***




Produced by Al Haines.




                              _THE GIRLS_
                                  _OF_
                          _SILVER SPUR RANCH_


                                   BY

                          GRACE MACGOWAN COOKE

                                  AND

                              ANNE MCQUEEN



                    THE GOLDSMITH PUBLISHING COMPANY
                               _Chicago_




              MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                           *LIST OF CHAPTERS*


      I. A Question of Names
     II. Roy Rides to Silver Spur
    III. A Package and a Leather-Brown Phaeton
     IV. A Jewel of Great Price
      V. The Silver Spur Bakery
     VI. A Shiny Black Box
    VII. The Wire Cutter
   VIII. A Partner of the Sun
     IX. The Rose by Another Name




                           _*THE GIRLS OF*_*
                         *_*SILVER SPUR RANCH*_



                              *CHAPTER I*

                         *A Question of Names*


The girls of Silver Spur ranch were all very busy helping Mary, the
eldest, with her wedding sewing.  Silver Spur was rather a pretentious
name for John Spooner’s little Texas cattle-farm, but Elizabeth, the
second daughter, who had an ear attuned to sweet sounds, had chosen it;
as a further confirmation of the fact she had covered an old spur with
silver-leaf and hung it over the doorway.  The neighboring ranchers had
laughed, at first, and old Jonah Bean, the one cowboy left in charge of
the small Spooner herd, always sniffed scornfully when he had occasion
to mention the name of his ranch, declaring that The Tin Spoon would
suit it much better.  However, in time everybody became used to it, and
Silver Spur the ranch remained--somehow Elizabeth always had her own
way.

This young lady sat by the window in the little living-room where they
were all at work, and carefully embroidered a big and corpulent "B" on a
sofa-pillow for Mary, who was to marry, in a few days, a young man from
another state who owned the euphonious name of Bellamy--a name Elizabeth
openly envied him.

"I do think Spooner is such a horrid, commonplace sort of name," she
declared with emphatic disapproval.  "Aren’t you glad you’ll soon be rid
of it, Mary?"

"Um-m," murmured Mary, paying scant heed to Elizabeth’s query; she was
hemming a ruffle to trim the little muslin frock which was the last
unfinished garment of her trousseau, and she was too busy for argument.

"As if," continued Elizabeth, "the name wasn’t odious enough, father
must needs go and choose a _spoon_ for his brand!  And he might so
easily have made it a _fleur-de-lys_--fairly rubbing it in, as if it was
something to be proud of!"

Just then Mary, finding that the machine needle kept jabbing in one
place, looked about for a cause, and perceived Elizabeth tranquilly
rocking upon one of the unhemmed breadths of her ruffle.

"I’ll be much obliged if you’ll take your chair off my ruffle, Saint
Elizabeth," she laughed, tugging at the crumpled cloth, "and just don’t
worry over the name--try and live up to your looks."

Elizabeth blushed a little as she stooped to disentangle the cloth from
her rocker; she was a very handsome girl, altogether unlike her sisters,
who were all rather short and dark, and plump looking, Cousin Hannah
Pratt declared, as much alike as biscuits cut out of the same batch of
dough. Elizabeth was about sixteen, tall and fair and slim, with large,
serious blue eyes and long, thick blond hair, which she wore plaited in
the form of a coronet or halo about her head--privately, she much
preferred the halo, as best befitting the character of her favorite
heroine, Saint Elizabeth, a canonized queen whom she desired to resemble
in looks and deportment.

"One would have to be a saint to bear with the name of Spooner," she
said, rather crossly, as she tossed Mary her ruffle.

Cousin Hannah Pratt, rocking in the biggest chair, which she filled to
overflowing, lifted her eyes from her work and regarded Elizabeth
meditatively.  "How’d you like to swap it for Mudd, Libby?" she asked
tranquilly.

Elizabeth shuddered--she hated to be called Libby, it was so
commonplace; and Cousin Hannah persisted in calling her that when she
knew how it annoyed her. Elizabeth was thankful that Cousin Hannah--who
kept a boarding-house in Emerald, the near-by village, and had kindly
come over to help with the wedding--was only kin-in-law, which was bad
enough; to have such an uncultured person for a blood relation would
have been worse.

"Mudd!  O, poor Elizabeth!" giggled Ruth, the third of the Spooner
sisters, a merry-hearted girl of fifteen, who looked on all the world
with mirthful eyes.  "Cousin Hannah, what made you think of such an
_awful_ name?"

"Don’t be so noisy, Ruth," cautioned Mary, with what seemed unnecessary
severity.  "Mother’s neuralgia is bad to day. You can hear every sound
right through in her room.  Cousin Hannah, won’t you please make her a
cup of tea?  I think it would do her good; you make such nice tea."

"Sure and certain!" agreed Cousin Hannah, heartily.  Rising ponderously
from her chair, she moved on heavy tiptoes out into the kitchen, the
thin boards creaking as she walked.

"I might also remark that a person would have to be a saint to bear with
Cousin Hannah," said Elizabeth, "she doesn’t intend it, maybe, but she
does rile me so!"

"I don’t see why anybody would want to be a saint; I’d heap rather be a
knight," spoke up little Harvie, nicknamed by her family "the Babe."
She lay curled up on a lounge in the corner, ostensibly pulling out
bastings, but really reading a worn old copy of Ivanhoe, which was the
book of her heart.  There were no children living near the lonely little
ranch, and the Babe, who was only ten, solaced herself with the company
of heroes and heroines of romance--much preferring the heroes.

"I’d rather be ’most anything than a ’mover’," declared Elizabeth,
emphatically. "And if you want to know the reason, just look out of the
window and watch this procession coming up from the road."

Ruth and the Babe ran to the window; Mary, leaving her machine, slipped
quietly out of the room to see about her mother. Also Mary desired to
have a little private talk with Cousin Hannah.

It was a pitifully ludicrous spectacle that the girls beheld.  Up the
driveway leading to the house came a dreary procession of those
unfortunates known in western parlance as "movers," family tramps who
follow the harvests in hope of getting a little work in the fields;
always moving on when the crops are gathered, or planted, as the case
may be--movers never became dwellers in any local territory.

These movers were, in appearance, even more wretched than usual.  In a
little covered cart drawn by a diminutive donkey, sat a pale woman with
a baby in her arms, and two small and pallid children crouching beside
her.  Behind the cart the father of the family pushed valiantly, in a
kindly endeavor to help along the donkey, while just ahead of that
overburdened animal walked a small boy, holding, as further inducement,
an alluring ear of corn just out of reach of the donkey’s nose.
Certainly the family justified Elizabeth’s declaration that ’most
anything was preferable to being a mover!

Ruth and Elizabeth both laughed at the comical procession, but the
Babe’s eyes were full of pity.  "The poor things are coming up for
water," she said sorrowfully. "Father always let them get water at our
well--I’ll go show them the way."  And she ran out to meet the movers
and show them the well at the back of the house, where they filled their
water-jugs and quenched the thirst of the patient and unsatisfied
donkey.

"I wish to goodness Father never had gone to Cuba," sighed Ruth, as she
turned from the window to take up her button-holes, "it is so awfully
lonesome without him."

"I think it was splendid," said Elizabeth, with shining eyes, "to be
among the very first of the volunteers.  And maybe he’ll do some deed of
daring and be made an officer.  Think how nice it will be to say, when
the war is over, that our father figures in history--maybe as one of the
foremost heroes of the Spanish-American war."

"You’re always dreaming of things that never happen, Elizabeth," scoffed
practical Ruth.  "Of course he won’t be made a big officer.  If he comes
back just a plain Captain I’ll be mighty glad."

"O, well, the world’s greatest men and women have always been dreamers,"
asserted Elizabeth, cheerfully, "I can’t help being born different from
the rest of you, can I?"

"H’m, I reckon not--but you can start a fire in the stove.  People must
eat, no matter how great they are.  It’s your time to get supper."

"O, dear, it’s bad to be born poor!" sighed Elizabeth, as she arose
reluctantly. "Especially when there’s a longing within you to do
perfectly fine things, and not mere drudgery.  I wish I were a
princess--it seems to me I was born to rule.  I’m sure I would be a wise
and capable sovereign. Well, even queens stoop to minister to the lowly,
like Saint Elizabeth, so _I’ll_ go get supper for the Spooners!"

And with her head in the clouds, the throneless queen marched
majestically kitchenward, to engage in the humble occupation of cooking
supper for her family.

Voices from her mother’s closed door reached her ears as she passed.
Elizabeth would have scorned eavesdropping, but--the ranch being located
in the prairie region of Texas, where lumber is so scarce that just as
little as possible is used in building, and the walls being merely board
partitions, she could not help hearing Cousin Hannah’s voice, always
strident, rising above her mother’s and Mary’s lower tones.

"Fiddle-diddle!  What’s the use of mincin’ matters anyway?  She’s bound
to know, sooner or later--ought to know without--tellin’, if she had a
grain o’ common sense. Ain’t a single, solitary thing about her favors
the rest of you all."

The words sounded very clearly in Elizabeth’s startled ears, arousing a
train of troubled thoughts in her mind, as she moved mechanically about
the kitchen.  She felt quite certain that they were talking about her,
and that Cousin Hannah wanted to tell her something that Mrs. Spooner
and Mary didn’t want known.

"I wonder what it can be," pondered Elizabeth, as she slowly stirred the
hominy pot.  "Whether Cousin Hannah thinks so or not, I’ve always known
I wasn’t like the rest."

This was quite true; Elizabeth, though she dearly loved the parents and
sisters who had always, Cousin Hannah declared, spoiled her, yet could
not help feeling that she was, mentally and physically superior to them,
"made of finer clay," she would have put it.  People often remarked on
this lack of resemblance to the others, and when they did so in Mrs.
Spooner’s presence she always hastily changed the subject.  Elizabeth
had often wondered why.  Somehow there seemed always to have been a
mystery surrounding her--something that, if explained, would prove very
thrilling indeed.

Occupied with these thoughts, she moved from cupboard to table, and from
table to fire, preparing the evening meal with deft skill, for anything
Elizabeth Spooner did she did a little better than other people.

Outside the window stretched a vast brown-green plain, bounded by a
horizon line like a ring.  There was monotony in the prospect, and yet a
curious sense of adventure and romance, as there is about the sea.
Elizabeth delighted in the mystic beauty of the prairie, yet to-day her
fine eyes studied the level unseeingly as she glanced through the
window, looking to see if Jonah Bean was in sight; the glories of sunset
that flooded the plain passed almost unnoticed.  She was thinking too
earnestly on her own problem to observe the outside world.

"If I were by chance adopted, I certainly have a right to know who I
am," Elizabeth pondered, as she set the table beautifully, with certain
artistic touches that the clumsier hands of the other girls somehow
could never manage.  "It won’t make any difference in my feelings for
father and mother and the girls if I should happen to be born in a
higher station of life than theirs--though I can easily see how poor
mother could think it might; I trust I’m above being snobbish--"
Elizabeth’s eyes began to glow with a resolute purpose--"I’m going to
find out, that’s what!  I’ll make Cousin Hannah tell me.  She’s so big
it’s awful to sleep with her, and she snores like thunder. Mary knows
how bad it is, and how I hate it, that’s the reason she made me sleep
with Ruth, when one of us had to give up our place.  To-night I’ll make
Mary take the Babe’s place with Mother, who might need her in the night,
and I’ll sleep with Cousin Hannah--and find out what she knows about
me!"

Jonah Bean came stamping up the steps just then to wash up for supper at
the water-shelf just outside the kitchen door; informing anybody who
chose to listen that he was mighty tired--there was two men’s work to do
on the Spooner ranch, anyhow, and he was gittin’ old, same’s other
folks.  Glancing in at the open door he observed who was the cook.

"Humph!  So it’s your night for gittin’ supper?  Well, I hope the
truck’ll taste as fancy as that air table looks."

"Sure, Jonah," answered Elizabeth, critically observing the effect of
her handiwork. "If you’ll just step outside and get me a big bunch of
those yellow cactus-blooms to put in this brown pitcher it’ll be
perfect, and I’ll see that you get a big painted cup full of coffee."

"Never could see no use in weeds--full o’ stickers at that," grumbled
Jonah, as he turned to go out for the flowers that were growing on the
great cactus in the fence corner.  "Hope that air coffee’ll be strong
and hot, though."

The coffee was strong and hot, and the hominy was white and well-cooked;
the bacon was brown and crisp and the biscuits light as feathers.
Elizabeth dished the supper in the flowered dishes kept for company,
because she could not bear the heavy earthenware they used every day.
She filled the squatty brown pitcher with the big bunch of golden blooms
old Jonah bore gingerly, careful of the thorns, and then lighted the
lamp with the red shade.  Really they didn’t need a lamp, but the glow
from the red shade was so pretty that she lighted it anyway--she so
loved beautiful things.

She arranged her mother’s tray daintily, laying a cactus-bloom, freed of
its thorns, beside the plate--somehow she felt as if she was preparing
for some extra occasion.

"I declare Libby always cooks like she was fixin’ for company," said
Cousin Hannah, admiringly, as she sat at the gracefully arranged table.
"Oughter keep boarders, and she wouldn’t find no time for extra kinks."

Elizabeth shuddered a little as she poured Jonah’s coffee in the biggest
cup, with the painted motto on it--how she would hate to do such a
sordid thing as keep boarders!

But she smiled very affably on Cousin Hannah, and asked if she wouldn’t
tell her how to make spice cake--she always noticed that Cousin Hannah’s
cake was so good. She wished to get the recipe to write in her
scrap-book.

"Shore and certain," said Cousin Hannah, amiably, pleased at Elizabeth’s
praise, "I’ll be glad to write it off.  You’re ’bout as good a cook as
Ruth, though I always did say she was the born cook o’ the family--you
seemin’ to be a master hand at managin’."

That she was indeed a master hand at the art, Elizabeth proved that
night, when with a few energetic commands, she sent Mary obediently to
her mother’s room, to take the Babe’s place, who in turn was put to
sleep with Ruth.

"Why in the world don’t you let Ruth sleep with Cousin Hannah?" argued
Mary, "you know how you hate to--and she doesn’t mind."

"Because it isn’t fair that I shouldn’t have my turn as well as the
others--it’s disagreeable to all of us.  Now you just let me have my
way, and say nothing else about it!" declared Elizabeth with authority,
and as usual, she was allowed to have her way.

While Cousin Hannah undressed, moving ponderously about the little room,
Elizabeth sat on the side of the bed, brushing her long blond hair,
watching with critical admiration of the beautiful, the gleams of red
and gold the lamplight cast upon its glittering strands, and formulating
in her mind a plan to find out the secret of her birth--if secret there
was.

She finally decided that plain speech was better than beating about the
bush, and spoke in a carefully suppressed tone.

"Cousin Hannah," she said, with whispering decisiveness, "I want to know
what you, and Mother and Mary were talking about in her room."

"Why, Libby!" exclaimed Cousin Hannah, plumping down upon the bed in her
astonishment, "did you go and listen to what we was sayin’?"

"Indeed I didn’t!  But I couldn’t help hearing you--and I think it’s my
right to know, if you were talking about me."

"But your Ma--but Jennie said she didn’t _want_ you should know," argued
the bewildered Cousin Hannah, "land o’ livin’, girl, ain’t you got a
home, and people to care for you?  Why in tunket can’t you be satisfied
with _that_?"

Certainty made Elizabeth calmly triumphant.

"I have felt, for a long time--ever since I can remember, that I was
different from the rest of my family, though you didn’t give me credit
for having sense enough to see it.  Of course, I love them all dearly
but I can’t help feeling that it’s my right to know the truth, whatever
it is.  Cousin Hannah, is or is not my name Spooner?"

"Well," Cousin Hannah evaded the question, "what would you get out of it
if your name wasn’t Spooner?"

Elizabeth leaped up softly, she held her hairbrush as though it were a
scepter; her long hair flowed and billowed about her as she walked with
majestic tread, up and down the tiny room--she was seeing visions!

If her name was not Spooner!  That would mean that her birth was, she
felt sure, indefinitely illustrious some way.  Of course she would never
desert the people who loved her, and whom she would always love,
but--might not something come of it that would be grand for them all?

"Libby," Cousin Hannah’s eyes followed the moving figure with a
distressed look in them, "your ma--Jennie Spooner--your true ma, if love
and tenderness count for anything, never wanted you told.  Mary knows,
and she don’t want you should know. When I watch your uppity ways I tell
’em it’s high time they explained the situation to you."

"The situation--" Elizabeth hung breathlessly on her words with shining
eyes, and an eager tremble of her lips.

"Yes, the situation," repeated Cousin Hannah heavily.  "Jennie Spooner
had a tough time raisin’ you--a troublesome young’un as ever I see.  You
teethed so hard that it looked like she never knew what a night’s rest
was till you got ’em through the gums.  I used to come over here many a
time and help her; what with Ruth bein’ so nigh the same age, she had
her hands full.  It was kept from you for fear of hurtin’ your feelin’s,
if you must know."

"How could it hurt my feelings?" questioned Elizabeth, a little puzzled.
"I love them all--but they should have told me. They ought to have known
they couldn’t change--" a swan to a duckling had been on the tip of her
tongue, but she stopped in time, "me to a Spooner, even by their love
and kindness."

"Change you to a Spooner?" slow wrath mounted to Cousin Hannah’s face.
She caught Elizabeth’s arm as the girl passed by.  "I reckon they
couldn’t make a Spooner out o’ you, that’s a fact.  The Spooners, bein’,
so far’s known to me, respectable householders--"

"But not what _my_ people were," suggested Elizabeth, her whole face
alight, her eyes shining with eagerness.  "You must tell me who they
were--what my rightful name is."

Cousin Hannah groaned.  "Looks like I’ve let the cat out of the
bag--don’t it? Well, what I’ve got to tell ain’t nigh what you think
I’ve got to tell," she asserted doggedly.  "You’ll be sorry for askin’."

Through Elizabeth’s mind flashed visions of a wonderful ancestry; to do
her justice these dream parents did not in any way displace the father
and mother she really loved with all her young heart--they were only
that vision which comes to us all in some shape when we feel we are
misunderstood--different.

Mary’s step was heard approaching in the little corridor.  She had
undoubtedly been disturbed by the sound of their voices, and was uneasy
for fear Cousin Hannah would be teased into making in judicious
revelations.

"Tell me--tell me quick--" whispered Elizabeth, shaking her room-mate’s
arm. "Tell me before Mary gets here."

"Well, I will," gasped Cousin Hannah. "You ought to know it--but I warn
you it’s not what you’re expectin’!"




                              *CHAPTER II*

                       *Roy Rides to Silver Spur*


When Mary stepped into the little bedroom Cousin Hannah Pratt had
already spoken.

"Your pa and ma was movers that come here sixteen years ago--movers,
like the folks you seen to-day and made such fun of. The name was Mudd."

These whispered words sounded in Elizabeth’s ears, and the girl crumpled
up on the bed sobbing just as Mary opened the door. Mrs. Pratt pulled
the elder sister into the room.

"I’ve told Libby--she ought to have been told long ago--with you
marryin’ and goin’ away and Ruth not havin’ a bit of faculty and her
bein’ the one to take your place I think she was obliged to know it."

Mary came across the room with a rush, and took slim Elizabeth in loving
arms.

"Go away, Cousin Hannah, please," she said.  "You can sleep with Ruth
and I’ll stay with Elizabeth."

Mrs. Pratt, glad enough to be relieved from sight of the misery she had
caused, hurried away and the two sisters were alone together.  Mary knew
very little of what Cousin Hannah had seen fit to reveal, a child
herself at the time, she had but vague remembrances of it, and indeed
Elizabeth asked no questions--she only needed to be comforted, and this
Mary did as best she could.

The next day but one was the wedding day, Mr. Bellamy was expected in
the morning and they would probably have no other chance for private
talk, but Mary urged Elizabeth to go to their mother for comfort when
the wedding was over, and some time late in the night they both fell
asleep.

In the days that followed the wedding, when everything was strange, and
they were settling slowly back into the usual routine Elizabeth found no
opportunity to speak with her mother of that trouble which had come now
to haunt every waking hour, and even pursued her into dreams.

Mary and her euphoniously named Mr. Bellamy had gone on their way to
Oklahoma, where the bridegroom owned a ranch. Cousin Hannah Pratt,
having helped with the wedding sewing and the packing, had gone back to
Emerald and her own overflowing boarding-house.  Mrs. Spooner, the three
girls, and old Jonah were left alone, face to face with the problem of
getting along.

Everything had settled into the usual routine at the Silver Spur; Mrs.
Spooner, rather weak from her neuralgia and the strain of the wedding,
sat on the front porch in a big chair which Elizabeth had endeavored to
make comfortable with rugs and pillows.

"Are you perfectly sure I can’t do anything else for you, Mother?" she
asked anxiously.  "Mary always waited on you so beautifully, while--it
seems to me I’ve never done one little thing for you, when you’ve done
so much for me!"

A big tear slipped from the long lashes and splashed on Mrs. Spooner’s
little hand, fluttering among the cushions.  In a minute the mother-arms
had pulled the girl’s head down to the mother-breast, the thin fingers
patting the blond braids and the mother-voice crooning comfort into the
crumpled little ear buried upon the maternal shoulder.

"Don’t cry, daughter, Mother loves you just the same!  Haven’t you been
our own since you were, O, such a _wee_ baby!  It was cruel of Cousin
Hannah to tell you, but we won’t let it make one bit of difference.
You’re ours and we are yours.  A thing like that can’t matter to people
who love each other as we do."

"It--it doesn’t matter, Mother," gasped Elizabeth, as she mopped her
reddened eyes, "if I can just take Mary’s place to you.  I am going to
try, my very level best."

"Then you’ll be sure to succeed," said her mother, confidently.  "You
always succeed in everything you undertake--hadn’t you noticed that,
dear?  Now, really, I’m just as comfortable as hands can make me, so you
run on down to the corral and help Ruth and the Babe with the ponies.
You ride with them to Emerald, and get the mail--it’ll do you good.  And
be sure you bring me a letter from father."

Cheered by her mother’s words, Elizabeth gave one more pat and pull to
the pillows, kissed her, and ran down to the corral, where the girls
were roping the ponies.  She and Ruth could each rope a little, missing
about three out of five throws, but the Babe usually flourished so
reckless a loop that she entangled herself, and had to be helped out; in
spite of which old Jonah Bean insisted that she was the only one who
showed any signs of learning the art.

Poor Elizabeth!  Her castle of dreams had fallen, leaving her wide awake
to the fact that she was no princess of romance but the humble offspring
of miserable movers, such as had always been the objects of her
shuddering contempt.  Even Cousin Hannah’s heart was touched with pity,
and she tried with clumsy but hearty kindness to make amends for the
grief she had caused by her disclosure.  Nothing had been said to Ruth
and the Babe, of course--they still believed her to be their born
sister. However, deep down in her heart, Elizabeth was walking in the
Valley of Humiliation amid the dust and ashes of dead hopes; and, as
most people know, when one enters the Valley it is very, very hard to
find the way out again!

