***




Produced by Al Haines.




                              _THE GIRLS_
                                  _OF_
                          _SILVER SPUR RANCH_


                                   BY

                          GRACE MACGOWAN COOKE

                                  AND

                              ANNE MCQUEEN



                    THE GOLDSMITH PUBLISHING COMPANY
                               _Chicago_




              MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                           *LIST OF CHAPTERS*


      I. A Question of Names
     II. Roy Rides to Silver Spur
    III. A Package and a Leather-Brown Phaeton
     IV. A Jewel of Great Price
      V. The Silver Spur Bakery
     VI. A Shiny Black Box
    VII. The Wire Cutter
   VIII. A Partner of the Sun
     IX. The Rose by Another Name




                           _*THE GIRLS OF*_*
                         *_*SILVER SPUR RANCH*_



                              *CHAPTER I*

                         *A Question of Names*


The girls of Silver Spur ranch were all very busy helping Mary, the
eldest, with her wedding sewing.  Silver Spur was rather a pretentious
name for John Spooner's little Texas cattle-farm, but Elizabeth, the
second daughter, who had an ear attuned to sweet sounds, had chosen it;
as a further confirmation of the fact she had covered an old spur with
silver-leaf and hung it over the doorway.  The neighboring ranchers had
laughed, at first, and old Jonah Bean, the one cowboy left in charge of
the small Spooner herd, always sniffed scornfully when he had occasion
to mention the name of his ranch, declaring that The Tin Spoon would
suit it much better.  However, in time everybody became used to it, and
Silver Spur the ranch remained--somehow Elizabeth always had her own
way.

This young lady sat by the window in the little living-room where they
were all at work, and carefully embroidered a big and corpulent "B" on a
sofa-pillow for Mary, who was to marry, in a few days, a young man from
another state who owned the euphonious name of Bellamy--a name Elizabeth
openly envied him.

"I do think Spooner is such a horrid, commonplace sort of name," she
declared with emphatic disapproval.  "Aren't you glad you'll soon be rid
of it, Mary?"

"Um-m," murmured Mary, paying scant heed to Elizabeth's query; she was
hemming a ruffle to trim the little muslin frock which was the last
unfinished garment of her trousseau, and she was too busy for argument.

"As if," continued Elizabeth, "the name wasn't odious enough, father
must needs go and choose a _spoon_ for his brand!  And he might so
easily have made it a _fleur-de-lys_--fairly rubbing it in, as if it was
something to be proud of!"

Just then Mary, finding that the machine needle kept jabbing in one
place, looked about for a cause, and perceived Elizabeth tranquilly
rocking upon one of the unhemmed breadths of her ruffle.

"I'll be much obliged if you'll take your chair off my ruffle, Saint
Elizabeth," she laughed, tugging at the crumpled cloth, "and just don't
worry over the name--try and live up to your looks."

Elizabeth blushed a little as she stooped to disentangle the cloth from
her rocker; she was a very handsome girl, altogether unlike her sisters,
who were all rather short and dark, and plump looking, Cousin Hannah
Pratt declared, as much alike as biscuits cut out of the same batch of
dough. Elizabeth was about sixteen, tall and fair and slim, with large,
serious blue eyes and long, thick blond hair, which she wore plaited in
the form of a coronet or halo about her head--privately, she much
preferred the halo, as best befitting the character of her favorite
heroine, Saint Elizabeth, a canonized queen whom she desired to resemble
in looks and deportment.

"One would have to be a saint to bear with the name of Spooner," she
said, rather crossly, as she tossed Mary her ruffle.

Cousin Hannah Pratt, rocking in the biggest chair, which she filled to
overflowing, lifted her eyes from her work and regarded Elizabeth
meditatively.  "How'd you like to swap it for Mudd, Libby?" she asked
tranquilly.

Elizabeth shuddered--she hated to be called Libby, it was so
commonplace; and Cousin Hannah persisted in calling her that when she
knew how it annoyed her. Elizabeth was thankful that Cousin Hannah--who
kept a boarding-house in Emerald, the near-by village, and had kindly
come over to help with the wedding--was only kin-in-law, which was bad
enough; to have such an uncultured person for a blood relation would
have been worse.

"Mudd!  O, poor Elizabeth!" giggled Ruth, the third of the Spooner
sisters, a merry-hearted girl of fifteen, who looked on all the world
with mirthful eyes.  "Cousin Hannah, what made you think of such an
_awful_ name?"

