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+Project Gutenberg's Ruth Fielding In the Saddle, by Alice B. Emerson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ruth Fielding In the Saddle
+       College Girls in the Land of Gold
+
+Author: Alice B. Emerson
+
+Release Date: June 12, 2011 [EBook #36396]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank, David Edwards and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: AS THE MAD HORSE CIRCLED HER, THE GIRL STRUCK AGAIN AND
+AGAIN. Page 171]
+
+
+
+
+                             Ruth Fielding
+                             In the Saddle
+
+                                   OR
+
+                            COLLEGE GIRLS IN
+                            THE LAND OF GOLD
+
+                                   BY
+
+                            ALICE B. EMERSON
+
+               Author of "Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill,"
+                 "Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island," Etc.
+
+                             _ILLUSTRATED_
+
+[Image]
+
+                                NEW YORK
+                         CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
+                               PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+                            Books for Girls
+                          BY ALICE B. EMERSON
+                          RUTH FIELDING SERIES
+                       12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
+
+
+                 RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
+                 Or, Jasper Parloe's Secret.
+
+                 RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL
+                 Or, Solving the Campus Mystery.
+
+                 RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
+                 Or, Lost in the Backwoods.
+
+                 RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
+                 Or, Nita, The Girl Castaway.
+
+                 RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
+                 Or, Schoolgirls Among the Cowboys.
+
+                 RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
+                 Or, The Old Hunter's Treasure Box.
+
+                 RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
+                 Or, What Became of the Raby Orphans.
+
+                 RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES
+                 Or, The Missing Pearl Necklace.
+
+                 RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES
+                 Or, Helping the Dormitory Fund.
+
+                 RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE
+                 Or, Great Times in the Land of Cotton.
+
+                 RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE
+                 Or, The Missing Examination Papers.
+
+                 RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE
+                 Or, College Girls in the Land of Gold.
+
+
+               Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York.
+
+                          Copyright, 1917, by
+                         Cupples & Leon Company
+
+                      Ruth Fielding in the Saddle
+
+                          Printed in U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+               CHAPTER                                 PAGE
+                    I. What Is Coming                     1
+                   II. Eavesdropping                      9
+                  III. The Letter from Yucca             18
+                   IV. A Week at Home                    26
+                    V. The Girl in Lower Five            35
+                   VI. Somebody Ahead of Them            44
+                  VII. A Mysterious Affair               52
+                 VIII. Min                               58
+                   IX. In the Saddle at Last             67
+                    X. The Stampede                      75
+                   XI. At Handy Gulch                    82
+                  XII. Min Shows Her Mettle              94
+                 XIII. An Ursine Holdup                 100
+                  XIV. At Freezeout Camp                109
+                   XV. More Discoveries                 117
+                  XVI. New Arrivals                     124
+                 XVII. The Man in the Cabin             134
+                XVIII. Ruth Really Has a Secret         142
+                  XIX. Something Unexpected             151
+                   XX. The Mad Stallion                 159
+                  XXI. A Peril of the Saddle            167
+                 XXII. Ruth Hears Something             177
+                XXIII. More of It                       185
+                 XXIV. The Real Thing                   192
+                  XXV. Uncle Jabez Is Converted         199
+
+
+
+
+RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--WHAT IS COMING
+
+
+"Will you do it?" asked the eager, black-eyed girl sitting on the deep
+window shelf.
+
+"If Mr. Hammond says the synopsis of the picture is all right, I'll go."
+
+"Oh, Ruthie! It would be just--just scrumptious!"
+
+"_We'll_ go, Helen--just as we agreed last week," said her chum, laughing
+happily.
+
+"It will be great! great!" murmured Helen Cameron, her hands clasped in
+blissful anticipation. "Right into the 'wild and woolly.' Dear me, Ruth
+Fielding, we _do_ have the nicest times--you and I!"
+
+"You needn't overlook me," grumbled the third and rather plump freshman
+who occupied the most comfortable chair in the chums' study in Dare
+Hall.
+
+"That would be rather--er--impossible, wouldn't it, Heavy?" suggested
+Helen Cameron, rolling her black eyes.
+
+Jennie Stone made a face like a street gamin, but otherwise ignored
+Helen's cruel suggestion. "I'd rather register joy, too----Oh, yes, I'm
+going with you; have written home about it. Have to tell Aunt Kate
+ahead, you know. Yes, I'd register joy, if it weren't for one thing that
+I see looming before us."
+
+"What's that, honey?" asked Ruth.
+
+"The horseback ride from Yucca into the Hualapai Range seems like a
+doubtful equation to me."
+
+"Don't you mean 'doubtful equestrianism'?" put in the black-eyed girl
+with a chuckle.
+
+"Perhaps I do," sighed Jennie. "You know, I'm a regular sailor on
+horseback."
+
+"You should have taken it up when we were all at Silver Ranch with Ann
+Hicks," Ruth said.
+
+"Oh, say not so!" begged Jennie Stone lugubriously. "What I should have
+done in the past has nothing to do with this coming summer. I groan to
+think of what I shall have to endure."
+
+"Who will do the groaning for the horse that has to carry you, Heavy?"
+interposed the irrepressible Helen, giving her the old nickname that
+Jennie Stone now scarcely deserved.
+
+"Never mind. Let the horse do his own worrying," was the placid reply.
+The temper of the well nourished girl was not easily ruffled.
+
+"Why, Jennie, _think!_" ejaculated Helen, suddenly turned brisk and
+springing down from the window seat. "It will be just the jaunt for you.
+The physical culturists claim there is nothing so good for reducing
+flesh and helping one's poor, sluggish liver as horseback riding."
+
+"Say!" drawled the other girl, her nose tilted at a scornful angle,
+"those people say a lot more than their prayers--believe me! Most
+physical culturists have never ridden any kind of horse in their lives
+but a hobbyhorse--and they still ride _that_ when they are senile."
+
+Ruth applauded. "A Daniel come to judgment!" she cried.
+
+"Huh!" sniffed Jennie, suspiciously. "What does that mean?"
+
+"I--I don't just know myself," confessed Ruth. "But it sounds good--and
+Dr. Milroth used it this morning in chapel, so it must be all right."
+
+"Anything that our revered dean says goes big with me, I confess," said
+Jennie. "Oh, girls! isn't she just a dear?"
+
+"And hasn't Ardmore been just the delightsomest place for nine months?"
+cried Helen.
+
+"Even better than Briarwood," agreed Ruth.
+
+"That sounds almost sacrilegious," Helen observed. "I don't know about
+any place being finer than old Briarwood."
+
+"There's Ann!" cried Ruth in a tone that made both the others jump.
+
+"Where? Where?" demanded Helen, whirling about to look out of the window
+again. The window gave a broad view of the lower slope of College Hill
+and the expanse of Lake Remona. Dusk was just dropping, for the time was
+after dinner; but objects were still to be clearly observed. "Where's
+Jane Ann Hicks?"
+
+"Just completing her full course at Briarwood Hall," Ruth explained
+demurely. "She will go to Montana, of course. But if I write her I know
+she'll join us at Yucca just for the fun of the ride."
+
+"Some people's idea of fun!" groaned Jennie.
+
+"What are _you_ attempting to go for, then?" demanded Helen, somewhat
+wonderingly.
+
+"Because I think it is my duty," the plump girl declared. "You young and
+flighty freshies aren't fit to go so far without somebody solid along----"
+
+"'Solid!' You said it!" scoffed Helen.
+
+"I was referring to character, Miss Cameron," returned the other shaking
+her head. "But Ann is certainly a good fellow. I hope she will go,
+Ruth."
+
+"I declare, Ruthie," exclaimed her chum, "you are getting up a regular
+party!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It _will_ be great fun," acknowledged the black-eyed girl.
+
+"Of course it will, goosie," said Jennie Stone. "Isn't everything that
+Ruth Fielding plans always fun? Say, Ruth, there are some girls right
+here at Ardmore--and freshies, too--who would be tickled to death to join
+us."
+
+"Goodness!" objected Ruth, laughing at her friend's exuberance. "I
+wouldn't wish to be the cause of a general massacre, so perhaps we'd
+better not invite any of the other girls."
+
+"Little Davenport would go," Jennie pursued. "She's a regular bear on a
+pony."
+
+"Bareback riding, do you mean, Heavy?" drawled Helen.
+
+Except for a look, which she hoped was withering, this was ignored by
+the plump girl, who went on: "Trix would jump at the chance, Ruth. You
+know, she has no regular home. She's just passed around from one family
+of relations to another during vacations. She told me so."
+
+"Would her guardian agree?" asked Ruth.
+
+"Nothing easier. She told me he wouldn't care if she joined that party
+that's going to start for the south pole this season. He's afraid of
+girls. He's an old bachelor--and a misogynist."
+
+"Goodness!" murmured Helen. "There should be something done about
+letting such savage animals be at large."
+
+"It's no fun for poor little Trix," said Jennie.
+
+"She shall be asked," Ruth declared. "And Sally Blanchard."
+
+"Oh, yes!" cried Helen. "She owns a horse, and has been riding three
+times a week all this spring. Her father believes that horseback riding
+keeps the doctor away."
+
+"Improvement on 'an apple a day keeps the doctor away,'" quoted Ruth.
+
+"How about eating an onion a day?" put in Jennie. "That will keep
+everybody away!"
+
+"Oh, Jennie, we're not getting anywhere!" declared Helen Cameron. "_Are_
+you going to invite a bunch of girls, Ruth, to go West with us?"
+
+This is how the idea germinated and took root. Ruth and Helen had talked
+over the possibility of making the trip into the Hualapai Range for more
+than a fortnight; but nothing had as yet been planned in detail.
+
+Mr. Hammond, president of the Alectrion Film Corporation had conceived
+the idea of a spectacular production on the screen of "The
+Forty-Niners"--as the title implied, a picture of the early gold digging
+in the West. He had heard of an abandoned mining camp in Mohave County,
+Arizona, which could easily and cheaply be put into the condition it was
+before its inhabitants stampeded for other gold diggings.
+
+Mr. Hammond desired to have most of the scenes taken at Freezeout Camp
+and he had talked over the plot of the story with Ruth Fielding, whose
+previous successes as a scenario writer were remarkable. The producer
+wished, too, that Ruth should visit the abandoned mining camp to get her
+"local color" and to be on the scene when his company arrived to make
+the films.
+
+There was a particular reason, too, why Ruth had a more than ordinary
+interest in this proposed production. Instead of being paid outright for
+her work as the writer of the scenario, some of her own money was to be
+invested in the picture. Having taken up the making of motion pictures
+seriously and hoping to make it her livelihood after graduating from
+college, Ruth wished her money as well as her brains to work for her.
+
+Nor was the president of the Alectrion Film Corporation doing an
+unprecedented thing in making this arrangement. In this way the shrewd
+capitalists behind the great film-making companies have obtained the
+best work from chief directors, the most brilliant screen stars, and the
+more successful scenario writers. To give those who show special talent
+in the chief departments of the motion picture industry a financial
+interest in the work, has proved gainful to all concerned.
+
+Ruth had walked slowly to the window, and she stood a moment looking out
+into the warm June dusk. The campus was deserted, but lights glimmered
+everywhere in the windows of the Ardmore dormitories. This was the
+evening before Commencement Day and most of the seniors and juniors were
+holding receptions, or "tea fights."
+
+"What do you think, girls?" Ruth said thoughtfully. "Of course, we'll
+have to have the guide Mr. Hammond spoke about, and a packtrain anyway.
+And the more girls the merrier."
+
+"Bully!" breathed the slangy Miss Stone, wiggling in her chair.
+
+"Oh, I vote we do, Ruth. Have 'em all meet at Yucca and----"
+
+Suddenly Ruth cried out and sprang back from the window.
+
+"What's the matter, dear?" asked Helen, rushing over to her and seizing
+her chum's arm.
+
+"What bit you, Ruth Fielding? A mosquito?" demanded Jennie.
+
+"Sh! girls," breathed the girl of the Red Mill softly. "There's somebody
+just under this window--on the ledge!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--EAVESDROPPING
+
+
+Helen tiptoed to the window and peered out suddenly. She expected to
+catch the eavesdropper, but----
+
+"Why, there's nobody here, Ruth," she complained.
+
+"No-o?"
+
+"Not a soul. The ledge is bare away to the end. You--you must have been
+mistaken, dear."
+
+Ruth looked out again and Jennie Stone crowded in between them, likewise
+eager to see.
+
+"I know there was a girl there," whispered Ruth. "She lay right under
+this window."
+
+"But what for? Trying to scare us?" asked Helen.
+
+"Trying to break her own neck, I should think," sniffed Jennie. "Who'd
+risk climbing along this ledge?"
+
+"_I_ have," confessed Helen. "It's not such a stunt. Other girls have."
+
+"But _why?_" demanded the plump freshman. "What was she here for?"
+
+"Listening, I tell you," Helen said.
+
+"To what? We weren't discussing buried treasure--or even any personal
+scandal," laughed Jennie. "What do you think, Ruth?"
+
+"That is strange," murmured the girl of the Red Mill reflectively.
+
+"The strangest thing is where she could have gone so quickly," said
+Helen.
+
+"Pshaw! around the corner--the nearest corner, of course," observed
+Jennie with conviction.
+
+"Oh! I didn't think of that," cried Ruth, and went to the other window,
+for the study shared during their freshman year by her and Helen Cameron
+was a corner room with windows looking both west and south.
+
+When the trio of puzzled girls looked out of the other open window,
+however, the wide ledge of sandstone which ran all around Dare Hall just
+beneath the second story windows was deserted.
+
+"Who lives along that way?" asked Jennie, meaning the occupants of the
+several rooms the windows of which overlooked the ledge on the west side
+of the building.
+
+"Why--May MacGreggor for one," said Helen. "But it wouldn't be May. She's
+not snoopy."
+
+"I should say not! Nor is Rebecca Frayne," Ruth said. "She has the fifth
+room away. And girls! I believe Rebecca would be delighted to go with us
+to Arizona."
+
+"Oh--well----Could she go?" asked Helen pointedly.
+
+"Perhaps. Maybe it can be arranged," Ruth said reflectively.
+
+She seemed to wish to lead the attention of the other two from the
+mystery of the girl she had observed on the ledge. But Helen, who knew
+her so well, pinched Ruth's arm and whispered:
+
+"I believe you know who it was, Ruthie Fielding. You can't fool me."
+
+"Sh!" admonished her friend, and because Ruth's influence was very
+strong with the black-eyed girl, the latter said no more about the
+mystery just then.
+
+Ruth Fielding's influence over Helen had begun some years before--indeed,
+almost as soon as Ruth herself, a heart-sore little orphan, had arrived
+at the Red Mill to live with her Uncle Jabez and his little old
+housekeeper, Aunt Alvirah, "who was nobody's relative, but everybody's
+aunt."
+
+Helen and her twin brother, Tom Cameron, were the first friends Ruth
+made, and in the first volume of this series of stories, entitled, "Ruth
+Fielding of the Red Mill," is related the birth and growth of this
+friendship. Ruth and Helen go to Briarwood Hall for succeeding terms
+until they are ready for college; and their life there and their
+adventures during their vacations at Snow Camp, at Lighthouse Point, at
+Silver Ranch, at Cliff Island, at Sunrise Farm, with the Gypsies, in
+Moving Pictures and Down in Dixie are related in successive volumes.
+
+Following this first vacation trip Ruth and Helen, with their old chum
+Jennie Stone, entered Ardmore College, and in "Ruth Fielding at College;
+Or, The Missing Examination Papers," the happenings of the chums'
+freshman year at this institution for higher education are narrated.
+
+The present story, the twelfth of the series, opens during the closing
+days of the college year. Ruth's plans for the summer--or for the early
+weeks of it at least--are practically made.
+
+The trip West, into the Hualapai Range of Arizona for the business of
+making a moving picture of "The Forty-Niners" had already stirred the
+imagination of Ruth and her two closest friends. But the idea of forming
+a larger party to ride through the wilds from Yucca to Freezeout Camp
+was a novel one.
+
+"It will be great fun," said Helen again. "Of course, old Tom will go
+along anyway----"
+
+"To chaperon us," giggled Jennie.
+
+"No. To see we don't fall out of our saddles," Ruth laughed. "Now! let's
+think about it, girls, and decide on whom we shall invite."
+
+"Trix and Sally," Jennie said.
+
+"And Ann Hicks!" cried Helen. "You write to her, Ruth."
+
+"I will to-night," promised her chum. "And I'm going to speak to Rebecca
+Frayne at once."
+
+"I'll see Beatrice," stated Jennie, moving toward the door.
+
+"And I'll run and ask Sally. She's a good old scout," said Helen.
+
+But as soon as the plump girl had departed, Helen flung herself upon
+Ruth. "Who was she? Tell me, quick!" she demanded.
+
+"The girl under that window?"
+
+"Of course. You know, Ruthie."
+
+"I--I suspect," her chum said slowly.
+
+"Tell me!"
+
+"Edie Phelps."
+
+"There!" exclaimed Helen, her black eyes fairly snapping with
+excitement. "I thought so."
+
+"You did?" asked Ruth, puzzled. "Why should she be listening to us?
+She's never shown any particular interest in us Briarwoods."
+
+"But for a week or two I've noticed her hanging around. It's something
+concerning this vacation trip she wants to find out about, I believe."
+
+"Why, how odd!" Ruth said. "I can't understand it."
+
+"I wish we'd caught her," said Helen, sharply, for she did not like the
+sophomore in question. Edith Phelps had been something of a "thorn in
+the flesh" to the chums during their freshman year.
+
+"Well, I don't know," Ruth murmured. "It would only have brought on
+another quarrel with her. We'd better ignore it altogether I think."
+
+"Humph!" sniffed Helen. "That doesn't satisfy my curiosity; and I'm
+frank to confess that I'm bitten deep by _that_ microbe."
+
+"Oh well, my dear," said Ruth, teasingly, "there are many things in this
+life it is better you should not know. Ahem! I'm going to see Rebecca."
+
+Helen ran off, too, to Sarah Blanchard's room. Many of the girls' doors
+were ajar and there was much visiting back and forth on this last
+evening; while the odor of tea permeated every nook and cranny of Dare
+Hall.
+
+Rebecca's door was closed, however, as Ruth expected. Rebecca Frayne was
+not as yet socially popular at Ardmore--not even among the girls of her
+own class.
+
+In the first place she had come to college with an entirely wrong idea
+of what opportunities for higher education meant for a girl. Her people
+were very poor and very proud--a family of old New England stock that
+looked down upon those who achieved success "in trade."
+
+Had it not been for Ruth Fielding's very good sense, and her advice and
+aid, Rebecca could never have remained at Ardmore to complete her
+freshman year. During this time, and especially toward the last of the
+school year, she had learned some things of importance besides what was
+contained within the covers of her textbooks.
+
+But Ruth worried over the possibility that before their sophomore year
+should open in September, the influence at home would undo all the good
+Rebecca Frayne had gained.
+
+"I've just the thing for you, Becky!" Ruth Fielding cried, carrying her
+friend's study by storm. "What do you think?"
+
+"Something nice, I presume, Ruth Fielding. You always _are_ doing
+something uncommonly kind for me."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"No nonsense about it. I was just wondering what I should ever do
+without you all this long summer."
+
+"That's it!" cried Ruth, laughing. "You're not going to get rid of me so
+easily."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Rebecca, wonderingly.
+
+"That you'll go with us. I need you badly, Becky. You've learned to
+rattle the typewriter so nicely----"
+
+"Want me to get an office position for the summer near you?" Rebecca
+asked, the flush rising in her cheek.
+
+"Better than that," declared Ruth, ignoring Rebecca's flush and tone of
+voice. "You know, I told you we are going West."
+
+"You and Cameron? Yes."
+
+"And Jennie Stone, and perhaps others. But I want you particularly."
+
+"Oh, Ruth Fielding! I couldn't! You know just how _dirt poor_ we are.
+It's all Buddie can do to find the money for my soph year here. No! It
+is impossible!"
+
+"Nothing is impossible. 'In the bright lexicon of youth,' and so forth.
+You can go if you will."
+
+"I couldn't accept such a great kindness, Ruth," Rebecca said, in her
+hard voice.
+
+"Better wait till you learn how terribly kind I am," laughed Ruth. "I
+have an axe to grind, my dear."
+
+"An axe!"
+
+"Yes, indeedy! I want you to help me. I really do."
+
+"To _write?_" gasped Rebecca. "You know very well, Ruth Fielding, that I
+can scarcely compose a decent letter. I _hate_ that form of human folly
+known as 'Lit-ra-choor.' I couldn't do it."
+
+"No," said Ruth, smiling demurely. "I am going to write my own scenario.
+But I will get a portable typewriter, and I want you to copy my stuff.
+Besides, there will be several copies to make, and some work after the
+director gets there. Oh, you'll have no sinecure! And if you'll go and
+do it, I'll put up the money but you'll be paying all the expenses,
+Becky. What say?"
+
+Ruth knew very well that if she had offered to pay Rebecca a salary the
+foolishly proud girl would never have accepted. But she had put it in
+such a way that Rebecca Frayne could not but accept.
+
+"You dear!" she said, with her arms about Ruth's neck and displaying as
+she seldom did the real love she felt for the girl of the Red Mill.
+"I'll do it. I've an old riding habit of auntie's that I can make over.
+And of course, I can ride."
+
+"You'd better make your habit into bloomers and a divided skirt,"
+laughed Ruth. "That's how Jane Ann--and Helen and Jennie, too--will dress,
+as well as your humble servant. There _are_ women who ride sidesaddle in
+the West; but they do not ride into the rough trails that we are going
+to attempt. In fact, most of 'em wear trousers outright."
+
+"Goodness! My aunt would have a fit," murmured Rebecca Frayne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--THE LETTER FROM YUCCA
+
+
+Before Dare Hall was quiet that night it was known throughout the
+dormitory that six girls of the freshman class were going to spend a
+part of the summer vacation in the wilds of Arizona.
+
+"Like enough we'll never see any of them again," declared May
+MacGreggor. "The female of the species is scarce in 'them parts,' I
+understand. They will all six get married to cowboys, or gold miners,
+or----"
+
+"Or movie actors," snapped Edith Phelps, with a toss of her head. "I
+presume Fielding is quite familiar with any quantity of 'juvenile leads'
+and 'stunt' actors as well as 'custard-pie comedians.'"
+
+"Oh, behave, Edie!" chuckled the Scotch girl. "I'd love to go with 'em
+myself, but I must help mother take care of the children this summer.
+There's a wild bunch of 'loons' at my house."
+
+Fortunately, Helen Cameron did not hear Edith's criticism. Helen had a
+sharp tongue of her own and she had no fear now of the sophomore.
+Indeed, both Ruth and Helen had quite forgotten over night their
+suspicions regarding the girl at their study window. They arose betimes
+and went for a last run around the college grounds in their track suits,
+as they had been doing for most of the spring. The chums had gone in for
+athletics as enthusiastically at Ardmore as they had at Briarwood Hall.
+
+Just as they set out from the broad front steps of Dare and rounded the
+corner of the building toward the west, Ruth stopped with a little cry.
+There at her feet lay a letter.
+
+"Somebody's dropped a billet-doux," said Helen. "Or is it just an
+envelope?"
+
+Ruth picked it up and turned it over so that she could see its face.
+"The letter is in it," she said. "And it's been opened. Why, Helen!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"It's for Edie Phelps."
+
+Helen had already glanced upward. "And right under our windows," she
+murmured. "I bet she dropped it when----"
+
+"I suppose she did," said Ruth, as her chum's voice trailed off into
+silence. Suddenly Helen, who was looking at the face of the envelope,
+gasped.
+
+"Look!" she exclaimed. "See the return address in the corner?"
+
+"Wha----Why, it says: 'Box 24, R. F. D., Yucca, Arizona!'"
+
+"Yucca, Arizona," repeated Helen. "Just where we are going. Ruth! there
+is something very mysterious about this. Do you realize it?"
+
+"It is the oddest thing!" exclaimed Ruth.
+
+"Edith getting letters from out there and then creeping along that ledge
+under our windows to listen. Well, I'd give a cent to know what's in
+that letter."
+
+"Oh, Helen! We couldn't," cried Ruth, quickly, folding the envelope and
+slipping it between the buttons of her blouse.
+
+"Just the same," declared her chum, "she was eavesdropping on us. We
+ought to be excused if we did a little eavesdropping on her by reading
+her letter."
+
+But Ruth set off immediately in a good, swinging trot, and Helen had to
+close her lips and put her elbows to her sides to keep up with her.
+Later, when they had taken their morning shower and had dressed and all
+the girls were trooping down the main stairway of Dare Hall in answer to
+the breakfast call, Ruth spied Edith Phelps and hailed her, drawing the
+letter from her bosom.
+
+"Hi, Edith Phelps! Here's something that belongs to you."
+
+The sophomore turned quickly to face the girl of the Red Mill, and with
+no pleasant expression of countenance. "What have you there?" she
+snapped.
+
+"A letter that you dropped," said Ruth, quietly.
+
+"That _I_ dropped?" and she came quickly to seize the proffered missive.
+"Ha! I suppose you took pains to read it?"
+
+Ruth drew back, paling. The thrust hurt her cruelly and although she
+would not reply, the sophomore's gibe did not go without answer. Helen's
+black eyes flashed as she stepped in front of her chum.
+
+"I can assure you Ruth and I do not read other people's correspondence
+any more than we listen to other people's private conversation, Phelps,"
+she said directly. "We found that letter _under our window where you
+dropped it last night!_"
+
+Ruth caught at her arm; but the stroke went home. Edith Phelps' face
+reddened and then paled. Without further speech she hurried away with
+the letter gripped tightly in her hand. She did not appear at breakfast.
+
+"It's terrible to be always ladylike," sighed Helen to Ruth. "I just
+_know_ we have seen one end of a mystery. And that's all we are likely
+to see."
+
+"It is the most mysterious thing why Phelps should be interested in our
+affairs, and be getting letters from Yucca," admitted Ruth.
+
+The chums had no further opportunity of talking this matter over, for it
+was at breakfast that Rebecca Frayne threw her bomb. At least, Jennie
+Stone said it was such. Rebecca came over to Miss Comstock's table where
+the chums and Jennie sat and demanded:
+
+"Ruth Fielding! who is going to chaperon your party?"
+
+"What? Chaperon?" murmured Ruth, quite taken aback by the question.
+
+"Of course. You say Helen's brother is going. And there will be a guide
+and other men. We've got to have a chaperon."
+
+"Oh!" gasped Helen. "Poor old Tommy! If he knew that! He won't bite you,
+Rebecca."
+
+"You girls certainly wouldn't dream of going on that long journey unless
+you were properly attended?" cried Rebecca, horrified.
+
+"What do you think we need?" demanded Jennie Stone. "A trained nurse, or
+a governess?"
+
+Rebecca was thoroughly shocked. "My aunt would never hear of such a
+proceeding," she affirmed. "Oh, Ruth Fielding! I want to go with you;
+but, of course, there must be some older woman with us."
+
+"Of course--I presume so," sighed Ruth. "I hadn't thought that far."
+
+"Whom shall we ask?" demanded Helen. "Mrs. Murchiston won't go. She's
+struck. She says she is too old to go off with any harum-scarum crowd of
+school girls again."
+
+"I like that!" exclaimed Jennie, in a tone that showed she did not like
+it at all. "We have got past the hobbledehoy age, I should hope."
+
+Miss Comstock, the senior at their table, had become interested in the
+affair, and she suggested pleasantly:
+
+"We Ardmores often try to get the unattached members of the faculty to
+fill the breach in such events as this. Try Miss Cullam."
+
+"Oh, dear me!" muttered Helen.
+
+Ruth said briskly, "Miss Cullam is just the person. Do you suppose she
+has her summer free, Miss Comstock?"
+
+"She was saying only last evening that she had made no plans."
+
+"She shall make 'em at once," declared Ruth, jumping up and leaving her
+breakfast. "Excuse me, Miss Comstock. I am going to find Miss Cullam,
+instantly."
+
+It was Miss Cullam, too, who had worried most about the lost examination
+papers which Ruth had been the means of finding (as related in "Ruth
+Fielding at College"); and the instructor of mathematics had taken a
+particular interest in the girl of the Red Mill and her personal
+affairs.
+
+"I haven't ridden horseback since I was a girl," she said, in some
+doubt. "And, my _dear!_ you do not expect me to ride a-straddle as girls
+do nowadays? Never!"
+
+"Neither will Rebecca," chuckled Ruth. "But we who have been on the
+plains before, know that a divided skirt is a blessing to womankind."
+
+"I do not think I shall need that particular blessing," Miss Cullam
+said, rather grimly. "But I believe I will accept your invitation, Ruth
+Fielding. Though perhaps it is not wise for instructors and pupils to
+spend their vacations together. The latter are likely to lose their fear
+of us----"
+
+"Oh, Miss Cullam! There isn't one of us who has a particle of fear of
+you," laughed Ruth.
+
+"Ahem! that is why some of you do not stand so well in mathematics as
+you should," said the teacher dryly.
+
+That was a busy day; but the party Ruth was forming made all their
+plans, subject, of course, to agreement by their various parents and
+guardians. In one week they were to meet in New York, prepared to make
+the long journey by train to Yucca, Arizona, and from that point into
+the mountains on horseback.
+
+Helen found time for a little private investigation; but it was not
+until she and Ruth were on the way home to Cheslow in the parlor car
+that she related her meager discoveries to her chum.
+
+"What did you ever learn about Edie Phelps?" Helen asked.
+
+"Oh! Edie? I had forgotten about her."