Mrs. Spooner, watching the girls ride down the road, sighed softly.
"Poor child," she murmured pityingly, "I can hardly forgive Cousin
Hannah.  But in the end it may prove the best thing.  I’m afraid we were
spoiling her.  This may bring out the fine nature that I know she
possesses."

Texas is a land of far horizons; Mrs. Spooner could see all the vast,
brown-green circling plain until it lost itself in the hazy distance.

Away up the trail that led to her brother’s distant ranch, twenty miles
further from Emerald, she noticed a moving cloud of dust which resolved
itself into an oscillating speck--two--a man on a pony, with a led
horse.

For some reason which she could not have explained, Mrs. Spooner felt
that the approaching rider was going to turn in at the Silver Spur.
There was no pleasant feeling between herself and Harvey Grannis. John
Spooner had bought the Silver Spur ranch from his brother-in-law when he
came to this part of Texas, and there had been trouble over the
transaction, due, Mrs. Spooner felt, to Harvey’s disposition to take too
much authority.  He was a bachelor, and the rich man of the
community--excepting the English rancher, McGregor, who did not live so
far away.  He would have liked to do a good deal for the family of his
only sister, but he wanted to do it in his own way, asserting that John
Spooner couldn’t take care of them, and treating them, Elizabeth fireily
said like paupers.  A hard man, with his good qualities, yet full of the
"rule or ruin" spirit, and liable to go to great lengths to make his
point.

The approaching rider was now seen to be a young fellow, scarcely more
than a big boy.  He came up the long bare drive, stopped at the porch
edge and took off his hat before he spoke to the woman in the
rocking-chair.  She noted that the pony he rode stumbled with weariness,
while the led horse trotted briskly, unencumbered with saddle or rider.
She saw, too, that while the tired pony bore a brand unfamiliar to her,
the led one was marked with a G in a horse-shoe--Harvey Grannis’s brand.

"Good morning, ma’am," the newcomer greeted her.  He was a handsome lad
of perhaps sixteen, but just now in a woeful plight, dusty, shaking,
haggard with weariness.  "I stopped to ask if you’d like to buy a pony
at a big bargain."

Mrs. Spooner leaned forward in her chair with a little gasp.  She was
afraid of what was coming.

"I don’t know," she replied evasively. "Which one of them do you want to
sell?"

"O, mine’s played out," the boy returned never noticing the admission
his words contained.  "I’ve ridden pretty hard, and besides I’ve got to
have her to carry me to Emerald, so I can take the train there.  It’s
the other one.  He’s a mighty fine pony, and I’ll let him go for enough
to buy me a ticket back home."

"Won’t you come in and rest a minute?--you look tired," said Mrs.
Spooner, sympathetically.  Somehow she could not bring herself to ask if
he was from her brother’s ranch, though she felt quite sure something
was wrong about the pony that would go so cheap.

"I am tired, but I’ve got to go on so as to catch the six o’clock
train," the boy smiled wanly.  "I guess I can stop in for a drink,
anyhow."

He dropped the lines, and the two ponies stood, cattle country fashion,
as though they had been tied.

Mrs. Spooner got up from her chair, forgetting, in her excitement, any
weakness or weariness.

"Just come right in and lie down on the lounge," she invited him.  "It’s
cool and shady.  I’ll make you a pitcher of lemonade in a minute.
You’ll gain time by resting."

She smiled that reassuring mother-smile of hers as she opened the door
of the quiet living-room.  The boy followed in, his spurs clinking on
the boards, and dropped wearily down upon the lounge.  When she came
back he was sitting with his head in his hands, but he drank the cool
lemonade thirstily, finally draining the pitcher.

"It’s awfully good," he sighed, his eyes speaking his gratitude.
"Mother always made us lemonade in the summer time at home.  You--you
make me think of her, someway."

As if the resemblance had been too much for him, he turned from her with
an inarticulate sound, and buried his face in the cushions.  Mrs.
Spooner sat down beside him, and after awhile his groping hand caught
hers.  She spoke to him in whispers, though there was nobody in the
house to hear.

"I’m afraid you’re in trouble, my poor boy," she said gently.  "Don’t
you want to tell me all about it?  Maybe I can help you."

After a time he found strength to face her, and tell the poor, pitiful
little story.

His name was Roy Lambert.  He was, indeed, one of Harvey Grannis’s
cowboys, and had come west fascinated by the stories of frontier life.
He had made a contract with Grannis to work for him for one year. Then
came a letter, telling him that his mother was desperately ill, and he
must hurry to her.  Grannis refused to advance him money or to annul the
contract.  He treated the matter with contempt, pretending to believe
that the boy was simply homesick, and the letter a ruse to get away. At
last, frantic at the treatment he received, and determined to reach his
mother, Roy got up before daylight, took his own pony and one of
Grannis’s which he hoped to sell for enough money to get home, and set
out for Emerald and the railroad.

"I couldn’t walk it, it would take too long to get to Emerald that way,"
he said, "besides, Grannis owes me more than the chestnut’s worth, if I
sold it for full value. I didn’t expect to get only just enough to buy
my ticket."

"Two wrongs won’t make a right, Roy," said Mrs. Spooner, gravely.  "Mr.
Grannis was wrong--very wrong, not to advance you the money, or let you
off your contract. But did you stop to think he could have you arrested
for horse-stealing when you took his pony?"

"No!" blazed Roy, "I didn’t steal it. If I had, I don’t care.  He’s a
hard-hearted old skinflint.  I’d like to wring his neck, but even Harvey
Grannis can’t say I’m a horse thief.  And I _must_ get home!"

"Of course you must," soothed Mrs. Spooner, well aware as she looked at
his flushed face, that Roy himself disapproved of what he had done.  "I
have a little money, and I will try and manage it, someway."

"Would you?" cried the boy.  "I’ll pay you--I’ll send you a check as
soon as I get home."

"Jonah Bean, the only cowboy I keep now, can ride on with you to
Emerald, and bring your pony back.  I’ll try to sell it for enough to
repay myself, or I might keep it--I think we could use one more gentle
animal."

"You’re awfully good," choked the poor fellow.  "If all the folks in the
world were like you--such a man as Grannis makes me distrust everybody.
Do you know him?"

"Yes.  I think you’re a little mistaken," said gentle little Mrs.
Spooner.  "Harvey Grannis isn’t really a villain, he’s just a
hard-headed, high-tempered man, that was spoiled by having his own way
when he was a boy."

"You don’t know--" Roy was beginning, when she interrupted him.

"I think I do.  Harvey Grannis is my only brother.  My baby child is
named after him--little Harvie."

"Your brother?"  Roy Lambert leaped to his feet, looking about with
terrified eyes.

Mrs. Spooner divined his thought at once.

"I’m not going to give you up to Harvey," she said firmly.  "But I’m
going to make you let me lend you the money, and leave Harvey’s pony
here.  The laws calls what you’ve done horse-stealing, and you can’t
make laws for yourself.  You lie down and try to get a little sleep,
now, my child.  I’ll wake you in an hour."

He thanked her with trembling lips, turned on his side, and, secure in
his trust of her, fell at once asleep.  When she saw that he really
slept, Mrs. Spooner once more took her seat on the porch, this time to
look for her brother, being quite certain that Harvey would follow
hot-foot on the trail of his stolen pony.

She didn’t have long to wait; in less than an hour a buckboard drawn by
a pair of good sized grade horses turned in at the gate; in it sat
Harvey Grannis and one of his men.  They were tracking the lost pony.
She saw them long before they reached the house, recognize it, as it
grazed on the bit of sunburned pasture which Elizabeth hopefully called
a lawn.

"Hello, Jennie," her brother called out, ignoring any coldness there had
been between them, as Mrs. Spooner walked rapidly out to meet him.
Grannis was a loud-spoken individual, and she did not care to have the
boy awakened.  "I’m after the thief that stole this pony of mine.  Is he
on your place?"

"He’s asleep in the house," said Mrs. Spooner, quietly, though her voice
was shaking a little.  "He’s very tired, and he’s going to ride to
Emerald tonight.  I don’t want him disturbed."

"You bet he’s going to ride to Emerald!" blustered the ranchman.  "I’ll
have him in jail there before supper-time!  Come on, Tom, we’ll go in
and wake the young gentleman.  Fetch your rope.  Keep your gun handy.
You never know what a young, dime-novel-crazy idiot like that will do."

He sprang from the buckboard, and both men were starting for the house
when Mrs. Spooner barred their way.

"You can’t go in there, Harvey," she told him.  And now she was
trembling so that Tom, of the rope and gun, was sorry for her, and
heartily sick of his errand.  No doubt Harvey Grannis was too, which
merely made him talk louder and more harshly.

"Well, I’d like to know why I can’t?" he demurred, pretending to laugh
at her a bit.  "Who’s going to stop me?  Now see here, Jennie, you
always were a simple-hearted, soft-natured little goose.  Anybody can
bamboozle you.  Look at the way John Spooner--"

"We won’t go into that," warned Mrs. Spooner, with a flash in her eyes
that made Grannis’s cowboy chuckle inwardly.

"What’s your reason for defending this boy?" Grannis argued.  "He’s a
thief."

"I’m not defending Roy Lambert alone," said Mrs. Spooner.  "I’m
defending my brother--a brother I used to be very fond of--from doing a
thing he’ll be sorry for all the days of his life."

Grannis flushed redly through the deep tan of his sunburned skin, while
Tom, standing by and listening, enjoyed himself thoroughly over his
employer’s discomfiture.

"These boys come west crazy for ranch life," Grannis said dogmatically.
"They soon get sick of honest work, and invent any kind of story to get
away.  This boy’s lying to you, and he’s stolen a pony from me.  Move
out of the way, Jennie, and let me handle him."

The men had been standing with their backs to the trail.  Mrs. Spooner
noted a little figure on a gaunt pony whose gaits were familiar to her
approaching from the direction of Emerald.  Now small Harvey rose in her
stirrups and shouted, waving an envelope above her head.  Mrs. Spooner
was sorry she had not got rid of her brother before the girls returned.
Grannis looked over his shoulder, and feeling unwilling that his beloved
namesake should see him doing anything unkind rushed the matter hastily.

"Get out of the way, Jennie," he repeated.  "Come on, Tom."

A figure appeared in the ranch-house door, Roy Lambert, flushed and
trembling with the fever that Mrs. Spooner had been fearing for him.  He
carried his belt in his hand, and was fumbling at the holster to get his
pistol.

"I won’t go back alive," he said.

"Rope him, Tom," prompted Grannis in a low tone.  "I don’t want to shoot
the crazy kid."

"Uncle Harvey--Uncle Harvey," came the Babe’s thin, sweet pipe, "I’m
glad you’re here, ’cause I’ve got a telegram for somebody out at your
ranch.  Jonah was to take it on but now he won’t have to."

The child’s eyes saw nothing amiss.  The three men were warily watching
each other, Roy tugging desperately at the holster to get his weapon
which had caught, and Tom half sullenly loosening and coiling his rope.

"It’s for Mr. Roy Lambert," sang out the little girl, triumphant in her
ability to read even bad handwriting.




                             *CHAPTER III*

                *A Package and a Leather-Brown Phaeton*


The men stood rigid at little Harvey’s announcement.  Mrs. Spooner took
the envelope from the child’s hands, opened it and read aloud:

"Mother died last night.  Funeral over before you can get here.
Sister."

The boy on the steps wheeled and ran into the house.  Grannis turned
unwillingly.

"Well--that looks genuine," he muttered with the obstinacy of a
high-tempered man. "I won’t prosecute him for lifting my pony--But I
want you to understand that it’s on your account Jennie.  I tell you to
turn him out.  He’s a bad lot.  If ever he sets foot on the Circle G
he’ll have me to settle with.  If you insist on having him around your
place I’ll--I’ll--"  His eye fell on Harvie.  "Take the halter there,
Tom and tie Baldy on behind.  He leads all right."

"Aren’t you going to pay him the money you owe him," Mrs. Spooner asked
as she saw the men preparing to depart.

Grannis would have paid the money if it had not been for the presence of
Tom. He could not let one of his cowboys see a loosening of discipline.

"No, I’ll not," he said bluntly and whipped his team around into the
drive.  "He can’t collect a cent off me, and I’m done making concessions
on your account."

"Where are the girls?" Mrs. Spooner asked as she and the Babe stood
watching the Circle G rig depart.

"They’re coming," answered the Babe. "I rode ahead ’cause they were
carrying so many things and I could go faster.  The man at the telegraph
office paid us for bringing the message out.  Are you going to keep Roy
Lambert here, like Uncle Harvey said you ought not, mother?"

Mrs. Spooner nodded as she went back into the living-room, leaving
little Harvie to start the fire in the stove.  There she did her best to
comfort the poor fellow, facing his first big sorrow.

"I won’t go home now--there’s no use," he declared, when he could speak.
"But I’ll never go back to Grannis!  If you let me I’ll stay here and
work for you.  And I’d do my best to do for you what a son would.
Outside of heaven, I’ve got no mother now."  And once more his grief
overwhelmed him.

"I’ll be happy to treat a good boy like you as a son," said Mrs.
Spooner.  "My husband is away with the troops, and we’ve had a pretty
hard time to get along without him.  I’m sure my girls will be glad to
take you into our household as a brother.  Maybe providence sent you to
us, to-day.  Maybe we need you as much as you need us."

With the relaxing of the terrible strain, and the exhaustion of his
grief, the boy seemed to become really ill.  She sat beside him, trying
to soothe him with tenderly wise words, and bathing his hot forehead hi
cool water till at last he slept, and she stole softly out to warn old
Jonah, who came stumping in with a basket of cobs for the kitchen fire.

"Make as little noise as you can, Jonah," she whispered.  "We have a boy
in the house asleep--one of Harvey’s cowboys--I’m afraid he has fever."

"O Lord!" groaned Jonah, in a doleful whisper.  "Trouble comes
double--never knowed it to fail yit!  ’T ain’t ’nough that you ain’t
right peart, and the boss gone, and me with the rheumatiz a-ticklin’ my
right foot ag’in, but we got to have a no-’count cowboy, sweater an’
shirk, of course, laid up on us.  Poor gals, I feel for ’em!--an’ you’ve
got nothin’ but gals.  Ef you’d ’a’ had a right smart mess o’ boys,
now--  They’ll have all the work to do--like enough have to ride and
rope and brand, ’fore they are done, besides nussin’ this here boy, and
me’n you throwed in for good measure. Whyn’t Grannis tend to his own
sick cowboys?  Plenty o’ folks at his ranch."

"He’s not Harvey’s cowboy any longer, Jonah--he’s ours, if we need
him--and according to that, we do.  Now don’t say a word, just listen to
me--" as the old man opened his mouth to remonstrate very forcibly on
the utter folly of taking an unknown person into her home.  Then,
speaking in subdued tones, she told him the story of the boy from the
Grannis ranch.

At the end old Jonah Bean, being tender-hearted if cantankerous, took
out his bandanna and blew his nose with hushed vigor.

"If I warn’t in the presence of a lady what’s his sister, Mis’ Spooner,"
he said with elaborate politeness, "I’d up an’ say--_Dad rat_ Harvey
Grannis’s hide!  Manners an’ behavior is all prevents me from usin’ them
same cuss-words."

"Thank you for _not_ saying them, Jonah," approved Mrs. Spooner,
gravely, but with twinkling eyes.  "Now I’ll go out and meet the
girls--I hear them coming, and they’ll be sure to wake him with their
noise, if I don’t warn them."

The two girls were riding up the path, and both shouted:

"A letter from _Cuba Libre_!"

"A _fat_ letter--and we want to see what’s in it so bad!"

Of course the precious letter was immediately read--that came before
anything else; the girls, dismounting, the Babe running out, dish-towel
in hand, with Jonah hobbling in the rear, and all grouping around Mrs.
Spooner, to hear the news from Cuba.

It was a bravely cheerful letter, containing the best of all news; their
father was well, the health of the army was good, there was no prospect
of a battle.  Then followed long messages to each member of the family,
loving and jolly; advice to Jonah Bean about the ranch, winding up with
impressive charges to everybody to be "sure and take good care of
mother!"

"Three cheers for _Cuba Libre_--she’s taking good care of our boys!"
exulted Elizabeth, and Ruth declared fervently: "It’s such good news
that it makes me right hungry!  Let’s make muffins for supper Elizabeth,
and celebrate."

"Maybe there won’t ever be a real truly sure-enough battle like Ivanhoe
and King Richard Sour-de-lion and Jonah Bean used to fight," suggested
the Babe, hopefully, and Jonah added, sagely:

"I don’t know nothin’ ’bout them two folks you named over, honey, but I
lay you the war o’ the sixties was some punkin’s! I misdoubt this here
Cuban scrimmage is jest a play war."

"Truly, I hope so, Jonah," said Mrs. Spooner.  "Now listen, children, I
have some more news for you.  We can’t have father with us, but I
believe I have found a ’real, truly sure-enough’ brother--a regular big
brother, like other girls have."

"O, Mother," put in the Babe, excitedly, "I didn’t know _that_!  Is he
named after us, if he’s going to be our own brother?"

"No, his name is Roy Lambert--but we don’t care what it is," she added,
hastily, remembering how poor Elizabeth had loved fine-sounding names,
"if he is only a good boy, and I think he is."

Then she told them the story of poor Roy.

"I do think Uncle Harvey is the meanest old--" began Ruth, indignantly,
but her mother’s hand was laid lightly upon her lips, stopping further
outburst.

"That’s enough, daughter" she said, quietly, "they both did wrong, and I
think they’re both sorry.  It is all over now, and we must try and think
as kindly of Uncle Harvey and be as good to poor Roy as ever we can."

"Yes, and I’ll lend him my own pony, if his is too bad off for him to
ride," added the Babe generously--her own Rosinante being the joke of
the ranch.  "Uncle Harvey didn’t mean to be bad, Ruth--he looked just as
_sorry_ when you read the telegram--didn’t he, Mother?"

"I think he is sorry," agreed her mother, who wished her children to
think as well of their uncle as possible, but Jonah, with a scornful
snort, ejaculated: "Sorry--Harvey Grannis?  O, Lord, that _is_ a joke!"
And muttering his opinion of Harvey Grannis pretty audibly, went
stumping away, to his work.

Elizabeth said nothing, only she slipped her hand in that of her
foster-mother and whispered: "I think the Lord sent him to you, Mother,
because he was in trouble and needed you."

"Well, I hope he’ll be a nice boy, and I hope he won’t be sick.  I’ll go
in and make up the muffin batter, Elizabeth, while you set the table.  I
bet he didn’t get any muffins at Uncle Harvey’s ranch," said Ruth, who
believed in ministering to the sick by giving them good things to eat.

They had a very good supper, and the muffins were really gems, but Roy
could not touch the dainty tray, saying that it looked awfully good, but
he was too tired to eat--he’d be all right in the morning.

But next morning he was in a raging delirium, and Jonah Bean had to ride
to Emerald and fetch the doctor, who said the boy was in for a pretty
bad spell of fever.

For two weeks the Spooner household nursed him, then came a day of
rejoicing when the patient was able to move shakily about, gaunt and
hollow-eyed, but cheerfully assuring them he felt dandy! Recovery was
swift after that, and it was not long before the boy from the Circle G,
the outcast horse-thief, was a valued and almost indispensable member of
the Silver Spur household.

"I don’t see how we ever got along without him," declared Ruth,
positively, as she poked the clothes that were beginning to bubble in
the big wash-kettle out in the back yard.

"Particularly now that Jonah’s laid up with the rheumatism," agreed
Elizabeth, rubbing the white clothes on the wash-board with rhythmic
strokes that, somehow, seemed to take a lot of the drudgery away from
the task.

Ruth and Elizabeth were doing the week’s washing; it wasn’t a very hard
thing to do, when one went about it with the right spirit--the
determination to try, with cheerful energy, to get the clothes as clean
as possible in as little time as possible:

    "To sweep a room as for God’s cause
    Makes that and the action fine."

The Spooner girls had never heard these words of the old poet, but they
practiced the spirit of them a good deal in their work.

It was astonishing how much Roy had helped to lighten the work for them,
as well as for old Jonah Bean, who declared him to be nothing less than
a God-send.  For instance, he had filled the kettles and tubs with
water, and fetched a big basket of cobs to make a fire under the
wash-kettle, all before he had gone to Emerald on what he declared to be
a very particular errand of his own.

"I wonder what it is," mused Ruth, curiously, "last week he went--said
he had something very particular to do, you remember, and he came back
late.  He never brought anything back, that I could see."

"My private opinion is," said Elizabeth, confidentially, "that he is
fixing up some sort of a surprise for mother’s birthday, He heard us say
we were looking for a package from father, and that we hoped it would
get here in time for her birthday. I noticed it was right after that he
went to town on business of his own."

"It would be just like him--he’s always trying to think up something to
do for us. Say, Elizabeth, I certainly appreciate this shelter he built
for us, don’t you?"

"I don’t see how we ever got along without it: he’s certainly a handy
boy," declared Elizabeth, gratefully.

Heretofore the girls had washed with the glaring sun beating down upon
their unprotected heads, but now Roy had built a shelter for the tubs.
Timber was scarce, but he had managed to find enough for the posts and
cross-pieces, and there were plenty of tin shingles left from
re-shingling the house, so that he had managed to make a very neat job
of it, and one that added greatly to their comfort.

"Have you all seen the Babe anywhere?" asked Mrs. Spooner, coming out of
the kitchen.  "I want her to hunt some eggs for me; I think I’ll make
some tea-cakes for supper."

"She’s down at Jonah’s shack--I’ll call her," offered Elizabeth, but
Mrs. Spooner demurred, saying she would rather go herself.

"I haven’t enquired about Jonah’s foot, today, and he may think I’m
neglecting him," said the gentle mistress of the ranch, who never was
known to neglect a living thing upon it, and was particularly solicitous
about the welfare of her ancient cowboy.

Jonah Bean was a veteran of the sixties, much given to narrating tales
of his own marvelous exploits; he was also a bachelor, who declared
himself independent of the whole female sex, inasmuch as he could, if
necessary, sew, cook, and "do for himself" generally.  Though inclined
to be a grumbler, he was really devoted to all the Spooner family,
particularly little Harvie, whom he had been the first to nickname "the
Babe," and he always found her an eager listener to the tales of
adventure he delighted in telling.

