The Ranch Girls at Home Again Part 14

Finally, with Frank's arm about her, Jack managed to sit up.

"I am so glad it was you who found me, Frank," she said a moment later.

"All night I have thought you would come." She did not even try to walk or to explain what had happened, but let Frank lift her up on his horse, where she leaned against him in utter weakness and dependence, while the horse started slowly toward home.

The ride needs must be a long and fatiguing one even though aid reach them before their arrival at the Lodge. And Jack's pulse was still too faint to have her suffer further exhaustion. But after a while Frank leaned over, pressing his lips against the girl's heavy gold brown hair which had become unloosened from her long wandering and hung in two curled braids down her back.

"Are you glad I found you because you care for me, Jack?" he whispered, feeling that it was not altogether fair of him to ask such a question at such a time, and yet too impatient to wait.

The girl answered, "Yes" quite simply. A little later she added like a child: "Besides I knew you wouldn't scold, Frank. And of course I have been foolish and headstrong. I don't seem to know how to grow up. You'll ask Ruth and Jim not to make me explain to them until I have rested."

Frank smiled, but felt a curious lump in his throat--this new humility and dependence were so unlike Jack. Unconsciously the arm that had been holding her up closed more firmly about the girl's figure.

"Jack, Jack," he murmured, leaning low down until his lips were not far from her ear. "I have waited so long, I can wait no longer. You have just said that you cared for me, and for the second time I have believed you. Then you mean, you must mean that you are willing to be my wife."

For just an instant the girl's body quivered as though with a weakness beyond her power of control. The next moment she was shaking her head quietly and firmly, and although her companion could not see her face he heard her whisper, "No," with a measure of her old decision.

"Very well then," Frank returned just as firmly, "you shall never be troubled by my asking you that question again. As soon as possible I shall go home to England."

Once more the girl's shoulders trembled as if she had been struck an unexpected blow, but she made no reply. Frank realized that he was not playing fair and that she should not be troubled further.

For five or ten minutes more they rode on in complete silence, while Jack felt herself growing weaker and weaker. She was ashamed to be such a burden and yet only her own will power and Frank's arm were sustaining her.

A little later and Jack had again to be put down on the ground in a half fainting condition. By this time they had pa.s.sed beyond the stretches of sandy desert and were in one of the outlying meadows of the Rainbow Ranch, not far from a branch of their creek. As Jack was almost unconscious Frank was able to bathe her face more comfortably, pus.h.i.+ng back the tangled hair out of her eyes, that she might look more like the girl he loved. Then he shut his lips close together and his chin became squarer and his jaw firmer than ever Jacqueline's had been in her most obstinate days.

"I have just told a lie," he said to himself and yet rather grimly.

"For of course I shall go on asking Jack to marry me until she finally consents. If she did not care for me that would be another matter and I should be a cad to annoy her. But there can't be any other barrier real or fancied that is big enough to come between us permanently."

Then, as Jack opened her eyes for the second time, and sat straight up as though vexed with her own weakness, Frank had a sudden recollection of Olive's strange message to him when he had first started on his search.

"Tell her it has all been a dreadful mistake and that there is nothing in the whole world that will make me so happy as her engagement to you."

"What could Olive's words mean? Who had made a mistake? Had Jack been under some cruelly false impression?" Frank was utterly mystified. Yet he held out his hand. "Come, dear, we will walk for a few minutes," he said gently, "and I will lead the horse. You will feel less stiff and tired with a little exercise. See, the daylight has come. How beautiful and fragrant the world is!"

Some change in Frank's voice, or in his manner--the girl did not know or care to think what the change might mean--made her take the hand held out so quietly toward her and hold it close in her own cold fingers. How exquisitely she could always be at peace with Frank, how perfectly he understood things without having them explained to him! After all, he was not going to be angry with her because of her unreasonable and unkind behavior. She had felt his anger a little more than she was willing to endure in her present state of exhaustion.

So Jack looked overhead with more of her accustomed sparkle and animation than she had yet showed. The sky was a radiant rose color, so deeply pink that it cast its reflection on the ground at her feet. They were near a group of trees and the birds were beginning to waken one another with mild reproaches and then sudden bursts of eloquent song.

"Frank," Jack began pensively enough, "I never saw a more wonderful dawn. But do you happen to have anything in your pocket more substantial than beef tea? I have not had anything to eat since yesterday at noon and I think perhaps I am dying of hunger."

