CHAPTER XI
"WHERE'S JACK?"
RALPH MERRIT explained his unexpected appearance to Ruth in a far more conventional fashion than Jean had required. He was a native of Chicago, a graduate of a mining school, and had come west to see if he could make his living by testing the gold deposits in the mining camps in the northwest states. Two miners had induced him to go with them to an old mine not far away to see if their discoveries of gold deposits were of value. When the find turned out to be no good, the men had slipped away, leaving him, and not only refusing to pay what they had promised for his services, but stealing all the money he had with him. For the past two days the young man had been scouring the country for the thieves, but he now believed they had gotten to some town and were safely out of his reach.
"I should be awfully grateful to you, Miss Drew, if you would tell me the way to the nearest village," Ralph Merrit said at the end of his story. "I am green about this part of the country and don't know in what direction to move on."
Ruth shook her head. "I am afraid I don't know either," she confessed, "but if you will spend the day here with us until our guide, Mr. Colter, comes back, he will tell you anything you wish to know."
Ralph accepted the invitation gratefully, although he hardly guessed what a concession it represented. A year before, when Ruth Drew left Vermont, she had never spoken to a man in her life without a formal introduction, and now she was inviting a stranger to spend the day with her and the three girls in the woods. But Ruth never doubted the story Ralph Merrit had told her for a moment, although it was an unusual one. No one who was a judge of character ever doubted Ralph. He was a straightforward, manly, determined fellow, with a strong will and a sense of humor – one of the most delightful combinations in the world – and from the first hour of their acquaintance he was a special favorite with Ruth and later with Jim Colter.
For several hours, Ralph made himself a useful visitor, insisting on bringing in fresh stores of wood, as he assured his hostesses their stock would never last over night, and they would desire to keep up a particularly brilliant fire as a beacon light to the wanderers from camp.
About four o'clock in the afternoon Ruth suggested that the five of them take a walk to find out the source of the little stream, which made such a wonderful oasis in the stretch of sandy desert. After a few miles, Ruth, Olive and Frieda sat down to rest, while Jean and Ralph carried on their explorations. They had caught a splendid lot of fish, but Ralph had his gun with him and hoped to get some game for their supper. The young man and girl had talked to each other for the past few hours, but now they seemed to feel well enough acquainted to keep silent and enjoy the exquisite beauty of the scenery. They had wandered to the source of the brook. Trickling down from the base of a low hill, it was circled by a grove of cottonwood and spruce trees. Jean and Ralph hid in the underbrush and got softly down on their knees so as to make no possible noise, for they saw a few yards ahead a delicate, dappled fawn, with its nose deep in the clear water. Its sides were of a light gray and brown, its legs like slender staves, and its long ears as soft and sensitive as any created thing. The scene was so beautiful that Jean's eyes grew suddenly misty with tears.
Ralph also felt a quiver of excitement stiffen his arm. His companion was behind him and out of any possible danger, the fawn was in direct range of his gun and as yet unconscious of his presence.
The young man lifted his gun, took direct aim, and his fingers pressed the trigger. At the same instant the gun kicked up in the air, exploded and the shot went wide of its mark. For one quivering instant the fawn gazed at the hunter, its big brown eyes full of terror and reproach, and then with a bound was off through the trees and out of sight.
"How could you, Miss Bruce?" Ralph demanded indignantly, turning on Jean. "If you hadn't struck the butt of my gun I should have gotten that deer and we would have had fresh meat for a week." He stopped abruptly. Jean's eyes were as wide open and brown and frightened as the fawn's and her body trembled just as delicately.
"How could you?" she replied brokenly. "I couldn't bear to have you kill that lovely, gentle thing. I can't help it, I hate people who kill things. But if you think you will be hungry because of what I did, I'll get Ruth and Jim to let me give you some of my share of our food in the caravan," and Jean marched back to her friends and would have nothing more to say to her companion for the rest of the day.
