Part 5

There was a note of wistful eagerness in his voice that touched Ruth's sympathies, but a plum-pudding was, she feared, beyond her powers. Elizabeth, seeing her hesitation, spoke promptly. "Certainly, we'll be pleased to fill your order," she said, with business like briskness. "And if it isn't as good as any you ever ate in England you needn't pay for it."

"I'm sure it'll be rippin' good pudding, if you make it, miss," politely assured the cowboy, and, with a sweeping bow, he mounted his pony and galloped away to join the approaching herd.

As the hundreds of cattle tramped slowly by, one after another of the attending punchers turned in at the Spooner's gate, a purchaser to the full extent of his pocketbook.

Doughnuts and pies fairly melted away; Mrs. Spooner and the Babe filling the bags in the kitchen while Ruth and Elizabeth delivered the goods and received the money.

And, when they counted up the receipts that night, they found that, deducting all expenses, there would be five dollars profit!

"_And_ the McGregor ranch to bake for!" crowed Elizabeth, joyously. "Ruth, I plainly see land ahead!"

"I'm so relieved!" sighed Ruth, "But Elizabeth, are you sure you can manage the pudding?"

"'In the bright lexicon of youth there's no such word as fail', little sister," laughed Elizabeth. "_Of course_ I can bake--or boil--or steam a pudding as well as a born Britisher! In fact, being an American citizen, I don't see why I can't make even a better one. Let me take a look at that old cook-book of mother's."

All the next day they baked for the McGregor ranch, besides boiling the pudding for the Englishman. Elizabeth declared she wanted him to try it before he paid for it, but after one glance and a hearty sniff, he decided to pay in advance the two dollars and fifty cents which Elizabeth had figured out as a fair price.

That it was satisfactory was fully proven when he returned for the next baking, with orders for half-dozen more.

"I poured brandy over it and set it afire, like they do in England," he said. "And every bloomin' puncher that tasted it is wild for more! They call it 'The Perishin' Martyr Pie.' O, it's made a hit, all right."

After that there was quite a run on puddings, and hardly a day passed that the girls did not make a "Perishin' Martyr Pie"--a name that tickled them immensely. Even the Babe learned to mix the batter, and Roy declared he was quite an expert at boiling martyrs.

Money flowed into the little green pasteboard box, so that now there was plenty of company for the lonely thirty-five cents it had originally contained, when Ruth rashly decided she would pay Maudie Pratt for the lost diamond ring. It must be admitted that as the money tide rose Ruth's spirits fell.

"O, it would be so lovely if we were earning it for ourselves," she lamented. "Think of the things we could buy: If we could only give it to mother to help with the living I should be perfectly satisfied--but to go and hand it over to Maudie Pratt for a ring she just made me put on--"

"Now, Ruth," Elizabeth interrupted, laying a loving arm across her junior's shoulder, "we're all getting lots of fun out of the work. I think the whole family is finding that it is really play to earn money. Maybe we'll get into the habit and keep it up after Maudie's ring's paid for. Don't you worry. If we do the best we can, and do it every day, we are going to arrive at delectable places."

Ruth looked at her sister fondly. What would they do without Elizabeth's strong heart and capable head for planning? It was Elizabeth who hunted up a Mexican boy sufficiently reliable to be trusted with a lard-can full of the 'pies 'n things' which found a good market at the round-ups. This was not the season for them, but there is always something of the sort taking place in the cattle country, and Juan was willing to drive an absurd number of miles for a modest share in their profits. Never a cowboy passed the Spooners' attractive sign without galloping up for a purchase, and the early receipts from the bakery were astonishingly good.

But after awhile the McGregors secured a cook, and there were no more round-ups in reach; the cowboys had all become surfeited with a rich excess of "Perishin' Martyrs," so that orders declined and finally fell off altogether on that commodity. The grocer was paid, there was nearly a barrel of flour on hand, and part of a large tin of lard, but there was only seventy-nine dollars earned. Thanksgiving was approaching, and the hearts of the girls began to sink, thinking of its nearness and of the insufficient money in the green box.

And then, the very day before Thanksgiving, the unexpected happened, when Mrs. McGregor rode over, bright and early, from her ranch with a most unusual and imperative order for pumpkin-pies!

