by Andre Norton
"Hm-m," he looked from the ivory to Jeems and then to Val, "this is the final proof. Either one of you might have sat for this. You have the same coloring and features. If it were not for a slight difference of expression you might pass for twins. At any rate, there is no denying that you are both Ralestones."
"I don't think that we'll ever attempt to deny it," Val laughed. "But you were right, Jeems--I mean Roderick," he said to his newly discovered cousin, "you do have as much right here as we do."
Jeems colored. "Ah'm sorry for sayin' that," he confessed. "Ah thought yo' were right smart and too good for us. An' Ah'm sorry Ah played ha'nt. But Ah didn't expec' yo' would evah see me, only the niggahs, an' I didn't care 'bout them. Ah always came when yo' were 'way or in bed."
"Well, you've explained your interest in the place," Val assented, "but what about the rival? Why did he appear?"
"It started in a blackmail plot. Your family have been wealthy, you know," explained LeFleur. "But then the scheme became more serious when the oil prospectors aroused interest in the swamp. Already several men whose property bounds yours have been approached by the Central American Oil Company with an offer for their land. It would not at all surprise me if you were asked to dispose of your swamp wasteland for a good price. And the rumor of oil is what made the rival, as you call him, try to press his false claim instead of merely holding it over you as a threat."
"The Luck is certainly doing its stuff," Val observed. "Here's the lost heir found, oil-wells bubbling at our back door--"
"I would hardly say that, Mr. Valerius," remonstrated LeFleur.
"They may bubble yet," the boy assured him airily. "I wouldn't put it beyond the power of that length of Damascus steel to make wells bubble. Oil-wells bubbling," Val continued from the point where the lawyer had interrupted him, "Rupert turning out to be the missing author--"
"What was that?" demanded Creighton sharply. He was on the point of handing a small book to Jeems.
"We just discovered that Rupert is your missing author," Val explained. "Didn't you guess when you heard the story of the missing Ralestone? The family went into town to tell you all about it; that's why we were alone when the invaders arrived."
"Mr. Ralestone my missing author! No, I didn't guess. I was too interested in the story--but I should have! How stupid!" He looked down at the book he still held and then put it into the swamper's hand. "Between the pages of the prayer-book, covering the offices for St. Louis' Day, you'll find the birth certificate for Laurent St. Jean with his right name," he said. "That's a very important paper to keep, young man. Mr. Ralestone my author." He wiped his forehead with the handkerchief from his breast-pocket. "How stupid of me not to have seen at once. But why--"
"He had some idea that his stuff was no good when he didn't hear from that agent," Val explained, "so he just tried to forget the whole matter."
"But I have to see him, I have to see him at once." The New Yorker looked about him as if by will-power alone he could summon Rupert to stand before him on the terrace.
"Stay to supper and you will," Val invited. "Ricky and I discovered him for you just as we promised we would. But then you've given us Rod in return. I am not," Val told his cousin, "going to call you Rick even though there is a tradition for it. There are too many 'Ricks' complicating the family history now. I think you had better be 'Rod'."
"Anythin' yo' say," he grinned.
For the third time that afternoon Val heard a car coming up the drive.
"If this should turn out to be the Grand Chan of Tartary or the Lama of Peru I shall not be one iota surprised," he announced. "After what I've been through this afternoon, nothing, absolutely nothing, would surprise me. Oh, it's only the family."
With the impatience of one who has a good earth-shaking shock ready to administer, he watched his wandering relatives disembark. Charity and Holmes were still with them and a sort of aura of disappointment hung over the group. Then Ricky looked up and with a cry of joy came up the terrace steps in what seemed like a single leap.
"Oh, Mr. Creighton," she began when Val lifted his hand. "Let me tell it," he begged, "I've been waiting for a chance like this for years." Ricky was obediently silent, thinking that he wished to break the mystery of the author. But Jeems and LeFleur understood that it was to them Val appealed.
"Val, what are you doing out of bed?" was Rupert's first question.
"Saving the old homestead while you went joy-riding. We had visitors this afternoon."
"Visitors? Who?" he began when his brother silenced him with a frown.
"Oh, let's not go into that now," Val said hurriedly. "There is something more important to be discussed. Since you left this afternoon we have had an addition to the family."
"An addition to the family," puzzled Ricky. "What do you mean?"
"Rick Ralestone has come back," Val announced.
"Val, hadn't you better go back to bed?" suggested his sister.
"Not now," he grinned at her. "I haven't lost my mind yet, nor am I raving. Ladies and gentlemen," Val prepared to echo Creighton's speech of an hour before, "permit me to introduce Roderick St. Jean de Roche Ralestone, the missing heir!"
