Ruth Fielding in Alaska

Tom Cameron laughed at Ruth’s statement and tried to reassure her. But Ruth could not be shaken from her stand.

“Rumph dislikes me and mistrusts me for some reason, Tom,” she insisted. “I have not been in this profession so long, meeting all types and kinds of people, without learning a few things—and one of them is to be able to judge pretty accurately the attitude of my actors toward me. You don’t know how sensitive a director is to atmosphere, Tom. I suppose he has to traffic so much in emotions, both artificial and real, that he becomes supersensitive to them. Anyway, I know I can always tell whether an actor has confidence in me and whether he is working for or against me. And this dwarf, Rumph, is going to work against me every inch of the way! Of that much I am sure!”

Ruth had removed her hands from before her face and was sitting with them clasped tightly in her lap. She leaned toward Tom and spoke with an earnestness that could not fail to impress him. He had learned long ago to place trust in Ruth’s almost uncanny gift of reading people and motives. She seemed to know sometimes what her associates were going to do and how they were going to do it almost before they were aware of their own designs.

So on this occasion he looked grave and troubled and put one of his own big hands over her clasped ones.

“I’m sorry you feel this way, Ruth,” he said. “It seems to me Rumph plays a pretty important part in the picture. It would be rather hard to get along without him, wouldn’t it?”

To his surprise Ruth shook her head vehemently in the negative.

“Not the way I see it,” she said. “I have watched this—this afflicted creature work in other pictures, and he has never failed to make me sick with mingled pity and loathing. I have always felt—I may be wrong, but I don’t believe so—that the audience agreed with me. People go to the moving pictures to be amused and, in some cases, edified, but they don’t go to see monstrosities. It seems to me that it offends the ordinary normal-minded person to see a deformity, such as Rumph’s, exploited, brought into the limelight. It seems to me—and again I may be wrong—that I could make a far more striking, more powerful picture without Joe Rumph than with him.”

“But the book!” protested Tom. “It is necessary, isn’t it, to make the film production as near like the finished story as possible?”

“Of course,” said Ruth. “But if you will remember, the villain of the novel was no such deformed creature as Rumph. He had been crippled, it is true, in a railroad accident and his spine so hurt that he would always be a marked man, but he was no such repulsive animal as this Rumph!”

Ruth shuddered again and Tom laughed ruefully.

“I must admit myself he isn’t any beauty,” he said, beginning to stride up and down the room. “But if you should get rid of Rumph what would you do for a villain? No ordinary actor could take that part, you know.”

“No,” admitted Ruth simply. But there was the queer little secret look in her face that Tom had often surprised there when Ruth was seized by inspiration. “No ordinary actor could. But—have you noticed Carlton Brewer?”

“The one who plays the hero’s best friend—the spineless, good-natured, devoted lad whose idiocy is always getting him into laughable scrapes?” Tom wanted to know.

“The same,” said Ruth, her eyes half-closed in dreamy contemplation of some vision that only she herself could see. “His part in this picture is not impressive, I’m bound to admit, but I am convinced that that boy would make a great actor if he had only half a chance.”

“But the cripple part of it,” Tom protested. “Carlton Brewer is one of the best set-up lads I ever saw.”

“Oh, Tommy, Tommy, you’re funny,” cried Ruth, laughing a little with suppressed excitement. “Do you mean to tell me that you have been connected with this profession this long without learning that with a little artificial make-up the straightest back can be bent and a most convincing screen cripple made? And incidentally Abe Levy—did you notice him? The little good-looking, curly-haired Jew with the cheerful smile—is one of the cleverest make-up men in the profession. I’m willing to bet that with a little coaxing on my part he could make the loveliest cripple out of Carlton Brewer that you ever saw!”

Tom stopped before her and gazed down at her with that slightly bewildered, wholly admiring wonder that was a part of his affection for the girl.

“I believe anybody would do almost anything for you when you look like that, Ruth Fielding!” he said.

She made a little face at him and for a while they relapsed into a thoughtful silence.

At last Tom said:

“If you feel that way about it, I’d be willing to back your judgment to the limit. Mr. Hammond has given you full leave to exercise your discretion. Why don’t you discharge Rumph and have it over with?”

