“I declare I’m glad to see those cattle out of the way,” said Helen Cameron, with a sigh.
“I believe you,” returned Ruth, who was still beside her on the front seat. “I just didn’t realize before that cattle on the range are a whole lot different from a herd of cows in an eastern pasture.”
Tom and Bob got the new tire in place and pumped up, and then the automobile started again for the ranch house. Jane Ann was quite excited over her home-coming; anybody could see that with half an eye. She clung to her uncle’s hand and looked at him now and again as though to assure the old fellow that she really was glad to be home.
And Bill Hicks himself began to “fill into the picture” now that he was back in Montana. The young folks had seen many men like him since leaving Denver.
“Why, he’s just an old dear!” whispered Ruth to Helen, as the latter steered the car over the rough trail. “And just as kind and considerate as he can be. It’s natural chivalry these Western men show to women, isn’t it?”
“He’s nice,” agreed Helen. “But he never ought to have named his niece ‘Jane Ann.’ That was a mean trick to play on a defenseless baby.”
“He’s going to make it up to her now,” chuckled Tom, who heard this, being on the front seat with the two chums. “I know the ‘pinanner’ has gone on ahead, as he promised Nita. And carpets and curtains, too. I reckon this ranch we’re coming to is going to ‘blossom like the rose.’”
When they came in sight of Silver Ranch, just before evening, the guests from the East were bound to express their appreciation of the beauty of its surroundings. It was a low, broad verandahed house, covering a good deal of ground, with cookhouses and other outbuildings in the rear, and a big corral for the stock, and bunkhouses for the men. It lay in a beautiful little valley—a “coulie,” Jane Ann, or Nita, called it—with green, sloping sides to the saucer-like depression, and a pretty, winding stream breaking out of the hollow at one side.
“I should think it would be damp down there,” said Madge Steele, to the ranchman. “Why didn’t you build your house on a knoll?”
“Them sidehills sort o’ break the winds, Miss,” explained Mr. Hicks. “We sometimes git some wind out yere—yes, ma’am! You’d be surprised.”