Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point: or, Nita, the Girl Castaway

“Maybe Captain and Mrs. Kirby told all about her when they got to Boston. News of her, and where she was staying, got to her friends,” said Mercy Curtis. “That’s the ‘why and wherefore’ of it–believe me!”

“That sounds very reasonable,” admitted Aunt Kate. “The Kirbys would only know our last name and would not know how to properly address either Jennie or me. Come, now! get in on the rubber mats in your rooms and rub down well. The suits will be collected and rinsed out and hung to dry before Mammy Laura goes to bed. If any of you feel the least chill, let me know.”

But it was so warm and delightful a night that there was no danger of colds. The girls were so excited by the telegram and had so much to say about the mystery of Nita, the castaway, that it was midnight before any of them were asleep.

However, they had figured out that the writer of the telegram, leaving New York, from which it was sent at half after eight, would be able to take a train that would bring him to Sandtown very early in the morning; and so the excited young folks were all awake by five o’clock.

It was a hazy morning, but there was a good breeze from the land. Tom declared he heard the train whistle for the Sandtown station, and everybody dressed in a hurry, believing that “W. Hicks” would soon be at the bungalow.

There were no public carriages at the station to meet that early train, and Miss Kate had doubted about sending anybody to meet the person who had telegraphed. In something like an hour, however, they saw a tall man, all in black, striding along the sandy road toward the house.

As he came nearer he was seen to be a big-boned man, with broad shoulders, long arms, and a huge reddish mustache, the ends of which drooped almost to his collar. Such a mustache none of them had ever seen before. His black clothes would have fitted a man who weighed a good fifty pounds more than he did, and so the garments hung baggily upon him. He wore a huge, black slouched hat, with immensely broad brim.

He strode immediately to the back door–that being the nearest to the road by which he came–and the boys and girls in the breakfast room crowded to the windows to see him. He looked neither to right nor left, however, but walked right into the kitchen, where they at once heard a thunderous voice demand:

“Whar’s my Jane Ann? Whar’s my Jane Ann, I say?”

Mammy Laura evidently took his appearance and demand in no good part. She began to sputter, but his heavy voice rode over hers and quenched it:

“Keep still, ol’ woman! I want to see your betters. Whar’s my Jane Ann?”

“Lawsy massy! what kine ob a man is yo’?” squealed the fat old colored woman. “T’ come combustucatin’ inter a pusson’s kitchen in disher way–”

“Be still, ol’ woman!” roared the visitor again. “Whar’s my Jane Ann?”

The butler appeared then and took the strange visitor in hand.

“Come this way, sir. Miss Kate will see you,” he said, and led the big man into the front of the house.

“I don’t want none o’ your ‘Miss Kates,’” growled the stranger. “I want my Jane Ann.”

Heavy’s little Aunt looked very dainty indeed when she appeared before this gigantic Westerner. The moment he saw her, off came his big hat, displaying a red, freckled face, and a head as bald as an egg. He was a very ugly man, saving when he smiled; then innumerable humorous wrinkles appeared about his eyes and the pale blue eyes themselves twinkled confidingly.

“Your sarvent, ma’am,” he said. “Your name Stone?”

“It is, sir. I presume you are ‘W. Hicks’?” she said.

“That’s me–Bill Hicks. Bill Hicks, of Bullhide, Montanny.”

“I hope you have not come here, Mr. Hicks, to be disappointed. But I must tell you at the start,” said Miss Kate, “that I never heard of you before I received your very remarkable telegram.”

“Huh! that can well be, ma’am–that can well be. But they got your letter at the ranch, and Jib, he took it into Colonel Penhampton, and the Colonel telegraphed me to New York, where I’d come a-hunting her–”

“Wait, wait, wait!” cried Miss Kate, eagerly. “I don’t understand at all what you are talking about.”

“Why–why, I’m aimin’ to talk about my Jane Ann,” exclaimed the cattle man.

