"Then you'll be sure to succeed," said her mother, confidently. "You always succeed in everything you undertake--hadn't you noticed that, dear? Now, really, I'm just as comfortable as hands can make me, so you run on down to the corral and help Ruth and the Babe with the ponies. You ride with them to Emerald, and get the mail--it'll do you good. And be sure you bring me a letter from father."
Cheered by her mother's words, Elizabeth gave one more pat and pull to the pillows, kissed her, and ran down to the corral, where the girls were roping the ponies. She and Ruth could each rope a little, missing about three out of five throws, but the Babe usually flourished so reckless a loop that she entangled herself, and had to be helped out; in spite of which old Jonah Bean insisted that she was the only one who showed any signs of learning the art.
Poor Elizabeth! Her castle of dreams had fallen, leaving her wide awake to the fact that she was no princess of romance but the humble offspring of miserable movers, such as had always been the objects of her shuddering contempt. Even Cousin Hannah's heart was touched with pity, and she tried with clumsy but hearty kindness to make amends for the grief she had caused by her disclosure. Nothing had been said to Ruth and the Babe, of course--they still believed her to be their born sister. However, deep down in her heart, Elizabeth was walking in the Valley of Humiliation amid the dust and ashes of dead hopes; and, as most people know, when one enters the Valley it is very, very hard to find the way out again!
Mrs. Spooner, watching the girls ride down the road, sighed softly. "Poor child," she murmured pityingly, "I can hardly forgive Cousin Hannah. But in the end it may prove the best thing. I'm afraid we were spoiling her. This may bring out the fine nature that I know she possesses."
Texas is a land of far horizons; Mrs. Spooner could see all the vast, brown-green circling plain until it lost itself in the hazy distance.
Away up the trail that led to her brother's distant ranch, twenty miles further from Emerald, she noticed a moving cloud of dust which resolved itself into an oscillating speck--two--a man on a pony, with a led horse.
For some reason which she could not have explained, Mrs. Spooner felt that the approaching rider was going to turn in at the Silver Spur. There was no pleasant feeling between herself and Harvey Grannis. John Spooner had bought the Silver Spur ranch from his brother-in-law when he came to this part of Texas, and there had been trouble over the transaction, due, Mrs. Spooner felt, to Harvey's disposition to take too much authority. He was a bachelor, and the rich man of the community--excepting the English rancher, McGregor, who did not live so far away. He would have liked to do a good deal for the family of his only sister, but he wanted to do it in his own way, asserting that John Spooner couldn't take care of them, and treating them, Elizabeth fireily said like paupers. A hard man, with his good qualities, yet full of the "rule or ruin" spirit, and liable to go to great lengths to make his point.
The approaching rider was now seen to be a young fellow, scarcely more than a big boy. He came up the long bare drive, stopped at the porch edge and took off his hat before he spoke to the woman in the rocking-chair. She noted that the pony he rode stumbled with weariness, while the led horse trotted briskly, unencumbered with saddle or rider. She saw, too, that while the tired pony bore a brand unfamiliar to her, the led one was marked with a G in a horse-shoe--Harvey Grannis's brand.
"Good morning, ma'am," the newcomer greeted her. He was a handsome lad of perhaps sixteen, but just now in a woeful plight, dusty, shaking, haggard with weariness. "I stopped to ask if you'd like to buy a pony at a big bargain."
Mrs. Spooner leaned forward in her chair with a little gasp. She was afraid of what was coming.