Just before tea time, the storm that had overtaken the travelers to the deserted mine gathered over the little party, who were resting near the tent. Ruth and the girls tried their best to fight down their fears, but their lips and eyes asked the same question: "How were Jim and Jack and Carlos to fight their way back to them through the darkness and rain and wind with only the light of the small lantern Jim had taken with him when they set out?"
Jean and Olive got a hasty supper, while Ralph Merrit lashed the tent ropes more closely to the ground, found what shelter he could for the horses, and made a canopy of pine branches over the fire, so that the downpour of rain should not put it out. It was about dusk when he found Ruth and Frieda standing outside their tent door watching with white, nervous faces the big clouds roll together in a black mass.
"Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable, Miss Drew?" Ralph asked. "You have been awfully good to me, and I can't tell you how I appreciate it. Why, this day with you has been almost like running across my own people here in this wilderness. But if there is nothing I can do, I had best move on to find some sort of shelter for the night before the storm gets worse."
Ruth put out her hand, impulsively clutching Ralph's coat sleeve. "Please, please don't leave us until Mr. Colter and Jack and Carlos return," she begged. "I told them I would not be worried if they did not get back until quite late, but this storm makes us feel so much more lonely and frightened."
Ralph patted Ruth's hand reassuringly. "Of course I won't go if you would like me to stay," he answered cheerfully. "And you mustn't be alarmed. I'll watch the fire to keep it from going out, and when your friends return, I'll roost in a tree, like 'Monsieur Chantecler,' and wake you first thing in the morning."
Ruth smiled, and Olive, who had come out of the tent with Jean, looked less forlorn; but Jean, although she was devoutly glad they were not to be left alone, could not cheer up. She walked apart from the others, not wishing them to guess how uneasy she felt about Jack. Of course nothing was going to happen, but she wished she had not accused Jack of being selfish the day before.
Ralph Merrit came over and stood silently at Jean's side for a moment. He felt twice her age and was actually eight years older.
"I did not know you would mind my shot this afternoon," he began stiffly in the fashion in which a man usually apologizes. "If you had been brought up in a city and were unused to hunting I might have understood your feeling. As it was I – "
Jean's cheeks flushed in the somber twilight. Already the first drops of rain were falling. Ruth was calling them inside the tent.
"I hope I have not been rude," she said. "I ought to have explained to you that I can never bear to see anything killed. My cousin, Jack Ralston, and the overseer of our ranch, Jim Colter, both think I am awfully silly because I never go hunting with them even when they are after wild game, though I can shoot pretty well. But when a bird or animal is full of motion and maybe joy, why, to see it stiff and cold all of a sudden and to know you can never make it alive again – " Jean's voice broke off abruptly. She did not care to show emotion to a stranger.
"I understand," Ralph answered slowly. "I believe I would like to have my sister feel that way. I know you have not asked it of me, and we may never meet again, but so long as I live I shall never kill anything unless I positively need it for food, or am trying to protect some one."
For several hours Ruth, the girls and their guest huddled inside their tent waiting for the storm to pass and the wanderers to return. The rain beat in until their waterproof cloaks were hung over the slits and openings, and then, in spite of the coldness of the night outside, the air in the tent grew close and heavy. Ruth did her best to keep up a conversation with Ralph, but Jean and Olive sat on a pile of sofa cushions with their arms about each other, waiting, listening for some sound that would tell them the wayfarers were almost home. Frieda had fallen asleep in a weary lump on a cot, with a tear of sheer lonesomeness for Jack not yet dry on her pink cheek.
Suddenly the girls jumped to their feet and Frieda rolled off the cot. From afar off they heard Jim's familiar whistle and long, cheerful call. Ralph Merrit rushed out to pile the fire with the pine cones and logs they had been keeping dry inside the tent. Jean and Olive lit the extra candles they had been saving all evening. The rain having almost ceased, Ruth flung a mackintosh about her and ran forth to follow the sound of Jim's voice.
