The Girl from Sunset Ranch: or, Alone in a Great City

“I suppose not,” admitted the girl.

“Huh! Won’t be room in the yard for a cow,” growled Big Hen. “Nor chickens. Whatter yer goin’ to do without a fresh aig, Snuggy?”

“I expect that will be pretty tough, Hen. But I feel like I must go, you see,” said the girl, dropping into the idiom of Sunset Ranch. “Dad wanted me to.”

“The Boss wanted yuh to?” gasped the giant, surprised.

“Yes, Hen.”

“He never said nothin’ to me about it,” declared the foreman of Sunset Ranch, shaking his bushy head.

“No? Didn’t he say anything about my being with women folk, and under different circumstances?”

“Gosh, yes! But I reckoned on getting Mis’ Polk and Mis’ Harry Frieze to take turns coming over yere and livin’ with yuh.”

“But that isn’t all dad wanted,” continued the girl, shaking her head. “Besides, you know both Mrs. Polk and Mrs. Frieze are widows, and will be looking for husbands. We’d maybe lose some of the best boys we’ve got, if they came here,” said Helen, her eyes twinkling.

“Great jumping Jehosaphat! I never thought of that,” declared the foreman, suddenly scared. “I never did like that Polk woman’s eye. I wouldn’t, mebbe, be safe myse’f; would I?”

“I’m afraid not,” Helen gravely agreed. “So, you see, to please dad, I’ll have to go to New York. I don’t mean to stay for all time, Hen. But I want to give it a try-out.”

She sounded Dud Stone a good bit about the big city. Dud had to stay several days at Sunset Ranch because he couldn’t ride very well with his injured foot. And finally, when he did go back to Badger’s, they took him in a buckboard.

To tell the truth, Dud was not altogether glad to go. He was a boyish chap despite the fact that he was nearly through law school, and a sixteen-year-old girl like Helen Morrell – especially one of her character – appealed to him strongly.

He admired the capable way in which she managed things about the ranch-house. Sing obeyed her as though she were a man. There was a “rag-head” who had somehow worked his way across the mountains from the coast, and that Hindoo about worshipped “Missee Sahib.” The two or three Greasers working about the ranch showed their teeth in broad smiles, and bowed most politely when she appeared. And as for the punchers and wranglers, they were every one as loyal to Snuggy as they had been to her father.

The Easterner realized that among all the girls he knew back home, either of her age or older, there was none so capable as Helen Morrell. And there were few any prettier.

“You’re going right to relatives when you reach New York; are you, Miss Morrell?” asked Dud, just before he climbed into the buckboard to return to his friend’s ranch.

“Oh, yes. I shall go to Aunt Eunice,” said the girl, decidedly.

“No need of my warning you against bunco men and card sharpers,” chuckled Dud, “for your folks will look out for you. But remember: You’ll be just as much a tenderfoot there as I am here.”

“I shall take care,” she returned, laughing.

“And – and I hope I may see you in New York,” said Dud, hesitatingly.

“Why, I hope we shall run across each other,” replied Helen, calmly. She was not sure that it would be the right thing to invite this young man to call upon her at the Starkweathers’.

“I’d better ask Aunt Eunice about that first,” she decided, to herself.

So she shook hands heartily with Dud Stone and let him ride away, never appearing to notice his rather wistful look. She was to see the time, however, when she would be very glad of a friend like Dud Stone in the great city.

Helen made her preparations for her trip to New York without any advice from another woman. To tell the truth she had little but riding habits which were fit to wear, save the house frocks which she wore around the ranch.

When she had gone to school in Denver, her father had sent a sum of money to the principal and that lady had seen that Helen was dressed tastefully and well. But all these garments she had outgrown.

To tell the truth, Helen had spent little of her time in studying the pictures in fashion magazines. In fact, there were no such books about Sunset Ranch.

The girl realized that the rough and ready frocks she possessed were not in style. There was but one store in Elberon, the nearest town, where ready-to-wear garments were sold. She went there and purchased the best they had; but they left much to be desired.

