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

“What do you mean?” demanded her chum, almost angry at Helen’s thoughtlessness. “Don’t you know that I am supposed to be ‘dead to the world’?”

“Oh, Ruthie, forgive me! But I had to tell you at once. There’s a strange woman about the camp. Miss Cullam and I both saw her.”

“A strange woman!” repeated Ruth. “I’m sure Miss Cullam didn’t send you hotfoot to tell me.”

“No-o. But I had to tell you – I just had to,” Helen declared. “Don’t be mean, Ruthie. Do take an interest in something besides your old movie picture.”

“Why, I am interested,” admitted Ruth. “But who is this strange woman?”

“Goodness!” exclaimed Helen. “That’s just what’s the matter. We don’t know. We didn’t see her face. She had a big shawl – or a Navajo blanket – around her.”

“An Indian squaw!” exclaimed Rebecca who could not help hearing. “I’d like to see one myself.”

“We-ell, maybe she was an Indian squaw,” admitted Helen, slowly. “But why did she run from us?”

“Afraid of you,” chuckled Ruth. “I expect to the eyes of the untutored savage you and Miss Cullam looked perfectly awful.”

“Now, Ruth!”

“But why bring your conundrums to me – just when I am busiest, too?”

“Well, I never! I thought you might be interested,” sniffed Helen.

“I am, dear. But don’t you see that your news is so – er —sketchy? I might be perfectly enthralled about this Indian squaw if I really met her. Capture her and bring her into camp.”

Helen went off rather offended. As it happened, it was Ruth herself who was destined to learn more about the mysterious woman, as well as the lone horseman. But much happened before that.

Before the end of the week Mr. Hammond rode into Freezeout with a nondescript outfit, including a dozen workmen prepared to put the old camp into shape for the making of the great film.

The old camp became a busy place immediately. Flapjack Peters “came out strong,” as his daughter expressed it, at this juncture. His memory of old times at these very diggings and at similar mines proved to be keen, and he became a valuable aid to Mr. Hammond.

Four days later the wagons appeared and the girls got their trunks. That very night there was a “regular party” in one of the old saloons and dancehalls that chanced, even after all these years, to be habitable.

One of the teamsters had brought his fiddle, and at the prospect of a dance, even with the paucity of men, the Ardmore girls were delighted. But, to tell the truth, the “party” was arranged more for the sake of Min Peters than for aught else.

“She’s got to get used to wearing fit clothes before those movie people come,” Ann Hicks said firmly. “You leave it to me, girls. I know how to coax her on.”

And Ann proved the truth of her statement. Not that Min was not eager to see herself “all dolled up,” as Jennie called it, in one of the two big mirrors the wagons had brought along for use in the actresses’ dressing cabins. But she was fiercely independent, and to suggest that she accept the college girls’ frocks and furbelows as gifts would have angered her.

But Ann induced her to “borrow” the things needed, and from the trunks of all were obtained the articles necessary to make Min Peters appear at the party as well dressed as any girl need be. Nor was she so awkward as some had feared.

“And pretty was no name for it.”

“See there!” cried Helen, under her breath, to her chum. “The girl is cutting you out, Ruth, with old Tommy-boy. He’s asked her to dance.”

Ruth only smiled at this. She had put Tom up to that herself, for she learned from Ann that the Yucca girl knew how to dance.

“Of course she can. There is scarcely a girl in the West who doesn’t dance. Goodness, Ruthie! don’t you remember how crazy they were for dancing around Silver Ranch, and the fun we had at the schoolhouse dance at The Crossing? Maybe we ain’t on to all those new foxtrots and tangos; but we can dance.”

So it proved with Min. She flushed deeply when Tom asked her, and she hesitated. Then, seeing the other girls whirling about the floor, two and two, the temptation to “show ’em” was too much. She accepted Tom’s invitation and the young fellow admitted afterward that he had danced with “a lot worse girls back East.”

Before the evening was over, Min was supremely happy. And perhaps the effect on her father was quite as important as upon Min herself. For the first time in her life he saw his daughter in the garb of girls of her age – saw her as she should be.

“By mighty!” the man muttered, staring at Min. “I don’t git it – not right. Is that sure ‘nuff my girl?”

“You should be proud of her,” said Mr. Hammond, who heard the old-timer say this. “She deserves a lot from you, Peters. I understand she’s been your companion on all your prospecting trips since her mother died.”

