The next day they rode over again to the Alameda ranch to see the Chief’s horses of which he was so proud. By this time, as Ted said, they were so accustomed to riding horseback that it seemed queer to walk around.
“Ted, that sounds for all the world like some old sailor who didn’t like dry land,” said Sue. “Anybody’d think, to hear you, that you were born and bred on a ranch.”
“Wish I had been,” Ted flung back over her shoulder, as she rode past. “Peggie, will you change places with me? You go back to school, and let me stay here.”
“Have to ask mother that,” Peggie replied, shaking her head.
“Have you asked her, yet, really, Peggie?” said Polly, who was next to her in the file of horses. But Peggie shook her head.
“Not yet. I mustn’t. It isn’t my turn. Don comes next.”
But Polly made up her mind privately, to ask Jean. If the skeleton turned out to be worth anything, the Doctor would be the first to purchase it for the Institute at Washington, and Peggie was the finder, so the money would be hers and the Chief’s, as it was his property. The Admiral always said that Polly was the most rapid builder of air castles he had ever known, but that never disconcerted nor discouraged Polly.
It was the first time since their arrival at the ranch that Jean had let them ride without her, but with the extra harvesters that week, she felt she must help her mother. Sally Lost Moon was willing, but slow and a poor cook.
“Peggie knows the way over as well if not better than I do,” Jean had said, that morning. “Take the trip easily, girls. I think you’ll be all right.”
Peggie and Polly rode together, and the other girls behind them. It was a merry cavalcade of demoiselles, as Mrs. Sandy put it, that trotted up to the Alameda that morning. After they had turned the ponies into the corral, the whole day lay before them. They went far up the back road with Sandy himself, first of all, about a mile, until they came to the horse range. Carefully selected, it was, out of all the land he owned, chosen for shelter and good water and grass. Here he had built a great corral in the center, with feed-sheds for winter. Here grazed fifty beautiful mares, horses that had never felt a saddle touch their glossy arched backs.