"Home at last!" thought Jim Colter happily, his worry and uncertainty slipping from him as he caught the distant gleam of the camp-fire. For many miles after leaving the mine he had hurried on, expecting each moment to overtake Jack and Carlos. Then fearing they might have lost their way, he turned aside at every doubtful place along the trail, searching and calling their names until he was hoarse. Not only was he torn with anxiety at the loss of his fellow-truants, but uneasy about Ruth and the girls alone in a tent in a fierce summer tempest. Now his journey was almost over, he believed Jack and Carlos had traveled fast and were safe within their own shelter. The vision of Ruth's pretty figure battling toward him through the wind seemed a good omen.
Both of them stretched out their hands. "Where's Jack?" they cried in the same breath. And Ruth was glad she had caught Jim's big hands in her warm ones, for the great, self-controlled overseer of the Rainbow Ranch shook like a child in a chill. "Aren't Jack and Carlos with you?" he queried hoarsely. And Ruth shook her head, drawing him, stumbling like a blind man, to their camp-fire.
All night long she sat by the fire with him while the girls and Ralph Merrit made coffee and walked back and forth from the tent to them. No one thought of going to bed. Jim wished to be off at once to recommence his search, but Ruth persuaded him to wait till daylight. For his sake she pretended to believe that Jack was too clever not to have found a refuge for herself and Carlos for the night. They were glad that the little Indian boy had run away with Jim and Jack to the mine, for it was better that Jack should not be alone.
At the first streak of dawn a light footfall sounded some distance away. Jim and Ruth and Ralph Merrit sprang up from the smouldering fire. "It's Jack!" Ruth cried happily, so that Jean and Olive and Frieda heard her, and came running pale and breathless from the shelter of the tent.
Stealing up the pathway of light made by the first streak of rose color in the sky was little brown Carlos, but he walked alone.
"Where's Jack?" called everybody this time. And Carlos shook his head uncertainly. He could not understand. There stood "The Big White Chief," and certainly he must have brought their companion back with him. Why did they ask him about "The Girl Who Was Never Afraid"? He was only a little boy, even though an Indian; he was hungry and cold and tired and had found his way all alone through the darkness of night in a strange country, and no one, not even "The Princess," seemed glad to see him. Carlos blinked, but his bronze, statuesque face showed absolutely no emotion. He dropped a little gray ball of fur on the ground, which Frieda picked up with a cry of pleasure.
CHAPTER XII
CARLOS MAKES GOOD
"DON'T, please, Mr. Colter!" Olive faltered.
Frieda clutched at Jean's skirts, with big tears in her eyes, and Jean stared at the scene with a frightened face. Ralph Merrit had walked some distance away and Ruth had gone back to their tent, worn out by her second disappointment over Jack's failure to return. The three girls who remained had rarely seen anyone so angry as Jim Colter. He had not spoken when Carlos first returned; now he made the boy stand up before him and give an account of himself.
Ruth was crying when she heard a swish of a whip through the air and thought she caught the sound of a sob from Frieda. She listened again. Jim was speaking in a voice she did not know he could use, and for a minute she turned quite cold.
"You deserter," the voice said harshly. "I forgave you for running away from camp this morning, when I told you to stay behind, and then when I leave you for an instant you turn traitor the second time. There is no blood of an Indian Chief in your veins; they at least keep faith with their friends." Swish! Ruth knew the whip had struck again.
She slipped quietly on the scene. Olive and Frieda were both crying, and Jean was biting her trembling lips. Jim's face was crimson and his blue eyes blazed as only a man's can who is slow to anger. Only Carlos stood as still as stone. He had but one thin shirt over his slender body, but when he staggered it was from fatigue not pain. He bore his punishment with the silence and fortitude of an Indian warrior.
Jim had lifted his stick for the third time and this blow he meant to make the severest of all. A small, white hand closed over the raised whip. "Stop, Mr. Jim," Ruth said quietly. "Carlos is a child and whatever he has done he is too tired for you to punish him now. I think he did not mean to desert Jack any more than you did." Ruth did not intend her words as a reproach, but Jim's arm dropped quickly to his side and he turned so pale that she was frightened. "Take Carlos away and see that he has something to eat," he ordered Olive, "and, Jean, make Frieda stop crying." Without glancing at Ruth, Jim picked up a flask of beef tea, which he had had prepared for Jack's return, and without another word set out to search for Jack.
