tents, and in front of each was a wide projecting canvas roof besides, so that it seemed almost like an extra room. Mr. Murray said he would take a blanket, and sleep in the sheep wagon, as he would be more likely to hear the horses if they got into trouble. Mrs. Murray took the younger ones under her wing, Peggie, Sue and Ted; and Jean shared the other tent with Polly, Ruth and Isabel. There were no cots, but each one had a fine bed of fresh cut spruce boughs and blankets thrown over them.

After supper, some helped clean up the remains, and the rest gathered firewood with Mr. Murray for a good blaze to keep off any inquisitive wanderers of the night. When it finally started up, on the shore of the lake, it was a brilliant spectacle. The flames sent out great flickering banners that were reflected in the dark waters, the sparks flew up and crackled, and the spruce sent out a rich, pungent fragrance.

“I never saw any one swing an axe as fast as Mr. Murray,” said Ted, admiringly. “It just seems to throw itself at the tree, and every time it lands in the same place.”

“They say up home he’s the best wood-cutter around,” Peggie replied, proudly. Dearly did she love her tall, strong-limbed father. “We’d better get a good pile for the night, to keep the fire going.”

So they worked, bearing wood and getting ready for the night, and when all was done, there was no protest to an early turning in.

“What’s that queer smell?” asked Isabel, as she lay down on her couch of spruce.

“That’s just the piney smell,” answered Polly, sleepily. “It’s very, very healthful, Aunty Welcome says. We ought to get a lot of pine needles and make pillows of them to take back home.”

“It doesn’t smell like pine,” Isabel insisted.

“Now, Isabel,” protested Ruth, already half asleep. “Don’t be fussy.”

“I’m not,” said poor Isabel, catching her breath, then she began to sneeze. “I’m not fus-u-s-u-s-u-s-y-choo! choo! choo!”

“The train’s starting,” called Sue from the next tent. “All aboard!”

“I think you’re all horrid,” said Isabel, sitting up. “And I don’t believe it is the piney smell at all. Oh, ker-choo!”

“Well, for the land o’ rest, what does ail the child,” exclaimed Mrs. Murray, coming to the tent entrance in her nightgown.

“She can’t stand the piney smell,” began Ruth.

“Piney smell? That’s snuff,” laughed Mrs. Murray, sniffing suspiciously around Isabel’s bed. “I did have a box of it in case we met a bear. Ever since a brown bear waddled up to my back door one morning and stole some fresh pies, I’ve had snuff by me in case of emergency. You can always make a bear run with a good dash of snuff in his face. And somehow, the box must have got mixed up in the blankets, and come uncovered. You poor child. I’ll give you a fresh pair.”

Everybody laughed except Isabel; all she could do was sneeze. But finally they got settled down for the night. Only once Polly started to giggle.

“Now what?” demanded Isabel.

“It rhymes with Isabel.”

“What does?”

“Piney smell.”

“If I didn’t need my pillow, I’d throw it at you, Polly,” Isabel said, drowsily. “Go to sleep.”

So at last peace settled down over the little camp, and only the flickering firelight moved, except when Mr. Murray would rouse to put on fresh wood, and take a look around to see that all was well.