Part 4

"If you think Emerald's dull, Maudie, what would you do out on our ranch?" asked Elizabeth, laughingly.

Maudie shuddered. "Horrors! Don't mention it--such a fate would be too unspeakable!"

"Yet Elizabeth and I manage to stand it--and I reckon we're as happy as most girls," protested Ruth, stoutly.

"O, that's because you don't know any better. You've never enjoyed the advantages of city life, as I have," said Maudie superiorly.

"I suppose your grandmother gave you a heap of pretty things, as usual," said Elizabeth, anxious to change the subject.

"O yes, a good many," carelessly replied Maudie. "How do you like this diamond ring? She gave me this on my birthday."

She held out her hand, which was adorned with several rings, one of them a small but showily set diamond.

Elizabeth and Ruth viewed the jewel with admiring amazement. Neither one of them had ever seen a diamond before, and to their untutored eyes it represented splendor indeed.

"Try it on," said Maudie affably, pleased with their exclamations of delighted wonder. It was much too large for Elizabeth's slender finger, but it fitted Ruth's plumper one pretty well.

Maudie replaced the ring on her own finger, and lifted out the tray of her trunk. "What are you girls going to wear to-night?" she asked carelessly.

"I'm not going to stay, but Ruth will wear her white dress," said Elizabeth. Somehow Ruth felt as if she couldn't speak of her poor little frock among all Maudie's radiant treasures.

"Oh," Maudie's eyebrows lifted slightly. "Let me show you what I'm going to wear." And she unfolded and shook out the shimmering breadths of a pale blue summer silk, lavishly trimmed with lace and ribbon.

"O-o-o!" breathed Ruth, rapturously, "I never saw such a perfectly beautiful dress, Maudie!"

And Elizabeth echoed, warmly, "A beautiful dress--and just the color I'd like, if I ever had a party dress."

"It is rather pretty, I think," acknowledged Maudie, with the air of a person to whom silks are a matter of course. She took out more dresses, dazzling the eyes of her country cousins with the sight of so much magnificence, and making poor Ruth feel very shabby indeed.

"My pink challis or blue mull would fit you exactly, Elizabeth--you're tall as I am. Stay all night and I'll lend you either one of them you want. I'd like to have you stay, too--the girls here are so common."

Elizabeth's cheeks flushed redly. Evidently Cousin Hannah had made no further disclosures. To Maudie, Elizabeth was still her cousin, and a Spooner--the name that had once seemed so commonplace and now so beautiful compared to that of the despised movers.

"O, but really I can't stay, Maudie; it's good of you to want me, and to offer to lend me your beautiful clothes, but mother can't spare us both very well, and Mary and I came last year, you know!"

"O, well, if you won't you won't. But I should think you'd jump at the chance of going to a party," said Maudie, who did not bother over consideration for her own mother.

Just then Cousin Hannah poked her head in at the door. "Maudie, honey," she asked, conciliatingly, "can't you just run in and set the table when dinner's ready, so's I can stay up town with your Cousin Jennie and the girls? And if the telegraph operator comes in give him his dinner? You know he has to have it early."

"Why on earth can't the cook give him his dinner?" frowned Maudie, petulantly. "I hate that old operator, anyway. Isn't the cook hired to set the table? I ain't feeling well, and I don't want to overdo so's I can't go to the hall to-night."

"O, well," said her mother, resignedly, "I reckon I'll hurry back and 'tend to it myself, if you ain't feelin' well."

But Ruth spoke up eagerly: "Let me do it, Cousin Hannah. I don't care about going up town--and I'd love to do it for you."

"Bless your heart--you're a reg'lar little help-all!" beamed Cousin Hannah, gratefully, and with Mrs. Spooner and Elizabeth, went on her way in great content, knowing that everything would go on well at home.

Maudie stayed in her room and spent her time deciding on her party finery, while busy Ruth swept and dusted the big dining room, that was always in a state of more or less disorder, laid the table carefully and had the operator's dinner ready punctually.

"Have a good time, little daughter," Mrs. Spooner said to Ruth, when at the close of a long day of sightseeing she and the Babe were once more seated in the phaeton. And Ruth replied happily that she would--she was certain of having a perfectly beautiful time.