With an impish grin Val had never seen on his face before, Jeems clicked his heels in a creditable imitation of a court bow.
CHAPTER XVIII
RUPERT BRINGS HOME HIS MARCHIONESS
"Such a nice domestic scene," Val observed.
Ricky looked up from the bowl into which she was shelling peas. "Now just what do you mean by that?" she asked suspiciously.
"Nothing, nothing at all. It's getting so I can't say a word around here without you suspecting some sort of a catch in it," her brother complained. He shifted the drawing-board Rod had fixed up for him an inch or two. Although Val's arm was at last out of the sling, he was not supposed to use it unless absolutely necessary.
"Well, after that afternoon when you made the missing heir appear like a rabbit out of a hat--" began his sister.
"Rod," Val called down to where their cousin was busied over the stretching of the new badminton net, "did you hear that? She referred to you as a rabbit--deliberately."
"Hm-m," Rod answered in absent-minded fashion. "That cat of Miss Charity's just walked away with one of those feathered things yo' bat 'round."
"Let us hope that he returns it in time," Val said; "otherwise I can prophesy that you are going to spend the rest of the morning crawling around under hedges and things hunting for him and it. Ricky will not be balked. If she says that we are going to play badminton--well, we are going to play badminton."
"I think that you might help too." Ricky attacked a fresh pod viciously as their cousin came up on the terrace. He stopped for a moment by Ricky's chair, long enough to gather the pods together on the paper she had put down for them, piling them up in a more orderly fashion than she was capable of.
"Doing what?" Val inquired. "You know that Lucy has chased everyone out of the house. And now that Rod has finished setting out the lawn sports, what is there left to do? By the way, did Sam mend that croquet mallet, the one with the loose head?"
"The one that you broke hitting the stone with when you aimed at your ball yesterday?" she asked sweetly. "Yes, I saw to that this morning."
"Then what more is there to worry about? Let the party begin." Val reached for his box of pencils.
That afternoon promptly at three-thirty the Ralestones of Pirate's Haven were going to give their first party. They had lived, eaten, and slept with the idea of a party for the past week until Rupert rebelled and disappeared for the morning, taking Charity with him. He declared before he left that the house was no longer habitable for anyone above the mental level of a party-mad monomaniac, a statement with which Val privately agreed. But Ricky did trap him before he got the roadster out and made him promise to bring home two pounds of salted nuts and some more ice, because she simply knew that they wouldn't have enough.
Ricky dropped the last of the peas into the bowl and leane
d back in her canvas deck-chair. "I'm going to wear green," she murmured dreamily, "with that leaf thing in my hair. And Charity's going to wear her rose, the one that swishes when she walks."
"I think I'll appear in saffron," Val announced firmly. "Somehow I feel like saffron. How about you, Rod?"
The thin, efficient, brown-faced person who was Roderick St. Jean de Roche Ralestone, to grant him his full name, stretched lazily and transferred a fistful of Ricky's peas to his mouth, a mouth which was no longer sullen. At Val's question he raised his shoulders in one of his French shrugs and considered.
"Yellow, with lilies behind mah ears," he grinned at Ricky. "Bettah give them somethin' to stare at; they'll all be powerful interested, anyway."
"Yes, the lost viscount," Val agreed. "Of course, you're really only a Lord like me, but it sounds better to say 'the lost viscount.' You'll share the limelight with Rupert and the Luck, so you'd better take that pair of my flannels which haven't turned quite yellow yet."
Rod shook his head. "This time Ah have mah own. Ah went in town shoppin' yesterday. It's mah turn to share clothes. Youah brothah told me to get yo' some shirts. So Ah did. Lucy put them in the top drawer."
"Don't tell me," Val begged, aroused by this news, "that we are actually able to afford some new clothes again?"
Rod nodded and Ricky sat up. "Don't be silly," she said, "we're comfortably well off. With Rupert writing books, and a lot of oil or something in the swamp, why, what have we got to worry about? And next fall Rod's going to college and I'm taking that course in dress designing and Rupert's going to write another book and--and--" Her inventive powers failed as Holmes came out on the terrace.
"Hello there." Val glanced at his watch. "I don't want to seem inhospitable, but you're about four hours too early. We haven't even crawled into our party duds."
"So I see. But this isn't a social call. By the way, where's Charity?"
"Oh, she went off with Rupert this morning," answered Ricky. "And I think it was mean of them, running out on us that way, when there was so much to do."
It seemed to Val that there was a faint shadow of irritation across the open good nature of Holmes' smile when he heard her answer. "That damsel is becoming very elusive nowadays," he observed as he sat down. "But now for business."
