"Wait here for me, Jack," Jim suggested finally. "I know you are tired and need a rest before we start back. Carlos, look after Miss Jack and don't go out of sight. I want to explore the neighborhood a bit. I will not be long. Nothing will happen, but if you want me call out."
Jack paid no special attention to Jim's departure. She found a comfortable place, sat down and closed her eyes. How soon she fell asleep she did not know, but she heard no sound from Carlos when he slipped away into the woods back of them. Tempted by the possession of a new gun, the boy disobeyed a second time that day.
CHAPTER IX
"MINER'S FOLLY"
JACK sat up with a start. She had dozed only a few minutes, and felt indignant with Carlos when she found he also had deserted her. It was time they were starting back for camp. "Jim! Jim! Carlos!" she halloed, in half-hearted fashion; then she hugged her sweater closer about her, glad that Ruth had insisted on her wearing it, for as evening approached it was growing strangely cooler.
There seemed nothing to do that was interesting before her companions returned. Jack wandered idly to the edge of the pine woods behind the hills, but saw and heard nothing of Carlos; then she examined the small stream along one of the hillsides, knelt and scooped up a handful of water, putting it to her lips. It was salt as the Dead Sea, and must have made life doubly hard for the men who worked in "Miner's Folly," for they could hear its soft trickle by day and night and yet never quench their thirst in its waters.
All this time Jack was thinking, not of what she was doing, but of the queer big hole in the side of the hill, that was like a wound. Irresistibly she was drawn toward it by an impulse of curiosity and dread. Jim had told her of no tragedies except disappointed hopes that were buried in the deserted mine, yet she felt that if the cavern could suddenly change into an open mouth it would have many strange stories to tell of lives and fortunes lost by its false lure.
Jack stared so hard into the entrance of the tunnel that it no longer seemed dark to her. She went into it a few feet and peered about her. Curiosity was one of the strongest traits of Jacqueline Ralston's character, not a girl's idle desire so much as a boy's firm determination to find out what things are like, and how they are accomplished. Jack had never seen a gold mine before, and she did not wish to tell the girls nothing except that it was a big hole in the earth. The mouth of the cave was uninteresting, so Jack lit a match and walked a few feet further in. On the ground were bits of broken stone which she stuffed in her pocket for Frieda, thinking she spied an odd glimmer in them. Although the main entrance to the mine was through a single opening, by the aid of her flickering light Jack saw that miners had pursued many dead lodes in the sides of the hill. This means they had dug tunnels wherever they hoped to follow a vein of gold, until the whole inside of the hill looked like a network of black passages.
It now occurred to Jack that Jim and Carlos must have returned and surely they would think the earth had opened and swallowed her, so out she crept into the daylight again. The place was still solitary and gloomy. "Jim! Jim! Carlos!" Jack cried aloud. There was no answer. If only she had waited five or ten minutes more before she started back into that gruesome cave. And yet, perhaps, the spirits of other adventurous natures were summoning her to follow them.
One passage was larger than the others. Jack certainly thought she saw stones that shone like gold lying near its mouth. It was separated from the main tunnel by a gully, across which some planks had been laid. With a lighted match in her hand and gazing upward, Jack stepped on the forward end of a plank. In a flash her light went out and she fell back with a heavy thud. Her weight on the loose plank had caused it to rise up, striking her in the forehead with terrific force. Fortunately, she had fallen clear of the gully, but her body lay in the shadow out of the reach of any light that might come from the mouth of the cave. She suffered no pain; the blow had been too swift and sure, stunning her into silence and complete unconsciousness.
"Oo! Ooo! Oooo!" Jim whistled through his fingers nearly a quarter of a mile away. "Cheer up, Jack, I'm coming at last," he shouted, a few yards farther on. His conscience had begun to trouble him, and he was quite prepared to find Jack cross at having been forced to wait for him more than half an hour. Jim had not consulted his watch at the moment of his departure, but he was fairly certain that he had been gone some time, and that they must hurry off at once if they were to be with Ruth and the girls by an early bedtime.