It seemed that a lot of unexpected guests had arrived from the east to spend Thanksgiving at the ranch, and, to celebrate the occasion properly, the McGregors had decided to join forces with a neighboring ranch and have a big barbecue and picnic-dinner in the open, to which all the neighbors were invited. The other ranch was to furnish all the meat for the feast--fat mutton and beef and shotes, to be barbecued deliciously over pits of glowing coals, while Mrs. McGregor was to provide the bread, pies and vegetables.

"Of course you should have been notified days ago," said the pleasant little lady, with deprecating hands outspread, "only I didn't know myself 'till last night! Now my cook can manage the bread and vegetables, and you, my dears, must furnish the pumpkin-pies or I'm a forsworn woman: I've calculated and re-calculated, and I find that, allowing five pieces to a pie, it will take a hundred and six pies to give everybody plenty--you know how men eat! Now dears--" she put a persuasive arm around each girl--"_can_ you bake them?"

Ruth gasped. "How in the world can we--in one day? Of course we have plenty of pumpkins--Jonah raised a big patch of them for cow-feed, and there's a barrel of flour and plenty of lard and sugar and things. But in _one_ day--"

"We'll do it, Mrs. McGregor," interrupted Elizabeth, smilingly. "We'll fill your order, and thank you very much. Jonah Bean shall deliver them early in the morning."

"My dear girl, you've simply saved my life--I can never thank you enough!" Mrs. McGregor rose, fumbling in her pretty silver wrist-bag. "Twenty-six dollars and fifty cents, I believe. Here's your money--and thank you very, very much: And don't you forget that every single member of your family is expected at our Thanksgiving dinner."

"Why did you take her order, Elizabeth?" wondered Ruth, when their guest was gone, "it will work us to death!"

"Not a bit of it, dear child. Listen, Ruth Spooner, there's just seventy-nine dollars in your green box. Twenty-six added makes a hundred and five. Five dollars is a great plenty for expenses, seeing that we have the pumpkins already. The odd fifty cents will buy a little present for the Babe, and leave you your full hundred to pay Maudie Pratt for her ring. 'Rah, 'rah, 'rah for the girls of the Silver Spur! Our debt's paid!"

"Glory!" Ruth's shouts suddenly wavered, the apron she waved aloft was thrown over her face as she burst into tears.

"O, Elizabeth--shut the door--I don't want anybody else to see me cry. I'm a wretch--and you're a genius--but--but--I can't help thinking about us all working so hard and Maudie Pratt getting all our money!"

"I know, honey," said Elizabeth, understandingly, "if I stop to think I feel that way myself. Let's not stop to think."

Ruth choked down her tears, bathed her eyes and turned a resolute face from the washstand.

"I'm all right," she said in a determinedly cheerful voice.

Elizabeth threw open the bedroom door and ran out among their helpers.

"Kindle a fire, Babe, while we get the pumpkins. Isn't it a mercy that Roy and Jonah are off the range to-day and can stay. Everybody'll have to get to work cutting up pumpkins--even mother."

All day they baked. The stove in the house, the brick oven in the yard which had scarcely been allowed to get cold since Ruth began her enterprise, were both kept filled. The baked pies were lifted out of their tins as soon as cool enough and dropped into paper plates. But even so they could not get enough tins to keep the baking up to the volume required for getting out the hundred pies in that length of time. At last Ruth announced in tones of dismay:

"There isn't a single tin left. What shall we do?"

"H'm, let me work my giant brain a moment," pondered Elizabeth. "How about tin shingles? There're a lot of new ones, you know, nice and clean. And plenty of lard-cans. Roy can cut rings from the cans, and lay them on the shingles. They'll be extra large pies, but they'll hold the dough all right."

It was a good idea, and it worked out very well, with a little care in handling the bulky "tins," so that there was no more time lost in waiting for cooling pies.

Jonah, who kept the fires going, became cheerfully loquacious under the influence of the strong coffee Mrs. Spooner insisted on making, to keep the workers awake at their tasks. He regaled them with thrilling stories of the war, and Munchausen deeds of bravery performed by himself while in service. Tales which served the twofold purpose of inspiring Jonah and amusing his hearers.