“That’s right. She’s been the old man’s best friend. She’s skookum. But I had no idee she’d look like that when she was fussed up same’s other girls. She’s been more like a boy to me.”

“Well, she’s no boy, you see,” Mr. Hammond said dryly.

Out of the dance, however, Ruth gained her desire. She explained to Min that she needed just her to make the motion picture complete. And Min, bashfully enough but gratefully, agreed to act the part of the “lookout” in the “palace of pleasure” afterward appearing in a girl’s garb in the hotel parlor.

Ruth was deep in her story now and could give attention to little else. Mr. Grimes and the motion picture company would arrive in a week, and by that time the several important buildings would be ready and the main street of Freezeout appear as it had been when the placer diggings were in full swing.

Something happened before the company arrived, however, which was of an astounding nature. Ruth, riding with Helen and Jennie one afternoon east of the camp, came upon the ridge where the lone horseman had been observed. And here, overhanging the gorge, was a place where the quartz ledge had been laid bare by pick and shovel.

“See that rock, girls? Look, how it sparkles!” said Helen. “Suppose it should be a vein of gold?”

“Suppose it is!” cried Jennie, scrambling off her horse.

“‘Fools’ gold,’ more likely, girls,” Ruth said.

“What is that?” demanded Jennie.

“Pyrites. But we might take some samples and show them to Flapjack.”

“Do you suppose that old fellow actually knows gold-bearing quartz when he sees it?” asked Helen, in doubt.

They picked up several pieces of the broken rock, and that evening after supper showed Peters and Min their booty. Flapjack actually turned pale when he saw it.

“Where’d you git this, Miss?” he asked Ruth.

“Well, it isn’t two miles from here,” said the girl of the Red Mill. “What do you think of it?”

“I think this here is a placer diggin’s,” said Peters, slowly. “But it’s sure that wherever there’s placer there must be a rock-vein where the gold washed off, or was ground off, ages and ages ago. D’you understand?”

“Yes!” cried Helen, breathlessly.

“Oh! suppose we have found gold!” murmured Jennie, quite as excited as Helen.

“The rock-vein ain’t never been found around here,” said Flapjack. “I know, for I’ve hunted it myself. Both banks of the crick, up an’ down, have been s’arched – ”

“But suppose this was found a good way from the stream?”

“Mebbe so,” said the old prospector. “The crick might ha’ shifted its bed a dozen times since the glacier age. We don’t know.”

“But how shall we find out if this rock is any good?” asked Jennie, eagerly.

“Mr. Hammond’s goin’ to send a man out to Handy Gulch with mail to-morrow,” said the prospector. “He’ll send these samples to the assayer there. He’ll send back word whether it’s good for anything or not. But I tell you right now, ladies. If I’m any jedge at all, that ore’ll assay a hundred an’ fifty dollars to the ton – or nothin’.”

CHAPTER XVII – THE MAN IN THE CABIN

Why, of course they could not keep it to themselves! At least, the three girls could not. They simply had to tell Miss Cullam and Tom, and the other Ardmore freshmen and Ann of their discovery.

So every day after that the visitors from the East “went prospecting.” They searched up and down the creek for several miles, turning over every bit of “sparkling” rock they saw and bringing back to the camp innumerable specimens of quartz and mica, until Mr. Hammond declared they were all “gold mad.”

“Why, this place has been petered out for years and years,” he said. “Do you suppose I want my actors leaving me to stake out claims along Freezeout Creek, and spoiling my picture? Stop it!”

The idea of gold hunting had got into the girls, however, as well as into Flapjack Peters and his daughter. The other Western men laughed at them. Gold this side of the Hualapai Range had “petered out.” They looked upon the old-timer as a little cracked on the subject. And, of course, these “tenderfoots” did not know anything about “color” anyway.

Even Miss Cullam searched along the creek banks and up into the low hills that surrounded the valley.

“Who knows,” said the teacher of mathematics, “but that I may find a fortune, and so be able to eschew the teaching of the young for the rest of my life? Gorgeous!”

“But pity the ‘young’,” begged Jennie Stone. “Think, Miss Cullam, how we would miss you.”

“I can hardly imagine that you would suffer,” declared the mathematics teacher. “Really!”