“Jane Ann who?” she gasped.

“Jane Ann Hicks. My little gal what you’ve got her and what you wrote about–”

“You are misinformed, sir,” declared Miss Kate. “I have never written to you–or to anybody else–about any person named Jane Ann Hicks.”

“Oh, mebbe you don’t know her by that name. She had some hifalutin’ idee before she vamoosed about not likin’ her name–an’ I give her that thar name myself!” added Bill Hicks, in an aggrieved tone.

“Nor have I written about any other little girl, or by any other name,” rejoined Miss Kate. “I have written no letter at all.”

“You didn’t write to Silver Ranch to tell us that my little Jane Ann was found?” gasped the man.

“No, sir.”

“Somebody else wrote, then?”

“I do not know it, if they did,” Miss Kate declared.

“Then somebody’s been a-stringin’ of me?” he roared, punching his big hat with a clenched, freckled fist in a way that made Miss Kate jump.

“Oh!” she cried.

“Don’t you be afeared, ma’am,” said the big man, more gently. “But I’m mighty cast down–I sure am! Some miser’ble coyote has fooled me. That letter said as how my little niece was wrecked on a boat here and that a party named Stone had taken her into their house at Lighthouse Point–”

“It’s Nita!” cried Miss Kate.

“What’s that?” he demanded.

“You’re speaking of Nita, the castaway!”

“I’m talkin’ of my niece, Jane Ann Hicks,” declared the rancher. “That’s who I’m talking of.”

“But she called herself Nita, and would not tell us anything about herself.”

“It might be, ma’am. The little skeezicks!” chuckled the Westerner, his eyes twinkling suddenly. “That’s a mighty fancy name–‘Nita.’ And so she is here with you, after all?”

“No.”

“Not here?” he exclaimed, his big, bony face reddening again.

“No, sir. I believe she has been here–your niece.”

“And where’d she go? What you done with her?” he demanded, his overhanging reddish eyebrows coming together in a threatening scowl.

“Hadn’t you better sit down, Mr. Hicks, and let me tell you all about it?” suggested Miss Kate.

“Say, Miss!” he ejaculated. “I’m anxious, I be. When Jane Ann first run away from Silver Ranch, I thought she was just a-playin’ off some of her tricks on me. I never supposed she was in earnest ’bout it–no, ma’am!

“I rid into Bullhide arter two days. And instead of findin’ her knockin’ around there, I finds her pony at the greaser’s corral, and learns that she’s took the train East. That did beat me. I didn’t know she had any money, but she’d bought a ticket to Denver, and it took a right smart of money to do it.

“I went to Colonel Penhampton, I did,” went on Hicks, “and told him about it. He heated up the wires some ’twixt Bullhide and Denver; but she’d fell out o’ sight there the minute she’d landed. Denver’s some city, ma’am. I finds that out when I lit out arter Jane Ann and struck that place myself.

“Wal! ’twould be teejious to you, ma’am, if I told whar I have chased arter that gal these endurin’ two months. Had to let the ranch an’ ev’rythin’ else go to loose ends while I follered news of her all over. My gosh, ma’am! how many gals there is runs away from their homes! Ye wouldn’t believe the number ’nless ye was huntin’ for a pertic’lar one an’ got yer rope on so many that warn’t her!”

“You have had many disappointments, sir?” said Miss Kate, beginning to feel a great sympathy for this uncouth man.

He nodded his great, bald, shining head. “I hope you ain’t going to tell me thar’s another in store for me right yere,” he said, in a much milder voice.

“I cannot tell you where Nita–if she is your niece–is now,” said Miss Kate, firmly.

“She’s left you?”

“She went away some time during the night–night before last.”

“What for?” he asked, suspiciously.

“I don’t know. We none of us knew. We made her welcome and said nothing about sending her away, or looking for her friends. I did not wish to frighten her away, for she is a strangely independent girl–”

“You bet she is!” declared Mr. Hicks, emphatically.