Jim whistled and called all the way to the three pine cone hills. He presumed he would have to make his peace with his companion by telling her that he had discovered other visitors to the old mine within a very short time. There were evidences of their presence everywhere in the vicinity, and they had not been idle curiosity seekers, but men with a mission. Whether they had given up the hunt for gold and gone away from the neighborhood of the mine for good, Jim could not tell. This was one of the reasons why he had prowled around so long. He had gone to all the likely spots near by, where a party of miners might be camping, thinking he might run across them, but not one of them had turned up.
Pretty soon, Jim discovered that Jack and Carlos were not in the spot where he left them, but he did not yet feel uneasiness. He circled around the three hills; he went a short distance into the thicket of pine trees, making as much racket as possible; he gave the long cowboy call of the Rainbow Ranch. And then Jim's blue eyes turned black with anger and his sun-tanned skin grew red. He was exceedingly angry with Jack and Carlos, he was frightened, and an inner voice reminded him that if anything had happened to them he was to blame for leaving them so long alone.
But what could have happened? – for no one else had come near the place.
Jim saw Jack's footprints leading to the entrance of the cave, but his own and the Indian boy's were alongside them, and as they had rushed to look in the mine the first moment of their arrival he did not think to search for fresh tracks. And yet, for an instant, Jim had an odd premonition urging him toward the deserted mine.
The wind was now blowing hard across the plains; and the sun was slipping down to the line of the far horizon, not in a crimson glow, but in a piled-up mass of smoke – gray clouds lit with flame-colored sparks. Jim watched it uneasily. A summer storm was coming up after their week of perfect weather, and Jack, who knew the signs of the weather as well as any backwoodsman, had probably set off with Carlos for their camp, expecting him to overtake them. There was no other explanation for their disappearance. Once Jim walked irresolutely toward the mouth of the mine; then he turned, quickly moving off along the trail, wondering how far his companions would be able to travel before he reached them. Within twenty yards he halted, swung himself about and, in spite of his worry and haste, strode back to the open mine, where he had once vainly tried to find his fortune. Jim did not know exactly why he returned; he never dreamed that either Jack or Carlos could be inside, but he had to obey the impulse that first prompted him.
The great hole in the hillside was blacker than ever, and Jim felt a shudder of repulsion as he gazed into it. He had always hated his old subterranean existence of digging into the earth for her treasures, when everywhere on her broad plains the fruit and flowers and grasses offered an equal opportunity and a fuller and higher meaning to life.
"Jack! Jack!" Jim called weakly, down on his knees at the gaping mouth of the tunnel, trying to grow more accustomed to the darkness and crying Jack's name, not because he thought her near, but because he was filled with a vague foreboding.
There was no answer out of the grim darkness. Jack could give no sign of her presence, and the black shadow into which she had fallen hid the outline of her prostrate body.
Suddenly a boom of distant thunder sounded from the far side of the world, and Jim Colter sprang quickly to his feet, for he knew how swiftly storms travel across the western plains, and he feared Jack and Carlos might wait for him in the dangerous shelter of the trees. Faster than he had run in many a long day he left the neighborhood of the unlucky mine.
A little later Carlos appeared at the opening of the pine woods, his brown face scratched, his breath coming unevenly, with his gun on his square, lean shoulder, and a little bunch of a feathery or furry something tucked under his arm. He did not linger as Jim had; he believed at once that his companions had given him up, and sped on as fast as his weary brown legs could carry him along the path which had brought them to the place of the pine cone hills. Carlos had wandered too far into the woods and had lost his way, but now he hoped to overtake the other adventurers and in some way to make his peace.