Mrs. Spooner found him sitting in the doorway of his shack, which was
near the corral, and had originally been intended for a bunk-house, when
John Spooner’s hand was on the helm, and Silver Spur promised to be a
paying ranch.  He was patching a pair of overalls and talking animatedly
to the Babe, who was, as usual, a rapt listener. "So Giner’l Jackson
sez, sez’e: ’Send me the pick o’ your men from each company.’  And, when
he looks us over, he p’ints at me.  ’What’s that runty, tallow-faced
little chap named?  And what’s he good for?’ he asts the cap’n o’ my
company.  And the cap’n ups and ’lows: ’His name’s Jonah Bean, Giner’l,
and he’s a powerful hand at--"

"O, Jonah!" interrupted the Babe, sorrowfully, "Ivanhoe never ran--nor
King Richard Sour-de-lion either.  Nobody but caitiffs and paynims and
folks like that ought ever to run."

"Why you see, honey," explained old Jonah patiently, "what the cap’n
meant was that I was like the Irishman’s pig--’mighty little but mighty
lively’, and could git over ground faster’n common."

"O," said the Babe in a relieved tone, "I’m glad _you_ weren’t a paynim
or a caitiff, Jonah."

"No," hastily denied Jonah, "I warn’t--I ain’t no kin to none o’ them
sort of folks; I’m a Tennesseean, me’n all my forefathers before me.
Well, the Giner’l calls me up, and sez, sez’e: ’Private Bean, your
country is dependin’ on you to do some mighty tall runnin’ to-day.  Kin
I depend on you to run so fast the Yankees can’t ketch you?’

"I s’luted, and sez I’d do my levelest. Then, as I was a-sayin’ he gimme
the papers and my orders.  ’Twas a long way from the ferry, so’s to save
time I swum the Jeems river--high water, and twenty-five mile acrost,
more or less, I disremember rightly, And then, man, sir!  I everlastin’
burnt the wind!  Minie-balls was a-rainin’ like hail, and I jest
natchully had to kick the bombshells out’n my way.  Right through the
enemy’s lines till I fetched up at Giner’l Lee’s headquarters, s’luted
and turned them papers over to him dry as powder--for I’d swum with ’em
under my hat."

"King Richard would ’a’ made you a knight!" breathed the Babe, in
ecstatic admiration.

"They didn’t have none o’ them in our army, honey, or they mighter.  I
shore’d ’a’ been promoted to sergeant anyhow, if Giner’l Jackson hadn’t
’a’ been killed before he could send in my recommend."  The Babe
murmured her regret over the General’s untimely taking off.

"Mornin’, ma’am," Jonah greeted Mrs. Spooner, who just then came up.
"Me’n the Babe, here, was jest a-talkin’ over old times.  She was
a-tellin’ me the news from Cuby and I was mentionin’ of a few things
happened back yander in the sixties.  I says this here Cubian war ain’t
no thin’ ’tall but jest chillun’s play-war."

"I hope and pray so, Jonah," said Mrs. Spooner, her voice trembling a
little.  "But--war is war, I’m afraid."

And to this, Jonah, scoffer though he was, could only agree.  War, even
a play war, meant some danger.

It was after dark when Roy returned from Emerald, and--as he had done
the last time, instead of riding up the front way and whistling a signal
from the road, he came in at the back, surprising the whole family, who
were all gathered in the kitchen.

"Howdy-do, folks!  Gee, that fried chicken smells good, Ruth!  Mrs.
Pratt sent you a quarter of mutton, Mother Spooner--they had just killed
a sheep.  I hung it up on the peg outside the back door to keep sweet."

He smiled affectionately on the Babe, who was eyeing with much curiosity
a big package under his arm.  "And this, I reckon, must be that birthday
bundle from Cuba; I found it at the express office."

There was a shout of joy from the Babe, and a satisfied exclamation from
her sisters, who had about given up hope of the package’s arriving on
time, the mails from Cuba being very uncertain.

"Day after to-morrow is mother’s birthday--just in the nick of time,"
they exulted.  "Don’t you dare take one little, little peep till then.
Lock it up in your bureau-drawer, Ruth, so she won’t have temptation
before her eyes," laughed Elizabeth, and Ruth bore off the package, in
spite of the Babe’s protest that maybe father had sent a little present
to Jonah--and he wouldn’t like to wait!

"Maybe there’s something in it for a little girl or so," laughed her
mother, "but I think we can wait.  For I’ll be forty years old, and it
needs pleasant things to make a fortieth birthday happy, I can tell
you."

At this the Babe hugged herself in delight, to think there was still
another pleasant thing in store for her mother.  For to-morrow Elizabeth
and Ruth had planned to make a wonderful cake, iced white like a real
Christmas cake, which, on the birthday they intended to light with forty
tiny pink candles, already bought and hidden away in Elizabeth’s trunk.
To console herself, she fell to dreaming over the lovely things shut up
in the brown paper package--to think of anything real hard was nearly as
good as seeing it.

"Mrs. Pratt’s Maudie got back from her grandmother’s last night," said
Roy, as they all sat at supper--except Jonah, who, because of his foot,
had had his supper carried to him by the Babe.

"They’re planning for a big celebration and a Harvest Home festival in
Emerald next week, and she wants the girls to go over and spend a few
days.  Mrs. Pratt particularly said both, if you can spare them."

"I wonder what Handle’s grandmother gave her this time," said Ruth,
rather wistfully.  "She always has so many pretty things when she comes
back from a visit out there.  It must be lovely to have a grandmother
who is well-off."  She sighed a little, thinking of the many-times
laundered cotton frocks that served Elizabeth and herself for all
dress-up occasions. Maudie, no doubt, would have a challis, or maybe
even a summer silk.

Elizabeth said nothing, but at the mention of a well-to-do grandmother
she felt a blush of shame creeping over her face.  It was such a little
while ago that she had indulged in beautiful dreams of unknown and
wealthy relations; stately grandmothers with high-piled white hair, gold
lorgnettes and rustling silks; and haughtily handsome grandfathers of
ancient lineage and great wealth, who would see that she was lavishly
supplied with means to buy the beautiful clothes necessary for a girl
who would move in the highest circles of society.  Dreams that ended in
such a sordid awakening--O, poor Elizabeth!

Mrs. Spooner’s mother eyes saw what the girl tried so hard to conceal,
and she said with quiet emphasis: "I wouldn’t give any one of my three
girls with their cotton frocks, for a dozen Maudies with a dozen silks
apiece!"

It was next morning that Roy explained his mysterious trips to town.

"You know your mother can’t walk much," he said, "and she can’t ride a
pony, like we do.  So when I saw a second-hand phaeton for sale I made
up my mind to buy it for her birthday gift.  Shasta works fine in
harness, so I rode her to town, hooked her up to the old phaeton, and,
last week, brought it home and hid it out in the corral shed, where I’ve
been putting in odd minutes painting it, while Jonah’s cutting down the
harness to fit Shasta.  It’s just shreds and patches now, and a mile too
big.  The phaeton’s pretty rickety as to looks, so I went yesterday and
got some cloth and fringe for the top, and you girls must help me fix up
the curtains so’s I’ll get it done in time for her to take a drive on
her birthday."

"I do think you are a wonder, Roy," admired Elizabeth, with sparkling
eyes. "The very thing she needed most--and had no idea she’d get till
father comes home."

"A package from Cuba, and a cake and a _phantom_!" exulted the Babe, who
was present.  "That’s a _cossal_ thing, Roy."

"She means colossal," explained Elizabeth, as Roy turned a bewildered
look on her.  And Ruth added: "She gets them out of books, those long
words that she can’t pronounce.  I wish Mother could send her to
school--she reads too much."

"People can’t read too much, Ruth," said the Babe severely.  "Some time,
when I go to school I’m going to learn to read well enough to read all
the books in the round world.  Jonah says there ain’t nothin’ like
_eddication_!"

"Sure--I agree with Jonah," laughed Roy.  "Sorry I can’t have a fine
’eddication,’ I’d like it the best sort.  But come on and let’s have a
look at the _phantom_."

It _was_ a pretty rickety phaeton--as to cover and cushions; Roy had
already made it spruce with a good many coats of leather-brown paint.
He showed the girls the fringe and the lining he had bought to renovate
the canopy-top.

"We’ll cover the cushions right away," said Ruth, viewing the
dilapidated affairs that had, in the distant past, been spick and spandy
leather cushions.

"There, now--I knew I’d never recollect everything!" said Roy, ruefully.
"I just got enough brown stuff to line the top--I clean forgot the
cushions."

Elizabeth, as usual, solved the difficulty.

"Mother has an old brown broadcloth skirt she doesn’t wear.  It’ll make
perfect cushion-covers, just the right shade.  I’ll take the measures
now and stitch up the covers in no time."

"Elizabeth always did have a head on her shoulders!" admired Ruth.  "I’m
willing enough, but I never could do anything but just cook.  Anyway,
I’ll make the birthday cake."

"And I’ll beat the eggs--I can beat eggs go nice and soap-suddy,"
boasted the Babe.

"That’ll be a great help.  We don’t want any hit-or-miss cake.
Everything’s got to be properly weighed and measured and beaten.  Now
let’s go see how Jonah’s coming on with the harness."

Jonah, with the harness in a big cotton-basket which could be hidden
from sight by throwing a horse-blanket over it if Mrs. Spooner happened
along, was seated indoors, busily snipping and stitching and patching
away at the rusty-looking leather.

"Now don’t you-all come a-frustratin’ me till I git th’ough with my
job," fumed the old man, rather crossly, "’course, you’ll ’low ’tain’t
much to look at--which I ain’t a-denyin’--but jest wait till me’n the
boy gits done--then jedge by ree-sults."

Roy sighed a little bit wistfully.  "I did want to get something better,
but my money barely held out for this."

"Something better?" scolded the girls, "who wants anything better?"

"A lovely, low-hung, leather-brown phaeton," added Elizabeth,
alliteratively, "is a thing of beauty.  Add brown cushions, brown
harness and a perfectly-matching brown pony and it’ll be too stylish for
anything."

"That’s sure ’seeing things’, Elizabeth," laughed Roy.  "Glad you
believe in us. I’ll work at the phaeton and try to have it looking as
much as possible like your fancy picture by to-morrow.  Jonah’ll boss
the harness job, and you girls can transform the cushions."

There were great preparations going on that day, right under Mrs.
Spooner’s unsuspecting eyes.  The girls had ironed the clothes the day
before, insisting that they required mending immediately, much to their
mother’s surprise, for they didn’t usually bother about the mending.

There was indeed plenty of it to do, and, since Mr. Spooner’s absence,
very little money to buy new clothes, so that the best the patient
mother could do was to mend and darn and patch, till, like the Cotter’s
wife, she "made old clothes look almost as well as new."

She sat on the front porch and darned and mended busily, while in the
kitchen Ruth and the Babe--who did beat the whites into most wonderful
soap-suds, made a marvelous silver-cake, which they iced thick and
white--a regular Christmas-cake.  And Elizabeth ripped up the old brown
skirt, sponged and pressed the cloth, and made the cushions as neatly as
any upholsterer could have done.  Roy and Jonah Bean, at the same time,
were transforming the harness and phaeton, to have it all done by the
next morning.  Roy, having his own and Jonah’s work to do, had to snatch
odd moments to rub down the paint and re-cover the ancient top.

Mrs. Spooner was allowed to open her package from Cuba on her birthday
morning, with the three girls crowding round to see--the Babe quivering
with eager anticipation.

Mrs. Spooner unwrapped from its folds of tissue-paper the gift they all
knew to be hers--a shawl or scarf of black, heavily-woven silk,
embroidered in most wonderfully natural pansies; a regular Cuban
mantilla, exquisitely made.

The girls were so delighted, draping their mother in its soft folds, and
admiring the effect, that they quite forgot a smaller package which was
still unopened--all but the Babe, who continued to gaze upon it with
fascinated eyes.

"O, Mother, _please_ open the little bundle," she begged at last.
"I’m--I’m just on _ten-pins_ to see what’s in it!"

"Now where’d she get _that_ word?  What on earth does it mean?" laughed
Ruth, who was often puzzled over her little sister’s expressions.

"Tenterhooks," translated Elizabeth. "Only she got ’hooks’ mixed up with
pins and needles.  Do open it, mother, and relieve the ’ten-pins’!"

"I’ll let the Babe open it herself.  I’m sure she can pick out her own
present," smiled the mother, as she gave the smaller package to the
child.

With awed delight the Babe removed the tissue-paper slowly, as befitting
a solemn rite: three tantalizing little bundles were disclosed, tightly
wrapped.  She opened the first; it contained a painted Spanish fan.

"This must be for Elizabeth," concluded the Babe, with decision, and
handed over the fan to Elizabeth, who waved it with languid grace,
imagining herself to be a Spanish Senorita.

The next parcel held a pretty handkerchief, with a wide border of
Mexican drawn-work; this the Babe promptly turned over to Ruth.  "I
don’t want that--I can borrow mother’s," she said, with fine assurance.

"O, but I do!  I never had a real pretty handkerchief in my life.  I
don’t believe even Maudie Pratt has one as pretty as this," exclaimed
Ruth, happily.

On this little ranch where things were hard to get at best, the thrifty
mother always cut up the flour sacks into neat squares, which she hemmed
on the machine; these when washed and ironed were piled neatly in each
girl’s little handkerchief-box, for every-day use.  For Sundays and
extra occasions there was a little square of muslin, hemstitched and
bordered with narrow lace. No Spooner ever dreamed of possessing a
better handkerchief.  No wonder that Ruth exulted over her gift.

The third was a little white box.  When the Babe removed the lid she
hugged the box to her bosom and pranced joyously about the room.

"My beads, my beads!" she crowed, ecstatically.  "My own dear, beautiful
pink necklace!" she held out a string of coral before her family’s
admiring eyes.  "Put it on for me, Elizabeth, so I can run show it to
Roy and Jonah," she begged.  "O, mother--" with a sudden look of
consternation, "suppose I didn’t guess right?"

"You guessed exactly right," reassured her mother, "but Elizabeth,
child, what are you pinning my hat on for?"

"Just walk out in front and behold another birthday gift," said
Elizabeth, busily pinning on the hat.  "There, now, you’re all
ready--hat, shawl and everything."

Wondering, her mother obeyed, and beheld drawn up at the door a spick
and spandy looking little low phaeton, painted a beautiful leather
brown; its fringed canopy-top fresh and neat, its cushions upholstered
in handsome brown broadcloth, and harnessed to a perfectly-matching
brown pony, in neatly fitting brown harness, already for taking a drive.

"O, my dears!" there was consternation in Mrs. Spooner’s voice.  "Did
you go and buy a _phaeton_!  How in the world did you manage?  You know
we simply must not go in debt."

A chorus of protest reassured her.  The gift was none of theirs--they
had not gone in debt.  Roy had bought it for her with his own money.

"For just nothing at all, Mother Spooner," he hastened to assure her.
"It was just junk.  We, Jonah, the girls and I, fixed it up for you, so
it’s really a family gift.  And you’ll find Shasta gentle as a kitten.
Now you and the Babe get in, and and Jonah and I’ll escort you in
style--we are going to take you over the ranch and come back in time for
the birthday dinner Ruth and Elizabeth are going to fix up."

As the procession clattered down the driveway and out into the trail
along the prairie, the Babe nestled close to her mother and sighed
blissfully--she had in mind another surprise that was to help make the
fortieth birthday a pleasant one.  A big, Christmassy cake, iced white
as snow and covered with forty tiny pink candles.




                              *CHAPTER IV*

                        *A Jewel of Great Price*


Every single member of the Spooner family with the exception of Jonah
Bean, who declared he didn’t have no time to waste a-pleasurin’, were
going to Emerald, to spend the day with Cousin Hannah Pratt and take
part in the Harvest Home festival.

Cousin Hannah, having heard of the new phaeton, declared that now Mrs.
Spooner didn’t have an earthly thing to prevent her coming to town, and
she had sent such urgent entreaties by Roy, that at last the mistress of
the ranch was prevailed upon to accept the invitation.

"But I can only spend the day," she declared, "we can’t all be spared at
once; Jonah is just able to be about, we mustn’t leave him too much work
to do.  The Babe and I will come back in the afternoon, and the girls
can stay--and you, Roy?"

There was a little note of interrogation in her voice as she laid her
hand affectionately upon the boy’s shoulder.  She was almost sure that
he wouldn’t want to go to a party that his grief was too recent.

Roy patted her hand, smiling a little sadly as he shook his head.  "I
don’t feel equal to parties yet," he said.

"And as to both Ruth and me staying, that’s out of the question,"
decided Elizabeth.  "There’ll be a hundred and one things to do, and
you’ll try to do them every one.  Ruth’s going to stay all night because
it’s her turn--Mary and I went last year. So _that’s_ settled, mother."

After some argument, Ruth--who really did want to stay very much,
yielded.  If Elizabeth wouldn’t stay, why she would, and be glad to.

"And you may carry my fan," said Elizabeth generously, "nobody--not even
Maudie, will have such a beautiful one.  And you shall wear my pink
girdle, too, it’s newer than your sash."

The Babe sighed.  She was having a mental struggle as to whether she
could practise self-denial enough to lend her sister the string of coral
beads that were the delight of her heart.  The situation finally
resulted in a compromise.

"And _I’ll_ lend you my beads--after I’ve wore ’em all day.  But you
mustn’t forget to feel every now and then for the catch, to see if it’s
fastened," she warned.

"Thank you, Babe, I will," laughed Ruth, "and I’ll take good care of
your fan, too, Elizabeth.  Dear me, won’t I be fine! Pink coral, and
pink girdle, a Spanish fan and my drawn-work handkerchief!"

"I don’t approve of girls borrowing things from each other," said Mrs.
Spooner, doubtfully.  "I’ve known serious trouble to result from such
practices.  There’s always danger of losing or injuring the things, you
know.  But, if you sisters want to lend, I won’t object.  Only be very
careful, because you couldn’t replace them if they were lost."

"I’ll be careful as care, mother--don’t you worry."  And Ruth ran
happily away, to pack her suit-case and get together her simple finery.

There were various attractions to be at the celebration.  A brass band
from a big town would play in the public square, between speeches by
noted members of the State Grange.  Pony-races by cowboys from the
neighboring ranches, the inevitable roping match, a big open-air dinner
for the public, and, to wind up with a dance at night in the town-hall,
where the various exhibits from the farms--the grain, fruits and
vegetables--were displayed.

As the Spooners desired to see all these spectacles, they started out
bright and early; Mrs. Spooner, the Babe and Ruth’s suitcase in the
phaeton, the girls and Roy riding their ponies.

Cousin Hannah, whose husband--a mild little man, quite overshadowed by
his big, bustling wife--was a rancher without a ranch, spending most of
his time taking cattle to the fattening ranges above, or to market in
other states, lived in a big, flimsily built frame house in the little
prairie town of Emerald.  Mrs. Pratt boarded the station-agent, the
telegraph operator, the school-teacher, and nearly all of what might be
termed the floating population of the town.

Maudie, the Pratt’s only child, was a girl about Elizabeth’s age, rather
pretty and very much spoiled by her mother and her grandmother, who
lived in another state, and who often had Maudie come and visit her.

Mr. Pratt, who happened to be at home for the festival, with his wife,
came out to meet their guests, welcoming them with much hospitality.

"The sight of you’s sure good for sore eyes, Jennie," exclaimed Cousin
Hannah, as she folded Mrs. Spooner in her ample embrace.  "I’m tickled
to death to see you!  And ain’t that buggy a sight.  It looks ’most as
good as new, I declare!"

"It’s not a buggy, Cousin Hannah--it’s a _phantom_," said the Babe, with
dignity.

Almost as good as new, indeed!  Where were Cousin Hannah’s eyes?  Very
few phaetons looked so new and delightful, to the Babe’s vision, anyway,
as this vehicle, in whose loving rejuvenation every one of them had been
allowed to have a hand.

"A phantom, is it?" laughed Cousin Hannah.  "Well, you come in here to
the dining-room and find out whether these cookies are phantoms.  The
big girls want to go up to Maudie’s room, I know.  Run along, honies,
I’ll take care of your ma and the Babe, and Mr. Pratt’ll look after Roy.
Maudie ain’t come out, yet; she’s feelin’ poorly, and wants to save up
her strength for to-night.  Maudie’s right delicate."

"Come in!" called out Maudie, when Elizabeth and Ruth, with the
suit-case between them, rapped at her door.

The young lady sat at her dresser, attired in a much trimmed and
flowered kimona, leisurely "doing" her nails with a silver-handled
polisher from an elaborate dressing-case spread open before her.

"Hello!  If it ain’t Elizabeth and Ruth!" she greeted, with somewhat
condescending cordiality.  "You all come in to see the country jays
celebrate?  Emerald’s such a pokey little hole folks are glad to see
most anything, for a change."

"If you think Emerald’s dull, Maudie, what would you do out on our
ranch?" asked Elizabeth, laughingly.

Maudie shuddered.  "Horrors!  Don’t mention it--such a fate would be too
unspeakable!"

"Yet Elizabeth and I manage to stand it--and I reckon we’re as happy as
most girls," protested Ruth, stoutly.

"O, that’s because you don’t know any better.  You’ve never enjoyed the
advantages of city life, as I have," said Maudie superiorly.

"I suppose your grandmother gave you a heap of pretty things, as usual,"
said Elizabeth, anxious to change the subject.

"O yes, a good many," carelessly replied Maudie.  "How do you like this
diamond ring?  She gave me this on my birthday."

She held out her hand, which was adorned with several rings, one of them
a small but showily set diamond.

Elizabeth and Ruth viewed the jewel with admiring amazement.  Neither
one of them had ever seen a diamond before, and to their untutored eyes
it represented splendor indeed.

"Try it on," said Maudie affably, pleased with their exclamations of
delighted wonder. It was much too large for Elizabeth’s slender finger,
but it fitted Ruth’s plumper one pretty well.

Maudie replaced the ring on her own finger, and lifted out the tray of
her trunk. "What are you girls going to wear to-night?" she asked
carelessly.

"I’m not going to stay, but Ruth will wear her white dress," said
Elizabeth.  Somehow Ruth felt as if she couldn’t speak of her poor
little frock among all Maudie’s radiant treasures.

"Oh," Maudie’s eyebrows lifted slightly. "Let me show you what I’m going
to wear."  And she unfolded and shook out the shimmering breadths of a
pale blue summer silk, lavishly trimmed with lace and ribbon.

"O-o-o!" breathed Ruth, rapturously, "I never saw such a perfectly
beautiful dress, Maudie!"

And Elizabeth echoed, warmly, "A beautiful dress--and just the color I’d
like, if I ever had a party dress."

"It is rather pretty, I think," acknowledged Maudie, with the air of a
person to whom silks are a matter of course.  She took out more dresses,
dazzling the eyes of her country cousins with the sight of so much
magnificence, and making poor Ruth feel very shabby indeed.

"My pink challis or blue mull would fit you exactly, Elizabeth--you’re
tall as I am.  Stay all night and I’ll lend you either one of them you
want.  I’d like to have you stay, too--the girls here are so common."

Elizabeth’s cheeks flushed redly. Evidently Cousin Hannah had made no
further disclosures.  To Maudie, Elizabeth was still her cousin, and a
Spooner--the name that had once seemed so commonplace and now so
beautiful compared to that of the despised movers.