“I hoped she would gradually become confiding, and then we could really do something for her. But when we got up yesterday morning she had stolen out of the house in the night and was gone.”

“And ye don’t know whar Jane Ann went?” he said, with a sort of groan.

Miss Kate shook her head; but suddenly a voice interrupted them. Ruth Fielding parted the curtains and came into the room.

“I hope you will pardon me, Miss Kate,” she said softly. “And this gentleman, too. I believe I can tell him how Nita went away–and perhaps through what I know he may be able to find her again.”

CHAPTER XXI

CRAB MAKES HIS DEMAND

Bill Hicks beckoned the girl from the Red Mill forward. “You come right here, Miss,” he said, “and let’s hear all about it. I’m a-honin’ for my Jane Ann somethin’ awful–ye don’t know what a loss she is to me. And Silver Ranch don’t seem the same no more since she went away.”

“Tell me,” said Ruth, curiously, as she came forward, “was what the paper said about it all true?”

“Why, Ruth, what paper is this? What do you know about this matter that I don’t know?” cried Miss Kate.

“I’m sorry, Miss Kate,” said the girl; “but it wasn’t my secret and I didn’t feel I could tell you–”

“I know what you mean, little Miss,” Hicks interrupted. “That New York newspaper–with the picter of Jane Ann on a pony what looked like one o’ these horsecar horses? Most ev’rythin’ they said in that paper was true about her–and the ranch.”

“And she has had to live out there without any decent woman, and no girls to play with, and all that?”

“Wal!” exclaimed Mr. Hicks. “That ain’t sech a great crime; is it?”

“I don’t wonder so much she ran away,” Ruth said, softly. “But I am sorry she did not stay here until you came, sir.”

“But where is she?” chorused both the ranchman and Miss Kate, and the latter added: “Tell what you know about her departure, Ruth.”

So Ruth repeated all that she had heard and seen on the night Nita disappeared from the Stone bungalow.

“And this man, Crab, can be found down yonder at the lighthouse?” demanded the ranchman, rising at the end of Ruth’s story.

“He is there part of the time, sir,” Miss Kate said. “He is a rather notorious character around here–a man of bad temper, I believe. Perhaps you had better go to the authorities first–”

“What authorities?” demanded the Westerner in surprise.

“The Sokennet police.”

Bill Hicks snorted. “I don’t need police in this case, ma’am,” he said. “I know what to do with this here Crab when I find him. And if harm’s come to my Jane Ann, so much the worse for him.”

“Oh, I hope you will be patient, sir,” said Miss Kate.

“Nita was not a bit afraid of him, I am sure,” Ruth hastened to add. “He would not hurt her.”

“No. I reckon he wants to make money out of me,” grunted Bill Hicks, who did not lack shrewdness. “He sent the letter that told me she was here, and then he decoyed her away somewhere so’s to hold her till I came and paid him the reward. Wal! let me git my Jane Ann back, safe and sound, and he’s welcome to the five hundred dollars I offered for news of her.”

“But first, Mr. Hicks,” said Miss Kate, rising briskly, “you’ll come to breakfast. You have been traveling all night–”

“That’s right, ma’am. No chance for more than a peck at a railroad sandwich–tough critters, them!”

“Ah! here is Tom Cameron,” she said, having parted the portières and found Tom just passing through the hall. “Mr. Hicks, Tom. Nita’s uncle.”

“Er–Mr. Bill Hicks, of the Silver Ranch!” ejaculated Tom.

“So you’ve hearn tell of me, too, have you, younker?” quoth the ranchman, good-naturedly. “Well, my fame’s spreadin’.”

“And it seems that I am the only person here who did not know all about your niece,” said Miss Kate Stone, drily.

“Oh, no, ma’am!” cried Tom. “It was only Ruth and Helen and I who knew anything about it. And we only suspected. You see, we found the newspaper article which told about that bully ranch, and the fun that girl had–”

“Jane Ann didn’t think ’twas nice enough for her,” grunted the ranchman. “She wanted high-heeled slippers–and shift–shift-on hats–and a pianner! Common things warn’t good enough for Jane Ann.”

