CHAPTER XIII—THE PARTY AT THE SCHOOLHOUSE
The bear fight and the runaway together so disturbed the minds of the picnicking party in the cañon that nobody objected to the suggestion of an early return to the ranch-house. Ruth was secretly much troubled in her mind over the mysterious individual who had killed the bear. She had not seen her rescuer’s face; but she wondered if Mary Cox had seen it?
The girls never did get to the top of the natural bridge. Jib and the boys in trying to trace the stranger had gone over the summit; but they did not tarry to look around. The girls and Ricardo got supper, immediately after which they set out on the return drive.
Jib insisted upon holding the lines over the backs of the team that had run away—and he saw that Mary Cox rode in that vehicle, too. But The Fox showed no vexation at this; indeed, she was very quiet all the way to Silver Ranch. She was much unlike her usual snappy, sharp-tongued self.
But, altogether, the party arrived home in very good spirits. The wonders of the wild country—so much different from anything the Easterners had seen before—deeply impressed Ruth and her friends. The routine work of the ranch, however, interested them more. Not only Tom and Bob, but their sisters and the other girls, found the free, out-of-door life of the range and corral a never-failing source of delight.
Ruth herself was becoming a remarkably good horsewoman. Freckles carried her many miles over the range and Jane Ann Hicks was scarcely more bold on pony-back than was the girl from the Red Mill.
As for the cowboys of the Silver outfit, they admitted that the visitors were “some human,” even from a Western standpoint.
“Them friends o’ yourn, Miss Jinny,” Jimsey said, to Old Bill’s niece, “ain’t so turrible ‘Bawston’ as some tenderfoots I’ve seen.” (“Boston,” according to Jimsey, spelled the ultra-East and all its “finicky” ways!) “I’m plum taken with that Fielding gal—I sure am. And I believe old Ike, here, is losin’ his heart to her. Old Lem Dickson’s Sally better bat her eyes sharp or Ike’ll go up in the air an’ she’ll lose him.”
It was true that the foreman was less bashful with Ruth than with any of the other girls. Ruth knew how to put him at his ease. Every spare hour Bashful Ike had he put in teaching Ruth to improve her riding, and as she was an early riser they spent a good many morning hours cantering over the range before the rest of the young people were astir at Silver Ranch.
It was on one of these rides that Bashful Ike “opened up” to Ruth upon the subject of the red-haired school-teacher at the Crossing.