"O, but really I can’t stay, Maudie; it’s good of you to want me, and to
offer to lend me your beautiful clothes, but mother can’t spare us both
very well, and Mary and I came last year, you know!"

"O, well, if you won’t you won’t.  But I should think you’d jump at the
chance of going to a party," said Maudie, who did not bother over
consideration for her own mother.

Just then Cousin Hannah poked her head in at the door.  "Maudie, honey,"
she asked, conciliatingly, "can’t you just run in and set the table when
dinner’s ready, so’s I can stay up town with your Cousin Jennie and the
girls?  And if the telegraph operator comes in give him his dinner? You
know he has to have it early."

"Why on earth can’t the cook give him his dinner?" frowned Maudie,
petulantly. "I hate that old operator, anyway.  Isn’t the cook hired to
set the table?  I ain’t feeling well, and I don’t want to overdo so’s I
can’t go to the hall to-night."

"O, well," said her mother, resignedly, "I reckon I’ll hurry back and
’tend to it myself, if you ain’t feelin’ well."

But Ruth spoke up eagerly: "Let me do it, Cousin Hannah.  I don’t care
about going up town--and I’d love to do it for you."

"Bless your heart--you’re a reg’lar little help-all!" beamed Cousin
Hannah, gratefully, and with Mrs. Spooner and Elizabeth, went on her way
in great content, knowing that everything would go on well at home.

Maudie stayed in her room and spent her time deciding on her party
finery, while busy Ruth swept and dusted the big dining room, that was
always in a state of more or less disorder, laid the table carefully and
had the operator’s dinner ready punctually.

"Have a good time, little daughter," Mrs. Spooner said to Ruth, when at
the close of a long day of sightseeing she and the Babe were once more
seated in the phaeton.  And Ruth replied happily that she would--she was
certain of having a perfectly beautiful time.

That night she wiped the supper dishes for the cook, and, after she had
dressed, helped to button Cousin Hannah into her own tight and
unaccustomed dress-up clothes.

Maudie, who declared that she never liked to be among the first because
it was more genteel to be late, took a long time to dress but really
looked quite pretty in her pale blue frock; Ruth, with heartily sincere
appreciation, told her so.

"Thank you," acknowledged Maudie, languidly, eyeing Ruth’s laundered
white dress and pink girdle with tolerant pity. Then her eyes falling on
Elizabeth’s fan her expression changed to eager covetousness.

"Where in the world did you get that fan?" she asked.  "Do you--do you
really think it matches your dress?  It seems to me a fan like that is
out of place with a wash dress.  I haven’t one.  I lost mine when I was
at grandmother’s."

"This is Elizabeth’s; father sent it from Cuba."

Ruth spoke rather hesitatingly; she would have offered to lend the
ornament at once, if it had been her own, for she was a generous little
soul, but she did not feel like risking Elizabeth’s property.

"I say," spoke Maudie abruptly, "lend me the fan, Ruth, and I’ll let you
wear my diamond ring."

"O, Maudie!" gasped Ruth, hesitation in her heart but delight in her
eyes, "I couldn’t--I oughtn’t to wear your ring. Something might
happen."

"Not a thing’ll happen," declared Maudie impatiently.  "Here, let me put
it on your finger.  No it isn’t too loose, either; my finger’s just as
small as yours.  I wish this fan was mine.  It would have cost a lot
over here, but in Cuba it’s different--or of course your father couldn’t
have afforded it."

She had coolly appropriated Elizabeth’s fan, waving it to and fro with
complacent admiration.  All Emerald had seen the diamond, but the fan
was entirely new, and she realized that it would be greatly admired.

Poor little Ruth, dazzled by the flashing ring, forgot her mother’s
disapproval of borrowing, and went to the hall with a light heart.

The Spooner girls had gone to school in Emerald when their father was at
home, and they could be spared from the ranch, so she knew all the boys
and girls who were present, and was soon having a very jolly and
sociable time, while Maudie, as befitting a person accustomed to city
life, was moving about among the crowd with a rather bored air,
displaying her finery to the admiring eyes of her neighbors, and waving
Elizabeth’s fan languidly.

Still, for all her indifferent air, Maudie felt aggrieved that Ruth, in
her shabby white lawn, should receive so much attention, while she in
her blue silk was comparatively neglected.

As she sat beside her mother and watched Ruth dancing merrily to the
music of the band, Maudie felt a growing rancor towards her unoffending
cousin, finally deciding that she would put an end to the enjoyment she
could not take part in.

"I want to go home, I’m tired of it all--it is so stupid," she
complained to her mother.  "Besides, I don’t feel very well. Call Ruth
and let’s go right away."

"No use disturbing Ruth, she seems to be enjoying herself, if you
ain’t," remarked Mr. Pratt, mildly.  "Any of the young folks’ll see her
home safe."

But Maudie flatly refused to go without Ruth, who was hastily summoned
from her dance by Cousin Hannah, and hustled unceremoniously away from
the hall.

"O, I _did_ have such a good time!" said Ruth, radiantly.  "I’m so sorry
we had to come away so soon, Maudie."

"It takes mighty little to give some folks a good time," said Maudie,
tartly.  "I thought the crowd was awfully coarse and common, even for
Emerald.  I hope you took good care of my ring," she continued, sharply,
for Ruth uttering an exclamation, of fear, had stopped and was groping
wildly about in the sand at her feet.

"O, Maudie!" Ruth’s voice quavered with fear, "O, Maudie--I’ve _lost_
it!"

"Lost my diamond ring!" Maudie shrilled wrathfully, "O, why was I such a
goose as to lend it to you!"

"What’s that?  Your diamond ring that Grandma Pratt gave you?  O, my me!
Was Ruth wearing it?  How’d that come? Whatever made you go and lose it,
Ruth?" groaned Cousin Hannah, not waiting for a reply to any of her
questions.

"It--it was too large," faltered Ruth, "it must have slipped off my
finger.  We’ll find it in a minute.  I know I had it on when we left the
hail; I kept feeling of it because it didn’t fit me very well."

"Then you’d no business to borrow it," scolded Cousin Hannah.  "What
made you wear it, if it was too loose?"

"Maudie wanted Elizabeth’s fan," explained Ruth, miserably.  "And--and
she lent me the ring in place of it.  I told her then it was too large."

"Yes, blame it all on me!" reproached Maudie, bitterly.  "Here--take
your old fan!  I reckon it didn’t cost more than a few cents, but at
least I took care of it!"

"Think where you had it last, Ruth--think _hard_!" implored Cousin
Hannah, distractedly, "I’d hate so for that expensive ring to be
lost--just throwed away, you might say.  I don’t know what we could say
to Grandma Pratt."

"I had it in the hall, I’m certain," said Ruth, dull with woe.  "Of
course I don’t remember where or when it came off my finger."

"Then we’ll go right back to the hall and search for it," decided Mr.
Pratt.  "Come along.  No use in making so much fuss, Maudie.  Wait till
you’re plumb certain it’s gone for good."

Back to the still crowded hall they went, and poor Ruth, in bitter
mortification, had to listen to Maudie’s shrill announcement to all and
sundry of the fact that Ruth had borrowed her diamond, and then lost it.
Which came, she explained loudly, of lending things to people who
weren’t used to them, and couldn’t understand their value.

"O," thought poor Ruth, in her despairing heart, "if I’d only listened
to mother I never would have been in all this trouble--if I’d only
listened to mother!"

Mr. Pratt, going to the young men who had charge of the hall, made known
to them the loss, and there was much searching, but all without
result--Maudie’s ring was indeed gone!

Downheartedly the party trailed along home; Maudie in tears, sobbing
wrathfully that she would never, never lend her things again--no matter
if people did beg and pray her to do it.  No indeed, she had learned a
lesson!

And Cousin Hannah, with torturing insistence, kept asking over and over
again if Ruth couldn’t remember where she had lost the ring.  She ought
to try and remember, seeing that it was her own fault.  She oughtn’t to
have worn a ring she knew was too loose for her finger.

To these questions Ruth could only answer, over and again, that she
didn’t know--she didn’t know!  Indeed she was fast becoming hysterical
with fright and worry.

Then mild little Mr. Pratt astonished them all by speaking with
authority that commanded attention.

"That’s quite enough, Hannah," he said sharply.  "Maudie, don’t let’s
have any more noise from _you_!  If your ring’s gone it’s gone, that’s
all there is to it.  I told mother, when she asked me about it, that it
was foolish to give you a diamond when you was so young.  I don’t know
if I ain’t glad it’s lost, if you want my opinion.  Now understand, I
want an end to all this talk. No use in badgerin’ poor Ruth to death,
either, Hannah."

"For pity’s sake, Jim!" exclaimed Cousin Hannah, "I didn’t aim to badger
the child. There, honey, don’t cry over it--accidents will happen.  I
didn’t aim to hurt your feelin’s, no mor’n _you_ aimed to lose the ring.
I was jest sorter flustered-like."  And she patted Ruth’s hand
soothingly.

Maudie, though sniffing dolefully, said no more at the moment, being
warned by a certain unaccustomed note in her father’s voice that his
commands must be obeyed. But in the privacy of their room that night she
turned the thumbscrews on poor Ruth with savage pressure.

"Of course people who are just a little above paupers can lose other
people’s property without worrying much about it," she remarked
sarcastically.

And Ruth, in a burst of indignation at such aspersions on her family,
answered spiritedly: "No such thing, Maudie Pratt! I intend to pay you
for your ring, of course."

"Pay me?" Maudie jeered, scornfully. "O yes, it’s likely you’ll ever be
able to pay me a hundred dollars for my diamond!"

Ruth gasped--the amount was so far above her calculation.  But her
fighting blood was up, for the honor of her family was at stake.

"I haven’t the money on hand, but I’ll certainly pay you by next
Thanksgiving," she said, with proud resolution.

And the green cardboard box at home, containing all the money she
possessed in the world, held just thirty-five cents!




                              *CHAPTER V*

                        *The Silver Spur Bakery*


"Elizabeth," whispered Ruth, tragically, "I have done something too
awful to tell--and I’ve got to tell it."

"I just knew you were dreadfully worried," whispered back Elizabeth,
sympathetically.  "I knew it as soon as you came back this morning.
Mother thought you were just plain tired, but I felt in my bones that
there was worse.  What is it?"

The two girls were in their room getting ready for bed, tiptoeing and
whispering to avoid waking Mrs. Spooner, who was sleeping in the next
room.

"It’s this, Elizabeth--" Ruth’s whisper was a wail of despair--"I’ve
lost Maudie Pratt’s--diamond--ring: And I’ve promised to pay her for it
by Thanksgiving! Elizabeth, it cost--a hundred--dollars!  And you know
I’ve got just thirty-five cents in all the world!"

Then, Elizabeth remaining dumb from astonishment, she went on to tell
the whole story.

"And, O, Elizabeth, how _will_ I ever get the money?" she ended,
despairingly.

"You mustn’t tell mother, Ruth," warned Elizabeth, with that sweet,
elder-sister air that had grown on her since Mary went away; "she’s got
worries enough already with father away, and everybody afraid it’s going
to be a dry year.  I can’t think just now of any way to earn a hundred
dollars quick.  I’ll sleep on it--maybe I’ll dream of a way.  One
thing’s certain; you’ve got to keep your word, for the credit of the
family."

"I was just sure you’d feel that way about it, Elizabeth.  What on earth
would we do without you!" sighed Ruth, gratefully.

Secure in Elizabeth’s ability to find a way, she nestled down among her
pillows and went peacefully to sleep.  And indeed she needed it sorely,
after the miserably wakeful night she had spent with Maudie Pratt.

Elizabeth did not dream at all.  She lay awake so long trying to think
up some miraculous way by which Ruth and she might earn a hundred
dollars, that when she did fall asleep her slumber was entirely too deep
for dreams to enter--so deep indeed that it took the warning rattle of
the alarm-clock to wake her in time to get the early breakfast necessary
for Roy and Jonah.

"Did you think of anything, Elizabeth?" asked Ruth anxiously, as she,
too, sprang out of bed at the alarm-clock’s warning. And Elizabeth was
obliged to confess that she hadn’t yet.

"But don’t you worry," she soothed, "I’ll think of a way.  Let’s ask
Roy, as soon as we get a chance; somehow I feel sure he could help."

It was evening before they found an opportunity to take Roy into their
confidence, down at the milk-pen.  Milking had been one of the girls’
recognized duties before he came, since then he had forbidden them to
interfere with the chores, declaring them to be men’s work.

Roy set the foaming pails on the fence, turned out the little bunch of
milk-pen calves kept to lure home the cows from the open range, and
regarded the girls with a grave face.

"I should call that a tough proposition," he said thoughtfully, "but not
impossible. In fact it seems that ’most anything’s possible if you work
hard enough for it.  How about cooking, Ruth?  You’re a dandy on ’pie’n
things’.  Every ranch round here would buy your truck if it was properly
advertised."

"That’s just it!" jubilated Elizabeth, "advertise!  Ruth, we’ll put up a
sign-board at the road gate: ’Bread, Doughnuts and Pies for Sale.’
Every cowboy that passes will see it, and every single one will buy.  I
never saw a boy or man that wasn’t hungry."

"Elizabeth has a great head," nodded Roy, approvingly, "that’s the
ticket, Ruth. I’ll paint the sign-board to-night and to-morrow you begin
baking--money!"

Ruth breathed a sigh of relief.  "I just can’t thank you enough, Roy,"
she declared gratefully.  "I’ll bake day and night if I can just pay
Maudie Pratt for that hateful ring!"

Mrs. Spooner was rather bewildered when her young folks--the Babe
excepted, begged earnestly for permission to make some money by going
into the bakery business.

"We can’t tell you just now what it’s for, mother," explained Ruth.
"Only that it’s for something important.  You’ll know all about it when
the right time comes."

"It seems to me that every one of you does as much work as possible,
now," doubted Mrs. Spooner.  "But as Ruth’s heart seems to be set upon
this extra labor, I promise not to interfere.  And I won’t ask any
questions about it until you see fit to tell me of your own accord."

The Babe, who had listened carefully to this conversation, beamed
hopefully upon them, seeing in the plan certain possibilities.

"_I’ll_ help you, Ruth," she volunteered magnanimously.  "And maybe if
you make a whole heap of money, you _might_ have enough left over to buy
a new Ivanhoe. Mine’s got seven leaves lost out, right at the most
exciting part."

"Done!" agreed Roy heartily, "I promise that you shall have a new
Ivanhoe if you help.  The bargain’s between you and me, Baby.  We’ll
leave the girls out of it."

"Except to see that you earn your book," laughed Elizabeth.

That night when they were all gathered around the evening lamp, Roy
painted the sign on a smooth white board, with some of the brown paint
left over from the phaeton.  Bread, he declared, was Ruth’s "long suit,"
but as cowboys would scarcely like dry bread, it was cut out of the
list.  Pies, however, were always acceptable.  Custard being objected to
as too "squshy," they decided on mince and apple as being best for cooks
and customers.  Doughnuts, of course, because everybody liked the little
fried cakes, and they could be conveniently handled.  Completed, the
sign read:

                         "HOME-MADE DOUGHNUTS.
                              APPLE PIES.
                              MINCE PIES.
                              FOR SALE AT
                          SILVER SPUR RANCH."


"Now," decided Roy, after all the family had duly admired his handiwork,
"I’m going to Emerald early in the morning, and I’ll fetch back all your
necessary supplies, down to the paper bags to hold ’em, by noon.  The
McGregor ranch is shipping cattle--they’ll pass here Thursday, one of
their punchers told me; that’ll be day after to-morrow.  You can spend
the afternoon baking and be ready for them, for I’m certain they’ll buy
you out.  Their range-cook’s quit, and Chunky Bill’s cooking for the
outfit, so they’re about starved for something good to eat."

"We’ll be obliged to have the first groceries charged to you, mother,"
apologized Ruth, "but we promise to pay for them ourselves."

"Very well--only don’t buy too much at a time," warned Mrs. Spooner, who
was doubtful of the success of the enterprise, "until you are sure of
making sales."

"We’ll succeed all right, never you fear, mumsy," asserted Roy, with
cheerful confidence.  "I’ll drum up trade, and Ruth’s good cooking’ll do
the rest."

Fuel in that woodless country was quite an item; Roy, realizing this,
brought home the next day a load of coke along with the other supplies,
all, it was agreed, to be paid for out of the proceeds of the sales.

Also he brought good news from Emerald, where he had met one of the
cowboys from the McGregor ranch, who not only confirmed the report of
the cattle passing next day, but told him that the ranch cook had quit
out there, as well as the man hired to go with the shipping outfit.  He
offered to get Ruth the job of baking for the ranch until a new cook
could be procured.

"Of course I said Ruth would take the job, so he’s to bring along the
order in the morning.  How’s that for a beginning for The Silver Spur
Bakery?"

"I see land ahead!" exulted Elizabeth, joyfully waving her big
cook-apron. "Allow me to invest you with your uniform, Mademoiselle
Chef: You will now proceed to mix the magic potions, while the Babe
kindles the fire on the Altar of Cookery known to mere mortals as the
kitchen range, and I complete the rites by rolling out the crust and
filling the tins.  Know all men by these greetings, the Silver Spur
Bakery is ready for business, and Roy may go tack up the sign."

Inspired by the hope of reward, they made a frolic of the baking working
with such zeal and enthusiasm that when evening came and the chief cook
doffed her floury apron with a sigh of weary content, there were shelves
full of pies and pans full of doughnuts as a result of their labors.
Delicate pies, with crisply melting covers and toothsome "inwards," and
doughnuts that were deliciously tender and flavory.

"Just for this once we’ll let everybody have a treat," decided Ruth,
generously. "We’ll just make a big pot of coffee and have doughnuts and
pie for supper.  I want Roy and Jonah to have a taste; they’ll relish
sweets for a change."

"And I think we’d better let them fix the price, too," suggested
Elizabeth.  "Men always know more about such things than we do."

Roy and Jonah were most appreciative judges, declaring that twenty-five
cents apiece was dirt-cheap for the apple, and--mincemeat costing so
much more than dried apples--fifty cents for the mince pies.  The
doughnuts, being superlatively excellent, were valued at five cents
apiece, or fifty cents a dozen.

The Babe could not be kept off the porch next morning, hovering there to
watch for the McGregor outfit.  Soon, like Bluebeard’s sister-in-law,
she reported a cloud of dust rising--the customers were coming!

Far ahead of the herd rode a single horseman who turned in at the gate
and came galloping up to the house.  The futile chuck-wagon, with its
incompetent cook, slid past unnoticed while the message from Mrs.
McGregor was delivered.  She had sent a tin bread-box of ample size, and
she wanted it filled with so much bread, cake and pie, that the Silver
Spur Bakery was rather startled.  She thought the amount she specified
might last them for half the week, the messenger said, and at the end of
that time she would return the empty tin box to be refilled.  And the
Spooner girls were to put their own prices on their wares.

While these things were being settled two other riders from the shipping
herd came up for sample orders, and hurried into the kitchen with the
Babe and Mrs. Spooner, eager to buy something to satisfy the pangs of
hunger to which Chunky Bill’s cooking had delivered them.

The stocky little Englishman who had brought Mrs. McGregor’s note, and
said he would be back from Emerald on his return trip next morning for
the box, if they would have it ready for him, paused at the edge of the
porch and negotiated a more personal errand.

"And I’ve a little order of my own, Miss," grinned he cowboy genially.
"You see, I’m from the old country, myself, and I’m fairly longing for a
taste of plum-pudding once more.  Think you’re equal to making one?  I’m
willing to pay your own price."

There was a note of wistful eagerness in his voice that touched Ruth’s
sympathies, but a plum-pudding was, she feared, beyond her powers.
Elizabeth, seeing her hesitation, spoke promptly.  "Certainly, we’ll be
pleased to fill your order," she said, with business like briskness.
"And if it isn’t as good as any you ever ate in England you needn’t pay
for it."

"I’m sure it’ll be rippin’ good pudding, if you make it, miss," politely
assured the cowboy, and, with a sweeping bow, he mounted his pony and
galloped away to join the approaching herd.

As the hundreds of cattle tramped slowly by, one after another of the
attending punchers turned in at the Spooner’s gate, a purchaser to the
full extent of his pocketbook.

Doughnuts and pies fairly melted away; Mrs. Spooner and the Babe filling
the bags in the kitchen while Ruth and Elizabeth delivered the goods and
received the money.

And, when they counted up the receipts that night, they found that,
deducting all expenses, there would be five dollars profit!

"_And_ the McGregor ranch to bake for!" crowed Elizabeth, joyously.
"Ruth, I plainly see land ahead!"

"I’m so relieved!" sighed Ruth, "But Elizabeth, are you sure you can
manage the pudding?"

"’In the bright lexicon of youth there’s no such word as fail’, little
sister," laughed Elizabeth.  "_Of course_ I can bake--or boil--or steam
a pudding as well as a born Britisher!  In fact, being an American
citizen, I don’t see why I can’t make even a better one.  Let me take a
look at that old cook-book of mother’s."

All the next day they baked for the McGregor ranch, besides boiling the
pudding for the Englishman.  Elizabeth declared she wanted him to try it
before he paid for it, but after one glance and a hearty sniff, he
decided to pay in advance the two dollars and fifty cents which
Elizabeth had figured out as a fair price.

That it was satisfactory was fully proven when he returned for the next
baking, with orders for half-dozen more.

"I poured brandy over it and set it afire, like they do in England," he
said.  "And every bloomin’ puncher that tasted it is wild for more!
They call it ’The Perishin’ Martyr Pie.’  O, it’s made a hit, all
right."

After that there was quite a run on puddings, and hardly a day passed
that the girls did not make a "Perishin’ Martyr Pie"--a name that
tickled them immensely. Even the Babe learned to mix the batter, and Roy
declared he was quite an expert at boiling martyrs.

Money flowed into the little green pasteboard box, so that now there was
plenty of company for the lonely thirty-five cents it had originally
contained, when Ruth rashly decided she would pay Maudie Pratt for the
lost diamond ring.  It must be admitted that as the money tide rose
Ruth’s spirits fell.

"O, it would be so lovely if we were earning it for ourselves," she
lamented.  "Think of the things we could buy: If we could only give it
to mother to help with the living I should be perfectly satisfied--but
to go and hand it over to Maudie Pratt for a ring she just made me put
on--"

"Now, Ruth," Elizabeth interrupted, laying a loving arm across her
junior’s shoulder, "we’re all getting lots of fun out of the work.  I
think the whole family is finding that it is really play to earn money.
Maybe we’ll get into the habit and keep it up after Maudie’s ring’s paid
for.  Don’t you worry. If we do the best we can, and do it every day, we
are going to arrive at delectable places."