"More business? Not another oil-well!" Ricky expressed her surprise vividly with upflung hands.
"Not an oil-well, no. Just this--" He pulled Val's black note-book from his pocket. "Now I am not going to tell you that I have shown them to a publisher and that he wants fifty thousand or so at five dollars apiece. But I did show them to that friend I spoke of. He isn't very well known at present but he will be some day. His name is Fenly Moss and he is interested in animated cartoons. He has some ideas that sound rather big to me.
"Fen says that these animal drawings of yours show promise and he wants to know whether you ever thought of trying something along his line?"
Val shook his head, impatient to hear the rest.
"Well, he's in town right now on his vacation and he's coming out to see you tomorrow. I advise you, Ralestone, that if Fen makes you the proposition I think he's going to, to grab it. It'll mean hard work for you and plenty of it, but there is a future to it."
"I don't know how to thank you," the boy began when Holmes frowned at him half-seriously. "None of that. I was really doing Fen a favor, but you needn't tell him that. Do you know how long Charity and your brother are going to be gone?"
"No. But they'll be back for lunch," Ricky said. "If they remember lunch--they're getting so vague lately. Val went out to call them to dinner last night and it took him a good five minutes to get them out of the garden."
"Five? Nearer ten," scoffed her brother.
Holmes got up abruptly. "Well, I'll be drifting. When is this binge of yours?"
"Three-thirty, which really means four," answered Ricky. "Aren't you going to stay to lunch?"
The New Yorker shook his head. "Sorry, I've another engagement. Thanks just the same."
"Thank _you_!" Val waved the note-book as he vanished. "Wonder why he hurried off that way?"
"Mad to think that Miss Charity was gone," answered Rod shrewdly. "Yo've had that board long enough." He calmly possessed himself of Val's drawing equipment. "Time to rest."
"Yes, grandfather," his cousin assented meekly.
Ricky slapped at a fly. "It seems to get hotter and hotter," she said. From the breast pocket of her sport dress she produced a handkerchief and mopped her face. Then she looked at the handkerchief in surprise.
"What's the matter? Some face come off along with the paint?" asked Val.
"No. But I just remembered what this is--our clue!"
"You mean the handkerchief we found in the hall? I wonder who--"
Rod reached up and took it out of her hand.
"Mine. Miss Charity gave me a dozen last Christmas."
"Then you left it there," Ricky laughed. "Well, that solves the last of our mysteries."
"All present or accounted for," Val agreed as around the house came Rupert and their tenant.
"So there you are," began Ricky. "And I'd like to know what you've been doing all morning--"
"Would you really?" asked Rupert.
Ricky stared at him for a long moment and then she arose before transferring her gaze to Charity. It might have been sunburn or the heat Ricky had complained of which colored the cheeks of the Boston Biglow.
"Rod! Val!" cried Ricky. "Where are your manners?" As she sank forward in a deep and graceful curtsy she added, "Can't you see that Rupert has brought home his Marchioness?"
"Now that," said Val, as he held out his hand to the new mistress of Pirate's Haven, "is what I call 'Ralestone Luck.'"
Rebel Spurs
Andre Norton
REBEL SPURS
In 1866, only men uprooted by war had reason to ride into Tubacca, Arizona, a nondescript town as shattered and anonymous as the veterans drifting through it. So when Drew Rennie, newly discharged from Forrest's Confederate scouts, arrived leading everything he owned behind him--his thoroughbred stud Shiloh, a mare about to foal, and a mule--he knew his business would not be questioned. To anyone in Tubacca there could be only one extraordinary thing about Drew, and that he could not reveal: his name, Rennie.
Drew had come west from Kentucky to find a father he had thought dead until the year before. Kinship with a man like Hunt Rennie, however--the legendary Don Cazar, owner of a matchless range and prize stallions--was not a claim to be made quickly or lightly. Posing as Drew Kirby the young veteran contrived to get himself and his friend Anse hired as corral hands at Rennie's Range, but he was hardly prepared for the suspicion and danger which stood between him and his father. As hotheaded as his father, Drew was ready to move on to California--until the day all proof of his Rennie name was stolen from him, and his unwarranted arrest for horse-thieving brought on the accusations of the one man whose trust he needed.
Andre Norton's _Ride Proud, Rebel!_ dramatically portrayed the last year of the Confederacy, when brave men like Drew Rennie met defeat with honor. In this sequel, Drew's struggle to establish his identity and begin life anew in a raw, unsettled land reflects the courage of thousands of rootless men set adrift by the Civil War.
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