When Jack opened her eyes it was nearly dark outside the mine as well as in. She lay quite still, feeling a dull pain in her head and an aching numbness in her body. "Olive! Jean! Ruth!" she called fretfully. "I'm ill. Why don't somebody come to me?" She thought she had wakened in the middle of the night in her bed at Rainbow Lodge. Poor Jack put out her hand to touch Jean, who usually slept with her, and her fingers closed on some loose mud and gravel. She held it for a moment and struggled to sit up, but her head ached harder than ever, and she reached back to find her lost pillow. There was only the earth to touch again, and slowly her consciousness returned. Jack stumbled to her feet and made for the faint light at the tunnel entrance. She took a few uncertain steps and sank down in a little heap on the outside at the foot of one of the hills. Drops of rain were falling, and the wind whistled through the tops of the tallest pine trees and swirled around the crests of the lonely hills. "Jim! Jim! surely you haven't left me!" Jack cried aloud. She was not usually timid or nervous, but the deserted place had alarmed her when she came to it early in the afternoon. Now she was alone in it, and about to face a fierce summer storm. Dulled by the pain in her head and by hunger and thirst, for Jim had carried the food and water bottle away in his pockets, she was uncertain as to how she had come to the mine and whether she would ever be able to keep to the return trail.
Jack's face was white and her expression unusual, while just over her temple there was an ugly bruise, and she did not feel able to think clearly. Once she put her hand to her head and was surprised to find her hair damp with wisps of wet curls streaking her forehead. Then she wondered what had become of her hat. An instant later she knew she had dropped it off her head when she fell inside the mine, but nothing would have induced her to go in again to find it. If Jim came back, perhaps he or Carlos would get it for her. Sometimes she was not certain of whether Jim and Carlos had just gone away for a few minutes or whether she had been waiting for them a great many hours. Then she pictured them back at their tent in the green place by the quiet stream, and wondered what they would do when she did not come.
It began to rain harder and faster in big pelting drops; lumps of hail beat down on Jack's shoulders and unprotected head. She ran to the woods to hide, but the place was so sodden and wet and ghostly in the twilight that she would not enter it. There was nothing to do but to try to find her way back to camp alone. Jack thought her head ached less and her decision a wise one. She did not realize that her friends could return to the old mine for her, but once missing the trail back to them she would be utterly lost in the wilderness. Jack recalled that several miles ahead there was a deep gorge with high walls on either side of it, and that she and Jim and Carlos had followed a path at the side of this ravine for a part of their journey. She would strike out across the open country, feeling sure that its high walls could soon be seen rising like a wall of mist beyond the rain.
Flying along on feet unconscious of fatigue, fighting through the storm and darkness and calling aloud when she had the strength, in about an hour Jack reached the ravine. No actual sight of the trail had guided her, but an instinctive feeling for the right direction. Now she sat down for a few minutes in the shelter of an overhanging rock, hoping the storm would blow over or that Jim would find her. But the thunder crashed on, and the wind in the jagged rocks of the ravine moaned and sighed like lost souls wandering in the walled chambers of the canyons, crying for release. Had she ever been rash enough to say she loved the splendid western storms? Jack asked herself. Yes, even in her terror and loneliness she realized there was something magnificent and awe-inspiring in their sudden fury and abandon, as though nature, yielding to a burst of elemental passion, poured forth her anger on the earth in the sweeping rain and furious charges of electricity.
When half an hour passed, the young girl crept out of her hiding place. Perhaps the storm was less severe; anyhow, she would rather face any fate than remain in the gorge all night. It was now too dark to see anything except the vague outlines of rocks and bunches of low shrubs. For a moment Jack stood still, trying to remember whether she should turn to the right or left, and straining her eyes to catch sight of a familiar object that might help her to decide. Then she moved off in exactly the wrong direction, with each step getting farther and farther away from her friends and shelter.
Trained to a knowledge of animal life in the plains of the great West, Jacqueline knew the call of almost every wild beast that is still native to the uncivilized portions of the western states. After walking for another hour, a sound filled her with horror. It was the low cry of a cougar! A thicket of trees and underbrush bordered one side of her path; on the other, lay the deep hollow of the ravine. And it had just begun to dawn on Jack that she was going in the wrong direction; she had passed by no such dense shrubbery in her morning journey. But this was not the time to turn back, nor must she show hesitation or fear, well knowing that the wild creature behind her would dog the footsteps of a solitary traveler, keeping only a short distance away, like a hungry wolf, and though a coward at heart, spring upon her if she showed weakness or defeat.