“We might not miss the mathematics,” said Rebecca, wickedly. “But you are the very best chaperon who ever ‘beaued’ a party of girls into the wilds. Isn’t that the truth, Ardmores?”

“It is!” they cried. “Hurrah for Miss Cullam!”

Ruth, however, despite the discovery of the possibly gold-bearing quartz, was not to be coaxed from her work. Each morning she shut herself into the “sanctum sanctorum” and worked faithfully at the scenario. Likewise, Rebecca stuck to the typewriter, for she had work to do for Mr. Hammond now, as well as for Ruth.

Some part of each afternoon Ruth took for exercise in the open. And usually she took this exercise on ponyback.

Riding alone out of the shallow gorge one day, she struck into what seemed to her a bridlepath which led into “dips” and valleys in the hills which she had never before seen. Nothing more had been observed of either the lone horseman or the supposed squaw for so many days that their presence about Freezeout Camp had quite slipped Ruth Fielding’s mind.

Besides, there were so many men at the camp now that to have fear of strangers was never in the girl’s thoughts. She urged her hardy pony into a gallop and sped down hill and up in a most invigorating dash.

Such a ride cleared the cobwebs out of her head and revivified mind and body alike. At the end of this dash, when she halted the pony in an arroyo to breathe, she was cheerful and happy and ready to laugh at anything.

She laughed first at her own nose! It really was ridiculous to think that she smelled wood smoke.

But the pungent odor of burning wood grew more and more distinct. She gazed swiftly all around her, seeing no campfire, of course, in this shallow gulch. But suddenly she gathered up the bridle reins tightly and stared, wide-eyed, off to the left. A faint column of blue smoke rose into the air – she could not be mistaken.

“Here’s a pretty kettle of fish!” thought Ruth. “Another camping party? Who can be living so near Freezeout without giving us a call? The lone horseman? The Indian squaw? Or both?”

She half turned her pony to ride back. It might be some ill-disposed person camping here in secret. Flapjack and Min had intimated there were occasionally ne’er-do-wells found in the range – outlaws, or ill-disposed Indians.

Still, it was cowardly to run from the unknown. Ruth had tasted real peril on more than one occasion. She touched the spur to her pony instead of pulling him around, and rode on.

There was a curve in the arroyo and when she came into the hidden part of the basin the mystery was instantly explained. A fairly substantial cabin – recently built it was evident – stood near a thicket of mesquite. The door was hung on leather hinges and was wide open. Yet there must be some occupant, for the smoke rose through the hole in the roof. It struck Ruth, for several reasons, that the cabin had been built by an amateur.

She held in her pony again and might, after all, have wheeled him and ridden away without going closer, if the little beast had not betrayed her presence by a shrill whinny. Immediately the pony’s challenge was answered from the mesquite where the unknown’s horse was picketed.

Ruth was startled again. No sound came from the cabin, nor could she discover anybody watching her from the jungle. She rode nearer to the cabin door.

It was then that the unshod hoofs of her pony announced her presence to whoever was within. A voice shouted suddenly:

“Hullo!”

The tone in which the word was uttered drove all the fear out of Ruth Fielding’s mind. She knew that the owner of such a voice must be a gentleman.

She rode her pony up to the open door and peered into the dimly lighted interior. There was no window in the cabin walls.

“Hullo yourself!” she rejoined. “Are you all alone?”

“Sure I am. I’m a hermit – the Hermit Prospector. And I bet you are one of those moving picture girls.”

A laugh accompanied the words. Ruth then saw the man, extended at full length in a rude bunk. One foot was bare and it and the ankle was swathed in bandages.

“Sorry I can’t get up to do the honors. Doctor’s ordered me to stay in bed till this ankle recovers.”

“Oh! Is it broken?” cried Ruth, slipping out of her saddle and throwing the reins on the ground before the pony so that he would stand.

“Wrenched. But a bad one. I’m likely to stay here a while.”

“And all alone?” breathed Ruth.

“Quite so. Not a soul to swear at, nor a cat to kick. My horse is out there in the mesquite and I suppose he’s tangled up – ”

“I’ll fix that in a moment,” cried Ruth. “He’d better be tethered here on the hillside before your door. The grazing is good.”

“Well – yes. I suppose so.”

Ruth was off into the mesquite in a flash. She found the whinnying pony. And she discovered another thing. The animal’s lariat had been untangled and his grazing place changed several times.

