Chiffon Scarf by Mignon Good Eberhart Page B

replied, drawling a little:
    “Well now, Miss Blaine, that’s easy. You’re almost in the middle of the Chochela Valley. Over toward the east—you crossed ’em—is the Sangre de Cristo Range. Red. Spanish named ’em; Blood of Christ. Toward the west is the Continental Divide; the Culebra Range is over that way.” He gestured lazily with a long brown hand toward a southwestern mountain rim. “Them mountains, west, is the Cochetopa Hills; beyond are the La Ganta Mountains. The Rio Grande lies quite a way to the south.”
    Averill’s small face was stiff.
    “Just where is the nearest city?”
    “Well, there’s Rocky Gap that way about fifty miles. But it’s not much of a city.” P. H. Sloane paused thoughtfully. “But there’s Telluride,” he went on doubtfully. “It’s north and west of us. And Cimarron. But if you want a city, you’ll have to go down to Sante Fe. Or Albuquerque. Or even Denver on the other side. They’re nearest, I reckon. But not very near, at that. Cady tells me your destination was Louisiana. You’re off your course quite a way.”
    “We know that,” said Averill.
    And Jim said:
    “Come along, Averill. Mr. Sloane’s ordered breakfast for us. Don’t keep it waiting.”
    The coarse grass was unexpectedly firm and springy under their feet. The air was as clear, as crisp, as clean as the morning sky.
    As they approached the fringe of brush and cottonwoods, the panorama of ranch houses and corrals began to stretch out, and the cottonwoods seemed to grow taller. There were barns, sheds, corrals; the party circled them and came in view of the house itself—long, low, rambling, flanked on each side by clusters of rustic cabins with native stone chimneys and narrow verandas running their full length.
    The oasislike effect of the green in which the house was set was due, Eden discovered, to a swift small creek lying below the house.
    “It’s a dude ranch,” said Jim to Averill, as she lifted questioning eyebrows. “P. H. Sloane is the owner. It used to be a cattle ranch—still is, I guess.”
    “I don’t care what it is,” said Averill, “so long as they’ll give us breakfast and a telephone. I expect you can telephone for anything you need.”
    “I don’t know what’s wrong yet,” said Jim, “but, as you say, we can telephone.”
    Eden, walking beside Averill, looked up quickly at Jim, caught by an undercurrent of meaning in his words. But his face was uncommunicative.
    Yet he must have planned the whole thing. She was almost sure of that in spite of the explanation he gave.
    “Right in here,” said P. H. Sloane, opening the door from a wide porch to a wide hall. “Dining room at the right. And breakfast—” He stopped, sniffed and finished with a smile, “Breakfast is ready for you.”
    If it was a dude ranch then there were no dudes. The cabins were obviously closed and unoccupied; the long, sprawling house itself vastly empty.
    They had a glimpse of a spacious lounge and at the end of the entrance hall, a billiard room. Rusticity stopped short of discomfort; the few Mexican shawls, the handsome brown and black bearskin rugs here and there were in no sense out of place although one faded crimson shawl lay over an old, massive piano—a Steinway and a concert size—laden also with worn sheet music. Along the walls were bookshelves, packed mainly with books, although there were Indian relics, too—flutes, bows and arrows, machetes, feathered headdresses on the shelves beyond the great piano.
    They passed through a large dining room with small bare tables and entered a smaller one—evidently their host’s own dining room, for the table and chairs were old and beautiful, and there were two or three good pictures on the walls.
    It was an enormous place, thought Eden, glancing about—the original old ranch had been quite evidently rebuilt with added wings and porches. It was so obviously and so fortunately able not only to house them all but to feed them for any