blue bonnet came up the steps of the long, low ranch house, and threw herself listlessly back in one of the deep veranda chairs.
“tired, honey?” mr. ashe asked, laying down his paper.
“yes, uncle cliff. i—hate walking!”
“then why not ride?”
blue bonnet was smoothing the ears of don, the big collie who had followed her up on to the veranda, and now stood resting his fine head on her knee. “i—didn’t want to,” she answered, slowly, without looking up.
“see here, honey,” said mr. ashe, leaning toward her, a note of inquiry in his deep, pleasant voice; “come to think of it, you haven’t been riding lately.”
“no, uncle cliff.” blue bonnet’s eyes were turned now out over the wide stretch of prairie before the house.
“any reason, honey?”
2 the girl hesitated. “yes, uncle cliff.”
“don’t you want to tell me it, blue bonnet?”
“no,” blue bonnet answered, slowly, “i don’t want to tell it to you. i—it’s because i’m—afraid.”
“afraid! blue bonnet! that’s an odd word for an ashe to use!”
“i know, uncle cliff; i reckon i’m not an ashe—clear through.” blue bonnet rose hurriedly and ran down the steps. around the house she went, and in through the back way to her own room. there she brushed the hot tears from her eyes with an impatient movement. “oh, it is true,” she said to herself, “and i can’t help it. oh, if i could only go away—i hate it here! hate it! hate it!”
later, swinging in the hammock on the back veranda, she looked up suddenly as her uncle came to sit on the railing beside her. something in his face and manner made her wonder.
“blue bonnet,” he said, abruptly, “we might as well have it out—right here and now—it’ll be the best thing for us both.”
blue bonnet sat up, pushing back her soft, thick hair. “have it out?” she repeated.
“blue bonnet,” he answered, bending nearer, “suppose you tell me just what it is you would like to do? it wouldn’t take much insight to see that you aren’t very happy nowadays; and—well, i3 reckon your father wouldn’t want things going on as they’ve been—lately.”
the girl’s face changed swiftly. “oh, i have been horrid, uncle cliff! but i—oh, i do so—hate it—here!”
“hate it here! hate the blue bonnet ranch—the finest bit of country in the whole state of texas!”
“i—hate the whole state of texas!”
“blue bonnet!”
“i do. i want to go east to live. i—my mother was an easterner. i want to live her life.”
“but, honey, your mother chose to come west. why, child,”—there was a quick note of triumph in the man’s voice—“it was your mother who named you blue bonnet.”
“i wish she hadn’t. it’s a—ridiculous sort of name—i would like to have been called elizabeth—it is my name, too.”
“elizabeth?” mr. ashe repeated. “it doesn’t seem to suit you nearly as well, honey. all the same, if you like it. but blue—elizabeth, you know that this is your ranch, and that your father wanted you brought up to know all about it, so as to be able to manage things for yourself a bit—at a pinch.”
“i shall sell—as soon as i come of age.”
mr. ashe rose. “i reckon we’d best not talk any more now.”
4 “uncle clifford.” blue bonnet looked up. “uncle clifford, please don’t think it’s just—temper. i mean it, truly—i sha’n’t ever make a westerner. i’m sorry—on your account. still, it’s true—i hate it all—now,—everything the life out here stands for—and i want to go east. i—i don’t see why i shouldn’t choose my own life—for myself.”
her uncle looked down into the upturned, eager face. “you seem to have gone over this pretty thoroughly in your own mind, bl—elizabeth.”
“i have, uncle cliff.”
“well, you and i’ll talk things over another time; i’ve some business to see to now. i suppose things’ll have to go on, even if you do intend to sell—in six years.”
“i wish you’d try to see my side of it, uncle cliff.”
