Jim Colter shook his head gravely, although his eyes were smiling. "No, I am Big Chief of nothing, sonnie," he replied kindly. "But you had better come into the house with me; that is an uncommonly ugly wound you have on your arm, and I've an idea you might be persuaded to eat a little something."
CHAPTER IV
THE WAY TO ARCADY
IT can't be, Jim, that you think maybe we will be able to carry out our scheme," Jean murmured, her voice hushed almost into a whisper from sheer surprise. She held her fork in the air, hovering between her mouth and her plate, while the other three girls leaned back limply in their chairs at the breakfast table. To win a battle without a fight when all your forces are drawn up for action is unsettling.
"Oh, well, I didn't exactly say I would agree to this caravan trip," Jim hedged. "I don't know that it is a good plan for you to give up your home and take to the woods; but I did say that the idea was worth considering if Miss Ruth favors it. The thing that troubles me most is who is to be the leader of this female cavalcade?" Jim frowned and buttered his fourth hot biscuit. "Don't tell me, Jack Ralston, that you can go it alone, for you can't. It is a good thing you were born in Wyoming, the first state to declare for woman's suffrage, for if ever I met a real natural born female suffragette, it's you. There isn't a thing on this earth that a man does that you wouldn't try if you could. I don't know, Miss Drew, but that we are a little more advanced on the woman question out here than you are in Vermont," Jim drawled slowly. "Kind of seems like it ought to help reconcile you to living among us."
Ruth laughed girlishly. She had on a white piqué frock and looked as dainty as a Dresden china shepherdess; she had plenty of color now and her lips had lost their disapproving curve. "I don't need the vote to reconcile me to living with the ranch girls, Mr. Colter," she insisted sweetly. "And please understand I am just as anxious for the caravan trip as I can be."
Jim looked thoughtfully at his plate without answering, until Jack gave a little tug at his sleeve. "See here, Jim, dear," she argued quickly, "even I haven't suggested that we undertake our trip without a man for our guide. You know we want to follow one of the old, almost forgotten trails across the state to the Yellowstone Park, and of course we don't want to get lost; but Jean and Olive and I planned the whole thing out this morning just perfectly. We know some of the horses we want to take with us and we have chosen the very man for our escort."
Jim shook his head obstinately. "You know I am not talking against the boys on our ranch," he answered solemnly; "they are as good a set of fellows as can be found anywhere in the business. But there isn't one of them that's fit to trust with the finest girls in this country."
"Oh, our guide is all right; don't worry about him, Jim," Jean announced, with the calm assurance of a priestess of the Delphic oracle. "I know you will thoroughly approve of him as soon as you hear who he is." Jean tried her best to wink at Ruth, so that she might guess their meaning, but Ruth was completely in the dark.