CHAPTER XXIII
"THEIR LAST RIDE TOGETHER"
"GOOD evening, Miss Drew," some one said politely.
Ruth drew in her breath. "Good evening," she returned coldly.
"Kind of surprised to see me?" "Gypsy Joe" inquired. "You have been having great goings on about the ranch lately. I could have told you about your gold mine in the early part of the summer, but I knew this man Harmon would give me a better show than your overseer if I put him on to my discovery and he got your ranch away from you."
Ruth turned irresolutely and then faced the man again. "Please don't talk to me of your dishonesty," she protested, "and do get off the ranch right away. You know what Mr. Colter told you." Ruth had a frightened vision of Jim's returning to find this tramp lurking about the rancho, and knew she would have small chance for a quiet evening with her lover after such a catastrophe.
"Look here, Miss Drew, don't you think you might speak a good word to your overseer and the young ladies for me?" Dawson whined. "Seems like it isn't fair for me to have been the first to discover that gold mine and not to have any share in it."
Ruth shrugged her shoulders. "We really can't help that. If you had told Mr. Colter of it first I am sure he would have been fair with you. Surely it is not our fault that you have cheated yourself in trying to cheat us. I really don't see how we owe you anything!"
"Jim Colter, as he calls himself, owes me a whole lot. Say, I'm hard up. Do you think you could get Colter to give me a job as a miner?" "Gypsy Joe" urged. "They say the men are making a pretty good thing out of that."
Slowly Ruth shook her head, knowing that Jim, who was the most gentle of men and the most yielding in little things, was like adamant once his mind was made up.
"I don't know what there is between you and Mr. Colter," Ruth answered hurriedly, "but I'm sure I could not make him change his opinion of you even if I wished to try. Do, do go away from here."
"I won't," the man replied. "You've got to hear something first." Ruth made a movement, but he caught at her skirts. "I'm all-fired tired of this man Colter's being so hard on me and having all the people around here treat him like a tin god. I am not living under an assumed name and he is. I have never done anything to make me proud of being called Joe Dawson, but I don't have to hide it. Colter!" Joe Dawson laughed. "Your friend is no more named Colter than I am. His name is Carter, John Carter, and he hails from Virginia the same as I do. Colter was a pretty good name to select when he came west, since a man named Colter happened to be one of the first settlers in Wyoming."
"Be quiet and let me go, Mr. Dawson!" Ruth commanded, white with anger. "Of course you understand I don't believe a word you have said, but you sha'n't force me to listen to your slander."
"Oh, don't take my word for it," Dawson sneered. "Ask Carter if he didn't run away from home because he stole a lot of money and broke his mother's and father's hearts. The Carters are a proud lot and not forgiving, and I expect they weren't sorry to have him change his name to Colter. He and I were school-fellows together, and we have never been friendly."
The man let go of her skirts, and Ruth ran back toward the rancho while he walked off in the other direction. There could not be a word of truth in what he had told her, yet the girl felt sick and trembling and dared not go in where her friends could see her. Crying softly, Ruth dropped down in the grass by the side of the road. Suddenly it occurred to her that Jim had never told her one word of his past history and that the ranch girls knew nothing of him before his coming to Wyoming; yet she had confided every detail of her own narrow story to him, her school days in Vermont and the teaching afterward, and then there was nothing else until she came out west to him.
A horse trotted along the road and shied at the white figure in the grass.
"Ruth, is anything the matter?" Jim asked in astonishment, recognizing her at once.
"Nothing, only I was waiting for you," Ruth answered.
Jim had ridden close up to her. Now he leaned down from his horse and lifted her up in the saddle with him. "Let's don't go in to the house now, Ruth," he whispered. "I want to ride with you, alone."
Ruth did not have to speak, for she yielded herself utterly to Jim's strength and tenderness. With a touch to his horse the man and woman rode on, feeling the night wind of the prairies with its thousand fragrances blow over them; seeing the sky with its ten million stars above them and the great wide sweep of the open country beneath.
"It has been more than a week, Ruth, and I am weary of waiting," Jim said, when his horse grew tired and they were moving toward home.
She turned her face toward him, flushed now with the joy of the night and the stars and the new love that enthralled her. "You know I love you, Jim," she murmured caressingly, "and I would rather be your wife than any man's in the world."
After this there did not seem to be need for speech; but the man walked his horse slowly, hoping that it might take forever before they reached home.