“i’m going to—after a while. just now, i can’t get beyond the fact that you hate the blue bonnet ranch. i hope your father doesn’t know it!” and mr. ashe turned away.
below the house, leaning against the low fence enclosing the oblong piece of ground called “the garden,” mr. ashe found uncle joe terry, ranch foreman, and his chief adviser in the difficult task of bringing up his orphan niece.
uncle joe was smoking placidly, his eyes on the wild riot of color which was one of the principal5 characteristics of blue bonnet’s garden. “tell you what,” he said, as mr. ashe came up, “this here place needs weeding. blue bonnet ain’t been keeping an eye on miguel lately.”
blue bonnet’s uncle stood a moment looking down at the neglected garden. “yes,” he said, “and it’s not only the garden, joe, that’s been left to itself lately.”
“she ain’t been out on firefly this two weeks,” uncle joe commented. “what’s wrong, cliff?”
“she wants to go east.”
“so that’s it? well, i reckon it’s natural—wants to run with the other young folks, i suppose?”
“but—joe, she says she hates—the ranch.”
uncle joe puffed at his pipe thoughtfully. “hm—so she says that? she always was an outspoken little piece, cliff.”
“she says, too, that she means to sell.”
“my lady must be a bit excited. well, it won’t be to-morrow, cliff, and a whole lot of things can happen in six years. you just give my lady her head; she’s looking to be crossed, and she’s all braced up to pull the other way. all you want to do is to go with her a bit.”
“it’s a pretty big proposition—sending her east,” mr. ashe said. “oh, she’ll pick up a lot of tomfool notions, most likely,” uncle joe admitted, “and a whole heap of others that’ll come in6 mighty handy one of these days. you just send her ’long back to those folks of her mother’s and quit worrying.”
that night mr. ashe wrote a letter to blue bonnet’s grandmother. he said nothing to blue bonnet herself about it, however. possibly mrs. clyde would not care to assume the charge of her granddaughter. in any case, it would be well to have the matter settled before mentioning it.
then one evening, not a fortnight later, uncle joe, coming home from the little post-office town, twenty miles away, tossed him several letters.
“postmarked woodford,” the older man said. “looks like sentence was about to be pronounced.”
five minutes more and mr. ashe knew how hard he had been hoping against hope these last two weeks.
“well?” uncle joe asked; and the other looked up to find him still sitting motionless in his saddle.
“they want her to come as soon as possible, so that she may be ready to start school at the beginning of the fall term.”
“pretty good school back there?”
“said to be—it’s the one her mother went to.”
“i reckon they’re tickled to death to have her come?”
“they seem pleased.”
“blue bonnet’s out in the garden,” uncle joe suggested.
7 blue bonnet was gathering nasturtiums when her uncle called to her from the gate at the upper end of the garden. he had two letters in his hand, and, as she reached him, he held them out. “they came to-night,” he explained. “they are in answer to one i wrote a short time ago.”
blue bonnet took them wonderingly, and, sitting on the ground, the great bunch of gay-colored nasturtiums beside her, she opened one of them. as it happened, it was the one from her aunt lucinda—a short letter, perfectly kind and sincere, but very formal. on the whole, a rather depressing letter, in spite of the answer it brought to her great desire.
blue bonnet refolded it rather soberly. “i wish,” she said, studying the firm, upright handwriting, “that i hadn’t read this one first. grandmother’s must be different.”
it certainly was. a letter overflowing with the joy the writer felt over the prospect of blue bonnet’s coming. through its magic the girl was carried far away from the little garden, from all the old familiar scenes. dimly remembered stories her mother used to tell her of the big white house standing amidst its tall trees came back to her, and the vague hopes and dreams that had been filling her thoughts for weeks past began to take definite form.
and she was going there—back to her mother’s old home. she was to have the very room that had8 been her mother’s,—grandmother had said so. it seemed too good to be true. she was glad, now, she had kept this letter to the last. and she would be going soon;—that thought, with its accompanying one of hurry and preparation, brought her back to the present.
picking up the letters, she ran up to the house. on the back steps she found uncle joe.
