The Girl from Sunset Ranch: or, Alone in a Great City

“Come on in, Helen. Belle’s just pouring tea. Don’t you want some?” said the youngest Starkweather girl.

It was in Helen’s mind to excuse herself. Yet she was naturally too kindly to refuse to accept an advance like this. And she, like Flossie, had no idea that there was anybody in the drawing-room save Belle and Hortense.

In they marched – and there were three young ladies – friends of Belle – sipping tea and eating macaroons by the log fire, for the evening was drawing in cold.

“Goodness me!” ejaculated Belle.

“Well, I never!” gasped Hortense. “Have you got to butt in, Floss?”

“We want some tea, too,” said the younger girl, boldly, angered by her sisters’ manner.

“You’d better have it in the nursery,” yawned Hortense. “This is no place for kids in the bread-and-butter stage of growth.”

“Oh, is that so?” cried Flossie. “Helen and I are not kids – distinctly not! I hope I know my way about a bit – and as for Helen,” she added, with a wicked grin, knowing that the speech would annoy her sisters, “Helen can shoot, and rope steers, and break ponies to saddle, and all that. She told me so the other evening. Isn’t that right, Cousin Helen?”

“Why, your cousin must be quite a wonderful girl,” said Miss Van Ramsden, one of the visitors, to Flossie. “Introduce me; won’t you, Flossie?”

Belle was furious; and Hortense would have been, too, only she was too languid to feel such an emotion. Flossie proceeded to introduce Helen to the three visitors – all of whom chanced to be young ladies whom Belle was striving her best to cultivate.

And before Flossie and Helen had swallowed their tea, which Belle gave them ungraciously, Gregson announced a bevy of other girls, until quite a dozen gaily dressed and chattering misses were gathered before the fire.

At first Helen had merely bowed to the girls to whom she was introduced. She had meant to drink her tea quietly and excuse herself. She did not wish now to display a rude manner before Belle’s guests; but her oldest cousin seemed determined to rouse animosity in her soul.

“Yes,” she said, “Helen is paying us a little visit – a very brief one. She is not at all used to our ways. In fact, Indian squaws and what-do-you call-’ems – Greasers – are about all the people she sees out her way.”

“Is that so?” cried Miss Van Ramsden. “It must be a perfectly charming country. Come and sit down by me, Miss Morrell, and tell me about it.”

Indeed, at the moment, there was only one vacant chair handy, and that was beside Miss Van Ramsden. So Helen took it and immediately the young lady began to ask questions about Montana and the life Helen had lived there.

Really, the young society woman was not offensive; the questions were kindly meant. But Helen saw that Belle was furious and she began to take a wicked delight in expatiating upon her home and her own outdoor accomplishments.

When she told Miss Van Ramsden how she and her cowboy friends rode after jack-rabbits and roped them – if they could! – and shot antelope from the saddle, and that the boys sometimes attacked a mountain lion with nothing but their lariats, Miss Van Ramsden burst out with:

“Why, that’s perfectly grand! What fun you must have! Do hear her, girls! Why, what we do is tame and insipid beside things that happen out there in Montana every day.”

“Oh, don’t bother about her, May!” cried Belle. “Come on and let’s plan what we’ll do Saturday if we go to the Nassau links.”

“Listen here!” cried Miss Van Ramsden, eagerly. “Golf can wait. We can always golf. But your cousin tells the very bulliest stories. Go on, Miss Morrell. Tell some more.”

“Do, do!” begged some of the other girls, drawing their chairs nearer.

Helen was not a little embarrassed. She would have been glad to withdraw from the party. But then she saw the looks exchanged between Belle and Hortense, and they fathered a wicked desire in the Western girl’s heart to give her proud cousins just what they were looking for.

She began, almost unconsciously, to stretch her legs out in a mannish style, and drop into the drawl of the range.

“Coyote running is about as good fun as we have,” she told Miss Van Ramsden in answer to a question. “Yes, they’re cowardly critters; but they can run like a streak o’ greased lightning – yes-sir-ree-bob!” Then she began to laugh a little. “I remember once when I was a kid, that I got fooled about coyotes.”

“I’d like to know what you are now,” drawled Hortense, trying to draw attention from her cousin, who was becoming altogether too popular. “And you should know that children are better seen than heard.”

“Let’s see,” said Helen, quickly, “our birthdays are in the same month; aren’t they, ’Tense? I believe mother used to tell me so.”