She got a brown dress to travel in, and a shirtwaist or two; but beyond that she dared not go. Helen was wise enough to realize that, after she arrived at her Uncle Starkweather’s, it would be time enough to purchase proper raiment.

She “dressed up” in the new frock for the boys to admire, the evening before she left. Every man who could be spared from the range – even as far as Creeping Ford – came in to the “party.” They all admired Helen and were sorry to see her go away. Yet they gave her their best wishes.

Big Hen Billings rode part of the way to Elberon with her in the morning. She was going to send the strawberry roan back hitched behind the supply wagon. Her riding dress she would change in the station agent’s parlor for the new dress which was in the tray of her small trunk.

“Keep yer eyes peeled, Snuggy,” advised the old foreman, with gravity, “when ye come up against that New York town. ’Tain’t like Elberon – no, sir! ’Tain’t even like Helena.

“Them folks in New York is rubbing up against each other so close, that it makes ’em moughty sharp – yessir! Jumping Jehosaphat! I knowed a feller that went there onct and he lost ten dollars and his watch before he’d been off the train an hour. They can do ye that quick!”

“I believe that fellow must have been you, Hen,” declared Helen, laughing.

The foreman looked shamefaced. “Wal, it were,” he admitted. “But they never got nothin’ more out o’ me. It was the hottest kind o’ summer weather – an’ lemme tell yuh, it can be some hot in that man’s town.

“Wal, I had a sheepskin coat with me. I put it on, and I buttoned it from my throat-latch down to my boot-tops. They’d had to pry a dollar out o’ my pocket with a crowbar, and I wouldn’t have had a drink with the mayor of the city if he’d invited me. No, sirree, sir!”

Helen laughed again. “Don’t you fear for me, Hen. I shall be in the best of hands, and shall have plenty of friends around me. I’ll never feel lonely in New York, I am sure.”

“I hope not. But, Snuggy, you know what to do if anything goes wrong. Just telegraph me. If you want me to come on, say the word – ”

“Why, Hen! How ridiculous you talk,” she cried. “I’ll be with relatives.”

“Ya-as. I know,” said the giant, shaking his head. “But relatives ain’t like them that’s knowed and loved yuh all yuh life. Don’t forgit us out yere, Snuggy – and if ye want anything – ” His heart was evidently too full for further utterance. He jerked his pony’s head around, waved his hand to the girl who likewise was all but in tears, and dashed back over the trail toward Sunset Ranch.

Helen pulled the Rose pony’s head around and jogged on, headed east.

CHAPTER V

AT BOTH ENDS OF THE ROUTE

As Helen walked up and down the platform at Elberon, waiting for the east-bound Transcontinental, she looked to be a very plain country girl with nothing in her dress to denote that she was one of the wealthiest young women in the State of Montana.

Sunset Ranch was one of the few remaining great cattle ranches of the West. Her father could justly have been called “a cattle king,” only Prince Morrell was not the sort of man who likes to see his name in print.

Indeed, there was a good reason why Helen’s father had not wished to advertise himself. That old misfortune, which had borne so heavily upon his mind and heart when he came to die, had made him shrink from publicity.

However, business at Sunset Ranch had prospered both before and since Mr. Morrell’s death. The money had rolled in and the bank accounts which had been put under the administration of Big Hen Billings and the lawyer at Elberon, increased steadily.

Big Hen was a generous-handed administrator and guardian. Of course, the foreman of the ranch was, perhaps, not the best person to be guardian of a sixteen-year-old girl. He did not treat her, in regard to money matters, as the ordinary guardian would have treated a ward.

Big Hen didn’t know how to limit a girl’s expenditures; but he knew how to treat a man right. And he treated Helen Morrell just as though she were a sane and responsible man.

“There’s a thousand dollars in cash for you, Snuggy,” he had said. “I got it in soft money, for it’s a fac’ that they use that stuff a good deal in the East. Besides, the hard money would have made a good deal of a load for you to tote in them leetle war-bags of yourn.”

“But shall I ever need a thousand dollars?” asked Helen, doubtfully.