CHAPTER V
AT BOTH ENDS OF THE ROUTE
As Helen walked up and down the platform at Elberon, waiting for the east-bound Transcontinental, she looked to be a very plain country girl with nothing in her dress to denote that she was one of the wealthiest young women in the State of Montana.
Sunset Ranch was one of the few remaining great cattle ranches of the West. Her father could justly have been called “a cattle king,” only Prince Morrell was not the sort of man who likes to see his name in print.
Indeed, there was a good reason why Helen’s father had not wished to advertise himself. That old misfortune, which had borne so heavily upon his mind and heart when he came to die, had made him shrink from publicity.
However, business at Sunset Ranch had prospered both before and since Mr. Morrell’s death. The money had rolled in and the bank accounts which had been put under the administration of Big Hen Billings and the lawyer at Elberon, increased steadily.
Big Hen was a generous-handed administrator and guardian. Of course, the foreman of the ranch was, perhaps, not the best person to be guardian of a sixteen-year-old girl. He did not treat her, in regard to money matters, as the ordinary guardian would have treated a ward.
Big Hen didn’t know how to limit a girl’s expenditures; but he knew how to treat a man right. And he treated Helen Morrell just as though she were a sane and responsible man.
“There’s a thousand dollars in cash for you, Snuggy,” he had said. “I got it in soft money, for it’s a fac’ that they use that stuff a good deal in the East. Besides, the hard money would have made a good deal of a load for you to tote in them leetle war-bags of yourn.”
“But shall I ever need a thousand dollars?” asked Helen, doubtfully.