Blue Bonnets Ranch Party | Page 6

saw was a long, low, rambling house, with wide, hospitable verandas embowered in half-tropical vines. It had evidently started out as a one-roomed, Spanish 'adobe,' and, as the needs of the family demanded it, an ell had been added here, a room there, like cells in a bee-hive, until now it covered a good deal of territory, still keeping its one-storied, Mission-like character.
"Oh, Blue Bonnet--it's just what I wanted it to be," exclaimed Kitty. "It looks as if a fat, Spanish monk might come out of that door this very minute."
"Instead of which there is my dear old Benita, and Pancho and his wife and the children and--oh, everybody!" Blue Bonnet was bouncing up and down now with excitement.
Alec and the other two riders came up in a cloud of dust just as Miguel raced the mustangs up to the veranda steps, where all the ranch hands were gathered to greet the young Se?orita.
"Se?orita mia!" cried Benita, and Blue Bonnet leaped from the wheel straight into her old nurse's arms.
"And this is Grandmother, Benita," said Blue Bonnet, helping Mrs. Clyde from her place.
"The little Se?ora's mother--God bless you!" cried Benita in Spanish. Then, in spite of her stiff joints, she made a deep, old-fashioned curtsy.
Tears sprang to the eyes of the Eastern woman. "Thank you, Benita," she said. "My daughter always wrote lovingly of you."
"Blessed Se?ora!" breathed Benita fervently.
"This is my grandmother, everybody," said Blue Bonnet, presenting Mrs. Clyde to the entire circle, "and these are my friends--'amigos' from Massachusetts."
"Pleased to know ye!" said Pinto Pete and Shady, the only American cowboys on the ranch; while the Mexicans, as one voice, gave a hearty chorus of greeting.
The six "amigos" from Massachusetts were thrilled to the core, although at the same time a trifle embarrassed as to the correct way of responding to this vociferous welcome. Blue Bonnet set them all an example: she had a smile and a word for every man, woman and child, and finally sent them all off with a--"Come back when my trunks arrive!" And the hint brought a fresh gleam to already beaming faces.
Later, after a bountiful supper, they all gathered once more on the broad veranda while Blue Bonnet distributed her gifts. That those days in New York had been profitably spent was fully attested now when the contents of the many trunks were displayed. There were ribbons, scarfs and gay beads for the women, toys and sweets for the children, and wonderful pocket-knives, pipes and tobacco pouches for the men.
The Blue Bonnet ranch had been part of an original Spanish land-grant in the days when Texas was still part of Mexico, and had descended from father to son until it came into the hands of Blue Bonnet's grandfather. Many of the Mexican ranch-hands had been born on the place and looked on the Ashe family as their natural guardians and protectors. As yet they had not acquired a Yankee sense of independence, nor had they lost the soft Southern courtesy inherent in their race. They came up one at a time to Blue Bonnet as she stood at the top of the steps, her gifts in a great heap beside her; and each one, as he received his gift from her hand, called down a blessing on the head of the young Se?orita. Then, laughing, chatting, and comparing gifts like a crowd of children, they trooped away, the single men to the "bunk-house" by the big corral, the married couples and their children to little cabins scattered over the place.
"It's just like some old Spanish tale," declared Alec. "Blue Bonnet is a princess just returned to her castle, and all the serfs are come to pay her homage."
"I suppose Don Quixote will be off soon, hunting wind-mills?" suggested Kitty, with a mocking glance at Alec, whose new gun was the pride of his heart.
Alec deigned no reply.
"Look!" said Mrs. Clyde, softly, "--there goes the sun."
They followed her glance across the prairie that stretched away, green and softly undulating, in front of the veranda, and watched the red disk as it sank in a blaze of glory at the edge of the plain.
"Now you know," said Blue Bonnet, "why I felt like pushing back the houses in Woodford--at first they just suffocated me."
Mrs. Clyde smiled with new understanding. "You probably agree with our Massachusetts writer who complained that people in cities live too close together and not near enough," she said, patting Blue Bonnet's head as the girl, sitting on the step below her, leaned against her knee.
"Didn't you ever get lonesome here?" asked Debby, snuggling up to Amanda. She had been brought up among houses.
"Lonesome?" echoed Blue Bonnet. "I never knew what lonesome meant--till my first day in school!"
All too soon came bedtime.
"Where are we all to sleep?" Blue Bonnet asked Benita. It