+
+"Well, I didn't forget. The mystery piques me, as the story writers
+say," laughed Helen. "Do you know that her father is an awfully rich
+man?"
+
+"Why, no. Edith doesn't make a point of telling everybody perhaps,"
+returned Ruth, smiling.
+
+"No; she doesn't. You've got to hand it to her for that. But, then, to
+blow about one's wealth is about as crude a thing as one can do, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Well, what about Edith's father?" asked Ruth, curiously.
+
+"Nothing particular. Only he is one of our 'captains of industry' that
+the Sunday papers tell about. Makes oodles of money in mines, so I was
+told. Edith has no mother. She had a brother----"
+
+"Oh! is he dead?" cried Ruth, with sympathy.
+
+"Perhaps he'd better be. He was rusticated from his college last year.
+It was quite a scandal. His father disowned him and he disappeared.
+Edith felt awfully, May says."
+
+"Too bad," sighed Ruth.
+
+"Why, of course, it's too bad," grumbled Helen. "But that doesn't help
+us find out why Edie is so much interested in our going to Yucca; nor
+how she comes to be in correspondence with anybody in that far, far
+western town. What do you think it means, Ruthie?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea," declared the girl of the Red Mill, shaking
+her head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--A WEEK AT HOME
+
+
+Mr. Cameron met the chums _en route_, and the next morning they arrived
+at Seven Oaks in time to see Tom receive his diploma from the military
+and preparatory school. Tom, black-eyed and as handsome in his way as
+Helen was in hers, seemed to have interest only in Ruth.
+
+"Goodness me! that boy's got a regular crush on you, Ruthie!" exclaimed
+Helen, exasperated. "Did you ever see the like?"
+
+"Dear Tom!" sighed Ruth Fielding. "He was the very first friend--of my
+own age, I mean--that I found in Cheslow when I went there. I _have_ to
+be good to Tommy, you know."
+
+"But he's only a boy!" cried the twin sister, feeling herself to be
+years older than her brother after spending so many months at college.
+
+"He was born the same day you were," laughed Ruth.
+
+"That makes no difference. Boys are never as wise or as old as girls----"
+
+"Until the girls slip along too far. Then they sometimes want to appear
+young instead of old," said the girl of the Red Mill practically. "I
+suppose, in the case of girls who have not struck out for themselves and
+gone to college or into business or taken up seriously one of the arts,
+it is so the boys will continue to pay them attentions. Thank goodness,
+Helen! you and I will be able to paddle our own canoes without depending
+upon any 'mere male,' as Miss Cullam calls them, for our bread and
+butter."
+
+_"You_ certainly can paddle your own boat," Helen returned admiringly,
+leaving the subject of the "mere male." "Father says you have become a
+smart business woman already. He approves of this venture you are going
+to make in the movies."
+
+But Uncle Jabez did not approve. Ruth had written to Aunt Alvirah
+regarding the manner in which she expected to spend the summer, and
+there was a storm brewing when she reached the Red Mill.
+
+Set upon the bank of the Lumano River, the old red mill with the
+sprawling, comfortable story-and-a-half farmhouse attached, made a very
+pretty picture indeed--so pretty that already one of Ruth's best
+scenarios had been filmed at the mill and people all over the country
+were able to see just how beautiful the locality was.
+
+When Ruth got out of the automobile that had brought them all from the
+Cheslow station and ran up the shaded walk to the porch, a little,
+hoop-backed old woman came almost running to the door to greet her--a
+dear old creature with a face like a withered russet apple and very
+bright, twinkling eyes.
+
+"Oh, my pretty! Oh, my pretty!" Aunt Alvirah cried. "I feared you never
+_would_ come."
+
+"Why, Auntie!" Ruth murmured, taking Aunt Alvirah in her arms and
+leading her back to the low rocking chair by the window where she
+usually sat.
+
+There was a rosy-cheeked country girl hovering over the supper table,
+who smiled bashfully at the college girl. Uncle Jabez, as he had
+promised, had hired somebody to relieve the little old woman of the
+heaviest of her housekeeping burdens.
+
+"Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!" groaned Aunt Alvirah as she settled
+back into her chair. "Dear child! how glad we shall be to have you at
+home, if only for so short a while."
+
+"What does Uncle Jabez say?" whispered Ruth.
+
+"He don't approve, Ruthie. You know, he never has approved of your doing
+things that other gals don't do."
+
+"But, Aunt Alvirah, other girls _do_ do them. Can't he understand that
+the present generation of girls is different from his mother's
+generation?"
+
+Aunt Alvirah wagged her head seriously. "I'm afraid not, my pretty.
+Jabez Potter ain't one to l'arn new things easy. You know that."
+
+Ruth nodded thoughtfully. She expected a scene with the old miller and
+she was not disappointed. It came after supper--after Uncle Jabez had
+retired to the sitting-room to count his day's receipts as usual; and
+likewise to count the hoard of money he always kept in his cash-box.
+
+Uncle Jabez Potter was of a miserly disposition. Aunt Alvirah often
+proclaimed that the coming of his grand-niece to the Red Mill had barely
+saved the old man from becoming utterly bound up in his riches.
+Sometimes Ruth could scarcely see how he could have become more miserly
+than he already was.
+
+"No, Niece Ruth, I don't approve. You knowed I couldn't approve of no
+sech doin's as this you're attemptin'. It's bad enough for a gal to
+waste her money in l'arnin' more out o' books than what a man knows. But
+to go right ahead and do as she plumb pleases with five thousand
+dollars--or what ye've got left of it after goin' off to college and sech
+nonsense. No----"
+
+The miller's feelings on the subject were too deep for further
+utterance. Ruth said, firmly:
+
+"You know, Uncle Jabez, the money was given to me to do what I pleased
+with."
+
+"Another foolish thing," snarled Uncle Jabez. "That Miz Parsons had no
+business to give ye five thousand dollars for gettin' back her necklace
+from the Gypsies--a gal like you!"
+
+"But she had offered the reward to anybody who would find it," Ruth
+explained patiently.
+
+Uncle Jabez ploughed right through this statement and shook his head
+like an angry bull. "And then the court had no business givin' it over
+to Mister Cameron to take care on't for ye. _I_ was the proper person to
+be made your guardeen."
+
+Ruth had no reply to make to this. She knew well enough that she would
+never have touched any of the money until she was of age had Uncle Jabez
+once got his hands upon it.
+
+"The money's airnin' ye good int'rest in the Cheslow bank. That's where
+it oughter stay. Wastin' it makin' them foolish movin' pictuers----"
+
+"But, Uncle!" she told him desperately; "you know that my scenarios are
+earning money. See how much money my 'Heart of a Schoolgirl' has made
+for the building of the new dormitory at Briarwood. And this last
+picture that Mr. Hammond took here at the mill is bound to sell big."
+
+"Huh!" grunted the miller, not much impressed. "Mebbe it's all right for
+you to spend your spare time writin' them things; but it ain't no re'l
+business. Can't tell me!"
+
+"But it _is_ a business--a great, money-making business," sighed Ruth.
+"And I am determined to have my part in it. It is my chance, Uncle
+Jabez--my chance to begin something lasting----"
+
+"Nonsense! Nonsense!" he declared angrily. "Ye'll lose your money--that's
+what ye'll do. But lemme tell you, young lady, if you do lose it, don't
+ye come back here to the Red Mill expectin' me ter support ye in
+idleness. For I won't do it--I won't do it!" and he stamped away to bed.
+
+The few days she spent at home were busy ones for Ruth Fielding.
+Naturally, she and Helen had to do some shopping.
+
+"For even if we are bound for the wilds of Arizona, there will be men to
+see us," said the black-eyed girl frankly. "And it is the duty of all
+females to preen their feathers for the males."
+
+"Just so," growled her twin. "I expect I shall have to stand with a gun
+in both hands to keep those wild cowpunchers and miners away from you
+two when we reach Yucca. I remember how it was at Silver Ranch--and you
+were only kids then."
+
+"'Kids,' forsooth!" cried his sister. "When will you ever learn to have
+respect for us, Tommy? Remember we are college girls."
+
+"Oh! you aren't likely to let anybody forget that fact," grumbled Tom,
+who felt a bit chagrined to think that his sister and her chum had
+arrived at college a year ahead of him. He would enter Harvard in the
+fall.
+
+During this busy week, Ruth spent as much time as possible with Aunt
+Alvirah, for the little old woman showed that she longed for "her
+pretty's" company. Uncle Jabez went about with a thundercloud upon his
+face and disapproval in his every act and word.
+
+Before Saturday a telegram came from Ann Hicks. She had arrived at
+Silver Ranch, conferred with Uncle Bill, and it was agreed that she
+should meet Ruth and the other girls at Yucca on the date Ruth had named
+in her letter. The addition of Ann to the party from the East would make
+it nine strong, including Miss Cullam as chaperon and Tom Cameron as
+"courier."
+
+Tom was to make all the traveling arrangements, and he went on to New
+York a day before Ruth and Helen started from Cheslow. There he had a
+small experience which afterward proved to be important. At the time it
+puzzled him a good deal.
+
+It had been agreed that the party bound for Arizona should meet at the
+Delorphion Hotel. Therefore, Tom took a taxicab at the Grand Central
+Terminal for that hostelry. Mr. Cameron had engaged rooms for the whole
+party by telephone, for he was well known at the Delorphion, and all Tom
+had to do was to hand the clerk at the desk his card and sign his name
+with a flourish on the register.
+
+The instant he turned away from the desk to follow the bellhop Tom noted
+a young man, after a penetrating glance at him, slide along to the
+register, twirl it around again, and examine the line he, Tom, had
+written there. The young fellow was a stranger to Tom. He was dressed
+like a chauffeur. Tom was sure he had never seen the young man before.
+
+"Now, wouldn't that bother you?" he muttered, eyeing the fellow sharply
+as he crossed the marble-floored rotunda to the elevators. "Does he
+think he knows me? Or is he looking for somebody and is putting every
+new arrival through the third degree?"
+
+He half expected the chauffeur person to follow him to the elevator, and
+he lingered behind the impatient bellhop for half a minute to give the
+stranger a chance to accost him if he wished to.
+
+But immediately after the fellow had read Tom's name on the book, he
+turned away and went out, without vouchsafing him another glance.
+
+"Funny," thought Tom Cameron. "Wonder what it means."
+
+However, as nothing more came of it--at least, not at once--he buried the
+mystery under the manifold duties of the day. He met a couple of school
+friends at noon and went to lunch with them; but he returned to the
+hotel for dinner.
+
+It was then he spied the same chauffeur again. He was helping a young
+lady out of a private car before the hotel entrance and a porter was
+going in ahead with two big traveling bags.
+
+Tom was sure it was the same man who had examined the hotel register
+after he had signed his name; and he was tempted to stop and speak to
+him. But the young lady whisked into the hotel without his seeing her
+face, while the chauffeur, after a curious, straight stare at Tom,
+jumped into the car and started away. Tom noticed that there was a
+monogram upon the motor-car door, but he did not notice the license
+number.
+
+"Maybe the girl is one of those going with us," Tom thought, as he went
+inside.
+
+The porter with the bags and the young lady in question has disappeared.
+He went to the desk and asked the clerk if any of his party had arrived
+and was informed to the contrary.
+
+"Well, it gets me," ruminated Tom, as he went up to dress for dinner. "I
+don't know whether I am the subject of a strange young lady's
+attentions, or merely if the chauffeur was curious about me. Guess I
+won't say anything to the girls about it. Helen would surely give me the
+laugh."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--THE GIRL IN LOWER FIVE
+
+
+Tom and his father had visited his sister and Ruth at Ardmore; the young
+fellow was no stranger to the girls whom Ruth had invited to join the
+party bound for Freezeout Camp. Of course, Jennie Stone knew Helen's
+black-eyed twin from old times when they were children.
+
+"Dear me, how you've grown, Tommy!" observed the plump girl, looking Tom
+over with approval.
+
+"For the first time since I've known you, Jennie, I cannot return the
+compliment," Tom said seriously.
+
+"Gee!" sighed the erstwhile fat girl, ecstatically, "am I not glad!"
+
+That next day all arrived. Ruth and Helen were the last, they reaching
+the hotel just before bedtime. But Tom was forever wandering through the
+foyer and parlors to spy a certain hat and figure that he was sure he
+should know again. He was tempted to tell Helen and her chums about the
+chauffeur and the strange young lady while they were all enjoying a late
+supper.
+
+"However, a man alone, with such a number of girls, has to be mighty
+careful," so Tom told himself, "that they don't get something on him.
+They'd rig me to death, and I guess Tommy had better keep his tongue
+between his teeth."
+
+The train on which the party had obtained reservations left the
+Pennsylvania Station at ten o'clock in the forenoon. Half an hour before
+that time Tom came down to the hotel entrance ahead of the girls and
+instructed the starter to bespeak two taxicabs.
+
+As Tom stepped out of the wide open door he saw the motor-car with the
+monogram on the door, the same chauffeur driving, and the girl with the
+"stunning" hat in the tonneau. The car was just moving away from the
+door and it was but a fleeting glimpse Tom obtained of it and its
+occupants. They did not even glance at him.
+
+"Guess I was fooling myself after all," he muttered. "At any rate, I
+fancy they aren't so greatly interested. They're not following us,
+that's sure."
+
+The girls came hurrying down, with Miss Cullam in tow, all carrying
+their hand baggage. Trunks had gone on ahead, although Ruth had warned
+them all that, once off the train at Yucca, only the most necessary
+articles of apparel could be packed into the mountain range.
+
+"Remember, we are dependent upon burros for the transportation of our
+luggage; and there are only just about so many of the cunning little
+things in all Arizona. We can't transport too large a wardrobe."
+
+"Are the burros as cunning as they say they are?" asked Trix Davenport.
+
+"All of that," said Tom. "And great singers."
+
+"Sing? Now you are spoofing!" declared the coxswain of Ardmore's
+freshman eight.
+
+"All right. You wait and see. You know what they call 'em out there?
+Mountain canaries. Wait till you hear a love-lorn burro singing to his
+mate. Oh, my!"
+
+"The idea!" ejaculated Miss Cullam. "What does the boy mean by
+'love-lorn'?"
+
+It was a hilarious party that alighted from the taxicabs in the station
+and made its way to the proper part of the trainshed. The sleeping car
+was a luxurious one, and when the train pulled out and dived into the
+tunnel under the Hudson ("just like a woodchuck into its hole," Trix
+said) they were comfortably established in their seats.
+
+Tom had secured three full sections for the girls. Miss Cullam had Lower
+Two while Tom himself had Upper Five. There was some slight discussion
+over this latter section, for the berth under Tom had been reserved for
+a lady.
+
+"Well, that's all right," said Tom philosophically. "If she can stand
+it, _I_ can. Let the conductor fight it out with her."
+
+"Perhaps she will want you to sleep out on the observation platform,
+Tommy," said Jennie Stone, wickedly. "To be gallant you'd do it, of
+course?"
+
+"Of course," said Tom, stoutly. "Far be it from me to add to the burden
+on the mind of any female person. It strikes me that they are mostly in
+trouble about something all the time."
+
+"Oh, oh!" cried Helen. "Villain! Is that the way I've brought you up?"
+
+Tom grinned at his sister wickedly. "Somehow your hand must have slipped
+when you were molding me, Sis. What d'you think?"
+
+When the time came to retire, however, there was no objection made by
+the lady who had reserved Lower Five. Of course, in these sleeping cars
+the upper and lower berths were so arranged that they were entirely
+separate. But in the morning Tom chanced to be coming from his berth
+just as the lady started down the corridor for the dressing room.
+
+"My!" thought Tom. "That's some pretty girl. Who----"
+
+Then he caught a glimpse of her face, just as she turned it hastily from
+him. He had seen it once before--just as a certain motor-car was drawing
+away from the front of the Delorphion Hotel.
+
+"No use talking," he thought. "I've got to take somebody into my
+confidence about this girl. To keep such a mystery to myself is likely
+to affect my brain. Humph! I'll tell Ruth. She can keep a secret--if she
+wants to," and he went off whistling to the men's lavatory at the other
+end of the car.
+
+Later he found Ruth on the observation platform. They were alone there
+for some time and Tom took her into his confidence.
+
+"Don't tell Helen, now," he urged. "She'll only rig me. And I'm bound to
+have a bad enough time with all you girls, as it is."
+
+"Poor boy," Ruth said, commiseratingly. "You _are_ in for a bad time,
+aren't you? What about this strange and mysterious female in Lower
+Five?"
+
+But as he related the details of the mystery, about the chauffeur and
+all, Ruth grew rather grave.
+
+"As we go through to the dining car for breakfast let us see if we can
+establish her identity," she told him. "Never mind saying anything to
+the other girls about it. Just point her out to me."
+
+"Say! I'm not likely to spread the matter broadcast," retorted Tom.
+"Only I _am_ curious."
+
+So was Ruth. But she bided her time and sharply scrutinized every female
+figure she saw in the cars as they trooped through to breakfast. She
+waited for Tom to point out this "mysterious lady;" but the girl of
+Lower Five did not appear.
+
+The train was rushing across the prairies in mid-forenoon when Tom came
+suddenly to Ruth and gave her a look that she knew meant "Follow me."
+When she got up Jennie drawled:
+
+"Now, see here, Ruthie! What's going on between that perfectly splendid
+brother of Cameron's and you? Are you trying to make the rest of us
+girls jealous?"
+
+"Perhaps," Ruth replied, smiling, then hurried with her chum's brother
+into the next car.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Ruth suddenly, and she stopped by the door.
+
+"Know her?" asked Tom, with curiosity.
+
+Ruth nodded and hastily turned away so that the girl might not see that
+she was observed.
+
+"Well, now!" cried Tom. "Tip me off. Explain--elucidate--make clear. I'm
+as puzzled as I can be."
+
+"So am I, Tommy," Ruth told him. "I haven't the least idea _why_ that
+girl should be interested in our affairs. And I'm not sure that she
+_is_."
+
+"Who is she?" he demanded.
+
+"She goes to college with us. Not in our class, you understand. I am
+sure none of our party had an idea Edie Phelps was going West this
+vacation."
+
+"Huh!" said Tom suspiciously. "What's up your sleeve, Ruth?"
+
+"My arm!" she cried, and ran back to the other girls and Miss Cullam,
+laughing at him.
+
+Edith's presence on this train was puzzling.
+
+"That was a man's handwriting on the envelope Helen and I picked up
+addressed to Edith," Ruth told herself. "Some man has been writing to
+her from that Mohave County town. Who? And what for?"
+
+"Not that it is really any of my business," she concluded.
+
+She did not take Helen into her confidence in the matter. Let the other
+girls see Edith Phelps if they chanced to; she determined to stir up no
+"hurrah" over the sophomore.
+
+Besides, it was not at all sure that Edith was going to Arizona. Her
+presence upon this train did not prove that her journey West had any
+connection with the letter Edith had received from Yucca.
+
+"Why so serious, honey?" asked Helen a little later, pinching her chum's
+arm.
+
+"This is a serious world, my dear," quoth Ruth, "and we are growing
+older every minute."
+
+"What novel ideas you do have," gibed her chum, big-eyed. But she shook
+her a little, too. "There you go, Ruthie Fielding! Always having some
+secret from your owniest own chum."
+
+"How do you know I have a secret?" smiled Ruth.
+
+"Because of the two little lines that grow deeper in your forehead when
+you are puzzled or troubled," Helen told her, rather wickedly. "Sure
+sign you'll be married twice, honey."
+
+"Don't suggest such horrid possibilities," gasped the girl of the Red
+Mill in mock horror. "Married twice, indeed! And I thought we had both
+given up all intention of being wedded even the _first_ time?"
+
+This chaff was all right to throw in Helen's eyes; but all the time Ruth
+expected one of the party to discover the presence of Edith Phelps on
+the train. She felt that with such discovery there would come an
+explosion of some kind; and she shrank from having any trouble with the
+sophomore.
+
+Of course, with Miss Cullam present, Edith was not likely to display her
+spleen quite so openly as she sometimes did when alone with the other
+Ardmore girls. But Ruth knew Helen would be so curious to know what
+Edith's presence meant that "the fat would all be in the fire."
+
+It was really amazing that Edith was not discovered before they reached
+Chicago. After that her reservation was in another car. Then on the
+fifth night of their journey came something that quite put the sophomore
+out of Ruth Fielding's mind, and out of Tom Cameron's as well.
+
+They had changed trains and were on the trans-continental line when the
+startling incident happened. The porter had already begun arranging the
+berths when the train suddenly came to a jarring stop.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked Miss Cullam of the porter. She already had
+her hair in "curlers" and was longing for bed.
+
+"I done s'pect we broke in two, Ma'am," said the darkey, rolling his
+eyes. "Das' jes' wot it seems to me," and he darted out of the car.
+
+There was a long wait; then some confusion arose outside the train. Tom
+came in from the rear. "Here's a pretty kettle of fish," he said.
+
+"What is it, Tommy?" demanded his sister.
+
+"The train broke in two and the front end got over a bridge here, and,
+being on a down grade, the engineer could not bring his engine to a stop
+at once. And now the bridge is afire. Come on out, girls. You might as
+well see the show."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--SOMEBODY AHEAD OF THEM
+
+
+Even Miss Cullam--in her dressing gown--trailed out of the car after Tom.
+The sky was alight from the blazing bridge. It was a wooden structure,
+and burned like a pine knot.
+
+Beyond the rolling cloud of smoke they could see dimly the lamps of the
+forward half of the train. The coupling having broken between two
+Pullmans, the engine had attached to it only the baggage and mail
+coaches, the dining car and one sleeping car.
+
+The other Pullmans and the observation coach were stalled on the east
+side of the river.
+
+"And no more chance of getting over to-night than there is of flying," a
+brakeman confided to Tom and the girls. "That bridge will be a charred
+wreck before midnight."
+
+"Oh, goodness me! What _shall_ we do?" was the cry. "Can't we get over
+in boats?"
+
+"Where will you get the boats?" sniffed Miss Cullam.
+
+"And the water's low in the river at this season," said the brakeman.
+"Couldn't use anything but a skiff."
+
+"What then?" Tom asked, feeling responsibility roweling him. "We're not
+destined to remain here till they rebuild the bridge, I hope?"
+
+"The conductor is wiring back for another engine. We'll pull back to
+Janesburg and from there take the cross-over line and go on by the
+Northern Route. It will put us back fully twelve hours, I reckon."
+
+"Good-_night!_" exploded Tom.
+
+"Why, what does it matter?" asked Helen, wonderingly. "We have all the
+time there is, haven't we?"
+
+"Presumably," Miss Cullam said drily.
+
+"But I telegraphed ahead to Yucca for rooms at the hotel," Tom
+explained, slowly, "and sent a long message to that guide Mr. Hammond
+told you about, Ruth."
+
+"Oh!" cried Helen, giggling. "Flapjack Peters--such a romantic name. Mr.
+Hammond wrote Ruth that he was a 'character.'"
+
+"'H. J. Peters,'" Tom read, from his memorandum. "Yes. I told him just
+when we would arrive and told him that after one night's sleep at the
+hotel we'd want to be on our way. But if we don't get there----"
+
+"Oh, Tom, there's Ann, too!" Ruth exclaimed. "She will be at Yucca too
+early if we are delayed so."
+
+"I'll send some more telegrams when we get to Janesburg," Tom promised
+Ruth and his sister. "One to Ann Hicks, too."
+
+"Those people in the forward Pullman will get through on time," Jennie
+Stone said. "I'm always losing something. ''Twas ever thus, since
+childhood's hour, my fondest hopes I've seen decay,' and so forth!"
+
+Tom whispered to Ruth: "That sophomore from Ardmore will get ahead of
+us. She's in the forward Pullman."
+
+"Oh, Edith!" murmured Ruth. "She was in that car, wasn't she?"
+
+They were all in bed, as were the other tourists in the delayed
+Pullmans, before the extra locomotive the conductor had sent for
+arrived. It was coupled to the stalled half of the train and started
+back for Janesburg without one of the party bound for Yucca being the
+wiser.
+
+Tom Cameron meant to send the supplementary telegrams from that junction
+as he had said. Indeed, he had written out several--one to his father to
+relieve any anxiety in the merchant's mind should he hear of the
+accident to their train; one to the guide, Peters; one to Ann Hicks to
+supplement the one already awaiting her at Yucca; and a fourth to the
+hotel.
+
+But as he wished to put these messages on the wire himself, Tom did not
+entrust them to the negro porter. Instead he lay down in his berth with
+only his shoes removed--and he awoke in the morning with the sun flooding
+the opposite side of the car where the porter had already folded up the
+berths!
+
+"Good gracious, Agnes!" gasped Tom, appearing in the corridor with his
+shoes in his hand. "What time is it? Eight-thirty? Is my watch right?"
+
+"Ah reckon so, boss," grinned the porter. "'Most ev'rybody's up an'
+dressin'."
+
+"And I wanted to send those telegrams from Janesburg."
+
+"Oh Lawsy-massy! Janesburg's a good ways behint us, boss," said the
+porter. "Ef yo' wants to send 'em pertic'lar from dere, yo'll have to
+wait till our trip East, Ah reckon."
+
+Tom did not feel much like laughing. In fact, he felt a good deal of
+annoyance. He made some further enquiries and discovered that it would
+be an hour yet before the train would linger long enough at any station
+for him to file telegrams.
+
+They spent one more night "sleeping on shelves," as Jennie Stone
+expressed it, than they had counted upon. Miss Cullam went to her berth
+with a groan.
+
+"Believe me, my dears," she announced, "I shall welcome even a saddle as
+a relief from these cars. You are all nice girls, if I do say it, who
+perhaps shouldn't. I flatter myself I have had something to do with
+molding your more or less plastic minds and dispositions. But I must
+love you a great deal to ever attempt another such long journey as this
+for you or with you."
+
+"Oh, Miss Cullam!" cried Trix Davenport, "we will erect a statue to you
+on Bliss Island--right near the Stone Face. And on it shall be engraved:
+'Nor granite is more enduring than Miss Cullam.'"
+
+"I wonder," murmured the teacher, "if that is complimentary or
+otherwise?"
+
+But they all loved her. Miss Cullam developed very human qualities
+indeed, take her away from mathematics!
+
+The party was held up for two hours at Kingman, waiting for a local
+train to steam on with them to their destination. And there Tom learned
+something which rather troubled him.
+
+Telegrams were never received direct at Yucca. The railroad business was
+done by telephone, and all the messages sent to Yucca were telephoned
+through to the station agent--if that individual chanced to be on hand.
+Otherwise they were entrusted to the rural mail carrier. One could
+almost count the inhabitants of Yucca on one's fingers and toes!
+
+"Jiminy!" gasped Tom, when he learned these particulars. "I bet I've
+made a mess of it."
+
+He tried to find out at the Kingman station what had become of the final
+messages he had sent. The operator on duty when they arrived was now off
+duty, and he lived out of town.
+
+"If they were mailed, son," observed the man then at the telegraph
+table, "you will get to Yucca about two hours before the mail gets
+there. Here comes your train now."
+
+Had the girls not been so gaily engaged in chattering, they must have
+noticed Tom's solemn face. He was disturbed, for he felt that the
+comfort of the party, as well as the arrangements for the trip into the
+hills, was his own particular responsibility.
+
+It was late afternoon when the combination local (half baggage and
+freight, and half passenger) hobbled to a stop at Yucca. Besides a dusty
+looking individual in a cap who served the railroad as station agent,
+there was not a human being in sight.
+
+"What a jolly place!" cried Jennie Stone, turning to all points of the
+compass to gaze. "So much life! We're going to have a gay time in Yucca,
+I can see."
+
+"Sh!" begged Trix. "Don't wake them up."
+
+"Awaken whom, my dear?" drawled Sally Blanchard.
+
+"The dead, I think," said Helen. "This place must be the understudy for
+a graveyard."
+
+At that moment a gray muzzle was thrust between the rails of a corral
+beside the track and an awful screech rent the air, drowning the sound
+of the locomotive whistle as the train rolled away.
+
+"For goodness' sake! what is that?" begged Rebecca, quite startled.
+
+"Mountain canary," laughed Helen. "That is what will arouse you at
+dawn--and other times--while we are on the march to Freezeout."
+
+"You don't mean to say," demanded Trix, "that all that sound came out of
+that little creature?" And she ran over to the corral fence the better
+to see the burro.
+
+"And he didn't need any help," drawled Jennie. "Oh! you'll get used to
+little things like that."
+
+"Never to that little thing," said Miss Cullam, tartly. "Can't he be
+muzzled?"
+
+Meanwhile Tom had seized upon the station agent. He was a long, lean,
+"drawly" man, with seemingly a very languid interest in life.
+
+"What telegrams?" he drawled.
+
+Tom explained more fully and the man referred to a memorandum book he
+carried in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt.
+
+"Yep. Three messages received over the 'phone from Kingman station. All
+delivered."
+
+"Good!" Tom exclaimed, with vast relief.
+
+"Four days ago," added the station agent.
+
+That was a dash of cold water. "Didn't you receive other telegrams in
+the same way yesterday?"
+
+"Not a one."
+
+"Where have they gone, then?"
+
+"I wouldn't be here 'twixt eight and 'leven. They'd come over the wire
+to Kingman, and the op'rator there would mail 'em. Mail man's due any
+time now."
+
+"Well," groaned Tom, "let's go up to the hotel and see if they've
+reserved the rooms for us, if we are late."
+
+"And where's Jane Ann Hicks?" queried Ruth, in some puzzlement. "_She_
+ought to be here to greet us."
+
+"What about that guide--the Flapjack person?" added Helen. "Didn't you
+telegraph him, Tommy?"
