Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party Part 12

"Please tell us some more about the boys' camp," begged Blue Bonnet, "I've heard about the Big Spring, and Uncle has promised to take me there. But, somehow, he never seems to get time. Is it a camp just for boys?--it sounds so interesting."

"It's one of Uncle's fads," Knight returned, showing by his tone that he was rather proud of "Uncle's fad." "He's tremendously interested in boys and has started a sort of 'get together' movement for fellows who live on big ranches and farms and don't get a chance to see much of other young people--"

"Like me!" Blue Bonnet nodded.

"They club in on expenses, share the work, and, incidentally, have more fun than some of them ever had before," he continued. "Uncle isn't at all strong--that's why he came back from his mission--but he works hard all the time, always doing good--" he stopped abruptly. "I didn't mean to brag, but when I get started on Uncle Bayard, I never know when to stop."

"And Carita--does she go camping, too?" asked Blue Bonnet.

"Aunt Cynthy often brings the whole family for over Sunday," he replied. Then a thought seemed to strike him. "Why don't you all come up and camp--it isn't a hard trip?"

Blue Bonnet clapped her hands. "Oh, I think it would be perfectly lovely. Grandmother, may we?" she asked.

Mrs. Clyde looked up with her sympathetic smile. "It sounds attractive. Perhaps we can arrange it."

Without seeming to do so Grandmother had heard every word of the conversation, and her heart had warmed to the boy who spoke so glowingly of his uncle's work. Knight Judson was a manly young fellow, she concluded, the right sort to be among girls; the best of companions for the frail, bookish Eastern lad.

Alec himself was charmed with Knight. There was something fascinating about a boy who had spent most of his life in the open, and without much aid from books had yet thought more deeply than most youths of his age. He was tall and strong, all bone and muscle, with something about him that was suggestive of a restless colt; but a thoroughbred, every inch of him.

After breakfast the two boys set out to hunt for Knight's horse, as nothing had been seen or heard of that frisky pony since he had vanished so unceremoniously the evening before. Alec carried a lariat, for learning to la.s.so had become the absorbing pa.s.sion of his life, and young Judson, in spite of the hampering folds of the sling about his left arm, could give lessons in that art to any boy of his age in Texas.

Blue Bonnet and Mrs. Clyde looked after the youthful pair with interested eyes. It was plain that Knight had brought a new element into Alec's life, and these two good friends rejoiced, though they said nothing and only smiled with new understanding.

"I'm glad we nearly tipped over!" Blue Bonnet suddenly declared.

"Blue Bonnet!" exclaimed her grandmother in a pained tone.

"Well, I reckon I didn't mean that," confessed Blue Bonnet after a moment's reflection. "But I'm glad we've met Knight Judson. Alec has had too many girls around him here. He needs a spell of roughing it,"

and then, as she saw an odd look on her grandmother's face, she asked quickly: "Isn't 'roughing it' in good society?"

Mrs. Clyde laughed. "I believe it moves in the best circles--here."

"That's good, for there isn't a Ma.s.sachusetts word that could possibly take its place."

"The dining-table is cleared, Benita says," Sarah announced from the doorway, "and we can begin our sewing lesson."

They all repaired to the house, and a few minutes later the big dining-room was the scene of great activity; the table strewn with the bright-hued pieces of material, Benita smoothing and pinning the patterns, the Senora superintending, and the girls cutting and snipping to their hearts' content. At the same time there went on an incessant chatter, chatter, to the cheerful accompaniment of the sewing-machine.

When Juanita entered to spread the cloth for their early dinner, the girls looked up in surprise.

"I never knew time fly so quickly before," said Debby.

"If I'd known this kind of sewing was so easy and so fascinating,"

Blue Bonnet declared, "I'd have taken it up before. It's much nicer than embroidery or mending. Just see how much I've done!" She proudly held up the bright red garment.

Sarah scanned it with perplexed eyes. "It looks rather queer to me,"

she said.

Kitty examined it, too, then s.n.a.t.c.hed the suit from Blue Bonnet's hands. "Look!" she bade the rest, "--there's no place to get into it.

Blue Bonnet has sewn it up the back!"

There was a great outcry at this, which had the unexpected effect of making Blue Bonnet angry.

"There's nothing on earth gives Kitty Clark such pleasure as finding me out in a mistake," she declared with flas.h.i.+ng eyes and cheeks that burned with mortification. Then she turned on Kitty,--"I'm sorry the ranch can't offer you any other enjoyment!" she said scathingly and then, s.n.a.t.c.hing back her ridiculed work, flung herself out of the room.

Kitty's cheeks turned as red as her hair and she was just framing an angry reply to hurl after Blue Bonnet when she met Mrs. Clyde's eyes, full of a pained surprise. The girl checked the words on her lips at once, but a few hot tears came in spite of her efforts.

"I was only joking," she said with a catch in her voice.