“You’ve hobbled around a good bit since your ankle was hurt,” she said accusingly, when she returned to the cabin door. “And see all the firewood you’ve got!”

“I expect I did too much after I strained the ankle,” the man admitted gravely. “That’s why it is so bad now. But when a man’s alone – ”

“Yes. When he is alone,” repeated Ruth, eyeing him thoughtfully.

He was a young man and as roughly dressed as any of the teamsters at Freezeout Camp. There was, too, several days’ growth of beard upon his face. But he was a good looking chap, with rather a humorous cast of countenance. And Ruth was quite sure that he was educated and at present in a strange environment.

“Have you plenty of water?” she asked suddenly, for she had seen the spring several rods away.

“Lots,” declared “the hermit.” “See! I’ve a drip.”

He pointed with pride to the arrangement of a rude shelf beside the head of his bunk with a twenty-quart galvanized pail upon it. A pin-hole had been punched in this pail near the bottom, and the water dripped from the aperture steadily into a pint cup on the floor.

“Would you believe it,” he said, with a smile, “the water, after falling so far through the air, is quite cooled.”

“What do you do when the pail is empty?” the girl asked quickly.

“Oh! I shall be able to hobble to the spring by that time. If the cup gets full and I don’t need the water, I pour it back.”

Ruth stood on tiptoe and looked into the pail. Then she brought water from the spring in her own canteen, making several trips, and filled the pail to the brim.

“Now, what do you eat, and how do you get it?” she asked him.

“My dear young lady!” he cried, “you must not worry about me. I shall be all right. I was just going to cook some bacon when you rode up. That is why I made up a fresh fire. I shall be all right, I assure you.”

Ruth insisted upon rumaging through his stores and cooking the hermit a hearty meal. She marked the fact that certain delicacies were here that the ordinary prospector would not have packed into the wilds. Likewise, there was vastly more tea and sugar than one person could use in a long time.

Ruth was quite sure “the hermit” was not a native of the West. She was exceedingly puzzled as she went about her kindly duties. Then, of a sudden, she was actually startled as well as puzzled. In a corner of the cabin she found hanging on a nail a rubber bathcap on which was stenciled “Ardmore.” It was one of the gymnasium caps from her college.

CHAPTER XVIII – RUTH REALLY HAS A SECRET

Ruth Fielding came back from her ride to Freezeout Camp and said not a word to a soul about her discovery of the young man in the cabin. She had a secret at last, but it was not her own. She did not feel that she had the right to speak even to Helen about it.

She was quite sure “the hermit” had no ill intention toward their party. And if he had a companion that companion could do those at Freezeout no harm.

Just what it was all about Ruth did not know; yet she had some suspicions. However, she rode out to the lone cabin the next day, and the next, to see that the young man was comfortable. “The Hermit Prospector,” as he laughingly called himself, was doing very well.

Ruth brought him two slim poles out of the wood and he fashioned himself a pair of crutches. By means of these he began to hobble around and Ruth decided that he did not need her further ministrations. She did not tell him that she should cease calling, she merely ceased riding that way. For a “hermit” he had seemed very glad, indeed, to have somebody to speak to.

Ruth was exceedingly busy now. The director, Mr. Grimes – a very efficient but unpleasant man – arrived with the remainder of the company, and rehearsals began immediately. Hazel Gray, who had been so fresh and young looking when Ruth and Helen first met her at the Red Mill, was beginning to show the ravages of “film acting.” The appealing personality which had first brought her into prominence in motion pictures was now a matter of “registering.” There was little spontaneity in the leading lady’s acting; but the part she had to play in “The Forty-Niners” was far different from that she had acted in “The Heart of a School Girl,” an earlier play of Ruth’s.

Mr. Grimes was just as unpleasantly sarcastic as when Ruth first saw him. But he got out of his people what was needed, although his shouting and threatening seemed to Ruth to be unnecessary.

With Ruth Mr. Grimes was perfectly polite. Perhaps he knew better than to be otherwise. He was good enough to commend the scenario, and although he changed several scenes she had spent hard work upon, Ruth was sensible enough to see that he changed them for good cause and usually for the better.

He approved of Min’s part in the play, and he was careful with the Western girl in her scenes. Min did very well, indeed, and even Flapjack made his extra three dollars a day on several occasions when he appeared with the teamsters in the “rough house” scenes in the night life of the old-time mining camp.

