Dorothy on a Ranch

She ignored his question and sat down by her hostess to soothe that now abashed person for her failure. Captain Lem had withered even the lady of the ranch by his contempt.

“Helena next!” cried Molly, fairly dancing about in her impatience.

So Helena tried and made out fairly well. That is she succeeded in keeping the rifle in hand, she did not scream at the discharge, and she came within a hundred feet of the target. The lads applauded, noisily, and she mocked back at their pretended admiration, though she made one effort only and subsided on the bench beside the ladies.

“All the same it’s wonderfully exciting! And I mean to try again, to-morrow, if they’ll let me,” she remarked.

“Let some of the boys try before we do, so we can see how it’s done. Or you, Captain Hunt, you show us!” begged Molly.

This was what he had waited for. With a strut he marched across the space between them and the target and carried that much further back. He longed for a target bearing an arrangement of letters that he could hit and cause to disappear, as at his boasted Seagirt, instead of a plain affair such as this he had to use.

Strutting back to them he lay down, wriggled himself into position, muttered something about the sun in his eyes, hemmed and hawed, took final aim and – let her go!

But she didn’t go – not in the least. All unconsciously, he had taken an unloaded piece!

There was no strut left in him as he rose to his feet, rather slowly, and faced his laughing audience; but he rallied after a moment and good-naturedly joined in the laugh against himself.

However, discipline was over for that lesson. Without regard to any rules the youngsters rushed to the stack and took whatever gun was fancied. Then began an indiscriminate firing till Mrs. Ford grew frightened and implored them to stop. They did so, all but Alfaretta and Molly, who had both been fascinated by the sport and felt sure that they could hit the bull’s-eye – which nobody else had done.

“Come on, Alfy! Let’s get down on our tummy, same’s all marksmen do, let’s!”

Down they flung themselves and now, as eager for their success as they were, old Lem handed each a fresh rifle and sang out:

“Let her go! A silver dollar to the gal that wins!”

They fired – and the unexpected happened. Alfaretta’s untaught hands succeeded where greater skill had failed. Her bullet went straight into the bull’s-eye, into its very centre.

“By the Great Horned Spoon! What an eye you’ve got, child of mortality! Why I couldn’t ha’ done better myself! Glory be!” shouted the excited ranchman, fairly dancing in his pride and glee. Then he helped Alfy up from the ground, where she still lay, wondering at the excitement about her, and peered critically into her blue orbs.

“However could you see it? That fur away?”

“Why – why, I didn’t see it at all. I got scared and shut my eyes when I pulled that thing on it!”

Captain Lem staggered as if he had been hit instead of the target and softly marvelled:

“Such – dum – luck! She done it – with her eyes – shut! She – done – it – with – her – eyes – shut! Somebody take me out and lay me down. I’m beat.”

His ludicrous manner amused the others but frightened the too successful Alfaretta. Also, her attention was claimed by Molly’s expression. That ambitious young person was looking very white about the lips, and was clasping and unclasping her hands in evident distress.

“Molly, what’s the matter?” cried Alfy, shaking her partner in the affair.

Molly lifted one shaking finger and pointed into the distance:

“I – I hit something, too!”

Other eyes than Alfy’s followed the pointing finger and a groan of horror burst from more than one throat.

Indeed, and all too surely, Molly had “hit something, too!”

CHAPTER VIII

A CONCERT IN THE MOONLIGHT

Night fell on San Leon; and the searching party which had gone out in the morning, sure of prompt success, returned tired and dispirited. But their places were immediately taken by fresh recruits, Mr. Ford announcing that the matter would not be dropped, night or day, until all hope had to be given up.

Except that Jim’s clothes had been left in his room it might have seemed that the lad had run away, feeling himself out of place at San Leon. But the folded garments placed on the chair beside his empty bed told a different tale.

“No, he has wandered off unknowing what he did. Well, when he comes back he shall find his place ready for him and the warmest of welcomes waiting. While we have tried – and will still – to visit every cabin and ranch within reasonable reach, there are many such little shacks dropped here and there among the mountains; and we have probably overlooked the one in which he is sheltered. Open hospitality is a feature of the west. Anybody who comes across the boy will be good to him. Now, let’s have a little music and then to bed. A whole day in the saddle tires me, though I’m bound to get used to it yet, and so shall all of you. Come, Erminie, give me a song; and Dorothy dear, get out your violin.”