With a laugh her companion let go her hand, drawing a package from his pocket. "Ruth gave me this at midnight along with the beef tea, but I have not been interested enough to see what was in it," he explained.

Greedily Jack tore open the bundle and had devoured a large chicken sandwich before good manners even suggested her sharing the luncheon with its owner. Afterwards Frank also confessed to being hungry, and so they walked on toward the Lodge like happy, runaway children, almost safe at home again.

Yet while he talked and laughed and ate Frank Kent was not forgetting Olive's words nor her final injunction to him. "Please tell her what I say when you first find her. Don't wait too long," she had begged.

"Jack, dear," Frank began casually in the midst of something else they had been discussing, "there is something I want to ask your forgiveness for before another five minutes have pa.s.sed. Because I don't think I can hold out much longer. Back there on horseback when you were nearly dead with fatigue I was angry with you and told you that I never meant to ask you to marry me again. That was the most untruthful speech a man ever made! Because if you are too tired to listen I may have to wait until you have rested a little while, but not any longer. You know you care for me, dear. You are not the kind of a girl who would deceive a man by your words or your manner after all these years of friends.h.i.+p! There is some mystery that is keeping you from showing me your real feelings. I can't guess what it is. Yet Olive must think so too, for she told me to tell you that you had been making a dreadful mistake about something or other, heaven only knows what! And that our engagement would make her happier than anything in the world."

Jacqueline Ralston stood ankle deep in the rose-touched meadow gra.s.s with her straight-forward, honest gray eyes looking into the blue eyes of her companion.

"Did Olive tell you to say that to me? Did she really and truly seem to mean it?" she asked wonderingly.

Frank Kent nodded, not trusting himself to speak, nor wis.h.i.+ng to lose an instant's vision of the girl's face, or an inflection of her voice.

Jack had been pale before; but now her face had flushed with such a look of exquisite gentleness and surrender, that in spite of all she had recently endured she had never been so beautiful.

Then it was like her to say with self-evident sincerity: "Of course you are right, Frank dear, I could not hide how much I cared for you even though I have done my best. It will be hard for me to leave the ranch and the people I love, but it would be harder to stay on here--without you!"

CHAPTER XIX

RAINBOW CASTLE

SOME weeks had pa.s.sed, and it was now early fall at the ranch. But another change had taken place besides that of the seasons, for Jim and Ruth and the Ranch girls had moved away from the old Lodge into their splendid new home.

To everybody's satisfaction, however, the Lodge was not deserted; for Ralph Merrit had changed into it from his old quarters, and his friend, Henry Tilford Russell, was still with him--not that the young professor had become an invalid owing to his accident at the Rainbow Mine, for his broken leg was completely healed. But as he had come west for his general health somehow the Rainbow Ranch seemed to hold more curative properties than any other place. And Ralph was delighted to have his society. The youthful professor of ancient languages appeared to have recovered in a measure from his previous prejudice against girls, or at least he was able to find the companions.h.i.+p of the four Ranch girls endurable.

The move to the big house had been somewhat hastened for several reasons, the most important being that Jacqueline Ralston and Frank Kent were to be married during the first part of October. Frank would not consent to returning to England without Jack. He insisted that she was far too uncertain a quant.i.ty to be left alone in her beloved western lands, since her prairies were his most dangerous rival. Moreover, as he had promised his father to stand for a Liberal seat in Parliament that same winter, Jack was needed at Kent House to aid him in winning his election.

Now it seemed that all of the intimate friends that the girls had acquired in their two years away from home, had suddenly decided to pay visits to the Rainbow Ranch. Among them were the Princess Colonna and her nephew, Giovanni, who, because of the death of her husband without heir, had inherited the Prince's ancient t.i.tle.

Miss Katherine Winthrop had finally arrived, and her presence seemed to compensate Olive for the loss of a good deal of Jack's companions.h.i.+p; yet when the two friends were able to be together without any one else, they were as intimate and as devoted as at any time in their lives. And though Jack never referred to the subject of their unfortunate conversation, she could find no trace in Olive of unhappiness or regret.

It is true that Miss Winthrop and the girl, who was like a peculiarly devoted and sympathetic daughter, spent numbers of afternoons in the nearby Indian village discussing Olive's desire to become a teacher to the Indians when she was old enough and sufficiently well trained for the task. For the older woman was wise enough not to oppose the girl's present fancy as Jack had done, only insisting that she wait until she felt sure of her own fitness.

