VALOR
"The Silver Arrow is to be yours, Jeanette. The club has decided without a single dissenting voice."
Martha Putnam was speaking.
Jeanette smiled, flushed and shook her head.
"Thank you, no, I must decline an honor I never gained."
The girls were out of doors. They were not in the vicinity of the big house, nor of the old lodge which was now a burned-out pile of charred logs. They were hovering about the front porch of the ranch house where the men who were employed on the Rainbow Ranch formerly had lived.
On the day after the fire the men at the ranch house had offered to vacate their own quarters and allow the members of the Colter family to move in until they could make more satisfactory arrangements.
Gladly Mr. Colter accepted. There were tents in which the ranchmen could make their temporary quarters until the coming of cold weather. By that time they would have found a new house or moved back into one of their own. Mrs. Colter desired that the old lodge be restored, but the question had not yet been finally settled.
No one of them appeared especially depressed by the disaster, although coming at a particularly trying time when the family finances were low and the large house rented until Christmas. Still, no one had been injured. At first Mrs. Perry insisted the entire family live with her; later she offered to surrender the lease on the house if Mr. Colter wished it.
Neither of her kind offers had been accepted.