Thus said Mr. Ford, when their evening dinner had been enjoyed and they had all gone out to sit upon the wide veranda, the moonlight flooding the beautiful grounds, and the soft spring air playing about them.

Dorothy felt that she could not play a note, and even Alfaretta was quietly crying in the retired corner she had sought, in the shadow of a pillar. But Mrs. Ford at once obeyed her husband’s wish, and as her wonderful voice floated over them it banished every thought save the delight of listening.

The “boys” came over from their “Barracks” and sprawled on the grass, entranced. Hitherto, their life on the ranch had been one of toil, lightened by sports almost as rough, with the evening diversion of swopping stories over their pipes. They hadn’t been greatly pleased at the prospect of a lot of strangers living so near them, but already all that was changed; and though they didn’t know, till Lemuel informed them, and this singer was one of a few famous artistes, they were moved and touched by the marvellous beauty of her voice.

“You know, boys, it’d be worth ten dollars a ticket – gallery seats, at that – just to get into an opery house an’ hark to yonder lady. An’ now you’re just gettin’ it for nothin’, free, clear gratis, take it or leave it, ary one. Fact. The ‘Boss’s’ lady is an A 1 singer if she is a – I mean, a poor show at a rifle.”

The songs went on till the Gray Lady dared sing no more. Like all trained singers she was careful of her throat and unused, as yet, to the air of this region at night. But when she laughingly declared:

“No more this time; not if I’m to sing again,” there was a murmur of dissatisfaction from the group of men about the fountain; and old Captain Lem begged, in their name:

“Just one more, lady, to sleep on. That kind o’ music makes a feller hungry for more and sort-of-kind-of sets him thinkin’ ’bout things back home.”

But Mr. Ford interposed:

“No, Captain, not to-night! I want to have a lot of just such concerts so we mustn’t put the prima donna out of condition. But I’ve a little girl here with a fiddle and I tell you she can just make it talk! Come farther forward, Dolly dear, and stand close to me. Then ‘rosin your bow’ and get to work. Show these cowboys what a little girl-tenderfoot can do. Maybe, too, who knows? Maybe our Jim will hear it wherever he is and hurry back. At it, child, and call him!”

Lady Gray feared this was a trifle unkind to the girl, who she wished might wholly forget the boy, but the master felt it not so. He knew that nothing would more thoroughly inspire her than this possibility.

“Oh! do you think so? Then I’ll play as I never did before – I will, I will!”

She stepped out from the veranda upon the broad walk before it, and with the moonlight pouring down upon her white-clad little figure, her face uplifted to the sky, and her precious violin beneath her chin, she played, indeed, “as she had never done before.”

On and on she played; one ranchman after another softly suggesting some desired melody, and her eager little fingers rendering it upon the instant. The men ceased sprawling and sat up. If they had found the Gray Lady’s voice a marvel, here was a greater. That any child – a despised “female” child – could evoke such music seemed past belief; and when, at length, Mr. Ford bade her render the beloved “Home, Sweet Home” as a finale, there was a reluctant rising of the audience to its feet, ordered to it by the Captain who, in rather husky tones, stated:

“Ladies and gentlemen, and mostly the little gal, I give the sentiments o’ my regiment, to a man, when I say all you tenderfoots is welcome to S’ Leon. We wasn’t very tickled before, thinkin’ all our free livin’s an’ doin’s was to be interfered with, but we are now. Three cheers for the company an’ the treat they’ve give us, more especial for the Little One, and – Long may she wave! Hip, hip, hurrar!”

The cheer was given with a will, and then again came the Captain’s order:

“Fall into line. Right about face. March! hep, hep, hep – hep!”

But as they filed away Dorothy had another inspiration and, acting upon it, sent the delighted cowboys marching to the lively air of “Yankee, Doodle, Doodle Doo.”

“And now to bed!” advised the hostess. So within a very few moments all were in their rooms, tired and happy despite the worries of the day, and sure that all would come right at last.

The four girls shared two rooms, facing one another and with two dainty beds in each. Milliken’s chamber was at the end of the long passage beyond theirs, and those of the rest of the household across a wide hall which cut this wing of the house in two. In structure the building was very like El Paraiso, which the Gray Lady had admired and where the happiness of reunion had come to her; and it seemed to those who had wintered in the old adobe that they had but stepped into another home.

Of course, sleep did not come at once. Four girls, even if together all day long, find much to chatter about at night, and this had been a day of “happenings” indeed.