THE GIRLS OF SILVER SPUR RANCH

LIST OF CHAPTERS

1. A Question of Names

2. Roy Rides to Silver Spur

3. A Package and a Leather-Brown Phaeton

4. A Jewel of Great Price

5. The Silver Spur Bakery

6. A Shiny Black Box

7. The Wire Cutter

8. A Partner of the Sun

9. 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