+
+"Who d'you mean--Flapjack Peters?" asked the station agent, interested.
+"Why, he lit out for some place in the Hualapai this forenoon, beauin' a
+party of these here tourists--or, so I heard tell."
+
+There were blank faces among the newly arrived visitors from the East.
+But only Tom Cameron really felt disturbed. It looked to him as though
+somebody had got ahead of them!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--A MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR
+
+
+"You needn't be 'fraid of not findin' room at Lon Crujes' hotel,"
+drawled the station agent. "He don't often have more'n two visitors at a
+time there, and them's mostly travelin' salesmen. Only when somebody's
+shippin' cattle. And there ain't no cattlemen here now."
+
+"Well, that is some relief, at least," Helen said promptly. "Come on,
+Tommy! Lead the procession. Take Miss Cullam's bag, too. The rest of us
+will carry our own."
+
+"How can we get the trunks up to the hotel?" asked Ruth, beginning to
+realize that Tom, to whom she had left all the arrangements, was in a
+"pickle."
+
+"Let's see what the hotel looks like first," returned Helen's twin,
+setting off along the dusty street.
+
+A dog barked at the procession; but otherwise the inhabitants of Yucca
+showed a disposition to remain incurious. It was not necessary to ask
+the way to Lon Crujes' hotel; it was the only building in town large
+enough to be dignified by the name of "Yucca House."
+
+A Mexican woman in a one-piece garment gathered about her waist by a
+man's belt from which an empty gun-sheath dangled, met the party on the
+porch of the house. She seemed surprised to see them.
+
+"You ain't them folks that telegraphed Lon you was comin', are you?" she
+asked. "Don't that beat all!"
+
+"I telegraphed ahead for rooms--yes," Tom said.
+
+"Well, the rooms is here all right--by goodness, yes!" she said, still
+staring. Such an array of feminine finery as the girls displayed had
+probably never dawned upon Mrs. Crujes' vision before. "Nobody ain't run
+off with the rooms. We ain't never crowded none in this hotel, 'cept in
+beef shippin' time."
+
+"Well, how about meals?" Tom asked quietly.
+
+"If Lon gets home with a side of beef he went for, we'll be all right,"
+the woman said. "You kin all come in, I reckon. But say! who was them
+gals here yesterday, then, if 'twasn't you."
+
+"What girls?" asked Ruth, who remained with Tom to inquire.
+
+"Have they gone away again?" demanded Tom.
+
+"By goodness, yes! Two gals. One was tenderfoot all right; but 'tother
+knowed her way 'round, I sh'd say."
+
+"Ann?" queried Ruth of Tom.
+
+"Must have been. But the other--Say, Mrs. Crujes, tell us about them,
+will you, please?" he asked the Mexican woman.
+
+"Why, this tenderfoot gal dropped off the trans-continental. Jest the
+train we expected you folks on. I s'pose you was the folks we expected?"
+
+"That's right. We're the ones," said Tom, hastily. "Go on."
+
+"The other lady, _she_ come later. She's Western all right."
+
+"Ann is from Montana," Ruth said, deeply interested.
+
+"So she said. I reckoned she never met up with the Eastern gal before,
+did she?"
+
+"But who is the girl you speak of--the one from the East?" gasped Ruth.
+
+"Huh! Don't you know her neither?"
+
+"I'm not sure I couldn't guess," Ruth declared. Tom kept his lips
+tightly closed.
+
+"They made friends, then," explained the woman. "The gal you say you
+know, and the tenderfoot. And they went off together this morning with
+Flapjack----"
+
+"Not with our guide?" cried Ruth. "Oh, Tom! what can it mean?"
+
+"Got me," grunted the young fellow.
+
+"Why! it is the most mysterious affair," Ruth repeated. "I can't
+understand it."
+
+"Leave it to me," said Tom, quickly. "You go in with the other girls and
+primp."
+
+"Primp, indeed!"
+
+"I suppose you'll have to here, just the same as anywhere else," the boy
+said, with a quick grin. "I'll look around and see what's happened. Of
+course, that Flapjack person can't have gone far."
+
+"And Ann wouldn't have run away from us, I'm sure," Ruth sent back over
+her shoulder as she entered the hotel.
+
+Before the Mexican woman could waddle after Ruth, Tom hailed her again.
+"Say!" he asked, "where can I find this Peters chap?"
+
+"The Senor Flapjack?"
+
+"Yes. Fine name, that," he added in an undertone.
+
+"He it is who is famous at making the American flapjack--_si si!_" said
+the woman. "But he is gone I tell you. I know not where. Maybe Lon, he
+can tell you when he come back with the beef--by goodness, yes!"
+
+"But he lives here in town, doesn't he? Hasn't he a family?"
+
+"Oh, sure! He's got Min."
+
+"Who's Min? A Chinaman?"
+
+"Chink? Can you beat it?" ejaculated the woman, grinning broadly. "Min's
+his daughter. See that house down there with the front painted yellow?"
+
+"Yes," admitted Tom, rather abashed.
+
+"That's where Flapjack, he live. Sure! And Min can tell you where he's
+gone and how long he'll be away."
+
+The hotel proprietor's wife disappeared, bustling away to attend to the
+wants of this party of guests that was apt to swamp her entire menage.
+Tom hesitated about searching out the guide's daughter alone. "Min"
+promised embarrassing possibilities to his mind.
+
+"Jiminy! we're up against it, I believe," he thought. "They'll all blame
+me, I suppose. I ought not to have gone to sleep night before last and
+missed sending those last telegrams from Janesburg.
+
+"Father will say I wasn't 'tending to business properly. I wonder what
+I'd better do."
+
+Ruth suddenly reappeared. She had merely gone inside to get rid of her
+bag and assure Miss Cullam that there were some matters she and Tom had
+to attend to. Now she approached her chum's brother with a question that
+excited and startled him.
+
+"What under the sun could have made her act so, do you suppose, Tom?"
+
+"Huh? Who?" he gasped.
+
+"That girl. She's gone off with our guide and all."
+
+"Who do you mean? Jane Ann Hicks?"
+
+"Goodness! I don't understand Ann's part in it, either. But she's not
+the leading spirit, it is evident."
+
+"Who do you mean, then?" Tom demanded.
+
+"Edith Phelps. Of course it is she. She arrived here on the
+trans-continental train on time. Tommy, she was in correspondence with
+somebody here in Yucca. Helen and I saw the envelope. And it puzzled us.
+Her being on the train puzzled me more. And now----"
+
+"Oh, Jiminy!" ejaculated Tom Cameron. "The mystery deepens. Rival
+picture company, maybe, Ruth. How about it?"
+
+"I don't think it's _that_," said Ruth Fielding, reflectively. "I am
+sure Edie Phelps has no connection with movie people--no, indeed!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--MIN
+
+
+"Well, let's go along and see Flapjack's daughter," Tom proposed. "I
+don't want to make the acquaintance of any strange girl without somebody
+to defend me," and he grinned at the girl of the Red Mill.
+
+"Oh, yes. We know just how desperately timid you are, Tommy-boy," she
+told him, smiling. "I will be your shield and buckler. Lead on."
+
+The house had a yellow front, but was elsewhere left bare of paint. It
+stood away from its neighbors and, as Ruth and Tom Cameron approached
+it, it seemed deserted. From other houses they were frankly watched by
+slatternly women and several idle men.
+
+Tom rapped gently at the front door. There was no reply and after
+repeating the summons several times Ruth suggested that they try a rear
+entrance.
+
+"Huh!" complained the boy. "This Min they tell of must be deaf."
+
+"Or bashful. Perhaps she is nothing but a child and is afraid of us."
+
+Tom merely grunted in reply, and led the way into a weed-grown yard. The
+fence was of wire and laths--the kind bought by the roll ready to set up;
+but it was very much dilapidated. The fence had never been finished at
+the rear and up on a scrubby side hill behind the house a man was
+wielding an axe.
+
+"Maybe he knows something about this Flapjack Peters person," grumbled
+Tom.
+
+"Knock on the back door," ordered Ruth Fielding briskly. "If that guide
+has a daughter she must know where he's gone, and for how long. It's the
+most mysterious thing!"
+
+"It gets me," admitted Tom, knocking again.
+
+"Mr. Hammond said that he knew this guide and that he believed he was a
+fairly trustworthy person. He is what they call an 'old-timer'--been
+living here or hereabout for years and years. Just the person to find
+Freezeout Camp."
+
+"Well, there must be other men who know their way about the hills," and
+Tom turned his back to the door to look straight away across the valley
+toward the faint, blue eminences that marked the Hualapai Range.
+
+"It's beautiful, isn't it?" sighed Ruth, likewise looking at the
+mountains. "How clear the air is! See that peak away to the north? We
+saw it from the car window. That is the tallest mountain in the
+range--Hualapai Peak. Oh, Tom!"
+
+"Yes?" he asked.
+
+"That man looks awfully funny to me. Do you see----?"
+
+Tom wheeled to look at the person chopping wood a few rods away. The
+woodchopper wore an old felt hat; from underneath its brim flowed
+several straggly locks of black hair.
+
+"Must be an Indian," muttered Tom.
+
+"It must be a woman!" exclaimed Ruth. "It is a woman, Tom! I'm going to
+ask her----"
+
+"What?" demanded the youth; but he trailed along behind the self-reliant
+girl of the Red Mill.
+
+The woodchopper did not even raise her head as the two young folks
+approached. She beat upon the log she was splitting with the old axe and
+showed not the least interest in their presence.
+
+Ruth led the way around in front of her and demanded:
+
+"Do you know where Mr. Peters' daughter is? We had business with him,
+and they tell us he is away from home."
+
+At that the woman in men's shabby habiliments raised her head and looked
+at them.
+
+"Jiminy!" exploded Tom, but under his breath. "It is a girl!"
+
+Ruth was quite as curious as her companion; but she was wise enough to
+reveal nothing in her own countenance but polite interest.
+
+The masquerader was both young and pretty; only the perspiration had
+poured down her face and left it grimy. Her hands were red and
+rough--calloused as a laboring man's and with blunted fingers and broken
+nails.
+
+When she stood up straight, however, even the overalls and jumper she
+wore, and the broken old hat upon her head, could not hide the fact that
+she was of a graceful figure.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Ruth again. "Can you tell me where Miss Peters
+is?"
+
+"I can tell you where _Min_ Peters is, if you want to know so bad,"
+drawled the girl, red suffusing her bronzed cheeks and a little flash
+coming into her big gray eyes.
+
+"That--that must be the person we wish to see."
+
+"Then see her," snapped the other ungraciously. "An' I s'pose you fancy
+folks think her a sight, sure 'nuff."
+
+"You mean _you_ are Mr. Peters' daughter?" Ruth asked, doubtfully.
+
+"I'm Flapjack's girl," the other said, biting her remarks off short.
+
+"Oh!" cried Ruth. "Then you can tell us all about it."
+
+"All about what?"
+
+"How it happens that your father is not here at Yucca to meet us?"
+
+"Huh! What would he want to meet you for?" asked the girl, shaking back
+her straggly hair.
+
+"Why, it was arranged by Mr. Hammond that Mr. Peters should guide us
+into the Range. We are going to Freezeout Camp."
+
+"Wha-at?" drawled Min Peters in evident surprise. "You, too?"
+
+Tom here put in a word. "I am the one who telegraphed to Mr. Peters when
+we were on the way here. It was understood through Mr. Hammond that Mr.
+Peters was to hold himself in readiness for our party."
+
+"Then what about them other girls?" demanded the girl, with sudden
+vigor. "They done fooled pop, did they?"
+
+"I don't understand what you mean by 'those other girls,'" Ruth hastened
+to say.
+
+"Why, pop's already started for the hills. I I dunno whether he's goin'
+to Freezeout or not. There ain't nobody at that old camp, nohow. Dunno
+what you want to go there for."
+
+Ruth waived that matter to say, eagerly:
+
+"How many girls are there in this party your father has gone off with?"
+
+"Two. He 'spected more I reckon, for there's a bunch of ponies down in
+Jeb's corral. But the girl that bossed the thing said you-all had backed
+out. It looked right funny to _me_--two girls goin' off there into the
+hills. And she was a tenderfoot all right."
+
+"You mean the girl who 'bossed' the affair?" asked Tom, curiously.
+
+"Yep. The other girl seemed jest driftin' along with her. _She_ knowed
+how to ride, and she brought her own saddle and rope with her. But that
+there tenderfoot started off sidesaddle, like a missioner."
+
+"A 'missioner?'" repeated Ruth, curiously.
+
+"These here women that sometimes come here teachin' an' preachin'. They
+most all of 'em ride sidesaddle. Many of 'em on a burro at that. 'Cause
+a burro don't never git out of a walk if he kin help it. But I've purty
+near broke my neck teachin' four or five of the ponies to stand for a
+sidesaddle--poor critters. I rid 'em with a blanket wrapped 'round me to
+git 'em used to a skirt flappin'," and she spoke in some amusement.
+
+"Well," Ruth said, more briskly, "I don't exactly understand those girls
+going without us. One of them I am sure is our friend. The girl who
+evidently engaged your father is not a stranger to us; but she was not
+of our party."
+
+"What in tarnation takes you 'way into them mountains to Freezeout?"
+demanded Min Peters. "There ain't a sign of color left there, so pop
+says; and he's prospected all through the range on that far side. Why,
+he remembers Freezeout when it was a real camp. And I kin tell you there
+ain't much left of it now."
+
+"Oh!" cried Ruth. "Have you seen it?"
+
+"Sure. I been all through the Range with pop. He didn't have nobody to
+leave me with when I was little. I ain't never had no chance like other
+girls," said Min, in no very pleasant tone. "Why I ain't scurcely human,
+I reckon!"
+
+At that Ruth laughed frankly at her. "What nonsense!" she cried. "You
+are just as human and just as much of a girl as any of us. As I am. Your
+clothes don't even hide the fact that you are a girl. But I suppose you
+wear them because you can work easier in men's garments?"
+
+"And that's where you s'pose mighty wrong," snapped Min.
+
+"No?"
+
+"I wear these old duds 'cause I ain't got no others to wear. That's
+why."
+
+She said it in an angry tone, and the red flowed into her cheeks again
+and her gray eyes flashed.
+
+"I never _did_ have nothin' like other girls. Pop bought me overalls to
+wear when I was jest a kid; and that's about all he ever did buy me. He
+thinks they air good enough. I haf to work like a boy; so why not dress
+like a boy? Huh?"
+
+Tom had moved away. Somehow he felt a delicacy about listening to this
+frank avowal of the strange girl's trials. But Ruth was sympathetic and
+she seized Min's unwilling hand.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" she cried under her breath. "I am sorry. Can't you work
+and earn money to clothe yourself properly?"
+
+"What'll I do? The cattlemen won't hire me, though I kin rope and
+hog-tie as well as any puncher they got. But they say a girl would make
+trouble for 'em. Nobody around here ever has money enough to hire a girl
+to do anything. I don't know nothing about cookin' or housework--'cept to
+make flapjacks. I kin do camp cookin' as good as pop; only I don't use
+two griddles at a time same's he does. But huntin' parties won't hire
+me. It sure is tough luck bein' a girl."
+
+"Oh, my dear!" cried Ruth again. "I don't believe that. There must be
+some way of improving your condition."
+
+"You show me how to earn some money, then," cried Min. "I'll dress as
+fancy as any of you. Oh! I was watchin' you girls troop up from the
+train. And that other girl that went off with pop this mornin'. _She_
+gimme a look, now I tell you. I'd like to beat her up, I would!"
+
+Ruth passed over this remark in silence. She was thinking. "Wait a
+moment, Min," she begged, "I must speak to Mr. Cameron," and she led Tom
+aside.
+
+"Now, Tommy, we've just got to get to Freezeout Camp some way. We don't
+want to wait here a week or more for the movie company to arrive. Mr.
+Hammond expects me to have the first part of the scenario ready for the
+director when he gets on the ground. And I _must_ see the old camp just
+as it is."
+
+"I'd like to know what that Edith Phelps has got to do with it--and why
+Ann Hicks went off with her," growled Tom.
+
+"Oh, dear! Don't you suppose I am just as curious as you are?" Ruth
+demanded. "But _that_ doesn't get us anywhere."
+
+"Well, what will get us to Freezeout?" he asked.
+
+"Getting started, first of all," laughed Ruth. "And we can do it. This
+girl can guide us just as well as her father could. We can get a man or
+a boy to look after the ponies and the packtrain. A 'wrangler' don't
+they call them on the ranch?"
+
+"The girl looks capable enough," admitted Tom. "But what will your Miss
+Cullam say to her?"
+
+Ruth giggled. "Poor Miss Cullam is doomed to get several shocks, I am
+afraid, before the trip is over."
+
+"All right. You're the doctor," Tom said, grinning. "Looks to me like
+some lark. This Min Peters is certainly a caution!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--IN THE SADDLE AT LAST
+
+
+"The matter can be arranged in one, two, three order!" Ruth cried.
+
+She had already seen just the way to go about it. Give Min Peters the
+chance to make money and she would jump at it.
+
+"You see, _we_ don't mind having a girl for cook and guide. We will
+rather like it," she said, laughing into Min's delighted face. "Poor old
+Tom is our only male companion. And unless we find a man to take care of
+the horses and burros he'll have to put on overalls himself and do that
+work."
+
+"That'll be all right. I can get a Mexican boy--a good one," Min said
+quickly. "The hosses is all in Jeb's corral and you can hire of him. I
+tell you pop expected a big crowd of you and he was disappointed."
+
+"You will make the money he would have made," Ruth told her cheerfully.
+"We will pay you man's wages and we shall want you at least a month.
+Eighty dollars and 'found.' How is that?"
+
+"Looks like heaven," said Min bluntly. "I ain't never seen so much money
+in my life!"
+
+"And the Mexican boy?"
+
+"Pedro Morales. Twenty-two fifty is all he'll expect. We don't pay
+Greasers like we do white men in this country," said the girl with some
+bruskness. "But, say, Miss----"
+
+"I am Ruth Fielding."
+
+"Miss Fielding, then. You're the boss of this outfit?"
+
+"I suppose so. I shall pay the bills at any rate. Until Mr. Hammond and
+the moving picture people arrive."
+
+"Well! what will them other girls say to me--dressed this here way?"
+
+"If you had plenty of dresses and were starting into the range for a
+trip like this, you'd put on these same clothes, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Oh, sure."
+
+"All right then. You're hired to do a man's work, so I presume a man's
+clothing will the better become you while you are so engaged," said
+Ruth, smiling at her frankly.
+
+"All right. Though they've got some calico dresses at the store. I could
+buy one and wear it--that is, if you'd advance me that much money. But I
+got a catalog from a Chicago store---- Gee! it's full of the purtiest
+dresses. I _dreamed_ about gettin' hold of some money some time and
+buyin' one o' them--everything to go with it. But to tell you honest,
+when pop gits any loose change, he spends it for red liquor."
+
+"I'll see that you have the money you are going to earn, for yourself,"
+Ruth assured her. "Now tell Mr. Cameron just what to buy. He will do the
+purchasing at the store. And introduce him to the Mexican boy, Pedro,
+too. I'll run to tell the other girls how lucky we are to get you to
+help us, Min."
+
+She hurried away, in reality to prepare her friends for the appearance
+of the girl who had never worn proper feminine habiliments. She knew
+that Min would not put up with any giggling on the part of the
+"tenderfoot" girls. As for Miss Cullam, that good woman said:
+
+"I'm sure I can stand overalls on a girl as well as I can stand these
+divided skirts and bloomers that some of you are going to wear."
+
+"Just think of a girl never having worn a pretty frock!" gasped Helen.
+"Isn't that outrageous!"
+
+"The poor thing," said Rebecca. "But she must be awfully coarse and
+rough."
+
+"Don't let her see that you think so, Rebecca," commanded Ruth quickly.
+"She has keener perceptions than the average, believe me! We must not
+hurt her feelings."
+
+"Trust _you_ not to hurt anybody's feelings, Ruthie," drawled Jennie
+Stone. "But I might find a dress in my trunk that will fit her."
+
+"Oh, girls! let's dress her up--let's give her enough of our own finery
+out of the trunks to make her feel like a real girl." This from Helen.
+
+"Not now," Ruth said quickly. "She would not thank you. She is an
+independent thing--you'll see. Let her earn her new clothes--and get
+acquainted with us."
+
+"Ruth possesses the 'wisdom of serpents,'" Miss Cullam said, smiling.
+"Are the trunks going to remain here all the time we are absent in the
+hills?"
+
+"Mr. Hammond is going to have several wagons to transport his goods to
+Freezeout; and if there is room he will bring along our trunks too. By
+that time we shall probably be glad to get into something besides our
+riding habits."
+
+Miss Cullam sighed. "I can see that this roughing it is going to be a
+much more serious matter than I thought."
+
+However, they all looked eagerly forward to the start into the hills.
+The hotelkeeper returned with his horse-load of beef, and he was able to
+give Ruth and Miss Cullam certain information regarding the two girls
+who had departed with Flapjack Peters on the trail to Freezeout.
+
+"What can Edith Phelps mean by such actions?" the Ardmore teacher
+demanded in private of Ruth. "You should have told me about that letter
+and Edith's presence on the train. I should have gone to her and asked
+her what it meant."
+
+"Perhaps that would have been well," Ruth admitted. "But, dear Miss
+Cullam! how was I to know that Edith was coming here to Yucca?"
+
+"Yes. I presume that the blame can be attached to nobody in particular.
+But how could Edith Phelps have gained the confidence of your friend,
+Miss Hicks?"
+
+"That certainly puzzles me. Edith made all the arrangements with Min's
+father, so Min says. Ann Hicks must have been misled in some way."
+
+"It looks very strange to me," observed Miss Cullam. "I have my
+suspicions of Edith Phelps, and always have had. There! you see that we
+instructors at college cannot help being biased in our opinions of the
+girls."
+
+"Dear me, Miss Cullam!" laughed Ruth. "Isn't that merely human nature?
+It is not alone the nature of members of the college faculty."
+
+The hotel was a very plainly furnished place; but the girls and Miss
+Cullam managed to spend the night comfortably. At eight o'clock in the
+morning Tom and a half-grown Mexican boy were at the hotel door with a
+cavalcade of ten ponies and four burros.
+
+Tom had learned the diamond hitch while he was at Silver Ranch and he
+helped fasten the necessary baggage upon the four little gray beasts.
+Each rider was obliged to pack a blanket-roll and certain personal
+articles. But the bulk of the provisions, and a small shelter tent for
+Miss Cullam, were distributed among the pack animals.
+
+The Briarwood girls and Trix Davenport rode in men's saddles; as did Min
+Peters; but Sally Blanchard and Rebecca and Miss Cullam had insisted
+upon sidesaddles.
+
+"And the mildest mannered pony in the lot, please," the teacher said to
+Tom. "I am just as afraid of the little beasts as I can be. Ugh!"
+
+"And they are so cunning!" drawled Jennie. She stepped quickly aside to
+escape the teeth of her own mount, who apparently considered the
+possibility of eating her so as not to bear her weight.
+
+"And can you blame him?" demanded Helen. "It would look better if you
+shouldered the pony instead of riding on his back."
+
+"Is that so? Just for that I'll bear down as heavily as I can on him,"
+declared Jennie. "I'm not going to let any little cowpony nibble at me!"
+
+The party started away from Yucca with Min Peters ahead and Pedro
+bringing up the rear with his burros. Although the ponies could travel
+at a much faster pace than the pack animals, the latter at their steady
+pace would overtake the cavalcade of riders before the day was done.
+
+The road they struck into after leaving town was a pretty good wagon
+trail and the riding was easy. There was an occasional ranch-house at
+which the occupants showed considerable interest in the tourists. But
+before noon they had ridden into the foothills and Min told them that
+thereafter dwellings would be few and far between.
+
+"'Ceptin' where there's a town. There are some regular gold washin's we
+pass. Hydraulic minin', you know. But they are all on this side of the
+Range. Nothin' doin' on t'other side. All the pay streaks petered out
+years an' years ago. Even a Chink couldn't make a day's wages at them
+old diggin's like Freezeout."
+
+"Well, we are not gold hunting," laughed Ruth. "We are going to mine for
+a better output--moving pictures."
+
+"I've heard tell of them," said Min, curiously. "There was a feller
+worked for the Lazy C that went to California and worked for them
+picture fellers. He got three dollars a day and his pony's keep an' says
+he never worked so hard in his life. That is, when the sun shone; and it
+most never does rain in that part o' California, he says."
+
+The prospect of camping out of doors, even in this warm and beautiful
+weather, was what most troubled Miss Cullam and some of the girls.
+
+"With the sky for a canopy!" sighed Sally Blanchard. "Suppose there are
+wolves?"
+
+"There are coyotes," Helen explained. "But they only howl at you."
+
+"That's enough I should hope," Rebecca Frayne said. "Can't we keep on to
+the next house and hire beds?"
+
+This was along toward supper time and the burros were in sight and the
+sun was going down.
+
+"The nearest ranch is Littell's," explained Min Peters. "And it's most
+thirty mile ahead. We couldn't make it."
+
+"Of course it will be _fun_ to camp out, Rebecca," declared Ruth
+cheerfully. "Wait and see."
+
+"I'm likely to know more about it by morning," admitted Rebecca. "I only
+hope the experience will not be too awful."
+
+Ruth and her chum, as well as Jennie and Tom, laughed at the girl. They
+expected nothing unusual to happen. However----
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--THE STAMPEDE
+
+
+Their guide was fully as capable as a man, and proved it when it came to
+making camp. Her selection of the camping site could not have been
+bettered; she wielded an axe as well as a man in cutting brush for
+bedding and wood for the fires.
+
+As soon as Pedro and the burros arrived, Min proceeded to get supper for
+the party with a skill and celerity that reminded him, so Tom said, of
+one of those jugglers in vaudeville that keep half a dozen articles in
+the air at a time.
+
+Min broiled bacon, made coffee, mixed and baked biscuits on a board
+before the coals, and finally made the popular flapjacks in unending
+number--and attended to all these things without assistance.
+
+"Pop can beat me at flapjacks. Them's his long suit," declared the girl
+guide. "Wait till you see him toss 'em--a pan in each hand."
+
+Min's viands could only be praised, and the party made a hearty supper.
+
+As dusk mantled them about, Tom suddenly saw a spark of light out across
+the plain to the south.
+
+"What's yonder?" he asked. "I thought you said there was no house near
+here, Miss Peters?"
+
+"Gee! if you don't stop calling me _that_," gasped their guide, "I
+certainly will go crazy. I ain't used to it. But that ain't a house."
+
+"What is it, then?" asked the abashed Tom.
+
+"One of the Lazy C outfits I reckon. Didn't you see the cattle grazin'
+yonder when we come over that last ridge?"
+
+"Oh, my! a regular herd of cattle such as you read about?" demanded
+Sally Blanchard. "And real cowboys with them?"
+
+"I s'pect they think they're real enough," replied Min, dryly. "Punchin'
+steers ain't no cinch, lemme tell you."
+
+"Doesn't she talk queerly?" said Rebecca, in a whisper. "She really
+doesn't seem to be a very proper person."
+
+"My goodness!" gasped Jennie Stone, choked with laughter at this. "What
+do you expect of a girl who's lived in the mines all her life? Polite,
+Back-Bay English and all the refinements of the Hub?"
+
+"No-o," admitted Rebecca. "But, after all, refined people are ever so
+much nicer than rude people. Don't you find it so yourself, Jennie?"
+
+"Well, I s'pose that's so," admitted the plump girl. "For a steady diet.
+Just the same, if you judged it by its husk, you'd never know how sweet
+the meat of a chestnut is."
+
+The campfire at the chuckwagon of the herding outfit was several miles
+away; and later in the evening it died down and the glow of it
+disappeared.
+
+The girls were tired enough to seek repose early. Min, Tom and the
+Mexican boy had agreed to divide the night into three watches. Otherwise
+Rebecca declared she would be afraid even to close her eyes--and then her
+regular breathing announced that sleep had overtaken her within sixty
+seconds of her lying down!
+
+Min chose the first watch and Ruth was not sleepy. During the turns
+before midnight the girl from the East and the girl who had lived a
+boy's life in the mining country became very well acquainted indeed.
+
+There had not been any "lucky strikes" in this region since Min could
+remember. But now and then new veins of gold were discovered on old
+claims; or other metals had been discovered where the early miners had
+looked only for gold.
+
+"And pop's an old-timer," sighed Min. "He'll never be any good for
+anything but prospectin'. Once it gets into a man, I reckon there ain't
+no way of his ever gettin' away from it. Pop's panned for gold in three
+States; he'll jest die a prospector and nothin' more."
+
+"It's good of you to have stuck to him since you grew big," said Ruth.
+
+"What else could I do?" demanded the Western girl. "Of course he loves
+me in his way; and when he goes on his sprees he'd die some time if I
+wasn't on hand to nurse him. But some day I'm goin' to get a bunch of
+money of my own--an' some clo'es--and I'm goin' to light out and leave him
+where he lies. Yes, ma'am!"
+
+Ruth did not believe Min would do quite that; and to change the subject,
+she asked suddenly:
+
+"What's that yonder? That glow over the hill?"
+
+"Moon. It's going to be bright as day, too. Them boys of the Lazy C will
+ride close herd."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Don't you know moonlight makes cattle right ornery? The shadows are so
+black, you know. Then, mebbe there's something 'bout moonlight that
+affects cows. It does folks, too. Makes 'em right crazy, I hear."
+
+"I have heard of people being moonstruck," laughed Ruth. "But that was
+in the tropics."