Ruth looked at her sister fondly.  What would they do without
Elizabeth’s strong heart and capable head for planning?  It was
Elizabeth who hunted up a Mexican boy sufficiently reliable to be
trusted with a lard-can full of the ’pies ’n things’ which found a good
market at the round-ups. This was not the season for them, but there is
always something of the sort taking place in the cattle country, and
Juan was willing to drive an absurd number of miles for a modest share
in their profits.  Never a cowboy passed the Spooners’ attractive sign
without galloping up for a purchase, and the early receipts from the
bakery were astonishingly good.

But after awhile the McGregors secured a cook, and there were no more
round-ups in reach; the cowboys had all become surfeited with a rich
excess of "Perishin’ Martyrs," so that orders declined and finally fell
off altogether on that commodity. The grocer was paid, there was nearly
a barrel of flour on hand, and part of a large tin of lard, but there
was only seventy-nine dollars earned.  Thanksgiving was approaching, and
the hearts of the girls began to sink, thinking of its nearness and of
the insufficient money in the green box.

And then, the very day before Thanksgiving, the unexpected happened,
when Mrs. McGregor rode over, bright and early, from her ranch with a
most unusual and imperative order for pumpkin-pies!

It seemed that a lot of unexpected guests had arrived from the east to
spend Thanksgiving at the ranch, and, to celebrate the occasion
properly, the McGregors had decided to join forces with a neighboring
ranch and have a big barbecue and picnic-dinner in the open, to which
all the neighbors were invited.  The other ranch was to furnish all the
meat for the feast--fat mutton and beef and shotes, to be barbecued
deliciously over pits of glowing coals, while Mrs. McGregor was to
provide the bread, pies and vegetables.

"Of course you should have been notified days ago," said the pleasant
little lady, with deprecating hands outspread, "only I didn’t know
myself ’till last night!  Now my cook can manage the bread and
vegetables, and you, my dears, must furnish the pumpkin-pies or I’m a
forsworn woman: I’ve calculated and re-calculated, and I find that,
allowing five pieces to a pie, it will take a hundred and six pies to
give everybody plenty--you know how men eat!  Now dears--" she put a
persuasive arm around each girl--"_can_ you bake them?"

Ruth gasped.  "How in the world can we--in one day?  Of course we have
plenty of pumpkins--Jonah raised a big patch of them for cow-feed, and
there’s a barrel of flour and plenty of lard and sugar and things.  But
in _one_ day--"

"We’ll do it, Mrs. McGregor," interrupted Elizabeth, smilingly.  "We’ll
fill your order, and thank you very much. Jonah Bean shall deliver them
early in the morning."

"My dear girl, you’ve simply saved my life--I can never thank you
enough!"  Mrs. McGregor rose, fumbling in her pretty silver wrist-bag.
"Twenty-six dollars and fifty cents, I believe.  Here’s your money--and
thank you very, very much: And don’t you forget that every single member
of your family is expected at our Thanksgiving dinner."

"Why did you take her order, Elizabeth?" wondered Ruth, when their guest
was gone, "it will work us to death!"

"Not a bit of it, dear child.  Listen, Ruth Spooner, there’s just
seventy-nine dollars in your green box.  Twenty-six added makes a
hundred and five.  Five dollars is a great plenty for expenses, seeing
that we have the pumpkins already.  The odd fifty cents will buy a
little present for the Babe, and leave you your full hundred to pay
Maudie Pratt for her ring.  ’Rah, ’rah, ’rah for the girls of the Silver
Spur!  Our debt’s paid!"

"Glory!"  Ruth’s shouts suddenly wavered, the apron she waved aloft was
thrown over her face as she burst into tears.

"O, Elizabeth--shut the door--I don’t want anybody else to see me cry.
I’m a wretch--and you’re a genius--but--but--I can’t help thinking about
us all working so hard and Maudie Pratt getting all our money!"

"I know, honey," said Elizabeth, understandingly, "if I stop to think I
feel that way myself.  Let’s not stop to think."

Ruth choked down her tears, bathed her eyes and turned a resolute face
from the washstand.

"I’m all right," she said in a determinedly cheerful voice.

Elizabeth threw open the bedroom door and ran out among their helpers.

"Kindle a fire, Babe, while we get the pumpkins.  Isn’t it a mercy that
Roy and Jonah are off the range to-day and can stay. Everybody’ll have
to get to work cutting up pumpkins--even mother."

All day they baked.  The stove in the house, the brick oven in the yard
which had scarcely been allowed to get cold since Ruth began her
enterprise, were both kept filled. The baked pies were lifted out of
their tins as soon as cool enough and dropped into paper plates.  But
even so they could not get enough tins to keep the baking up to the
volume required for getting out the hundred pies in that length of time.
At last Ruth announced in tones of dismay:

"There isn’t a single tin left.  What shall we do?"

"H’m, let me work my giant brain a moment," pondered Elizabeth.  "How
about tin shingles?  There’re a lot of new ones, you know, nice and
clean.  And plenty of lard-cans.  Roy can cut rings from the cans, and
lay them on the shingles.  They’ll be extra large pies, but they’ll hold
the dough all right."

It was a good idea, and it worked out very well, with a little care in
handling the bulky "tins," so that there was no more time lost in
waiting for cooling pies.

Jonah, who kept the fires going, became cheerfully loquacious under the
influence of the strong coffee Mrs. Spooner insisted on making, to keep
the workers awake at their tasks.  He regaled them with thrilling
stories of the war, and Munchausen deeds of bravery performed by himself
while in service.  Tales which served the twofold purpose of inspiring
Jonah and amusing his hearers.

The girls insisted upon their mother and the Babe going to bed, so as to
be rested for the barbecue, which they determined to attend, as the
ranch lay only a little way beyond Emerald.  But they, with Roy and
Jonah as able assistants, kept on baking till the last pie of the
hundred and six was cooling on the shelf, and the voice of the oldest
and most experienced rooster warned them of the coming dawn.

However, every Spooner was up and dressed in time next morning, with the
pies safely packed in the wagon, which Jonah was to drive, Roy and the
girls acting as Mrs. Spooner’s escort.

When they started Ruth rode ahead. Nobody but Elizabeth knew what was
behind her resolutely smiling face.  Pinned in the pocket of her jacket
there was a roll of bills--a hundred dollars.  The thought of Maudie’s
exultation over its receipt pinched Elizabeth almost as much as giving
up the money.  She lagged behind a little and talked of it with Roy.
They agreed that the money-earning fever had got into their blood, and
that nothing less than a new enterprise to companion this old one, which
they agreed must be carried forward, would satisfy either of them.

They had reached Emerald when Ruth, trotting briskly along its one
street, suddenly felt her pony go lame, and quickly dismounted to
examine its hoof for a possible pebble or ball of clay.

Suddenly, with a curious little choking cry, she sprang into the saddle
and raced ahead, the pony now going quite easily.

Roy and Elizabeth exchanged indignant glances.  Evidently Ruth was
overcome because she had to give up her precious money so soon.

"I guess it’s got on her nerves," whispered Elizabeth.  "I feel pretty
much like crying, myself."

"Ruth must be going ahead to let Cousin Hannah know we are coming,"
remarked her mother, placidly.  "I hope it’ll be so that they can all
go.  I haven’t seen any of them since the Harvest Home festival."

But Ruth had stopped a little way ahead, waving impatiently for her
family to catch up, and hastening on they all arrived at the Pratt home
together.

Mr. Pratt and his wife came out, Maudie, very much dressed up, followed
languidly.

"Have you got my money, Ruth?" she called in her high, shrill voice.  "I
bet anything you haven’t--and I was depending on it to go to Chicago and
study music."

"No," answered Ruth, with emphatic clearness, "I’m never going to pay
you for that ring.  I want to keep the money for myself, and mother and
Elizabeth, and the Babe.  O, what _lovely_ things we’ll have out of a
whole--hundred--dollars!"

The Pratts stared, mystified by this mad speech.  Elizabeth gasped--it
did sound shocking.  Mrs. Spooner was so little informed that she
supposed there was a joke on hand, and laughed with motherly
complaisance.  Only Roy, pulling back close to Elizabeth’s shoulder,
muttered in an undertone.

"Ruth’s got something up her sleeve. Hold on, don’t make up your mind
too quick about it."

"What in time was Ruthie goin’ to pay you a hundred dollars for?" Cousin
Hannah demanded, at last.

"For my diamond ring," cried Maudie, "my lovely diamond ring that
Grandma gave me, and that I wouldn’t have lost for a thousand dollars."

"It never cost to exceed twenty-five," snorted Mr. Pratt.  "Ruthie’s
just right not to pay you more’n that--or half as much.  It was partly
your fault for lending the ring."

"I’m not going to pay her a cent," repeated Ruth, with dancing eyes.
"I’ve got the money--a hundred dollars--see here," and she flourished a
sheaf of bills that made them gasp again.

"I guess I can _make_ you pay," stormed Maudie, "you _promised_, and
you’ve got to keep your word."

"Well, you _did_ lose Maudie’s diamond, you know.  Ain’t you goin’ to
replace it, Ruth?" asked Cousin Hannah, a little wistfully.

"You must do the right thing, daughter," cautioned Mrs. Spooner, taking
a part in the conversation for the first time.

"I will, mother," said Ruth, suddenly sobered; and she went toward
Maudie Pratt with the sheaf of greenbacks in one hand, and something
which nobody could see clasped tightly in the other.




                              *CHAPTER VI*

                         *The Shiny Black Box*


The thing was like a scene in a play, almost.  Maudie stood, half
abashed, half eager, and wholly frightened.  Ruth came forward with a
confident, buoyant step that reassured her mother.  A girl who was going
to do something impudently wrong would never act that way.

"There," said the plump, smiling Spooner girl, dropping into Maudie’s
outstretched palm a little lump of adobe clay that looked considerably
like a rough pebble.  "I picked that out of my pony’s hoof, right in the
path where I’d lost your ring."

"Wha--what is it?" faltered Maudie, afraid to look.

"Turn it over," prompted Elizabeth impatiently.

"O, Maudie’s almost a paynim, or a caitiff," breathed the Babe, hiding a
too sympathetic countenance against her mother’s knee.

The Pratt girl turned the little lump of clay in trembling fingers.
Something glittered on one side of it; the clay parted and a circlet
with a wee, shining setting lay in her palm.

"My diamond ring!" she gasped.

Then before them all she flung it from her, so that it tinkled and
skipped on the porch floor.  This done she sat down on the step and
burst into a tempest of wrathful tears.

"I always hated it," she sobbed.  "It’s such a miserable little diamond.
I wanted that hundred dollars to go to Chicago and study music.  How in
the world am I going to go if you don’t--"

"Hush, Maudie," Mrs. Pratt cautioned, and her father seconded the
admonition rather more sternly.

The Spooner young folks had closed in around Mrs. Spooner’s vehicle and
were helping her out and explaining all about the earning of that
hundred dollars.  While they did so the Pratts managed to get Maudie
straightened up with the assurance that she should be permitted somehow
to go to Chicago; and by the time the two groups came together they were
ready to drop the subject, Maudie looking self-conscious if not
hang-dog, whenever anything remotely concerning a ring was mentioned.

They went on harmoniously enough to the Thanksgiving dinner at the
McGregor ranch.  Coming home after they had passed Emerald and the Pratt
house, the matter was again brought up by the Spooners. The sky was all
a delightful lavender, with the big, white stars of the plains country
beginning to blossom in it, and there was still light enough to travel
very comfortably over the winding, level road.

"I’m proud of the enterprise and persistance you all showed in earning
that hundred dollars," said Mrs. Spooner fondly.  "But it hurts me to
think you could keep a secret from mother as long as that; and such a
hard secret, too.  I’d have been so glad to help you, dears."

"It was my fault," Elizabeth said, "that part of it.  I wouldn’t let
Ruth bother you because I felt that you had worries enough. Of course if
I’d dreamed for a minute that Maudie Pratt would tell a story about the
value of her ring, and that twenty-five dollars was the real price of
it, I should have let Ruth tell you; but a hundred dollars--why, Mother,
until we tried, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible for us to come
anywhere near earning a hundred dollars. Would you?"

"No," said Mrs. Spooner.  "That’s why I say I’m proud of you.  It’s an
achievement any three young persons of your age may well be proud
of--and none of you neglected your other duties for it."

"It was _lovely_," sighed Elizabeth, reminiscently.  "I think making
money is almost more fun than spending it.  Ruth can always earn with
her cooking.  I wish I had a special gift.  What do you think I can do
best, mother?"

"You do almost anything you do a little better than other people,"
declared Mrs. Spooner.  "But there’s one thing you can excel at, and
that nobody else around here attempts, and that’s photography.  Why not
try to make a profession of it."

Elizabeth thought it over.

"I suppose I’d have to go to some big town and study," she ruminated.

"Ruth didn’t go to a big town to take cooking lessons," prompted Mrs.
Spooner, smilingly.  "And you were just admiring the fact that it was
her good cooking that made the earning of the hundred dollars possible."

"Wise little mother," said Elizabeth, touching her heel to her pony and
riding ahead, blowing back a kiss as she passed, and cantering on for
some distance.

"I think that’s a splendid idea," said Roy eagerly.  "I knew a boy who
worked his way through college almost entirely by camera work.  And he
was just an amateur photographer, too."

"I’d help her all I could," put in Ruth, loyally.  "She helped me--you
all did.  I didn’t near earn that hundred dollars alone."

Here Elizabeth came dashing back to announce to the family that there
was an insuperable obstacle.  If she went into the simplest kind of
photography she would have a new camera--and oh, quite a lot of things.

"A camera is easy," said Mrs. Spooner, "since you’ve all agreed to give
me the keeping of the hundred dollars, I intend to put it in the bank as
a reserve fund to draw on in case of an emergency.  I’ll consider this
case of yours as one, and buy you a camera with some of it."

"And I’ll fix up a dark-room all right, Elizabeth," promised Roy, who
was always intensely interested in all the Spooners’ affairs.  "I can do
it easily; just board up an end of the back porch, fix a red lantern in
it for a light, with some shelves and a sink, same as the kitchen.  I
can make it. It won’t cost much, and you can do your own developing.
Say, Elizabeth, that’s easy!"

So it came about that, after some persuasion, Elizabeth finally accepted
the camera--a small one, with chemicals, films and everything necessary
for a start, all of them to be paid for out of the hundred dollars in
the bank.  Roy fixed up the darkroom with all the needed apparatus, and,
thus equipped, Elizabeth declared herself ready for business, and let
the public know it by adding to the sign down at the road gate another
line, in smaller letters, which read:

                      "Photographs made to order.
                Horseback pictures and views of places a
                              specialty."


Ruth still kept up her baking in a small way.  She no longer undertook
such strenuous jobs as baking for ranches or festivals, but people
passing by usually dropped in for a bag of doughnuts or a pie, knowing
that they were always kept on hand.  Some of these customers patronized
Elizabeth’s "studio," as she named the little boarded-up corner of the
porch, and had their pictures taken.  More often she was asked to go and
make a card-picture of somebody’s home, or she tried snap-shots of
cattle handling which sold well to the boys who could identify
themselves or their friends in a chance group.

Elizabeth made her charges in accordance with her work, which, being an
amateur, could not command professional rates.  She studied hard her
manual of photography, and finally after considerable debate, took a
correspondence course in the art.  Still, living on a ranch, she could
barely make enough to pay for her materials, and indeed was doing well
to accomplish this much.

"When I get so I can earn, and have enough money to buy a bigger camera,
I might try a place in town, or maybe I’ll put up my prices," she said.
But she resisted all suggestions that a finer camera be purchased from
the reserve fund.  "If anything happens we’ll need that to live on," was
her wise conclusion.

Let nobody think that there were not days of discouragement, when
Elizabeth spoiled her films or the simple drudgery of the work weighed
on her.  Nothing worth having is got without effort.  Whatever this
girl’s ancestry, she had inherited pluck and persistance, and after a
failure she always went back to work with renewed energy.

"I _will_ do it!" she would say to Ruth and Roy.  "I am going to try to
make myself the very best photographer I can,--and then maybe the next
higher profession will come along and invite me in."

The Babe, being the only idle inmate of the Silver Spur, continued to
devour unchecked her books of romance, until an incident occurred that
made Mrs. Spooner decide that the time had come for her reading to be a
little more varied.  It happened one day in the following summer, when
old Jonah, with a worried look on his face, sought her for a little
private conversation.

"It’s about the Babe, ma’am.  Have you noticed anything pertickler wrong
with her lately?" he asked anxiously.

"Why no, Jonah; what makes you think there’s anything wrong?  What has
she been doing?" asked Mrs. Spooner in alarm. She arose from her seat
hastily.  "I must go and find her--where is she?"

"Jest down at the corral, unsaddlin’ of her pony," soothed Jonah.  "No
need to be skeered--at the present.  You set down, Mis’ Spooner, and
I’ll tell ye.  A while ago I come acrost her out on the range,
a-gallopin’ along on that little rat-tailed cayuse o’ her’n, and I’m
blest if she didn’t have a broom-handle over her shoulder, and a old
fire-shovel helt out right straight in front! She looked out’n her eyes
like--well, like she was _seein’_ things.  I calls to her: ’Babe, whar
ye gwine?’  But law, she looks at me pine-black like I was a stranger,
hits Queen Beren-jerry, as she calls that reedic’lous cayuse, and
hollers back over her shoulder: ’Avaunt thee, villain!’ and a heap o’
other lingo I couldn’t make sense outer."

Mrs. Spooner’s face relaxed, she dropped back in her rocking-chair and
began to laugh.  The old man seemed to resent her mirth.

"Now Mis’ Spooner, you may take it that-a-way, but ’tain’t like the Babe
to be miscallin’ nobody, let alone me what’s raised her.  My opinion is
the child’s comin’ down with fever, or got a tetch o’ the sun, and you
better go to dosin’ her mighty quick!"

"No, Jonah," laughed Mrs. Spooner, much relieved, "it’s just Ivanhoe
gone to her head--not the sun.  She reads too much, and is too much
alone, I’m afraid. She was only playing she was a knight--a person out
of that book she’s always reading. But thank you for telling me, all the
same."

"I’d be glad to think it was no wuss; but--" Jonah shook his head
doubtfully, "a-misscallin’ me a villian don’t seem natchul.  I’ll go
send her in to you, so’s you can look at her tongue.  My notion is she
needs doctor’s truck."

As he hobbled out in quest of the Babe, Mrs. Spooner sighed a little,
feeling that she had a problem to cope with.  The lonely child was
living too much in a world of dreams.  "I’ll speak to Elizabeth," the
mother mused, thankful that she had Elizabeth’s wise young head and
Ruth’s willing hands to rely upon.  The older pair must take little
Harvie more into their hearts. "What on earth would I do without my
girls to help me!"

Both girls were spending the day in Emerald, with Cousin Hannah Pratt,
who--now that Maudie was away in Chicago, studying music, and Mr. Pratt
up in Wyoming with a herd of fattening cattle--was very lonely, and
begged earnestly for some of the Spooners to come in whenever it was
possible, and keep her company.

When the affair of the ring occurred, Mrs. Pratt for once found it in
her heart to give her adored daughter some much needed plain speech,
declaring that she was thoroughly ashamed of the way Maudie had treated
her cousin, and insisting upon taking the girl out to the Silver Spur,
to apologize to Ruth--a deed that was very ungraciously done.

Mr. Pratt went even farther, for he took the ring into his own keeping,
depositing it in the bank with his papers, and declaring that it should
stay there until Maudie learned to value the truth more than diamonds.

Still, from that very day Cousin Hannah began to put by a little money
every week, with the view in end of gratifying Maudie’s wish to study
music.  Grandma Pratt added to this fund till at last there was enough,
and with high hopes Maudie had gone to Chicago, quite sure of becoming a
world-famous musician.

Elizabeth and Ruth returned rather late, as they had waited for the last
mail, which came in the afternoon.  Mrs. Spooner heard their merry young
voices down at the corral as she moved about the kitchen, getting the
early supper ready.  Soon they came hurrying in at the back door, their
arms laden with bundles, followed by the Babe, now wide-eyed and alert;
knights and paynims had faded away before the present-day delights of a
box of candy the girls had brought her--an extravagance for which their
mother could not find it in her heart to scold them, knowing that, next
to her books, the Babe loved sweets.

"I declare you’ve gone and got supper ready--you bad mammy!" scolded
Ruth, "didn’t you know your big daughters would be back in time to save
you from such extra work?"

"Yes, and you must stop right now and go out on the porch, where there’s
still light from the afterglow, and read your letters--two of ’em, and
from the folks you love best--father and Mary."  Elizabeth fished the
letters from the mail-pouch at her side.  "And we’ve got a heap of
mail-magazines, and a letter from home for Roy, that pamphlet on
photography that I sent for, and the new films and developer.  Ruth had
a letter from father, too.  He’s all right, but make haste and let us
hear from Mary."

"And here’s a candied fig for you to eat while you’re readin’ your
letters, mother," added the Babe, generously, as she held out the
particular dainty her heart loved best. "Now I’ll go find Jonah and
Roy--I want to give them some of my candy, too."

Mrs. Spooner looked rather grave when she returned from reading her
letters in the afterglow of the summer twilight.  "Father’s well, and
sends love, and wants letters more than anything in the world, he says
he hopes we’ll all remember.  But Mary--the letter’s from John--is not
so well--."  Mrs. Spooner’s voice trembled a little--"he sends me a
check, and begs that I’ll go out and spend a few weeks with her.  But
how in the world can I leave you all?"

"Mary not well?"  Elizabeth’s tones were filled with anxiety--"O,
Mother, you must go; we’ll get on somehow.  If Mr. Bellamy sent a check
for you to pay your way, there’s nothing at all to prevent."

"We can go in and stay with Cousin Hannah," put in Ruth, "she needs us,
really--she hasn’t got a cook, and there are so many boarders that we’d
be a great help, I know.

"Yes, you would--and I think it would do you both good, being in the
village a little while.  But what about the Babe?" asked Mrs. Spooner.
"You and Elizabeth could help, but she would only be in the way.  Jonah
was just telling me about seeing her out on the range, galloping along
pretending she was Ivanhoe, or somebody else out of her books.  I’m
afraid the poor little thing needs company."

"Take her with you," suggested Elizabeth promptly.  "A change would do
you both a lot of good.  Just take enough money from that reserve fund
in the bank to pay her fare, and both of you hustle off just as quick as
possible.  We can get you ready by day after to-morrow, easily."

This plan, after a little consultation with Roy and Jonah, was adopted,
and Mrs. Spooner and the delighted Babe set off for Oklahoma, while
Elizabeth and Ruth, much to Cousin Hannah’s delight, went in to stay
with her.  Jonah and Roy--who declared that he was just pining to get a
taste of Jonah’s boasted cookery, were left alone on the ranch.

Cousin Hannah, who was naturally a very loquacious person, had become
decidedly reticent on the subject of Maudie and her musical studies,
though in the beginning the boarders had found the repeated and detailed
information about the matter rather wearisome.  Even to Elizabeth and
Ruth she said little, though more than once, they surprised her wiping
away tears as she went about her work.

