“I wish that hoot owl would turn settler, and find his resting place,” grumbled Ted. “He sounds so awfully lost.”
But almost as she said it, she drifted away to dreamland, and the first night in Wyoming had begun.
CHAPTER XIII
CROSSBAR RANCH
Polly was the first to awake the following morning. She heard the oddest sound right under her window, a sharp cry of “Come back, come back, come back!”
Then came Mrs. Murray’s voice, hushed, but agitated.
“Get away from there! Shoo, with you, shoo!”
Polly jumped up from her cot, and looked out. A flock of speckled guinea hens fluttered away from a waving apron, and vanished behind the old blacksmith shop. It was early morning. Polly dressed quietly, and went out, leaving the rest of the girls sleeping, for she knew how tired they were after the long overland journey.
Once outdoors, she stood still, and looked around her. The Murray ranch lay in a pleasant valley, with foothills and buttes surrounding it. Polly’s first thought was, where could the trees be? Excepting for the cottonwoods that fringed the creek bed, and the spruces rising spire-like in every place they could find a foothold, there seemed to a Virginia-bred girl, to be a dearth of trees. The ranch was built facing the south, and almost backed into the buttes at the north for shelter. The main log cabin was only one story high, but broad and long, and home-like looking. A hammock swung under its porch shelter, and there were some flower borders around it, with geraniums and mignonette growing in them, and some pansies, but precious little else. Just across the valley rose a mountain. Patches of pines covered its sides, with here and there the white line of the wagon road showing around the slopes. Straggling away from the main cabin were various buildings, all low, and built also of logs. Farther back, under the shelter of the shelving sandstone butte, was the corral, a round enclosure of rails, and ponies within. Down in the valley where the creek wound in and out, were some sheep, their heads bent down as they grazed, their backs stone-gray like rocks.
Eastward, the sun was just showing above the hills, and everywhere was heard the songs of birds.