The girls insisted upon their mother and the Babe going to bed, so as to be rested for the barbecue, which they determined to attend, as the ranch lay only a little way beyond Emerald. But they, with Roy and Jonah as able assistants, kept on baking till the last pie of the hundred and six was cooling on the shelf, and the voice of the oldest and most experienced rooster warned them of the coming dawn.

However, every Spooner was up and dressed in time next morning, with the pies safely packed in the wagon, which Jonah was to drive, Roy and the girls acting as Mrs. Spooner's escort.

When they started Ruth rode ahead. Nobody but Elizabeth knew what was behind her resolutely smiling face. Pinned in the pocket of her jacket there was a roll of bills--a hundred dollars. The thought of Maudie's exultation over its receipt pinched Elizabeth almost as much as giving up the money. She lagged behind a little and talked of it with Roy. They agreed that the money-earning fever had got into their blood, and that nothing less than a new enterprise to companion this old one, which they agreed must be carried forward, would satisfy either of them.

They had reached Emerald when Ruth, trotting briskly along its one street, suddenly felt her pony go lame, and quickly dismounted to examine its hoof for a possible pebble or ball of clay.

Suddenly, with a curious little choking cry, she sprang into the saddle and raced ahead, the pony now going quite easily.

Roy and Elizabeth exchanged indignant glances. Evidently Ruth was overcome because she had to give up her precious money so soon.

"I guess it's got on her nerves," whispered Elizabeth. "I feel pretty much like crying, myself."

"Ruth must be going ahead to let Cousin Hannah know we are coming," remarked her mother, placidly. "I hope it'll be so that they can all go. I haven't seen any of them since the Harvest Home festival."

But Ruth had stopped a little way ahead, waving impatiently for her family to catch up, and hastening on they all arrived at the Pratt home together.

Mr. Pratt and his wife came out, Maudie, very much dressed up, followed languidly.

"Have you got my money, Ruth?" she called in her high, shrill voice. "I bet anything you haven't--and I was depending on it to go to Chicago and study music."

"No," answered Ruth, with emphatic clearness, "I'm never going to pay you for that ring. I want to keep the money for myself, and mother and Elizabeth, and the Babe. O, what _lovely_ things we'll have out of a whole--hundred--dollars!"

The Pratts stared, mystified by this mad speech. Elizabeth gasped--it did sound shocking. Mrs. Spooner was so little informed that she supposed there was a joke on hand, and laughed with motherly complaisance. Only Roy, pulling back close to Elizabeth's shoulder, muttered in an undertone.

"Ruth's got something up her sleeve. Hold on, don't make up your mind too quick about it."

"What in time was Ruthie goin' to pay you a hundred dollars for?" Cousin Hannah demanded, at last.

"For my diamond ring," cried Maudie, "my lovely diamond ring that Grandma gave me, and that I wouldn't have lost for a thousand dollars."

"It never cost to exceed twenty-five," snorted Mr. Pratt. "Ruthie's just right not to pay you more'n that--or half as much. It was partly your fault for lending the ring."

"I'm not going to pay her a cent," repeated Ruth, with dancing eyes. "I've got the money--a hundred dollars--see here," and she flourished a sheaf of bills that made them gasp again.

"I guess I can _make_ you pay," stormed Maudie, "you _promised_, and you've got to keep your word."

"Well, you _did_ lose Maudie's diamond, you know. Ain't you goin' to replace it, Ruth?" asked Cousin Hannah, a little wistfully.

"You must do the right thing, daughter," cautioned Mrs. Spooner, taking a part in the conversation for the first time.

"I will, mother," said Ruth, suddenly sobered; and she went toward Maudie Pratt with the sheaf of greenbacks in one hand, and something which nobody could see clasped tightly in the other.

*CHAPTER VI*

*The Shiny Black Box*

The thing was like a scene in a play, almost. Maudie stood, half abashed, half eager, and wholly frightened. Ruth came forward with a confident, buoyant step that reassured her mother. A girl who was going to do something impudently wrong would never act that way.

"There," said the plump, smiling Spooner girl, dropping into Maudie's outstretched palm a little lump of adobe clay that looked considerably like a rough pebble. "I picked that out of my pony's hoof, right in the path where I'd lost your ring."

