The Girl from Sunset Ranch by AMY BELL MARLOWE (best ereader for manga .TXT) 📖

the patter of hoofs.

She gave voice to the long range yell, and a dozen anxious punchers replied. Great discussion had arisen over where she could have gone, for nobody had seen her ride off toward the View that afternoon.

"Whar you been, gal?" demanded Big Hen Billings, bringing his horse to a sudden stop across the trail. "Hul-lo! What's that you got with yer?"

"A tenderfoot. Easy, Hen! I've got his leg strapped to the girth. He's in bad shape," and she related, briefly, the particulars of the accident.

Dudley Stone had only a hazy recollection later of the noise and confusion of his arrival. He was borne into the house by two men--one of them the ranch foreman himself.

They laid him on a couch, cut the boot from his injured foot, and then the sock he wore.

Hen Billings, with bushy whiskers and the frame of a giant, was nevertheless as tender with the injured foot as a woman. Water with a chunk of ice floating in it was used to reduce the swelling. The foreman's blunted fingers probed for broken bones.

But it seemed there was none. It was only a bad sprain, and they finally stripped him to his underclothes and bandaged the foot with cloths soaked with ice water.

When they got him into bed--in an adjoining room--the young mistress of Sunset Ranch reappeared, with a tray and napkins, with which she arranged a table.

"That's what he wants--some good grub under his belt, Snuggy," said the gigantic foreman, finally lighting his pipe. "He'll be all right in a few days. I'll send word to Creeping Ford for one of the boys to ride down to Badger's and tell 'em. That's where Mr. Stone says he's been stopping."

"You're mighty kind," said the Easterner, gratefully, as Sing, the Chinese servant, shuffled in with a steaming supper.

"We're glad to have a chance to play Good Samaritan in this part of the country," said Helen, laughing. "Isn't that so, Hen?"

"That's right, Snuggy," replied the foreman, patting her on the shoulder.

Dud Stone looked at Helen curiously, as the big man strode out of the room.

"What an odd name!" he commented.

"My father called me that, when I was a tiny baby," replied the girl. "And I love it. All my friends call me 'Snuggy.' At least, all my ranch friends."

"Well, it's too soon for me to begin, I suppose?" he said, laughing.

"Oh, quite too soon," returned Helen, as composedly as a person twice her age. "You had better stick to 'Miss Morrell,' and remember that I am the mistress of Sunset Ranch."

"But I notice that you take liberties with my name," he said, quickly.

"That's different. You're a man. Men around here always shorten their names, or have nicknames. If they call you by your full name that means the boys don't like you. And I liked you from the start," said the Western girl, quite frankly.

"Thank you!" he responded, his eyes twinkling. "I expect it must have been my fine riding that attracted you."

"No. Nor it wasn't your city cowpuncher clothes," she retorted. "I know those things weren't bought farther West than Chicago."

"A palpable hit!" admitted Dudley Stone.

"No. It was when you took that tumble into the tree; was hanging on by your eyelashes, yet could joke about it," declared Helen, warmly.

She might have added, too, that now he had been washed and his hair combed, he was an attractive-looking young man. She did not believe Dudley Stone was of age. His brown hair curled tightly all over his head, and he sported a tiny golden mustache. He had good color and was somewhat bronzed.

Dud's blue eyes were frank, his lips were red and nicely curved; but his square chin took away from the lower part of his face any suggestion of effeminacy. His ears were generous, as was his nose. He had the clean-cut, intelligent look of the better class of educated Atlantic seaboard youth.

There is a difference between them and the young Westerner. The latter are apt to be hung loosely, and usually show the effect of range-riding--at least, back here in Montana. Whereas Dud Stone was compactly built.

They chatted quite frankly while the patient ate his supper. Dud found that, although Helen used many Western idioms, and spoke with an abruptness that showed her bringing up among plain-spoken ranch people, she could, if she so desired, use "school English" with good taste, and gave other evidences in her conversation of being quite conversant with the world of which he was himself a part when he was at home.

"Oh, you would get along all right in New York," he said, laughing, when she suggested a doubt as to the impression she might make upon her relatives in the big town. "You'd not be half the 'tenderfoot' there that I am here."

"No? Then I reckon I can risk shocking them," laughed Helen, her gray eyes dancing.

This talk she had with Dud Stone on the evening of his arrival confirmed the young mistress of Sunset Ranch in her intention of going to the great city.

CHAPTER IV (HEADED EAST)

 

When Helen Morrell made up her mind to do a thing, she usually did it. A cataclysm of nature was about all that would thwart her determination.

This being yielded to and never thwarted, even by her father, might have spoiled a girl of different calibre. But there was a foundation of good common sense to Helen's nature.

"Snuggy won't kick over the traces much," Prince Morrell had been wont to say.

"Right you are, Boss," had declared Big Hen Billings. "It's usually safe to give her her head. She'll bring up somewhar."

But when Helen mentioned her eastern trip to the old foreman he came "purty nigh goin' up in th' air his own se'f!" as he expressed it.

"What d'yer wanter do anythin' like that air for, Snuggy?" he demanded, in a horrified tone. "Great jumping Jehosaphat! Ain't this yere valley big enough fo' you?"

"Sometimes I think it's too big," admitted Helen, laughing.

"Well, by jo! you'll fin' city quarters close't 'nough--an' that's no josh. Huh! Las' time ever I went to Chicago with a train-load of beeves I went to see Kellup Flemming what useter work here on this very same livin' Sunset Ranch. You don't remember him. You was too little, Snuggy."

"I've heard you speak of him, Hen," observed the girl.

"Well, thar was Kellup, as smart a young feller as you'd find in a day's ride, livin' with his wife an' kids in what he called a flat. Be-lieve me! It was some perpendicular to git into, an' no flat.

"When we gits inside and inter what he called his parlor, he looks around like he was proud of it (By jo! I'd be afraid ter shrug my shoulders in it, 'twas so small) an' says he: 'What d'ye think of the ranch, Hen?'

"'Ranch,' mind yeh! I was plumb insulted. I says: 'It's all right--what there is of it--only, what's that crack in the wall for, Kellup?'

"'Sufferin' tadpoles!' yells Kellup--jest like that! 'Sufferin' tadpoles! That ain't no crack in the wall. That's our private hall.'

"Great jumping Jehosaphat!" exclaimed Hen, roaring with laughter. "Yuh don't wanter git inter no place like that in New York. Can't breathe in the house."

"I guess Uncle Starkweather lives in a little better place than that," said Helen, after laughing with the old foreman. "His house is on Madison Avenue."

"Don't care where it is; there natcherly won't be no such room in a city dwelling as there is here at Sunset Ranch."

"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