"I'm afraid it was my fault," said Sarah. "I shouldn't have called attention to her mistake. I'll go and apologize."

Kitty turned to Mrs. Clyde. "I apologize to _you_, Senora," she said, adding proudly, "but I've nothing to apologize for to Blue Bonnet.

Half the fun of being a We are Seven is being able to say just what we want to. If everybody is suddenly going to be thin-skinned, I'll have to go about muzzled."

"Blue Bonnet was hasty," said Mrs. Clyde, "and I'm sure she'll be ready to apologize as soon as she has thought it over."

The sewing lesson for that day ended in a gloomy silence. At dinner the two "magpies," as Uncle Joe had nicknamed them, were mute. This unheard of state of affairs would have aroused comment at any other time, but just now their attention was diverted.

"Doctor" Abbott, who had ridden over to "take a look at Knight's wrist," had stayed to dinner--there being always room for one more at that elastic table--and his bright humorous talk had completely fascinated every one. After dinner the men went off for a smoke, and the girls retired for their siesta in an atmosphere as hazy as if they too had indulged in the fragrant weed.

They went to the swimming hole later in the day, but somehow the zest was all gone from the sport, with the two leading spirits distrait and moody, avoiding direct speech with each other, and preserving an att.i.tude of injured pride. Blue Bonnet had made up her mind that Kitty owed her an apology, while Kitty obstinately refused even in her thoughts to acknowledge herself in the wrong.

"Blue Bonnet thinks she's the king-pin of the universe," she mused angrily. "The others can keep on spoiling her if they want to, but I'm not going to kowtow all the time. They ape her every action,--_I'll_ show her that one of us has independence."

Keyed up by this formula, repeated mentally a great many times, Kitty began to indulge in heroics. Aching to excite some admiration for herself she did "stunts" in the water that would have terrified her the day before. Once she plunged her bright head under the water and kept it there until she was almost black in the face, in an effort to prove her "staying powers." It only frightened the other girls and went apparently unnoticed by Blue Bonnet for whose benefit the test had been made.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'_I_ BELIEVE THE ONLY WAY TO LEARN TO SWIM IS TO DIVE IN HEAD-FIRST.'"]

"I'll show her we're not all 'fraid-cats!" Kitty resolved pa.s.sionately. "I believe," she announced to the girls, in a tone loud enough to reach Blue Bonnet, who was doing an overhand stroke in the quiet water of the opposite bank. "_I_ believe the only way to learn to swim is to dive in head-first--then you just _have to_. Big boys always toss little fellows into the middle of the pool and make 'em scramble back--they always do it right off. Here goes!"

She poised only for a moment on the bank, not daring to give herself time to reconsider. Blue Bonnet shot a quick glance at her; she saw at once that Kitty had chosen too shallow a spot,--a dive at that point might be dangerous. At any other time she would have shouted a hasty warning, but now she hesitated,--and in that second Kitty shot head-first into the water.

The girls gave a gasp, and kept their eyes on the spot where she had gone down, waiting to see the red locks reappear. But the water closed over Kitty,--and stayed closed.

"Blue Bonnet!" they shouted shrilly, "she hasn't come up!"

Blue Bonnet felt a queer tightening around her heart; she had heard of boys breaking their necks that way. With a few powerful strokes she reached the shallows and felt for Kitty. "Help me girls--quick!" she cried, "she's struck her head on the bottom." She had seized Kitty by this time and held the girl's head above the water, but the body hung limp and heavy in her arms. The girls sprang to help and among them they managed to lift the slight figure to the bank and lay it tenderly on the soft gra.s.s. Kitty's face was deathly white, and from a gash on the top of her head a trickling stream was dyeing her bright locks a deeper red.

Blue Bonnet's teeth were chattering. "Go for somebody!" she gasped, and then, as Debby started on the run, she called after her--"That young doctor--bring him!" Then she turned to Sarah: "Here, help me set her up--work her arms--so!"

Dripping as she fled like a frightened water-sprite, Debby burst upon the others as they sat under the magnolia and screamed tragically:

"Come quick--the doctor, everybody! Kitty dove and Blue Bonnet went down after her and she's drowned!"

Then breathless, exhausted, and with her bare feet cut and bleeding from her run over the rough meadow, she fell headlong at Mrs. Clyde's feet.

Uncle Cliff dropped his pipe and ran, followed by the two boys and Abbott, who paused only to catch up his medicine case from the veranda, and then sped like the wind after the others. Mrs. Clyde had turned ghastly white at Debby's cry and had sprung up to follow the men. But the sight of the little messenger lying in a pathetic heap by her chair, stopped her. Hastily summoning Benita she helped carry Debby into the house and put her to bed; and not until a faint tired moan told of returning consciousness, did she yield to her anxiety and hasten to the pool.

With her feet winged by fear she crossed the meadow, ran as she had not run for forty years, and burst upon the group on the bank with a wild cry--"My girl, my girl--where is she?"