Ruth laughed, for she wasn’t at all afraid of the big Westerner. “If chiffon hats and French heeled slippers would have kept Nita–I mean, Jane Ann–at home, wouldn’t it have been cheaper for you to have bought ’em?” she asked.

“It shore would!” declared the cattleman, emphatically. “But when the little girl threatened to run away I didn’t think she meant it.”

Meanwhile Miss Kate had asked Tom to take the big man up stairs where he could remove the marks of travel. In half an hour he was at the table putting away a breakfast that made even Mammy Laura open her eyes in wonder.

“I’m a heavy feeder, Miss,” he said apologetically, to Ruth. “Since I been East I often have taken my breakfast in two restaurants, them air waiters stare so. I git it in relays, as ye might say. Them restaurant people ain’t used to seeing a man eat. And great cats! how they do charge for vittles!”

But ugly as he was, and big and rude as he was, there was a simplicity and open-heartedness about Mr. Hicks that attracted more than Ruth Fielding. The boys, because Tom was enthusiastic about the old fellow, came in first. But the girls were not far behind, and by the time Mr. Hicks had finished breakfast the whole party was in the room, listening to his talk of his lost niece, and stories of Silver Ranch and the growing and wonderful West.

Mercy Curtis, who had a sharp tongue and a sharper insight into character, knew just how to draw Bill Hicks out. And the ranchman, as soon as he understood that Mercy was a cripple, paid her the most gallant attentions. And he took the lame girl’s sharp criticisms in good part, too.

“So you thought you could bring up a girl baby from the time she could crawl till she was old enough to get married–eh?” demanded Mercy, in her whimsical way. “What a smart man you are, Mr. Bill Hicks!”

“Ya-as–ain’t I?” he groaned. “I see now I didn’t know nothin’.”

“Not a living thing!” agreed Mercy. “Bringing up a girl among a lot of cow–cow–what do you call ’em?”

“Punchers,” he finished, wagging his head.

“That’s it. Nice society for a girl. Likely to make her ladylike and real happy, too.”

“Great cats!” ejaculated the ranchman, “I thought I was doin’ the square thing by Jane Ann–”

“And giving her a name like that, too!” broke in Mercy. “How dared you?”

“Why–why–” stammered Mr. Hicks. “It was my grandmother’s name–and she was as spry a woman as ever I see.”

“Your grandmother’s name!” gasped Mercy. “Then, what right had you to give it to your niece? And when she way a helpless baby, too! Wasn’t she good enough to have a name of her own–and one a little more modern?”

“Miss, you stump me–you sure do!” declared Mr. Hicks, with a sigh. “I never thought a gal cared so much for them sort o’ things. They’re surprisin’ different from boys; ain’t they?”

“Hope you haven’t found it out too late, Mister Wild and Woolly,” said Mercy, biting her speech off in her sharp way. “You had better take a fashion magazine and buy Nita–or whatever she wants to call herself–clothes and hats like other girls wear. Maybe you’ll be able to keep her on a ranch, then.”

“Wal, Miss! I’m bound to believe you’ve got the rights of it. I ain’t never had much knowledge of women-folks, and that’s a fact–”

He was interrupted by the maid coming to the door. “There’s a boy here, Miss Kate,” she said, “who is asking for the gentleman.”

“Asking for the gentleman?” repeated Miss Kate.

“Yes, ma’am. The gentleman who has just came. The gentleman from the West.”

“Axing for me?” cried the ranchman, getting up quickly.

“It must be for you, sir,” said Aunt Kate. “Let the boy come in, Sally.”

In a minute a shuffling, tow-headed, bare-footed lad of ten years or so entered bashfully. He was a son of one of the fishermen living along the Sokennet shore.