“Oh, never mind your birthdays,” urged Miss Van Ramsden, while some of the other girls smiled at the repartee. “Let’s hear about your adventure with the coyote, Miss Morrell.”

“Why, ye see,” said Helen, “it wasn’t much. I was just a kid, as I say – mebbe ten year old. Dad had given me a light rifle – just a twenty-two, you know – to learn to shoot with. And Big Hen Billings – ”

“Doesn’t that sound just like those dear Western plays?” gasped one young lady. “You know – ‘The Squaw Man of the Golden West,’ or ‘Missouri,’ or – ”

“Hold on! You’re getting your titles mixed, Lettie,” cried Miss Van Ramsden. “Do let Miss Morrell tell it.”

“To give that child the center of the stage!” snapped Hortense, to Belle.

“I could shake Flossie for bringing her in here,” returned the oldest Starkweather girl, quite as angrily.

“Tell us about your friend, Big Hen Billings,” drawled another visitor. “He does sound so romantic!”

Helen almost giggled. To consider the giant foreman of Sunset Ranch a romantic type was certainly “going some.” She had the wicked thought that she would have given a large sum of money, right then and there, to have had Big Hen announced by Gregson and ushered into the presence of this group of city girls.

“Well,” continued Helen, thus urged, “father had given me a little rifle and Big Hen gave me a maverick – ”

“What’s that?” demanded Flossie.

“Well, in this case,” explained Helen, “it was an orphaned calf. Sometimes they’re strays that haven’t been branded. But in this case a bear had killed the calf’s mother in a coulée. She had tried to fight Mr. Bear, of course, or he never would have killed her at that time of year. Bears aren’t dangerous unless they’re hungry.”

“My! but they look dangerous enough – at the zoo,” observed Flossie.

“I tell ye,” said Helen, reflectively, “that was a pretty calf. And I was little, and I hated to hear them blat when the boys burned them – ”

“Burned them! Burned little calves! How cruel! What for?”

These were some of the excited comments. And in spite of Belle and Hortense, most of the visitors were now interested in the Western girl’s narration.

“They have to brand ’em, you see,” explained Helen. “Otherwise we never could pick our cattle out from other herds at the round-up. You see, on the ranges – even the fenced ranges – cattle from several ranches often get mixed up. Our brand is the Link-A. Our ranch was known, in the old days, as the ‘Link-A.’ It’s only late years that we got to calling it Sunset Ranch.”

“Sunset Ranch!” cried Miss Van Ramsden, quickly. “Haven’t I heard something about that ranch? Isn’t it one of the big, big cattle and horse-breeding ranches?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Helen, slowly, fearing that she had unwittingly got into a blind alley of conversation.

“And your father owns that ranch?” cried Miss Van Ramsden.

“My – my father is dead,” said Helen. “I am an orphan.”

“Oh, dear me! I am so sorry,” murmured the wealthy young lady.

But here Belle broke in, rather scornfully:

“The child means that her father worked on that ranch. She has lived there all her life. Quite a rude place, I fawncy.”

Helen’s eyes snapped. “Yes. He worked there,” she admitted, which was true enough, for nobody could honestly have called Prince Morrell a sluggard.

“He was – what you call it – a cowpuncher, I believe,” whispered Belle, in an aside.

If Helen heard she made no sign, but went on with her story.

“You see, it was such a pretty calf,” she repeated. “It had big blue eyes at first – calves often do. And it was all sleek and brown, and it played so cunning. Of course, its mother being dead, I had a lot of trouble with it at first. I brought it up by hand.

“And I tied a broad pink ribbon around its neck, with a big bow at the back. When it slipped around under its neck Bozie would somehow get the end of the ribbon in its mouth, and chew, and chew on it till it was nothing but pulp.”

She laughed reminiscently, and the others, watching her pretty face in the firelight, smiled too.

“So you called it Bozie?” asked Miss Van Ramsden.

“Yes. And it followed me everywhere. If I went out to try and shoot plover or whistlers with my little rifle, there was Bozie tagging after me. So, you see when it came calf-branding time, I hid Bozie.”

“You hid it? How?” demanded Flossie. “Seems to me a calf would be a big thing to hide.”

“I didn’t hide it under my bed,” laughed Helen. “No, sir! I took it out to a far distant coulée where I used to go to play – a long way from the bunk-house – and I hitched Bozie to a stub of a tree where there was nice, short, sweet grass for him.

