Ruth Fielding In the Saddle; College Girls in the Land of Gold

“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.