Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch; Schoolgirls Among Cowboys

“Give the reins to me!” she cried in Mary’s ear, and seized the leathers just as they slipped from the hands of The Fox.

Ruth gripped them firmly and flung herself back into her own seat. Helen seized her with one hand and saved her from being thrown out of the pitching vehicle. And so, with her chum holding her into her seat, Ruth swung all her weight and force against the ponies’ bits.

At first this seemed to have not the least effect upon the frightened animals. Ruth’s slight weight exercised small pressure on those iron jaws. On and on they dashed, rocking the buckboard over the rough trail – and drawing each moment nearer to that perilous elbow in the cañon!

Ruth realized the menacing danger of that turn in the trail from the moment the beasts first jumped. There was no parapet at the outer edge of the shelf – just the uneven, broken verge of the rock, with the awful drop to the roaring river below.

She remembered this in a flash, as the ponies tore on. There likewise passed through her mind a vision of the chum beside her, crushed and mangled at the bottom of the cañon – and again, Helen’s broken body being swept away in the river! And The Fox – the girl who had so annoyed her – would likewise be killed unless she, Ruth Fielding, found some means of averting the catastrophe.

It was a fact that she did not think of her own danger. Mainly the runaway ponies held her attention. She must stop them before they reached the fatal turn!

Were the ponies giving way a little? Was it possible that her steady, desperate pulling on the curbs was having its effect? The pressure on their iron jaws must have been severe, and even a half-broken mustang pony is not entirely impervious to pain.

But the turn in the road was so near!

Snorting and plunging, the animals would – in another moment – reach the elbow. Either they must dash themselves headlong over the precipice, and the buckboard would follow, or, in swerving around the corner, the vehicle and its three passengers would be hurled over the brink.

And then something – an inspiration it must have been – shot athwart Ruth’s brain. The thought could not have been the result of previous knowledge on her part, for the girl of the Red Mill was no horsewoman. Jane Ann Hicks might have naturally thought to try the feat; but it came to Ruth in a flash and without apparent reason.

She dropped the left hand rein, stood up to seize the right rein with a shorter grip, and then flung herself back once more. The force she brought to bear on the nigh pony by this action was too much for him. His head was pulled around, and in an instant he stumbled and came with a crash to the ground!

The pony’s fall brought down his mate. The runaway was stopped just at the turn of the trail – and so suddenly that Mary Cox was all but flung headlong upon the struggling animals. Ruth and Helen did fall out of the carriage – but fortunately upon the inner side of the trail.

Even then the maddened, struggling ponies might have cast themselves – and the three girls likewise – over the brink had not help been at hand. At the turn appeared Jib Pottoway, his pony in a lather, recalled by the sound of the runaways’ drumming hoofs. The Indian flung himself from the saddle and gripped the bridles of the fallen horses just in season. Bob, driving the second pair of ponies with a firm hand, brought them to a halt directly behind the wreck, and Tom and Jane Ann ran to Jib’s assistance.

“What’s the matter with these ponies?” demanded the Indian, sharply. “How’d they get in this shape? I thought you could drive a pair of hawses, boy?” he added, with scorn, looking at Tom.

“I got out to buckle a strap and they got away,” said Tom, rather sheepishly.

“Don’t you scold him, Jib!” commanded Jane Ann, vigorously. “He ain’t to blame.”

“Who is?”

“That girl yonder,” snapped the ranchman’s niece, pointing an accusing finger at Mary Cox. “I saw her start ’em on the run while Tom was on the ground.”

“Never!” cried The Fox, almost in tears.

“You did,” repeated Jane Ann.

“Anyway, I didn’t think they’d start and run so. They’re dangerous. It wasn’t right for the men to give us such wild ponies. I’ll speak to Mr. Hicks about it.”

“You needn’t fret,” said Jane Ann, sternly. “I’ll tell Uncle Bill all right, and I bet you don’t get a chance to play such a trick again as long as you’re at Silver Ranch – ”

Ruth, who had scrambled up with Helen, now placed a restraining hand on the arm of the angry Western girl; but Jane Ann sputtered right out:

“No! I won’t keep still, Ruth Fielding. If it hadn’t been for you that Mary Cox would now be at the bottom of these rocks. And she’ll never thank you for saving her life, and for keeping her from killing you and Helen. She doesn’t know how to spell gratitude! Bah!”