“I hitched him in the morning, for the branding fires were going to be built right after dinner. But I had to show up at dinner – sure. The whole gang would have been out hunting me if I didn’t report for meals.”

“Yes. I presume you ran perfectly wild,” sighed Hortense, trying to look as though she were sorry for this half-savage little cousin from the “wild and woolly.”

“Oh, very wild indeed,” drawled Helen. “And after dinner I raced back to the coulée to see that Bozie was all right. I took my rifle along so the boys would think I’d gone hunting and wouldn’t tell father.

“I’d heard coyotes barking, as I thought, all the forenoon. And when I came to the hollow, there was Bozie running around and around his stub, and getting all tangled up, blatting his heart out, while two big old coyotes (or so I thought they were) circled around him.

“They ran a little way when they saw me coming. Coyotes sometimes will kill calves. But I had never seen one before that wouldn’t hunt the tall pines when they saw me coming.

“Crackey, those two were big fellers! I’d seen big coyotes, but never none like them two gray fellers. And they snarled at me when I made out to chase ’em – me wavin’ my arms and hollerin’ like a Piute buck. I never had seen coyotes like them before, and it throwed a scare into me – it sure did!

“And Bozie was so scared that he helped to scare me. I dropped my gun and started to untangle him. And when I got him loose he acted like all possessed!

“He wanted to run wild,” proceeded Helen. “He yanked me over the ground at a great rate. And all the time those two gray fellers was sneakin’ up behind me. Crackey, but I got scared!

“A calf is awful strong – ’specially when it’s scared. You don’t know! I had to leave go of either the rope, or the gun, and somehow,” and Helen smiled suddenly into Miss Van Ramsden’s face – who understood – “somehow I felt like I’d better hang onter the gun.”

“They weren’t coyotes!” exclaimed Miss Van Ramsden.

“No. They was wolves – real old, gray, timber-wolves. We hadn’t been bothered by them for years. Two of ’em, working together, would pull down a full-grown cow, let alone a little bit of a calf and a little bit of a gal,” said Helen.

“O-o-o!” squealed the excited Flossie. “But they didn’t?”

“I’m here to tell the tale,” returned her cousin, laughing outright. “Bozie broke away from me, and the wolves leaped after him – full chase. I knelt right down – ”

“And prayed!” gasped Flossie. “I should think you would!”

“I did pray – yes, ma’am! I prayed that the bullet would go true. But I knelt down to steady my aim,” said Helen, chuckling again. “And I broke the back of one of them wolves with my first shot. That was wonderful luck – with a twenty-two rifle. The bullet’s only a tiny thing.

“But I bowled Mr. Wolf over, and then I ran after the other one and the blatting Bozie. Bozie dodged the wolf somehow and came circling back at me, his tail flirting in the air, coming in stiff-legged jumps as a calf does, and searching his soul for sounds to tell how scart he was!

“I’d pushed another cartridge into my gun. But when Bozie came he bowled me over – flat on my back. Then the wolf made a leap, and I saw his light-gray underbody right over my head as he flashed after poor Bozie.

“I jest let go with the gun! Crackey! I didn’t have time to shoulder it, and it kicked and hit me in the nose and made my nose bleed awful. I was ‘all in,’ too, and I thought the wolf was going to eat Bozie, and then mebbe me, and I set up to bawl so’t Big Hen heard me farther than he could have heard my little rifle.

“Big Hen was always expectin’ me to get inter some kind of trouble, and he come tearin’ along lookin’ for me. And there I was, rolling in the grass an’ bawling, the second wolf kicking his life out with the blood pumping from his chest, not three yards away from me, and Bozie streakin’ it acrost the hill, his tail so stiff with fright you could ha’ hung yer hat on it!”

“Isn’t that perfectly grand!” cried Miss Van Ramsden, seizing Helen by the shoulders when she had finished and kissing her on both cheeks. “And you only ten years old?”

“But, you see,” said Helen, more quietly, “we are brought up that way in Montana. We would die a thousand deaths if we were taught to be afraid of anything on four legs.”

“It must be an exceedingly crude country,” remarked Hortense, her nose tip-tilted.

“Shocking!” agreed Belle.

“I’d like to go there,” announced Flossie, suddenly. “I think it must be fine.”

“Quite right,” agreed Miss Van Ramsden.

The older Starkweather girls could not go against their most influential caller. They were only too glad to have the Van Ramsden girl come to see them. But while the group were discussing Helen’s story, the girl from Sunset Ranch stole away and went up to her room.