A little later Ralph Merrit proposed that he too should go out to reconnoiter. Having also met with misfortune at "Miner's Folly," he knew the country all about the neighborhood. The young man was saying good-by to Ruth and Frieda, when Jean's face, paler and more wistful than usual, appeared over her chaperon's shoulder.
"Ruth, dear, Olive and I want to go with Mr. Merrit to look for Jack," she begged. "Yes, I know it is awfully selfish of us to leave you, but we are perfectly worn out with waiting. Besides, Jack don't know Mr. Merrit and he will never be able to persuade her to return with him."
Ralph laughed. "Frieda, won't you give me the blue ribbon on your hair to prove to your sister I have been a guest of the caravan party?" he asked. "Though, of course, I don't believe she would be so obstinate."
Frieda solemnly unwound the band of ribbon which she used to keep her hair out of her eyes, and Ralph tied it in his buttonhole, where the ends floated out like blue pennants; but understanding their impatience, Ruth let Olive and Jean go to assist in the search for Jack.
It was now broad daylight; the birds were singing and the sun shining with the peculiar brilliancy that follows a rain-washed night. Ruth put Frieda to bed, as the little girl was exhausted; then she persuaded Carlos to lie down on her own cot. The boy had said nothing, only he never let go the gray ball of fur which he had brought home from the woods, but kept it pressed close to him. Ruth had no idea what animal Carlos had found, though it had a sharp, pointed nose, restless eyes, and every now and then tore at something with its baby teeth. Hidden near an old tree in the woods back of the gold mine, Carlos had run across a baby wolf cub, and having a curious fellowship with animals, had brought it back with him, hoping he might be allowed to raise it as a dog.
The ranch girls knew of Carlos' strange communion with birds and beasts. They would come at his call and eat out of his brown hand, but it did not seem remarkable to them, as the boy had lived always in the open and was only a half-tamed creature himself.
Ruth left the children alone in the tent. Fifteen minutes later she returned and Carlos had again disappeared. This time she made up her mind that the Indian boy must be sent back to his own people, since they could do nothing to stop his disobedience. But Olive had been trying to teach the little fellow to read and write, and in straightening up her bed Ruth found a piece of torn yellow paper. On it Carlos had written in quaint, scrawling letters: "I Go Girl Never Afrid. Find Not, Come Back Not."
Ruth put the letter away; her heart once more softened toward the lad, hoping for his sake that he might be the one to bring Jack to them.
But no one need have been troubled about Jack on this wonderful summer morning. Quite comfortably she awoke in her nest of branches to a bewildering chorus of song, a little stiff, of course; hungry and thirsty. But climbing out on the ground, she ran for half a mile until the soreness was out of her muscles and the surging blood warmed her heart and cheeks. Jack took off her sweater, carrying it under her arm, the wind blew back her hair, which had the colors of the sun in it, her lips were open and full and a deep crimson. If ever any of the old-time pagan goddesses that one reads of in mythology sheds her influence over the modern girl, Jack had drawn some of her spirit from Diana. She looked as you might imagine Diana to have looked after she had spent the night hunting with her maidens in some lonely forest – fresh, brilliant and gay.
When Jack stopped to rest from her run she saw, near the rocky gorges and in many of the waste places, red cacti blooming against the gray buttes, like splashes of flame. Gathering a little she stuck it in her belt, but Jack hoped to discover a cactus plant of a different kind. Her father and Jim had taught her all they knew of the plants and flowers that grow in the American desert, for they wished her to be prepared for just such an emergency as had now befallen her. At first Jack kept close to the path at the side of the gorge, retracing the steps she had wrongly taken the night before. When she came beyond the thicket through which the cougar had followed her, a stretch of arid country spread away to her right on this side the gorge. Standing in the desert with nothing about it but sand and sage brush, Jack spied the cactus she sought. It rose like a tree, with thick, bunchy leaves at its base, and dozens of clusters of small mustard-colored flowers on separate branches sticking out from its summit like the ribs of an umbrella.
