Frank Kent shook Jack's hand warmly and this time he did not seem offended.
"All right," he answered sadly. "But if there is ever anything I can do to help you, I am going to do it, whether we are friends or not."
And though Jack and Jean did not see how this strange fellow could ever be mixed up in their affairs, they were comforted somehow by what he promised.
"I am going over to Mrs. Simpson's this afternoon, Jean," Jack announced a few minutes after their guest's departure. "I know people say that we ranch girls never take anybody's advice, but just the same I am going to ask Mrs. Simpson what we had better do about this Indian child. Will you come along?"
Mrs. Simpson, the ranch girls' most intimate friend, and her husband were the wealthiest ranch owners in that part of Wyoming. She was a typical Western woman, with a big heart and a sharp tongue. She used to lecture the girls and at the same time was awfully proud of their courage and independence.
"I'm game, Jack," Jean agreed, "but I haven't any proper riding habit. I wouldn't mind a bit if that wretched niece of Mrs. Simpson's wasn't there. I wish you had seen how she stared at me the other day when I called Mrs. Simpson, Aunt Sallie, as though we hadn't called her Aunt all the days of our youth. Do you think Aunt Ellen could mend this for me before we go?" Jean held up a green broadcloth riding habit very much the worse for wear, with a long ugly rent in it.
"You need a new habit dreadfully, Jean," Jack declared. "I am afraid we haven't any really proper clothes. The worst of it is, I don't know just what we ought to have or where to get them. I wonder if we are too much like boys?"
"What's the odds, Jack, so long as we are happy," Jean sang out cheerfully. "Besides, Jim says that money hasn't been flowing in to Rainbow Ranch any too plentifully lately. It takes pretty much all he can get hold of to run things, so I thought I wouldn't trouble about another habit. But the idea of that fashionable Miss Laura Post, from Miss Beatty's school, New York City, staring at me with her china-blue eyes does rattle me. She and her mother treat us exactly as though we were a Wild West show. Besides it is my unpleasant impression that I had this same tear in my skirt when I rode over to Aunt Sallie's the last time."
"Jean, you are lazy; why didn't you mend it yourself?" Jack scolded. "You know Aunt Ellen can't sew a bit. Isn't it dreadful that little Frieda is the only one of us who ever touches a needle and she has no one to show her how to sew, poor baby. Come along, I'll see what I can do with your old skirt. Let's go in the Indian girl's room while I do my worst, best, I mean."
Olilie had very little to tell her rescuers of her history. She could not explain why Laska wanted her to live with her, because she had always hated her and been unkind to her. Olilie had but one friend, a teacher in the Indian school in the Indian village in Wind Creek valley. The sick girl did not talk so freely before Jack, as she seemed a little afraid of her, but she begged the girls to find her a home at one of the ranch houses where she might earn her living, for she declared that she would never go back to the "Crow's nest," as old Laska's hut was called.