The Western girl had been thinking seriously; now she seized her uncle by the arm. “I tell you what I want, Uncle Bill!” she cried.
“Something beside the pianner and the shift-on hat?” he grumbled, but his blue eyes twinkled.
“Those things don’t count,” she declared earnestly. “But this five hundred dollars, Uncle Bill, you haven’t got to pay that Crab man. So you just spend it by taking all these girls and boys that have been so nice to me out to Silver Ranch. They think it must be the finest place that ever happened–and I don’t know but ’tis, Uncle, if you don’t have too much of it,” she added.
“Great cats! that would shore be some doin’s; wouldn’t it?” exclaimed the cattleman, grinning broadly.
“You bet it would! We’ll take Ruth and Helen and Tom and Heavy an–why, every last one of ’em that’ll go. We’ll show ’em a right good time; is it a go, Uncle Bill?”
And it certainly was “a go,” for we shall meet Ruth and her friends next in a volume entitled, “Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch; Or, Schoolgirls Among the Cowboys.”
Old Bill Hicks’ hearty invitation could not be accepted, however, until the various young folks had written home to their parents and guardians about it. And the expectation of what fun they could have on Silver Ranch did not spoil the fun to be found closer at hand, at Lighthouse Point.
The remainder of that fortnight at the bungalow would long be remembered by Ruth and her girl friends, especially. Mr. Hicks got board at Sokennet; but Jane Ann (although they all called her “Nita” save The Fox, who took some delight in teasing her about her ugly name) remained at the bungalow. The cattleman could not do too much for anybody who had been kind to his niece, and had the life saving men not refused absolutely to accept anything from him, he would have made them all a present because they had rescued Jane Ann from the wreck of the Whipstitch.
Nevertheless, Mr. Hicks found out something that he could do for the life-savers, and he presented the station with a fine library–something which all the surfmen, and Cap’n Abinadab as well, could enjoy during the long winter days and evenings. Nor did the ranchman forget Mother Purling at the lighthouse. Up from New York came the finest black silk dress and bonnet that the big man could buy for money in any shop, and no present could have so delighted the plucky old lighthouse keeper. She had longed, she said, for a black silk dress all her life.
Before the young folks departed from Lighthouse Point, too, Miss Kate invited the life-savers, and Mother Purling, and Phineas and some of the other longshoremen and their wives to a “party” at the bungalow. And there were good things to eat (Heavy saw to that, of course) and a moving-picture entertainment brought down from the city for that evening, and a big display of fireworks afterward on the shore.