"Don't be so noisy, Ruth," cautioned Mary, with what seemed unnecessary
severity.  "Mother's neuralgia is bad to day. You can hear every sound
right through in her room.  Cousin Hannah, won't you please make her a
cup of tea?  I think it would do her good; you make such nice tea."

"Sure and certain!" agreed Cousin Hannah, heartily.  Rising ponderously
from her chair, she moved on heavy tiptoes out into the kitchen, the
thin boards creaking as she walked.

"I might also remark that a person would have to be a saint to bear with
Cousin Hannah," said Elizabeth, "she doesn't intend it, maybe, but she
does rile me so!"

"I don't see why anybody would want to be a saint; I'd heap rather be a
knight," spoke up little Harvie, nicknamed by her family "the Babe."
She lay curled up on a lounge in the corner, ostensibly pulling out
bastings, but really reading a worn old copy of Ivanhoe, which was the
book of her heart.  There were no children living near the lonely little
ranch, and the Babe, who was only ten, solaced herself with the company
of heroes and heroines of romance--much preferring the heroes.

"I'd rather be'most anything than a'mover'," declared Elizabeth,
emphatically. "And if you want to know the reason, just look out of the
window and watch this procession coming up from the road."

Ruth and the Babe ran to the window; Mary, leaving her machine, slipped
quietly out of the room to see about her mother. Also Mary desired to
have a little private talk with Cousin Hannah.

It was a pitifully ludicrous spectacle that the girls beheld.  Up the
driveway leading to the house came a dreary procession of those
unfortunates known in western parlance as "movers," family tramps who
follow the harvests in hope of getting a little work in the fields;
always moving on when the crops are gathered, or planted, as the case
may be--movers never became dwellers in any local territory.

These movers were, in appearance, even more wretched than usual.  In a
little covered cart drawn by a diminutive donkey, sat a pale woman with
a baby in her arms, and two small and pallid children crouching beside
her.  Behind the cart the father of the family pushed valiantly, in a
kindly endeavor to help along the donkey, while just ahead of that
overburdened animal walked a small boy, holding, as further inducement,
an alluring ear of corn just out of reach of the donkey's nose.
Certainly the family justified Elizabeth's declaration that'most
anything was preferable to being a mover!

Ruth and Elizabeth both laughed at the comical procession, but the
Babe's eyes were full of pity.  "The poor things are coming up for
water," she said sorrowfully. "Father always let them get water at our
well--I'll go show them the way."  And she ran out to meet the movers
and show them the well at the back of the house, where they filled their
water-jugs and quenched the thirst of the patient and unsatisfied
donkey.

"I wish to goodness Father never had gone to Cuba," sighed Ruth, as she
turned from the window to take up her button-holes, "it is so awfully
lonesome without him."

"I think it was splendid," said Elizabeth, with shining eyes, "to be
among the very first of the volunteers.  And maybe he'll do some deed of
daring and be made an officer.  Think how nice it will be to say, when
the war is over, that our father figures in history--maybe as one of the
foremost heroes of the Spanish-American war."

"You're always dreaming of things that never happen, Elizabeth," scoffed
practical Ruth.  "Of course he won't be made a big officer.  If he comes
back just a plain Captain I'll be mighty glad."

"O, well, the world's greatest men and women have always been dreamers,"
asserted Elizabeth, cheerfully, "I can't help being born different from
the rest of you, can I?"

"H'm, I reckon not--but you can start a fire in the stove.  People must
eat, no matter how great they are.  It's your time to get supper."

"O, dear, it's bad to be born poor!" sighed Elizabeth, as she arose
reluctantly. "Especially when there's a longing within you to do
perfectly fine things, and not mere drudgery.  I wish I were a
princess--it seems to me I was born to rule.  I'm sure I would be a wise
and capable sovereign. Well, even queens stoop to minister to the lowly,
like Saint Elizabeth, so _I'll_ go get supper for the Spooners!"

And with her head in the clouds, the throneless queen marched
majestically kitchenward, to engage in the humble occupation of cooking
supper for her family.

Voices from her mother's closed door reached her ears as she passed.
Elizabeth would have scorned eavesdropping, but--the ranch being located
in the prairie region of Texas, where lumber is so scarce that just as
little as possible is used in building, and the walls being merely board
partitions, she could not help hearing Cousin Hannah's voice, always
strident, rising above her mother's and Mary's lower tones.

"Fiddle-diddle!  What's the use of mincin' matters anyway?  She's bound
to know, sooner or later--ought to know without--tellin', if she had a
grain o' common sense. Ain't a single, solitary thing about her favors
the rest of you all."