+
+"Howsomever," Min declared, "it makes the cows oneasy. See! there's the
+edge of her. Like silver, ain't it?"
+
+The moon flooded the whole plain with its beams as it rose from behind
+the mountains. One might have easily read coarse print by its light.
+
+Every bush and shrub cast a black reflection upon the ground. It was
+very still--not a breath of air stirring. Far, far away rose the whine of
+a coyote; and the girls could hear one of the herdsmen singing as he
+urged his pony around and around the cattle.
+
+"You hear 'em pipin' up?" said Min, smiling. "Them boys of the Lazy C
+know their business. Singin' keeps the cows quiet--sometimes."
+
+Their own fire died out completely. There was no need for it. By and by
+Ruth roused Tom Cameron, for it was twelve o'clock. Then both she and
+Min crept into their own blanket-nests, already arranged. The other
+girls were sleeping as peacefully as though they were in their own beds
+at Ardmore College.
+
+Tom was refreshed with sleep and had no intention of so much as "batting
+an eye." The brilliancy of the moonlight was sufficient to keep him
+awake.
+
+Yet he got to thinking and it took something of a jarring nature to
+arouse him at last. He heard hoarse shouts and felt the earth tremble as
+many, many hoofs thundered over it!
+
+Leaping up he looked around. Bright as the moon's rays were he did not
+at first descry the approaching danger. It could not be possible that
+the cattle had stampeded and were coming up the valley, headed for the
+tourists' camp!
+
+Yet that is what he finally made out. He shouted to Pedro, and finally
+kicked the boy awake. Without thinking of the danger to the girls Tom
+believed first of all that their ponies and burros might be swept away
+with the charging steers.
+
+"Gather up those lariats and hold the ponies!" Tom shouted to the
+Mexican. "The burros won't go far away from the horses. Hi, Min Peters!
+What do you know about this?"
+
+Their guide had come out of her blanket wide awake. She appreciated the
+peril much more keenly than did Tom or the girls.
+
+"A fire! We want a fire!" she shouted. "Never mind them ponies, Pedro!
+You strike a light!"
+
+Up the valley came charging the forefront of the cattle, their wicked,
+long horns threatening dire things. As the Eastern girls awoke and saw
+the cattle coming, they were for the most part paralyzed with fear.
+
+"Fire! Start a fire!" yelled Min, again.
+
+The thunder of the hoofs almost drowned her voice. But Ruth Fielding
+suddenly realized what the girl guide meant. The cattle would not charge
+over a fire or into the light of one.
+
+She grabbed something from under her blanket and leaped away from Miss
+Cullam's tent toward the stampede. Tom shouted to her to come back;
+Helen groaned aloud and seized the sleepy Jennie Stone.
+
+"She'll be killed!" declared Helen.
+
+"What's Ruth doing?" gasped the plump girl.
+
+Then Ruth touched the trigger of the big tungsten lamp, and the
+spotlight shot the herd at about the middle of its advance wave.
+Snorting and plunging steers crowded away from the dazzling beam of
+light, brighter and more intense than the moon's rays, and so divided
+and passed on either side of the tourists' encampment.
+
+The odor of the beasts and the dust they kicked up almost suffocated the
+girls, but they were unharmed. Nor did the ponies and burros escape with
+the frightened herd.
+
+The racing punchers passed on either side of the camp, shouting their
+congratulations to the campers. The latter, however, enjoyed little
+further sleep that night.
+
+"Such excitement!" murmured Miss Cullam, wrapped in her blanket and
+sitting before the fire that Pedro had built up again. "And I thought
+you said, Ruth Fielding, that this trip would probably be no more
+strenuous than a picnic on Bliss Island?"
+
+But Min eyed the girl of the Red Mill with something like admiration.
+"Huh!" she muttered, "some of these Eastern tenderfoots are some good in
+a pinch after all."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI--AT HANDY GULCH
+
+
+Sitting around a blanket spread for a tablecloth at sunrise and eating
+eggs and bacon with more flapjacks, the incidents of the night seemed
+less tangible, and certainly less perilous.
+
+"Why, I can't imagine those mild-eyed cows making such a scramble by us
+as they did," Trix Davenport remarked.
+
+"'Mild-eyed kine' is good--very good indeed," said Jennie Stone. "These
+long-horns are about as mild-tempered as wolves. I can remember that we
+saw some of them in tempestuous mood up at Silver Ranch. Isn't that so,
+Helen?"
+
+"Truly," admitted the black-eyed girl.
+
+"I shall never care even to _eat_ beef if we go through many such
+experiences as that stampede," Miss Cullam declared. "Let us hurry away
+from the vicinity of these maddened beasts."
+
+"We'll be off the range to-day," said Min dryly. "Then there won't be
+nothing to scare you tenderfoots."
+
+"No bears, or wolves, or panthers?" drawled Jennie wickedly.
+
+"Oh, mercy! You don't mean there are such creatures in the hills?" cried
+Rebecca.
+
+"I don't reckon we'll meet up with such," Min said.
+
+"Shouldn't we have brought guns with us?" asked Sally timidly.
+
+"Goodness! And shoot each other?" cried Miss Cullam.
+
+"Why, you didn't say nothin' about huntin'," said the guide slowly.
+"Pop's got his rifle with him. But I'm packin' a forty-five; that'll
+scare off most anything on four laigs. And there ain't no two-legged
+critters to hurt us."
+
+"I've an automatic," said Tom Cameron quietly. "Didn't know but I might
+have a chance to shoot a jackrabbit or the like."
+
+"What for?" drawled Min, sarcastically. "We ain't likely to stay in one
+place long enough to cook such a critter. They're usually tougher'n all
+git-out, Mister."
+
+"At any rate," said Ruth, with satisfaction, "the party is sufficiently
+armed. Let us not fear bears or mountain lions."
+
+"Or jackrabbits," chuckled Jennie.
+
+"And are you _sure_ there are no ill-disposed men in the mountains?"
+asked the teacher.
+
+"Men?" sniffed Min. "I ain't 'fraid of men, I hope! There ain't nothin'
+wuss than a drunken man, and I've had experience enough with them."
+
+Ruth knew she referred to her father; but she did not tell the other
+girls and Miss Cullam what Min had confided to her the previous evening.
+
+The trail led them into the foothills that day and before night the
+rugged nature of the ground assured even Miss Cullam that there was
+little likelihood of such an unpleasant happening as had startled them
+the night before.
+
+They halted to camp for the night beside a collection of small huts and
+tents that marked the presence of a placer digging which had been found
+the spring before and still showed "color."
+
+There were nearly a dozen flannel-shirted and high-booted miners at this
+spot, and the sight of the girls from the East had a really startling
+effect upon these lonely men. There was not a woman at the camp.
+
+The men knocked off work for the day the moment the tourists arrived.
+Every man of them, including the Mexican water-carrier, was broadly
+asmile. And they were all ready and willing to show "the ladies from the
+East" how placer mining was done.
+
+The output of a mountain spring had been brought down an open plank
+sluice into the little glen where the vein of fine gold had been
+discovered; and with the current of this stream the gold-bearing soil
+was "washed" in sluice-boxes.
+
+The miners, rough but good-natured fellows, all made a "clean up" then
+and there, and each of the visitors was presented with a pinch of gold
+dust, right from the riffles.
+
+This placer mining camp was run on a community basis, and the camp cook
+insisted upon getting supper for all, and an abundant if not a
+delicately prepared meal was the result.
+
+"I'm not sure that we should allow these men to go to so much expense
+and trouble," Miss Cullam whispered to Ruth and Min Peters.
+
+"Oh, gee!" ejaculated the girl in boy's clothing. "Don't let it worry
+you for a minute, Miss Cullam. We're a godsend to them fellers. If they
+didn't spend their money once't in a while they'd git too wealthy," and
+she chuckled.
+
+"That could not possibly be, when they work so long and hard for a pinch
+of gold dust," declared the college instructor.
+
+"They fling it away just as though it come easy," returned Min. "Believe
+me! it's much better for 'em to have you folks here and blow you to
+their best, than it is for them to go down to Yucca and blow it all in
+on red liquor."
+
+The miners would have gone further and given up their cabins or their
+tents to the use of the women. But even Rebecca had enjoyed sleeping out
+the night before and would not be tempted. The air was so dry and tonic
+in its qualities that the walls of a house or even of a tent seemed
+superfluous.
+
+"I do miss my morning plunge or shower," Helen admitted. "I feel as
+though all this red dust and grit had got into my skin and never would
+get out again. But one can't rough it and keep clean, too, I suppose."
+
+"That water in the sluice looks lovely," confessed Jennie Stone. "I'd
+dearly like to go paddling in it if there weren't so many men about."
+
+"After all," said Ruth, "although we are traveling like men we don't act
+as they would. Tom slipped off by himself and behind that screen of
+bushes up there on the hillside he took a bath in the sluice. But there
+isn't a girl here who would do it."
+
+"Oh, lawsy, I didn't bring my bathing suit," drawled Jennie. "That was
+an oversight."
+
+"Old Tom does get a few things on us, doesn't he?" commented Helen.
+"Perhaps being a boy isn't, after all, an unmitigated evil."
+
+"But the water's so co-o-ld!" shivered Trix. "I'm sure I wouldn't care
+for a plunge in this mountain stream. Will there be heated bathrooms at
+Freezeout Camp, Fielding?"
+
+"Humph!" Miss Cullam ejaculated. "The title of the place sounds as
+though steam heat would be the fashion and tiled bathrooms plentiful!"
+
+The third day of the journey was quite as fair as the previous days; but
+the way was still more rugged, so they did not travel so far. They
+camped that night in a deep gorge, and it was cold enough for the fires
+to feel grateful. Tom and the Mexican kept two fires well supplied with
+fuel all night. Once a coyote stood on a bank above their heads and sang
+his song of hunger and loneliness until, as Sally declared, she thought
+she should "fly off the handle."
+
+"I never _did_ hear such an unpleasant sound in all my life--it beats the
+grinding of an ungreased wagon wheel! I wish you would drive him away,
+Tom."
+
+So Tom pulled out the automatic that he had been "aching" to use, and
+sent a couple of shots in the direction of the lank and hungry beast--who
+immediately crossed the gorge and serenaded them from the other bank!
+
+"What's the use of killing a perfectly useless creature?" demanded Ruth.
+
+"No fear," laughed Jennie. "Tom won't kill it. He's only shooting holes
+in the circumambient atmosphere."
+
+There was a haze over the mountain tops at dawn on the fourth day; but
+Min assured the girls that it could not mean rain. "We ain't had no rain
+for so long that it's forgotten how," she said. "But mebbe there'll be a
+wind storm before night."
+
+"Oh! as long as we're dry----"
+
+"Yes, Miss Ruth," put in the girl guide. "We'll be _dry_, all right. But
+a wind storm here in Arizona ain't to be sneezed at. Sometimes it comes
+right cold, too."
+
+"In summer?"
+
+"Yep. It can git mighty cold in summer if it sets out to. But we'll try
+to make Handy Gulch early and git under cover if the sand begins to
+sift."
+
+"Oh me! oh my!" groaned Jennie. "A sand storm? And like Helen I feel
+already as though the dust was gritted into the pores of my skin."
+
+"It ain't onhealthy," Min returned dryly. "Some o' these old-timers live
+a year without seein' enough water to take a bath in. The sand gives 'em
+a sort of dry wash. It's clean dirt."
+
+"Nothing like getting used to a point of view," whispered Sally
+Blanchard. "Fancy! A 'dry wash!' How do _you_ feel, Rebecca Frayne?"
+
+"Just as gritty as you do," was the prompt reply.
+
+"All right then," laughed Ruth. "We all must have grit enough to hurry
+along and reach this Handy Gulch before the storm bursts."
+
+Min told them that there was a "sure enough" hotel at the settlement
+they were approaching. It was a camp where hydraulic mining was being
+conducted on a large scale.
+
+"The claims belong mostly to the Arepo Mining and Smelting Company. They
+have several mines through the Hualapai Range," said the guide. "This
+Handy place is quite a town. Only trouble is, there's two rum sellin'
+places. Most of the men's wages go back to the company through drink and
+cards, for they control the shops. But some day Arizona is goin' dry,
+and then we'll shut up all such joints."
+
+"Dry!" coughed Helen. "Could anything be dryer than Arizona is right
+here and now?"
+
+The seemingly tireless ponies carried the girls at a lope, or a gallop,
+all that forenoon. It was hard to get the eager little beasts to walk,
+and they never trotted. Miss Cullam claimed that everything inside of
+her had "come loose and was rattling around like dice in a box."
+
+"Dear me, girls," sighed the teacher, "if this jumping and jouncing is
+really a healthful exercise, I shall surely taste death through an
+accident. But good health is something horrid to attain--in this way."
+
+But in spite of the discomforts of the mode of travel, the party hugely
+enjoyed the outing. There were so many new and strange things to see,
+and one always came back to the same statement: "The air _is_ lovely!"
+
+There were certainly new things to see when they arrived at Handy Gulch
+just after lunch time, not having stopped for that meal by the way. The
+camp consisted of fully a hundred wood and sheet-iron shacks, and the
+hotel was of two stories and was quite an important looking building.
+
+Above the town, which squatted in a narrow valley through which a
+brawling and muddy stream flowed, was the "bench" from which the gold
+was being mined. There were four "guns" in use and these washed down the
+raw hillside into open sluices, the riffles of which caught the
+separated gold. The girls were shown a nugget found that very morning.
+It was as big as a walnut.
+
+But most of the precious metal was found in tiny nuggets, or in dust, a
+grain of which seemed no larger than the head of a common pin.
+
+However, although these things were interesting, the minute the
+cavalcade rode up to the hotel something much more interesting happened.
+There was a cry of welcome from within and out of the front door charged
+Jane Ann Hicks, dressed much as she used to be on the ranch--broad
+sombrero, a short fringed skirt over her riding breeches, high boots
+with spurs, and a gun slung at her belt.
+
+"For the good land of love!" she demanded, seizing Ruth Fielding as the
+latter tumbled off her horse. "Where have you girls been? I was just
+about riding back to that Yucca place to look for you."
+
+Jennie and Helen came in for a warm welcome, too. Ann was presented to
+Miss Cullam and the other two girls before explanations were made by
+anybody. Then Ruth demanded of the Montana girl a full and particular
+account of what she had done, and why.
+
+"Why, I reckon that Miss Phelps ain't a friend of yours, after all?"
+queried Ann. "She's one frost, if she is."
+
+"Now you've said something, Nita," said Jennie Stone. "She is a cold
+proposition. Can you tell us what she's doing out here?"
+
+"I don't know. She sure enough comes from that college you girls attend,
+don't she?"
+
+"She does!" admitted Helen. "She truly does. But she's not a sample of
+what Ardmore puts forth--don't believe it."
+
+"I opine she's not a sample of any product, except orneriness," scolded
+Ann, who was a good deal put out by the strange actions of Edith Phelps.
+"You see how it was. My train was late. According to the telegram I
+found waiting for me, you folks should have arrived at Yucca hours ahead
+of me."
+
+"And we were delayed," sighed Ruth. "Go on."
+
+"I saw this Phelps girl," pursued Ann Hicks, "and asked her about you
+folks. She said you'd been and gone."
+
+"Oh!" was the chorused exclamation from the other girls.
+
+"And _she_ is one of my pupils!" groaned Miss Cullam.
+
+"She didn't learn to tell whoppers at your college, I guess," said Ann,
+bluntly. "Anyhow, she fooled me nicely. She said she was going over this
+very route you had taken and I could come along. She wouldn't let me pay
+any of the expenses--not even tip the guide. Only for my pony."
+
+"But where is she now?" asked Ruth.
+
+"And where is that Flapjack person--Min's father?" cried Jennie.
+
+"We got here last night and put up at this hotel," Ann said, going
+steadily on with her story and not to be drawn away on any side issues.
+"We got here last night. Late in the evening somebody came to see this
+Phelps girl--a man."
+
+"Goodness!" exclaimed Rebecca. "And she is traveling without a
+chaperon!"
+
+"'Chaperon'--huh!" ejaculated Ann. "She didn't need any chaperon. She can
+take care of herself all right. Well, she didn't come back and I went to
+bed. This morning I found a bit of paper on my pillow--here 'tis----"
+
+"That's Edie's handwriting," Sally Blanchard said eagerly. "What does it
+say?"
+
+"'Good-bye. I am not going any farther with you. Wait, and your friends
+may overtake you.' Just that," said Ann, with disgust. "Can you beat
+it?"
+
+"What has that wild girl done, do you suppose?" murmured Miss Cullam.
+
+"Oh, she isn't wild--not so's you'd notice it," said Ann. "Believe me,
+she knows her way about. And she shipped that guide."
+
+"Discharged Mr. Peters, do you mean?" Ruth asked. Min was not in the
+room while this conversation was going on.
+
+"H'm. Yes. _Mister_ Peters. He's some sour dough, I should say! He was
+paid off and set down with money in his fist between two saloons.
+They're across the street from each other, and they tell me he's been
+swinging from one bar to the other like a pendulum ever since he was
+paid off."
+
+"Poor Min!" sighed Ruth Fielding.
+
+"Huh?" said Ann Hicks. "If he's got any folks, _I'm_ sorry for 'em,
+too."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII--MIN SHOWS HER METTLE
+
+
+There were means to be obtained at the Handy Gulch Hotel for the baths
+that the tourists so much desired, even if tiled bathrooms and hot and
+cold water faucets were not in evidence.
+
+The party lunched after making fresh toilets, and then set forth to view
+the "sights." Ruth inquired of Tom for Min; but their guide had
+disappeared the moment the party reached the hotel.
+
+"She's acquainted here, I presume," said Tom Cameron. "Maybe she doesn't
+wish to be seen with you girls. Her outfit is so very different from
+yours."
+
+"Poor Min!" murmured Ruth again. "Do you suppose she has found her
+father?"
+
+Tom could not tell her that, and they trailed along behind the others,
+up toward the bench where the hydraulic mining was going on.
+
+Only one of the nozzles was being worked--shooting a solid stream three
+inches in diameter into the hillside, and shaving off great slices that
+melted and ran in a creamlike paste down into the sluice-boxes. Half a
+hundred "muckers" were at work with pick and shovel below the bench. The
+man managing the hydraulic machine stood astride of it, in hip boots and
+slicker, and guided the spouting stream of water along the face of the
+raw hill.
+
+The party of spectators stood well out of the way, for the work of
+hydraulic mining has attached to it no little danger. The force of the
+stream from the nozzle of the machine is tremendous; and sometimes there
+are accidents, when many tons of the hillside unexpectedly cave down
+upon the bench.
+
+The man astride the nozzle, however, took the matter coolly enough. He
+was smoking a short pipe and plowed along the face of the rubble with
+his deadly stream as easily as though he were watering a lawn.
+
+"And if he should shoot it this way," said Tom, "he'd wash us down off
+the bench as though we were pebbles."
+
+"Ugh! Let's not talk about that," murmured Rebecca Frayne, shivering.
+
+"Oh, girls!" burst out Helen, "see that man, will you?"
+
+"What man?" asked Trix.
+
+"_Where_ man?" demanded Jennie Stone.
+
+"Running this way. Why! what can have happened?" Helen pursued. "Look,
+Tom, has there been an accident?"
+
+A hatless man came running from the far end of the bench. He was
+swinging his arms and his mouth was wide open, though they could not
+hear what he was shouting. The noise of the spurting water and falling
+rubble drowned most other sounds.
+
+"Why, girls," shouted Ann Hicks, and her voice rose above the noise of
+the hydraulic, "that's the feller that guided us up here. That's
+Peters!"
+
+"Flapjack Peters?" repeated Tom. "The man acts as if he were crazy!"
+
+The bewhiskered and roughly dressed man gave evidence of exactly the
+misfortune Tom mentioned. His eyes blazed, his manner was distraught,
+and he came on along the bench in great leaps, shouting unintelligibly.
+
+"He is intoxicated. Let us go away," Miss Cullam said promptly.
+
+But the excitement of the moment held the girls spellbound, and Miss
+Cullam herself merely stepped back a pace. A crowd of men were chasing
+the irrepressible Peters. Their shouts warned the fellow at the nozzle
+of the hydraulic machine.
+
+He turned to look over his shoulder, the stream of water still plowing
+down the wall of gravel and soil. It bored directly into the hillside
+and down fell a huge lump, four or five tons of debris.
+
+"Git back out o' here, ye crazy loon!" yelled the man, shifting the
+nozzle and bringing down another pile of rubble.
+
+But Peters plunged on and in a moment had the other by the shoulders.
+With insane strength he tore the miner away from the machine and flung
+him a dozen feet. The stream of water shifted to the right as the
+hydraulic machine slewed around.
+
+"Come away! Come away from that, Pop!" shrieked a voice, and the amazed
+Eastern girls saw Min Peters darting along the bench toward the scene.
+
+Peters sprang astride the nozzle and shifted it quickly back and forth
+so that the water spread in all directions. He knew how to handle the
+machine; the peril lay in what he might decide to do with it.
+
+"Come away from that, Pop!" shrieked Min again.
+
+But her father flirted the stream around, threatening the girl and those
+who followed her. The men stopped. They knew what would happen if that
+solid stream of water collided with a human body!
+
+"D'you hear me, Pop?" again cried the fearless girl. "You git off that
+pipe and let Bob have it."
+
+Bob, the pipeman, was just getting to his feet--wrathful and muddy. But
+he did not attempt to charge Peters. The latter again swept the stream
+along the hillside in a wide arc, bringing tons upon tons of gravel and
+soil down upon the bench. The narrow plateau was becoming choked with
+it. There was danger of his burying the hydraulic machine, as well as
+himself, in an avalanche.
+
+The tourist party was in peril, too. They scarcely understood this at
+the moment, for things were transpiring so quickly that only seconds had
+elapsed since first Peters had approached.
+
+The miners dared not come closer. But Min showed no fear. She plunged in
+and caught him around the body, trying to confine his arms so that he
+could not slew the nozzle to either side.
+
+This helped the situation but little. For half a minute the stream shot
+straight into the hillside; then another great lump fell.
+
+At the same moment Peters threw her off, and Min went rolling over and
+over in the mud as Bob had gone. But she was up again in a moment and
+made another spring for the man.
+
+And then suddenly, quite as unexpectedly as the riot had started, it was
+all over. The hurtling, hissing stream of water fell to a wabbling,
+futile out-pouring; then to a feeble dribble from the pipe's nozzle. The
+water had been shut off below.
+
+The miners pyramided upon him, and in half a minute Flapjack Peters was
+"spread-eagled" on the muddy bench, held by a dozen brawny arms.
+
+"Wait! wait!" cried Ruth, running forward. "Don't hurt him. Take care----"
+
+"Don't hurt him, Miss?" growled Bob, the man who had been flung aside.
+"We ought to nigh about knock the daylights out o' him. Look what he
+done to me."
+
+"But you mustn't! He's not responsible," Ruth Fielding urged.
+
+The miners dragged Peters to his feet and there was blood on his face.
+Here is where Min showed the mettle that was in her again. She sprang in
+among the angry miners to her father's side.
+
+"Don't none of you forgit he's my pop," she threatened in a tone that
+held the girls who listened spellbound and amazed.
+
+"You ain't got no call to beat him up. You know he can't stand red
+liquor; yet some of you helped him drink of it las' night. Ain't that
+the truth?"
+
+Bob was the first to admit her statement. "I s'pose you're right, Min.
+We done drunk with him."
+
+"Sure! You helped him waste his money. Then, when he goes loco like he
+always does, you're for beatin' of him up. My lawsy! if there's anything
+on top o' this here airth more ornery than that I ain't never seen it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII--AN URSINE HOLDUP
+
+
+Peters was still struggling with his captors and talking wildly. He
+evidently did not know his own daughter.
+
+"Well, what you goin' to do with him?" demanded Bob, the pipeman. "We
+ain't expected to stand and hold him all day, if we ain't goin' to be
+'lowed to hang him--the ornery critter!"
+
+"You shet up, Bob Davis!" said Min. "You ain't no pulin' infant yourself
+when you're drunk, and you know it."
+
+The other men began laughing at the angry miner, and Bob admitted:
+
+"Well, s'posin' that's so? I'm sober now. And I got work to do. So's
+these other fellows. What you want done with Flapjack?"
+
+Ruth Fielding was so deeply interested for Min's sake that she could not
+help interfering.
+
+"Oh, Min, isn't there a doctor in this camp?"
+
+"Yes'm. Doc Quibbly. He's here, ain't he, boys?"
+
+"The old doc's down to his office in the tin shack beyant the hotel,"
+said one. "I seen him not an hour ago."
+
+"Let's take your father to the hotel, Min," Ruth said. "These men will
+help us, I know. So will Tom Cameron. We will have the doctor look after
+your father."
+
+"The old doc can dope him a-plenty, I reckon," said Bob.
+
+"Sure we'll help you," said the rough fellows, who were not really
+hard-hearted after all.
+
+"I dunno's they'll let him into the hotel," Min said.
+
+"Yes they will. We'll pay for his room and you and the doctor can look
+out for him," Ruth declared.
+
+"You are good and helpful, Ruth Fielding," said Miss Cullam, coming
+forward, much as she despised the condition of the man, Peters. "How
+terrible! But one must be sorry for that poor girl."
+
+"And Min has pluck all right!" cried Jennie Stone, admiringly. "We must
+help her."
+
+They were all agreed in this. Even Rebecca and Miss Cullam, who both
+shrank from the coarseness of the men and the roughness of Min and her
+father, commiserated the man's misfortune and were sorry for Min's
+strait.
+
+Tom assisted in leading the wildly-talking Peters to the hotel. Ruth and
+Miss Cullam hurried on in advance to engage a room for the man whom they
+assured the proprietor was really ill. Min, meanwhile, went in search of
+the camp's medical practitioner.
+
+Dr. Quibbly was a gray-bearded man with keen eyes but palsied hands. He
+had plainly been wrecked by misfortune or some disease; but he had been
+left with all his mental powers unimpaired.
+
+He took hold of the distraught Peters in a capable manner; and Tom, who
+remained to help nurse the patient, declared to Ruth and Helen that he
+never hoped to see a doctor who knew his business better than Dr.
+Quibbly knew it.
+
+"He had Peters quiet in half an hour. No harmful drug, either. Told me
+everything he used. Says rest, and milk and eggs to build up the
+stomach, is all the chap needs. Min's with him now and I'm going to
+sleep in my blanket outside the door to-night, so if she needs anybody
+I'll be within call."
+
+It had been rather an exciting experience for the girls and they
+remained in their rooms for the rest of the day. The hotel proprietor
+offered to take them around at night and "show them the sights"; but as
+that meant visiting the two saloons and gambling halls, Miss Cullam
+refused for the party, rather tartly.
+
+"No offence meant, Ma'am," said the hotel man, Mr. Bennett. "But most of
+the tenderfeet that come here hanker to 'go slumming,' as they call it.
+They want to see these here miners at their amusements, as well as at
+their daily occupations."
+
+"I'd rather see them at church," Miss Cullam told him frankly. "I think
+they need it."
+
+"Good glory, Ma'am!" exclaimed the man. "We git that, too--once a month.
+What more kin you expect?"
+
+"I suppose," Miss Cullam said to her girls, "that a perfectly
+straight-laced New England old maid could not be set down in a more
+inappropriate place than a mining camp."
+
+The speech gave Ruth a suggestion for a scene in the picture play of
+"The Forty-Niners," and she would have been delighted to have the
+Ardmore teacher play a part in that scene.
+
+"However," she said to Helen, whispering it over in bed that night, "it
+will be funny. I know Mr. Hammond will bring plenty of costumes of the
+period of forty-nine, for he wants women in the show. And there will be
+some character actress who can take the part of an unsophisticated blue
+stocking from the Hub, who arrives at the camp in the midst of the
+miner's revelry."
+
+"Oh, my!" gasped Helen. "Miss Cullam will think you are making fun of
+her."
+
+"No she won't----the dear thing! She has too much good sense. But she
+_has_ given me what Tom would call a dandy idea."
+
+"Isn't it nice to have Tom--or somebody--to lay our use of slang to?" said
+Ruth's chum demurely.
+
+The party did not leave Handy Gulch the next day, nor the day following.
+There were several excuses given for this delay and they were all good.
+
+One of the ponies had developed lameness; and a burro wandered away and
+Pedro had to spend half a day searching for him. Perhaps the Mexican lad
+would have been quicker about this had Min been on hand to hurry him.
+But having been close beside her father all night she lay down for
+needed sleep while Tom Cameron and the doctor took her place.
+
+The report from the sickroom was favorable. In a few hours the man who
+had come so near to bringing about a tragedy in Handy Gulch would be fit
+to travel. Ruth declared that she would wait for him, and he should go
+along with the party to Freezeout.
+
+"But you are our guide and general factotum, Min. We depend on you," she
+told the sick man's daughter.
+
+"I dunno what that thing is you called me; but I guess it ain't a bad
+name," said Min Peters. "If you'll jest let pop trail along so's I kin
+watch him he'll be as good as pie, I know."
+
+Then, there was Miss Cullam's reason for not wishing to start. She said
+she was "saddle sick."
+
+"I have been seasick, and trainsick; but I think saddlesick must be the
+worst, for it lasts longer. I can lie in bed now," said the poor woman,
+"and feel myself wabbling just as I do in that hateful saddle.
+
+"Oh, dear, me, Ruthie Fielding! I wish I had never agreed to come
+without demanding a comfortable carriage."
+
+"They tell me that there are places on the trail before we get to
+Freezeout so narrow that a carriage can't be used. The wagons are going
+miles and miles around so as to escape the rough places of the
+straighter trail."