“seems like you was in a hurry,” he said.
blue bonnet laughed, looking at him with shining eyes. “i’m going east!”
“to-night?” he questioned.
“no, not to-night; but very soon, i think.”
uncle joe seemed neither surprised, nor impressed. “humph,” he grunted, knocking the ashes from his pipe. “well, i reckon it’s all right back east—for them that like it.”
his reception of her news rather daunted blue bonnet, and she went at a slower pace through the wide center hall to the front veranda, where her uncle sat.
“uncle cliff,” she asked, giving him the letters, “you mean—i’m to go?”
mr. ashe shifted the letters from one hand to the other for a moment, without speaking; then he said gravely, “yes, you’re to go, elizabeth. when a girl hates the ranch, hates everything the life here stands for, and is afraid to ride, i don’t see that there’s anything left to do—but send her east.”
9 blue bonnet dropped down on the upper step, the quick color flooding her face. to go east was one thing—but to be sent! she sat very still for a few moments, looking out over the broad, level prairie.
her uncle was the first to speak.
“i suppose you’d best get started pretty soon; there’ll be some fixing up to do after you get there.”
“am i going alone?” blue bonnet asked.
“i don’t see how i can leave home at present,” her uncle answered. “perhaps i’ll hear of some one going east who’ll be willing to look after you.”
“it’ll seem funny to go to school with other girls,” blue bonnet said. “i wonder how i’ll like going to school.”
“i reckon you’ll be learning a good many lessons of various kinds, honey.” mr. ashe spoke a little wistfully. it was hard to realize that blue bonnet was going away.
the girl looked up soberly; his words had somehow reminded her of aunt lucinda’s letter. a sudden dread of the writer of it seized her. “uncle cliff,” she asked, “what are they like—grandmother and aunt lucinda?”
“suppose you wait and find out for yourself, honey.”
“i wish aunt lucinda hadn’t been so much older than mamma. uncle cliff, have you ever been in woodford?”
10 “no, honey; it’s a right pretty place, i reckon. you’ll have to write and tell me all about it.”
“and you’ll answer, won’t you? you’ll write very often?”
“of course, honey; but i don’t know what i’ll find to tell you—you won’t care about ranch talk.”
“but you’ll write? you’ve promised—and you’ve never broken a promise to me,” blue bonnet said.
and that night, lying awake and thinking of the new life to come, blue bonnet found the thought of those promised letters strangely comforting. “it—it can’t seem so far then,” she told herself.
“hurry, benita!” blue bonnet urged, “i hear uncle joe coming.”
the old woman gave a finishing touch to the waist she was laying in place in the big trunk standing in the center of blue bonnet’s room. “si, se?orita,” she said, “all is ready.”
she lifted the tray in place and closed down the lid, passing a hand admiringly over the surface of the trunk. “se?orita has the trunk of the se?ora, is it not?”
“yes,” blue bonnet answered gravely.
“i remember, as it were but yesterday, the coming of the se?ora,” benita said, “and the se?or calling ‘benita! oh, benita! here is your new mistress!’ she was but the young thing—that11 little se?ora—not much older than you are now, se?orita mia, and with the face all bright and the eyes so expressive—like yours.”
“eighteen,” blue bonnet said, thoughtfully, “and i’m fifteen.”
“it was i who unpacked the trunk—this and others, for there were many—and now i am packing it again for the going of the se?orita.” benita’s voice was trembling. “and the se?orita goes to the home of her mother’s mother. much would the se?ora tell me of the home she had left, in those first days.”
blue bonnet came to put an arm about the old woman, who, since her mother’s death ten years before, had mothered and looked after her to the best of her ability. “i wish you were going too, benita,” she said.
“si, se?orita mia, it is the journey too long for old benita.”
“all the way from texas to massachusetts,” blue bonnet said. “i wonder who’ll look after me and do everything for me there, benita.”
“that thought troubles me much, also, se?orita.”
