Evelyn Raymond - Dorothy on a Ranch

It was impossible to retain gloomy forebodings while Alfy’s cheerful tongue was running on at this rate, and as she left the living-room for the kitchen at the rear both Lady Gray and Helena were laughing, partly at their own awkwardness at the tasks assigned them as well as at her glib remarks.

“I never set a table in my life!” cried Helena, in glee.

“And I never sliced a loaf of bread!” said Gray Lady; “though I’ll admit it is time I learned. Indeed, I’ve never had a home, you know, and I’m looking forward to my housekeeping as eagerly as a child to her playhouse.”

“I’m wondering what the landlady will say, when she finds how we’ve invaded her pantry,” continued Helena, carefully arranging the coarse stone-china upon the oilcloth covered tables. She had begun very reluctantly but found that the labor was a delightful relief from worry, and, with the good sense she possessed, now went on with it as painstakingly as if she expected a fashionable and critical company. Indeed, her first table-setting, copied, as near as she could remember, from the careful appointments of her own mother’s board, was to be an object lesson to others besides herself.

For presently there was the sound of voices in the kitchen; Alfaretta’s, of course, with another equally gay and girlish.

Mattie Roderick had slept lightly. She had been excited over the arrival of the Ford party in the first place, and doubly so from the later events of the night. So as she lay sleepless and listening, she heard the rattle of cooking things in the kitchen below and soon the odor of frying. With a little grumble she got up and put on the few garments she had discarded.

“It can’t be near morning yet. I don’t see what’s set Ma to cooking, ’less they’re on the road back and nigh starved. One thing I know! I shan’t marry no tavern-keeper! It’s nothin’ but fry, roast, bake, an’ bile, the hull endurin’ time. I’m goin’ to quit and go east fur as Denver, anyhow, soon’s I get my age. I’d like to look same’s them girls do, and they ain’t no prettier ’n me. It’s only their clothes makes ’em look it, and as for that Molly, they call her, that’s rid off on Chiquita, she’s just as plain and folksy as get out! So’s the red-headed one with the high-falutin’ name, out of that song Pa sings about the ‘blue Juniata’ and ‘bright Alfaretta,’ or some such trash. Them boys – Well, they hain’t took no notice o’ me yet – but I can show ’em a thing or two. I bet I can shoot better than any of ’em. I bet, if they don’t hurry off too early to-morrow, I’ll get up a match and teach ’em how a Colorado girl can hit the bull’s-eye every time!”

With these ambitious reflections the inn-keeper’s daughter arrived at the kitchen and the presence of the red-headed girl in it, instead of the portly form of her mother.

“What on earth does it mean?” demanded Mattie, scarcely believing her own eyes.

It didn’t take Alfy long to explain, and she added the warning:

“You keep it up! Don’t you let on to Mrs. Ford that there’s the least misdoubt in your mind but what them searchers will be back, right to once, same’s I’m pretending! Oh! I hope they do! I hope they do! I hope it so much I dassent hardly think and just have to keep talking to stop it. If I had hold that Molly Breckenridge I’d shake her well! The dear flighty little thing! To go addin’ another scare to a big enough one before, and now about that Leslie. He’s a real nice boy – Leslie is – if you let him do exactly what he wants and don’t try to make him different. His ma just sets all her store by him. I never got the rights of it, exactly, Aunt Betty Calvert – she ’t I’ve been hired out to – she never approved of gossip. She said that folks quarrellin’ was just plain makin’ fools of themselves, or words to that effect. The Fords had done it and now, course, they was thicker ’n blueberries again and didn’t want to hear nothing about the time they wasn’t. Don’t leave them ’tatoes in that water so long! Why, child o’ grace, don’t you know yet, and you keepin’ tavern, that soon’s a potato is cooked it ought to be snatched out the pot and set to steamin’, to get dry? Soggy potatoes gives you the dyspepsy and that’s a disease I ain’t sufferin’ to catch. It makes folks so cross.”

By this time Mattie had entered into the spirit of the thing and had never been happier in her life. This Alfaretta was so jolly, so friendly, so full of talk. So wholly satisfied in her conscience, too, now that “one of the family” was beside her to share the risk she had assumed of using other people’s provisions so recklessly.

But in that she had misjudged her genial hosts. Nothing was too good for their guests, these or any others, and if the chickens meant for breakfast were pre-empted for this midnight meal, why there were plenty more in the hennery.

So, secure in her better knowledge of the elder Rodericks, Miss Mattie sped about, flew in and out of the sitting-room, to tend the fire or add some delicacy to Helena’s daintily set table; the same that made her stare at its difference from ordinary. Didn’t seem possible that the mere arrangement of cups and saucers, of knives and forks, could give such an “air” to the whole place.

“Like brook trout, Mis’ Ford?” asked the girl, upon one entrance. “You men-folks like ’em, too?”

Assured that they were considered a great treat, Mattie advised:

“Well, you just wait! I know where there’s a lot, in a basket in the pool. Pa catched ’em to have ’em ready and I’ll hike after ’em to onct. You like to go along, Helena?”

Stately Helena smiled at the free masonry of the westerner and glanced at Mrs. Ford, in inquiry:

“Yes, dear, go with her. I shan’t be lonely, with Alfaretta left, flying in and out busily. I declare, those kitchen odors are savory! I hope the wanderers will soon be here, that this new meal won’t be kept till spoiled, as Mrs. Roderick complained of the other.”

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