That night she wiped the supper dishes for the cook, and, after she had dressed, helped to button Cousin Hannah into her own tight and unaccustomed dress-up clothes.

Maudie, who declared that she never liked to be among the first because it was more genteel to be late, took a long time to dress but really looked quite pretty in her pale blue frock; Ruth, with heartily sincere appreciation, told her so.

"Thank you," acknowledged Maudie, languidly, eyeing Ruth's laundered white dress and pink girdle with tolerant pity. Then her eyes falling on Elizabeth's fan her expression changed to eager covetousness.

"Where in the world did you get that fan?" she asked. "Do you--do you really think it matches your dress? It seems to me a fan like that is out of place with a wash dress. I haven't one. I lost mine when I was at grandmother's."

"This is Elizabeth's; father sent it from Cuba."

Ruth spoke rather hesitatingly; she would have offered to lend the ornament at once, if it had been her own, for she was a generous little soul, but she did not feel like risking Elizabeth's property.

"I say," spoke Maudie abruptly, "lend me the fan, Ruth, and I'll let you wear my diamond ring."

"O, Maudie!" gasped Ruth, hesitation in her heart but delight in her eyes, "I couldn't--I oughtn't to wear your ring. Something might happen."

"Not a thing'll happen," declared Maudie impatiently. "Here, let me put it on your finger. No it isn't too loose, either; my finger's just as small as yours. I wish this fan was mine. It would have cost a lot over here, but in Cuba it's different--or of course your father couldn't have afforded it."

She had coolly appropriated Elizabeth's fan, waving it to and fro with complacent admiration. All Emerald had seen the diamond, but the fan was entirely new, and she realized that it would be greatly admired.

Poor little Ruth, dazzled by the flashing ring, forgot her mother's disapproval of borrowing, and went to the hall with a light heart.

The Spooner girls had gone to school in Emerald when their father was at home, and they could be spared from the ranch, so she knew all the boys and girls who were present, and was soon having a very jolly and sociable time, while Maudie, as befitting a person accustomed to city life, was moving about among the crowd with a rather bored air, displaying her finery to the admiring eyes of her neighbors, and waving Elizabeth's fan languidly.

Still, for all her indifferent air, Maudie felt aggrieved that Ruth, in her shabby white lawn, should receive so much attention, while she in her blue silk was comparatively neglected.

As she sat beside her mother and watched Ruth dancing merrily to the music of the band, Maudie felt a growing rancor towards her unoffending cousin, finally deciding that she would put an end to the enjoyment she could not take part in.

"I want to go home, I'm tired of it all--it is so stupid," she complained to her mother. "Besides, I don't feel very well. Call Ruth and let's go right away."

"No use disturbing Ruth, she seems to be enjoying herself, if you ain't," remarked Mr. Pratt, mildly. "Any of the young folks'll see her home safe."

But Maudie flatly refused to go without Ruth, who was hastily summoned from her dance by Cousin Hannah, and hustled unceremoniously away from the hall.

"O, I _did_ have such a good time!" said Ruth, radiantly. "I'm so sorry we had to come away so soon, Maudie."

"It takes mighty little to give some folks a good time," said Maudie, tartly. "I thought the crowd was awfully coarse and common, even for Emerald. I hope you took good care of my ring," she continued, sharply, for Ruth uttering an exclamation, of fear, had stopped and was groping wildly about in the sand at her feet.

"O, Maudie!" Ruth's voice quavered with fear, "O, Maudie--I've _lost_ it!"

"Lost my diamond ring!" Maudie shrilled wrathfully, "O, why was I such a goose as to lend it to you!"

"What's that? Your diamond ring that Grandma Pratt gave you? O, my me! Was Ruth wearing it? How'd that come? Whatever made you go and lose it, Ruth?" groaned Cousin Hannah, not waiting for a reply to any of her questions.

"It--it was too large," faltered Ruth, "it must have slipped off my finger. We'll find it in a minute. I know I had it on when we left the hail; I kept feeling of it because it didn't fit me very well."

"Then you'd no business to borrow it," scolded Cousin Hannah. "What made you wear it, if it was too loose?"

"Maudie wanted Elizabeth's fan," explained Ruth, miserably. "And--and she lent me the ring in place of it. I told her then it was too large."

"Yes, blame it all on me!" reproached Maudie, bitterly. "Here--take your old fan! I reckon it didn't cost more than a few cents, but at least I took care of it!"

