“Bill’s one possession besides his cattle and horses that he took any joy in was his younger brother’s daughter, Jane Ann. She is an orphan and came to Bill and he has taken sole care of her (for a woman has never been at Silver Ranch, save Indian squaws and a Mexican cook woman) since she could creep. Jane Ann is certainly the apple of Old Bill’s eye.
“But, as Old Bill has told the Bullhide chief of police, who is sending the pictures and description of the lost girl all over the country, ‘Jane Ann got some powerful hifalutin’ notions.’ She is now a well-grown girl, smart as a whip, pretty, afraid of nothing on four legs, and just as ignorant as a girl brought up in such an environment would be. Jane Ann has been reading novels, perhaps. As the Eastern youth used to fill up on cheap stories of the Far West, and start for that wild and woolly section with the intention of wiping from the face of Nature the last remnant of the Red Tribes, so it may be that Jane Ann Hicks has read of the Eastern millionaire and has started for the Atlantic seaboard for the purpose of lassoing one–or more–of those elusive creatures.
“However, Old Bill wants Jane Ann to come home. Silver Ranch will be hers some day, when Old Bill passes over the Great Divide, and he believes that if she is to be Montana’s coming Cattle Queen his niece would better not know too much about the effete East.”
And in this style the newspaper writer had spread before his readers a semi-humorous account (perhaps fictitious) of the daily life of the missing heiress of Silver Ranch, her rides over the prairies and hills on half-wild ponies, the round-ups, calf-brandings, horse-breakings, and all other activities supposed to be part and parcel of ranch life.
“My goodness me!” gasped Ruth, when she had hastily scanned all this, “do you suppose that any sane girl would have run away from all that for just a foolish whim?”
“Just what I say,” returned Tom. “Cracky! wouldn’t it be great to ride over that range, and help herd the cattle, and trail wild horses, and–and––”
“Well, that’s just what one girl got sick of, it seems,” finished Ruth, her eyes dancing. “Now! whether this same girl is the one we know––”
“I bet she is,” declared Tom.
“Betting isn’t proof, you know,” returned Ruth, demurely.
“No. But Jane Ann Hicks is this young lady who wants to be called ‘Nita’–Oh, glory! what a name!”