Izola L. Forrester

“ I shall tell Ruth about it. You know how old-fashioned and motherly she is, Miss Murray. Sometimes, I almost think she is my dearest friend, although I like the other girls, too. Ruth says that my way of planting is an allegory. She says we all of us sow kind deeds and happy thoughts broadcast, and trust to the winds that blow, and the rains that fall, and the sun that is sure to shine sometime, to make them take roots and grow, even in strange hearts. Let’s sit on this stone seat, and talk about the ranch. I wish that our outing club had a chance to go to some place like that. ”

“ Polly was laughing and eager, and managed to take a corner off the white square, but it was Ruth, quiet, steady-handed Grandma, as the girls called her, with spectacles and all, who lifted the rifle to her shoulder, aimed and sighted slowly, and put her bullet where it should go.
“There’s one place where you can’t trust to luck,” said Sandy. “That’s when you’re leveling a gun. You’ve got to think and figure too. Ruth’s got a calculating eye, I should say. We had one little shaver with us, in the Shoshone uprising, with only one eye, and he could pick off any brave’s topknot you’d prefer. ”

“ We’re only plain people, Jean, lass.”
“Oh, mother, the girls at Calvert are not what the world calls wealthy. They seem so to us because we have so little in a way. We are rich in land and stock, and love, but very little real cash. It’s only a different scale of values, dear. What difference does it make whether father gives one of us a yearling or a new pony for a birthday gift, and down yonder, the Admiral gives Polly a new camera, or a necklace. It all comes to the same thing. Peggie will hold her own among them all, dear, and they will love her too. ”

“ CRULLERS’ PAROLE “Oh, grandfather, dear—” exclaimed Polly, holding up a slice temptingly on a plate, “Shortcake?”
“No, Polly, don’t coax me. Not a bite to eat. I’ve just been riding along the river. And girls, that reminds me.” The Admiral sank into one of the deep-seated garden chairs, and held up his finger at them all mysteriously. “I have seen her again.”
“The same girl?” asked Polly eagerly, bending forward and even forgetting the shortcake.
“The same one. I never saw a girl ride so splendidly in all my life. She is the admiration of every one along the river road. ”

“ Polly, as a relief to my conscience, I wish to hand over some of the spoils to the club that had sense enough to know prehistoric bones when it saw them. Here is one hundred, and I knew you’d like it in gold. Girls always do. Five twenty-dollar gold pieces, one for each of you, and you shall be honorary members anyway of my own private geological society when I start it.”
“Oh, Doctor Smith,” cried Polly, flushing warmly at the unexpectedness of the gift. “We don’t deserve this.” ”

“ The Murray ranch lay in a pleasant valley, with foothills and buttes surrounding it. Polly’s first thought was, where could the trees be? Excepting for the cottonwoods that fringed the creek bed, and the spruces rising spire-like in every place they could find a foothold, there seemed to a Virginia-bred girl, to be a dearth of trees. The ranch was built facing the south, and almost backed into the buttes at the north for shelter. The main log cabin was only one story high, but broad and long, and home-like looking. ”

“ The little path led down to the creek, and along its winding course until it turned a bend, and slipped into rapids around a rough, old butte that the children at the ranch had named Thunder Cloud, years before. Here the creek bed was full of rocks, as if, Polly said, years before, some giant had thrown them down there like a handful of pebbles. A little farther on, the creek broadened and deepened, and there lay the swimming hole. ”

“ It is the brotherliness of humanity that is the most ancient law of all. It is the law of the human pack, as Sandy says.”
“Oh, girls, pack!” exclaimed Polly suddenly. “That makes me think of animals. We’re forgetting about the bones.”
“Bones? What does the child mean?” said Mrs. Sandy.
Then they coaxed her down to where the Chief sat explaining to Ted and Sue the difference between the Sioux and the Crows. And they told of the find down in Zed’s gulch. Sandy listened with steady, unblinking eyes, and brows drawn together a little.
“It must be some bear skeleton, dear,” Mrs. Sandy said. ”

“ I always knew it would happen some day. Love will bring to us that which is ours if we trust.’ Isn’t that beautiful to remember? Love will bring to us that which is ours, if we trust.”
“Well, I’m trusting that those bones will turn out to be a perfect and well-preserved dinosaur,” proclaimed Sue, rising, “and it’s getting late.”
They left the cabin-door open now, with the screen door fastened, and long after the rest were asleep, Ruth lay wide awake thinking. A head raised cautiously from Polly’s pillow. ”