"Wha--what is it?" faltered Maudie, afraid to look.

"Turn it over," prompted Elizabeth impatiently.

"O, Maudie's almost a paynim, or a caitiff," breathed the Babe, hiding a too sympathetic countenance against her mother's knee.

The Pratt girl turned the little lump of clay in trembling fingers. Something glittered on one side of it; the clay parted and a circlet with a wee, shining setting lay in her palm.

"My diamond ring!" she gasped.

Then before them all she flung it from her, so that it tinkled and skipped on the porch floor. This done she sat down on the step and burst into a tempest of wrathful tears.

"I always hated it," she sobbed. "It's such a miserable little diamond. I wanted that hundred dollars to go to Chicago and study music. How in the world am I going to go if you don't--"

"Hush, Maudie," Mrs. Pratt cautioned, and her father seconded the admonition rather more sternly.

The Spooner young folks had closed in around Mrs. Spooner's vehicle and were helping her out and explaining all about the earning of that hundred dollars. While they did so the Pratts managed to get Maudie straightened up with the assurance that she should be permitted somehow to go to Chicago; and by the time the two groups came together they were ready to drop the subject, Maudie looking self-conscious if not hang-dog, whenever anything remotely concerning a ring was mentioned.

They went on harmoniously enough to the Thanksgiving dinner at the McGregor ranch. Coming home after they had passed Emerald and the Pratt house, the matter was again brought up by the Spooners. The sky was all a delightful lavender, with the big, white stars of the plains country beginning to blossom in it, and there was still light enough to travel very comfortably over the winding, level road.

"I'm proud of the enterprise and persistance you all showed in earning that hundred dollars," said Mrs. Spooner fondly. "But it hurts me to think you could keep a secret from mother as long as that; and such a hard secret, too. I'd have been so glad to help you, dears."

"It was my fault," Elizabeth said, "that part of it. I wouldn't let Ruth bother you because I felt that you had worries enough. Of course if I'd dreamed for a minute that Maudie Pratt would tell a story about the value of her ring, and that twenty-five dollars was the real price of it, I should have let Ruth tell you; but a hundred dollars--why, Mother, until we tried, I wouldn't have believed it was possible for us to come anywhere near earning a hundred dollars. Would you?"

"No," said Mrs. Spooner. "That's why I say I'm proud of you. It's an achievement any three young persons of your age may well be proud of--and none of you neglected your other duties for it."

"It was _lovely_," sighed Elizabeth, reminiscently. "I think making money is almost more fun than spending it. Ruth can always earn with her cooking. I wish I had a special gift. What do you think I can do best, mother?"

"You do almost anything you do a little better than other people," declared Mrs. Spooner. "But there's one thing you can excel at, and that nobody else around here attempts, and that's photography. Why not try to make a profession of it."

Elizabeth thought it over.

"I suppose I'd have to go to some big town and study," she ruminated.

"Ruth didn't go to a big town to take cooking lessons," prompted Mrs. Spooner, smilingly. "And you were just admiring the fact that it was her good cooking that made the earning of the hundred dollars possible."

"Wise little mother," said Elizabeth, touching her heel to her pony and riding ahead, blowing back a kiss as she passed, and cantering on for some distance.

"I think that's a splendid idea," said Roy eagerly. "I knew a boy who worked his way through college almost entirely by camera work. And he was just an amateur photographer, too."

"I'd help her all I could," put in Ruth, loyally. "She helped me--you all did. I didn't near earn that hundred dollars alone."

Here Elizabeth came dashing back to announce to the family that there was an insuperable obstacle. If she went into the simplest kind of photography she would have a new camera--and oh, quite a lot of things.

"A camera is easy," said Mrs. Spooner, "since you've all agreed to give me the keeping of the hundred dollars, I intend to put it in the bank as a reserve fund to draw on in case of an emergency. I'll consider this case of yours as one, and buy you a camera with some of it."

"And I'll fix up a dark-room all right, Elizabeth," promised Roy, who was always intensely interested in all the Spooners' affairs. "I can do it easily; just board up an end of the back porch, fix a red lantern in it for a light, with some shelves and a sink, same as the kitchen. I can make it. It won't cost much, and you can do your own developing. Say, Elizabeth, that's easy!"