Then Ruth said carelessly, because the tramp's story had passed out of her thoughts until this moment: "Jim, don't be angry – I didn't want to listen, but you must make that fellow, Joe Dawson, stop telling dreadful stories about you. Why, I met him to-night and he told me such absurd things. He said – "
Suddenly the man's arm stiffened about the woman he loved. "He said what, Ruth?" Jim Colter inquired with a new note in his voice.
Ruth laughed nervously and clung more closely to him, as though she feared to slip from her seat. "Just that your name was John Carter and not Jim Colter. Please don't make me tell you any more of his stories," she begged.
"I would like to hear all, Ruth; it will be better for us in the end," Jim insisted.
"But I'm ashamed," the girl argued, "because it is so utterly unlike you or anything you could do. You know, I believe you are the soul of honor, Jim, yet this man said you had stolen money when you were a young man, and run away from home to hide."
"The man told you the truth, Ruth," Jim Colter answered. "Don't be frightened. I have done wrong, for I should have told you before. My name is John Carter under the law, though I have borne the name of Jim Colter for fourteen years and it seems far more like my own name than the other, for I have learned to be a man under it."
Ruth drew herself away, clinging to the horse's mane, her body rigid and her tears dry.
"You mean you have been deceiving me and have asked me to marry you without my knowing your real name?" she asked, all her fear and suspicion of men returning. If Jack had once hated what she called "Ruth's schoolmarm manner," Jim Colter was now to know her in the light of an upright judge.
"Of course I meant to tell you my story some day, Ruth," he replied almost top humbly. "I thought things over a long time and I didn't see how I was doing you any harm to keep my old name and past a secret from you until you learned to love me. Maybe I was mistaken, but I didn't want you to love the man I used to be, I wanted you to love the man I am now. I could see that you were growing more understanding every day about little things, and not so hard and narrow, and I thought maybe if you loved me you'd be able to forgive something that happened so many years ago it seems almost like a bad dream."
"I never could marry anyone who deceived me," the girl returned frigidly.
"I wasn't deceiving you, I was just waiting to tell you. Maybe you will listen to the story now?" Jim asked. "It won't take long." Then before Ruth could reply he went on: "My father and mother had two sons, and I was the older. We were an old Virginia family and had been rich before the war. I was a good-for-nothing fellow, never studied, had no ambition and used to spend all of my time out of doors. My brother Ben was a different sort, a brilliant, studious chap, and we believed he would some day restore the family fortunes. After graduating at the high school he went to Richmond to study law, but as I had never studied anything there was nothing for me to do but to get a job as clerk in a store in our town. Both of us were boys at this time, Ben twenty and I only a little older. One night pretty late I was alone in the store, and Ben appeared, saying he had come down from Richmond because he had to have three hundred dollars quick, that very night. Well, I knew that father and mother and I didn't have thirty dollars between us. Ben suggested that I borrow the money from my employer, as I knew the combination of his safe. In a few days Ben was sure he would have the money to pay back and I could explain the whole situation. I am not excusing myself, Ruth. I knew I was sinning when I borrowed another man's money without his consent. Ben couldn't pay back, and I told the man I worked for what I had done. I offered to take any punishment the law ordered and then to come back to his shop and work until I paid him the last cent. The man forgave me, Ruth, and was willing to let me work out my salvation; but there was one thing I had not counted on, and that was family pride. When my father and mother learned what I had done they asked me to leave town, change my name and never to come home again."
"Did they know you took the money for your brother?" Ruth queried.
Jim shook his head. "What was the use? My sin was just the same. I paid the man back years ago, Ruth. Now can you forgive me?"
"I am sorry, Jim," Ruth answered kindly, but in a manner as remote from him and his need as though she had been a thousand miles away. "I am sure you will understand, but I must take back my promise. I can't be the wife of a man who has done wrong, no matter how much he has repented. Has no one ever known of what you did in all these years?"
"One man besides Joe Dawson, who is the nephew of the man from whom I took the money," Jim returned. "He was John Ralston. I told him my story a few days before he died and he left me the guardian of his little girls, to manage their property until Jack is twenty-one." And this was the only defense Jim Colter ever made for himself.
By and by he put Ruth down on the porch of the rancho and went away to his tent for the night. In the morning he had gone from Rainbow Ranch to attend to other business.