“Hush up, Jinny,” commanded Jib, easily. “You’ve got all that off your mind now, and you ought to feel some better. The ponies don’t seem to be hurt much. Some scraped, that’s all. We can go on, I reckon. You ride my hawse, Mr. Cameron, and I’ll sit in yere and drive. Won’t trust these gals alone no more.”

“I guess you could trust Ruth Fielding all right,” cried the loyal Tom. “She did the trick – and showed how plucky she is in the bargain. Did you ever see anything better done than the way she threw that pony?”

Jane Ann ran to the girl of the Red Mill and flung her arms around her neck.

“You’re just as brave as you can be, Ruthie!” she cried. “I don’t know of anybody who is braver. If you’d been brought up right out here in the mountains you couldn’t have done any better – could she, Jib?”

“Miss Fielding certainly showed good mettle,” admitted the Indian, with one of his rare smiles. “And now we’ll go on to the camping place. Don’t let’s have any more words about it, or your fun will all be spoiled. Where’s Ricardo, with the camp stuff? I declare! that Greaser is five miles behind, I believe.”

With which he clucked to the still nervous ponies and, Tom now in the lead, the procession started on in a much more leisurely style.

CHAPTER XI – AN URSINE HOLD-UP

The party of young people were so excited by the adventure that they were scarcely in mind to appreciate the rugged beauty of the cañon. The opposite wall was covered with verdure – hardy trees and shrubs found their rootage in the crevices between the rocks. Some beds of moss, far down where the spray from the river continually irrigated the thin soil, were spangled so thickly with starlike, white flowers that the patches looked like brocaded bedspreads.

Around the elbow in the trail – that sharp turn which had been the scene of the all but fatal accident – the driveway broadened. Far ahead (for the cañon was here quite straight again) they could see the arching roof of rock, surmounted by the primeval forest, which formed the so-called natural bridge. The river tumbled out of the darkness of the tunnel, fretted to a foaming cascade by battling with the boulders which strewed its bed under the roof-rock. The water’s surface gleamed ghostly in the shadow of the arch, and before the opening the arc of a rainbow shone in the spray.

As the girls’ excitement subsided, Ruth saw this scene far ahead and cried aloud in rapture:

“Look! Oh, just look! Isn’t that beautiful?”

“The waterfall,” agreed her chum, “or cascade, or whatever they call it, is just a picture, Ruthie!”

“Mighty pretty,” said Tom, reining in the pony beside them.

“The cavern is so black and the water is so white – like milk,” cried Madge from the second carriage. “What a contrast!”

“I tell you what it looks like,” added Heavy, who sat beside her. “A great, big chocolate cream drop that’s broken and the cream oozing out. M – m!”

They all laughed at the stout girl’s figure of speech, for Jennie Stone’s mind seemed always to linger upon good things to eat, and this comparison was quite characteristic.

“I’d be afraid to go down under that bridge,” said Helen. “It’s so dark there.”

“But there’s a path through the tunnel, Miss,” said Jib, the Indian. “And there’s another path by which you can climb out on the top of the bridge. But the trail for a waggin’ stops right yonder, where we camp.”

This spot was a sort of cove in the wall of the cañon – perhaps half an acre in extent. There was a pretty lawn with a spring of sweet water, the overflow of which trickled away to the edge of the precipice and dashed itself to spray on the rocks fifty feet below.

They had become used to the sullen roar of the river now and did not heed its voice. This was a delightful spot for camping and when Ricardo came up with the wagon, the boys and Jib quickly erected the tent, hobbled the ponies, and built a fire in the most approved campers’ fashion.

Never had a picnic luncheon tasted so good to any of the party. The mountain air had put an edge on their appetites, and Heavy performed such feats of mastication that Helen declared she trembled for the result.

“Don’t you trouble about me,” said the stout girl. “You want to begin to worry over my health when I don’t eat at all. And I can’t see where I have got so far ahead of any of the rest of you in the punishment of this lunch.”

But afterward, when the other girls proposed to climb the rocky path to the summit of the natural bridge, Heavy objected.

“It’s injurious to take violent exercise after eating heavily,” she said.

“I never knew the time when Heavy considered it safe to exercise,” said The Fox, who had gradually recovered her usual manner since the runaway. “The time between meals isn’t long enough, in her opinion, to warrant anybody’s working. Come on! let’s leave her to slothful dreams.”

“And blisters,” added Heavy. “My shoes have hurt me for two days. I wouldn’t climb over these rocks for a farm – with a pig on’t! Go on – and perspire – and tell yourselves you’re having a good time. I’ve a book here to read,” declared the graceless and lazy stout girl.