“ That’s like Polly. Virginia isn’t on a star. It’s right down back of Topnotch there.”
“Yes, and what kind of an Indian would you make with pigtails, and spectacles, goose?” added Polly.
“I don’t care,” sighed Ruth. “I feel that way. I think I’d like to live out here.”
“There you are! And Peggie said to-day, she thought she’d like to live down East,” laughed Polly. “It’s like Aunty Welcome tells about flies on a window. All those on the outside want to get in, and all on the inside want to get out.” ”

“ Immigrants? Ted! How much you girls have to learn. I don’t know how I can tell it to you in a few words, but if you had lived out in a large, new, unsettled State, you would know that the hope of its future lies in its blessed homeseekers. Where do they come from? Where don’t they, you mean, Polly. They are people who really need a home, who love the open, and the new land, and the chance of making good, as we say out West here. ”

“ What had seemed only one of Polly’s balloons, as Ruth called them, had developed into a very tangible possibility. As Ted said, when one is afraid of anything, you must not run. You must turn about, and hit it hard. Ted was a splendid smasher of windmills.
All Queen’s Ferry knew that five of Miss Calvert’s girls were to spend their vacation on a ranch out in Wyoming, but it took the strawberry festival, and Polly’s birthday party to make it understand likewise that they were earning their own way out there. Steadily, the sum in Ruth’s treasury mounted higher and higher. ”

“ Polly said, flatly. “Those things are for the nobility, not for hard-working vacation seekers like us. We will take the ‘homeseekers special’ out from Chicago, probably.”
“What’s that, Polly?” asked Sue, suspiciously.
“It’s a train for people who are in real earnest, and want to go some place, and don’t care how they go as long as they get there,” pronounced Polly, gravely.
“I’m in that class,” Ted put in, blithely. “Let’s all be jolly good travelers, girls, and start in ‘roughing it’ from this end. Why, we’d have a good time even if we went on a plank through the air.” ”

“ It’s more fun than a dining car, isn’t it?”
“It’s like starting in to camp out, even now,” Polly declared. “And we’ve all got our traveling duties mapped out, too. I’m to look after the twins, and Sue has charge of the old lady. Isabel has been loaning her fan and some magazines to a young girl who is going West for her health. She sits in the last seat on our side, Miss Murray; you can just see her hair as she leans back. How much more entertaining everything is when you forget about yourself, and feel interested in what the rest of the world is doing?” ”

“ Jean replied, when Polly had explained. “We have no near-by Indian villages. You know that is all done away with now, girls. You are coming to the new West. But Sally Lost Moon will know about it. She is our cook at the ranch, and is an old Shoshone squaw. Our Wyoming tribes are not as artistic as the Adirondack Indians and the Navajos, but we may find some good bead work. It was nice of her to offer, was it not, girls?”
“She is interested in us because she used to be a Calvert girl herself.”
“But, Polly,” protested Ted, suddenly, “she must be about forty. Maybe she knew Miss Diantha Calvert.” ”

“ The world is young still, bless it, and it’s fresh and green and very beautiful, and I do love to see young things playing on it, whether it’s lambs, or children, or rabbits. They’re a wonderful lot alike.”
Jean listened, sitting on the lower step of the little porch, sewing on a new dress for Peggie, that she needed for camping. It was a strong, tan khaki, like the other girls wore, with a divided skirt, and middy blouse. Someway, as she heard what her mother said, it seemed like the propitious moment for Peggie, and she unfolded Polly’s plan. ”

“ He always rides over to meet the Bishop, and looks after everything for him.”
“Isn’t it queer?” Ruth said, all at once. “People aren’t very different any more than birds or animals are. Here you find a cowboy singing hymns and canticles, and with all the East and South to choose from, Miss Diantha married a Westerner who was a scout and rancher. Wouldn’t it be queer if some day we find out we really are all brothers and sisters in one family?”
“Ruth, pay attention. You’re dipping into social economy, and that doesn’t come until you reach college,” laughed Jean. ”

“ So they spent the last of the week having a good time on the ranch, and riding around, bareheaded, merry, and just “full of fun,” as Mrs. Murray said, comfortably.
“Land o’ rest, let them enjoy themselves while they can,” she would say, standing at the low doorway, to watch them at play down in the lower field below the corral. Don and Peggie were giving an exhibition of trick-riding and Ted and Polly were trying to imitate them. “I wish sometimes that I could turn loose hosts of young ones like these out here in our beautiful land, and let them find the world as young as they are. ”

“ They had to take a different route from the riding trail in order to find a way down into the gulch, but an hour’s journey brought them to the cabin where old Zed had lived and died. Through the deep gulch ran the creek, over rocks, and half-sunken trees here and there. Cottonwoods grew in the cool stretch of land between the high walls on either side of limestone, and blue shale, and sandstone. You could trace the course of the creek by the cottonwoods, and already their seeds had spread air-planes of down, and were turned into wind travelers. ”