She had not meant to tell about her life in the West – not in just this way. She had tried to talk about as her cousins expected her to, when once she got into the story; but its effect upon the visitors had not been just what either the Starkweather girls, or Helen herself, had expected.

She saw that she was much out of the good graces of Belle and Hortense at dinner; they hardly spoke to her. But Flossie seemed to delight in rubbing her sisters against the grain.

“Oh, Pa,” she cried, “when Helen goes home, let me go with her; will you? I’d just love to be on a ranch for a while – I know I should! And I do need a vacation.”

“Nonsense, Floss!” gasped Hortense.

“You are a perfectly vulgar little thing,” declared Belle. “I don’t know where you get such low tastes.”

Mr. Starkweather looked at his youngest daughter in amazement. “How very ridiculous,” he said. “Ahem! You do not know what you ask, Flossie.”

“Oh! I never can have anything I want,” whined Miss Flossie. “And it must be great fun out on that ranch. You ought to hear Helen tell about it, Pa.”

“Ahem! I have no interest in such things,” said her father, sternly. “Nor should you. No well conducted and well brought up girl would wish to live among such rude surroundings.”

“Very true, Pa,” sighed Hortense, shrugging her shoulders.

“You are a very common little thing, with very common tastes, Floss,” admonished her oldest sister.

Now, all this was whipping Helen over Flossie’s shoulders. The latter grinned wickedly; but Helen felt hurt. These people were determined to consider Sunset Ranch an utterly uncivilized place, and her associates there beneath contempt.

The following morning she set out to find the address upon the letter Mr. Starkweather had given to her. Whether she should present this letter to Mr. Grimes at once, Helen was not sure. It might be that she would wish to get acquainted with him before he knew her identity. Her expectations were very vague, at best; and yet she had hope.

She hoped that through this old-time partner of her father’s she might pick up some clue to the truth about the lost money. The firm of Grimes & Morrell had been on the point of paying several heavy bills and notes. The money for this purpose, as well as the working capital of the firm, had been in two banks. Either partner could draw checks against these accounts.

When the deposits in both banks had been withdrawn it had been done by checks for each complete balance being presented at the teller’s window of both banks. And the tellers were quite sure that the person presenting the checks was Prince Morrell.

In the rush of business, however, neither teller had been positive of this. Of course, it might have been the bookkeeper, or Mr. Grimes, who had got the money on the checks. However it might be, the money disappeared; there was none with which to pay the creditors or to continue the business of the firm.

Fenwick Grimes had been a sufferer; Willets Starkweather had been a sufferer. What Allen Chesterton, the bookkeeper, had been, it was hard to say. He had walked out of the office of the firm and had never come back. Likewise after a few days of worry and disturbance, Prince Morrell had done the same.

At least, the general public presumed that Mr. Morrell had run away without leaving any clue. It looked as though the senior partner and the bookkeeper were in league.

But public interest in the mystery had soon died out. Only the creditors remembered. After ten years they were pleasantly reminded of the wreck of the firm of Grimes & Morrell by the receipt of their lost money, with interest compounded to date. The lawyer that had come on from the West to make the settlement for Prince Morrell bound the creditors to secrecy. The bankruptcy court had long since absolved Fenwick Grimes from responsibility for the debts of the old firm. Neither he nor Mr. Starkweather had to know that the partner who ran away had legally cleared his name.

But there was something more. The suspicion against Prince Morrell had burdened the cattle king’s mind and heart when he died. And his little daughter felt it to be her sacred duty to try, at least, to uncover that old mystery and to prove to the world that her father had been guiltless.

Mr. Grimes lived in an old house in a rather shabby old street just off Washington Square. Helen asked Mr. Lawdor how to find the place, and she rode downtown upon a Fifth Avenue ’bus.

The house was a half-business, half-studio building; and Mr. Grimes’s name – graven on a small brass plate – was upon a door in the lower hall. In fact, Mr. Grimes, and his clerk, occupied this lower floor, the gentleman owning the building, which he was holding for a rise in real estate values in that neighborhood.

The clerk, a sharp-looking young man with a pen behind his ear, answered Helen’s somewhat timid knock. He looked her over severely before he even offered to admit her, asking:

“What’s your business, please?”

“I came to see Mr. Grimes, sir.”

“By appointment?”