+
+"Goodness!" exclaimed Miss Cullam in disgust. "Is it necessary to get to
+Freezeout Camp in such a short time? I tell you right now: I am going to
+rest in bed for two days."
+
+And she did. The girls were not worried, however. They found plenty to
+see and to do about the mining town. As for Ruth, she set to work on her
+scenario, and kept Rebecca Frayne busy with the typewriter, too. She
+sketched out the scene she had mentioned to Helen, and it was so funny
+that Rebecca giggled all the time she was typewriting it.
+
+"Goodness!" murmured Ruth. "I hope the audiences will think it is as
+funny as you do. The only trouble is, unless a good deal of the
+conversation is thrown on the screen, they will miss some of the best
+points. Dear me! Such is fate. I was born to be a humorist--a real
+humorist--in a day and age when 'custard-pie comedians' have the
+right-of-way."
+
+The third day the party started bright and early on the Freezeout trail.
+Flapjack Peters was well enough to ride; and he was woefully sorry for
+what he had done. But he was still too much "twisted" in his mind to be
+able to tell Ruth just how he came to start away from Yucca with Edith
+Phelps and Ann Hicks, instead of waiting for the entire party to arrive.
+
+Ann had told all she knew about it at her meeting with Ruth. It remained
+a mystery why Edith had come to Yucca; why she had kept Ann and her
+friends apart; and why at Handy Gulch she had abandoned both Ann and
+Flapjack Peters.
+
+"She met a man here, that's all I know," said Ann, with disgust.
+
+"Maybe it was the man who wrote her from Yucca," said Helen to Ruth.
+
+"'Box twenty-four, R. F. D., Yucca, Arizona,'" murmured Ruth. "We should
+have made inquiries in Yucca about the person who has his mail come to
+that postbox."
+
+"These hindsights that should have been foresights are the limit!"
+groaned Helen. "We must admit that Edie Phelps has put one over on us.
+But what it is she has done _I_ do not comprehend."
+
+"That is what bothers me," Ruth said, shaking her head.
+
+They set off on this day from the Gulch in a spirit of cheerfulness, and
+ready for any adventure. However, none of the party--not a soul of
+it--really expected what did happen before the end of the day.
+
+As usual the pony cavalcade got ahead of the burros in the forenoon. The
+little animals would go only so fast no matter what was done to them.
+
+"You could put a stick of dynamite under one o' them critters," Min
+said, "and he'd rise slow-like. 'Hurry up' ain't knowed to the burros'
+language--believe me!"
+
+The pony cavalcade was halted most surprisingly about noon, and in a way
+which bid fair to delay the party until the burros caught up, if not
+longer. They had got well into the hills. The cliffs rose on either hand
+to towering heights. Thick and scrubby woods masked the sides of the
+gorge through which they rode.
+
+"It is as wild as one could imagine," said Miss Cullam, riding with Tom
+in the lead. "What do you suppose is the matter with my pony, Mr.
+Cameron?"
+
+Tom had begun to be puzzled about his own mount--a wise old, flea-bitten
+gray. The ponies had pricked their ears forward and were snuffing the
+air as though there was some unpleasant odor assailing their nostrils.
+
+"I don't know just what is the matter," Tom confessed. "But these
+creatures can see and smell a lot that _we_ can't, Miss Cullam. Perhaps
+we had better halt and----"
+
+He got no further. They were just rounding an elbow in the trail. There
+before them, rising up on their haunches in the path, were three gray
+and black bears!
+
+"Ow-yow!" shrieked Jennie Stone. "Do you girls see the same things _I_
+do?"
+
+To those ahead, however, it seemed no matter for laughter. The
+bears--evidently a female with two cubs--were too close for fun-making.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV--AT FREEZEOUT CAMP
+
+
+There is nothing really savage looking about a bear unless it _is_
+savage. Otherwise a bear has a rather silly looking countenance. These
+three bears had been walking peacefully down the trail, and were
+surprised at the sudden appearance of the cavalcade of ponies from
+around the bend, for such wind as was stirring was blowing down the
+trail.
+
+The larger bear, the mother of the two half-grown cubs, instantly
+realized the danger of their position. It may have looked like an ursine
+hold-up to the tourists; but old Mother Bear was quite sure she and her
+cubs were in man-peril.
+
+She growled fiercely, cuffing her cubs right and left and sending them
+scuttling and whining off into the bushes. She roared at the startled
+pony riders and did not descend from her haunches.
+
+She looked terrible enough then. Her teeth, fully displayed, promised to
+tear and rend both ponies and riders if they came near enough.
+
+Miss Cullam was speechless with fright. The ponies had halted, snorting;
+but for the first minute or so none of them backed away from the
+threatening beast.
+
+The hair rose stiffly on the bear's neck and she uttered a second
+challenging growl. Tom had pulled out his automatic; but he had already
+learned that at any considerable distance this weapon was not to be
+depended upon. Min's forty-five threw a bullet where one aimed; not so
+the newfangled weapon.
+
+Besides, the bear was a big one and it really looked as though a pistol
+ball would be an awfully silly thing to throw at it.
+
+Rebecca Frayne had just begun to cry and Sally Blanchard was begging
+everybody to "come away," when Min Peters slipped around from the rear
+to the head of the column.
+
+"Hold on to your horses, girls," she whispered shrilly. "Mebbe some of
+'em's gun-shy. Steady now--and we'll have bear's tongue and liver for
+supper."
+
+"Oh, Minnie!" squealed Helen.
+
+Min was not to be disturbed from her purpose by any hysterical girl. She
+was not depending upon her forty-five for the work in hand. She had
+brought her father's rifle from Handy Gulch; and now it came in use most
+opportunely.
+
+The bear was still on its haunches and still roaring when Min got into
+position. The beast was an easy mark, and the Western girl dropped on
+one knee, thus steadying her aim, for the rifle was heavy.
+
+The bear roared again; then the rifle roared. The latter almost knocked
+Min over, the recoil was so great. But the shot quite knocked the bear
+over. The heavy slug of lead had penetrated the beast's heart and lungs.
+
+She staggered forward, the blood spouted from her wide open jaws as well
+as from her breast; and finally she came down with a crash upon the hard
+trail. She was quite dead before she hit the ground.
+
+There was screaming enough then. Everybody save Ann Hicks and Tom,
+perhaps, had quite lost his self-control. Such a jabbering as followed!
+
+"Goodness me, girls," drawled Jennie Stone at last, raising her voice so
+as to be heard. "Goodness me! Min just wasted that perfectly good lead
+bullet. We could easily have talked that poor bear to death."
+
+It had been rather a startling incident, however, and they were not
+likely to stop talking about it immediately. Miss Cullam was more than
+frightened by the event; she felt that she had been misled.
+
+"I had no idea there were actually wild creatures like those bears in
+this country, Ruth Fielding. I certainly never would have come had I
+realized it. You could not have hired me to come on this trip."
+
+"But, dear Miss Cullam," Ruth said, somewhat troubled because the lady
+was, "I really had no idea they were here."
+
+"I assure you," Helen said soberly, "that the bears did not appear by
+_my_ invitation, much as I enjoy mild excitement."
+
+"'Mild excitement'!" breathed Rebecca Frayne. "My word!"
+
+"And those other two bears are loose and may attack us," pursued Miss
+Cullam.
+
+"They were only cubs, Miss," said Min, who, with her father, was already
+at work removing the bear's pelt. "They're running yet. And I shouldn't
+have shot this critter only it might have done some damage, being mad
+because of its young. We may have to explain this shootin' to the game
+wardens. There's a closed season for bears like there is for game birds.
+There ain't many left."
+
+"And do they really want to keep any of the horrid creatures _alive?_"
+demanded Trix Davenport.
+
+"Yes. Bear shootin' attracts tenderfoots; and tenderfoots have money to
+spend. That's the how of it," explained Min.
+
+The ponies did not like the smell of the bear, and they were all drawn
+ahead on the trail. But the cavalcade waited for Pedro and the burros to
+overtake them; then the load on one burro was transferred to the ponies
+and the pelt and as much of the bear meat as they could make use of in
+such warm weather was put upon the burro.
+
+"Not that either the skin or the meat's much good this time o' year. She
+ain't got fatted up yet after sucklin' them cubs. But, anyway, you kin
+say ye had bear meat when you git back East," Min declared practically.
+
+The girls went on after that with their eyes very wide open. Miss Cullam
+declared that she knew she never would forget how those three bears
+looked standing on their hind legs and "glaring" at her.
+
+"Glaring!" repeated Jennie Stone. "All I could see was that old bear's
+open mouth. It quite swallowed up her eyes."
+
+"What an acrobatic feat!" sighed Trix Davenport. "You _do_ have an
+imagination, Jennie Stone."
+
+The event did not pass over as a matter for laughter altogether; the
+girls had really been given a severe fright. Min was obliged to ride
+ahead, or the tourists never would have rounded a bend in the trail in
+real comfort. It was probable that the Western girl had a hearty
+contempt for their cowardice. "But what could you expect of
+tenderfoots?" she grumbled to Ann Hicks.
+
+"D'you know," said the girl from Silver Ranch to the girl guide, "that
+is what I used to think about these Eastern girlies--that they were only
+babies. But just because they are gun-shy, and are unused to many of the
+phases of outdoor life with which you and I are familiar, Min, doesn't
+make them altogether useless.
+
+"Believe me, my dear! when it comes to book learning, and knowing how to
+dress, and being used to the society game, these girls from Ardmore are
+_sharks!_"
+
+"I reckon that's right," agreed Min. "I watched 'em come off the train
+in Yucca, and they looked like they'd just stepped out of a mail-order
+house catalogue. Such fixin's!" and the girl who had never worn proper
+feminine clothing sighed longingly at the remembrance of the Ardmore
+girls' traveling dresses and hats.
+
+The more Min saw of the Eastern girls, the more desirous she was of
+being like them--in some ways, at least. She might sneer at their lack of
+physical courage; nevertheless, she was well aware that they were used
+to many things of which she knew very little. And there never was a girl
+born who did not long for pretty clothes, and who did not wish to appear
+attractive in the eyes of others.
+
+Helen and Jennie had not forgotten their idea of dressing their guide in
+some of their furbelows.
+
+"Just wait till our trunks get to that Freezeout place, along with your
+movie people, Ruth," said Jennie. "We'll just doll poor Min all up."
+
+"That's an idea!" exclaimed the girl of the Red Mill, her mind quick to
+absorb any suggestion relative to her art. "I can put Min in the
+picture--if she will agree. Show her as she is, then have her
+metamorphosised into a pretty girl--for she _is_ pretty."
+
+"From the ugly caterpillar to the butterfly," cried Helen.
+
+"A regular Bret Harte character--queen of the mining camp," said Jennie.
+"You can give me a share of your royalties, Ruth, for this suggestion."
+
+Ruth had so many ideas in her head for scenes at the mining camp that
+she was anxious to get over the trail and reach Freezeout. By this time
+Mr. Hammond and his outfit must have arrived at Yucca.
+
+The trail was rough, however, and the cavalcade of college girls could
+travel only about so fast. Those unfamiliar with saddle work, like Miss
+Cullam, found the journey hard enough.
+
+At night they had to camp in the open, after leaving Handy Gulch; and
+because of the appearance of the bears, there were two guards set at
+night, and the fires were kept up. Tom and Pedro took half the watch,
+and then Min and her father took their turn.
+
+Nothing happened of moment, however, during the three nights that ensued
+before the party reached the abandoned camp of Freezeout. They came down
+into the "draw" or arroyo in which the old mining camp lay late one
+afternoon. A more deserted-looking place could scarcely be imagined.
+
+There were half a hundred log cabins, of assorted sizes and in different
+stages of dilapidation. The air was so dry and so little rain fell in
+this part of Arizona that the log walls of the structures were in fairly
+good condition, and not all the roofs had fallen in.
+
+Min and her father, with Tom Cameron, searched among the cabins to find
+those most suitable for occupancy. But it was Ruth Fielding who
+discovered something that startled the whole party.
+
+"See here! See here!" she called. "I've found something."
+
+"What is it?" asked Tom. "More bears?"
+
+"No. Somebody has been ahead of us here. Perhaps we are not alone in
+having an interest in this Freezeout place."
+
+"What do you mean, Ruthie?" cried Helen, running to her chum.
+
+"Here are the remains of a campfire. The ashes are still warm. Somebody
+camped here last night, that is sure. Do you suppose they are here now?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV--MORE DISCOVERIES
+
+
+A quick but thorough search of the abandoned mining camp revealed no
+living person save the party of tourists themselves.
+
+Ruth's inquiry for the persons who had built the campfire aroused the
+curiosity of Min Peters and her father, and they made some
+investigations for which the girl from the East scarcely saw the reason.
+
+"If we've got neighbors here, might's well know who they are," said
+Flapjack, who was gradually finding his voice and was "spunking up,"
+according to his daughter's statement.
+
+Peters was particularly anxious to please. He felt deeply the
+humiliation of what he had gone through at Handy Gulch, and wished to
+show Ruth and the other girls that he was of some account.
+
+No Indian could have scrutinized the vicinity of the dead campfire which
+Ruth had found more carefully than he did. Finally he announced that two
+men had been here at the abandoned settlement the night before.
+
+"One big feller and a mighty little man. I don't know what to make of
+that little feller's footprints," said the old prospector. "Mebbe he
+ain't only a boy. But they camped here--sure. And they've gone on--right
+out through the dry watercourse an' toward the east. I reckon they was
+harmless."
+
+"They surely will be harmless if they keep on going and never come
+back," laughed Ruth. "But I hope there are not many idlers hanging about
+this neighbourhood. I suppose there are some bad characters in these
+hills?"
+
+"About as bad as tramps are in town," said Min, scornfully. "You folks
+from the East do have funny ideas. Ev'ry other man out here ain't a
+train robber nor a cattle rustler. No, ma'am!"
+
+"The movie company will supply all those, I fancy," chuckled Jennie
+Stone. "Going to have a real, bad road agent in your play, Ruthie?"
+
+"Never mind what I am going to have," retorted Ruth, shaking her head.
+"I mean to have just as true a picture as possible of the old-time gold
+diggings; and that doesn't mean that guns are flourished every minute or
+two. Mr. Peters can help me a lot by telling me what he remembers of
+this very camp, I know."
+
+Flapjack was greatly pleased at this. Although Ruth continued to keep
+Min, the girl guide, to the fore, she saw that the girl's father was
+going to be vastly pleased by being made of some account.
+
+It was he who advised which of the cabins should be made habitable for
+the party. One was selected for the girls and Miss Cullam to sleep in;
+another for the men; and a third for a kitchen.
+
+But Flapjack made supper that night in the open as usual. For the first
+time he proudly displayed to the girls from the East the talent by which
+his nickname originated.
+
+Min made a great "crock" of batter and greased the griddles for him.
+Flapjack stood, red faced and eager, over the bed of live coals and
+handled the two griddles in an expert manner.
+
+The cakes were as large as breakfast plates, and were browned to a
+beautiful shade--one fried in each griddle. When the time came to turn
+them, Flapjack Peters performed this delicate operation by tossing them
+into the air, and with such a sleight of hand that the flapjacks
+exchanged griddles in their "turnover".
+
+"Dear me!" murmured Miss Cullam. "Such acrobatic cooking I never beheld.
+But the cakes are remarkably tasty."
+
+"Aeroplane pancakes," suggested Tom Cameron. "Believe me, they are as
+light as they fly, too."
+
+That night the party was particularly jolly. They had reached their
+destination and, as Miss Cullam said in relief, without dire mishap.
+
+The girls were, after all, glad to shut a door against the whole outside
+world when they went to bed; although the windows were merely holes in
+the cabin walls through which the air had a perfectly free circulation.
+
+There were six bunks in the cabin; but only one of them was put in
+proper condition for use. Miss Cullam was given that and the girls
+rolled up in their blankets on the floor, with their saddles, as usual,
+for pillows.
+
+"We have got so used to camping out of doors," Helen Cameron said, "that
+we shall be unable to sleep in our beds when we get home."
+
+In the morning, however, the first work Min started was to fill bags
+with dried grass from the hillsides and make mattresses for all the
+bunks. Tom had brought along hammer and nails as well as a saw, and with
+the old prospector's assistance he repaired the remainder of the bunks
+in the girls' cabin and put up three new ones. There was plenty of
+building material about the camp.
+
+Ruth, meantime, cleared out a fourth cabin. Here was set up the
+typewriter, and she and Rebecca Frayne planned to make the hut their
+workshop.
+
+"You girls, as long as you don't leave the confines of the camp alone,
+are welcome to go where you please, only, save, and excepting to the
+sanctum sanctorum," Ruth said at lunch time. "I am going to put up a
+sign over the door, 'Beware.'"
+
+"But surely, Ruth, you're not going to work _all_ the time?" complained
+Helen.
+
+"How are we going to have any fun, Ruth Fielding, if you keep out of
+it?" demanded Ann Hicks.
+
+"I shall get up early and work in the forenoon. While the mood is on me
+and my mind is fresh, you know," laughed Ruth. "That is, I shall do that
+after I really get to work. First I must 'soak in' local color."
+
+She did this by wandering alone through the shallow gorge, from the
+first, or lower "diggings," up to the final abandoned claim, where the
+gold pockets had petered out. There were hundreds of places about the
+old camp where the gold hunters had dug in hope of finding the precious
+metal.
+
+Ruth really knew little about this work. But she had learned from
+hearing Min and her father talk that, wherever there was gold in
+"pockets" and "streaks" in the sand there must somewhere near be "a
+mother lode." Flapjack confessed to having spent weeks looking for that
+mother lode about Freezeout Camp. It had never been discovered.
+
+"And after the Chinks got through with this here place, you couldn't
+find a pinch of placer gold big enough t' fill your pipe," the old
+prospector announced. "I reckon she's here somewhere; but there won't
+nobody find her now."
+
+Ruth saw some things that made her wonder if somebody had not been
+looking for gold here much more recently than Flapjack Peters supposed.
+In three separate places beside the brawling stream that ran down the
+gorge, it seemed to her the heaped up sand was still wet. She knew about
+"cradling"--that crude manner of separating gold from the soil; and it
+seemed to her as though somebody had recently tried for "color" along
+the edge of this stream.
+
+However, Ruth Fielding's mind was fixed upon something far different
+from placer mining. She was brooding over a motion picture, and she was
+determined to turn out a better scenario than she had ever before
+written.
+
+Hazel Gray, whom Ruth and her chum, Helen, had met a year and a half
+before, and who had played the heroine's part in "The Heart of a
+Schoolgirl," was to come on with Mr. Hammond and his company to play the
+chief woman's part in the new drama. For there was to be a strong love
+interest in the story, and that thread of the plot was already quite
+clear in Ruth's mind.
+
+She had recently, however, considered Min Peters as a foil for Hazel
+Gray. Min was exactly the type of girl to fit into the story of "The
+Forty-Niners. As for her ability to act----
+
+"There is no girl who can't act, if she gets the chance, I am sure,"
+thought Ruth. "Only, some can act better than others."
+
+Ruth really had little doubt about Min's ability to play the part that
+she had thought out for her. Only, would she do it? Would she feel that
+her own character and condition in life was being held up to ridicule?
+Ruth had to be careful about that.
+
+On returning to the camp she said nothing about the discoveries she had
+made along the bank of the stream. But that evening, after supper, as
+the whole party were grouped before the cabins they had now made fairly
+comfortable, Trix Davenport suddenly startled them all by crying:
+
+"See there! Who's that?"
+
+"Who's where, Trixie?" asked Jennie, lazily. "Are you seeing things?"
+
+"I certainly am," said the diminutive girl.
+
+"So do I!" Sally exclaimed. "There's a man on horseback."
+
+In the purple dusk they saw him mounting a distant ridge east of the
+stream--almost on the confines of the valley on that side. It was only
+for a minute that he held in his horse and seemed to be gazing down at
+the fire flickering in the principal street of Freezeout Camp.
+
+Then he rode on, out of sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI--NEW ARRIVALS
+
+
+"'The lone horseman riding into the purple dusk,' a la the sensational
+novelist," chuckled Jennie Stone. "Who do you suppose that was, Min?"
+
+"Dunno," declared the Yucca girl. But it was plain she was somewhat
+disturbed by the appearance of the horseman. And so was Flapjack.
+
+They whispered together over their own fire, and Flapjack warned Tom
+Cameron to be sure that his automatic was well oiled and that he kept it
+handy during his turn at watching the camp that night.
+
+Morning came, however, without anything more threatening than the almost
+continuous howling of a coyote.
+
+Ruth, who wandered about a little by herself the second day at
+Freezeout, saw Flapjack go over to the ridge where they had seen the
+lone horseman. He came back, shaking his head.
+
+"Who was the man, Mr. Peters?" she asked him curiously.
+
+"Dunno, Miss. He ain't projectin' around here now, that's sure. His pony
+done took him away from there on a gallop. But there ain't many single
+men that's honest hoverin' about these parts."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked the surprised Ruth. "That only married men are
+to be trusted in Arizona?"
+
+He grinned at her. "You're some joker, Miss," he replied. Then, seeing
+that the girl was genuinely puzzled, he added: "I mean that 'nless a
+man's got something to be 'fraid of, he usually has a partner in these
+regions. 'Tain't healthy to prospect round alone. Something might happen
+to you--rock fall on you, or you git took sick, and then there ain't
+nobody to do for you, or for to ride for the doctor."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Men that's bein' chased by the sheriff, on t'other hand," went on
+Flapjack, frankly, "sometimes prefers to be alone. You git me?"
+
+"I understand," admitted the girl of the Red Mill. "But don't let Miss
+Cullam hear you say it. She will be determined to start back for the
+railroad at once, if you do."
+
+Flapjack promised to say nothing to disturb the rest of the party, and
+Ruth knew she could trust Min's good judgment. But she began to worry in
+her own mind about who the strange horseman could be, and about his
+business near Freezeout Camp. She naturally connected the unknown with
+the traces she had seen of recent placer washings and with the campfire
+the ashes of which had been warm when her party arrived.
+
+With these suspicions, those that had centered about Edith Phelps in
+Ruth's mind, began to be connected. She could not explain it. It did not
+seem possible that the Ardmore sophomore could have any real interest in
+the making of this picture of "The Forty-Niners." Yet, why had Edith
+come into the Hualapai Range?
+
+Why Edith had kept Ann Hicks from meeting her friends as soon as they
+arrived at Yucca was more easily understood. Edith wished to get ahead
+of Ruth's party on the trail without her presence in Arizona being known
+to the freshman party.
+
+But why, _why_ had she come? The perplexing question returned to Ruth
+Fielding's mind time and again.
+
+And the man who had met Edith and with whom she had presumably ridden
+away from Handy Gulch--who could _he_ be? Had the two come to Freezeout
+Camp, and were they lingering about the vicinity now? Was the stranger
+on horseback revealed against the skyline the evening before, Edith
+Phelps' comrade?
+
+"If I take any of the girls into my confidence about this," thought
+Ruth, "it will not long be a secret. Perhaps, too, I might frighten them
+needlessly. Surely Edith, and whoever she is with, cannot mean us any
+real harm. Better keep still and see what comes of it."
+
+It bothered her, however. And it coaxed her mind away from the important
+matter of the scenario. However, she was doing pretty well with that and
+Rebecca had several scenes of the first two episodes ready for Mr.
+Hammond.
+
+That afternoon, while she was absorbed in sketching out the third
+episode of her scenario, and Rebecca was beating the typewriter keys in
+busy staccato, Helen came running from the far end of the camp and burst
+into the sanctum sanctorum in wild disorder.
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded her chum, almost angry at Helen's
+thoughtlessness. "Don't you know that I am supposed to be 'dead to the
+world'?"
+
+"Oh, Ruthie, forgive me! But I had to tell you at once. There's a
+strange woman about the camp. Miss Cullam and I both saw her."
+
+"A strange woman!" repeated Ruth. "I'm sure Miss Cullam didn't send you
+hotfoot to tell me."
+
+"No-o. But I had to tell you--I just _had_ to," Helen declared. "Don't be
+mean, Ruthie. Do take an interest in something besides your old movie
+picture."
+
+"Why, I am interested," admitted Ruth. "But who is this strange woman?"
+
+"Goodness!" exclaimed Helen. "That's just what's the matter. We don't
+know. We didn't see her face. She had a big shawl--or a Navajo
+blanket--around her."
+
+"An Indian squaw!" exclaimed Rebecca who could not help hearing. "I'd
+like to see one myself."
+
+"We-ell, maybe she was an Indian squaw," admitted Helen, slowly. "But
+why did she run from us?"
+
+"Afraid of you," chuckled Ruth. "I expect to the eyes of the untutored
+savage you and Miss Cullam looked perfectly awful."
+
+"Now, Ruth!"
+
+"But why bring your conundrums to me--just when I am busiest, too?"
+
+"Well, I never! I thought you might be interested," sniffed Helen.
+
+"I am, dear. But don't you see that your news is so--er--_sketchy?_ I
+might be perfectly enthralled about this Indian squaw if I really met
+her. Capture her and bring her into camp."
+
+Helen went off rather offended. As it happened, it was Ruth herself who
+was destined to learn more about the mysterious woman, as well as the
+lone horseman. But much happened before that.
+
+Before the end of the week Mr. Hammond rode into Freezeout with a
+nondescript outfit, including a dozen workmen prepared to put the old
+camp into shape for the making of the great film.
+
+The old camp became a busy place immediately. Flapjack Peters "came out
+strong," as his daughter expressed it, at this juncture. His memory of
+old times at these very diggings and at similar mines proved to be keen,
+and he became a valuable aid to Mr. Hammond.
+
+Four days later the wagons appeared and the girls got their trunks. That
+very night there was a "regular party" in one of the old saloons and
+dancehalls that chanced, even after all these years, to be habitable.
+
+One of the teamsters had brought his fiddle, and at the prospect of a
+dance, even with the paucity of men, the Ardmore girls were delighted.
+But, to tell the truth, the "party" was arranged more for the sake of
+Min Peters than for aught else.
+
+"She's got to get used to wearing fit clothes before those movie people
+come," Ann Hicks said firmly. "You leave it to me, girls. I know how to
+coax her on."
+
+And Ann proved the truth of her statement. Not that Min was not eager to
+see herself "all dolled up," as Jennie called it, in one of the two big
+mirrors the wagons had brought along for use in the actresses' dressing
+cabins. But she was fiercely independent, and to suggest that she accept
+the college girls' frocks and furbelows as gifts would have angered her.
+
+But Ann induced her to "borrow" the things needed, and from the trunks
+of all were obtained the articles necessary to make Min Peters appear at
+the party as well dressed as any girl need be. Nor was she so awkward as
+some had feared.
+
+"And pretty was no name for it."
+
+"See there!" cried Helen, under her breath, to her chum. "The girl is
+cutting you out, Ruth, with old Tommy-boy. He's asked her to dance."
+
+Ruth only smiled at this. She had put Tom up to that herself, for she
+learned from Ann that the Yucca girl knew how to dance.
+
+"Of course she can. There is scarcely a girl in the West who doesn't
+dance. Goodness, Ruthie! don't you remember how crazy they were for
+dancing around Silver Ranch, and the fun we had at the schoolhouse dance
+at The Crossing? Maybe we ain't on to all those new foxtrots and tangos;
+but we can _dance_."
+
+So it proved with Min. She flushed deeply when Tom asked her, and she
+hesitated. Then, seeing the other girls whirling about the floor, two
+and two, the temptation to "show 'em" was too much. She accepted Tom's
+invitation and the young fellow admitted afterward that he had danced
+with "a lot worse girls back East."
+
+Before the evening was over, Min was supremely happy. And perhaps the
+effect on her father was quite as important as upon Min herself. For the
+first time in her life he saw his daughter in the garb of girls of her
+age--saw her as she should be.
+
+"By mighty!" the man muttered, staring at Min. "I don't git it--not
+right. Is that sure 'nuff my girl?"
+
+"You should be proud of her," said Mr. Hammond, who heard the old-timer
+say this. "She deserves a lot from you, Peters. I understand she's been
+your companion on all your prospecting trips since her mother died."
+
+"That's right. She's been the old man's best friend. She's skookum. But
+I had no idee she'd look like that when she was fussed up same's other
+girls. She's been more like a boy to me."
+
+"Well, she's no boy, you see," Mr. Hammond said dryly.
+
+Out of the dance, however, Ruth gained her desire. She explained to Min
+that she needed just her to make the motion picture complete. And Min,
+bashfully enough but gratefully, agreed to act the part of the "lookout"
+in the "palace of pleasure" afterward appearing in a girl's garb in the
+hotel parlor.
+
+Ruth was deep in her story now and could give attention to little else.
+Mr. Grimes and the motion picture company would arrive in a week, and by
+that time the several important buildings would be ready and the main
+street of Freezeout appear as it had been when the placer diggings were
+in full swing.
+
+Something happened before the company arrived, however, which was of an
+astounding nature. Ruth, riding with Helen and Jennie one afternoon east
+of the camp, came upon the ridge where the lone horseman had been
+observed. And here, overhanging the gorge, was a place where the quartz
+ledge had been laid bare by pick and shovel.
+
+"See that rock, girls? Look, how it sparkles!" said Helen. "Suppose it
+should be a vein of gold?"
+
+"Suppose it _is!_" cried Jennie, scrambling off her horse.
+
+"'Fools' gold,' more likely, girls," Ruth said.
+
+"What is that?" demanded Jennie.
+
+"Pyrites. But we might take some samples and show them to Flapjack."
