RAQUEL OF THE RANCH COUNTRY

BELOW LAY THE RANCH

CHAPTER I RAQUEL GOES TO SCHOOL

Sunset brought Raquel to The Towers, that fashionable school for girls whose turrets overlooked the Hudson. The glow behind her seemed to have lingered to introduce this child of the land of sunshine. It seemed to burnish the dowdy little figure sitting so stiffly in the sedan. Yet she resolutely kept her back to the West, for to see it made her homesick. This was all so different. No wonder a calf bawled for its mother when they took it away!

Three days’ travel from Texas had put a whole world between Raquel and Los Ranchos, the Sunset Limited speeding her back over plains that the covered wagon of her grandparents had not crossed in three months’ journeying. And here she was rolling up a drive toward high iron gates. She leaned forward to peer through. It was even more imposing than she had imagined, this feudal castle in its beautiful grounds, all splashed with the reds and golds of autumn.

Lights were already glowing within the school. The pupils of The Towers always dressed for dinner, and Raquel could see girlish figures passing and repassing before the windows in their soft-colored frocks.

She had never been so afraid of anything in her life as of the prospect of this new world. She was trembling with nervousness. Two girls stood for a moment in one of the windows, each with an arm around the other’s waist. How happy they seemed! Oh, of course she would love school! Homesickness fell away. Raquel leaned forward, sat on the edge of the seat in her eagerness to be inside among those cheerful groups.

The girls of the Misses Carter’s school, watching from the windows as the sedan came to a stop at the entrance, saw a slight figure in a badly fitting suit swing out of the car the moment Jeems opened the door. Before he could stoop for her old calfskin bags the new girl had seized them herself and with a bulging piece of luggage in each hand leaped up the steps ahead of him.

There was a rush from the drawing-room windows. The next moment she was standing in the hall, eager eyes on the faces filling the doorway. They looked mighty pretty. Then the bags dropped to the floor with a thump. A lean hand was thrust out to enclose the plump white one of the younger Miss Carter, and a soft Texan voice was drawling, “Howdy, Ma’am, I sure am glad to be here.”

Then, striding after the floating form of the younger Miss Carter, the new girl was gone up the wide staircase.

“The cowgirl from Texas, or the Girl of the Golden West,” laughed a mischievous voice. “That your new roommate, Lois?”

Lois Wainwright shook a blonde head; her pretty face hardened. “Not if I can help it. I can get along without her in my young life. As a matter of fact I didn’t come here to be forced into any such association.”

“Oh, come, Loie, don’t be a snob!” A long-legged, handsome girl spoke from the depths of an easy chair where she sprawled with a book. “Besides, what do you know about that girl? She’s probably a peach. And she may be the very person that you may need most in your young life, old kiddo.”

Upstairs, Raquel Daniels followed Miss Isaphine Carter down carpeted halls strangely soft to unaccustomed feet. Her nostrils widened like a colt’s at the unfamiliar odor of this new atmosphere, a mingling of scented clothing, fine housekeeping, imperceptible to the careful but accustomed nose of Miss Isaphine, ever on the alert for forbidden things—cigarettes, strong perfumes, bubbling fudge after bedtime. At the ranch there was only the odor of fresh alfalfa blossoms to cover the smell of frying meat or sizzling frijoles.

“This will be your room, dear child.” Miss Carter was switching on the lights. Raquel blinked. How pretty! It was prettier than anything at San Antone’s big store. Prettier somehow than Raquel’s own room at home, and she had thought hers was surely the handsomest set of furniture in the world when Dad bought it for her last year.

“You will have a charming roommate, Lois Wainwright, one of our sweetest girls,” Miss Carter smiled professionally. “You had better dress for dinner now, dear, and then come down to the drawing-room as quickly as you can.”

Left alone, Raquel stood for a moment, smiling, excited. Well, here she was. All these girls to be friends with! And she had to learn to act pretty, like them. Dress for dinner, the teacher had said. Was there anything wrong with her new suit? She had thought it very plain-looking, but that was what they had told her to get. Did Miss Carter mean for her to wear her party dress with elbow sleeves, or should she wear the Sunday dress with long sleeves? She knelt before the bags and threw them open—calfskin bags they were, handmade, and polished from a quarter century’s use. The Sunday dress was in the trunk.

They had forgotten to unstrap it, and Raquel attacked the clumsy-looking knotted rope with deft fingers. Custer was such a hand at roping, he couldn’t even let her new trunk be. Raquel was so absorbed that she did not hear the door softly open and close.

“I think there must be some mistake.” It was an almost artificially sweet voice. “I have this room to myself. Perhaps you’d better not unpack until you can be transferred.” Lois’ eyes took in the cheap trunk, the heavy leather valises.

Raquel rose. Surely this was the prettiest girl in the whole world. She could not take her eyes away.

“I reckon you must be Lois Wainwright, aren’t you?”

“Lois Wainwright is my name.”

“Why, then,” the brown hand shot out again, “you’re my roommate sure enough. I’m Raquel Daniels from Los Ranchos.”

But the pride and confidence in her voice faded as her empty hand fell to her side.

“It was Jimmy, Jim Hovey, your cousin, who told us about The Towers. And you being here, and all. And Dad wrote—Jimmy wrote, too—to you. Maybe you didn’t get the letter. He—” Raquel stopped, checked by the utter lack of response. “I’d have known you anywheres from your picture,” she said softly then.

“Really! How interesting,” Lois drawled indifferently. She fancied that her pointless remark was the essence of sarcasm. “My father, however, happened to engage my room for me early last summer. Yes, I believe Jimmy did write about you. But I don’t pretend to keep up with my cousin’s—er—acquaintances.”

It didn’t take schooling for the girl from Los Ranchos to know that she was not wanted. This strange burning in her cheeks and tightness in her throat made it necessary to get away as fast as she could. Stooping quickly, Raquel closed her grips, and striding to the door, threw it open and set the bags, ever so gently this time, outside. Then back; and lifting the heavy trunk on end, she dragged it swiftly and easily to the door, and bumped it over the threshold, Lois standing there motionless, like one fascinated by what she had done.

It was this tableau which flashed before Anne Marvin as she rounded the corner on her way to her room, and stopped before Lois’ open door—Lois standing cool, indifferent, in the center of the room, the new girl flushed, tense, there in the hall in the midst of her own luggage.

Anne knew just what had happened. That was clear enough.

“This is Raquel Daniels, isn’t it?” She laid a cordial hand on Raquel’s arm. “I’ve come up after you—to meet my new roommate. There was some mistake in the rooming plans, and we’re to be partners, you and I. Shall we go right on to my room? There’s just time before dinner.”