The words sounded very clearly in Elizabeth's startled ears, arousing a
train of troubled thoughts in her mind, as she moved mechanically about
the kitchen.  She felt quite certain that they were talking about her,
and that Cousin Hannah wanted to tell her something that Mrs. Spooner
and Mary didn't want known.

"I wonder what it can be," pondered Elizabeth, as she slowly stirred the
hominy pot.  "Whether Cousin Hannah thinks so or not, I've always known
I wasn't like the rest."

This was quite true; Elizabeth, though she dearly loved the parents and
sisters who had always, Cousin Hannah declared, spoiled her, yet could
not help feeling that she was, mentally and physically superior to them,
"made of finer clay," she would have put it.  People often remarked on
this lack of resemblance to the others, and when they did so in Mrs.
Spooner's presence she always hastily changed the subject.  Elizabeth
had often wondered why.  Somehow there seemed always to have been a
mystery surrounding her--something that, if explained, would prove very
thrilling indeed.

Occupied with these thoughts, she moved from cupboard to table, and from
table to fire, preparing the evening meal with deft skill, for anything
Elizabeth Spooner did she did a little better than other people.

Outside the window stretched a vast brown-green plain, bounded by a
horizon line like a ring.  There was monotony in the prospect, and yet a
curious sense of adventure and romance, as there is about the sea.
Elizabeth delighted in the mystic beauty of the prairie, yet to-day her
fine eyes studied the level unseeingly as she glanced through the
window, looking to see if Jonah Bean was in sight; the glories of sunset
that flooded the plain passed almost unnoticed.  She was thinking too
earnestly on her own problem to observe the outside world.

"If I were by chance adopted, I certainly have a right to know who I
am," Elizabeth pondered, as she set the table beautifully, with certain
artistic touches that the clumsier hands of the other girls somehow
could never manage.  "It won't make any difference in my feelings for
father and mother and the girls if I should happen to be born in a
higher station of life than theirs--though I can easily see how poor
mother could think it might; I trust I'm above being snobbish--"
Elizabeth's eyes began to glow with a resolute purpose--"I'm going to
find out, that's what!  I'll make Cousin Hannah tell me.  She's so big
it's awful to sleep with her, and she snores like thunder. Mary knows
how bad it is, and how I hate it, that's the reason she made me sleep
with Ruth, when one of us had to give up our place.  To-night I'll make
Mary take the Babe's place with Mother, who might need her in the night,
and I'll sleep with Cousin Hannah--and find out what she knows about
me!"

Jonah Bean came stamping up the steps just then to wash up for supper at
the water-shelf just outside the kitchen door; informing anybody who
chose to listen that he was mighty tired--there was two men's work to do
on the Spooner ranch, anyhow, and he was gittin' old, same's other
folks.  Glancing in at the open door he observed who was the cook.

"Humph!  So it's your night for gittin' supper?  Well, I hope the
truck'll taste as fancy as that air table looks."

"Sure, Jonah," answered Elizabeth, critically observing the effect of
her handiwork. "If you'll just step outside and get me a big bunch of
those yellow cactus-blooms to put in this brown pitcher it'll be
perfect, and I'll see that you get a big painted cup full of coffee."

"Never could see no use in weeds--full o' stickers at that," grumbled
Jonah, as he turned to go out for the flowers that were growing on the
great cactus in the fence corner.  "Hope that air coffee'll be strong
and hot, though."

The coffee was strong and hot, and the hominy was white and well-cooked;
the bacon was brown and crisp and the biscuits light as feathers.
Elizabeth dished the supper in the flowered dishes kept for company,
because she could not bear the heavy earthenware they used every day.
She filled the squatty brown pitcher with the big bunch of golden blooms
old Jonah bore gingerly, careful of the thorns, and then lighted the
lamp with the red shade.  Really they didn't need a lamp, but the glow
from the red shade was so pretty that she lighted it anyway--she so
loved beautiful things.

She arranged her mother's tray daintily, laying a cactus-bloom, freed of
its thorns, beside the plate--somehow she felt as if she was preparing
for some extra occasion.

"I declare Libby always cooks like she was fixin' for company," said
Cousin Hannah, admiringly, as she sat at the gracefully arranged table.
"Oughter keep boarders, and she wouldn't find no time for extra kinks."

Elizabeth shuddered a little as she poured Jonah's coffee in the biggest
cup, with the painted motto on it--how she would hate to do such a
sordid thing as keep boarders!

But she smiled very affably on Cousin Hannah, and asked if she wouldn't
tell her how to make spice cake--she always noticed that Cousin Hannah's
cake was so good. She wished to get the recipe to write in her
scrap-book.