+
+"Do you suppose that old fellow actually knows gold-bearing quartz when
+he sees it?" asked Helen, in doubt.
+
+They picked up several pieces of the broken rock, and that evening after
+supper showed Peters and Min their booty. Flapjack actually turned pale
+when he saw it.
+
+"Where'd you git this, Miss?" he asked Ruth.
+
+"Well, it isn't two miles from here," said the girl of the Red Mill.
+"What do you think of it?"
+
+"I think this here is a placer diggin's," said Peters, slowly. "But it's
+sure that wherever there's placer there must be a rock-vein where the
+gold washed off, or was ground off, ages and ages ago. D'you
+understand?"
+
+"Yes!" cried Helen, breathlessly.
+
+"Oh! suppose we have found gold!" murmured Jennie, quite as excited as
+Helen.
+
+"The rock-vein ain't never been found around here," said Flapjack. "I
+know, for I've hunted it myself. Both banks of the crick, up an' down,
+have been s'arched----"
+
+"But suppose this was found a good way from the stream?"
+
+"Mebbe so," said the old prospector. "The crick might ha' shifted its
+bed a dozen times since the glacier age. We don't know."
+
+"But how shall we find out if this rock is any good?" asked Jennie,
+eagerly.
+
+"Mr. Hammond's goin' to send a man out to Handy Gulch with mail
+to-morrow," said the prospector. "He'll send these samples to the
+assayer there. He'll send back word whether it's good for anything or
+not. But I tell you right now, ladies. If I'm any jedge at all, that
+ore'll assay a hundred an' fifty dollars to the ton--or nothin'."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII--THE MAN IN THE CABIN
+
+
+Why, of course they could not keep it to themselves! At least, the three
+girls could not. They simply had to tell Miss Cullam and Tom, and the
+other Ardmore freshmen and Ann of their discovery.
+
+So every day after that the visitors from the East "went prospecting."
+They searched up and down the creek for several miles, turning over
+every bit of "sparkling" rock they saw and bringing back to the camp
+innumerable specimens of quartz and mica, until Mr. Hammond declared
+they were all "gold mad."
+
+"Why, this place has been petered out for years and years," he said. "Do
+you suppose I want my actors leaving me to stake out claims along
+Freezeout Creek, and spoiling my picture? Stop it!"
+
+The idea of gold hunting had got into the girls, however, as well as
+into Flapjack Peters and his daughter. The other Western men laughed at
+them. Gold this side of the Hualapai Range had "petered out." They
+looked upon the old-timer as a little cracked on the subject. And, of
+course, these "tenderfoots" did not know anything about "color" anyway.
+
+Even Miss Cullam searched along the creek banks and up into the low
+hills that surrounded the valley.
+
+"Who knows," said the teacher of mathematics, "but that I may find a
+fortune, and so be able to eschew the teaching of the young for the rest
+of my life? Gorgeous!"
+
+"But pity the 'young'," begged Jennie Stone. "Think, Miss Cullam, how we
+would miss you."
+
+"I can hardly imagine that you would suffer," declared the mathematics
+teacher. "Really!"
+
+"We might not miss the mathematics," said Rebecca, wickedly. "But you
+are the very best chaperon who ever 'beaued' a party of girls into the
+wilds. Isn't that the truth, Ardmores?"
+
+"It is!" they cried. "Hurrah for Miss Cullam!"
+
+Ruth, however, despite the discovery of the possibly gold-bearing
+quartz, was not to be coaxed from her work. Each morning she shut
+herself into the "sanctum sanctorum" and worked faithfully at the
+scenario. Likewise, Rebecca stuck to the typewriter, for she had work to
+do for Mr. Hammond now, as well as for Ruth.
+
+Some part of each afternoon Ruth took for exercise in the open. And
+usually she took this exercise on ponyback.
+
+Riding alone out of the shallow gorge one day, she struck into what
+seemed to her a bridlepath which led into "dips" and valleys in the
+hills which she had never before seen. Nothing more had been observed of
+either the lone horseman or the supposed squaw for so many days that
+their presence about Freezeout Camp had quite slipped Ruth Fielding's
+mind.
+
+Besides, there were so many men at the camp now that to have fear of
+strangers was never in the girl's thoughts. She urged her hardy pony
+into a gallop and sped down hill and up in a most invigorating dash.
+
+Such a ride cleared the cobwebs out of her head and revivified mind and
+body alike. At the end of this dash, when she halted the pony in an
+arroyo to breathe, she was cheerful and happy and ready to laugh at
+anything.
+
+She laughed first at her own nose! It really was ridiculous to think
+that she smelled wood smoke.
+
+But the pungent odor of burning wood grew more and more distinct. She
+gazed swiftly all around her, seeing no campfire, of course, in this
+shallow gulch. But suddenly she gathered up the bridle reins tightly and
+stared, wide-eyed, off to the left. A faint column of blue smoke rose
+into the air--she could not be mistaken.
+
+"Here's a pretty kettle of fish!" thought Ruth. "Another camping party?
+Who can be living so near Freezeout without giving us a call? The lone
+horseman? The Indian squaw? Or both?"
+
+She half turned her pony to ride back. It might be some ill-disposed
+person camping here in secret. Flapjack and Min had intimated there were
+occasionally ne'er-do-wells found in the range--outlaws, or ill-disposed
+Indians.
+
+Still, it was cowardly to run from the unknown. Ruth had tasted real
+peril on more than one occasion. She touched the spur to her pony
+instead of pulling him around, and rode on.
+
+There was a curve in the arroyo and when she came into the hidden part
+of the basin the mystery was instantly explained. A fairly substantial
+cabin--recently built it was evident--stood near a thicket of mesquite.
+The door was hung on leather hinges and was wide open. Yet there must be
+some occupant, for the smoke rose through the hole in the roof. It
+struck Ruth, for several reasons, that the cabin had been built by an
+amateur.
+
+She held in her pony again and might, after all, have wheeled him and
+ridden away without going closer, if the little beast had not betrayed
+her presence by a shrill whinny. Immediately the pony's challenge was
+answered from the mesquite where the unknown's horse was picketed.
+
+Ruth was startled again. No sound came from the cabin, nor could she
+discover anybody watching her from the jungle. She rode nearer to the
+cabin door.
+
+It was then that the unshod hoofs of her pony announced her presence to
+whoever was within. A voice shouted suddenly:
+
+"Hullo!"
+
+The tone in which the word was uttered drove all the fear out of Ruth
+Fielding's mind. She knew that the owner of such a voice must be a
+gentleman.
+
+She rode her pony up to the open door and peered into the dimly lighted
+interior. There was no window in the cabin walls.
+
+"Hullo yourself!" she rejoined. "Are you all alone?"
+
+"Sure I am. I'm a hermit--the Hermit Prospector. And I bet you are one of
+those moving picture girls."
+
+A laugh accompanied the words. Ruth then saw the man, extended at full
+length in a rude bunk. One foot was bare and it and the ankle was
+swathed in bandages.
+
+"Sorry I can't get up to do the honors. Doctor's ordered me to stay in
+bed till this ankle recovers."
+
+"Oh! Is it broken?" cried Ruth, slipping out of her saddle and throwing
+the reins on the ground before the pony so that he would stand.
+
+"Wrenched. But a bad one. I'm likely to stay here a while."
+
+"And all alone?" breathed Ruth.
+
+"Quite so. Not a soul to swear at, nor a cat to kick. My horse is out
+there in the mesquite and I suppose he's tangled up----"
+
+"I'll fix that in a moment," cried Ruth. "He'd better be tethered here
+on the hillside before your door. The grazing is good."
+
+"Well--yes. I suppose so."
+
+Ruth was off into the mesquite in a flash. She found the whinnying pony.
+And she discovered another thing. The animal's lariat had been untangled
+and his grazing place changed several times.
+
+"You've hobbled around a good bit since your ankle was hurt," she said
+accusingly, when she returned to the cabin door. "And see all the
+firewood you've got!"
+
+"I expect I did too much after I strained the ankle," the man admitted
+gravely. "That's why it is so bad now. But when a man's alone----"
+
+"Yes. When he _is_ alone," repeated Ruth, eyeing him thoughtfully.
+
+He was a young man and as roughly dressed as any of the teamsters at
+Freezeout Camp. There was, too, several days' growth of beard upon his
+face. But he was a good looking chap, with rather a humorous cast of
+countenance. And Ruth was quite sure that he was educated and at present
+in a strange environment.
+
+"Have you plenty of water?" she asked suddenly, for she had seen the
+spring several rods away.
+
+"Lots," declared "the hermit." "See! I've a drip."
+
+He pointed with pride to the arrangement of a rude shelf beside the head
+of his bunk with a twenty-quart galvanized pail upon it. A pin-hole had
+been punched in this pail near the bottom, and the water dripped from
+the aperture steadily into a pint cup on the floor.
+
+"Would you believe it," he said, with a smile, "the water, after falling
+so far through the air, is quite cooled."
+
+"What do you do when the pail is empty?" the girl asked quickly.
+
+"Oh! I shall be able to hobble to the spring by that time. If the cup
+gets full and I don't need the water, I pour it back."
+
+Ruth stood on tiptoe and looked into the pail. Then she brought water
+from the spring in her own canteen, making several trips, and filled the
+pail to the brim.
+
+"Now, what do you eat, and how do you get it?" she asked him.
+
+"My dear young lady!" he cried, "you must not worry about me. I shall be
+all right. I was just going to cook some bacon when you rode up. That is
+why I made up a fresh fire. I shall be all right, I assure you."
+
+Ruth insisted upon rumaging through his stores and cooking the hermit a
+hearty meal. She marked the fact that certain delicacies were here that
+the ordinary prospector would not have packed into the wilds. Likewise,
+there was vastly more tea and sugar than one person could use in a long
+time.
+
+Ruth was quite sure "the hermit" was not a native of the West. She was
+exceedingly puzzled as she went about her kindly duties. Then, of a
+sudden, she was actually startled as well as puzzled. In a corner of the
+cabin she found hanging on a nail a rubber bathcap on which was
+stenciled "Ardmore." It was one of the gymnasium caps from her college.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII--RUTH REALLY HAS A SECRET
+
+
+Ruth Fielding came back from her ride to Freezeout Camp and said not a
+word to a soul about her discovery of the young man in the cabin. She
+had a secret at last, but it was not her own. She did not feel that she
+had the right to speak even to Helen about it.
+
+She was quite sure "the hermit" had no ill intention toward their party.
+And if he had a companion that companion could do those at Freezeout no
+harm.
+
+Just what it was all about Ruth did not know; yet she had some
+suspicions. However, she rode out to the lone cabin the next day, and
+the next, to see that the young man was comfortable. "The Hermit
+Prospector," as he laughingly called himself, was doing very well.
+
+Ruth brought him two slim poles out of the wood and he fashioned himself
+a pair of crutches. By means of these he began to hobble around and Ruth
+decided that he did not need her further ministrations. She did not tell
+him that she should cease calling, she merely ceased riding that way.
+For a "hermit" he had seemed very glad, indeed, to have somebody to
+speak to.
+
+Ruth was exceedingly busy now. The director, Mr. Grimes--a very efficient
+but unpleasant man--arrived with the remainder of the company, and
+rehearsals began immediately. Hazel Gray, who had been so fresh and
+young looking when Ruth and Helen first met her at the Red Mill, was
+beginning to show the ravages of "film acting." The appealing
+personality which had first brought her into prominence in motion
+pictures was now a matter of "registering." There was little spontaneity
+in the leading lady's acting; but the part she had to play in "The
+Forty-Niners" was far different from that she had acted in "The Heart of
+a School Girl," an earlier play of Ruth's.
+
+Mr. Grimes was just as unpleasantly sarcastic as when Ruth first saw
+him. But he got out of his people what was needed, although his shouting
+and threatening seemed to Ruth to be unnecessary.
+
+With Ruth Mr. Grimes was perfectly polite. Perhaps he knew better than
+to be otherwise. He was good enough to commend the scenario, and
+although he changed several scenes she had spent hard work upon, Ruth
+was sensible enough to see that he changed them for good cause and
+usually for the better.
+
+He approved of Min's part in the play, and he was careful with the
+Western girl in her scenes. Min did very well, indeed, and even Flapjack
+made his extra three dollars a day on several occasions when he appeared
+with the teamsters in the "rough house" scenes in the night life of the
+old-time mining camp.
+
+The film actors were not an unpleasant company; yet after all they were
+not people who could adapt themselves to the rude surroundings of the
+abandoned camp as easily, even, as did the college girls. The women were
+always fussing about lack of hotel requisites--like baths and electric
+lights and maids to wait upon them. The men complained of the food and
+the rude sleeping accommodations.
+
+Ruth learned something right here: All the girls from Ardmore save
+Rebecca Frayne and Ruth herself came from wealthy families--and Rebecca
+was used to every refinement of life. Yet the Ardmores took the
+"roughing it" good-naturedly and never worried their pretty heads about
+"maid service" and the like.
+
+Some of the film women, seeing Min Peters about in her usual garb,
+undertook to treat her superciliously. They did not make the mistake
+twice. Min was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and she
+intended to be treated with respect. Min was so treated.
+
+Helen Cameron was much amused by the attitude her brother took toward
+the leading lady, Hazel Gray. Miss Gray was not more than two years
+older than the twins and when the film actress had first become known to
+them Tom had been instantly attracted. His case of boyish love had been
+acute, but brief.
+
+For six months the walls of his study at Seven Oaks were fairly papered
+with pictures of Hazel Gray in all manner of poses and
+characterizations. The next semester Tom had gone in for well-known
+athletes, not excluding many prize fighters, and the pictures of Miss
+Gray went into the discard.
+
+Now the young actress set out to charm Tom again. He was the only young
+personable male at Freezeout, save the actors themselves, and she knew
+them. But Tom gave her just as much attention as he did Min Peters, for
+instance, and no more.
+
+There was but one girl in camp to whom he showed any special attention.
+He was always at Ruth's beck and call if she needed him. Tom never put
+himself forward with Ruth, or claimed more than was the due of any good
+friend. But the girl of the Red Mill often told herself that Tom was
+dependable.
+
+She was not sure that she ever wanted her chum's brother to be anything
+more to her than what he was now--a safe friend. She and Helen had talked
+so much about "independence" and the like that it seemed like sheer
+treachery to consider for a moment any different life after college than
+that they had planned.
+
+Ruth was to write plays and sing. Helen was to improve her violin
+playing and give lessons. They would take a studio together in
+Boston--perhaps in New York--and live the ideal life of bachelor girls.
+Helen desired to support herself just as much as Ruth determined to
+support herself.
+
+"It is dependence upon man for daily bread and butter that makes women
+slaves," Helen declared. And Ruth agreed--with some reservations. It
+began to look to her as though all were dependent upon one another in
+this world, irrespective of sex.
+
+However, Tom was one of those dependable creatures that, if you wanted
+him, was right at hand. Ruth let the matter rest at that and did not
+disturb her mind much over questions of personal growth and expansion,
+or over the woman question.
+
+Her thought, indeed, was so much taken up with the picture that was
+being made that she had little time to bother with anything else. She
+almost forgot the lame young man in the distant cabin and ceased to
+wonder as to who his companion might be. She certainly had quite
+forgotten the specimens of ore which had been sent to the Handy Gulch
+assayer's office until unexpectedly the report arrived.
+
+Helen and Jennie, as well as Peters and his daughter, were interested in
+this event. The others of the Ardmore party had only heard of the
+supposed find and had not even seen the uncovered bit of ledge from
+which the ore had been taken.
+
+"Why, perhaps we are all rich!" breathed Jennie Stone. "Beyond the
+dreams of avarice! How much does he say?"
+
+"One hundred and thirty-three dollars to the ton. And it's 'free gold,'"
+declared Ruth. "It can be extracted by the cyaniding process. That can
+be done on the spot, and cheaply. Where there is much sulphide in the
+ore the gold must be extracted by the hydro-electric process."
+
+"Goodness, Ruth! How did you learn so much?" gasped Helen.
+
+"By using my tongue and ears. What were they given us for?"
+
+"To taste nice things with and drape 'spit-curls' over," giggled Jennie.
+
+They went to Peters and Min and displayed the report. The old prospector
+could have given the thing away in the exuberance of his joy if it had
+not been for the good sense his daughter displayed.
+
+"Hush up, Pop," she commanded. "You want to put all these bum actors on
+to the strike before we've laid out our own claims? We want to grab off
+the cream of this find. You know it must be rich."
+
+"Rich? Say, girl, rich ain't no name for it. I know what this Freezeout
+proposition was when it was placer diggings. Where so much dust and
+nuggets come from along a crick bed, we knowed there must be a regular
+mother lode somewheres here. Only we never supposed it was on that side
+of the stream an' so far away. It looked like the old bed of the crick
+lay to the west.
+
+"Well, we've got it! A hundred and thirty-three dollars per ton at the
+grass-roots. Lawsy! No knowin' how deep the ledge is. An' you ladies
+only took specimens in one spot. We want to take others clean acrosst
+the ledge--as far as we kin trace it--git 'em assayed, then pick out the
+best claims before any of these cheapskates around here can ring in on
+it. Laugh at _me_, will they? I reckon they'll find out that Flapjack is
+wuth something as a prospector after all."
+
+He quite overlooked the fact that the three college girls had found the
+ore--and that somebody had uncovered the ledge before them! But Min did
+not forget these very pertinent facts.
+
+"We got to get a hustle on us," she announced. "No knowin' who 'twas
+that first opened that prospect, Pop. Mebbe he was green, or he ain't
+had his samples assayed yet. We got to get in quick."
+
+"Sure," agreed Flapjack.
+
+"And the best three claims has got to go to Miss Ruth and Miss Cam'ron
+and Miss Stone. They found the place. You an' I, Pop, 'll stake out the
+next best claims. Then the rush kin come. But we want to git more
+samples assayed first."
+
+"Is that necessary?" Ruth asked, quite as eager as the others now.
+Somehow the gold hunting fever gets into one's blood and effervesces. It
+was hard for any of them to keep their jubilation from the knowledge of
+the whole camp.
+
+"We dunno how long this ledge of gold-bearing rock is," Min explained.
+"Maybe we only struck the poorest end of it. P'r'aps it'll run two
+hundred dollars or more to the ton at the other end. We want to stake
+off our claims where the ore is richest, don't we?"
+
+"Let's stake it _all_ off," said Helen.
+
+"Couldn't hold it. Not by law. These big minin' companies git so many
+claims because they buy up options from different locaters all along a
+ledge. There's ha'f a hundred claims belongs to the Arepo Company, for
+instance, at one workin's. No. We've got to be careful and keep this
+secret till we're sure where the best of the ore lays."
+
+"Oh, let's go at once and see!" cried Jennie.
+
+"We'll go this afternoon," Ruth said. "All five of us."
+
+"I hope nobody will find the place before we get there," Helen observed.
+
+"No more likely now than 'twas before," Min said sensibly. "Pop'll sneak
+out a pick and shovel for us, and meet us over there on the ridge."
+
+So it was arranged. But the three college girls were so excited that
+they were scarcely fit for either work or play. They set off eagerly
+into the hills after lunch and met Flapjack and his daughter as had been
+appointed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX--SOMETHING UNEXPECTED
+
+
+The old prospector was wild with joy. He had already dug several holes
+down to the surface of the ledge along the ridge north of the spot where
+the first sample of gold-bearing rock had been secured. He claimed that
+each spot showed an increase in the amount of gold in the rock.
+
+"It's ha'f a mile long, I bet. An' the farther you go, the richer it
+gits. I tell you, we're goin' all to be as rich as red mud! Whoop!"
+
+"Hold in your hosses, Pop," commanded Min, sensibly. "Them folks down in
+camp may see you prancin' around here, and they'll either think you are
+crazy or know that you've struck pay dirt. And we don't want 'em in on
+this yet."
+
+"By mighty! Listen here, girl!" gasped the old man. "We're goin' to be
+rich, you and me. You're goin' to dress in the fanciest clo'es there is.
+You'll look a lot finer than that there leadin' lady actress girl.
+Believe me!"
+
+"Now, Pop, be sensible!"
+
+"You're a-goin' to be a lady," declared Flapjack.
+
+"Huh! Me, a lady, with them han's?" and she put forth both her calloused
+palms. "A fat chance I got!"
+
+With tears in her eyes Ruth Fielding said: "Those hands have earned the
+right to be a 'lady's', Min. If there is gold here in quantity, you
+shall be all that your father says."
+
+"Of course she shall!" cried the other college girls in chorus.
+
+"Well, it'll kill me, I know that," declared Min. "I'd just about bust
+wide open with joy."
+
+Flapjack dug seven holes that afternoon, and they took seven specimens
+of the rock with the bright specks in it. The college girls thought they
+could detect an increasing amount of gold in the ore as they advanced up
+the ledge.
+
+The old prospector insisted upon filling in each hole as they went along
+and putting back the tufts of bunch grass in order to make the place
+look as it ordinarily did. Tiny numbered stakes driven down into the
+loose and gravelly soil was all that marked the places from which the
+specimens were taken. Of course, the specimens themselves were properly
+marked, too.
+
+The gold seemed to be right at the grass-roots, as Flapjack had said. He
+told them the ledge was all of twenty yards wide, with the width
+increasing as the value of the ore increased. The full length of the
+ledge was still unexplored, but the depth of the vein of gold-bearing
+quartz was really the "unknown dimension."
+
+"But we're going to be rich, girls!" whispered Jennie Stone, almost
+dancing, as they went back to the camp at dusk. "Rich! why, I've always
+been rich--or, my father has. I never thought much about it. But to own a
+real gold mine oneself!"
+
+The thought was too great for utterance. Besides, they had agreed not to
+whisper about the find at the camp. Not even Miss Cullam knew that the
+report had come from the assayer regarding the first specimen of ore the
+girls had found.
+
+It was not hard to hide their excitement, for there was so much going on
+at Freezeout Camp. Mr. Grimes was trying to rush the work as much as
+possible, for the picture actors were complaining constantly regarding
+their trials and the manifold privations of the situation.
+
+The college girls and Ann Hicks, however, were having the time of their
+lives. They dressed up in astonishing apparel furnished by the film
+company and posed as the female populace of Freezeout Camp in some of
+the episodes. Min, in the part Ruth had especially written for her, was
+a pronounced success. Miss Gray, of course, as she always did, filled
+the character of the heroine "to the queen's taste"--and to Mr. Grimes'
+satisfaction as well, which was of much more importance.
+
+The weather was just the kind the "sun worshippers" delighted in. The
+camera man could grind his machine for six hours a day or more. The film
+of "The Forty-Niners" grew steadily.
+
+Ruth had practically finished her part of the work; but Rebecca Frayne
+was kept busy at her typewriter during part of the day. Therefore, Ruth
+easily got away from the sanctum sanctorum the next forenoon and went up
+to the ridge again with Flapjack and Min.
+
+It had been settled that Helen and Jennie should remain with the other
+girls and keep them from wandering about on the easterly side of the
+stream.
+
+Flapjack had been on the ridge since early light. He was taking samples
+every few rods, and Min was wrapping them up and marking the ore and the
+stakes. Beyond a small grove of scrubby trees they came in sight of what
+Flapjack declared was probably the end of the gold-bearing rock. There
+was a dip into another arroyo and beyond that a mesquite jungle as far
+as they could see.
+
+"Well, she's more'n a ha'f a mile long," sighed the old prospector.
+"Ev'ry thing's got to come to an end in this world they say. We needn't
+grow bristles about it---- Great cats! What's them?"
+
+"Oh, Pop!" shrieked Min, "We ain't here first."
+
+"What _are_ those stakes?" asked Ruth, puzzled to see that the peeled
+posts planted in the gravelly soil should so disturb the equanimity of
+the prospector and his daughter.
+
+"Somebody's ahead of us. Two claims staked," groaned Flapjack. "And
+layin' over the best streak of ore in the whole ledge, I bet my hat!"
+
+There were two scraps of paper on the posts. Min ran forward to read the
+names upon them. Flapjack rested on his pick and said no further word.
+
+Of a sudden Ruth heard the sharp ring of a pony's hoof on gravel. She
+turned swiftly to see the pony pressing through the mesquite at the foot
+of the ridge. Its rider urged the animal up the slope and in a moment
+was beside them.
+
+"What are you doing on my claim and my partner's?" the man demanded, and
+he slid out of his saddle gingerly, slipping rude crutches under his
+armpits as he came to the ground. He had one foot bandaged, and hobbled
+toward Ruth and her companions with rather a truculent air.
+
+"What are you doing on my claim?" "the hermit" repeated, and he was
+glaring so intently at Flapjack that he did not see Ruth at all.
+
+The prospector was smoking his pipe, and he nearly dropped it as he
+stared in turn at this odd-looking figure on crutches. It was easy
+enough to see that the claimant to the best options on Freezeout ledge
+was a tenderfoot.
+
+"Ain't on your claim," growled Peters at last.
+
+"Well, that other fellow is," declared "the hermit," "Let me tell you
+that my partner's gone to Kingman to have the claims recorded. They are
+so by this time. If you try to jump 'em----"
+
+"Who's tryin' to jump anything?" demanded Min, now coming back from
+examining the notices on the stakes. "Which are you--this here 'E' or
+'R'yal?'"
+
+"Royal is my name," said the man, gruffly.
+
+"Brothers, I s'pose?" said Min.
+
+The young man stared at her wonderingly. "I declare!" he finally
+exclaimed. "You're a girl, aren't you?"
+
+"No matter who or what I am," said Min Peters, tartly. "You needn't
+think you can stake out all this ledge just because you found it
+first--maybe."
+
+It was evident that both Flapjack and his daughter considered the
+appearance of this claimant to the supposedly richest options on the
+ledge most unfortunate.
+
+"I know my rights and the law," said the young man quite as truculently
+as before. "If it's necessary I'll stay here and watch those stakes till
+my--my partner gets back with the men and machinery that are hired to
+open up these claims."
+
+"By mighty!" groaned Flapjack. "The hull thing will be spread through
+Arizony in the shake of a sheep's hind laig."
+
+"Well, what of it? You can stake out claims as we did," snapped "the
+hermit." "We are not trying to hog it all."
+
+"These men you're bringin' 'll grab off the best options and sell 'em to
+you. You're Easterners. You're goin' to make a showin' and then sell the
+mine to suckers," said Min bitterly. "We know all about your kind, don't
+we, Pop?"
+
+Peters muttered his agreement. Ruth considered that it was now time for
+her to say another word.
+
+"I am sure," she began, "that Mr.--er--Royal will only do what is fair.
+And, of course, we want no more than our rights."
+
+The man with the injured ankle looked at her curiously. "I'm willing to
+believe what you say," he observed. "You have already been kind to me.
+Though you didn't come back to see me again. But I don't know anything
+about this man and this--er----"
+
+"Miss Peters and her father," introduced Ruth, briskly, as she saw Min
+flushing hotly. "And they must stake off their claims next in running to
+the two you and your partner have staked."
+
+"No!" exclaimed Min, fiercely. "You and the other two young ladies come
+first. Then pop and me. It puts us a good ways down the ledge; but it's
+only fair."
+
+The young man looked much worried. He said suddenly:
+
+"How many more of you are informed of the existence of this gold ledge?"
+
+"After my claim," said Ruth, firmly, "I am going to stake out one for
+Rebecca Frayne. She needs money more than anybody else in our party--more
+even than Miss Cullam. The others can come along as they chance to."
+
+"Great Heavens!" gasped the young man. "How many more of you are there?
+I say! I'll make you an offer. What'll you-all take for your claims,
+sight-unseen?"
+
+"There! What did I tell you?" grumbled Min Peters. "He's one o' them
+Eastern promoters that allus want to skim the cream of ev'rything."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX--THE MAD STALLION
+
+
+Somehow Ruth Fielding could not find herself subscribing to this opinion
+of "the hermit" so flatly stated by Min Peters. She begged the
+prospector's daughter to hush.
+
+"Let us not say anything to each other that we will later be sorry for.
+Of course, we all understand--and must admit--that the finding of this
+gold-bearing ledge is a matter that cannot be long kept from the general
+public."
+
+"Sure! There'll be a rush," growled Flapjack.
+
+"And when this feller's men git here they'll hog it all," declared Min.
+
+"They won't hog our claims--not unless I'm dead," said her father
+violently.
+
+"Oh, hush! hush!" cried Ruth again. "This is no way to talk. We can
+stake out our claims and the other girls can stake out theirs. You
+understand we honestly found this ore just the same as you and your
+partner did?" she added to the lame young man.
+
+"I found it first," he said, gloomily. "I found it months ago----"
+
+"Great cats!" broke in Flapjack. "Why didn't you file on it, then, and
+git started?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Royal," said Ruth, puzzled. "Why the delay?"
+
+"Well, you see, I hadn't any money. I had to write to--to my partner.
+Ahem! I had to get money through my partner. I was afraid to file on the
+claim for fear the news would spread and the whole ridge be overrun with
+prospectors before I could be sure of mine."
+
+"And what you considered yours was the cream of it all," repeated Min,
+quickly.
+
+"Well! I found it, didn't I?" he demanded.
+
+"We were going to do the same thing ourselves," Ruth said. "Let us be
+fair, Min."
+
+"But this feller means to git it all," snapped the prospector's
+daughter, nodding at "the hermit."
+
+"It means a lot to me--this business," the young man muttered. "More than
+I can tell you. _It means everything to me_."
+
+He spoke so earnestly that the trio felt uncomfortable. Even Min did not
+seem able to ask another personal question. Her father drawled:
+
+"Seems to me I seen you 'round Yucca, didn't I, Mister?"
+
+"Yes. I stayed there for a while. With a man named Braun."