“But aren’t the boys going?” asked Ruth.

“They’ve started for the tunnel down there – with Jib,” said Jane Ann, with a snap. “Huh! boys aren’t no good, anyway.”

“Your opinion may be correct; your grammar is terrible,” scoffed Mary Cox.

“Never you mind about my grammar, Miss Smarty!” rejoined the Western girl, who really couldn’t forget the peril into which The Fox had run her friends so recently. “If you girls are comin’ along to the top of the bridge, come on. Let the boys go down there, if they want to. The rocks are slippery, and they’ll get sopping wet.”

“There isn’t any danger, is there?” queried Helen, thinking of her brother.

“No, of course not,” replied Jane Ann. “No more danger than there is up this way,” and she led the way on the path that wound up the rocky heights.

The girls were dressed in corduroy skirts and strong, laced walking boots – a fitting costume for the climb. But had Jib been present at the camp perhaps he would not have allowed them to start without an escort. Ricardo had to remain at the camp. This was a wild country and not even Jane Ann carried any weapon, although when the ranchman’s niece rode about the range alone she carried a gun – and she knew how to use the weapon, too.

But they could hear the shouts of the boys, rising above the thunder of the river, when they left the plateau and began to climb the heights, and danger of any kind did not enter the minds of the girls. It was like picnicking along the Lumano River, at home, only the scenery here was grander.

Ruth and Helen assumed the lead after a very few minutes; they were even better climbers than the Western girl. But the way was steep and rugged and it wasn’t long before their chatter ceased and they saved their breath for the work in hand. Madge and Jane Ann came along after the chums quite pluckily; but The Fox began clamoring for rest before they had climbed half the distance to the top of the cliff.

“Oh, come on, Mary!” ejaculated Madge. “Don’t be whining.”

“I don’t see anything in this,” grumbled The Fox. “It’s no fun scrambling over these rocks. Ouch! Now I’ve torn my stocking.”

“Aw, come on!” said Jane Ann. “You’re a regular wet blanket, you are.”

“There’s no sense in working so hard for nothing,” snapped The Fox.

“What did you start out for, Mary?” demanded Madge. “You might have remained at the camp with Heavy.”

“And she had sense.”

“It’s too bad you haven’t a little, then,” observed Jane Ann, rudely.

Ruth and Helen, who really enjoyed the climb, looked down from the heights and beckoned their comrades on.

“Hurry up, Slow Pokes!” cried Ruth. “We shall certainly beat you to the top.”

“And much good may that do you!” grumbled Mary Cox. “What a silly thing to do, anyway.”

“I do wish you’d go back, if you want to, Mary,” declared Madge, wearily.

“She’s as cross as two sticks,” ejaculated Jane Ann.

“Well, why shouldn’t I be cross?” demanded The Fox, quite ready to quarrel. “This place is as dull as ditch-water. I wish I hadn’t come West at all. I’m sure, I’ve had no fun.”

“Well, you’ve made enough trouble, if you haven’t had a good time,” Jane Ann said, frankly.

“I must say you’re polite to your guests,” exclaimed Mary Cox, viciously.

“And I must say you’re anything but polite to me,” responded the ranch girl, not at all abashed. “You’re pretty near the limit, you are. Somebody ought to give you a good shaking.”

Ruth and Helen had gotten so far ahead because they had not wasted their breath. Now they were waiting for the other three who came puffing to the shelf on which the chums rested, all three wearing frowns on their faces.

“For pity’s sake!” gasped Helen; “what’s the matter with you all?”

“I’m tired,” admitted Madge, throwing herself upon the short turf.

“This girl says it’s all foolishness to climb up here,” said Jane Ann, pointing at The Fox.

“Oh, I want to reach the very summit, now I’ve started,” cried Ruth.

“That’s silly,” declared Mary Cox.

“You’re just as cross as a bear,” began the Western girl, when Helen suddenly shrieked:

“Oh, oh! Will you look at that? What is it?”

Ruth had already started on. She did not wish to have any words with The Fox. A rod or more separated her from her mates. Out of an aperture heretofore unnoticed, and between Ruth and the other girls, was thrust the shaggy head and shoulders of a huge animal.

“A dog!” cried Madge.

“It’s a wolf!” shrieked Mary Cox.

But the Western girl knew instantly what the creature was. “Run, Ruthie!” she shouted. “I’ll call Jib and the boys. It’s a bear!”