But although Olive had frequent talks with old Laska, who never could entirely connect the charming young American lady with the child she had persecuted, there was a new member of the village community with whom Olive would have no conversation. And this was her once devoted friend and admirer, the Indian boy, Carlos.

After Jacqueline Ralston's home-coming, when she had the opportunity to explain her unaccountable disappearance, it was Jim Colter who at once armed himself with a short whip and demanded that the business of punis.h.i.+ng Carlos be left entirely to him. Yet, notwithstanding her long night of wandering about in the sand, too weary and too stupefied to find her way home or to believe that the boy would not eventually return with her horse, Jack immediately became Carlos' defender, finally persuading her guardian to punish the boy no further than by not permitting him again to set foot on Rainbow Ranch. She also confessed her own share in the day's difficulties, taking a part of the blame upon herself by insisting that if she had not struck the boy he would never have attempted so ugly and dangerous a revenge.

Jim and Frank, though at last agreeing to Jack's wish, did have one interview with Carlos. But though they came away leaving the boy frightened and submissive, he never was brought to confess just what he had intended in riding off with Jack's horse. Perhaps during the long afternoon he had vainly been trying to think of some form of vengeance and then at the last moment the idea of stealing Jack's horse and deserting her had come like a sudden inspiration. Or perhaps the boy had meant to return--no one ever knew. He had gone on with the two horses to the nearest Indian village and never again left it for any other home. For the effort to civilize Carlos had been a vain one and he cheerfully reverted to the habits and companions.h.i.+p of his own race.

Nevertheless, he did not go unpunished, although no one ever knew in what his punishment consisted. But the refusal of Olive's further friends.h.i.+p was a sorrow which the Indian lad endured in silence to the end of his days. For he never married and was that very rare figure among his people--an old bachelor, looked after by old women and the squaws of other men. And this when half a dozen Indian maidens would gladly have mated with Carlos. For he was unusually handsome and was always admired and reverenced by his own nation.

At the time they moved into the new house Ruth and Jim and the girls were feeling particularly happy and prosperous, because, not long after the announcement of Jack's and Frank's engagement, Ralph Merrit had made discoveries of fresh supplies of gold in Rainbow Mine. Also, he had devised the long-sought-for method by which the gold could be extracted without too great danger and expense. He had not trusted entirely to his own judgment and experience, for three of the greatest mining experts in the West had been sent for, who were open in their praises of Ralph's idea and plan, predicting a big future for him and offering him opportunities with them should he ever care to leave the Rainbow Mine.

But this new "pot of gold at the end of the rainbow," Ralph had straightway announced was to be his particular wedding gift to Jack and Frank. Certainly he had no idea of deserting his old friends, now that he was again able to prove his usefulness. So he was working on in apparent contentment when the Princess and the young Prince appeared.

Then once more his dream faded and it was hard for Ralph not to think of his work as mere drudgery in which the labor was almost all his and the large rewards for others.

For like lightning out of a clear sky, soon after the Princess Colonna's installation in their new home, even before Ruth or the girls had become accustomed to her presence, with entire formality she asked Jim Colter's consent to Jean Bruce's marriage to her nephew, Giovanni, the young Prince Colonna. When Jim was only barely able to express his surprise and consternation at such a suggestion, she explained to him a complete understanding of his feelings, that this method of procedure in a question of marriage was the custom in Italy, her nephew's country.

Therefore the young Prince would never dream of speaking to Jean without first obtaining her guardian's approval. Nevertheless, Mr. Colter must not believe that there was any lack of affection on the Prince Colonna's part, for he had never ceased thinking and talking of Jean from that first hour of their meeting in the Pincio Gardens in Rome.

In reply to the Princess, Jim could only flush and stammer, saying that he would prefer first talking the matter over with Mrs. Colter before giving his answer. For the truth was that Jim really wished to shout aloud his refusal to consider such a proposition even for five minutes.

Jean to marry a wretched little Italian youth, no taller than she was herself, when she might have almost any clean, hard working American fellow! It was bad enough for his adored Jack to be going away with an _Englishman_, but then Frank Kent was different!

Nevertheless, Jim understood that the reply which he really wished to make was not altogether fair and certainly not courteous to their guests. Ruth must at once find some way of clearing up the situation.

So soon as her husband had explained the matter to her Ruth was under the impression that she did see a way. With the Princess' and the Prince Colonna's consent she herself would first speak to Jean, letting them hear later whether Miss Bruce was willing to listen to the Prince's suit.