"Shore and certain," said Cousin Hannah, amiably, pleased at Elizabeth's
praise, "I'll be glad to write it off.  You're 'bout as good a cook as
Ruth, though I always did say she was the born cook o' the family--you
seemin' to be a master hand at managin'."

That she was indeed a master hand at the art, Elizabeth proved that
night, when with a few energetic commands, she sent Mary obediently to
her mother's room, to take the Babe's place, who in turn was put to
sleep with Ruth.

"Why in the world don't you let Ruth sleep with Cousin Hannah?" argued
Mary, "you know how you hate to--and she doesn't mind."

"Because it isn't fair that I shouldn't have my turn as well as the
others--it's disagreeable to all of us.  Now you just let me have my
way, and say nothing else about it!" declared Elizabeth with authority,
and as usual, she was allowed to have her way.

While Cousin Hannah undressed, moving ponderously about the little room,
Elizabeth sat on the side of the bed, brushing her long blond hair,
watching with critical admiration of the beautiful, the gleams of red
and gold the lamplight cast upon its glittering strands, and formulating
in her mind a plan to find out the secret of her birth--if secret there
was.

She finally decided that plain speech was better than beating about the
bush, and spoke in a carefully suppressed tone.

"Cousin Hannah," she said, with whispering decisiveness, "I want to know
what you, and Mother and Mary were talking about in her room."

"Why, Libby!" exclaimed Cousin Hannah, plumping down upon the bed in her
astonishment, "did you go and listen to what we was sayin'?"

"Indeed I didn't!  But I couldn't help hearing you--and I think it's my
right to know, if you were talking about me."

"But your Ma--but Jennie said she didn't _want_ you should know," argued
the bewildered Cousin Hannah, "land o' livin', girl, ain't you got a
home, and people to care for you?  Why in tunket can't you be satisfied
with _that_?"

Certainty made Elizabeth calmly triumphant.

"I have felt, for a long time--ever since I can remember, that I was
different from the rest of my family, though you didn't give me credit
for having sense enough to see it.  Of course, I love them all dearly
but I can't help feeling that it's my right to know the truth, whatever
it is.  Cousin Hannah, is or is not my name Spooner?"

"Well," Cousin Hannah evaded the question, "what would you get out of it
if your name wasn't Spooner?"

Elizabeth leaped up softly, she held her hairbrush as though it were a
scepter; her long hair flowed and billowed about her as she walked with
majestic tread, up and down the tiny room--she was seeing visions!

If her name was not Spooner!  That would mean that her birth was, she
felt sure, indefinitely illustrious some way.  Of course she would never
desert the people who loved her, and whom she would always love,
but--might not something come of it that would be grand for them all?

"Libby," Cousin Hannah's eyes followed the moving figure with a
distressed look in them, "your ma--Jennie Spooner--your true ma, if love
and tenderness count for anything, never wanted you told.  Mary knows,
and she don't want you should know. When I watch your uppity ways I tell
'em it's high time they explained the situation to you."

"The situation--" Elizabeth hung breathlessly on her words with shining
eyes, and an eager tremble of her lips.

"Yes, the situation," repeated Cousin Hannah heavily.  "Jennie Spooner
had a tough time raisin' you--a troublesome young'un as ever I see.  You
teethed so hard that it looked like she never knew what a night's rest
was till you got 'em through the gums.  I used to come over here many a
time and help her; what with Ruth bein' so nigh the same age, she had
her hands full.  It was kept from you for fear of hurtin' your feelin's,
if you must know."

"How could it hurt my feelings?" questioned Elizabeth, a little puzzled.
"I love them all--but they should have told me. They ought to have known
they couldn't change--" a swan to a duckling had been on the tip of her
tongue, but she stopped in time, "me to a Spooner, even by their love
and kindness."

"Change you to a Spooner?" slow wrath mounted to Cousin Hannah's face.
She caught Elizabeth's arm as the girl passed by.  "I reckon they
couldn't make a Spooner out o' you, that's a fact.  The Spooners, bein',
so far's known to me, respectable householders--"

"But not what _my_ people were," suggested Elizabeth, her whole face
alight, her eyes shining with eagerness.  "You must tell me who they
were--what my rightful name is."

Cousin Hannah groaned.  "Looks like I've let the cat out of the
bag--don't it? Well, what I've got to tell ain't nigh what you think
I've got to tell," she asserted doggedly.  "You'll be sorry for askin'."

Through Elizabeth's mind flashed visions of a wonderful ancestry; to do
her justice these dream parents did not in any way displace the father
and mother she really loved with all her young heart--they were only
that vision which comes to us all in some shape when we feel we are
misunderstood--different.

