Discovering a cottonwood tree not far from the gate, Jimmie now climbed up and seated himself upon one of the lower branches. Here he was enabled to have a wide outlook.
Behind him was the Rainbow lodge where he and his mother were living at the present time. So often Jimmie Kent had been told its history! Here his mother with her sister, Frieda Ralston, and her cousin Jean Bruce, had lived when the three of them were little girls and under the guardianship of Jim Colter, the manager of their father's ranch after his death. Later the fourth ranch girl had found refuge with them, escaping from an Indian woman in whose charge she had been for so many years that her early childhood was enshrouded in mystery.
From his present viewpoint Jimmie Kent was able to observe two figures not at a great distance away. They were Captain MacDonnell and his wife, who had been Olive to the other ranch girls until the discovery of her parentage.
Captain MacDonnell, injured in the great war, later had developed his talent as an artist. Jimmie possessed the ordinary small boy's attitude toward pictures, nevertheless he had something to say in favor of Captain MacDonnell's, since _his_ reputation had been acquired through his painting of western scenes.
At the present moment he was sketching a mustang pony, which one of the ranch boys was leading back and forth in an effort to persuade the pony to remain within the range of the artist's vision. Jimmie would have enjoyed changing places with the other boy. In spite of Captain Bryan MacDonnell's lameness he had an especial understanding and love of the outdoors, to such an extent that he and his wife were spending a year or more at the Rainbow ranch, living in a tent, regardless of the fact that at the great house built after the discovery of the Rainbow mine there was room for any number of guests.
Jimmie now glanced over toward the splendid mansion which had been christened "Rainbow Castle" by Frieda Ralston years before. His Aunt Frieda and her distinguished if eccentric husband, Professor Henry Tilford Russell and their one little girl were at present visitors at Rainbow Castle, having arrived only a day or so before.
Jimmie was no more interested in relatives as relatives than most small boys. Yet had his preference been asked he would have said freely that he liked best his Aunt Jean and his uncle Ralph Merritt, possibly because a famous engineer who had been not only the engineer of the Rainbow mine but of several other mines would appeal to any masculine imagination. Then possessing no sons of her own and greatly desiring one, his Aunt Jean was particularly kind to him.