The film actors were not an unpleasant company; yet after all they were not people who could adapt themselves to the rude surroundings of the abandoned camp as easily, even, as did the college girls. The women were always fussing about lack of hotel requisites – like baths and electric lights and maids to wait upon them. The men complained of the food and the rude sleeping accommodations.

Ruth learned something right here: All the girls from Ardmore save Rebecca Frayne and Ruth herself came from wealthy families – and Rebecca was used to every refinement of life. Yet the Ardmores took the “roughing it” good-naturedly and never worried their pretty heads about “maid service” and the like.

Some of the film women, seeing Min Peters about in her usual garb, undertook to treat her superciliously. They did not make the mistake twice. Min was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and she intended to be treated with respect. Min was so treated.

Helen Cameron was much amused by the attitude her brother took toward the leading lady, Hazel Gray. Miss Gray was not more than two years older than the twins and when the film actress had first become known to them Tom had been instantly attracted. His case of boyish love had been acute, but brief.

For six months the walls of his study at Seven Oaks were fairly papered with pictures of Hazel Gray in all manner of poses and characterizations. The next semester Tom had gone in for well-known athletes, not excluding many prize fighters, and the pictures of Miss Gray went into the discard.

Now the young actress set out to charm Tom again. He was the only young personable male at Freezeout, save the actors themselves, and she knew them. But Tom gave her just as much attention as he did Min Peters, for instance, and no more.

There was but one girl in camp to whom he showed any special attention. He was always at Ruth’s beck and call if she needed him. Tom never put himself forward with Ruth, or claimed more than was the due of any good friend. But the girl of the Red Mill often told herself that Tom was dependable.

She was not sure that she ever wanted her chum’s brother to be anything more to her than what he was now – a safe friend. She and Helen had talked so much about “independence” and the like that it seemed like sheer treachery to consider for a moment any different life after college than that they had planned.

Ruth was to write plays and sing. Helen was to improve her violin playing and give lessons. They would take a studio together in Boston – perhaps in New York – and live the ideal life of bachelor girls. Helen desired to support herself just as much as Ruth determined to support herself.

“It is dependence upon man for daily bread and butter that makes women slaves,” Helen declared. And Ruth agreed – with some reservations. It began to look to her as though all were dependent upon one another in this world, irrespective of sex.

However, Tom was one of those dependable creatures that, if you wanted him, was right at hand. Ruth let the matter rest at that and did not disturb her mind much over questions of personal growth and expansion, or over the woman question.

Her thought, indeed, was so much taken up with the picture that was being made that she had little time to bother with anything else. She almost forgot the lame young man in the distant cabin and ceased to wonder as to who his companion might be. She certainly had quite forgotten the specimens of ore which had been sent to the Handy Gulch assayer’s office until unexpectedly the report arrived.

Helen and Jennie, as well as Peters and his daughter, were interested in this event. The others of the Ardmore party had only heard of the supposed find and had not even seen the uncovered bit of ledge from which the ore had been taken.

“Why, perhaps we are all rich!” breathed Jennie Stone. “Beyond the dreams of avarice! How much does he say?”

“One hundred and thirty-three dollars to the ton. And it’s ‘free gold,’” declared Ruth. “It can be extracted by the cyaniding process. That can be done on the spot, and cheaply. Where there is much sulphide in the ore the gold must be extracted by the hydro-electric process.”

“Goodness, Ruth! How did you learn so much?” gasped Helen.

“By using my tongue and ears. What were they given us for?”

“To taste nice things with and drape ‘spit-curls’ over,” giggled Jennie.

They went to Peters and Min and displayed the report. The old prospector could have given the thing away in the exuberance of his joy if it had not been for the good sense his daughter displayed.

“Hush up, Pop,” she commanded. “You want to put all these bum actors on to the strike before we’ve laid out our own claims? We want to grab off the cream of this find. You know it must be rich.”

“Rich? Say, girl, rich ain’t no name for it. I know what this Freezeout proposition was when it was placer diggings. Where so much dust and nuggets come from along a crick bed, we knowed there must be a regular mother lode somewheres here. Only we never supposed it was on that side of the stream an’ so far away. It looked like the old bed of the crick lay to the west.