CHAPTER XXIII
AT THE ALAMOSITAS
After all, going away from home for the first time when you’re nearly seventeen is a thrilling business. Hilda was the sort to get joy even out of small things—and the change from the Three Sorrows to the Alamositas, though it was but from one great ranch to another, was not small.
The Marchbanks ranch, most often called the Flying M, for its brand, got its Spanish name of Alamositas, “little cottonwood,” from the number of those trees which grew tall all along the Juanajara River, which wound sluggishly through many of its pastures. At the Alamositas, headquarters was almost like a small village, with a big main house of adobe, two-story, built Spanish-fashion, around a court; numerous bunk-houses for the men who worked for the Marchbankses; manager’s quarters, a blacksmith shop and the ranch supply store; standing over across the trail, opposite the front gate; inviting all sorts of comers and goers.
Hilda was given a large upstairs room all to herself; it adjoined Maybelle’s, and she thought that would be nice, remembering vividly the plump little girl with whom she had played dolls in the tree roots on the lawn at the Sorrows. She found Maybelle Marchbanks still plump, and quite pretty; a year older than Hilda, she was very competent at all household matters, neat as wax, dressed quite like a young lady and with a great deal of ornament. She could ride, of course, but not as Hilda could, and she left the interests of the ranch to the men. She seemed to have forgotten all about that earlier time, and even when Hilda reminded her she was vague with:
“Oh, yes, I remember I was over in Lame Jones County once when I was a little girl—did I visit at your house?” It seemed to Hilda that so many interesting things had happened to this girl that it was perfectly natural she should have forgotten. For from the first morning when Miss Ferguson opened lessons, Hilda sensed the cross-pull that there was here. The lively interfering tide came right over from the store porch, where young fellows in bullion-trimmed sombreros, high-heeled boots and clanking spurs, were apt to be on hand to intercept the girls if one of them ran across on an errand. And there was always an errand, when Maybelle saw any one she liked there. Sometimes when she didn’t do that, one or more of the boys sauntered across to the ranch house, even looked in at the schoolroom window to say hello and ask when lessons would be over.
Miss Ferguson, the teacher, did the best she could. Hilda realized at once that here was some one who knew twice as much as Miss Belle or Miss Bobbie, who had taught Uncle Hank’s academy—a really good teacher from a well-known woman’s college in the East. But Mrs. Marchbanks didn’t seem to care how much the lessons were interrupted. It was almost as though she put greater emphasis on the girls having a good time. She had two lively, spoiled children of her own, Tod, the boy, seven, and Jinnie, five. Her immediate interest fastened upon Hilda’s looks. She had followed on to the room the first day, gone in with the two girls, sat down on the bed with Tod and Jinnie on each side of her, and gazed at the new member of her household with very admiring eyes.
“Hilda, dear—I’m going to call you Hilda, of course—you ought always to wear white.”
Hilda was pulling on a fresh blouse, making herself tidy for lunch.
“I don’t mean just a shirt-waist—a thin dress, with your arms showing through a little. They are too sunburned now—you’ve been careless with them—but I can soon take that off with buttermilk. I would just love to see you dressed in a thin white dress with a dark red flower in your hair.”
“Tod’s freckled like a hop-toad,” little red-headed Jinnie piped up, suddenly. “Muvver doesn’t take the freckles off of him with buttermilk. Could you, Muvver? Would they come off? I ast him once to let me scrub ’em off wiv sand—but he wouldn’t.”