“You wanter see me, son?” demanded the Westerner. “Bill Hicks, of Bullhide?”

“Dunno wot yer name is, Mister,” said the boy. “But air you lookin’ for a gal that was brought ashore from the wreck of that lumber schooner?”

“That’s me!” cried Mr. Hicks.

“Then I got suthin’ for ye,” said the boy, and thrust a soiled envelope toward him. “Jack Crab give it to me last night. He said I was to come over this morning an’ wait for you to come. Phin says you had come, w’en I got here. That’s all.”

“Hold on!” cried Tom Cameron, as the boy started to go out, and Mr. Hicks ripped open the envelope. “Say, where is this Crab man?”

“Dunno.”

“Where did he go after giving you the note?”

“Dunno.”

Just then Mr. Hicks uttered an exclamation that drew all attention to him and the fisherman’s boy slipped out.

“Great cats!” roared Bill Hicks. “Listen to this, folks! What d’ye make of it?

“‘Now I got you right. Whoever you be, you are wanting to get hold of the girl. I know where she is. You won’t never know unless I get that five hundred dols. The paper talked about. You leave it at the lighthouse. Mis Purling will take care of it and I reckon on getting it from her when I want it. When she has got the five hundred dols. I will let you know how to find the girl. So, no more at present, from

“‘J. Crab.’

“Listen here to it, will ye? Why, if once I get my paws on this here Crab–”

“You want to get the girl most; don’t you?” interrupted Mercy, sharply.

“Of course!”

“Then you’d better see if paying the money to him–just as he says–won’t bring her to you. You offered the reward, you know.”

“But maybe he doesn’t really know anything about Nita!” cried Heavy.

“And maybe he knows just where she is,” said Ruth.

“Wal! he seems like a mighty sharp feller,” admitted the cattleman, seriously. “I want my Jane Ann back. I don’t begredge no five hundred dollars. I’m a-goin’ over to that lighthouse and see what this Missus Purling–you say she’s the keeper?–knows about it. That’s what I’m going to do!” finished Hicks with emphasis.

CHAPTER XXII

THIMBLE ISLAND

Miss Kate said of course he could use the buckboard and ponies, and it was the ranchman’s own choice that the young folks went, too. There was another wagon, and they could all crowd aboard one or the other vehicle–even Mercy Curtis went.

“I don’t believe that Crab man will show up at the light,” Ruth said to Tom and Helen. “He’s plainly made up his mind that he won’t meet Nita’s friends personally. And to think of his getting five hundred dollars so easy!” and she sighed.

For the reward Mr. Hicks had offered for news of his niece, which would lead to her apprehension and return to his guardianship, would have entirely removed from Ruth Fielding’s mind her anxiety about Briarwood. Let the Tintacker Mine, in which Uncle Jabez had invested, remain a deep and abiding mystery, if Ruth could earn that five hundred dollars.

But if Jack Crab had placed Nita in good hands and was merely awaiting an opportunity to exchange her for the reward which the runaway’s uncle had offered, then Ruth need not hope for any portion of the money. And certainly, Crab would make nothing by hiding the girl away and refusing to give her up to Mr. Hicks.

“And if I took money for telling Mr. Hicks where Nita was, why–why it would be almost like taking blood money! Nita liked me, I believe; I think she ought to be with her uncle, and I am sure he is a nice man. But it would be playing the traitor to report her to Mr. Hicks–and that’s a fact!” concluded Ruth, taking herself to task. “I could not think of earning money in such a contemptible way.”

Whether her conclusion was right, or not, it seemed right to Ruth, and she put the thought of the reward out of her mind from that instant. The ranchman had taken a liking to Ruth and when he climbed into the buckboard he beckoned the girl from the Red Mill to a seat beside him. He drove the ponies, but seemed to give those spirited little animals very little attention. Ruth knew that he must be used to handling horses beside which the ponies seemed like tame rabbits.

“Now what do you think of my Jane Ann?” was the cattleman’s question. “Ain’t she pretty cute?”

