Blaine was the third child of a family of four boys and three girls, the favorite of a Kansas farmer who had emigrated to northern California and had taken up a great tract of marshland along Tule Lake. In wet seasons his land was under water. He had labored there, along with several other farsighted pioneers. And when the government drained Tule Lake it was as if their fortunes had been touched by the magic of Aladdin.
But he had sent Ina to a Kansas college long before fortune had smiled upon him. He had a brother at Lawrence, in whose home Ina was welcome during the period of her schooling. It had not been his intention to leave Ina there all this time. But one thing and another, including lack of funds and illness in her uncle’s family, had prevented Ina from spending a vacation at home. So she had been away four years, during which wealth had come, as if overnight, to the Blaines.
To revel in being home, to delight in her freedom, to play a little after the long years of study, to put off the inevitable settling down to the serious things of life—these had been Ina’s cherished hopes.
“I must see the funny side of it,” she soliloquized, with a little laugh. “For it is funny. Dad so important and pompous—mother fussed over a multitude of new fandangles—Archie impressed with his destiny as the eldest son of a cattle king—Fred and Bob leaning away from farm work to white collars and city girls. Kate engaged to a Klamath lawyer! I really can’t savvy her. The kids, though, will make up for much. We’ll get along, when once they remember me.
“To begin, then,” said Ina, resolutely, and she got up on the right side of the bed. She was home. Whatever had been the changes in country and family, here was where she had longed to be and meant to live and serve. She had spent time in St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, San Francisco, the last of which she had found most interesting. But she would never be happy in the confines of a city. She loved northern California—the vastness of it, the great white mountains, the ranges of soft round sage hills, lakes and rivers and streams, and in the midst of them the little villages here and there, not too close together, and the green flat ranches, still few in number.
“Last night when I said I’d teach school some day, didn’t dad roar?” she mused. “And mother looked offended. What has happened to my dear parents? I fear they must suffer for my education. I wonder what they have in mind. Heigho! I feel tremendously old and learned. . . . Back to the tomboy days for Ina! I’ll slide down the haymow with Dall. I’ll fish and ride and swim with Marvie. How keen he was to ask me that! . . . And Ben Ide? . . . Not a letter from him all these years. Dear old Ben! I seem to have forgotten much until now. How time flies! They wrote me Ben had gone to the bad. I never believed it—I think I didn’t. Ben was queer, not like the other boys, but he was good. . . . Has he forgotten me? Ben was a year younger than Archie. He’s twenty-four now. Quite a man! Five years didn’t make such difference when I was fifteen.”
Ina peeped out of her window. The east above the gray range blazed brightly gold, and the glow of the spring morning shone over the level waving plain where Tule Lake had once shimmered. Flocks of ducks dotted the rosy sky, and a triangle of wild geese headed toward the dim blue swamp land under the black lava mounds. Old Mount Shasta stood up majestically, snow-crowned and sunrise-flushed. The fresh keen air vibrated with sounds—honk of geese, song of spring birds, bawl of calf and low of cow. The pasture was alive with horses, cattle, pigs. Cocks were crowing, and out by the jumble of barns a cowboy whistled merrily.
Ina went downstairs and through the wide new hallway that connected with what had been the old house. Her father had made the mistake of erecting a large frame structure as an addition to the old half-log, half-stone house. It was significant that despite his rise in the ranching world he could not quite forsake his humble abode. And indeed he had his room and office there still. A kitchen had been added to the living room, which evidently, from the long tables and benches, was now a dining room for her father’s horde of cowboys.
Ina peeped into this dining room before she ventured farther. It was empty. Then she heard her mother in the kitchen. Ina ran through to surprise Mrs. Blaine helping the man-cook.
“Good morning, Mother. Where’s everybody?” cried Ina, gayly.
“Bless your heart, how you scared me!” ejaculated her mother, quite manifestly embarrassed. She was a large woman, gray-haired and somewhat hard-featured. “Nobody’s up yet, except me an’ your father.”
“Well! Why, Mother, Archie used to clean out the horse stalls, and Kate used to milk the cows!” retorted Ina, laughingly.
“They don’t any more,” replied Mrs. Blaine, shortly.
“I shall try, at least, to milk the cows.”
“Ina, your father didn’t give you a college education for that,” protested her mother, in vague alarm.
“But you used to milk cows and I’d never be above what you did,” said Ina, sweetly, and embraced her mother.
“Father has some big hopes for you, Ina,” returned Mrs. Blaine, dubiously. She did not quite know this long-lost, grown-up daughter. She seemed bewildered by circumstances of monumental importance, but which were unnatural.
“The cow-hands will be comin’ in for breakfast any minute,” she said. “You’d better go.”
“Why? I’d like to see them.”
“Your father said he’d not have any cowboys gallivantin’ round after you.”
“Indeed! But suppose I liked it,” retorted Ina, merrily. “You married dad when he was a cowboy.”
“But that was different, Ina.”
“I’d like to know how.”
“My child, I was a milkmaid on the Kansas farm where Hart Blaine was a hand. You’re the daughter of a rancher who will be a millionaire some day.”
“Mother, that last is very high-sounding, but it doesn’t impress me,” returned Ina, with seriousness. “Dad and I are going to have some arguments.”
“Ina, you were our most obedient child,” said Mrs. Blaine, divided between conjecture and doubt.
“I’ll still be, Mother dear—with reservations. And I’ll begin now by running off so the interesting cowboys will not get to see me, this time.”
Ina returned to the other part of the house, with a thoughtfulness edging into her happy mood. Her mother was plodding amid perplexities and complexities beyond her ken. The old simple hard-working farm life seemed to have been disrupted. Ina went to the sitting room, which she had explored yesterday and had found attractive in spite of its newness. There were some sticks of burning wood in the open fireplace. Ina liked that. A familiar fragrance, not experienced for a long time, assailed her nostrils. How warm and stirring the emotions it roused! Her girlhood again, trails and ponies and camp fires!
Ina curled up in a big chair before the fire, as she had been wont to do as a dreamy child, and was about to give herself up to the pleasure of retrospection when Dall came bounding in, pursued by Marvie. Sight of Ina interrupted hostilities. Dall was a gawky, growing girl of twelve and Marvie a handsome lad of fourteen, tow-headed and blue-eyed, as were all the Blaines except Ina. An animated conversation ensued, in which Dall reverted to her endless queries about college, Kansas, towns, and travel, while Marvie tried to tell about his horse and that on Saturday Ina must ride with him and go fishing.
In due time the oldest girl, Kate, came down wearing a dress rather unsuited to
