The Ranch Girls at Rainbow Lodge

by Margaret Vandercook

  CHAPTER XV.

  ALL SAVE JACK!

  IT was nearly noon next day when the latest comer to Rainbow Lodgeawoke. She still felt sore and stiff from her long journeyings, but shecould never remember such a blissful sleep in her life.

  Out her bedroom window, Ruth thought she caught the sound of the girls'voices and dipping into her wrapper, threw up her window blind. The sunflooded her room with a curious radiance. Ruth felt she had never knownwhat real sunlight was before. It certainly cleared away the mists fromher heart and brain.

  Ruth gazed around her room. It was a joy to her in its wide sunlitemptiness. The girls had hung white muslin curtains at the windows, thelittle pinewood table, chair and bureau were painted white and the bedwas white iron. A little fire burned in the low grate, for Aunt Ellenhad stolen in and laid it, without wakening their guest. There was nocolor in the room except the soft brown stain on the walls and floor,and one bright, red and black Indian blanket.

  Ruth understood that the girls had made the place lovely for her. Shebegan to feel that perhaps they did want her with them after all.Unconsciously she yielded to the cheerful spirit of Rainbow Lodge andhurrying into her clothes, found Aunt Ellen ready with her toast andcoffee.

  Aunt Ellen explained that the ranch girls had disappeared somewhereabout the ranch. They had waited for their visitor, but when it seemedthat she was going to sleep all day, they vanished.

  "You mustn't mind, Miss," Aunt Ellen murmured apologetically, "but theycan't somehow stay indoors, so long as the good weather holds."

  Cousin Ruth went shyly out on the ranch-house veranda. She was thinkingregretfully of what a bad impression she had made on her cousins thenight before, because she, too, had planned a very different kind ofmeeting. No recollection remained of any one of the girls, except Jack,whom she would always remember as the young Centaur she saw racingacross the plains.

  Ruth strolled slowly down the path through the cottonwood trees. She wasbeginning to feel lonely, and hoped one of the girls would turn up soon.Above her head the yellow leaves rustled softly and the brown landscapeno longer looked uninteresting. It was all new and strange, she thought,but some day she might learn to care for it.

  If Miss Drew had not been so deep in her reflections, she would not havebeen so terrified a moment later. For suddenly in her way there loomed abig shaggy animal and a pair of huge paws clung to her shoulders.

  Ruth screamed.

  "Down! Shep, down!" cried a merry voice. "I am so sorry, Cousin Ruth.Shep is our watchdog. He never realizes that visitors don't understandhis friendly intentions."

  Jean slipped through an opening in the trees, carrying a tin bucket onher arm. "I have been for some milk," she explained. "The cows Jim keepsfor our use have their stable near Jim's house and Aunt Ellen wantedsome extra milk and sent me for it. I hope you feel quite rested."

  Jean sometimes tilted her head, with its mass of heavy brown hair, a bitto one side, when she was deeply interested. She surveyed their newchaperon with such a merry, friendly sparkle in her wide-open brown eyesthat Ruth was charmed with her at once. She couldn't have guessed thatMiss Jean Bruce was making a rapid inventory of Miss Ruth Drew'scharacter, inside and out.

  "Manner, stiff and old maidy; complexion, bad; hair pretty, if she fixedit differently; mouth looks like she has eaten something acid, exceptwhen she smiles, then mouth and eyes quite nice; figure small, butdistinctly good."

  Ruth was patting old Shep, for as usual Jean was talking in a steadystream. "Hope you didn't mind our going off and leaving you," sheapologized. "You see we have a good many small duties about the ranch.Jack probably won't be back until luncheon, but I am sure we will soonfind Frieda and Olive."

  Ruth leaned over. "Won't you kiss me, Jean?" she asked unexpectedly. "Ihave an idea you and I may be good friends." She guessed that Jean wasmischievous and full of fun, but not nearly so hard to influence asheadstrong Jack.

  Jean's manner softened. She put down her milk pail and gave themuch-discussed cousin an affectionate hug. "I hope you are going to behappy with us at Rainbow Lodge," she exclaimed. "You know we are used todoing pretty much what we like, but remember, if things go wrong, youare going to tell us how to behave," and she ended her advice with sucha funny expression that Cousin Ruth laughed and slipped her hand throughJean's arm.

  "Just let me get through with playing 'Molly the Milkmaid,' Cousin Ruth,and we will go find the other girls," Jean suggested when they got backto the ranch house. A minute later Jean reported that Aunt Ellen thoughtOlive and Frieda were somewhere near the creek. Olive had suggested thatshe would try to catch some fresh fish for Cousin Ruth's luncheon.

  The waters of Rainbow Creek were no longer in danger of flowing into theNorton ranch. Jim and his men had built a dam at the end of RainbowLake, where the dynamite explosion had taken place. The Ralston Ranchhad filed suit for damages against Mr. Norton, but the claim had not yetbeen settled.

  Ruth and Jean crossed some stepping-stones to the wooded side of thestream and had walked only a short distance beyond, when Ruth spied agleam of color a little farther on. It was Frieda, who wore a red Tam, ared sweater and her long blonde plaits tied with red ribbons. She wassitting on the stump of an old tree sewing some bits of ribbon togetheras calmly as though she had been in a little rocking-chair by the fire.She looked so like a little German maedchen, though she was so far awayfrom the _Vaterland_, that Ruth wanted to laugh aloud.

  "Frieda!" called an unfamiliar voice.