"I don’t believe that ungrateful Maudie Pratt writes to her mother!"
said Ruth, indignantly.  "I found Cousin Hannah crying in the parlor
just now; she said it was _toothache_--when I know she has a full set of
’uppers and unders,’ as she calls them. You see, she’d forgotten.  I
believe she was crying about Maudie."

"Ruth," said Elizabeth in reply--they had been at the Pratts three days,
"do you remember that a week from to-morrow is Cousin Hannah’s
birthday?"

"Why, so it is," said Ruth, "and she hasn’t said a word about it.  She
always used to have a big dinner, didn’t she?  I know what the trouble
is--it’s Maudie. She can’t bear to have a big birthday dinner because
Maudie won’t be here.  Maybe that’s what made her cry."

"Yes, because Maudie isn’t here, and because she hasn’t heard from her
in two weeks and is frightened to death about her--I just chanced to
find that out.  Let’s make Cousin Hannah get up a big dinner, and
telegraph an invitation to Maudie. The telegraph operator’ll send it for
nothing. He always gives as much as ten dollars for a birthday present
for Cousin Hannah."

"A birthday present," repeated Ruth.  "I know what she’d like--she told
me yesterday.  Say, Elizabeth, I believe we could get one for her, too.
The Revingtons are going away, and they’d sell theirs cheap, rather than
ship it east."

"What on earth are you talking about?" demanded Elizabeth.

"Big secrets!" exclaimed the younger sister exultantly.  "Come on and
let’s run down town to Meeker’s store and see if Roy’s in from the
ranch, I want to talk to him about it.  Pretty nearly everybody in
town’ll join us.  Hurry up!"

The two girls ran down the street, stopping in at the insurance office
to speak to little Miss Thorpe, a new boarder of Cousin Hannah’s, a
stenographer who had recently come to Emerald.  They went on, cheered by
this interview, and consulted the station agent, who agreed that Mrs.
Pratt, who had made him comfortable for many years, must be given a
birthday which would raise her drooping spirits.

"I’d sure do anything that would bring Maudie home, and _keep_ her
home," he said, rather grimly, "because I know that’s what her ma
wants--though I’m not so certain that it’ll make her or any of the rest
of us any happier.  If we’re all to throw in together, for one present
you can count on me to double the ten dollars if it has to come."

Roy had joined them by this time, and was taking down what he called
"subscriptions" with pencil and paper.  As the three young folks went
out the door Mr. Rouse called after them:

"But you must give us a mighty good dinner, Miss Elizabeth.  A good
dinner always goes with a celebration of any kind, and to my notion it’s
the best part of one. So you and Ruth put on your studyin’ caps, and get
out your cook-books."

"We’ll promise to give you a good dinner, Mr. Rouse," agreed Ruth,
heartily, and Elizabeth added: "If you’ll all tell us what particular
dishes you like best, we’ll try to have them, just as a little token of
our appreciation."

This was a happy thought, and it pleased the boarders immensely to have
such consideration shown them.  Ruth got her own pencil and note-book,
and gravely made entries of each boarder’s favorite dish.  It was a
funny bill-of-fare that she made out: Chicken-pie and turnip-greens,
potato-pone and apple-dumplings, cold-slaw and Waldorf salad, and other
equally incongruous dishes, all of which were faithfully and
painstakingly prepared by the conscientious little cooks, with certain
additions of their own, making a very palatable "company dinner."

Elizabeth sent word to Jonah by Roy; he was to come over bright and
early on the morning of the birthday, bringing along the wagon to fetch
home the gift for Cousin Hannah.

Many hands, we know, make work easy. The week went by swift-footed.  If
Cousin Hannah had heard from Maudie she did not mention it, and if the
girls had any reply to their telegram they were equally reticent. The
difference was that Mrs. Pratt, in spite of the birthday preparations
became more and more doleful, while the girls went out on errands that
involved that subscription paper of Roy’s, and beamed with joyous
anticipation.

The great day came.  Ruth and Elizabeth helped till the dinner was all
on and cooking beautifully, the table set, ready to dish up the dinner
when the time came, then they both disappeared in a very mysterious
manner, leaving Cousin Hannah bustling about her kitchen all alone.

Everything went smoothly till the kettle became dry, and she found there
was no water in the pipes.  Calling Elizabeth and Ruth repeatedly and
finding that they were both out, Cousin Hannah decided that she would go
herself and see what was the matter with the wind-mill, as there was
nobody else at hand.

"I know in my mind it’s caught," she muttered, "and only needs a tap
with a hammer to start it a-goin’ again.  Well, I just _got_ to have
water, so I reckon I might’s well go try to skin up that ladder."

Taking a hammer to loosen the refractory sails, she climbed slowly and
cautiously up the creaking ladder, and soon had the water flowing again,
as the sails began to work; they had needed only a slight jar to loosen
them.

On top of the ladder she paused, and looked wonderingly over the vast
plains that surrounded Emerald.

"My me!  I ain’t had such a good look at the country since I used to
live in the foothills," she exclaimed.  "I feel like I was standin’ on
top of one of ’em now, viewin’ the scenery.  O, pity on me--_what_ is
that!"

With a gasp of horror she clung to the ladder, her eyes fixed on the
object that had attracted her startled attention.  It was a wagon driven
by a man whom she recognized as Jonah Bean, and containing something
long, and black and shiny--a box-like object that made her heart grow
cold to look upon. She got a mere glimpse since a horse-blanket had been
thrown over it, evidently for the purpose of concealment--as if
_anything_ could hide that awful shiny black box:

The wagon was coming slowly--very slowly, up the road toward her house,
and walking beside and around it was a group of young people whom she
knew for her own household--Elizabeth and Ruth, and some of the younger
of her boarders, with Roy and one or two other boys from the
neighborhood.  They seemed excited, and had apparently one stranger with
them, since she could see an unfamiliar dress of vivid plaid on the
other side of the wagon.

"O me!  O my!" moaned the poor woman, as she started hurriedly to
descend from her high perch.  "I ain’t heard one blessed word from her
in a month!  And I thought she was just too careless to write to me: My
poor, poor girl!"

Near the bottom, one of the rungs broke under the weight of her foot,
and she barely saved herself from a dangerous fall by clinging with both
hands and drawing up her foot to the rung above.

Sitting thus she waited for them to come; her eyes shut because she did
not want to see, drawing her breath in heavy, muffled sobs, praying for
strength to bear the blow that was coming, trying to find courage to
look upon that grewsome, shiny black box when the time arrived.

The wagon drew up in front of the house, but Roy and Elizabeth came
creeping softly round to the kitchen.  Cousin Hannah could hear them
whispering:

"Let’s find out exactly where she is, so’s we can get it in without her
knowing--it might frighten her."  How heartless the best of young people
were!

"Children," quavered poor Cousin Hannah from the ladder, "come and help
me down--I know what you’re bringing--I saw it away off--and I knew
right away--how could I help knowing!"

"O, _did_ you!" exclaimed Roy and Elizabeth, dejectedly.  They stopped
below and stared up.  "That’s too bad.  We’re _so_ sorry, Cousin Hannah.
We tried our best to get it in before you saw what it was."

"What difference does that make?" moaned Cousin Hannah--Roy and
Elizabeth thought she must have sprained her foot, and the pain made her
groan--"take me to her--my poor, poor child!  You shan’t call her _it_!"

Roy and Elizabeth laughed rather sheepishly, and Mrs. Pratt glared at
them.  Had they no feelings!

"How on earth did you find out?" asked the mystified young people, as
they helped her down and supported her between them into the house.

They steered her straight for the parlor, where a crowd stood around the
black box.

"Am I to break the news?" asked Mr. Rouse. But instead of the serious
mien proper to such an occasion he was smiling broadly.




                             *CHAPTER VII*

                           *The Wire Clipper*


The conclusion of that matter at Cousin Hannah Pratt’s, left a very warm
feeling between the two families, for when Mr. Rouse moved aside from
the black box it was discovered to be an old-fashioned square piano, now
set proudly on its legs, and seated at the stool in front of it, her
lips parted ready to burst into song--was Maudie Pratt.

Her mother’s astonishment and rapture pretty nearly scared the donors of
the piano to death, for they had cherished no intentions of giving
Cousin Hannah a fright with their mysterious preparations.  Maudie had
simply been ill, homesick, and afraid to come back until she got the
telegram the girls sent.  Putting her at the piano was an afterthought,
and one which some of them regretted, since she sang all afternoon, and
had to be dragged away for the birthday dinner.  However, that being an
example of Ruth’s very best skill, helped out by Elizabeth, they had an
extremely jolly time, and went home with promises of friendship that
were astonishing.

"If you ever need anything from me, remember my heart and my home are
open to you," Cousin Hannah kept repeating as she waved to them from the
steps.

They had little idea how soon they should be in bitter trouble when they
needed assistance from anybody that would offer it. Of course it was a
dry year--Jonah Bean declared that it was, taking it by and large, the
worst all-round year he had ever witnessed in the state of Texas--and he
had seen a main of ’em!

Mrs. Spooner and the Babe after spending a month in Oklahoma were back
again, and all that was left of the Spooner family at home once more.
The Babe had greatly enjoyed this, her first railroad trip, and she was
kept busy for weeks relating her experiences.  Mary was well again, and
had promised to come in the winter and make a long visit when, they all
hoped and prayed, their father would be at home with them.

It was a thing they hardly dared own, even to themselves, but everybody
was beginning to feel worried about Mr. Spooner’s safety, for there had
come news of a battle fought in Cuba, and though all the papers were
filled with the details, no letter had been received from him.  Day
after day some one rode to the village to bring back the mail, and day
after day the poor little mother, watching and waiting at home, was
doomed to be disappointed when no letter came.

For the children’s sakes she bore up bravely, always saying with forced
cheerfulness that probably Father had been sent into the interior, where
there was no means of mailing a letter--it would be sure to come after
awhile.  But in her own heart she entertained a great fear which she
never breathed to the others--a fear that he might be among the
"missing" after the battle! The nameless missing.

Then there came the day when Harvey Grannis, riding over from his
distant ranch, let his sister know pretty plainly that the public shared
her fear.

"No use mincing matters, Jennie," he said, speaking kindly--though he
could not keep an eager note out of his voice.  "We’re mighty afraid
that poor John won’t come back!  He never would take my advice, or he’d
not have been crazy enough to volunteer."

Mrs. Spooner sank down on the lounge and covered her face, moaning
softly.

"Now don’t take on, Jennie," her brother said, patting her awkwardly on
the shoulder. "Just you listen to this proposition I’ve come to make to
you: I’ve got a big ranch, and a big house, and you are all welcome to
come and live with me.  Your girls are growing up wild, anyway, without
a man to overlook ’em.  Of course you know, good and well, that I hold a
mortgage on this ranch of yours, and the interest money ain’t been paid
for some time, either.  But that’s neither here nor there.  The question
is, now that John’s gone, will you all come over and let me take care of
you?"

A shiver went over the little woman on the lounge, but she dropped her
hands from before her eyes, and faced the situation bravely.

"You’re good to offer us a home, Harvey," she said, when she could
command her voice; "but I can’t bear to think of moving till--till I
feel sure John’s not coming back!  I’m hoping every day to have news
from him; I’m certain that the children wouldn’t want to leave the home.
Thank you, Harvey, but we’ll stay right where we are, for the present,
anyhow."

Then the storm burst--so angrily loud that Elizabeth and Ruth sitting in
the back room heard every word.

"Don’t you think for one minute," blustered Harvey, "that you can depend
on me to support you on this ranch: You needn’t keep an old fool like
Jonah Bean and a young horse-thief like Roy Lambert hanging round, and
expect a man who knows his business to spend one cent for you.  Such
fellows as that are good for nothing but to run you and your ranch to
rack and ruin.  No, ma’am!  You’ve got to come to my house, or you
needn’t expect me to take care of you."

"I never asked you to take care of us, Harvey," returned Mrs. Spooner
with spirit, "I never thought of such a thing!"

Elizabeth, in the back room, looked at Ruth.  "I just can’t stand it any
longer!" she whispered indignantly, "let’s go to mother."  And they
marched into the room, hand in hand.

"Well, I hope you’ve come to persuade your mother to listen to reason,"
grunted their uncle, as the two girls entered the little parlor.

"We’ve come to tell her that we’ll take care of her, Uncle Harvey.  And
you’ve no right to suppose that father won’t come back!" burst out Ruth
impetuously.

Elizabeth added in a milder tone: "We don’t need any help, really, Uncle
Harvey--we’re quite able to take care of mother. We thank you for
offering us a home, but we don’t need it.  We’ve got one--and we mean to
keep it, and support ourselves."

Harvey Grannis gave the newcomers a long look.  Elizabeth said he tried
to "stare them down."

"Support yourselves, hey?" he grunted. "Well--I wash my hands of the
whole bunch!"

He got as far as the door, marching very slowly, and expecting to be
called back, when Mrs. Spooner hurried after him, her hands held out.
The girls were wrathful and disappointed, but their mother’s first words
brought them comfort.

"Good-bye then, Harvey," said Mrs. Spooner kindly.  "But we won’t part
in anger.  The girls didn’t mean to offend you.  I’m sure we’ll get
along all right."

"Didn’t _mean_ to offend?" snorted the now enraged ranchman.  "Well they
done so, mighty easy!  If they get along half as well making a living as
they do at being impudent to their elders they’ll have no need of help."

"Now, now," soothed Mrs. Spooner, as she took her brother’s hand and
raised her small, tired face for his good-bye kiss.  "My girls are just
high-spirited, Harvey--and you ought to be the last to complain of
that!"

Harvey Grannis kissed his sister grudgingly--and then was angrier than
ever because he had done this apparently gracious act.  The girls,
nodded to them as a gentle hint, made no effort towards bidding him
farewell.

"Let them alone," complained Harvey, "they’re fixing it up that I’m an
old brute and they’re persecuted angels.  Let ’em have their way.  We’ll
see what comes of it--you needn’t expect me to care what happens after
this!"

The very explosiveness of his protest showed how much he did care.  In
point of fact his sister and her family were all he had, and at heart he
was very fond of them--not the least of Elizabeth.  Mrs. Spooner always
looked to hear him make some allusion to her alien birth, but he never
did. He had longed to have these bright, brave young creatures and his
only sister in his home, to feel that they belonged to him, that they
were dependent on him.  It might not have been a very pleasant life for
them, but it was what he longed for, and what he gave up with anger and
reluctance.

Down at the road gate he met the Babe, riding on her pony, Queen
Berengaria.

"O, Uncle Harvey, I’m so glad you’ve come!" chirped the child, joyously.
"Ain’t you going to spend the day?  It’s been the longest time since
you’ve come, and we all want to see you so bad."

Harvey Grannis’s eyes softened; in his own rough way he loved the child
very much; she was named for him, and, unlike the other girls, she was
not the least bit afraid of him.  How he would have loved to have his
little namesake niece to ride about with him over his own ranch!

"Glad to see your old uncle, are you Harvie?  Well, I can’t say the rest
of ’em felt that way about it!  You’re a fine little girl, and I’d like
to have you where I could keep an eye on you."  He sighed regretfully.
"No, I ain’t going to spend the day this time--maybe some other day.
And say, Harvie, don’t you let ’em talk you into hating your old uncle,"
earnestly.

"Why, no Uncle Harvey, ’course not," agreed the Babe, wonderingly.  "But
there don’t anybody at our house hate you. Please come on back, and
Ruth’ll make a cake for dinner."

Harvey Grannis declined to accept this hospitable invitation, knowing
better than the child that he had made himself unwelcome.

"I’ve got to go now, honey," he said. "You can give a message to your
mother for me."  He looked at his namesake a long time.  "Harvie," he
wheedled, and nobody would have guessed that his voice could be so soft
and pleading, "wouldn’t you like to come over to the Circle G and live?"

Little Harvie looked doubtful.

"Do mother and the girls want to go? What’ll father think of it when he
gets home?"

Grannis had not the heart say to her, as he had said freely to the
others, that they must give up hope of John Spooner’s return.  Instead
he offered a bait which he thought would take her mind from the two
questions she had asked.

"I’d give you the prettiest little cutting-pony you ever looked at, a
pinto with blue eyes.  That old skate you’re on isn’t fit for you to
ride."

The Babe’s own blue eyes filled with tears.

"Queen Berengaria isn’t _very_ beautiful," she admitted, "but she’s
_awful_ good!"

Grannis, with that lack of sympathy which his type of man shows for the
tender sensibilities of a child, burst out laughing.

"You just say that because she’s the best you can get," he surmised,
smilingly.  "If I had you over at the Circle G to be my little girl,
we’d shoot this old bag of bones and give you something that could go."

Old bag of bones!  _Shoot_ Queen Berengaria! Harvey Grannis never knew
that then and there he settled the question as to his namesake’s ever
agreeing, so long as she could fight the question, to set foot on the
Circle G as a home.

"Did you say you wanted me to take a message to mother?" she asked
quietly, after a somewhat lengthy pause.

"Yes," said the ranchman.  "You just tell ’em I said that the big
spring’s liable to give out--and _then_ she’ll maybe think different
about some things."

Small Harvie repeated the message, her clear eyes fixed on her uncle’s
face.

"Now I can say it just like you did," and solemnly she parroted the big
man’s words, giving quite unconsciously his intonation, and the threat
that was in his voice.  It appeared that he did not relish this, for he
put in hastily:

"Don’t say it cross--just _say_ it."

"But, Uncle Harvey, even if the spring does give out we always water at
the big water-hole.  Nobody ever did know it to give out, did they?"

"No," said Harvey Grannis, "that’s why I bought the land it’s on."

"And you’d always let us water at the big tank," concluded the Babe,
comfortably.

"I would if ’twas only you, honey," he told her, and his eyes glittered.

He had said that he bought the land for that water-tank, and he might
have added: "That’s why I wouldn’t sell it to your father when he wanted
to buy it with Silver Spur."  He might have said this, for the Silver
Spur joined his big pastures, had once, in fact, been part of his
holding, and when John Spooner bought from his brother-in-law, Grannis
retained the pasture containing the tank, saying that he wanted to use
it for convenience in watering herds when he drove them down to the
railroad for shipping, and that the Spooners could always use it anyhow.
This was a mere verbal arrangement, it did not stand in the deed, and
when the Babe arrived with her little speech and repeated it at the
dinner-table there was consternation.

"What on earth can Uncle Harvey mean?" asked Ruth indignantly.  "Do you
suppose he thinks the use of that tank could be taken away from us?"

"I don’t think he could really be as mean as that, Ruth," reassured
Elizabeth.  "He’s just trying to worry us because of the way we spoke.
The tank is on his own land, you know."

But that the threat was real was proven later, when Roy announced that
Grannis had come with a wagon and men from his ranch, and was busy
running a wire-fence around the water-hole.  They were putting up a
locked gate, so that only by permission could anybody have access to it.

"And the big spring’s just mud," said Roy, gloomily.  "I think Harvey
Grannis is the meanest man in Texas!"

Mrs. Spooner, pale and worn from anxiety about her husband, received the
news calmly.  "I don’t think there’s anything to worry over," she
soothed the girls; "Harvey maybe has some good reason.  Remember it’s a
dry year, and other people may have been annoying him.  Anyway, I’m sure
he’ll not forbid us to water our cattle there. Please put Shasta to the
phaeton, Roy, the Babe and I’ll drive down and see about it."

The fence was indeed going rapidly up when Mrs. Spooner arrived; Grannis
himself was busily directing his men, urging haste in his usual stormy
manner.

"Well," he greeted his sister, "have you come to your senses yet--you
and those unbroken colts you’ve got for daughters?  You see there’s no
more water-hole for you to depend on.  Cattle’ll die, of course.  Only
thing you can do is to drive ’em over to my ranch and pack up and come
along yourselves. If ever a set of young ones need discipline, those two
girls do!"

His eyes snapped fiercely--discipline with Harvey Grannis meant
punishment.

"Harvey," asked his sister, quietly ignoring his attack on her girls,
"aren’t you going to give us a key to that gate?"

"Give you a key to the gate?  Yes, when you send me word that you’re
packing to move over to my ranch.  I’m doing this for your good.  I
think you know it, and those stiff-necked young’uns could see it for
themselves if you’d brought ’em up right.  That’s my last word, and I
mean it."

Turning on his heel he walked rapidly away, leaving Mrs. Spooner to
return to her waiting children.

"Never mind, mother," soothed the Babe, as they drove slowly homeward.
"Uncle Harvey’s not a bad man--he didn’t mean sure-enough that our
cattle couldn’t drink at the water-hole."

But her mother knew otherwise.  Harvey Grannis intended to force them to
live with him, for, as has been said, he was really fond of his sister
and her children.  Since he had come to believe John Spooner dead, the
thought that now he would have them all to himself, in his big,
comfortable house, grew very pleasant, so that he had determined, in his
usual violent fashion, to use force if necessary to accomplish his
purpose.

"I’m sure, children, I don’t know what we’re to do," Mrs. Spooner
sighed, as she related the ill success of her errand to the family.  "I
didn’t dream that Harvey could be so hard."

They soothed her with words of cheer, and Elizabeth sat beside her as
she lay upon the lounge, and bathed her mother’s aching temples with
cool water.

"Never mind, mother," she whispered, "I promise to take care of
you--always!"

Soothed by the magnetic touch of the firm young hands, Mrs. Spooner soon
dropped asleep, and Elizabeth looking on the pitifully frail little
form, beheld through tear-blurred eyes a picture of the past--a vision
of the young mother, delicate and burdened with many cares, unselfishly
adopting into her home and heart the abandoned offspring of
strangers--the child of sordid birth and ignoble poverty!  A wave of
passionate gratitude swept over the girl as she looked, and again she
breathed a vow to always take care of her foster-mother.

Next day Jonah Bean came galloping up to tell them that the wire of the
dividing fence had been cut in the night, and the Spooner cattle had, as
usual, satisfied their thirst at the water-hole!  Grannis’s cowboys had
rounded them up and driven them out at dawn, and Grannis himself had
ordered Jonah to come and mend the break, declaring he had made it.

"I ain’t cut that fence, neither a-mendin’ it," announced Jonah
oracularly.  "Stands to reason the cattle got to drink.  Providence done
it, ’cordin’ to my way o’ thinkin’."

"Grannis yelled something over at me, but I’m not worrying over it,"
declared Roy, "it’s the meanest thing I ever knew of. I’m certainly not
going to prevent the cattle drinking when somebody else cut the wires."

The cutting of a wire-fence is in all cattle-countries a grave
misdemeanor, punishable by law.  Harvey Grannis, when his "spite-fence"
had been cut, was of course in a towering rage, threatening to prosecute
the clipper, when caught, and vowing no less punishment than the
penitentiary if the offence was repeated.