+
+"Yep. Out on the trail to Kaster."
+
+"Yes," said "the hermit."
+
+"Oh!" ejaculated Ruth, suddenly. "Was his rural delivery box number
+twenty-four?"
+
+"What?" asked "the hermit." "Yes, it was."
+
+Ruth opened her lips again; then she shut them tightly. She would not
+speak further of this subject before Flapjack and Min.
+
+"Well," the latter said irritably. "No use standin' here all day. We're
+goin' to stake out them claims and put up notices. And we don't want 'em
+teched, neither."
+
+"If mine are not touched you may be sure I shall not interfere with
+yours," said the young man stiffly, turning his back on them and
+hobbling to his waiting pony.
+
+Ruth wanted to say something else to him; then she hesitated. Then the
+young man rode away, the crutches dangling over his shoulder by a cord.
+
+She left Peters and Min to stake out the claims, having written the
+notices for her own, and for Helen's and Jennie's and Rebecca Frayne's
+claims as well. It was agreed that nothing was to be said at the camp
+about the find. As soon as she arrived she took Helen and Jennie aside
+and warned them.
+
+"As Min says, we'll 'button up our lips,'" Jennie said. "Oh, I can keep
+a secret! But who will go to Kingman to file on the claims?"
+
+That was what was puzzling Ruth. Flapjack, who knew all about such
+things--and knew the shortest trail, of course--was not to be trusted. He
+had money in his pocket and as Min said, a little money drove the man to
+drink.
+
+"And Min can't go. She is needed in several further scenes of the
+picture," groaned Ruth.
+
+"I tell you what," Helen said eagerly, "we have just got to take one
+other person into our confidence."
+
+"You are right," agreed Ruth. "I know whom you mean, Nell. Tom, of
+course."
+
+"Yes, Tom is perfectly safe," said Helen. "He won't even go up there and
+stake out a claim for himself if I tell him not to. But he _will_ rush
+to Kingman and file on our claims."
+
+"And take these specimens of ore to the assayer," put in Ruth.
+
+It was so agreed, and when Min and her father reappeared at the camp the
+suggestion was made to them. Evidently the Western girl had been much
+puzzled about this very thing and she hailed the suggestion with
+acclaim.
+
+"Seems to me I ought to be the one to file on them claims," Flapjack
+said slowly. "And takin' one more into this thing means spreadin' it out
+thinner."
+
+"I wouldn't trust you to go to Kingman with money in your pocket,"
+declared his daughter frankly. "You know, Pop, you said long ago that if
+ever you did strike it rich you was goin' to be a gentleman and cut out
+all the rough stuff."
+
+"That's right," admitted Mr. Peters. "Me for a plug hat and a white vest
+with a gold watchchain across it, and a good _seegar_ in my mouth. Yes,
+sir! That's me. And a feller can't afford to git 'toxicated and roll
+'round the streets with them sort of duds on--no sir! If this is my lucky
+strike I've sure got to live up to it."
+
+Ruth wondered if clothes were going to make such a vast difference to
+both Min and her father. Yet lesser things than clothes have been
+elements of regeneration in human lives.
+
+However, it was agreed that Tom must be taken into the gold hunters'
+confidence. He was certainly surprised and wanted to rush right over to
+look at the ridge. But they showed him the gold-bearing ore instead and
+he had to be satisfied with that.
+
+For time was pressing. "The hermit's" partner might return with a crowd
+of hired workers and trouble might ensue. Without doubt Royal and his
+mate had intended to open the entire length of the ledge and gain
+possession of it. The mining law made it imperative that the claims
+should be of a certain area and each claim must be worked within so many
+months. But there are ways of circumventing the law in Arizona as well
+as in other places.
+
+"I wonder who that partner of the lame fellow is?" Ruth murmured, as
+they were talking it over while Tom Cameron was making his preparations
+for departure.
+
+"Same name as R'yal," said Min, briefly. "Must be brothers."
+
+This statement rather puzzled Ruth. It certainly dissipated certain
+suspicions she had gained from her visits to the cabin in the distant
+arroyo, where "the hermit" lived.
+
+Tom left the camp before night, carrying a good map of the trails to the
+north as far as Kingman. He was supposed to be going on some private
+errand for himself, and as he had no connection at all with the moving
+picture activities his departure was scarcely noted.
+
+Besides, Mr. Grimes and the actors were just then preparing for one of
+the biggest scenes to be incorporated in the film of "The Forty-Niners."
+This was the hold-up of the wagon train by Indians and it was staged on
+the old trail leading south out of Freezeout.
+
+The wagons that had carted the paraphernalia over from Yucca had tops
+just like the old emigrant wagons in '49. There were only a few real
+Indians in Mr. Grimes' company; but some of the cowboys dressed in
+Indian war-dress. For picture purposes there seemed a crowd of them when
+the action took place.
+
+Everybody went out to see the film taken, and the fight and massacre of
+the gold hunters seemed very realistic. Indeed, one part of it came near
+to being altogether too realistic.
+
+One of the punchers working with the company had announced before that
+there was either a bunch of wild horses in the vicinity, or a lone
+stallion strayed from some ranch. The horse in question had been sighted
+several times, and its hoofprints were often seen within half a mile of
+Freezeout.
+
+The girls, while riding in a party through the hills, had spied the
+black and white creature, standing on a pinnacle and gazing, snorting,
+down upon the bridled ponies. The lone horse seemed to be attracted by
+those of his breed, yet feared to approach them while under the saddle.
+And, of course, the horses of the outfit were all picketed near the
+camp.
+
+In the midst of the rehearsal of the Indian hold-up, when the emigrant's
+ponies were stampeded by the redskins, the lone horse appeared and,
+snorting and squealing, tried to join the herd of tame horses and lead
+them away.
+
+"It's an 'old rogue' stallion, that's what it is," Ben Lester, one of
+the real Indians remarked. He had been to Harvard and had come back to
+his family in Arizona to straighten out business affairs, and was
+waiting for the Government to untangle much red tape before getting his
+share of the Southern Ute grant.
+
+"He acts like he was locoed to me," declared Felix Burns, the horse
+wrangler, who, much to his disgust, had to "act in them fool pitchers"
+as well as handle the stock for the outfit. "Looky there! If he comes
+for you, beat him off with your quirts. A bite from him might send man
+or beast jest as crazy as a mad dog."
+
+"Do you mean that the stallion is really mad?" asked Ruth, who was
+riding near the Indians, but, of course, out of the focus of the camera.
+
+"Just as mad as a dog with hydrophobia--and just as dangerous," declared
+Ben. "You ladies keep back. We may have to beat the brute off. He's a
+pretty bird, but if he's locoed, he'd better be dead than afoot--poor
+creature."
+
+The strangely acting stallion did not come near enough, however, for the
+boys to use their quirts. Nor did he bite any of the loose horses. He
+seemed to have an idea of leading the pack astray, that was all; and
+when the ponies were rounded up the stallion disappeared again,
+whistling shrilly, over the nearest ridge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI--A PERIL OF THE SADDLE
+
+
+Helen and Jennie, as they had promised, kept away from the ridge where
+the gold-bearing rock had been found. But the next afternoon when Ruth
+went for a gallop over the hills she chose a direction that would bring
+her around to the rear of the ledge.
+
+She left her pony and climbed the hill on foot. For some distance along
+the length of the ledge and toward what was believed to be the richer
+end, Flapjack and Min had staked out the claims. They followed the two
+staked by the lame young man and his partner, and "R. Fielding" was on
+the notice stuck up on the one next to the claims of the mysterious
+young man and his partner.
+
+"Well, nobody's disturbed them, that is sure. Tom is pounding away just
+as fast as he can go for Kingman. Dates and time mean much in
+establishing mining claims, I believe. But if Tom gets to the county
+office and files on these claims before this other party can get on the
+site to jump them--if that is what they really mean to do--in the end we
+ought to be able to get judgment in the courts."
+
+Yet, somehow, she could not believe that "the hermit" was the sort of
+man who would do anything crooked. Satisfied that none of the stakes had
+been disturbed she returned to her pony and started him into the east
+again.
+
+In a few moments she found herself following that half-defined path that
+she had ridden on the day she had first seen the secret cabin and the
+lame man in it. She had never mentioned this adventure to any of the
+girls. Ruth was, by nature, cautious without being really secretive. And
+when a second person was a party to any secret she was not the girl to
+chatter.
+
+She hesitated, if the pony did not, in following this route. Half a
+dozen times she might have pulled out and taken a side turn, or ridden
+into another arroyo and so escaped seeing that hidden cabin again.
+
+It must be confessed, however, that Ruth Fielding was curious. Very
+curious indeed. And she had reason to be. The gymnasium cap she had seen
+in "the hermit's" cabin pointed to a most astounding possibility. She
+had not believed in the first place that "the hermit" was entirely alone
+in this wild and lonely spot. Now he had admitted the existence of a
+partner. Who was it?
+
+She was deep in thought as her pony carried her at an easy canter down
+into the arroyo at the far end of which the cabin stood. Suddenly her
+mount lifted his head and challenged.
+
+"Whoa! what's the matter with you? What are you squealing at?" demanded
+Ruth, tightening her grasp on the reins.
+
+She glanced around and saw nothing at first. Then the pony squealed
+again, and as it did so there came an answering equine hail from the
+mesquite. There was a crash in the bushes; then out upon the open ground
+charged the lone stallion that had the day before troubled the picture
+making company.
+
+There was good blood in the handsome brute. He was several hands higher
+than the cow pony, and his legs were as slender and shapely as a
+Morgan's. His muzzle was as glossy as satin; his nostrils a deep red and
+he blew through them and expanded them with ears pricked forward and
+yellow teeth bared--making altogether a striking picture, but one that
+Ruth Fielding would much rather have seen on the screen than here in
+reality.
+
+She raised her quirt and brought it down upon her pony's flank. He
+sprang forward under the lash but was not quick enough to escape the mad
+stallion. That brute got directly in the path and they collided.
+
+Ruth was almost unseated, while the clashing teeth of the free horse
+barely grazed her legging. He snapped again at the rump of the plunging
+pony, but missed.
+
+The girl was seriously frightened. What Ben Lester and the other
+cowpuncher had said about the stallion seemed to be true. Did he have
+hydrophobia just the same as a dog that runs mad?
+
+Whether the beast was afflicted with the rabies or not, Ruth did not
+want either herself or the pony bitten. She had seen enough of
+half-tamed horses on Silver Ranch in Montana to know that there is
+scarcely an animal more savage than a wild stallion.
+
+And if this black and white beast had eaten of the loco weed which, in
+some sections of the Southwest is quite common, he was much more
+dangerous than the bear Min Peters had shot as they came over from
+Yucca.
+
+She tried to start her pony along the bottom of the arroyo on the back
+track; but the squealing stallion had got around behind them and again
+charged with open jaws, the froth flying from his curled-back lips.
+
+So she wheeled her mount, clinging desperately with her knees to his
+heaving sides, and once more lashed him with the quirt.
+
+Since she had ridden him that first day out of Yucca Ruth had been in
+the saddle almost every day since; but so far she had never had occasion
+to use the whip on her pony. He was a spirited bit of horseflesh, not
+much more than half the size of the stallion. The quirt embittered him.
+
+Although he wheeled to run, facing down the arroyo again, he began to
+buck instead. His heels suddenly were thrown out and just grazed the
+stallion's nose, while Ruth came close to flying out of her saddle and
+over his head.
+
+If she was once unhorsed Ruth suddenly realized that her fate would be
+sealed. The stallion rose up on his hind legs, squealing and whistling,
+and struck at her with his sharp hoofs.
+
+It was a moment of grave peril for Ruth Fielding.
+
+Again and again she beat her mount, and again and again he went up into
+the air, landing stiff-legged, and with all four feet close together.
+Then she swung the stinging lash across the face of the stallion.
+
+It was a cruel blow and it laid open the satiny, black skin of the angry
+brute right across his nose. He squealed and fell back. The pony whirled
+and again Ruth struck at their common enemy.
+
+Lashing the stallion seemed a better thing than punishing her own
+frightened mount, and as the mad horse circled her the girl struck again
+and again, once cutting open the stallion's shoulder and drawing blood
+in profusion.
+
+The fight was not won so easily, however. The pony danced around and
+around trying to keep his heels to the stallion; the latter endeavored
+to get in near enough to use either his fore-hoofs in striking, or his
+teeth to tear the girl or her mount.
+
+And then Ruth unexpectedly heard a shout. Somebody at the top of his
+voice ordered her to "Lie down on his neck--I'm going to fire!"
+
+She saw nothing; she had no idea where this prospective rescuer stood;
+but she was wise enough to obey. She seized the pony's mane and lay as
+close to his neck as possible. The next instant the report of a heavy
+rifle drowned even the squealing of the stallion.
+
+He had risen on his hind feet, his fore-hoofs beating the air, the foam
+flying from his lips, his yellow teeth gleaming. A more frightful,
+threatening figure could scarcely be imagined, it seemed to the girl of
+the Red Mill in her dire peril.
+
+At the rifle shot he toppled over backward, crashing to the earth with a
+scream that was almost human. There he lay on his back for a minute.
+
+Out of the brush hobbled the young man named Royal. He was getting
+around without his crutches now. The gun in his hand was still smoking.
+
+"Have you a rope?" he shouted. "If you have I'll noose him."
+
+"No. I haven't a rope, though Ann is always telling me never to ride
+without one in this country."
+
+"I think she's right--whoever Ann is," said the young man, with that
+humorous twist to his features that Ruth so liked. "A rope out here is
+handier than a little red wagon. Come on, quick! I only creased that
+stallion. He may not have had the fight all taken out of him--the
+ferocious beast!"
+
+The black and white horse was already trying to struggle to his feet.
+Perhaps he was not badly hurt. Ruth controlled her pony, and he was
+headed down the arroyo.
+
+"Where is your horse, Mr. Royal?" she asked the lame young man.
+
+He started and looked a little oddly at her when she called him that;
+but he replied:
+
+"My horse is down at the cabin. I was just trying my legs a little.
+Glory! I almost turned my ankle again that time."
+
+He was hobbling pretty badly now, for he had been too excited while
+shooting the mad stallion to be careful of his lame ankle. Ruth was out
+of the saddle in a moment.
+
+"Get right up here," she commanded. "We'll get to your cabin and be
+safe. I can go back to camp by another way."
+
+"Not alone," he declared, firmly, as he scrambled into her place on the
+pony. "I'll ride with you. That beast is not done for yet."
+
+But the stallion did not pursue them. He stood rather wabblingly and
+shook his head, and turned in slow circles as though he were dazed. The
+rifle shot had not, however, permanently injured him.
+
+They were quickly out of the sight of the scene of Ruth's peril. The
+young man looked down at her, trudging hot and dusty beside the pony,
+and his face crinkled into a broad smile again.
+
+"You're some girl," he said. "I'd dearly love to know your name and just
+who you are. My--That is, my partner says you are a bunch of movie actors
+over there at Freezeout. But, of course, that old-timer who was up on
+the ridge and the girl in--er--overalls, were not actors. How about you?"
+
+"Yes," said Ruth, amusedly. "I act. Sometimes."
+
+"Get out!"
+
+"I did. Out of my saddle to give you my seat. You should be more
+polite."
+
+He burst into open laughter at this. "You're all right," he declared.
+"Do you mind telling me your name?"
+
+"Fielding. Miss Fielding, Mr. Royal."
+
+He grinned at her wickedly. "You've got only half of _my_ name," he
+said.
+
+"Indeed?" she cried. "Yes, I suppose, like other people, you must have a
+first name."
+
+"I have a last name," he chuckled.
+
+"What?" Ruth gasped. "Isn't Royal----"
+
+"That is what I was christened. Phelps is the rest of it--Royal Phelps."
+
+"I knew it! I felt it!" declared Ruth, stopping in the trail and making
+the pony stop, too. "You are Edith Phelps' brother. I was puzzled as I
+could be, for I believed, since the first day I met you, that must be so
+and that she had been with you at that cabin."
+
+"Why," he asked curiously, "how did you come to know my sister?"
+
+"Go to college with her," said Ruth, shortly, and moving on again. "And
+she was on the train with us coming West."
+
+"And you did not know where she was coming? Of course not! It was a
+secret."
+
+"She knew where _we_ were coming," said Ruth, briefly.
+
+"Then you're not a movie actress?"
+
+"I'm a freshman at Ardmore. But I do act--once in a while. There are a
+party of us girls from Ardmore, with one of the teachers, roughing it at
+Freezeout Camp. The movie people are there, too. We are acquainted with
+them."
+
+"Well, I'm mighty sorry my sister isn't here----"
+
+"Is she your partner, Mr. Phelps?" Ruth asked.
+
+"Sure thing! And a bully good one. When I was hurt and couldn't ride so
+far, she set off alone to find her way over the trails to Kingman."
+
+"Oh!" Ruth cried. "Aren't you worried about her? Have you heard----?"
+
+"Not a word. But it isn't time yet. Edith is a smart girl," declared the
+brother with confidence. "She'll make it all right. I don't expect her
+back for a week yet."
+
+"Oh! but we expect Tom----"
+
+"What Tom?" asked Phelps, suspiciously.
+
+"My chum's brother. He started--started day before yesterday--for Kingman
+to file on our claims. We expect him back in ten days, or two weeks at
+the longest. Why, we shall probably be all through taking the pictures
+by that time!"
+
+"Look here, Miss Fielding," said the young man, his face suddenly
+gloomy. "Can't you fix it so we can buy up your claims along that ridge?
+It means a lot to me."
+
+"Why, Mr. Phelps!" exclaimed Ruth, "don't you suppose it means something
+to the rest of us? If it is really a valuable gold deposit."
+
+"Not what it means to me," he returned soberly, and rode in silence the
+rest of the way to the cabin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII--RUTH HEARS SOMETHING
+
+
+Ruth Fielding was particularly interested in the situation of "the
+hermit," Edith Phelps' brother. But she was not deeply enough interested
+in him or in his desires to give up her own expectation from the
+gold-bearing ledge on the ridge.
+
+She remembered very clearly what Helen Cameron had told her about this
+young Royal Phelps. She had not known his name, of course, and the fact
+that Min Peters that day on the ridge had not explained fully what
+Royal's last name was, had caused the girl some further puzzlement.
+
+The character the tale about Edith's brother had given that young man
+did not seem to fit this "hermit" either. This fellow seemed so
+gentlemanly and so amusing, that she could scarcely believe him the
+worthless character he was pictured. Yet, his presence here in the
+wilds, and Edith's coming out to him so secretly, pointed to a mystery
+that teased the girl of the Red Mill.
+
+When they came to the cabin door, and Royal Phelps slid carefully out of
+her saddle, Ruth said easily:
+
+"I wish you'd tell me all about yourself, Mr. Phelps. I am curious--and
+frank to say so."
+
+"I don't blame you," he admitted, smiling suddenly again--and Ruth
+thought that smile the most disarming she had ever seen. Royal Phelps
+might have been disgraced at college, but she believed it must have been
+through his fun-loving disposition rather than because of any
+viciousness.
+
+"I don't blame you for feeling curiosity," the young man repeated,
+seating himself gingerly in the doorway. "If I had a chair I'd offer it
+to you, Miss Fielding."
+
+"Thanks. I'll hop on my pony. I'll get yours for you before I go."
+
+"Wait a bit," he urged. "I am going with you when you return to that
+town. That wild beast of a horse may be rampaging around again."
+
+"Ugh!" ejaculated Ruth with no feigned shudder. "He was awful!"
+
+"Now you've said something! But you are a mighty cool girl, Miss
+Fielding. What Edie would have done----"
+
+"She would have done quite as well as I, I have no doubt," Ruth hastened
+to say. "And I have been in the West before, Mr. Phelps."
+
+"Yes? You are really a movie actor?"
+
+"Sometimes."
+
+"And a college girl?"
+
+"Always!" laughed his visitor.
+
+"I believe you are puzzling me intentionally."
+
+"I told you that I was puzzled about you."
+
+"I suppose so," he laughed. "Well, tit for tat. You tell me and I'll
+tell you."
+
+"I trust to your honor," she said, with mock seriousness. "I will tell
+you my secret. Really, I am not a movie actress--save by brevet."
+
+"I thought not!" he exclaimed with warmth.
+
+"Why, they are very nice folk!" Ruth told him. "Much nicer than you
+suppose. I am really writing the scenario Mr. Hammond is producing."
+
+"Goodness!" he exclaimed. "A literary person?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"But why didn't Edie tell me something about you? She went over there
+and took a peep at you."
+
+"I fancied so. The girls thought her an Indian squaw. That would please
+Edie--if I know her at all," said Ruth with sarcasm.
+
+"I'll have to tell her," he grinned.
+
+"Better not. She does not like us any too well. Us freshmen, I mean. You
+know," Ruth decided to explain, "there is an insurmountable wall between
+freshmen and sophs."
+
+"I ought to know," murmured Royal Phelps, and his face clouded.
+
+Ruth, determined to get to the root of this mysterious matter, thrust in
+a deep probe: "I believe you have been to college, Mr. Phelps?"
+
+He reddened to his ears. "Oh, yes," he answered shortly.
+
+"And then did you come out here to go into the mining business?" she
+continued, with some cruelty, for he was writhing.
+
+"After the pater put me out--yes," he said, looking directly at her now,
+even though his face flamed.
+
+Ruth was doubly assured that Royal Phelps could not be as black as he
+was painted. "Though I do not believe any painter could reflect the
+Italian sunset hue that now mantles his brow," she thought.
+
+"I am sorry that you have had trouble with your father. Is it
+insurmountable?" she asked him quietly, and with the air that always
+gave even strangers confidence in Ruth Fielding.
+
+"I hope not," he admitted. "I was mad enough when I came away. I just
+wanted to 'show him.' But now I'd like to _show him_. Do--do you get me?"
+
+"There is no difference in the words, but a great deal in the
+inflection, Mr. Phelps," Ruth said quietly.
+
+"Well. You're an understandable girl. After I had come a cropper at
+Harvard--silly thing, too, but made the whole faculty wild," and here he
+grinned like a naughty small boy at the remembrance--"the pater said I
+wasn't worth the powder to blow me to Halifax. And I guess he was right.
+But he'd not given me a chance.
+
+"Said I'd never done a lick of work and probably wouldn't. Said I was
+cut out for a rich man's wastrel or a tramp. Said I shouldn't be the
+first with _his_ money. Told James to show me the outer portal with the
+brass plate on it, and bring in the 'welcome' mat so that I wouldn't
+stand there and think it meant _me_.
+
+"So I came away from there," finished Royal Phelps with a wry face.
+
+"Oh, that was terrible!" Ruth declared with clasped hands and all the
+sympathy that the most exacting prodigal could expect. "But, of course,
+he didn't mean it."
+
+"Mean it? You don't know Costigan Phelps. He never says anything he
+doesn't mean. Let me tell you it won't be a slippery day when I show up
+at the paternal mansion. The pater certainly will not run out and fall
+on either my neck or his own. There'll be nobody at the home plate to
+see me coming and hail me: 'Kill the fatted prodigal; here comes the
+calf!' Believe me!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Phelps!" begged Ruth. "Don't talk that way. I know just how you
+feel. And you are trying to hide it----"
+
+"With airy persiflage--yes," he admitted, turning serious. "Well, pater's
+made a lot of money in mines. I said to Edie: 'I'll shoot for the West
+and locate a few and so attract his attention to the Young Napoleon of
+mines in his own field.' It looked easy."
+
+"Of course," whispered Ruth.
+
+"But it wasn't."
+
+"Of course again," and the girl smiled.
+
+"Grin away. It helps _you_ to bear it," scoffed Royal Phelps. "But it
+doesn't help the 'down and outer' a bit to grin. I know. I've tried it
+ever since last fall."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"I finally got to rummaging out through these hills. I came with a party
+of sheep herders. You know the Prodigal Son only herded hogs. _That's_
+an aristocratic game out here in the West beside sheep herding. Believe
+me!
+
+"It puts a man in the last row when he fools with sheep. When I went
+down to Yucca nobody would have anything to do with me but old Braun.
+And he was owning sheep right then.
+
+"If I went into a place the fellows would hold their noses and tiptoe
+out. You know, it's a joke out here: A couple of fellows made a bet as
+to which was the most odoriferous--a sheep or a Greaser. So they put up
+the money and selected a judge.
+
+"They brought the sheep into the judge's cabin and the judge fainted.
+Then they brought in the Greaser and the sheep fainted. So, you see,
+aside from Greasers, I didn't have many what you'd call close friends."
+
+Ruth's lips formed the words "Poor boy!" but she would not have given
+voice to them for the world. Still, for some reason, Royal Phelps, who
+was looking directly at her, nodded his head gratefully.
+
+"Tough times, eh? Well, I'd seen something up here in these hills. I'd
+been studying about mineral deposits--especially gold signs. I saved
+enough money to get a small outfit and this pony I ride. I'd brought my
+gun on from the East. I started out prospecting with scarcely a
+grubstake. But nobody around here would have trusted a tenderfoot like
+me. I was bound to do it on my lonely, if I did it at all."
+
+"Weren't you afraid to start off alone?" asked Ruth. "Mr. Peters says it
+is dangerous for _one_ to go prospecting."
+
+"Yes. But lots of the old-timers do. And this 'new-timer' did it.
+Nothing bit me," he added dryly.
+
+"So I came back here and knocked up this cabin. Pretty good for 'mamma's
+baby boy,' isn't it?" and he laughed shortly. "That's what some of the
+Lazy C punchers called me when I first came into their neighborhood.
+
+"Well, mamma's boy played a lone hand and found that ledge of gold ore.
+For it is gold I know. I had some specimens assayed."
+
+"So did we," confessed Ruth, eagerly.
+
+He scowled again. "You girls--movie actresses, college girls, or whoever
+you are--are likely to queer this whole business for me. Say!" he added,
+"that one in the overalls isn't an Ardmore freshman, is she?"
+
+"Hardly," laughed Ruth. "But she needs a gold mine a good deal more than
+the rest of us do."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII--MORE OF IT
+
+
+Royal Phelps continued very grave and silent for a few moments after
+Ruth's last statement. Then he groaned.
+
+"Well, it can't be helped! None of you can want that ledge of gold more
+than I do. That I know. But, of course, your claims are perfectly
+legitimate. It is a fact the men Edith will bring out with her are under
+contract. I sent her to a lawyer in Kingman who understands such things.
+An agreement with the men covers all the claims they may stake out on
+this certain ledge--dimensions in contract, and all that. I wanted to
+start the work, make a showing with reports of assayers and all, then
+send it to a friend of mine in New York who graduated from college last
+year and went into his father's brokerage shop, and he would put shares
+in my mine on the market. With the money, I hoped to develop and--Well!
+what's the use of talking about it? We'll get our little slice and that
+is all, if you girls and the other folks that have staked claims hang on
+to your ownings."
+
+"Tell me how you came to get Edith into it?" asked Ruth without
+commenting upon his statement.
+
+"Why, she's a good old sport, Edie is," declared the brother warmly.
+"She stood up to the pater for me. She can do most anything with him.
+But I've got to do something before he lets down the bars to me, even
+for her sake.
+
+"We kept in correspondence, Edie and I, all through the winter. When I
+found this gold I wrote her hotfoot. I did not dare file my claim. It
+would cause comment and perhaps start a rush this way."
+
+"I see."
+
+"And you can easily understand," he chuckled, "how startled Edie was
+when, as she told me, she learned that several girls she knew were
+coming out here to old Freezeout to work with some movie people. Of
+course, she did not tell me just who you were, Miss Fielding."
+
+"I suppose not."
+
+"No. Well, she was suspicious of you, she said. Wanted to know just when
+you were coming and how. She desired to get to Yucca as soon as
+possible, but she had to spend some time with the pater. Poor old chap!
+he thinks the world and all of her--in his way.
+
+"Well, she had to do some shopping in New York, and went to a friend's
+house. The chauffeur who drove them around was a decent fellow and she
+told him to keep a watch on the Delorphion for you folks. You went
+there, didn't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" exclaimed Ruth, remembering Tom's story.
+
+"So did she--for one night. She took the same train you did and an
+accident gave her some advantage. I don't think she was nice to that
+friend of yours that she made tag on with her as far as Handy, where I
+met her," added Royal Phelps, slowly.
+
+"Oh!" was Ruth's dry comment.
+
+"But she was mighty secretive, you know," apologized the young man. "You
+see, we really had to be."
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"Well, that's about all. Edie brought the money. She has some of her own
+and the pater gave her five thousand without asking a question. She and
+I are really partners. We're going to show him--if we can."
+
+"I think it is fine of you, Mr. Phelps!" cried Ruth, with enthusiasm.
+"And--and I think your sister is a sister worth having."
+
+"Oh, you can bet she is!" he agreed. "Edie is all right. I couldn't
+begin to pull this off if it were not for her. I expect the pater will
+say so in the end. But if I can show some money for what I have done--a
+bunch of it--it will be all right with him."
+
+Ruth made no further comment here. She saw plainly that Royal Phelps'
+father probably weighed everybody and everything on the same scales upon
+which precious metals are weighed.
+
+"Now I'll catch your pony, Mr. Phelps," she said. "If you want to ride
+back with me I'll introduce you to the girls and Miss Cullam."
+
+"That's nice of you. Perfectly bully, you know. Or, as they say out
+here, 'skookum!' But I guess I'd better wait till Edie returns. Let her
+do the honors. Besides, I am not at all sure that we sha'n't be enemies,
+Miss Fielding--worse luck."