“oh, i’ll get along somehow,” blue bonnet laughed. she turned as uncle joe came down the hall, a coil of rope over his shoulder.
“ready!” she called.
“this looks like business, for sure,” uncle joe12 said, slipping an end of the rope under blue bonnet’s trunk.
she nodded rather soberly. she had worn a sober face a good deal of the time during the days of preparation. “uncle joe,”—she looked up a little wistfully into the kind, weather-beaten face,—“you—you’ll look after uncle cliff, won’t you?”
“sure i will, blue bonnet, same’s if he was an infant in arms.”
“and you’ll write to me, too, sometimes—and tell me all about—everything?”
“i ain’t much on letter-writing,” uncle joe answered, “but i’ll make a try at it now and then; and you’re going to be so busy doing the things you’re wanting to do that you won’t have much time to be pestered with the goings-on out here.”
“please, uncle joe, you know that isn’t so.”
“ain’t it? there now, that’s roped to stay. seems kind of hard to realize that come another twenty-four hours and the blue bonnet ranch’ll be without its best and prettiest blue bonnet. eh, benita?”
benita shook her gray head sadly. “the sunshine goes with the going of the se?orita,” she said.
“i reckon you’ll take to the doings back there all right, blue bonnet,” uncle joe began. “there! i’m always forgetting—just as if your uncle hadn’t13 explained how, seeing as everything was to be new, you wasn’t to be blue bonnet any more, but elizabeth. it’s a fine name, elizabeth, and it’s going to suit back east all right; but, if you was staying on here, i’m thinking you’d have to go on being blue bonnet. i doubt if the boys here on the ranch would stand for anything else—they’re sort of kicking now over your going.”
“yes,” blue bonnet said, “i’ve had to say such a lot of good-byes—i don’t see why they care so much.” and, after uncle joe had carried out the trunk, and benita had gone, she sat quite still on the foot of her bed beside her half-packed hand-bag, trying to realize that in another twenty-four hours she would be travelling further and further from the blue bonnet ranch.
she and her uncle were to leave early the next morning, taking the long drive to the nearest railway station in the cool of the day. mr. ashe was to go the first hundred miles with her, and from there on she would be in charge of a friend of his who was going east.
and she had never been fifty miles on the railway in her life! blue bonnet’s eyes brightened. she drew a quick breath of pleasure. to be fifteen, and setting out to the land of one’s heart’s desire! all the doubts, the regrets, the half-vague fears of the past ten days vanished.
hearing her uncle’s step on the veranda, she went14 out to meet him. he was looking down at the trunk; something of the same expression in his eyes that had been in old benita’s.
“don’t you wish you were going, too?” the girl asked gaily.
“yes, honey.”
“isn’t it a big trunk and doesn’t it look delightfully travellingified?”
“delightfully what?”
blue bonnet laughed. reaching up, she touched the little knot of dark blue, pea-like blossoms in her uncle’s buttonhole. “you won’t forget me while you have your blue bonnets,” she said.
“i reckon i won’t forget you, honey.”
they went in to supper, blue bonnet talking and laughing excitedly; but afterwards, when she and her uncle went out to the front veranda as usual, her mood changed suddenly. it was so still, so peaceful, out there—and yet, already, so strangely alien.
for a few moments she walked up and down restlessly, followed closely by don. don scented the coming change; he thoroughly disapproved of that roped trunk on the back veranda.
“uncle cliff—” blue bonnet came at last to sit on the arm of her uncle’s chair, letting her head rest on his shoulder. something had got to be put into words, which she had been trying to say in various other ways for a good many days past.15 “uncle cliff, i—truly—i am sorry—that i spoke the way i did—that night.”
mr. ashe stroked the brown head gently. “that’s all right, honey. and remember, honey, if things go wrong, if you’re disappointed, or—anything like that, you’ve only to send word. this is your home,—and will be—for six years. and, honey, you won’t forget,—what your father said,—that you were to try to live as he had taught you to ride—straight and true.”
