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

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,’ à 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.