But the next night they were again clipped, and the Spooner herd once
more rejoiced in abundance of water.  Harvey Grannis had trusted to the
wire-cutter being frightened away by his loud threats, and had not set a
guard over the fence.  Now indeed did he swear vengeance against the
offender--"male or female," he declared fiercely and to further protect
the fence drove a bunch of his own cattle down and camped in the
pasture--he would see that no more water was furnished the Spooner
cattle, or jail the clipper!

It cannot be said that this move increased his popularity with his
neighbors when they came to know its meaning.  Indeed his own cowboys
muttered indignantly as they moved about, pitching their tents and
making ready for camp, that it was a sin and shame, and the boss too
pizen mean to live!  At the same time they could not help admitting that
it would be much wiser for the Spooner family to move over into his
comfortable house and be taken care of by the wealthy ranchman, than to
try and struggle along combatting poverty and drouth.  This knowledge
served to keep them from open revolt, though the means he had taken to
accomplish his purpose moved them to scornful wrath.  Brow-beating women
and children didn’t agree with the cowboy sense of honor.

With the coming of Grannis’s camp to the water-hole pasture the
Spooner’s case became desperate.  The well at the house had a small
basin which filled slowly, and the little water it furnished must be
saved for drinking and household purposes.  Jonah and Roy reluctantly
watered their ponies from it, but the big spring their cattle had
depended on was now only a dry mud-hole. Roy went privately to Grannis
and asked the privilege of hauling water from the big tank.  He received
for his pains an accusation of having cut the fence-wires.  This in
addition of Grannis’s usual name for him of horse thief proved so
unpleasant that he was sorry he went.

"Looks to me like we was at our row’s end," remarked Jonah Bean with
gloomy philosophy.  "If they’s a turnin’ p’int I hain’t seed it.
Might’s well sell out, Mis’ Spooner, if you kin find a buyer for the
bunch."

"No, no, Jonah," objected Elizabeth eagerly.  "We’ll find a way.  Can’t
you think of something, Roy?" she asked.

Roy’s face was sober; he and Jonah had discussed the question, and
neither one could see any other way than to sell the herd before they
perished of drouth.

"Nothing except sell," he said, shaking his head soberly.

"Then _I’ll_ find a way!" declared Elizabeth, passionately.  "They
shan’t be sold--and they shan’t starve, either.  You and Jonah round up
the bunch and Ruth and I will haul water from Munson’s pond--it never
dries up, and I know Mr. Munson won’t care."

"O, that will be the very thing!  Mother, please let us," begged Ruth,
eager to help.

Really there seemed nothing else to do. Elizabeth’s plan though it meant
hard work, was at least feasible--for a time, at least; in the meantime
something unforseen might turn up.

So, with a big hogshead in the ranch wagon they drove five miles to get
water, which their neighbor Mr. Munson kindly let them have.

"I always knew Harvey was a cross-grained old sinner," frankly declared
Mr. Munson.  "Wants to starve you out, I hear, so’s he c’n make you all
live with him. Well, I don’t think much of his plan.  But you’re plumb
welcome to water--long’s you hold out to haul it."

For three days they hauled water, staying but not satisfying the
famishing cattle’s thirst; and on one pretext or another Grannis kept
his men in the water-hole pasture. The morning of the third day Ruth
came upon Elizabeth with the wire clippers in her hand and a very queer
look upon her face--a look that caused an awful thought to flash into
the younger sister’s mind.  Could she--could Elizabeth be the
wire-clipper that Harvey Grannis was waiting to catch--and jail?  The
thing was impossible, she argued fiercely; Elizabeth simply couldn’t do
such a thing!

Yet somehow all day she felt an uneasy sense that more trouble was
brewing, and that night after their early supper when she could not find
Elizabeth anywhere, terror seized her, and without letting anybody know,
she ran wildly across the pastures by the short cut, to search for her.

It was a wonderful velvet-black summer night, the skies star-sprinkled
and the enemy’s camp lighted by a great central cook-fire that could be
seen far in that flat, plains-country.  Flickering lanterns moved about
it.  Ruth ran on, seeking Elizabeth where the former cuttings had been,
and praying that she would not find her there.

Halfway across she met Roy coming back from a secret survey of Grannis’s
camp. With panting breath she gasped out her story.  Somebody must find
Elizabeth!

"I will," said Roy quietly, "I think I know where she is.  You go back
to the house, Ruth--I’ll find her."

He turned back in the direction of the camp and Ruth walked slowly to
the house, meeting her mother and Jonah, who were driving down the
avenue in the phaeton.

"O, mother!" whispered Ruth anxiously. "Where are you going in the dark?
Who are you looking for?"

"Hush!" warned her mother.  "I’m not looking for any one.  Why do you
ask?  I’m going to your Uncle Harvey’s camp.  I thought you were all in
your rooms--I didn’t want Elizabeth to know, and I just can’t stand this
any longer.  I think, if he’s made to see things right, that he’ll give
us a key to that gate, as he ought to, and leave us in peace.  You run
in the house and go to bed--and don’t let Elizabeth know."

"O, goodness gracious!  Whatever shall I do?" moaned poor Ruth, as she
watched her mother and Jonah drive away.  "Maybe Roy won’t be in time,
and while Mother’s right there, begging Uncle Harvey to go home they’ll
catch Elizabeth and bring her before them all!  It would just about kill
mother.  I can’t stay here--I just can’t!"

Forgetful of the Babe left alone in the dark, Ruth darted away on the
trail of Roy and Elizabeth.

Supper was over at the camp when Mrs. Spooner and Jonah reached it.  The
cowboys scattered about on the grass, smoked, or played cards or read
old newspapers by the light of the cook-fire.  Harvey Grannis sat on a
camp stool before his tent and smoked a pipe which was anything but a
pipe of peace.  He was angry with his cowboys who took no pains to
conceal their disapproval of his high-handed proceedings with the
Spooners because they would not yield, but most important of all, he was
angry with himself, because he knew in his heart he was behaving in a
most contemptible way.

The gate towards the road was not locked, nor even shut.  Jonah drove
through it and was in the middle of the camp before Grannis noticed his
arrival.

"Can I speak to you privately, Harvey?" asked his sister, as he arose
and came forward to greet her.

"No, ma’am," he answered with emphatic loudness.  "Say your
say--Everybody’s welcome to hear it.  I’ve done nothing I’m ashamed of."

The indignant blood rushed to Mrs. Spooner’s pale face.  She had no wish
to make a scene.  She pushed aside the rug and stepped quietly from her
phaeton. Jonah held the lines over Shasta, looking straight ahead of
him.  The circle of cowboys drew closer, listening curiously, eagerly,
most of them with angry distaste, yet hopeful that the little woman
would speak up to their boss.

And she did.  She told him pretty plainly what she thought of his
behavior.  She began with the sale of the ranch to John Spooner and the
verbal agreement concerning the use of this tank or water-hole which had
never in the memory of man gone dry. Her voice faltered when she spoke
of her husband’s absence and danger, the doubt which Harvey had
expressed of his brother-in-law’s ever returning to his family.  She
mentioned the conduct of her daughters as highly creditable to them.

At this point Harvey, enraged by being reproved when he fully expected
entreaties, broke in.

"Well, those same high-spirited girls of yours have been cutting wires,
ma’am--and wire-cutting is a penitentiary offense.  Jake over there, saw
a girl snooping along the fence and bending over working at it, and when
he got down there three wires were clipped in two, and swinging.  That’s
the way your girls show their high-spirit!"

"I don’t believe it!" exclaimed Mrs. Spooner indignantly.  "Neither Ruth
nor Elizabeth would do such a thing.  They fully understand that it’s a
crime before the law--though surely what you are doing, Harvey, is a
crime before Heaven.  Maybe you think I cut the wires?"

"No, no, Jennie," began Harvey, somewhat abashed, yet still thoroughly
angry. "You hold on and I’ll catch the minx in the act--we’ve got three
men hidden down by the fence now--Here they come!"

There was a stir off in the darkness where the fence cutting had been.
Mrs. Spooner put her hand to her heart and gasped, praying silently that
neither of her girls had been driven into reckless reprisals.  She had
talked to them about it, again and again as she did to Roy, begging them
to remember that two wrongs never made a right.  Then she turned away
and hid her eyes against the phaeton edge.

"Sufferin’ Moses!" groaned Jonah Bean.

For Elizabeth Spooner, Ruth Spooner and Roy Lambert were being hustled
into the circle of light by two eager cowboys.

"We caught your wire-clipper, boss," they sniggered jeeringly.  "Caught
’er in the act!  We’ll all stand by you when you fix to send her off to
jail!"

"Elizabeth--my child!  How could you?" wailed Mrs. Spooner.

"You see--I told you!" broke in Grannis, speaking loud to cover his
dismay.

"O, I didn’t cut the wires," said Elizabeth composedly, adding in her
clear tones, "I didn’t--neither did Ruth or Roy.  But we got there just
as they caught the wire-clipper, and we came along to see how Uncle
Harvey likes his work.  Look, Uncle Harvey!"

And she drew aside to reveal the clipper.




                             *CHAPTER VIII*

                         *A Partner of the Sun*


It took Harvey Grannis a long time to live down that scene by the camp
fire; for when Elizabeth drew aside there stood revealed, clinging to
her skirts, a pair of wire-clippers clutched in her free hand--the Babe.
Harvey Grannis stared incredulously for a full minute, and everybody
stared at him. Then he turned away with an inarticulate exclamation that
was like a groan.

"O, Uncle Harvey!" cried the Babe, rushing forward at the sound of his
voice, clasping his knees, bumping him with the wire-clippers, looking
up at him, her face streaming with tears.

"It wasn’t this child," he declared fiercely, catching her up in his
arms and glaring across her head at the others.  "The rest of you are
puttin’ it on her--of if her poor little hands done the work, you all
egged her on and made her do it."

"No, they didn’t," declared the child, squirming free and getting to her
feet, her real courage coming to her aid and sweeping away the nervous
fright that had possessed her.  "I cut the wire that first night--and
then I cut it the next night, because the cows were thirsty, and I knew
you wouldn’t be mad after all--you were just making believe, weren’t
you, Uncle Harvey?"

She turned confidentially to him, and the big man looked exceedingly
foolish.  The tension of the scene slackened a bit, and one or two of
the cowboys snickered.  But Mrs. Spooner’s face was stern as she came
forward and took her little girl by the hand.

"You see, Harvey, why I don’t want to come and live in your house," she
said clearly and distinctly.  "Perhaps you understand now why I’m not
willing that you should have a chance to discipline my girls. Look what
you drive people into!"

Her glance went fleetingly to Roy, and everybody in the cow-camp
remembered how Grannis’s ideas of discipline had made a sort of horse
thief out of a very honest lad.

"This child’s a minor," began Grannis, sulkily.  "She’s not to blame.
If you have a mind to let her come and live with me--even part of the
time--I’ll give her the key to the gate.  What do you say?"

Mrs. Spooner looked at her little girl’s face and read the terror and
distaste in it.

"Please, O, _please_ don’t, mother!" came the imploring whisper.  The
Babe had visions of Queen Berengaria slain and herself set to careering
about on a strange pinto that she could never love--and yet expected to
be thankful for the change!

"I say that you’ve proved yourself as hard as usual, Harvey," Mrs.
Spooner returned quietly.  "I couldn’t spare my baby--even if she were
willing to go.  Why can’t you be contented with the children loving and
respecting you--and staying independently in their own home?"

The defeat was too public.  Grannis would not accept it.

"All right," he growled.  "That gate’s locked from this on--and you can
get along the best way you know how for all of me. It’s lucky it wasn’t
one of your older girls that played this trick--or one of the men you
employ.  You’ve got off easy."

The Spooner party went home in despair. The Babe showed unexpected
spirit and demanded that, as she had cut the wires, the cattle be
allowed to go in and water that night.  They were.  Nobody interfered
with Ruth and Elizabeth when they hauled three hogsheads of water the
next morning while Grannis’s force was breaking camp and before they had
mended the fence.

But that was the end of everything. There was no news from Cuba, and
Mrs. Spooner began to look about her for some way to dispose of the
cattle.  It was the next week, in the midst of her perplexities, that
Harvey Grannis rode up to the ranch to warn them that he intended to
foreclose his mortgage on the place at once.

"I’m doing it for your own good, Jennie," he argued.  "I’ll still hold
to my offer to give you all a home.  Common sense ought to tell you it
will be a sight better to live at the Circle G and have a man to look
after you than to stay here and starve, depending on a jail-bird, an old
fool and a couple of feather-headed girls.  When do you think you’ll be
ready to move?"

"I must consult my girls first, Harvey," said Mrs. Spooner quietly.
"They are down at the corral--I’ll call them at once. I have a dreadful
headache this morning, and when I’ve explained the situation to them
I’ll go and lie down.  They can answer your questions as well as I."

Her brother fumed a good deal at this, vowing that he wouldn’t be
surprised if she felt called upon to consult old Jonah and the
jail-bird!

"I certainly do intend to consult them," replied his sister mildly.
"Only just now they are out hauling water from Munson’s pond.  But the
girls’ll be here in a minute--I will do as we all think best."

Elizabeth and Ruth felt their hearts sink at sight of their uncle,
certain that his coming meant some new disaster.  "He couldn’t bring
anything else!" they thought indignantly.

Mrs. Spooner, warning Grannis to silence, explained his proposition to
the girls very clearly and calmly; she wished them to see it as
favorably as possible, for in her heart she could think of nothing
better--there seemed to be no other alternative; it seemed they must
live with Harvey, hard as it would be. When she had finished she went to
lie down.

Ruth looked at Elizabeth for counsel as her mother left the room.  If
there was any other way, she was sure that Elizabeth would find it.

"We’ll agree to give up the ranch at once," began Elizabeth.

"You’ll have to," interrupted Harvey Grannis.  "Those are the terms of
the mortgage.  I _could_ put you out to-day, but I’ll give you time to
pack."

"With the privilege of making our payment when father comes home.  Are
you willing to do that, Uncle Harvey?" Elizabeth finished.

Grannis agreed promptly to this, certain now that he would have his own
way with the family.

"Then we’ll move next week," decided Elizabeth.

"I’ll send my teams over for your things--Monday, say?" asked Grannis,
in high satisfaction.

"O, no," Elizabeth demurred, "there’ll be no need to bother you.  Jonah
and Roy can move us without any help.  Thank you, just the same."

"Jonah and Roy, is it?" snorted Grannis. "Well, I told your mother, and
I tell you, that I won’t have that young horse-thief on my place.  The
teams will be here Monday.  See that you’re ready when they come."

"But we aren’t going to the Circle G, Uncle Harvey," said Elizabeth,
mildly.

Grannis was in the doorway, he turned, his look of surprise and dismay
was almost comical.

"Where are you going, then?  Straight to destruction, I suppose.  And
dragging your poor sick mother with you.  I want a word with Jennie
about this."

"Mother has allowed me to speak for her," Elizabeth said.  "Ruth and I
are going to take care of her.  We can--you know we can."

She spoke with assurance, but she had as little idea how the thing was
to be accomplished as Ruth had when she offered to pay Maudie Pratt a
hundred dollars--with only thirty-five cents at home in her pasteboard
box!  Perhaps the memory of the triumphant conclusion that matter worked
up to, put confidence in Elizabeth’s voice.  Anyway, Harvey Grannis went
storming away, informing nobody in particular that his sister’s family
were an ungrateful lot, declaring that he had washed his hands of
them--all except little Harvie.

That night when the chores were over and supper ended, the Silver Spur
household gathered on the porch and resolved itself into a committee of
ways and means, with Elizabeth holding the floor.

"I’ve been thinking of a plan," she said cheerfully.  "As Ruth claims,
I’ve a head on my shoulders--whether there’s anything in the head, or
the plan, is for the rest of you to decide."

"I have a great deal of confidence in your ability and common-sense,
daughter," said Mrs. Spooner faintly from her rocker.  Her head was
better, but it left her spent and white.

"Your scheme’ll be a good one--I’ll back it," Roy followed.

"Of course--we’ll all back what Elizabeth says," agreed Ruth.

"’Cause Elizabeth _knows_," chimed in the Babe, loyally.

"Well, she ain’t so foolish--for a gal," old Jonah put in last.

Elizabeth was fairly overwhelmed by their trust in her.  "You see we
can’t stay here, and we _won’t_ go to the Circle G," she began, flushed
with her family’s praise, "of course we may hear from father any day,
but we’d have had to get rid of the cattle--anyhow that bunch Uncle
Harvey shut out from the tank.  It seems to me the best thing we can do
is to go into Emerald to live.  There isn’t a sign of a photographer in
the place; everybody says my work is worth paying for, and Ruth would
have a chance of earning something.  Besides, there’d be school for the
Babe, and we’d be near Cousin Hannah."

"Say, don’t think you’re the only worker in this family hive!" protested
Roy, "I haven’t a profession, but I _can_ get a job any day.  Mr. Pell’s
son Joe has gone away to school, and he needs a clerk in the grocery the
worst kind.  I reckon I’ll earn money enough to pay rent, and a little
bit over."

"They’s jobs a-waitin’ for young folks to pick up, but ’tain’t easy when
you’re gettin’ on in years," sighed Jonah, dolefully. "Nothin’ _I_ kin
do in town, I reckon. Maybe the Old Soldiers’ Home’ll take keer o’ me."

There was a chorus of indignant protests from the whole family.  Jonah
knew they couldn’t get along without him!  Wherever they went he should
go to--that was settled. The tender-hearted Babe, with her arms around
the old man’s neck, cheered him further by adding: "Me’n you’ll help
mother, Jonah--she’ll need us."

"Bless your heart, honey, if that ain’t the gospel truth!" agreed Jonah,
now quite cheerful.  "They’s a gyarden to make, an’ a cow to milk--we
can’t get along without one, and wood to chop.  Maybe the ole man _will_
earn his salt, after all."

Early the next morning after this decision Elizabeth and Ruth rode into
town to see about getting a house.  The only vacant one in the place was
an old adobe, rather dilapidated, but with plenty of room, and enough
ground fenced in to keep a cow, besides having the garden and small
patches they would be obliged to plant for vegetables and cow-feed.  It
belonged to Mr. Rouse, the station agent who boarded with Cousin Hannah,
and he was so glad of the chance of getting it occupied that he told the
girls if they would agree to make the necessary repairs, he would let
them have it rent-free for the first six months.

This was joyfully agreed to, and the very next day Jonah and Roy went to
town to see about making the repairs--mending the roof, putting in
window panes, and whitewashing the interior, so that at last it was
converted into a very respectable and comfortable habitation--really
more comfortable than the ranch-house, for the adobe walls were thick,
and would keep out the cold in winter and the heat in summer as well.

During the days that the men worked on the adobe Ruth and Elizabeth were
busy packing up, while the Babe and her mother drove about in the
phaeton, making arrangements for the keeping of the cattle and ponies,
for Mrs. Spooner determined that she would not sell them--it would be
like admitting her husband was dead.

Mr. Munson, a man with a big ranch and a big heart, readily agreed to
graze the cattle, scoffing at the idea of taking a third of the increase
for his share, until Mrs. Spooner declared that, unless he did, she
could not allow him to be burdened with them.

"Then I hope for your sake it won’t be long, ma’am," said the rancher
heartily. "No news is good news, I’ve always heard say, and there’s no
tellin’ when John may come."

Another neighbor agreed to graze the ponies, and the Babe earnestly
begged that he would be very, very kind to Queen Berengaria, who was a
good pony, if she wasn’t so very pretty!

With everybody working like beavers, it was only a few days before the
Spooners closed the doors of the lonely little ranch-house, striving
bravely to think that it would only be for a little while, and took up
their abode in the old adobe in Emerald.

If there had been, just at this time, a voting contest for the most
unpopular man in the district, Harvey Grannis would undoubtedly have won
the prize by a big majority.  Everybody was so indignant at his
treatment of the Spooners that they vied with each other in showing
their sympathy and friendship for the family, sending them such loads of
vegetables from their gardens and choice cuts of fresh meat when a beef
was killed, that it was a long time before they had need of anything
else; while Cousin Hannah came over on the first day, laden with trays
of good things for the first meal.

Everybody tried to be very cheerful as they gathered around the
brightly-lighted supper table that evening, eating the good things
Cousin Hannah had provided with, it must be confessed, scant appetite;
their hearts were full, but each tried bravely to see only the bright
side, and, because they tried so hard, at last became really cheerful,
discussing their plans for the future with some enthusiasm.  Only the
Babe wiped away tears, as she thought of Queen Berengaria out in strange
pastures without a soul to think of taking her lumps of sugar at
feeding-time!

"I’ll plow up the land and sew it down in rye for cow-feed," said Jonah,
"before I git ready to go to gyardenin’.  I got to hustle, too, for
time’s a-flyin’."

"I won’t set into work at the store till next week," said Roy, "for I
want to fix up that shack out in the yard for a studio--with _two_
display windows, if you please, one for cakes and one for ’takes’.  A
skylight in the roof, and a little curtained-off dark room, and there
you are, all ready for business, Misses Spooner!"

"O, Roy, that _will_ be lovely--I simply couldn’t get along without
you--none of us could, in fact.  And I’m expecting my enlarging camera
any day.  I reckon I’ll spoil some pictures before I get used to it;
anyway, I can experiment on the family first."

"I’m so glad we’ve got a good cook-stove," said Ruth, contentedly.  "I
expect to make money on bread.  Cousin Hannah says she’ll get me all the
orders I can fill."

"And what are me’n you going to do, mother?" enquired the Babe, with
interest.

"Well, I’m going down town to the store tomorrow and buy some pretty
gingham for cutting out into school dresses which you’re to stitch up on
the machine, if you’ll try to run the seams straight.  Then, as soon as
they’re made, we’ll get some school-books, and a little girl about your
size will put on one of the new dresses, take the new books in her new
book-bag, and go right straight to school--where she’ll be a credit to
us all, I’m sure."

"I’ll learn to read so good that I’ll be able to read all the books in
the whole round world!" sighed the Babe, happy in the promised
fulfillment of her highest earthly desire.

By the time the new studio was finished Elizabeth had quite a display of
photographs, having ’taken’ the family and all the neighbors who were
handy, finding Maudie Pratt a willing and excellent subject, while Ruth
in her own show-window set forth a tempting array of tarts and pies and
doughnuts, in token that the bakery was in operation.

Mrs. Pell, the wife of Roy’s employer, was their first customer,
bringing her twin boys of seven to be photographed.

"Their pa says if anybody can make ’em stand still long enough to get a
picture, they’ll sure deserve a prize," declared the twins’ mother
frankly, as she arranged Wilfred’s big, smothering collar, and tied anew
the huge red bow under Wilmot’s chin.  "I taken ’em to the finest
picture-taker in Houston, last summer, and the best he could do was a
proof that had three heads apiece on it!"