“I am not quite sure that I know what you mean by that, Mr. Hicks,” Ruth answered, demurely. “But she isn’t as smart as she ought to be, or she wouldn’t have gone off with Jack Crab.”

“Huh!” grunted the other. “Mebbe you’re right on that p’int. He didn’t have no drop on her–that’s so! But ye can’t tell what sort of a yarn he give her.”

“She would better have had nothing to say to him,” said Ruth, emphatically. “She should have confided in Miss Kate. Miss Kate and Jennie were treating her just as nicely as though she were an invited guest. Nita–or Jane, as you call her–may be smart, but she isn’t grateful in the least.”

“Oh, come now, Miss–”

“No. She isn’t grateful,” repeated Ruth. “She never even suggested going over to the life saving station and thanking Cap’n Abinadab and his men for bringing her ashore from the wreck of the Whipstitch.”

“Great cats! I been thinkin’ of that,” sighed the Westerner. “I want to see them and tell ’em what I think of ’em. I ’spect Jane Ann never thought of such a thing.”

“But I liked her, just the same,” Ruth went on, slowly. “She was bold, and brave, and I guess she wouldn’t ever do a really mean thing.”

“I reckon not, Miss!” agreed Mr. Hicks. “My Jane Ann is plumb square, she is. I can forgive her for running away from us. Mebbe thar was reason for her gittin’ sick of Silver Ranch. I–I stand ready to give her ’bout ev’rything she wants–in reason–when I git her back thar.”

“Including a piano?” asked Ruth, curiously.

“Great cats! that’s what we had our last spat about,” groaned Bill Hicks. “Jib, he’s had advantages, he has. Went to this here Carlisle Injun school ye hear so much talk about. It purty nigh ruined him, but he can break hosses. And thar he l’arned to play one o’ them pianners. We was all in to Bullhide one time–we’d been shipping steers–and we piled into the Songbird Dancehall–had the place all to ourselves, for it was daytime–and Jib sot down and fingered them keys somethin’ scand’lous. Bashful Ike–he’s my foreman–says he never believed before that a sure ’nough man like Jibbeway Pottoway could ever be so ladylike!

“Wal! My Jane Ann was jest enchanted by that thar pianner–yes, Miss! She was jest enchanted. And she didn’t give me no peace from then on. Said she wanted one o’ the critters at the ranch so Jib could give her lessons. And I jest thought it was foolishness–and it cost money–oh, well! I see now I was a pretty mean old hunks–”

“That’s what I heard her call you once,” chuckled Ruth. “At least, I know now that she was speaking of you, sir.”

“She hit me off right,” sighed Mr. Hicks. “I hadn’t never been used to spending money. But, laws, child! I got enough. I been some waked up since I come East. Folks spend money here, that’s a fact.”

They found Mother Purling’s door opened at the foot of the lighthouse shaft, and the flutter of an apron on the balcony told them that the old lady had climbed to the lantern.

“She doesn’t often do that,” said Heavy. “Crab does all the cleaning and polishing up there.”

“He’s left her without any help, then,” Ruth suggested. “That’s what it means.”

And truly, that is what it did mean, as they found out when Ruth, the Cameron twins, and the Westerner climbed the spiral staircase to the gallery outside the lantern.

“Yes; that Crab ain’t been here this morning,” Mother Purling admitted when Ruth explained that there was reason for Mr. Hicks wishing to see him. “He told me he was mebbe going off for a few days. ‘Then you send me a substitute, Jack Crab,’ I told him; but he only laughed and said he wasn’t going to send a feller here to work into his job. He is handy, I allow. But I’m too old to be left all stark alone at this light. I’m going to have another man when Jack’s month is out, just as sure as eggs is eggs!”

Mr. Hicks was just as polite to the old lady as he had been to Miss Kate; and he quickly explained his visit to the lighthouse, and showed her the two letters that Crab had written.