"Think where you had it last, Ruth--think _hard_!" implored Cousin Hannah, distractedly, "I'd hate so for that expensive ring to be lost--just throwed away, you might say. I don't know what we could say to Grandma Pratt."

"I had it in the hall, I'm certain," said Ruth, dull with woe. "Of course I don't remember where or when it came off my finger."

"Then we'll go right back to the hall and search for it," decided Mr. Pratt. "Come along. No use in making so much fuss, Maudie. Wait till you're plumb certain it's gone for good."

Back to the still crowded hall they went, and poor Ruth, in bitter mortification, had to listen to Maudie's shrill announcement to all and sundry of the fact that Ruth had borrowed her diamond, and then lost it. Which came, she explained loudly, of lending things to people who weren't used to them, and couldn't understand their value.

"O," thought poor Ruth, in her despairing heart, "if I'd only listened to mother I never would have been in all this trouble--if I'd only listened to mother!"

Mr. Pratt, going to the young men who had charge of the hall, made known to them the loss, and there was much searching, but all without result--Maudie's ring was indeed gone!

Downheartedly the party trailed along home; Maudie in tears, sobbing wrathfully that she would never, never lend her things again--no matter if people did beg and pray her to do it. No indeed, she had learned a lesson!

And Cousin Hannah, with torturing insistence, kept asking over and over again if Ruth couldn't remember where she had lost the ring. She ought to try and remember, seeing that it was her own fault. She oughtn't to have worn a ring she knew was too loose for her finger.

To these questions Ruth could only answer, over and again, that she didn't know--she didn't know! Indeed she was fast becoming hysterical with fright and worry.

Then mild little Mr. Pratt astonished them all by speaking with authority that commanded attention.

"That's quite enough, Hannah," he said sharply. "Maudie, don't let's have any more noise from _you_! If your ring's gone it's gone, that's all there is to it. I told mother, when she asked me about it, that it was foolish to give you a diamond when you was so young. I don't know if I ain't glad it's lost, if you want my opinion. Now understand, I want an end to all this talk. No use in badgerin' poor Ruth to death, either, Hannah."

"For pity's sake, Jim!" exclaimed Cousin Hannah, "I didn't aim to badger the child. There, honey, don't cry over it--accidents will happen. I didn't aim to hurt your feelin's, no mor'n _you_ aimed to lose the ring. I was jest sorter flustered-like." And she patted Ruth's hand soothingly.

Maudie, though sniffing dolefully, said no more at the moment, being warned by a certain unaccustomed note in her father's voice that his commands must be obeyed. But in the privacy of their room that night she turned the thumbscrews on poor Ruth with savage pressure.

"Of course people who are just a little above paupers can lose other people's property without worrying much about it," she remarked sarcastically.

And Ruth, in a burst of indignation at such aspersions on her family, answered spiritedly: "No such thing, Maudie Pratt! I intend to pay you for your ring, of course."

"Pay me?" Maudie jeered, scornfully. "O yes, it's likely you'll ever be able to pay me a hundred dollars for my diamond!"

Ruth gasped--the amount was so far above her calculation. But her fighting blood was up, for the honor of her family was at stake.

"I haven't the money on hand, but I'll certainly pay you by next Thanksgiving," she said, with proud resolution.

And the green cardboard box at home, containing all the money she possessed in the world, held just thirty-five cents!

*CHAPTER V*

*The Silver Spur Bakery*

"Elizabeth," whispered Ruth, tragically, "I have done something too awful to tell--and I've got to tell it."

"I just knew you were dreadfully worried," whispered back Elizabeth, sympathetically. "I knew it as soon as you came back this morning. Mother thought you were just plain tired, but I felt in my bones that there was worse. What is it?"

The two girls were in their room getting ready for bed, tiptoeing and whispering to avoid waking Mrs. Spooner, who was sleeping in the next room.

"It's this, Elizabeth--" Ruth's whisper was a wail of despair--"I've lost Maudie Pratt's--diamond--ring: And I've promised to pay her for it by Thanksgiving! Elizabeth, it cost--a hundred--dollars! And you know I've got just thirty-five cents in all the world!"

Then, Elizabeth remaining dumb from astonishment, she went on to tell the whole story.