“No-o, sir. But – ”

“He is very busy. He seldom sees anybody save by appointment. Are – are you acquainted with him?”

“No, sir. But my business is important.”

“To you, perhaps,” said the clerk, with a sneering smile. “But if it isn’t important to him I shall catch it for letting you in. What is it?”

“It is business that I can tell to nobody except Mr. Grimes. Not in detail. But I can say this much: It concerns a time when Mr. Grimes was in business with another man – sixteen years or more ago and I have come – come from his old partner.”

“Humph!” said the clerk. “A begging interview? For, if so, take my advice – don’t try it. It would be no use. Mr. Grimes never gives anything away. He wouldn’t even bait a rat-trap with cheese-parings.”

“I have not come here to beg money of Mr. Grimes,” said Helen, drawing herself up.

“Well, you can come in and wait. Perhaps he’ll see you.”

This had all been said very low in the public hall, the clerk holding the door jealously shut behind him. Now he opened it slowly and let her enter a large room, with old and dusty furniture set about it, and the clerk’s own desk far back, by another door – which latter he guarded against all intrusion. Behind that door, of course, was the man she had come to see.

But as Helen turned to take a seat on the couch which the clerk indicated with a gesture of his pen, she suddenly discovered that she was not the only person waiting in the room. In a decrepit armchair by one of the front windows, and reading the morning paper, with his wig pushed back upon his bald brow, was the queer old gentleman with whom she had ridden across the continent when she had come to New York.

The discovery of this acquaintance here in Mr. Grimes’s office gave Helen a distinct shock.

CHAPTER XVIII

PROBING FOR FACTS

Helen sat down quickly and stared across the room at the queer old man. The latter at first seemed to pay her no attention. But finally she saw that he was skillfully “taking stock” of her from behind the shelter of the printed sheet.

The Western girl was more direct than that. She got up and walked across to him. The clerk uttered a very loud “Ahem!” as though to warn her to drop her intention; but Helen said coolly:

“Don’t you remember me, sir?”

“Ha! I believe it is the little girl who came from the coast with me last week,” said the man.

“Not from the coast; from Montana,” corrected Helen.

“But you are dressed differently now and I was not sure,” he said. “How have you been?”

“Very well, I thank you. And you, sir?”

“Well. Very. But I did not expect to see you again – er —here.”

“No, sir. And you are waiting to see Mr. Grimes, too?”

“Er – something like that,” admitted the old man.

Helen eyed him thoughtfully. She had already glanced covertly once or twice at the clerk across the room. She was quite bright enough to see between the rungs of a ladder.

“You are Mr. Grimes,” she said, bluntly, looking again at the old man, who was adjusting his wig.

He looked up at her slily, his avaricious little eyes twinkling as they had aboard the train when he had looked over her shoulder and caught her counting her money.

“You’re a very smart little girl,” he said, with a short laugh. “What have you come to see me about? Do you think of investing some of your money in mining stocks?”

“No,” said Helen. “I have no money to invest.”

“Humph. Did you find your folks?” he asked, turning the subject quickly.

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s the matter with you, then? What do you want?”

“You are Mr. Grimes?” she pursued, to make sure.

“Well, I don’t deny it.”

“I have come to talk to you about – about Prince Morrell,” she said, in a very low voice so that the clerk could not hear.

“Who?” gasped the man, falling back in his chair. Evidently Helen had startled him.

“Prince Morrell,” she replied.

“What are you to Prince Morrell?” demanded the man.

“I am his daughter. He is dead. I have come here to talk with you about the time – the time he left New York,” said the girl from Sunset Ranch, hesitatingly.

Mr. Grimes stared at her, with his wig still awry, for some moments; then the color began to come back into his face. Helen had not realized before that he had turned pale.

“You come into my office,” he snapped, jumping up briskly. “I’ll get to the bottom of this!”

His movements were so very abrupt and he looked at her so strangely that, to tell the truth, the girl from Sunset Ranch was a bit frightened. She trailed along behind him, however, with only a hesitating step, passing the wondering clerk, and heard the lock of the door of the inner office snap behind her as Mr. Grimes shut it.

He drew heavy curtains over the door, too. The place was a gloomy apartment until he turned on the electric light over a desk table. She saw that there were curtains at all the windows, and at the other door, too.

“Come here,” he said, beckoning her to the desk, and to a chair that stood by it, and still speaking softly. “We will not be overheard here. Now! Tell me what you mean by coming to me in this way?”