Virginia's Ranch Neighbors

by Grace May North

Virginia glanced at her wrist watch. “True enough,” she exclaimed “and now that I am home, Uncle Tex, you are to have a long vacation from the kitchen. We girls will do all the cooking and brewing and mopping and scrubbing and—” but the old man, shaking his head, interrupted—

“Wall, I reckon yo-all won’t have time to do much playin’ if yer scheming that-a-way.”

All unconsciously Virginia sighed. How she did wish that the faithful Chinaman, who had been cook in her home since she was a baby, had not, the year before, decided to revisit the land of his birth. He had slipped away without giving notice, (although he had told them months before that he was going, sometime), and he had never returned.

As they crossed the descending trail that led to the towering red windmill, Virg glanced at the old man, and silently renewed her resolve to relieve him of much of the kitchen work, which had been his self-assumed task. They had tried Mexican cooks, Malcolm had written her, but Uncle Tex had fretted through the brief stay of each one, and had at last declared that he didn’t want any more “cholos” messin’ round Miss Virginia’s kitchen, “spatterin’ it up,” and that he’d take “keer” of it fer her himself, but Virg knew how, during those long months of faithful service, his big heart had yearned for the freedom of the range. “I’ll show him how much I appreciate what he has done to make the home pleasant for my brother while I was gone,” the girl had just decided when a cry from Betsy and Babs, who had skipped on ahead attracted her attention. They were standing near the windmill beckoning excitedly. “I do believe they have found the surprise,” Virg confided to Margaret, then she glanced inquiringly at the old man, but his beaming expression revealed nothing.

A moment later the something was revealed.

“Oh Uncle Tex, how pretty! Did you make that all alone and for me?” Virginia’s delight was indeed real and she was convinced, as were the other girls, that at last they had found the surprise about which Uncle Tex had written. Beyond the windmill and in the warm shelter of its wide walls stood a little garden house over which a blossoming vine was growing. Within was a table and four comfortable chairs that had been entirely made of yucca stalks and had been skillfully fashioned with infinite patience by the leathery, wrinkled hands of the old cattleman.

The garden house itself was made of yucca, the stalks being so long and strong that Virginia knew, to procure them, the old man had to visit a distant part of the desert where they grew.

Just below the door of this summer house was the pond of which Uncle Tex had written, and on it several ducks were lazily swimming.

“There’s water enough for a garden, Miss Virginia dearie, but Ah reckon’d as yo-all’d want to set out the sort of flowers yo’d like best.” Then, as Virginia had not spoken, he asked, almost wistfully. “Yo-all likes it, don’t yo’, Miss Virginia dearie?”

There were tears in the violet eyes that turned toward him. “Like it! Oh, Uncle Tex!” Her arms were about him and her soft young cheek was pressed close to his leathery one. “I was just hoping mother might know. She used so often to wish since there are no shade trees near that we might have a cool, sheltered out-of-doors place where we could take our books and sewing.”