+
+"Oh, no, Mr. Phelps," Ruth said warmly. "Never _that!_"
+
+"I don't know," he grumbled, hobbling on his crutches now while she
+walked toward the pony that was trailing his picket-rope. "You see, I'm
+pretty desperate about this gold strike. I've a good mind to go up there
+on the ridge and pull up all your stakes and throw 'em away."
+
+"I wouldn't," she advised, smiling at him. "Mr. Flapjack Peters has what
+they call a 'sudden' temper; and his daughter, we found out coming over
+from Yucca, is a dead shot."
+
+"I want a big slice of that ledge," said the young man, sighing. "Enough
+to make a showing in the Eastern share market."
+
+"Let us wait and see. You know, you might be able to buy up us
+girls--three of us who hold the next three claims to yours and your
+sister's."
+
+"Oh! Would you do it?" he demanded, brightening up.
+
+"Perhaps. And we might wait for our money till you got the mine to
+working on a paying basis," Ruth said seriously. "Besides, there is Min
+Peters and her father. If you would take them into your company, so that
+they would have an income, Peters would be of great use to you, Mr.
+Phelps."
+
+"Look here! I'll do anything fair," cried the young man. "It isn't that
+I am just after the money for the money's sake----"
+
+"I understand," she told him, nodding. "We'll talk about it later. After
+we get reports on the ore that Peters took specimens of, all along the
+ledge. But I am afraid your sister's bringing workmen up here will start
+a stampede to Freezeout."
+
+"What do we care, as long as we get ours?" he cried, cheerfully. "Whew!
+The pater may think I am some good after all, before this business is
+over."
+
+They mounted their ponies and rode to the camp. They followed the very
+route Ruth had come, but did not see the wounded wild horse again. Royal
+Phelps left her when they came in sight of Freezeout and Ruth rode down
+into the camp alone.
+
+She told the camp wrangler something about her adventure and the next
+day he went out with some of the Indians and punchers working for the
+outfit, and they ran down the black and white stallion.
+
+However, Ruth had less interest in the wild stallion than she had in
+several other subjects. She quietly told the girls and Miss Cullam now
+about the possible discovery of a rich gold-bearing ledge so near camp.
+The Ardmore's were naturally greatly excited.
+
+"Stingy!" cried Trix Davenport. "Why not tell us all before?"
+
+"Because those who found it had first rights," Ruth said gravely. "I
+_did_ stake out a claim for Rebecca. And I think Miss Cullam comes
+next."
+
+"Oh, girls! _Real gold?_" gasped the teacher, while Rebecca was
+speechless with amazement.
+
+There was certainly a small "rush" that evening for the gold-bearing
+ledge. Miss Cullam staked her claim and put up a notice next to Rebecca
+Frayne. All the other Ardmore's followed suit; even Ann Hicks was bitten
+by the fever of gold seeking.
+
+They must have been watched, for not a few of the actors began to stake
+out claims as best they knew how and put up notices on the outskirts of
+the line along the summit of the ridge followed by those first to know
+of the gold.
+
+The Western men, the teamsters and others, laughed at the whole business
+and tried to tease Flapjack Peters; but they could get nothing out of
+him. Then some of them saw samples of the ore. The next morning found
+Freezeout Camp almost abandoned. Everybody who had not already done so
+was prowling around that half mile ridge of land, trying to stake claims
+as near to the top of the ledge as he could.
+
+"And at that," Min said gloomily, "some of these fellers that caught on
+last may have the best of it. We don't know where the richest ore is
+yet."
+
+Mr. Hammond and his director were nearly beside themselves. That day the
+company was so distraught that not a foot of film was made.
+
+"How can I tell these crazy gold hunters how to act like _real_ gold
+hunters?" growled Grimes.
+
+"If other people come flocking in the whole thing will be ruined,"
+groaned Mr. Hammond.
+
+Ruth Fielding did not believe that. She began to get a vision of what a
+real gold rush might mean. If they could get a _bona fide_ stampede on
+the film she believed it would add a hundred per cent. to the value of
+"The Forty-Niners."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV--THE REAL THING
+
+
+Freezeout Camp had awakened. Many of the old shacks and cabins had been
+repaired and made habitable for the purposes of the moving picture
+company. The largest dance hall--"The Palace of Pleasure" as it was
+called on the film--was just as Flapjack Peters remembered it, back in an
+earlier rush for placer gold to this spot.
+
+Behind the rough bar, on the shelves, however, were only empty bottles,
+or, at most, those filled with colored water. Mr. Hammond had been
+careful to keep liquor out of the rejuvenated camp.
+
+Flapjack Peters began to look like a different man. Whether it was his
+enforced abstinence from drink, or the fact that he saw ahead the
+possibility of wealth and the tall hat and white vest of which he had
+dreamed, he walked erect and looked every man straight in the eye.
+
+"It gets me!" said Min to Ruth Fielding. "Pop ain't looked like this
+since I kin remember."
+
+Two days of this excitement passed. The motion picture people "were
+getting down to earth again," as Mr. Grimes said, and the girls were
+beginning to expect Tom Cameron's return, when one noon the head of a
+procession was seen advancing through the nearest pass in the mountain
+range to the west. As Ruth and others watched, the procession began to
+wind down into the shallow gorge where the long "petered-out" placer
+diggings of Freezeout had been located, and where the rejuvenated town
+itself still stood.
+
+"What under the sun can these people want?" gasped Mr. Hammond, the
+president of the film-making company, to Ruth.
+
+The girl of the Red Mill was in riding habit and she had her pony near
+at hand. "I'll ride up and see," she said.
+
+But the instant she had sighted the first group of hurrying riders and
+the first wagon, she believed she understood. Word of the "strike" at
+the old camp had in some way become noised abroad.
+
+Before Edith Phelps and the men she was to hire, with the Kingman
+lawyer's aid, reached the ledge her brother had located, other people
+had heard the news. These were the first of "the gold rush."
+
+She spurred her horse up into the pass and ran the pony half a mile
+before she turned him and raced back to Mr. Hammond. She came with
+flying hair and rosy cheeks to the worried president, bursting with an
+idea that had assailed her mind.
+
+"Mr. Hammond! It is the greatest sight you ever saw! Get the camera man
+and hurry right up there to the mouth of the pass. Tell Mr. Grimes----"
+
+"What do you mean?" snapped the president of the Alectrion Film
+Corporation. "Do you want to disorganize my whole company again?"
+
+"I want to show you the greatest moving picture that ever was taken!"
+cried the girl of the Red Mill. "Oh, Mr. Hammond, you _must_ take it! It
+must be incorporated in this film. Why! _it is the real thing!_"
+
+"What is that? A joke?" he growled.
+
+"No joke at all, I assure you," said Ruth, patiently. "You can see them
+coming through the pass--and beyond--for miles and miles. Men afoot, on
+horseback, in all kinds of wagons, on burros--oh, it is simply great!
+There are hundreds and hundreds of them. Why, Mr. Hammond! this
+Freezeout Camp is going to be a city before night!"
+
+The chief reason why Mr. Hammond was a wealthy man and one of the powers
+in the motion picture world was because he could seize upon a new idea
+and appreciate its value in a moment. He knew that Ruth was a sane girl
+and that she had judgment, as well as imagination. He gaped at her for a
+moment, perhaps; the next he was shouting for Mr. Grimes, for the camera
+men, for the horse wrangler, and for the "call-boy" to round up the
+company.
+
+In half an hour a train set out for the pass, which met the first of the
+advance guard of gold seekers pouring down into the valley. The
+eager-faced men of all ages and apparently of all walks in life hurried
+on almost silently toward the spot where they were told a ledge of free
+gold had been found.
+
+There were roughly dressed teamsters, herdsmen, nondescripts; there were
+Mexicans and Indians; there were well dressed city men--lawyers, doctors,
+other professional men, perhaps. Afterward Ruth read in an Arizona
+newspaper that such a typical stampede to any new-found gold or silver
+strike had not been seen in a decade.
+
+A camera man set up his machine in a good spot and waited for the whole
+film company to drift along into the pass and join the real gold seekers
+that streamed down toward Freezeout.
+
+This idea of Ruth Fielding's was the crowning achievement of her work on
+this film. The company came back to the cabins at evening, wearied and
+dust-choked, to find, as Ruth had prophesied, a veritable city on and
+near the creek.
+
+The newcomers had rushed into the hills and staked out their claims,
+some of them on the very fringe of the valley out of which the
+gold-bearing ledge rose. Of course, many of these claims would be
+worthless.
+
+A lively buying and selling of the more worthless claims was already
+under way. With the stampede had come storekeepers and wagons of
+foodstuffs.
+
+That night nobody slept. Mr. Hammond, realizing what this really meant,
+but feeling none of the itch for digging gold that most of those on the
+spot experienced, organized a local constabulary. A justice of the peace
+was found with intelligence enough, and enough knowledge of the state
+ordinance, to act as magistrate.
+
+The men were called together early in the morning in the biggest dance
+hall and the vast majority--indeed, it was almost unanimous--voted that
+liquor selling be tabooed at Freezeout.
+
+Several men of unsavory reputations who had come, like buzzards scenting
+the carrion from afar, were advised to leave town and stay away. They
+met other men of their stripe on the trail from Handy Gulch and other
+such places, and reported that Freezeout was going to be run "on a
+Sunday-school basis"; there was nothing in it for the usual birds of
+prey that infest such camps.
+
+In a few hours the party coming from Kingman with Edith Phelps and the
+lawyer she had engaged, arrived. The camp about the ridge grew and
+expanded in every direction. Most of the claimholders slept on their
+claims, fearing trickery. Shafts were sunk. The Phelps crowd began to
+set up a small crusher and cyaniding plant that had been trucked over
+the trails.
+
+The moving picture was finished at last, before either Mr. Grimes or Mr.
+Hammond quite lost their minds. Several of the men of the company broke
+their contract with the Alectrion Film Corporation and would remain at
+the diggings. They believed their claims were valuable.
+
+Tom had returned before this with reports from the assayer and copies of
+the filing of the claims. The specimen from Ruth's claim showed one
+hundred and eighty dollars to the ton. The ore from Flapjack Peters and
+Min's claims were, after all, the richest of any of their party, though
+farther down the ledge. The ore taken from those claims showed two
+hundred dollars to the ton.
+
+"We're rich--or we're goin' to be," Min declared to the Ardmore girls and
+Miss Cullam, the last night the Eastern visitors were to remain in
+Freezeout. "That lawyer of R'yal Phelps is goin' to let pop have some
+money and we're both goin' to send for clo'es--some duds! Wish you could
+wait and see me togged up just like a Fourth o' July pony in the
+parade."
+
+"I wish we could, Min!" cried Jennie Stone.
+
+"You shall come East to visit me later," Ruth declared. "Won't you, Min?
+We'll all show you a good time there."
+
+"As though you hadn't showed me the best time I ever had already,"
+choked the Yucca girl. "But I'll come--after I git used to my new
+clo'es."
+
+"Have you and your father really made a bargain with Royal Phelps?" Miss
+Cullam asked, as much interested in the welfare of the suddenly enriched
+girl as her pupils.
+
+"Yes, Ma'am. Pop's going to have an office in the new company, too. And
+Mr. Phelps is goin' to git backin' from the East and buy up all the
+adjoinin' claims that he can."
+
+"He'll have all ours, in time," said Helen. "That's lots better than
+each of us trying to develop her little claim. Oh, that Phelps man is
+smart."
+
+"And what about Edith?" demanded the honest Ruth. "We've got to praise
+her, too."
+
+There was silence. Finally, Miss Cullam said dryly: "She seems to have
+no very enthusiastic friends in the audience, Miss Fielding."
+
+"Oh, well," Ruth said, laughing, "we none of us like Edith."
+
+"How about liking her brother?" asked Jennie Stone, and she seemed to
+say it pointedly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV--UNCLE JABEZ IS CONVERTED
+
+
+It was some months afterward. The growing town of Cheslow had long since
+developed the moving picture fever, and two very nice theatres had been
+built.
+
+One evening in the largest of these theatres an old, gray-faced and
+grim-looking man sat beside a very happy, pretty girl and watched the
+running off of the seven-reel feature, "The Forty-Niners."
+
+If the old man came in under duress and watched the first flashes on the
+screen with scorn, he soon forgot all his objections and sat forward in
+his seat to watch without blinking the scenes thrown, one after another,
+on the sheet.
+
+It really was a wonderfully fine picture. And thrilling!
+
+"Hi mighty!" ejaculated Uncle Jabez Potter, unwillingly enough and under
+his breath in the middle of the picture, "d'ye mean to say you done all
+that, Niece Ruth?"
+
+"I helped," said Ruth, modestly.
+
+"Why, it's as natcheral as the stepstun, I swan!" gasped the miller. "I
+can 'member hearin' many of the men that went out there in the airly
+days tell about what it was like. This is jest like they said it was. I
+don't see how ye did it--an' you was never born even, when them things
+was like that."
+
+"Don't say that, Uncle Jabez," Ruth declared. "For I saw a little bit of
+the real thing. They write me that Freezeout Camp has taken on a new
+lease of life. Mr. Phelps says," and she blushed a little, but it was
+dark and nobody saw it, "that we are all going to make a lot of money
+out of the Freezeout Ledge."
+
+But Uncle Jabez Potter was not listening. He was enthralled again in the
+picture of old days in the mining country. It seemed as though, at last,
+the old miller was converted to the belief that his grand-niece knew a
+deal more than he had given her credit for. To his mind, that she knew
+how to make money was the more important thing.
+
+The final flash of the film reflected on the screen passed and Uncle
+Jabez and Ruth rose to go. It was dark in the theatre and the girl led
+the old man out by the hand. Somehow he clung to her hand more tightly
+than was usually his custom.
+
+"'Tis a wonderful thing, Niece Ruth, I allow," he said when they came
+out into the lamplight of Cheslow's main street. "I--I dunno. You young
+folks seems ter have got clean ahead of us older ones. There's things
+that I ain't never hearn tell of, I guess."
+
+Ruth Fielding laughed. "Why, Uncle Jabez," she said, "the world is just
+full of such a number of things that neither of us knows much about that
+that's what makes it worth living in."
+
+"I dunno; I dunno," he muttered. "Guess you've got to know most of 'em
+now you've gone to that college."
+
+"I am beginning to get a taste of some of them," she cried. "You know I
+have three more years to spend at Ardmore before I can take a degree."
+
+"Huh! Wal, it don't re'lly seem as though knowin' so _much_ did a body
+any good in this world. I hev got along on what little they knocked
+inter my head at deestrict school. And I've made a livin' an' something
+more. But I never could write a movin' picture scenario, that's true.
+And if there's so much money in 'em----"
+
+"Mr. Hammond writes me that he's sure there is going to be a lot of
+money in this one. The State rights are bringing the corporation in
+thousands. Of course, my share is comparatively small; but I feel
+already amply paid for my six weeks spent in Arizona."
+
+This, however, is somewhat ahead of the story. Uncle Jabez' conversion
+was bound to be a slow process. When the party returned from the West
+the person gladdest to see Ruth Fielding was Aunt Alvirah.
+
+The strong and vigorous girl was rather shocked to find the little old
+woman so feeble. She did not get around the kitchen or out of doors
+nearly as actively as had been her wont.
+
+"Oh, my back! an' oh, my bones! Seems ter me, my pretty," she said,
+sinking into her rocking chair, "that things is sort o' slippin' away
+from me. I feel that I am a-growin' lazy."
+
+"Lazy! You couldn't be lazy, Aunt Alvirah," laughed the girl of the Red
+Mill.
+
+"Oh, yes; I 'spect I could," said Aunt Alvirah, nodding. "This here
+M'lissy your uncle's hired to help do the work, is a right capable girl.
+And she's made me lazy. If I undertake ter do a thing, she's there
+before me an' has got it done."
+
+"You need to sit still and let others do the work now," Ruth urged.
+
+"I dunno. What good am I to Jabez Potter? He didn't take me out o' the
+poorhouse fifteen year or more ago jest ter sit around here an' play
+lady. No, ma'am!"
+
+"Oh, Aunty!"
+
+"I dunno but I'd better be back there."
+
+"You'd better not let Uncle Jabez hear you say so," Ruth cried. "Maybe I
+don't always know just how Uncle Jabez feels about me; but I know how he
+looks at _you_, Aunt Alvirah. Don't dare suggest leaving the Red Mill."
+
+The little old woman looked at her steadily, and there were the scant
+tears of age in the furrows of her face.
+
+"I shall be leavin' it some day soon, my pretty. 'Tis a beautiful place
+here--the Red Mill. But there is a Place Prepared. I'm on my way there,
+Ruthie. But, thanks be, I kin cling with one hand to the happy years
+here because of you, while my other hand's stretched out for the feel of
+a Hand that you can't see, my pretty. After all, Ruthie, no matter how
+we live, or what we do, our livin' is jest a preparation for our dyin'."
+
+Nor was this lugubrious. Aunt Alvirah was no long-visaged, unhappy
+creature. The other girls loved to call on her. Helen was at the Red
+Mill this summer quite as much as ever. Jennie Stone and Rebecca Frayne
+both visited Ruth after their return from Freezeout Camp.
+
+It was a cheerful and gay life they led. There much much chatter of the
+happenings at Freezeout, and of the work at the new gold mining camp.
+Min Peters' scrawly letters were read and re-read; her pertinent
+comments on all that went on were always worth reading and were
+sometimes actually funny.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I wish you could see pop," she wrote once. "I mean Mr. Henry James
+Peters. If ever there was a big toad in a little puddle, it's him!
+
+"He's got a hat so shiny that it dazzles you when he's out in the sun.
+It's awful uncomfortable for him to wear, I know. But he wouldn't give
+it up--nor the white vest and the dinky patent leather shoes he's got on
+right now--for all the gold you could name.
+
+"And I'm getting as bad. I sit around in a flowery gown, and there's a
+girl come here to work in the hotel that's trimming my nails and fixing
+my hands up something scandalous. Man-curing, she calls it.
+
+"But the fine clothes has made another man of pop; and I expect they'll
+improve yours truly a whole lot. When we get real used to them, sometime
+we'll come East and see you. I can pretty near trust pop already to go
+into a rumhole here without expecting to see him come out again
+orey-eyed.
+
+"Not that he's shown any dispersition to drink again. He says his
+position is too important in the Freezeout Ledge Gold Mining Company for
+any foolishness. And I'll tell you right now, he's the only member of
+the company now that that Edie girl's gone home that ever is dressed up
+on the job. Mr. Phelps works like as though he'd been used to it all his
+life.
+
+"Let me tell you. _His_ pop's been out here to see him. 'Looking over
+prospects' he called it. But you bet you it was to see what sort of a
+figure his son was cutting here among sure-enough men.
+
+"I reckon the old gentleman was satisfied. I seen them riding over the
+hills together, as well as wandering about the diggings. One night while
+he was here we had a big dance--a regular hoe-down--in the big hall.
+
+"This here big-bug father of Mr. Royal danced with me. What do you know
+about that? 'What do you think of my son?' says he to me while we was
+dancing.
+
+"Says I: 'I think he's got almost as much sense as though he was borned
+and brought up in Arizona. And he knows a whole lot more than most of
+our boys does.' 'Why,' says he to me, 'you've got a lot of good sense
+yourself, ain't you?' I guess Mr. Royal had been cracking me up to his
+father at that.
+
+"Mr. Phelps--the younger, I mean--takes dinner with us most every Sunday;
+and he treats me just as nice and polite as though I'd been used to
+having my hair done up and my hands man-cured all my life."
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+This letter arrived at the Red Mill on a day when Jennie and Rebecca
+were there, as well as Helen and her twin. There was more to Min Peters'
+long epistle; but as Jennie Stone said:
+
+"That's enough to show how the wind is blowing. Why, I had no idea that
+Phelps boy would ever show such good sense as to 'shine up' to Min!"
+
+"The dear girl!" sighed Ruth. "She has the making of a fine woman in
+her. I don't blame Royal Phelps for liking her."
+
+"I imagine Edie took back a long tale of woe to her father and that he
+went out there to 'look over' Min more than he did gold prospects,"
+Rebecca said, tartly. "Of course, she's awfully uncouth, and Royal
+Phelps is a gentleman----"
+
+"Thus speaks the oracle!" exclaimed Helen, briskly. "Rebecca believes in
+putting signs on the young men of our best families who go into such
+regions: 'Beware the dog.'"
+
+"Well, he is really nice," complained Rebecca, who could not easily be
+cured of snobbishness.
+
+"I hope there are others," announced Tom, swinging idly in the hammock.
+
+"Fishing for compliments, I declare," laughed Jennie, poking him.
+
+"Why, he's des the cutest, nicest 'ittle sing," cooed his sister,
+rocking the big fellow in the hammock.
+
+"It's been an awful task for you to bring him up, Nell," drawled Jennie.
+"But after all, I don't know but it's been worth while. He's almost
+human. If they'd drowned him when he was little and only raised you, I
+don't know but it would have been a calamity."
+
+"Oh, cat's foot!" snapped Tom, rising from the hammock with a bound.
+"You girls mostly give me a woful pain. You're too biggity. Pretty soon
+there won't be any comfort living in the world with you 'advanced
+women.' The men will have to go off to another planet and start all over
+again.
+
+"Who'll mend your socks and press your neckties?" laughed Ruth from her
+seat on the piazza railing.
+
+"Thanks be! If there are no women the necessity for ties and socks will
+be done away with. And certain sure most of you college girls will never
+know how to do either."
+
+"Hear him!" cried Jennie.
+
+"Infamous!" gasped Rebecca.
+
+"You wait, young man," laughed his sister. "I'll make you pay for that."
+
+But Tom recovered his temper and grinned at them. Then he glanced up at
+Ruth.
+
+"Come on down, Ruth, and take a walk, will you? Come off your perch."
+
+The girl of the Red Mill laughed at him; but she did as he asked. "Come
+on, I'm game."
+
+"No more walks," groaned Jennie. "I scarcely cast a shadow now I'm
+getting so thin. That saddle work in Arizona pulled me down till I'm
+scarcely bigger than a thread of cotton."
+
+Ruth and Tom started off to go along the river road, the two who had
+first been friends in Cheslow and around the Red Mill. There was a smile
+on Ruth's lips; but Tom looked serious. Neither of them dreamed of the
+strenuous adventures the future held in store for them, as will be
+related in our next volume, entitled "Ruth Fielding in the Red Cross;
+or, Doing Her Bit for Uncle Sam."
+
+The other young folks, remaining in the shaded farmyard, looked after
+them. Jennie jerked out:
+
+"Mighty--nice--looking--couple, eh?"
+
+Nobody made any rejoinder, but all three of Ruth's friends gazed after
+her and her companion.
+
+The couple had halted on the bridge. They were talking earnestly, and
+Ruth rested one hand on the railing and turned to face the young man.
+His big brown hand covered hers, that lay on the rail. Ruth did not
+withdraw it.
+
+"Mated!" drawled Jennie Stone, and the others nodded understandingly.
+
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+
+
+THE RUTH FIELDING SERIES
+
+By ALICE B. EMERSON
+
+12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid
+
+    RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
+        or Jasper Parole's Secret
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOODHALL
+        or Solving the Campus Mystery
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
+        or Lost in the Backwoods
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
+        or Nita, the Girl Castaway
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
+        or Schoolgirls Among the Cowboys
+
+    RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
+        or The Old Hunter's Treasure Box
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
+        or What Became of the Raby Orphans
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES
+        or The Missing Pearl Necklace
+
+    RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES
+        or Helping the Dormitory Fund
+
+    RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE
+        or Great Days in the Land of Cotton
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE
+        or The Missing Examination Papers
+
+    RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE
+        or College Girls in the Land of Gold
+
+    RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS
+        or Doing Her Bit for Uncle Sam
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT
+        or The Hunt for a Lost Soldier
+
+    RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND
+        or A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils
+
+    RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST
+        or The Hermit of Beach Plum Point
+
+    RUTH FIELDING IN THE GREAT NORTHWEST
+        or The Indian Girl Star of the Movies
+
+    RUTH FIELDING ON THE ST. LAWRENCE
+        or The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands
+
+    RUTH FIELDING TREASURE HUNTING
+        or A Moving Picture that Became Real
+
+    RUTH FIELDING IN THE FAR NORTH
+        or The Lost Motion Picture Company
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AT GOLDEN PASS
+        or The Perils of an Artificial Avalanche
+
+CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+
+THE BETTY GORDON SERIES
+
+By ALICE B. EMERSON
+
+Author of the Famous "Ruth Fielding" Series
+
+12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors
+
+Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid
+
+A series of stories by Alice B. Emerson which are bound to make
+this writer more popular than ever with her host of girl readers.
+
+    1. BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM
+       or The Mystery of a Nobody
+
+    At the age of twelve Betty is left an orphan.
+
+    2. BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON
+       or Strange Adventures in a Great City
+
+    In this volume Betty goes to the National Capitol to find her
+    uncle and has several unusual adventures.
+
+    3. BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL
+       or The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune
+
+    From Washington the scene is shifted to the great oil fields of
+    our country. A splendid picture of the oil field operations of
+    to-day.
+
+    4. BETTY GORDON AT BOARDING SCHOOL
+       or The Treasure of Indian Chasm
+
+    Seeking the treasure of Indian Chasm makes an exceedingly
+    interesting incident.
+
+    5. BETTY GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP
+       or The Mystery of Ida Bellethorne
+
+    At Mountain Camp Betty found herself in the midst of a mystery
+    involving a girl whom she had previously met in Washington.
+
+    6. BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK
+       or School Chums on the Boardwalk
+
+    A glorious outing that Betty and her chums never forgot.
+
+    7. BETTY GORDON AND HER SCHOOL CHUMS
+       or Bringing the Rebels to Terms
+
+    Rebellious students, disliked teachers and mysterious robberies
+    make a fascinating story.
+
+    8. BETTY GORDON AT RAINBOW RANCH
+       or Cowboy Joe's Secret
+
+    Betty and her chums have a grand time in the saddle.
+
+Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue
+
+CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+
+THE LINGER-NOT SERIES
+
+By AGNES MILLER
+
+12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors
+
+Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid
+
+This new series of girls' books is in a new style of story
+writing. The interest is in knowing the girls and seeing them
+solve the problems that develop their character. Incidentally, a
+great deal of historical information is imparted.
+
+    1. THE LINGER-NOTS AND THE MYSTERY HOUSE
+       or The Story of Nine Adventurous Girls
+
+    How the Linger-Not girls met and formed their club seems
+    commonplace, but this writer makes it fascinating, and how they
+    made their club serve a great purpose continues the interest to
+    the end, and introduces a new type of girlhood.
+
+    2. THE LINGER-NOTS AND THE VALLEY FEUD
+       or The Great West Point Chain
+
+    The Linger-Not girls had no thought of becoming mixed up with
+    feuds or mysteries, but their habit of being useful soon
+    entangled them in some surprising adventures that turned out
+    happily for all, and made the valley better because of their
+    visit.
+
+    3. THE LINGER-NOTS AND THEIR GOLDEN QUEST
+       or The Log of the Ocean Monarch
+
+    For a club of girls to become involved in a mystery leading back
+    into the times of the California gold rush, seems unnatural until
+    the reader sees how it happened, and how the girls helped one of
+    their friends to come into her rightful name and inheritance,
+    forms a fine story.
+
+    4. THE LINGER-NOTS AND THE WHISPERING CHARMS
+       or The Secret from Old Alaska
+
+    Whether engrossed in thrilling adventures in the Far North or
+    occupied with quiet home duties, the Linger-Not girls could work
+    unitedly to solve a colorful mystery in a way that interpreted
+    American freedom to a sad young stranger, and brought happiness
+    to her and to themselves.
+
+Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue
+
+CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+
+THE RADIO GIRLS SERIES
+
+BY MARGARET PENROSE
+
+12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors
+
+Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid
+
+A new and up-to-date series, taking in the activities of several
+bright girls who become interested in radio. The stories tell of
+thrilling exploits, outdoor life and the great part the Radio
+plays in the adventures of the girls and in solving their mysteries.
+Fascinating books that girls of all ages will want to read.
+
+    1. THE RADIO GIRLS OF ROSELAWN
+       or A Strange Message from the Air
+
+    Showing how Jessie Norwood and her chums became interested in
+    radiophoning, how they gave a concert for a worthy local charity,
+    and how they received a sudden and unexpected call for help out
+    of the air. A girl wanted as witness in a celebrated law case
+    disappears, and the radio girls go to the rescue.
+
+    2. THE RADIO GIRLS ON THE PROGRAM
+       or Singing and Reciting at the Sending Station
+
+    When listening in on a thrilling recitation or a superb concert
+    number who of us has not longed to "look behind the scenes" to
+    see how it was done? The girls had made the acquaintance of a
+    sending station manager and in this volume are permitted to get
+    on the program, much to their delight. A tale full of action and
+    fun.
+
+    3. THE RADIO GIRLS ON STATION ISLAND
+       or The Wireless from the Steam Yacht
+
+    In this volume the girls travel to the seashore and put in a
+    vacation on an island where is located a big radio sending
+    station. The big brother of one of the girls owns a steam yacht
+    and while out with a pleasure party those on the island receive
+    word by radio that the yacht is on fire. A tale thrilling to the
+    last page.
+
+    4. THE RADIO GIRLS AT FOREST LODGE
+       or The Strange Hut in the Swamp
+
+    The Radio Girls spend several weeks on the shores of a beautiful
+    lake and with their radio get news of a great forest fire. It
+    also aids them in rounding up some undesirable folks who occupy
+    the strange hut in the swamp.
+
+Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue
+
+CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Ruth Fielding In the Saddle, by Alice B. Emerson
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