Digging her nails in the palms of her hands, Jacqueline crashed on, shouting when she could. A little while before, she had felt ill and deadly tired; now, forgetting both, her old courage revived. In the tragedies of the afternoon, her rifle had been forgotten and left outside the mine, but the big cat back of her would never dare attack her if she kept steadily on, frightening it by loud shouting and trampling.
How far Jack walked that night she never knew. There were times when the cougar kept back of her, then he seemed to be walking along by her side in the shelter of the thicket. Now and then Jack believed he slipped in front of her, crouching in a clump of underbrush, but she never once caught sight of the big furtive cat, though she was always conscious of the presence slinking near her. If it is necessary to prove that the modern American girl still has the nerve and fortitude of her pioneer grandmother, Jacqueline Ralston proved it that night. Not for a moment did she falter in her long march in the darkness.
A few hours before daylight the rain suddenly ceased and the stars came out as though the storm had not interrupted the usual hour of their appearance. Now Jack could rest at last! Having come through the wooded place, her enemy no longer pursued her. There were no more rocks ahead. She had reached the end of the gorge; the country beyond was a well-nigh unbroken plain.
A few yards farther on the young girl spied, like a dim sentinel, the outline of a solitary tree with its close, low branches sweeping the ground. Even in the darkness of night she knew a comfortable shelter could be found in it, for its beautiful boughs extended in a solid mass of foliage from its crown to its base, so the rain could scarcely have soaked through them. Jack crawled into the cradle-shaped branches and lay down to wait for the dawn and whatever the new day might bring forth, wondering if she were too tired to care what happened to her or if she had earned any shadow of right to the title Carlos had once given her: "The Girl Who Was Never Afraid."
It never dawned on her that sleep could come; but before the lamps in the sky went out she had journeyed to that dim country where we find strength for the next day's need.
CHAPTER X
BY THE WAYSIDE TENT
HARDLY had the three more adventurous members of the caravan party turned their backs on their wayside tent for their trip to the far-off gold mine, when Ruth, Jean, Olive and Frieda were seized with a furious attack of housewifely energy. Everything was routed out of the tent and wagon. A flapping line of blankets hung on Jim's best lasso, which was stretched from a tree to a tent pole. Then the girls collected their laundry and carried it down to the brook. The water of the stream was so clear that every pebble shone under it like a jewel, and the sand was as white as the sand of the sea. Over a shimmering pool a broad, flat rock formed a comfortable platform.
Jean and Ruth got down on their knees on this stone, swashing their clothes up and down and smearing them with big bars of soap, like the laundresses in Holland, until the clear water of the brook was a mass of iridescent soap bubbles.
Olive and Frieda rinsed and squeezed and spread the clothes out on the grass or hung them picturesquely over the low bushes. At the end of their labors, Frieda and Jean started a shadow dance with a big red tablecloth which Ruth had washed none too clean. Jean flapped it from one end, Frieda swirled it from the other; it flew up in the air like a red balloon and collapsed just as suddenly. Ruth and Olive rested in a patch of sunshine watching them. Suddenly Jean attempted to twist her unwieldy scarf into graceful curves about Frieda, but instead, tripped her up, and the little girl lay in a heap of helpless laughter on the grass. Straightway, Jean flung herself down beside her, beginning to unwind her long braids of hair.
"Ruth, make Frieda let me wash her hair," Jean urged. "She doesn't look like our pretty blond baby any more, but a poor, neglected 'orfling.' I am sure if she lies down flat on the rock, I can manage so she won't tumble into the brook."
Frieda crawled out of Jean's embrace, looking quite unresigned to the experience ahead of her. "You shan't do any such thing, Jean Bruce," she protested; "you'll get gallons of soap in my eyes and make me all sandy."
Jean struck a dramatic attitude. "Frieda Ralston, if you will let me make you beautiful, I will give you all my share of the gold that Jim and Jack bring back from the mine," she exclaimed.