  Frieda glanced quickly up. She was making a pincushion for their newcousin and had not had time to finish, but hoped to be through with itbefore Olive landed her fish.

  The bits of silk ribbon fluttered to the ground as Frieda caught sightof a stranger not much larger than Jean. She had her arms outstretchedand such an eager look in her nearsighted eyes that Frieda flew straightto her.

  "I am awfully glad to see you, I am really," Frieda announced, givingher new cousin an old-fashioned hug. "There are such a lot of things Iwant you to show me that Jack and Jean and Olive don't know a singlething about. And I am sure I shall like you in spite of what--" But awarning look from Jean cut short Frieda's confidences.

  "Where is Olive?" Jean asked quickly.

  "She is not very far away," Frieda answered, "but you must walk softlyor you will frighten the fish."

  Cousin Ruth tiptoed as softly as Frieda could wish. She was curious tosee this new ranch girl whom Jack had written her about, and she wouldhave been sorry to have missed her first vision of Olive.

  Olive hung out over the water, where the creek deepened into a smallpool, under the branches of a scrub pine tree. One slender arm clung toa limb of the young tree as she looked down into the muddy water in theshadow of the evergreen boughs. Ruth had a quick and vivid impression ofher glossy black hair; her delicate figure, with its peculiar woodlandgrace, clothed in an old green dress the color of the autumn grass, andcaught her breath in wonder. The girl looked like a dryad who had stolenout of the heart of a tree to catch an image of herself in the water.

  "Olive, don't fall in the creek," Jean called out gaily. "Come and beintroduced to Cousin Ruth; she would rather see you than have fish forher luncheon."

  Olive gave a startled cry and Jean made a dive for her. But Olive didnot tumble into the water. She gave a quick jerk to her fishing line,hooked and drew in a good-sized trout. Then Olive slipped up the bank tothe others. Ruth looked curiously at the dark, rich coloring of herface; she did not seem like an Indian, and yet she certainly bore noresemblance to an American girl. Cousin Ruth felt that she would be aninteresting study, although Olive was too shy to say more than a dozenwords of greeting.

  "Come on, let's walk a little farther along the creek, Jack won't behome for a while yet," Jean declared. "Jack thinks the ranch would go torack and ruin unless she were around to boss things."

  "Don't you think maybe it would?" Olive questioned gently.

  Jean laughed. "Oh, I expect so, Olive; but how you do take up for Jack!
Cousin Ruth, you will have to protect Frieda and me. Olive thinks Jackis perfection and agrees to anything she says."

  "Look, look! Oh, please don't talk," Frieda cried in excitement,pointing up in the sky above the bed of the creek.

  A weird troop of birds was flying toward them, uttering a queer,guttural noise. They were some distance off, but their short wingsseemed to clack like Spanish castanets and their long legs looked likedangling bits of string.

  "What on earth are those creatures?" Ruth asked helplessly. She wassurely seeing interesting sights in what she had thought a barren anddesert land.

  "They are sand cranes," Olive whispered softly. "Let's be quite still.They are flying so low, I think they mean to alight. They must havemistaken the creek for a river."

  Frieda snickered and put her hand to her mouth.

  "Shsh, Frieda," Olive cautioned. "These funny birds are as shy as deer.If they do alight, they will probably come down in the cleared field."

  The birds swept slowly down nearer the earth in a half circle, stilluttering their curious cries. It was as Olive said, they were movingtoward an open field.

  The four girls crept breathlessly through the trees and bushes, untilthey could find peepholes.

  The cranes dipped down. One of them touched the ground, then anotherdescended, and the third joined them; the birds stood each with a longthin leg drawn up out of sight, until the whole flock had landed in acircle on the ground. The leader must have squawked: "Bow to yourpartners, swing your corners," for the birds immediately started astately dance. They flapped their wings, they twisted their long necks,they fanned their short tails and made strange signs to one another.They hopped together to a given spot and then hopped back again, neverfor a single moment losing their solemn dignity.

  Ruth held in as long as she could. But really this dance of thesand-hill cranes was the funniest sight she had ever seen in her life!She laughed silently, until the tears ran down her cheeks, her glassesslid off her nose and she forgot she had ever thought of beinghomesick. Frieda chuckled softly at first. But finally Jean and Olivejoined in, and the secret audience burst into a roar.

  The leader of the cranes cast a shocked, horrified glance behind him,clacked a signal to his followers and the birds rose together in flight.

  Olive ran out into the field and a long, light brown feather flutteringdownward from the last bird in the flock, rested for a second in herblack hair. Frieda skipped toward her. "Give the feather to me, Olive,"Frieda begged. "It is exactly what I want to trim my doll's hat."

  But Olive made no answer, and when she joined Ruth and Jean she looked alittle pale.

  "What's the trouble, Olive?" Jean asked. "You look so funny, just likeyou were frightened over something."

  Olive shook her head. "Oh, I know I am silly," she explained, "and Idon't really believe in it. But there is an old Indian legend, that whena bird drops a feather at your feet, it is to give you a warning ofapproaching danger. There is an Indian story of a young chief who was onhis way to war. Three times an eagle cast down a feather before him.The chief knew what the signal meant, but he went on into battle justthe same. Of course he and his men were killed!"

  Jack was waiting at the ranch house when the girls returned. She triedto stifle the pang of jealousy she felt when Frieda clung to her newcousin, instead of racing to her in her usual fashion.

  Jack and Ruth shook hands politely. Each one of them tried to be asfriendly as possible to the other. But to save their lives they couldnot get rid of their first feeling of antagonism.