The American aloe has been the salvation of many a traveler in the desert country of the West. Hurrying to it, Jack cut away some of the thick leaves and then settling herself comfortably in the sand she sucked the sap from the leaves until her throat was no longer parched and her hunger and thirst were both appeased.
She was resting, trying to make up her mind to go back to the ravine, where Jim would surely find her, when she heard a well-known whistle. It was not like the note of a bird, and yet it did not seem to come from a human throat, yet Jack recognized it at once. It was the odd sound Carlos made when calling to the birds in the woods or fields. The call had traveled a great distance in the clear morning air.
Jack clapped her hands loudly. "I am coming, Carlos, I am coming," she cried; "wait for me." Then she ran back toward the edge of the cliff. She would have liked to cry out with pleasure when she first saw Carlos, but instead kept quite still.
The lad had made himself a whistle from a stalk of wild grass that grew like a reed. He was wandering along searching everywhere for Jack, yet beguiling his way with wonderful woodland noises which he made through his whistle. A robin sat perched on his black hair, several other birds fluttered over his head, afraid to alight and yet unwilling to leave him. If Jack had suggested the huntress Diana, Carlos looked like a follower of Pan. Surely in mythological days just such red-brown boys had accompanied the old wood god, making the weird and eerie music that caused a smile to hover ever on his wild face.
The caravan party, except Jim and the truants, were eating luncheon when Jack and Carlos burst in upon them. Jack flew to Ruth, flinging her arms about her and giving her a breathless hug. "It was all my fault, as usual," she explained, "but there is nothing the matter with me except a bruise on my forehead and an empty feeling in another place." Jack stopped, suddenly discovering the presence of the stranger, Ralph Merrit.
Hugging Jack with one arm, Ruth respectfully shook hands with Carlos with the other. The small lad tried not to show emotion, but a light of triumph shone in his eyes. He and not the "Big White Chief" had found "The Girl Who Was Never Afraid." Now surely he would be forgiven the sin of his failure to keep faith.
Worn and haggard, Jim returned a few hours later to find his fellow-travelers engaged in cheerful conversation and seemingly forgetful of the strain.
"I hope nothing will happen to me again while we are on this trip," Jack remarked carelessly. "I thought last night in the storm that the gypsy who came to our ranch had surely put her curse on me. You know she announced that something would happen to me that would force me to depend on other people, and as I had to depend on Carlos to show me the way home to the caravan, perhaps the spell is past."
Olive, sitting next Jack, gave a shudder. She had never confessed how much she had thought of the woman's evil words to her, but Frieda, who was playing with the stones Jack had brought back from the gold mine, made a quick turn in the conversation.
"Jean," she announced indignantly, "you told me you'd give me the gold Jim and Jack brought from the mine with them, and now they haven't brought any, because Ralph Merrit says these rocks are no better than other pebbles. I really did think they might find some gold, though I said I knew they wouldn't," she ended mournfully.
Jean laughed. "Same here, baby. I confess I thought maybe they would come home with a grand discovery and we would all be as rich as cream forever afterwards. Did you have any such idea in your head, Jack?"
Jack blushed. "Not really," she conceded; "but of course as soon as one hears anything about a gold mine, one goes quite crazy. Remember how we used to plan, when we were little girls, to run away and find the 'Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow' as soon as we grew up?"
Jean and Frieda nodded, but the entire party was soon busy with their plans for resuming their trip in the early morning. Jim asked Ralph Merrit to go along to the Yellowstone Park with them. The young man had been through the western reserve once before, and since his experience with Jack, Jim thought it might be just as well to have another man to divide responsibilities for the remainder of the trip.
By nine o'clock the next day the caravaners had moved away from the quiet oasis in the desert, their tent had been folded up and the horses reluctantly driven from the fresh grass. The little place had become but a memory to its dwellers by the wayside.