Frieda shook her head. "They won't bring any gold," she said firmly.
"But you'll feel lots better, Frieda," Ruth begged.
Frieda saw that the weight of opinion was against her, and, besides, she was vain of her hair and did wish it to look pretty again, so she gave in graciously.
"All right, Jean, if you will ride horseback with me all day to-morrow and make Olive and Jack ride in the wagon, I guess I will let you," she conceded.
Jean had the sleeves of her shirtwaist rolled up past her dimpled elbows and the collar of her white blouse tucked in at the neck. She felt as much at home by the wayside pool as she did in Rainbow Lodge. Frieda was wrapped in a white towel like a shawl. Only once, toward the end of the washing operation, did she utter a squeal of indignation, and Ruth and Olive immediately ran to her rescue.
"Jean's caught a minnow in my hair," she insisted wrathfully, with her face very red. "I saw the tiniest one sailing down the brook by me, and then all at once it disappeared, and I am sure I can feel it wriggling on my neck."
Ruth made a careful examination of the clean yellow hair before Frieda would be reconciled. Then she led the small girl away to a sunshiny spot, spreading her hair over her shoulders to dry, until she looked like the original "Miss Goldilocks" in the old fairy tale. Frieda was given a piece of scalloping, which she had been working on for weeks, to keep her quiet.
"Jean," Ruth called a minute later, "do you mind staying here with Frieda for a little while? Olive and I have to go foraging for some chips before we can make the fire burn for luncheon, naughty Carlos having deserted us. Do you think you can make yourself lovely and keep an eye on things at the same time?"
Jean nodded peacefully from her throne of rocks, though a minute before she had been hot from her exertions and angry at Frieda's ingratitude. "Sure, as my name is Jean Bruce, I can," she answered cheerfully, letting down the masses of her dark-brown hair. She made such a pretty picture that Ruth watched her smilingly for a few minutes. She thought she loved all the girls alike now, but Jack and Olive were her friends and Jean and Frieda her children. She guessed her business of playing chaperon to the ranch girls would not be an easy one, if ever Jean got away from their western life into the gay society world of which she dreamed and talked.
But no frivolous ideas of a society existence now engaged Miss Bruce's attention, and she had no more idea of being disturbed than if she had been the original lady in the Garden of Eden. Jean was indeed the nut-brown maid of whom old-fashioned poets loved to write. Her hair had no golden tones in it; only the rich browns of the autumn woods, and her eyes matched it in color. She was paler than the other ranch girls, with a soft, healthy pallor, although to-day a little tanned and rosier than usual from her week's trip in the caravan.
Frieda glanced around to see Jean leaning over the water with her hair covering her face. It did not seem worth while to disturb her, so without a word, Frieda slipped away to their tent to search for more thread for her sewing.
Jean could not hear very well at this time had she spoken, for the brook made a roary, gurgling noise of its own in her ears, and her head swam from being held upside down so long.
"Crunch, crunch, crunch." Some one was marching along the side of the stream right in her direction. Jean did not trouble to take her hair out of the water or to look around. Of course it could be no one but Frieda!
"Well, I never in all my life!" she heard a perfectly strange masculine voice exclaim. "I know I have walked straight into fairy land, and you must be the queen who has brought all this magic to pass over night, for I passed this stream just two days ago and there wasn't a sign of a tent or a caravan or a princess anywhere around."
Jean flung back her long, brown hair with a gasp of sheer surprise, and the drops of crystal water showered around her like the diamonds that fell from the mouth of the good sister in the fairy story.
"I have been washing my hair," she announced to the strange youth, and then because her explanation was so obvious, they both laughed. "You see, I hadn't the faintest idea anybody could turn up in this wilderness except us," she explained, not very grammatically. "We are making a caravan trip through the state."
"I suppose I ought to say I am awfully sorry I intruded," the young fellow answered. "Of course, you know, I would say it if I had bobbed into a lady's boudoir unexpectedly, but I am so glad to see some one in this out-of-the-way place that I haven't a social fib at my disposal. Don't you think you could let me stop to rest and perhaps talk to you a few minutes?"