“ Polly ordered. “This meeting is not called to discuss Miss Murray or Crullers either. This is the first call for action on the part of the vacation club.”
“Isn’t it pretty early even to think of vacation, Polly?” asked Isabel, with a sigh. “It’s weeks and weeks ahead of us.”
“Don’t groan, good pilgrim, over the hills ahead. They lead to glory,” chanted Polly. “Indeed, it isn’t too early; not if we expect to accomplish anything worth while. Haven’t we planned for it ever since last December, when we gave the first outing bazaar? How much did we glean that time, Ruth?” ”

“ You see, Polly, it is different with us at the ranch. Nearly all of you girls at Calvert do not have to fret or care about the future. You have beautiful old homes like this—”
“Not Ruth, Miss Murray,” interrupted Polly, soberly. “Her father’s dead, and she is studying, to support her invalid mother—didn’t you know that? I think she’s so strong and brave. She says she loves to even think that she is able to. And beautiful homes, even like Glenwood, can’t make up to a girl for mothers and fathers. ”

“ Polly added. “A little colored boy from down the river, and he said he knew how to lie down on the bank, and reach under, and grab the trout.”
“Now, Polly, if you develop into a teller of trout tales, you’ll be worse than Don. Listen.” Jean rose from the hammock. “First of all, you must fish up-stream. No standing still, and waiting for the fish to bite. You must learn how to hunt the best spots, and then to cast well. Trout lie with heads pointed up-stream, and hunt the shadowy nooks. Peggie and Don are our best catchers.” ”

“ Polly said, wistfully. “Especially if they looked alike like yours do, Mrs. Murray. It must be like having a lot of little selves around you.”
“Isn’t that just like Polly,” cried Ted. “Now, I’ve got two brothers, and they’re not a bit like me. Mother says I am a good deal more like the one boy in the family. Oh, look, girls!”
“It’s only Don,” Jean said, rising to get a better view. “He’s riding Scamp. That’s his own pony. He broke him himself, and taught him tricks. They say he’d make a good polo pony, but Don wouldn’t sell him for any price.” ”

“ When anything is in your heart, it bubbles out like a spring, doesn’t it, sorrow or happiness? But when we are happiest or saddest, well, we just can’t say anything. It is all here, ’way down deep in our hearts, but we can’t seem to lift it out, and exhibit it. So you see, girlie, while I may have seemed independent and self-sufficient all winter long, I was really eating my heart out for very lonesomeness. Can you understand?”
Polly nodded sympathetically. She always could understand the other person’s point of view.
“That is why the girls never became really acquainted with you, then. ”

“ Another time they met a sheepman from Idaho, driving his flocks eastward towards the fall markets. It was a strange sight. Hundreds of sheep grazing as they went, with the dogs skirting the bunch, and the grave-eyed, unsmiling herders staring at the campers.
“When did you start, friend?” called out Mr. Murray.
“Last of May,” came back the answer. “We’re going easy. They’ll be good and fat by fall.”
“Isn’t that funny,” exclaimed Polly, when they drove on. “Four months to go a few hundred miles.”
“They camp out when they come to a good feeding ground, and let the flocks get all they want. ”

“ There’s things that lie close hidden in the grand, still dawn of creation, and we small humanlings cannot hope to pierce the veil, or to understand the how and the why of it. But if there is a monster of the deep or of the plains either, that’s hiding away in old Zed’s gulch, we’ll haul him out, girls, and find out what he’s worth. I doubt not that he’d enjoy a sniff of fresh air at that, eh, Polly? ”

“ Ruth’s been all around seeing interesting things, and she always remembers the most interesting of all to tell us girls.”
“I should say she did,” said the Doctor, gravely. “Polly, that whale story shall be preserved, and passed down to posterity. Now, I am really going up to Wyoming, and I sincerely believe that I shall tap the foothills and the buttes, and discover the long-buried remains of a dinosaurus, yet I feel that Ruth has gone me one better as a naturalist.” ”

“ Once, as they rode, they came to a hilltop that overlooked the country for miles and miles. Far away to the south, Peggie pointed out Deercroft, just a little clump of match boxes, it looked, at that distance. They could see homesteads too, here and there far below them, and now and then a ranch.
“You can tell the difference if you look carefully,” Jean told them. “Wait a minute. I have my field glasses.” She stopped the team, and reached back into the locker for them, and the girls enjoyed looking through them in turn. “The ranches all have corrals. And the homesteads always have gardens. ”