CHAPTER XXIV
FAREWELL TO THE RAINBOW RANCH
THE coming of late September to the neighborhood of the ranch brought with it a storm and heavy downpour of rain.
"The very clouds themselves weep at the thought of our departure from the Rainbow Ranch," Jean exclaimed dramatically, pressing her piquant nose against the rain-splashed window of the living room in the Lodge and gazing out over the mist-dimmed fields.
"Does anybody know where Ruth is?" Jack inquired from a big sofa near the fire, looking about their beloved sitting room with an expression of unfailing affection. "She must be nearly worn out with packing and getting us ready to start to New York to-morrow. I do wish she would rest for a few minutes these days."
"Ruth has gone for a ride in the rain alone, Jack," Olive explained, stooping over her friend and arranging her pillows. "She said she thought it would do her more good than anything, and she will stop by the post box at the gate and bring us the last mail. Yes, Frieda, dear, I will help you in a minute, but please don't crowd any more treasures into that box or you will have everything smashed to bits."
For a moment Frieda ceased her occupation of jamming odd-shaped pieces of Indian pottery into a packing trunk filled with blankets, shawls, beadwork, dolls, Indian carvings, everything known to Indian manufacture, and surveyed the older girls reproachfully. "Olive, I thought you and Jean said that the one thing that would give you pleasure and keep us from just dying of homesickness would be to fix up an Indian sitting room at that horrid old boarding school we are going to in New York," she protested.
Riches, like everything else in this world, brings its responsibilities. The ranch girls and Ruth Drew were to leave the Rainbow Ranch soon after daylight next morning for the long trip across the country which was to land them in New York City. Now that the gold supply of Rainbow Creek was increasing day by day until no one could guess how vast the amount would be, Jim Colter had decided it would be best for the girls to leave the ranch. Jack was to see a famous surgeon, hoping that he would be able to restore her to health, for she had not improved to any extent and was still unable to walk or to sit up for any length of time. The other girls were to be placed in a fashionable boarding school near a village on the Hudson River, not far from New York City, and Jack was to join them when she got well. No one ever said "if" Jack got well; it was always "when," and she always talked of herself in this way, for her courage was yet undaunted.
Frank Kent was to act as escort to the travelers, as he was returning soon to his home in England, and Ralph Merrit was to be left as one of the engineers in charge of the Rainbow Mine. Jim Colter had not been at the ranch except once and then only for a few days since the night of his ride with Ruth.
"Goodness, children, you do look comfortable," Ruth announced, coming in the door at this minute, with her coat and hat heavy with rain. "Here, Jack, is a letter in Jim's handwriting. It is a pretty thick one, so I suppose he has written to say why he is letting you girls go away from home without coming to say good-by to you."
Ruth looked older and a little worn, but her expression was cold and reserved. She could not understand why Jim had hardly seen or spoken to her since their last long talk; it had never been a part of her plan not to be friends with him.
Slowly Jack read the first of her letter, while Frieda and Jean fairly danced with impatience and Olive stood with her arm about Carlos, who had crept in softly behind Ruth. The boy was to stay behind at the ranch with "The Big White Chief" he adored, yet he was solemn and desolate at the thought of the departure of the girls.
"Jim is desperately sorry, but he can't get here in time to see us start to-morrow," Jack read slowly. "Don't cry, Frieda. He sends you a dozen kisses and says you are to buy the biggest doll in New York as soon as you get there, as a present from him."
Frieda sniffed, her eyes brimming with tears. "Jim's silly; I'm too big for dolls," she answered, "and I just can't see why he don't come home!" She was about to break down and cry, but Jean knew this would mean the signal for them all to weep, so she stamped her foot indignantly. "Frieda Ralston, don't you dare shed a tear for Jim Colter or any other man," she commanded. "If Jim does not love us enough to want to say good-by to us then he can stay away. Come on, baby. I can smell hot gingerbread, so let's get some. Aunt Ellen thinks we are going to starve to death when we leave the Lodge. Perhaps we may have to eat solid gold food like poor King Midas, now that Rainbow Creek has given us the golden touch." Jean flitted from the room, holding Frieda's hand, and Olive and Carlos followed. When they had gone Ruth sat on the floor in front of the fire near Jack's couch, waiting while she finished her letter.
By and by Jack looked over at Ruth thoughtfully, and there was an expression in her gray eyes that made Ruth suddenly shield her face with her hand.