And at that moment Bruin waddled fully out of the hole – a huge, hairy, sleepy looking beast. He was between Ruth and her friends, and his awkward body blocked the path by which they were climbing to the summit of the natural bridge.

“Wu-uh-uh-uff!” said the bear, and swung his head and huge shoulders from the group of four girls to the lone girl above him.

“Run, Ruth!” shrieked Helen.

Her cry seemed to startle the ursine marauder. He uttered another grunt of expostulation and started up the steep path. Nobody needed to advise Ruth to run a second time. She scrambled up the rocks with an awful fear clutching at her heart and the sound in her ears of the bear’s sabre-like claws scratching over the path!

CHAPTER XII – THE MAN FROM TINTACKER

Ruth was just as scared as she could be. Although the bear did not seem particularly savage, there surely was not room enough on the path for him and Ruth to pass. The beast was ragged and gray looking. His little eyes twinkled and his tongue lolled out of his mouth, like that of an ox when it is plowing. Aside from a grunt, or two, he made at first no threatening manifestation.

Helen could not remain inactive and see a bear chase her chum over the rocks; therefore she picked up a good-sized stone and threw it at the beast. They say – at least, boys say! – that a girl can’t throw straight. But Helen hit the bear!

The stone must have hurt, for the beast let out a sudden growl that was in quite a different tone from the sounds he had made before. He turned sharply and bit at the place on his flank where the stone had hit him, and then, in a perfectly unreasonable manner, the bear turned sharp around and scampered after Ruth harder than ever. It was plain that he blamed her for throwing the stone. At least, she was nearest to him, and the bear was anxious to get out of the way of the screaming girls below.

Ruth did not give voice to her fear. Perhaps if she had shrieked as The Fox did the bear would have been afraid of her. As it was, he came on, growling savagely. And in half a minute he was fairly upon her heels!

The way up the height was in a gully with steep sides. Ruth, casting back over her shoulder a single terrified glance, saw the lumbering beast right upon her heels. The rocks on either hand were too steep to climb; it seemed as though the bear would seize her in a moment.

And then it was that the miracle happened. It seemed as though the girl must be torn and mangled by the bear, when a figure darted into sight above her. A voice shouted:

“Lie down! Lie down, so I can shoot!”

It was a man with a gun. In the second Ruth saw him she only knew he was trying to draw bead on the pursuing bear. She had no idea what her rescuer looked like – whether he was old, or young.

It took courage to obey his command. But Ruth had that courage. She flung herself forward upon her hands and knees and – seemingly – at the same instant the man above fired.

The roar of the weapon in the rocky glen and the roar of the stricken bear, was a deafening combination of sound. The bullet had hit the big brute somewhere in a serious spot and he was rolling and kicking on the rocks – his first throes of agony flinging him almost to Ruth’s feet.

But the girl scrambled farther away and heard the rifle speak again. A second bullet entered the body of the bear. At the same time a lusty shout arose from below. The boys and Jib having explored the river-tunnel as far as they found it practicable, had returned to the camp and there discovered where the girls had gone. Jib hastened after them, for he felt that they should not be roaming over the rocks without an armed escort.

“Hi, yi!” he yelped, tearing up the path with a rifle in his hand. “Keep it up, brother! We’re comin’!”

Tom and Bob came with him. Jib saw the expiring bear, and he likewise glimpsed the man who had brought bruin down. In a moment, however, the stranger darted out of sight up the path and they did not even hear his footsteps on the rocks.

“Why, that’s that feller from Tintacker!” cried the Indian. “Hey, you!”

“Not the crazy man?” gasped Jane Ann.

“Oh, surely he’ll come back?” said Helen.

Ruth turned, almost tempted to run after the stranger. “Do you really mean to say it is the young man who has been staying at the Tintacker properties so long?” she asked.

“That’s the feller.”

“We’d ought to catch him and see what Uncle Bill has to say to him about the fire,” said Jane Ann.

“Oh, we ought to thank him for shooting the bear,” cried Madge.

“And I wanted to speak with him so much!” groaned Ruth; but nobody heard her say this. The others had gathered around the dead bear. Of a sudden a new discovery was made:

“Where’s Mary?” cried Helen.

“The Fox has run away!” exclaimed Madge.

“I’ll bet she has!” exclaimed Jane Ann Hicks. “Didn’t you see her, Jib?”

“We didn’t pass her on the path,” said Tom.

Ruth’s keen eye discovered the missing girl first. She ran with a cry to a little shelf upon which the foxy maid had scrambled when the excitement started. The Fox was stretched out upon the rock in a dead faint!