So it came about that, after some persuasion, Elizabeth finally accepted the camera--a small one, with chemicals, films and everything necessary for a start, all of them to be paid for out of the hundred dollars in the bank. Roy fixed up the darkroom with all the needed apparatus, and, thus equipped, Elizabeth declared herself ready for business, and let the public know it by adding to the sign down at the road gate another line, in smaller letters, which read:

"Photographs made to order. Horseback pictures and views of places a specialty."

Ruth still kept up her baking in a small way. She no longer undertook such strenuous jobs as baking for ranches or festivals, but people passing by usually dropped in for a bag of doughnuts or a pie, knowing that they were always kept on hand. Some of these customers patronized Elizabeth's "studio," as she named the little boarded-up corner of the porch, and had their pictures taken. More often she was asked to go and make a card-picture of somebody's home, or she tried snap-shots of cattle handling which sold well to the boys who could identify themselves or their friends in a chance group.

Elizabeth made her charges in accordance with her work, which, being an amateur, could not command professional rates. She studied hard her manual of photography, and finally after considerable debate, took a correspondence course in the art. Still, living on a ranch, she could barely make enough to pay for her materials, and indeed was doing well to accomplish this much.

"When I get so I can earn, and have enough money to buy a bigger camera, I might try a place in town, or maybe I'll put up my prices," she said. But she resisted all suggestions that a finer camera be purchased from the reserve fund. "If anything happens we'll need that to live on," was her wise conclusion.

Let nobody think that there were not days of discouragement, when Elizabeth spoiled her films or the simple drudgery of the work weighed on her. Nothing worth having is got without effort. Whatever this girl's ancestry, she had inherited pluck and persistance, and after a failure she always went back to work with renewed energy.

"I _will_ do it!" she would say to Ruth and Roy. "I am going to try to make myself the very best photographer I can,--and then maybe the next higher profession will come along and invite me in."

The Babe, being the only idle inmate of the Silver Spur, continued to devour unchecked her books of romance, until an incident occurred that made Mrs. Spooner decide that the time had come for her reading to be a little more varied. It happened one day in the following summer, when old Jonah, with a worried look on his face, sought her for a little private conversation.

"It's about the Babe, ma'am. Have you noticed anything pertickler wrong with her lately?" he asked anxiously.

"Why no, Jonah; what makes you think there's anything wrong? What has she been doing?" asked Mrs. Spooner in alarm. She arose from her seat hastily. "I must go and find her--where is she?"

"Jest down at the corral, unsaddlin' of her pony," soothed Jonah. "No need to be skeered--at the present. You set down, Mis' Spooner, and I'll tell ye. A while ago I come acrost her out on the range, a-gallopin' along on that little rat-tailed cayuse o' her'n, and I'm blest if she didn't have a broom-handle over her shoulder, and a old fire-shovel helt out right straight in front! She looked out'n her eyes like--well, like she was _seein'_ things. I calls to her: 'Babe, whar ye gwine?' But law, she looks at me pine-black like I was a stranger, hits Queen Beren-jerry, as she calls that reedic'lous cayuse, and hollers back over her shoulder: 'Avaunt thee, villain!' and a heap o' other lingo I couldn't make sense outer."

Mrs. Spooner's face relaxed, she dropped back in her rocking-chair and began to laugh. The old man seemed to resent her mirth.

"Now Mis' Spooner, you may take it that-a-way, but 'tain't like the Babe to be miscallin' nobody, let alone me what's raised her. My opinion is the child's comin' down with fever, or got a tetch o' the sun, and you better go to dosin' her mighty quick!"

"No, Jonah," laughed Mrs. Spooner, much relieved, "it's just Ivanhoe gone to her head--not the sun. She reads too much, and is too much alone, I'm afraid. She was only playing she was a knight--a person out of that book she's always reading. But thank you for telling me, all the same."

"I'd be glad to think it was no wuss; but--" Jonah shook his head doubtfully, "a-misscallin' me a villian don't seem natchul. I'll go send her in to you, so's you can look at her tongue. My notion is she needs doctor's truck."