"And, O, Elizabeth, how _will_ I ever get the money?" she ended, despairingly.

"You mustn't tell mother, Ruth," warned Elizabeth, with that sweet, elder-sister air that had grown on her since Mary went away; "she's got worries enough already with father away, and everybody afraid it's going to be a dry year. I can't think just now of any way to earn a hundred dollars quick. I'll sleep on it--maybe I'll dream of a way. One thing's certain; you've got to keep your word, for the credit of the family."

"I was just sure you'd feel that way about it, Elizabeth. What on earth would we do without you!" sighed Ruth, gratefully.

Secure in Elizabeth's ability to find a way, she nestled down among her pillows and went peacefully to sleep. And indeed she needed it sorely, after the miserably wakeful night she had spent with Maudie Pratt.

Elizabeth did not dream at all. She lay awake so long trying to think up some miraculous way by which Ruth and she might earn a hundred dollars, that when she did fall asleep her slumber was entirely too deep for dreams to enter--so deep indeed that it took the warning rattle of the alarm-clock to wake her in time to get the early breakfast necessary for Roy and Jonah.

"Did you think of anything, Elizabeth?" asked Ruth anxiously, as she, too, sprang out of bed at the alarm-clock's warning. And Elizabeth was obliged to confess that she hadn't yet.

"But don't you worry," she soothed, "I'll think of a way. Let's ask Roy, as soon as we get a chance; somehow I feel sure he could help."

It was evening before they found an opportunity to take Roy into their confidence, down at the milk-pen. Milking had been one of the girls' recognized duties before he came, since then he had forbidden them to interfere with the chores, declaring them to be men's work.

Roy set the foaming pails on the fence, turned out the little bunch of milk-pen calves kept to lure home the cows from the open range, and regarded the girls with a grave face.

"I should call that a tough proposition," he said thoughtfully, "but not impossible. In fact it seems that 'most anything's possible if you work hard enough for it. How about cooking, Ruth? You're a dandy on 'pie'n things'. Every ranch round here would buy your truck if it was properly advertised."

"That's just it!" jubilated Elizabeth, "advertise! Ruth, we'll put up a sign-board at the road gate: 'Bread, Doughnuts and Pies for Sale.' Every cowboy that passes will see it, and every single one will buy. I never saw a boy or man that wasn't hungry."

"Elizabeth has a great head," nodded Roy, approvingly, "that's the ticket, Ruth. I'll paint the sign-board to-night and to-morrow you begin baking--money!"

Ruth breathed a sigh of relief. "I just can't thank you enough, Roy," she declared gratefully. "I'll bake day and night if I can just pay Maudie Pratt for that hateful ring!"

Mrs. Spooner was rather bewildered when her young folks--the Babe excepted, begged earnestly for permission to make some money by going into the bakery business.

"We can't tell you just now what it's for, mother," explained Ruth. "Only that it's for something important. You'll know all about it when the right time comes."

"It seems to me that every one of you does as much work as possible, now," doubted Mrs. Spooner. "But as Ruth's heart seems to be set upon this extra labor, I promise not to interfere. And I won't ask any questions about it until you see fit to tell me of your own accord."

The Babe, who had listened carefully to this conversation, beamed hopefully upon them, seeing in the plan certain possibilities.

"_I'll_ help you, Ruth," she volunteered magnanimously. "And maybe if you make a whole heap of money, you _might_ have enough left over to buy a new Ivanhoe. Mine's got seven leaves lost out, right at the most exciting part."

"Done!" agreed Roy heartily, "I promise that you shall have a new Ivanhoe if you help. The bargain's between you and me, Baby. We'll leave the girls out of it."

"Except to see that you earn your book," laughed Elizabeth.

That night when they were all gathered around the evening lamp, Roy painted the sign on a smooth white board, with some of the brown paint left over from the phaeton. Bread, he declared, was Ruth's "long suit," but as cowboys would scarcely like dry bread, it was cut out of the list. Pies, however, were always acceptable. Custard being objected to as too "squshy," they decided on mince and apple as being best for cooks and customers. Doughnuts, of course, because everybody liked the little fried cakes, and they could be conveniently handled. Completed, the sign read:

"HOME-MADE DOUGHNUTS. APPLE PIES. MINCE PIES. FOR SALE AT SILVER SPUR RANCH."