Jean drew herself up in an effort to look as dignified and unapproachable as she felt sure Jack and Olive would have done under the same circumstances. Far be it from either of them to engage in a friendly conversation with a stranger, even in a trackless waste; but to save her life Jean couldn't keep her eyes from shining mischievously. The water was trickling down her back until her shoulders were damp through her shirtwaist. Knowing she looked dreadfully foolish, she could not make up her mind to do anything so unattractive as deliberately to squeeze the water out of her hair or roll up her head in a towel before this handsome young fellow.
He was somewhat older than Donald Harmon or Frank Kent, and his eyes were as blue and his hair as golden as Siegfried's, thought romantic Jean, if only he were dressed in a suit of silver armor instead of dust-covered corduroys. The traveler had a knapsack strapped over his shoulders and a gun in his hand; his whole appearance suggested a long tramp.
Jean gazed at him meaningly. Ordinary intelligence might suggest to him that he turn his back for a few minutes while she repaired her damaged toilet, but the young fellow evidently had no such amiable intention. He seated himself by the edge of the brook a few feet from Jean. "My name is Ralph Merrit. I'm a mining engineer," he announced briefly.
Jean slightly inclined her wet head. "If you don't mind, I must beg you to excuse me?" she returned as haughtily as even Jack could have desired. Suddenly she made up her mind to snub this uncomfortably stupid acquaintance. Off she marched in as stately a fashion as possible, when one considers her damp, flowing locks and the fact that she had to pick her way through their various articles of laundry spread on the grass.
Inside the security of the tent Jean rubbed her hair vigorously and waved it energetically through the opening at the door, so it might dry as soon as possible. Frieda stationed herself outside the tent so as to communicate all possible information about the intruder to Jean.
"Has he gone yet?" Jean inquired for the fifth time in ten minutes.
Frieda shook her head. "He isn't going for a long time, Jeanie, I believe," she returned. "He is sitting by our brook just as though he never means to leave it. Now he has gotten up and is drinking some water. Now he is washing his face," she whispered excitedly, "and is taking a mirror out of his pocket to prink."
Jean and Frieda giggled and Jean joined her little cousin out of doors. She had piled her hair in a loose, damp mass on top of her head, for she was now determined, with Frieda for a chaperon, gently but firmly to persuade the young man to leave their Adamless Eden.
"Oh," said Jean, as, holding fast to Frieda's hand, she got within speaking distance of the stranger, "are you still here?" As there was nothing in the world to interrupt Miss Bruce's vision of the young man, even if she had been hopelessly near-sighted, he was obliged to understand her meaning. Coloring hotly under his already rosy skin, he got up.
"I thought you wouldn't mind if I rested a bit," he explained. "I have been tramping around this neighborhood for the last two days and I was counting on slowing up when I got back to this place. I need to fill my water bottles. And look here, I wonder if you would give me something to eat. You don't know it, but it is a custom for travelers of the open road to help each other out."
Ralph Merrit knew he had never seen a girl whose expression changed as swiftly as Jean's. A minute before, her eyes had been cool and reserved, and now they were brimming pools of kindness.
"Oh, I am so sorry you are hungry. I'll get you something to eat right away," she replied sympathetically. "If you will stay until Cousin Ruth and Olive come back I know they will invite you to lunch. I am sure you will tell how you happened to turn up here, and, of course, I can see you are a gentleman," she ended.
Ralph's face flushed gratefully, "You are awfully kind," he murmured, and then all at once Frieda saved the situation from further embarrassment. Suddenly she thrust into the young man's hand a large, red apple and a cracker, which she had concealed in her apron pocket. She had been foraging on her own account inside their tent, but had forgotten her provisions in the interest of Jean's discovery.
Ten minutes later Ruth and Olive appeared on the scene, swinging a large basket of chips and pine cones between them. In amazement they set down their basket and stared at a three cornered group composed of Jean, Frieda and a strange young man, seated comfortably on the ground, laughing and talking and lunching on their best jam and pickles and bread.