“I’m thinking we’ll leave it for Archie to bring up with him. He’ll be home day after to-morrow. We’ve got all we can manage to-night for the horses. Jeanie, you climb up beside Don, and I’ll take Peggie with me. Let three of the young ladies go with you, and we’ll take a couple and the suit-cases. Look after those groceries at your feet, Jeanie, or the mother’ll be having something to say to you if you spill out her sugar and oats.”
Laughing and calling to each other, the girls finally were packed away safely in the two wagons, and away they went, the ponies shaking their heads, and “sneezing,” as Peggie said, as they cut out of town into the open country.
“We have seventeen miles ahead of us,” Jean said. “Better take off your hats, and settle down to enjoy the drive.”
The girls took the suggestion, and, bareheaded, let the soft night breeze blow in their faces. Deercroft lay in the valley, and the road northward climbed the hills. Jean was busy talking to Don, not with him, but at him, as Polly said afterwards. Nobody ever really talked with Don, for he had nothing to say; but he was a splendid listener, and would smile, and nod his head, until you felt that he agreed with you perfectly. It was easy to see what close friends the two were. Polly, Sue and Ted were in the same wagon with them, so they could laugh and listen too.
“How fast the ponies go,” said Ruth, in the forward team.
“They know they’re homeward bound,” Mr. Murray returned. “Wait till you see them with Archie’s hand on them. He’s broken in nearly all of them. I suppose you’ll be riding, before many days. You will if you’re like our girls. Has Jeanie told you of the day she rode from Pegtop Mountain down to the ranch to give the alarm? No? I’ll wager not. She isn’t the kind to go about telling of her doings, and praising herself. Pegtop lies around yon knuckle.” He pointed with the whip at a jut of hillside ahead. “You’ll see it when we turn eastward again. The sheep grazed on that upper range those days, and we have no forest rangers up in our corner of the state. If there’s trouble in the hills, we get out and do our own fighting. This day in September, I know, it was dry as codfish, in the hills. The grass was burnt low, and every twig ready for the snapping. Somehow Pegtop caught fire on its southern slope, midway up where the spruces commence to fringe it. And around on its other side I had eight hundred or so sheep, and only one herder to the lot. Jeanie was a lass of fifteen then, about like this young lady,” pointing to Isabel. “The boys were helping me down in the valley, and she started out for a ride over Pegtop, and found the fire creeping through the brush. Have you ever seen one? No? First there’s the smell of it, and you can’t seem to find out where it belongs. Then you see the thin white streaks of smoke curl up and settle in a cloud above the spot, and you don’t waste time then.”
“But, what could you do way out here without anything to fight fire with, Mr. Murray?” asked Isabel.
“Do, lass? We did what we could, and no one can do more. Jeanie came riding back. You should have seen her, riding astride and laying over the pony’s neck like a slip of an Indian boy. Neil and myself went back when we heard her news.”
“To stop the fire?” asked Ruth.
He shook his head.