Part 13

"Oh, papa!" she cried. "I'm so glad the rest of it is a real ranch house! I've always wanted to see just how a real ranchman lives!"

He thought ruefully that she would soon learn, to her cost, how a very poverty-stricken ranchman lived. His examination of the larder had not been encouraging.

"I am afraid we shall have rather poor pickings for supper, my dear," he said apologetically. He called her "my dear" from the first; it seemed more non-committal and impersonal than the use of her name. He had not called a young lady by her first name for fifteen years.

"I have my dinner in the middle of the day," he went on, "and I seem to have run short of provisions this evening."

"I suppose you have a man-cook," she remarked, quite ignoring his apology.

"Yes," he replied grimly. "I have the honor to fill that office myself."

"Why; isn't there anybody else about the place?"

"No. I'm 'out of help' just now, as old Madam Gallup used to say. I don't suppose you remember old Madam Gallup."

"Oh, yes, I do! Mama used to have her to dinner every Sunday. She looked like a duchess, but when she died people said she died of starvation. That was the year after you went away," she added thoughtfully.

It seemed very odd to hear this tall young woman say "mama," and to realize that it was that other Elizabeth that she was laying claim to. Why, the girl seemed almost as much of a woman as her mother. Fifteen years! A long time to be sure. He ought to have known better than to have slipped into reminiscences at the very outset. Uncomfortable things, always--uncomfortable things!

He would not let her help him get the supper, and with a subtle perception of the irritation which he was at such pains to conceal, she forbore to press the point, and went, instead, and sat in the doorway, looking dreamily across the prairie.

Stanwood noted her choice of a seat, with a curious mixture of jealousy and satisfaction. He should be obliged either to give up his seat, or to share it for awhile; but then it was gratifying to know that the girl had a heart for that view.

And the girl sat there wondering vaguely why she was not homesick. Everything had been different from her anticipations. No one to meet her at Springtown; no letter, no message at the hotel. She had had some difficulty in learning how to reach Cameron City, and when, at last, she had found herself in the forlorn little prairie train, steaming eastward across the strange yellow expanse, unbroken by the smallest landmark, she had been assailed by strange doubts and questionings. At Cameron City, again, no longed-for, familiar face had appeared among the loungers at the station, and the situation and her part in it seemed most uncomfortable. When, however, she had made known her identity, and word was passed that this was "Jake Stanwood's gal," there were prompt offers of help, and she had soon secured the services of Cy Willows and his "team."

As she sat in the doorway, watching the glowing light, the sun dropped behind the Peak. She remembered how Cy had said he "hadn't never heard Jake Stanwood speak of havin' a gal of his own." The shadow of the great mountain had fallen upon the plain, and a chill, half imaginary, half real, possessed itself of her. Was she homesick after all? She stood up and stepped out upon the prairie, which had never yielded an inch of space before the cabin door. Off to the southward was a field of half-grown alfalfa that had taken on a weird, uncanny green in the first sunless light. She looked across to the remote prairie, and there, on the far horizon, the sunlight still shone, a golden circlet. No. She was not homesick; anything but that! She had been homesick almost ever since she could remember, but now she was in her father's house and everything must be well.

When Stanwood came to look for her he found her surrounded by the assiduous collies, examining with much interest the tall, ungainly windmill, with its broad wooden flaps.

On the whole, their first evening together was a pleasant one. Stanwood listened with amused appreciation to the account of her journey. She would be a credit to his name, he thought, out there in the old familiar world which he should never see again.

He had relinquished to her the seat on the door-step, and himself sat on a saw-horse outside the door, where the lamp-light struck his face. Her head and figure presented themselves to him as a silhouette, and somehow that suited him better than to see her features distinctly; it seemed to keep their relation back where it had always been, a sort of impersonal outline.

Elizabeth, for her part, thought that, for all his shabby clothes and thin, sunburnt face, her father was more manifestly a gentleman than any man she had ever seen.

She learned several things in the course of that conversation. She found that when she touched upon her reasons for coming to him, her feeling that they were only two and that they ought to be together, his eyes wandered and he looked bored; when she spoke of her mother he seemed uncomfortable.

Was she like her mother? No, he said, she was not in the least like her mother; he did not see that she took after anybody in particular. Then, as if to escape the subject, was her Uncle Nicholas as rabid a teetotaller as ever?

He liked best to hear about her school days and of the gay doings of the past year, her first year of "society."

"And you don't like society?" he asked at last, with a quizzical glance at her pretty profile. She had turned her eyes from the contemplation of his face, and seemed to be conjuring up interesting visions out of the darkness.

"Yes, I do!" she said with decision.

"You won't get much society out here," he remarked, and his spirits rose again. Of course she would be bored to death without it.

"I like some things better than society," she replied.

"For instance?"

She turned her face full upon him, and boldly said, "You."

"The deuce you do!" he cried, and was instantly conscious that it was the second time that he had forgotten himself.