"Jim has written me everything, Ruth," Jack said. "Please don't be angry. He and I have been such pals since I was a little girl, and he didn't want me to go away thinking he had neglected me when I was ill. As though I would! Foolish old Jim! He has written me too about some wicked thing he did years and years ago. Now he thinks maybe he ought to have told me before, because I might not have wished him to run the ranch and to take care of our money if I had known." Jack was smiling, though the tears were running down her cheeks. "And the last thing he writes is – that he won't be hurt if I get a man to superintend his work and to look over his accounts. Of course Jim is willing to continue to work for us almost for nothing; but now that we are going to be so rich he thinks we might like a guardian with a different history." Jack choked in her effort to pretend indignation. "As though anything Jim Colter ever did in the past keeps him from being the most splendid and unselfish person in the whole world now!" she ended loyally with a look of utter bewilderment at her companion.
Ruth leaned so near the fire that her cheeks flushed and her eyes shone from the heat of the glowing ashes. "Do you really feel that way about Jim, dear?" she questioned wonderingly. "I can't understand it."
"I can't understand feeling any other way, Ruth," Jack answered. "But I know people look at things differently. And Jim said I was never to speak of this to you or to try to influence you in any way – so please forgive me; I never will again."
Ruth made no reply and was unchanged in her determination, although her heart was heavy with the thought of turning her back on the Rainbow Ranch and all the wonderful things it had meant to her. They were to return she knew not when. Silently she slipped away, and Jack Ralston was left alone in the firelight. Her eyes were soon closed, and in a little while she must have been dreaming, for some one touched her and a familiar voice said with a slow drawl: "How you feeling, boss?"
Jack pulled herself up by catching at Jim's strong hands and laughed her old gay, teasing laugh. "You couldn't stay away, could you, pard? My, what a bluff you are! I suppose you guessed how furiously angry we were with you for not coming home to say good-by."
Jim laughed a little huskily. "You're right, as usual, Miss Ralston. I couldn't let my girls go away off to New York without making them promise to behave themselves. You must not let money and rich people fool and spoil you until you forget all about the dear old ranch." Jim patted Jack's hand softly. "I wasn't going to play the coward either, Jack, now it's come to the point. I am going to tell Ruth good-by and wish her good luck."
"Remember a motto I once said I was going to take for the Rainbow Ranch, Jim?" Jack asked gravely. "It was 'never say die,' and if you won't forget it, pard, I won't." And the man and girl shook hands like friends between whom no other words were necessary.
Frieda, coming back to her sister, heard Jim's voice and raised the alarm. In the midst of the group of laughing and enthusiastic girls Ruth was able to greet Jim as she would have done many months before.
The rain ceased and just before an early tea Jim lifted Jack and carried her out on the great porch in front of Rainbow Lodge. A giant rainbow spanned the heavens, and they wished to take a farewell of their beloved ranch with the arch of promise above them.
"See, Frieda, dear," Jack called gayly, "the rainbow does dip into the creek where we found our pot of gold. I told you it ended on our place, and that's why father gave it the name of 'The Rainbow Ranch.'"
Frieda shook her head, not being gifted with a vivid imagination. "I can't see it, sister," she argued seriously. "The rainbow just slips off in the sky somewhere. But I know a verse of poetry that Ruth taught me. Would you like me to say it?"
Everybody nodded with their eyes resting lovingly on the beautiful rain-washed fields of the ranch, shining now with a new, colorful beauty from the reflected glory in the heavens.
Frieda walked out in the yard facing her audience, her long blond pigtails quivering with the importance of her position, and her turquoise eyes shining with interest. Quite unconscious of her small self, with her gaze fastened on Jack, she raised one dimpled arm, reciting proudly:
"O beautiful rainbow, all woven of light!
There's not in thy tissue one shadow of night;
Heaven surely is open when thou dost appear,
And bending above thee, the angels draw near
And sing: 'The Rainbow! The Rainbow!
The smile of God is here.'"
The next book in this series devoted to the histories of the ranch girls will find them living in a totally new environment. How they are to enjoy the life of a fashionable boarding school; how their unconventional ideas will influence their school mates; what effect their sudden possession of great wealth will have upon them, and whether Jack will find her health, Olive her parentage, and what will develop for Ruth, must be told in a third volume to be entitled: "The Ranch Girls at Boarding School."