"Now," decided Roy, after all the family had duly admired his handiwork, "I'm going to Emerald early in the morning, and I'll fetch back all your necessary supplies, down to the paper bags to hold 'em, by noon. The McGregor ranch is shipping cattle--they'll pass here Thursday, one of their punchers told me; that'll be day after to-morrow. You can spend the afternoon baking and be ready for them, for I'm certain they'll buy you out. Their range-cook's quit, and Chunky Bill's cooking for the outfit, so they're about starved for something good to eat."

"We'll be obliged to have the first groceries charged to you, mother," apologized Ruth, "but we promise to pay for them ourselves."

"Very well--only don't buy too much at a time," warned Mrs. Spooner, who was doubtful of the success of the enterprise, "until you are sure of making sales."

"We'll succeed all right, never you fear, mumsy," asserted Roy, with cheerful confidence. "I'll drum up trade, and Ruth's good cooking'll do the rest."

Fuel in that woodless country was quite an item; Roy, realizing this, brought home the next day a load of coke along with the other supplies, all, it was agreed, to be paid for out of the proceeds of the sales.

Also he brought good news from Emerald, where he had met one of the cowboys from the McGregor ranch, who not only confirmed the report of the cattle passing next day, but told him that the ranch cook had quit out there, as well as the man hired to go with the shipping outfit. He offered to get Ruth the job of baking for the ranch until a new cook could be procured.

"Of course I said Ruth would take the job, so he's to bring along the order in the morning. How's that for a beginning for The Silver Spur Bakery?"

"I see land ahead!" exulted Elizabeth, joyfully waving her big cook-apron. "Allow me to invest you with your uniform, Mademoiselle Chef: You will now proceed to mix the magic potions, while the Babe kindles the fire on the Altar of Cookery known to mere mortals as the kitchen range, and I complete the rites by rolling out the crust and filling the tins. Know all men by these greetings, the Silver Spur Bakery is ready for business, and Roy may go tack up the sign."

Inspired by the hope of reward, they made a frolic of the baking working with such zeal and enthusiasm that when evening came and the chief cook doffed her floury apron with a sigh of weary content, there were shelves full of pies and pans full of doughnuts as a result of their labors. Delicate pies, with crisply melting covers and toothsome "inwards," and doughnuts that were deliciously tender and flavory.

"Just for this once we'll let everybody have a treat," decided Ruth, generously. "We'll just make a big pot of coffee and have doughnuts and pie for supper. I want Roy and Jonah to have a taste; they'll relish sweets for a change."

"And I think we'd better let them fix the price, too," suggested Elizabeth. "Men always know more about such things than we do."

Roy and Jonah were most appreciative judges, declaring that twenty-five cents apiece was dirt-cheap for the apple, and--mincemeat costing so much more than dried apples--fifty cents for the mince pies. The doughnuts, being superlatively excellent, were valued at five cents apiece, or fifty cents a dozen.

The Babe could not be kept off the porch next morning, hovering there to watch for the McGregor outfit. Soon, like Bluebeard's sister-in-law, she reported a cloud of dust rising--the customers were coming!

Far ahead of the herd rode a single horseman who turned in at the gate and came galloping up to the house. The futile chuck-wagon, with its incompetent cook, slid past unnoticed while the message from Mrs. McGregor was delivered. She had sent a tin bread-box of ample size, and she wanted it filled with so much bread, cake and pie, that the Silver Spur Bakery was rather startled. She thought the amount she specified might last them for half the week, the messenger said, and at the end of that time she would return the empty tin box to be refilled. And the Spooner girls were to put their own prices on their wares.

While these things were being settled two other riders from the shipping herd came up for sample orders, and hurried into the kitchen with the Babe and Mrs. Spooner, eager to buy something to satisfy the pangs of hunger to which Chunky Bill's cooking had delivered them.

The stocky little Englishman who had brought Mrs. McGregor's note, and said he would be back from Emerald on his return trip next morning for the box, if they would have it ready for him, paused at the edge of the porch and negotiated a more personal errand.

"And I've a little order of my own, Miss," grinned he cowboy genially. "You see, I'm from the old country, myself, and I'm fairly longing for a taste of plum-pudding once more. Think you're equal to making one? I'm willing to pay your own price."