The waters of Rainbow Creek were no longer in danger of flowing into the Norton ranch. Jim and his men had built a dam at the end of Rainbow Lake, where the dynamite explosion had taken place. The Ralston Ranch had filed suit for damages against Mr. Norton, but the claim had not yet been settled.
Ruth and Jean crossed some stepping-stones to the wooded side of the stream and had walked only a short distance beyond, when Ruth spied a gleam of color a little farther on. It was Frieda, who wore a red Tam, a red sweater and her long blonde plaits tied with red ribbons. She was sitting on the stump of an old tree sewing some bits of ribbon together as calmly as though she had been in a little rocking-chair by the fire. She looked so like a little German mädchen, though she was so far away from the Vaterland, that Ruth wanted to laugh aloud.
"Frieda!" called an unfamiliar voice.
Frieda glanced quickly up. She was making a pincushion for their new cousin and had not had time to finish, but hoped to be through with it before Olive landed her fish.
The bits of silk ribbon fluttered to the ground as Frieda caught sight of a stranger not much larger than Jean. She had her arms outstretched and such an eager look in her nearsighted eyes that Frieda flew straight to her.
"I am awfully glad to see you, I am really," Frieda announced, giving her new cousin an old-fashioned hug. "There are such a lot of things I want you to show me that Jack and Jean and Olive don't know a single thing about. And I am sure I shall like you in spite of what—" But a warning look from Jean cut short Frieda's confidences.
"Where is Olive?" Jean asked quickly.
"She is not very far away," Frieda answered, "but you must walk softly or you will frighten the fish."
Cousin Ruth tiptoed as softly as Frieda could wish. She was curious to see this new ranch girl whom Jack had written her about, and she would have been sorry to have missed her first vision of Olive.
Olive hung out over the water, where the creek deepened into a small pool, under the branches of a scrub pine tree. One slender arm clung to a limb of the young tree as she looked down into the muddy water in the shadow of the evergreen boughs. Ruth had a quick and vivid impression of her glossy black hair; her delicate figure, with its peculiar woodland grace, clothed in an old green dress the color of the autumn grass, and caught her breath in wonder. The girl looked like a dryad who had stolen out of the heart of a tree to catch an image of herself in the water.