"I think I can manage them, Mrs. Pell," said Elizabeth, confidently,
seeing more orders ahead if she could succeed where the city
photographer had failed.  "They are such cute little fellows.  Now,
boys, if you’ll be real quiet I’ll give you a doughnut apiece, in just
one minute," she promised the squirming twins, who brightened amazingly,
keeping expectant eyes upon the doughnuts which Elizabeth had placed at
just the proper elevation.

They were muffled and choked in stiff white pique suits, not a bit
comfortable, and their mother insisted that they should be posed in a
very stiff position, with their arms about each other.  However, in the
end Elizabeth secured a very good negative, "at least it has only one
head apiece," she laughed.  "But send them over when they have on their
everyday clothes, and let me take a picture for my window, if you don’t
mind."

Mrs. Pell didn’t mind--indeed she was highly gratified, and she sent
Wilfred and Wilmot over promptly, as soon as they had changed to their
old collarless and tieless play overalls.  Then, while the Babe told
them a fairy story to excite the proper amount of interest in their
faces, and Elizabeth bade them eat doughnuts at will, to promote
happiness that "showed through," she snapped her camera on a most
excellent likeness--so good, in fact, that their proud father ordered a
bromide enlargement to be made, and advised all his customers to go by
the studio and see that cute picture in the window--the cutest thing in
the shape of a photograph he’d ever seen took.

Trade increased, and both girls soon had all they could do--indeed Mrs.
Spooner, in her heart, often sighed to think of the free young souls
doomed to have so much work and so little play in their busy lives.

It was plain from the first that the Spooner girls and Roy Lambert could
maintain the family, though it took every bit of strength and every
ounce of energy the three young people could bring to bear on it.  Mrs.
Spooner drew a breath of relief when one day she saw her brother Harvey
turn in at the gate and calmly walk across to the studio as though he
were an ordinary customer, coming on an ordinary errand.

"Be nice to him, dear," she cautioned Elizabeth, when she informed her
of the unexpected customer in the studio.  "I’m proud of your
independence, but it breaks my heart to have you girls working so hard,
and getting none of the pleasure nor the education that you ought to
have."

"I think we’re getting lots of education, if you ask me," laughed
Elizabeth, as she put on her business apron and prepared to go out.  "As
for pleasure--I never was so happy in my life--except for worrying a
little bit about father--and he may come home any day of course, and
stop _that_."

She ran across the yard to the little building, where she found her
uncle gravely inspecting the photographs in the window, having come to a
decision as to the style he preferred for a dozen cabinet portraits of
himself, which he announced to be the errand that had brought him to
Emerald.

It was to Elizabeth like a little play to keep up her business manner
with Uncle Harvey all through the sitting.  She was urbane and
impressive.  She told about it gleefully at the supper table that
evening.

"How much?  And when can I have ’em?" the customer had asked as he arose
from his sitting.  Elizabeth got his tone exactly in telling of it.

"One dollar down, five dollars when they are finished, a week from
to-day, I’m pretty well rushed with orders, and can’t promise them any
sooner!" reported the photographer to her family.

"Then he took up his hat, and stood twirling it ’round and ’round, as if
he intended to say something else.  I suppose he changed his mind, for
he went away without another word.  I was glad; I wonder what he really
wanted.  Something more than pictures, I’ll bet.  Anyway, I think I got
a good picture."

On the day appointed Harvey Grannis put in an appearance at the little
studio at nine o’clock in the morning.  He took the filled envelope
Elizabeth handed him without a word, paid his money and lingered a
moment, never looking at the pictures.

"Hadn’t you better see whether you like them?" asked Elizabeth.  "We all
think them very good.  I took the liberty of giving mother one, because
she liked it so much."

"O, er--by the way, how is Jennie?" asked Grannis, uneasily.

"I’ll call her if you’d like to see her," returned Elizabeth promptly,
and there was a mischievous light in her eyes.

"No, no--not at all," stammered the ranchman.  "That is, I have a little
matter to talk over later--never mind now."

They were crossing the side yard between the house and the studio.
Without waiting for further Instructions Elizabeth called blithely:

"Mumsy--Uncle Harvey wants to see you!"

She was sure that Mrs. Spooner was just inside by the window, anxiously
waiting for what her brother might see fit to say or do.  The call was
responded to with unexpected, and so far as Grannis was concerned,
unwelcome promptness. Mrs. Spooner came out on the front porch and
walked down the steps to greet her brother. The Babe, always eager for
peace, though still shy of the man who had thought of shooting Queen
Berengaria, followed.  Ruth advanced from her bakery as the two left the
studio.  Old Jonah came around the house, wheeling a barrow, and to
complete the family picture Roy just then drove up in a grocer’s
delivery wagon and stopped at the curb.

"Well, we all seem to be here," remarked Harvey Grannis, rather feebly.

A bicycle-mounted boy wheeled up perilously close between the
delivery-wagon and the gate, Roy turned with a little annoyance, then he
saw that the messenger held a yellow envelope in his hand, and was
approaching Mrs. Spooner.

The little woman’s breath came in gasps, since the ceasing of her Cuban
letters she was always afraid of the sight of a telegram.

"Don’t let her have it--I want to say something first," Grannis
protested, getting between the messenger and his sister.

"I’ll open it for her--she would want me to," declared Elizabeth,
snatching the envelope from the messenger’s hand.

"Why, it isn’t addressed to mother--it’s addressed to--to--_father_!"
And she let the yellow envelope flutter to the ground, where the
messenger regarded it with lack-luster eyes, then picked it up and
prepared to depart with it.

"Party ain’t living here?" he asked, snapping together his receipt book,
which he had opened for signature.

"This here lady’s his late wife," asserted Jonah, lugubriously, getting
things rather mixed in his excitement to see what the telegram
contained.  "Give it to her--she’s the proper person to open it."

Once more Grannis put himself between the messenger and his sister,
protesting again that he had something to say before she read the
message.  And, at this second protest, there came an unexpected
interruption.




                              *CHAPTER IX*

                        *A Rose by Another Name*


In at the gate walked a tall, bronzed soldier in khaki, who reached
forward an authoritative hand, saying calmly to the messenger, "Give it
to me--it’s mine."

Everything about them seemed suddenly unreal.  Mrs. Spooner, catching
sight of the newcomer, quietly crumpled down in a dead faint at his
feet!

Elizabeth found herself running into the house for a glass of
water--moving like a person in a dream, making a desperate amount of
effort without advancing an inch.  Then, all at once, she was back to
find her father kneeling on the gravel beside his wife, resisting Harvey
Grannis’s efforts to raise her.

"Keep her head low, Harve--never raise a fainting person’s head," he
cautioned.

The Babe was crying and snuggling in under her father’s elbow, Roy had
rushed into the house and brought back the afghan from the couch.

"She’s all right," said Captain Spooner, confidently.  "She’s coming
round now. What made her faint, do you suppose?"

"O, Father!  Because you came back so suddenly," said Ruth.

"We hadn’t heard from you in months, you know," Elizabeth added in a low
tone. "We’ve been horribly uneasy, daddy."

The captain turned and kissed his tall girl, then he slipped a careful
arm under his wife’s shoulders.  Ruth and the Babe, pushing for their
share of attention, had to be cautioned.

"Quiet, girls!" he warned.  "We’ll lift mother in to the couch, and then
I’ll count you chickens and see how you look.  Help me, Harve."

Harvey Grannis had been edging away with a very curious expression on
his face; now he had no other course left open but to come forward, lift
his sister’s limp form and assist in carrying her into the house. On the
way she regained consciousness enough to protest lovingly, assuring them
that she was all right, and ashamed of being so silly as to faint.

"O, Father, why didn’t you telegraph, so it wouldn’t have scared
mother?" the Babe voiced the general wonder.

"I did," said Captain Spooner.  "But Mr. Rouse was away on his vacation,
and the new man they had in the office sent the telegram out to the
ranch, because it was addressed to Silver Spur.  You see, I’d got no
letters, and didn’t know of your moving. The boy had it along with one
from Harve to me, re-sent from Havana.  I’ll read it now."  And he tore
open the yellow envelope.

"O, Daddy," begged the Babe, frantically trying to smother him.  "Don’t
you ever, ever go to war again--no matter if that’s a telegram from the
president for you to go back--don’t you do it: And _what_ did you bring
us from Cuba?"

"Wait and see, you little rascal," laughed her father, lifting her in
his arms, and forgetting, for the moment, his telegram. "My!  What a big
girl you are, to be sure! And how well you are all looking--except
mother.  We must try and get some roses to grow in her cheeks.  Jonah,
you old sinner--shake!  We’ll swap war stories to beat the band, winter
evenings out at the ranch.  And Harve," slapping Grannis jovially on the
shoulder, "glad to see you, too.  I’ll read your telegram now.  Why in
the world didn’t you let the folks know long ago?"

"I--I was a little delayed," said Harvey nervously.  "In fact, I just
came over to-day to tell ’em."

"And the interest money?  I suppose you got that all right?  O, yes--you
say so in this telegram.  Got it right on the dot. No chance to act the
hard-hearted landlord and turn ’em out, hey?" and he laughed genially.
The world seemed bigger and warmer and sweeter to the children, now that
their father was at home; in the fullness of their joy they had no
thought of Harvey Grannis and the wrongs he had caused them to suffer.

Their uncle had been nervously turning his hat in his hand, going to the
door and coming back during the greetings between the re-united family.
It spoke well for his courage that he had not made his escape unnoticed.

"I--I just wanted a chance to speak about that, John," he began,
clearing his throat nervously.  "Your check was all right, of course,
but I haven’t banked it yet.  In fact, I just came over this morning to
tell the folks, as I said."

Elizabeth realized in a flash that Harvey’s telegram announcing Captain
Spooner’s approaching arrival had come just before he came to order the
photographs.  He was trying them for some decent way of explaining his
conduct.  She remembered his peculiar manner, and parted her lips to
speak when some impulse of kindness made her close them again.  Harvey
Grannis had done them all an injury, this was an opportunity for her to
forgive an enemy. The next moment she had reason to be glad.

"Then you did get the interest money all right?" the captain persisted.

The red blood flamed in Grannis’s tanned and bearded face.  His
confusion was painful.

"O, yes--O, yes, I got that," he admitted with an entreating glance
toward his sister.  "I--there was something connected with that that I
had intended explaining to Jennie.  In fact--if you’ll let me, I’d like
to make you a deed to the ranch."

"Let you?" echoed Captain Spooner, his keen blue eyes on his
brother-in-law’s face. "Make a deed to the ranch?  Why, I only sent you
the interest money.  The last payment remains to be met."

"Yes, I know," Grannis hurried to say, "but Jennie’s my only sister, and
we had a little misunderstanding--she’ll tell you all about it later, no
doubt.  I feel myself to blame--that is, I was mistaken.  I’d like to
make it up to--of course, I know there’s some of your family that’ll
never forgive me."

Then Elizabeth did a beautiful thing, and one which endeared her to all
of them. She marched across the room to Grannis, put out a slim hand and
said:

"I hope you don’t mean me, Uncle Harvey,"--with a very distinct
emphasis--"for if I have anything to forgive--it’s forgotten."

Harvey took the girl’s hand with a fervor that was pathetic.

"We mustn’t talk about disagreeable things when John’s just got back,"
said Mrs. Spooner decidedly.  "Harvey, you’ll stay to dinner.  Somebody
ought to go for Roy--he went right away, without giving John a chance to
meet him--he wanted us to be uninterrupted at our first meeting.  I’m
sure Mr. Pell will let him off for the rest of the day, if we ask him."

"I’ll go for him," offered Harvey, hastily, and before the eyes of the
astonished Spooners, he put his hat on his head and walked away in
search of Roy--the boy he had insisted upon regarding as a horse-thief!

While he was gone Captain Spooner was put in possession of all the
facts.  He was inclined to be indignant over his brother-in-law’s
conduct, but the girls joined their mother in excusing Grannis’s
behavior, insisting that it came from an excess of zeal for their
welfare.  When Harvey and Roy returned together, apparently on the best
of terms, Captain Spooner was ready to let by-gones be by-gones with his
brother-in-law, and to welcome Roy to the family circle with heart-felt
cordiality.

"I’ve heard all about you from mother," he said as he gripped the lad’s
hand.  "Only she says that he never can make me know just what you’ve
been to them all, and how very proud she is of her adopted son."

Roy blushed--praise was sweet, but embarrassing.  "I bet they didn’t
tell you a word about their goodness to me, sir," he returned, "I never
could make that up, no matter what I do."

Everything was satisfactorily explained over a good dinner.  When you
come to think of it, a good dinner makes many things seem more
satisfactory.  Ruth and Elizabeth cooked this one, the Babe set the
table, and all three girls kept jumping up from their places to run
around and hug the tall soldier father, to be sure that he was real, and
not just a beautiful dream.  Mrs. Spooner sat at the head of the table,
with a color and radiance in her face that had long been absent.  Harvey
Grannis talked more than anybody had ever heard him.  He made good his
promise of the blue-eyed pinto pony to little Harvie--though he offered
no further suggestion as to the shooting of Queen Berengaria.

"Pinto’s half Arab," he urged, "I broke him myself--wouldn’t let the
broncho-buster touch him--he’s as gentle as a dog."

All the elders at the table knew that Harvey Grannis was an excellent
horseman, and kind to animals, whatever he might be to his fellow-men.
They regarded the gift as highly as the Babe was certain to do when she
had fully made the acquaintance of the spotted pony.

"I’m awfully obliged to you, Uncle Harvey," she said at last.  "If you
don’t mind I’ll change his name to Prince--as though he was Queen
Berengaria’s son, you know.  I expect I’ll be mighty glad to have him,
because he’ll be able to carry me to school.  I couldn’t go when we were
at the ranch before, because it was ’most too far for Queen Berengaria
to come every day, and she’s so slow I’d have been sure to be tardy--I
don’t like tardy-marks."

When Harvey Grannis said good-bye, it was plain they were entering on a
new era of friendship with the lonely man. Apparently he would be
willing to benefit his sister’s family in the way that pleased them--not
insisting that it should be exclusively a way that pleased him.

When Grannis was gone Roy returned to his work at the grocery and the
Babe finally quieted down to her lessons.  Mrs. Spooner asked Ruth if
she would not help her younger sister with them, leaving Elizabeth to
have a little talk with her father.  The tall eldest girl followed her
mother into the other room, and soon found herself seated between the
two people who were so dear to her, the only parents she had ever known.
Thus she listened to a strange story told Captain Spooner by a soldier
of his own regiment--and who had died in Cuba.

"I don’t remember him much on the way out, or in camp, except that he
was a very tall man, well set up and good-looking--a fine type of
Englishman," the Captain said. "He kept himself to himself, the other
men said, and although I remembered afterward that he had looked at me
curiously once or twice, I couldn’t be sure that I’d ever seen him
before until he spoke to me one day. You’d sent me a lot of little
snap-shots, Elizabeth, and I was showing them to some of the officers
and mentioned your name. I saw him turn, and after awhile he came and
asked to look at the pictures.  I noticed then that he didn’t pay much
attention to any of them but yours, and when he handed them back he said
hastily that he wanted to have a talk with me.  He had the reserved
English way, but I could see that he was much upset.  The next day we
had a pretty hot little skirmish, getting some of us for good, and
wounding a good many.  After the fight was over they sent for me to go
to the field hospital, and there he was, wounded badly--knowing he had
to die!"

Elizabeth was strangely shaken during this story, and she held fast to
her mother’s hand, as though to make sure they were not giving her up.
Instinct told her of whom Captain Spooner was speaking, and when he went
on she needed no further explanation.

"He was an Englishman, sure enough, Elizabeth, of good family, but a
younger son, of course, and without any money.  It seems he married the
daughter of the rector of his parish, and she hadn’t anything either.
They came over to America--to Texas--thinking to make a fortune, but
found hard times and bad luck instead.  His young wife died while they
were on their way to California, traveling in a wagon, and he was so
broken-hearted and helpless that he left his baby girl with--well, he
left her with a mighty good woman, and I guess he knew it!"

Captain Spooner glanced at his wife; Elizabeth dropped her head on her
mother’s slender shoulder and cried softly.

"It makes me feel so sorry," she whispered.  "Yet I’m glad too--glad I
belong to you, even if my father did desert me!"

"He didn’t, Elizabeth.  That is, not knowingly," Captain Spooner
explained gently.  "When he went away from here he had promised to send
money for your keep, and he said he would come back for you.  He did
send some money, then all at once it ceased, and we never heard from him
again.  It seems he got word that you were dead.  Some movers coming
through told him of a baby that had died, and they mixed it up some way.
He was sick and down on his luck at the time, and failed to write to us,
but he never would have done it if he’d known his daughter was living.
Philip Maude wasn’t that kind of a man. He was a gentleman, born and
bred, and a brave man always."

"O, Father--I love to hear you say that!" said Elizabeth.  "I’ll always
be glad to think of him as brave and kind.  But I thought--Cousin Hannah
said--wasn’t the name _Mudd_?"

"Mudd?  No, indeed.  His name was Maude--M-a-u-d-e.  A very good name,
too.  What on earth made you think it was Mudd?"

"Cousin Hannah told me so," sobbed Elizabeth.  "And O, now I can tell
you when it’s all over--I’ve been so bitterly ashamed and miserable to
know that I, who used to really fool myself into thinking I was better
than other people, was just a miserable mover’s child--and that my name
was Mudd!"

"Cousin Hannah always did pronounce it that way," said Mrs. Spooner,
"she may have thought it was spelled so--it’s too bad to think how you
suffered for her mistake."  The motherly eyes overflowed, realizing how
sensitive Elizabeth, who adored pretty names, must have felt at being
saddled with such a grotesquely ugly one.

"So Philip Maude thought his daughter was dead till I showed those
pictures.  He told me that when he saw the little photograph it was like
looking at a picture of his dead wife.  He saw how much I loved you, and
how proud I was of you, and he had a struggle in his mind to know
whether he ought to claim you after all these years; but he had decided
that he must give you up when the fight came on, and the decision was
taken out of his bands.  The reason he sent for me at the last was that
he had, a few weeks before he enlisted, got notice of a small
inheritance that had fallen to him in England.  It won’t be more than
twenty-five thousand dollars--five thousand pounds, he called it--but he
made his will, and gave me his papers so that you might prove your right
to it, and he said that you might want to go home to your own people in
England.  He sent you this ring, and this broken watch chain--the watch
itself was shattered by the bullet that gave him his death wound."

Elizabeth took the ring and chain he handed her and wept over them.
They seemed to bring the father she had never consciously seen very
close to her.  It was not as though he took this father’s place, but
rather as if he were some one among her ancestors, far back, almost in
another life.

"I hope I may go there some time," she said at last.  "But you and
mother are the only father and mother I can ever have--and my home must
be here with you."

                     *      *      *      *      *

The Spooners stayed on in the old adobe through the winter.  There was
little to do at the ranch, and they were really more comfortable where
they were.  The first installment of Elizabeth’s income arrived from
England about holiday time, and made things most wonderfully joyous in
the Spooner family.  It was comical to see how the new state of affairs
impressed Maudie Pratt.  Grandmother’s diamond ring became a small
matter indeed compared to the small packet of really excellent old
jewelry that was forwarded to Elizabeth. The fact that she added Maude
to her name, simply calling herself Elizabeth Maude Spooner, was rather
a disappointment. Maudie Pratt, under similar circumstances, would have
promptly dropped the Spooner altogether.

The wise little mother looked on and breathed many a sigh of
thankfulness that Elizabeth’s good fortune had not come to her before
she was tried and proven.  When she saw her daughter choose wisely, and
behave modestly, and carry her new honors with simple graciousness, she
was aware that the year of discipline which had preceded the reward, had
made it a reward indeed.

When they all went out again to the ranch, Elizabeth insisted on
investing some of her money in making the home beautiful and comfortable
for them all.  Harvey Grannis admired her greatly for doing so, yet he
was in some sense jealous, and being a man of means he attempted, with a
simplicity that sometimes made them all laugh, to match any act of
generosity on Elizabeth’s part with one of his own. There was soon a
commodious, well-built house, a beautiful and properly irrigated lawn,
with beds of brilliant flowers where once only the cactus could be
coaxed to bloom.  These out-door luxuries were made possible by that
almost unattainable thing in such a country--plenty of water, for Harvey
Grannis made his namesake a deed to the pasture containing the big
water-hole. More land was bought and added to the ranch, as Captain
Spooner prospered, and with the luck of ’him that hath,’ money came in
until the Spooner brand was perhaps the best in the country, and of such
fine quality that it was the pride of old Jonah’s heart.

The question of education was one of the first things to come up in the
affairs of these young people, and Elizabeth declared that her income
was to be used for schooling the whole bunch--and in the bunch she
included Roy Lambert.  That independent young man, however, preferred to
work his way, as many an independent American boy has done before him.
He chose an agricultural college, for he believed that the cattle
business would gradually diminish, and that all of the ranches would be
forced into more or less farming as the years went on.  His ideas have
proved correct, and as he is a skilled and educated farmer, and a
natural manager, Captain Spooner has never seen the time when he was
willing to give up the claim they had on him at the time that Mrs.
Spooner called him her adopted son.

Most laughable of all, Harvey Grannis takes a great pride and personal
satisfaction in Roy’s success.  To hear him talk about it one would
think he had brought the boy west and placed him in his sister’s
home--as indeed he did, though quite unwittingly. With the lapse of
years Harvey has become gentler in his dealings with people, and more
amenable.  If he ever quarrels--and being Harvey Grannis, of course he
does sometimes--the Babe immediately acts as peacemaker, and he declares
that his nieces are the finest girls in the state of Texas, and that the
Babe is to inherit every acre and hoof of his possessions!

These greater advantages came to the Babe earlier than to the other
girls, and she was the only one of the three who cared to go to an
eastern college and take a degree. She was preparing herself for her
chosen career as a writer of stories for children, finding in that work
free vent for her exuberant fancy.

The year Ruth was nineteen she visited Mary in Oklahoma, and came back
engaged to her brother-in-law’s brother, a young ranchman of good looks
and qualities, and fairly prosperous.  She now lives on a ranch of her
own, and, with Mary, makes frequent visits to the home folks, where the
circle is still unbroken, even old Jonah still being spry and happy, and
delighting in relating his wonderful war stories as of old.

When Elizabeth finally left for England, partly to see her people--who
consisted of somewhat distant relatives, and partly for a course of
study, Roy felt that he would not be honorable in asking her to consent
to an engagement.  He told her that he was sure she would find her
ideals changing very much when she was among her own people, in such
surroundings as were really befitting to her.

But she came back to Silver Spur, a well-trained and popular painter of
miniatures, having chosen this for her profession.  She came back to
Roy, and to the dear parents who were, after all, more her own people
than those she had left behind her in England.

And it turned out that Elizabeth’s real profession is not art but
home-making.  She and Roy are married and live still at Silver Spur,
perfectly happy with each other, and radiating happiness about them by
the love and forethought of beautiful, unselfish natures.



                               (THE END.)