“Well! would you ever?” gasped Madge. “Who’d think that Mary Cox would faint? She’s always been bold enough, goodness knows!”

Ruth had hurried to the shelf where The Fox lay. She was very white and there could be no doubt but that she was totally unconscious. Jib lent his assistance and getting her into his arms he carried her bodily down the steep path to the camp, leaving Tom and Bob to guard the bear until he returned to remove the pelt. The other girls strung out after their fainting comrade, and the journey to the summit of the natural bridge was postponed indefinitely.

Cold water from the mountain stream soon brought The Fox around. But when she opened her eyes and looked into the face of the ministering Ruth, she muttered:

“And you saw him, too!”

Then she turned her face away and began to cry.

“Aw, shucks!” exclaimed the ranchman’s niece, “don’t bawl none about it. The bear won’t hurt you now. He’s dead as can be.”

But Ruth did not believe that Mary Cox was crying about the bear. Her words and subsequent actions did puzzle the girl of the Red Mill. Ruth had whispered to Tom, before they left the scene of the bear shooting:

“See if you can find that man. If you can, bring him into camp.”

“But if he’s crazy?” Tom suggested, in surprise.

“He isn’t too crazy to have saved my life,” declared the grateful girl. “And if he is in his right mind, all the more reason why we should try to help him.”

“You’re always right, Ruthie,” admitted Helen’s brother. But when the boy and Jib returned to camp two hours later, with the bear pelt and some of the best portions of the carcass, they had to report that the stranger who had shot the bear seemed to have totally disappeared. Jib Pottoway was no bad trailer; but over the rocks it was impossible to follow the stranger, especially as he had taken pains to hide his trail.

“If you want to thank that critter for saving you from the b’ar, Miss Ruthie,” the Indian said, “you’ll hafter go clear over to Tintacker to do so. That’s my opinion.”

“How far away is that?” demanded Mary Cox, suddenly.

“Near a hundred miles from this spot,” declared Jib. “That is, by wagon trail. I reckon you could cut off thirty or forty miles through the hills. The feller’s evidently l’arnt his way around since Winter.”

Mary asked no further question about the man from Tintacker; but she had shown an interest in him that puzzled Ruth.

CHAPTER XIII – THE PARTY AT THE SCHOOLHOUSE

The bear fight and the runaway together so disturbed the minds of the picnicking party in the cañon that nobody objected to the suggestion of an early return to the ranch-house. Ruth was secretly much troubled in her mind over the mysterious individual who had killed the bear. She had not seen her rescuer’s face; but she wondered if Mary Cox had seen it?

The girls never did get to the top of the natural bridge. Jib and the boys in trying to trace the stranger had gone over the summit; but they did not tarry to look around. The girls and Ricardo got supper, immediately after which they set out on the return drive.

Jib insisted upon holding the lines over the backs of the team that had run away – and he saw that Mary Cox rode in that vehicle, too. But The Fox showed no vexation at this; indeed, she was very quiet all the way to Silver Ranch. She was much unlike her usual snappy, sharp-tongued self.

But, altogether, the party arrived home in very good spirits. The wonders of the wild country – so much different from anything the Easterners had seen before – deeply impressed Ruth and her friends. The routine work of the ranch, however, interested them more. Not only Tom and Bob, but their sisters and the other girls, found the free, out-of-door life of the range and corral a never-failing source of delight.

Ruth herself was becoming a remarkably good horsewoman. Freckles carried her many miles over the range and Jane Ann Hicks was scarcely more bold on pony-back than was the girl from the Red Mill.

As for the cowboys of the Silver outfit, they admitted that the visitors were “some human,” even from a Western standpoint.

“Them friends o’ yourn, Miss Jinny,” Jimsey said, to Old Bill’s niece, “ain’t so turrible ‘Bawston’ as some tenderfoots I’ve seen.” (“Boston,” according to Jimsey, spelled the ultra-East and all its “finicky” ways!) “I’m plum taken with that Fielding gal – I sure am. And I believe old Ike, here, is losin’ his heart to her. Old Lem Dickson’s Sally better bat her eyes sharp or Ike’ll go up in the air an’ she’ll lose him.”

It was true that the foreman was less bashful with Ruth than with any of the other girls. Ruth knew how to put him at his ease. Every spare hour Bashful Ike had he put in teaching Ruth to improve her riding, and as she was an early riser they spent a good many morning hours cantering over the range before the rest of the young people were astir at Silver Ranch.