“I don’t know anything about it, Polly, any more than you do,” said Jean, simply. “Mother knows what the trouble is between the two sisters, because Mrs. Sandy told her herself, but we don’t know. Mother has that way always. Sometimes father will tell what he thinks is a great piece of news, and mother will say very gently, ‘Land o’ rest, David, I knew that six months ago. You mustn’t go ’round telling all you hear.’ Mrs. Sandy had always told Peggie and me about her stately sister at the old Southern home in Queen’s Ferry, and when I gave up the school over at Beaver Ford and told her I wanted to get into an upper class school, or preparatory for college, she said that she would write to her sister in my behalf at Calvert Hall, and, well—I got the appointment.”
“But Miss Calvert never talks about her, and she didn’t send her love by us,” put in Isabel, decidedly. “Has she lived out West here long, Miss Murray?”
“Before father took up his claim. I really am not sure how long it is. I know that Sandy was born East, but did most of his fighting out here, and then he went back home, and married Miss Diantha. Perhaps, before you go back home, you may find out all about it.”
“Oh, girls, look,” cried Polly, turning around eagerly. They had come to a turn in the road, skirting the base of the mountain. On one side was the sheer, precipitous cliff, with straight trunks of pines and spruce rising like ship masts higher and higher, until the tops were lost to sight. Below were the pines too, and the ground grew more and more rugged, as they rode upward. Far beneath them lay the valley, and in the distance was the ranch, its buildings and corrals looking almost like toys. Ahead the wagon road wound around the face of the mountain, and disappeared.
“We call this the Delectable Mountain,” Jean told them, as they all halted, to look at the gorgeous panorama outspread before them. “Mother named it years ago. It was a long and weary trip for her out here. They came by wagon from Iowa, the nearest shipping point. Mother has often told us of the long trip, and how kind people were at the ranches they passed along the route, but how very few there were. Father had taken up the claim, and then had sent for her to bring the goods on, and he met her. And she says that when, at last, after days and days of travel, they finally came around this curve of the old trail, and the valley lay before her, she just looked and looked at it, and smiled. ‘Davy, it’s the Delectable Mountain, isn’t it, dear heart, and yonder lies our Promised Land.’ That is what she said, girls. I think it was, too.”
The girls were silent. It was about eleven, and the sunlight flooded the valley with its golden glow. About it, the mountains grouped shelteringly. For miles and miles, in all the vast view, the only spot of human life was the ranch. And for the moment there came to the girls, even in their own careless pleasure, a realization of what that long journey had meant to the bride of thirty years ago, and what simple heroism there lay in the story of the valley home.
“How brave she was,” said Ruth, gently. “What did she do when the Indians came around?”
“She gave them bread,” Jean replied, smiling. “Mother doesn’t believe much in bullets. Now, ride along, girls. We’ll go as far as the spring cave for this morning, then back home to dinner, and you’ll have done very well. I think even the Admiral would say that much.”
They kept on for another three quarters of a mile, until the road broadened out, and there, at the side, was a spring tumbling and trickling out of the rocky ledge. A granite cup was tucked into one of the crevices, and they all dismounted, and had a good drink, then rode back to the ranch with keen appetites for one of Mrs. Murray’s famous dinners.