Mary's step was heard approaching in the little corridor.  She had
undoubtedly been disturbed by the sound of their voices, and was uneasy
for fear Cousin Hannah would be teased into making in judicious
revelations.

"Tell me--tell me quick--" whispered Elizabeth, shaking her room-mate's
arm. "Tell me before Mary gets here."

"Well, I will," gasped Cousin Hannah. "You ought to know it--but I warn
you it's not what you're expectin'!"




                              *CHAPTER II*

                       *Roy Rides to Silver Spur*


When Mary stepped into the little bedroom Cousin Hannah Pratt had
already spoken.

"Your pa and ma was movers that come here sixteen years ago--movers,
like the folks you seen to-day and made such fun of. The name was Mudd."

These whispered words sounded in Elizabeth's ears, and the girl crumpled
up on the bed sobbing just as Mary opened the door. Mrs. Pratt pulled
the elder sister into the room.

"I've told Libby--she ought to have been told long ago--with you
marryin' and goin' away and Ruth not havin' a bit of faculty and her
bein' the one to take your place I think she was obliged to know it."

Mary came across the room with a rush, and took slim Elizabeth in loving
arms.

"Go away, Cousin Hannah, please," she said.  "You can sleep with Ruth
and I'll stay with Elizabeth."

Mrs. Pratt, glad enough to be relieved from sight of the misery she had
caused, hurried away and the two sisters were alone together.  Mary knew
very little of what Cousin Hannah had seen fit to reveal, a child
herself at the time, she had but vague remembrances of it, and indeed
Elizabeth asked no questions--she only needed to be comforted, and this
Mary did as best she could.

The next day but one was the wedding day, Mr. Bellamy was expected in
the morning and they would probably have no other chance for private
talk, but Mary urged Elizabeth to go to their mother for comfort when
the wedding was over, and some time late in the night they both fell
asleep.

In the days that followed the wedding, when everything was strange, and
they were settling slowly back into the usual routine Elizabeth found no
opportunity to speak with her mother of that trouble which had come now
to haunt every waking hour, and even pursued her into dreams.

Mary and her euphoniously named Mr. Bellamy had gone on their way to
Oklahoma, where the bridegroom owned a ranch. Cousin Hannah Pratt,
having helped with the wedding sewing and the packing, had gone back to
Emerald and her own overflowing boarding-house.  Mrs. Spooner, the three
girls, and old Jonah were left alone, face to face with the problem of
getting along.

Everything had settled into the usual routine at the Silver Spur; Mrs.
Spooner, rather weak from her neuralgia and the strain of the wedding,
sat on the front porch in a big chair which Elizabeth had endeavored to
make comfortable with rugs and pillows.

"Are you perfectly sure I can't do anything else for you, Mother?" she
asked anxiously.  "Mary always waited on you so beautifully, while--it
seems to me I've never done one little thing for you, when you've done
so much for me!"

A big tear slipped from the long lashes and splashed on Mrs. Spooner's
little hand, fluttering among the cushions.  In a minute the mother-arms
had pulled the girl's head down to the mother-breast, the thin fingers
patting the blond braids and the mother-voice crooning comfort into the
crumpled little ear buried upon the maternal shoulder.

"Don't cry, daughter, Mother loves you just the same!  Haven't you been
our own since you were, O, such a _wee_ baby!  It was cruel of Cousin
Hannah to tell you, but we won't let it make one bit of difference.
You're ours and we are yours.  A thing like that can't matter to people
who love each other as we do."

"It--it doesn't matter, Mother," gasped Elizabeth, as she mopped her
reddened eyes, "if I can just take Mary's place to you.  I am going to
try, my very level best."

"Then you'll be sure to succeed," said her mother, confidently.  "You
always succeed in everything you undertake--hadn't you noticed that,
dear?  Now, really, I'm just as comfortable as hands can make me, so you
run on down to the corral and help Ruth and the Babe with the ponies.
You ride with them to Emerald, and get the mail--it'll do you good.  And
be sure you bring me a letter from father."

Cheered by her mother's words, Elizabeth gave one more pat and pull to
the pillows, kissed her, and ran down to the corral, where the girls
were roping the ponies.  She and Ruth could each rope a little, missing
about three out of five throws, but the Babe usually flourished so
reckless a loop that she entangled herself, and had to be helped out; in
spite of which old Jonah Bean insisted that she was the only one who
showed any signs of learning the art.

Poor Elizabeth!  Her castle of dreams had fallen, leaving her wide awake
to the fact that she was no princess