But Ruth shook her head, a shadow once more clouding her face.

“Not yet,” she said. “I don’t want to make any radical change until I feel that I have the full confidence of my company. And it may take me some time to win that, Tom!”

If Ruth could have been present at a conference of some of her actors and directors in Layton Boardman’s room, she would have found her forebodings justified.

Gerard Bolton was speaking at the moment.

“She’s clever, all right,” he admitted. “You can see that. But I doubt if she has the ability to handle a picture like ‘The Girl of Gold.’”

“She can do it if any one can,” said Layton Boardman. “Look at the work she did in ‘Snow-blind’ and this last picture at Golden Pass.”

“She is one of those rare people,” Edith Lang spoke up, also in Ruth’s support, “who have the imagination and ability not only to write the script of her plays but to direct the filming as well.”

“She did not write the script for ‘The Girl of Gold,’” Bolton pointed out.

“No, but I believe she thoroughly understands it,” Edith Lang flashed back at him.

“That,” retorted the director, with a cynical lifting of eyebrows, “remains to be seen!”

“I don’t like working under the direction of a woman, never did!” It was the growling tones of Joe Rumph that broke into the conversation. “I don’t know what the boss was thinking of to put a kid like that over us! It’s my belief that this whole thing’s going to be a complete flop!”

There was a deep and significant silence while the others looked at him. The dwarf was not popular with his fellow actors. For, where his terrible deformity might have excited pity, his rough manner and bitter words rejected it. But at this moment, despite the loyal defense of the two actors who had worked with Ruth in her last picture, the consensus of opinion was with Joe Rumph.

From all appearances, Ruth Fielding’s road to success on this occasion was to be by no means an easy one!

However, the next day, which was to mark the start of the journey to the Yukon, dawned hopefully clear and bright and Ruth awoke with a tremendous enthusiasm to start on her great adventure.

Helen was lazy and hard to get up.

After her matinée Helen had done a little window shopping. She was delighted with the great stores, saying that they reminded her of those in New York, only that they were “much more fascinating.”

When Chess came back to the hotel from his business interview, jubilant and declaring that he had “landed his big fish,” Helen was waiting for him and still blissfully employed in happy mental contemplation of gorgeous shop windows.

She was very enthusiastic about his good news, however, and gayly agreed to dine sumptuously with him and go that evening to the best show in town in honor of the great occasion.

Small wonder, then, that morning found her still sleepy and in no mood to hurry, as Ruth begged her to.

“You might let a fellow be,” Helen murmured reproachfully, as she succeeded with great effort in getting her second eye open.

“I’ll let you be in earnest if you don’t get busy and hustle,” Ruth retorted, as she combed her pretty hair and wound it neatly about her head. “Are you aware that our steamer leaves Seattle promptly at nine-thirty? Perhaps,” she added innocently, but with mischievous intent, “you and Chess like Seattle so much that you would like to stay here and not go to the Yukon with us, after all!”

With deep resignation Helen got up then and looked sleepily for her shoe under the bed.

“You can be the most cruel thing when you want to, Ruthie Fielding,” she complained. “Sometimes I just don’t know how I go on loving you at all!”

It was only after a wild scramble on Helen’s part—and on Ruth’s, too, since she was forced to pack Helen’s grip as well as her own—that they succeeded in reaching the dock in time to board the steamer.

Ruth found her company at the wharf before her and was relieved to find, as the gangplank was drawn up, that no one had been left behind.

“Except Joe Rumph,” she whispered to Tom, as the space slowly widened between the ship and the wharf. “I think I could have been quite content to have left him behind!”

The bustle and activity of the harbor was an inspiration in itself. Ruth’s eyes sparkled as she gazed out over the busy scene. Ships of all sizes and descriptions crowded the port. Except for the addition of many lumber boats, Ruth might almost have imagined herself back in New York, gazing out over lower New York Harbor.

The steamer was crowded and it was with difficulty that Tom kept his little flock together. He managed to get them all safely established finally in the staterooms he had reserved for them, and then came back to rejoin Ruth, who had lingered on deck, watching the shipping on Puget Sound.

“Some crowd, eh?” he greeted her buoyantly, as he fought his way through to her side. “This is the Yukon’s open season, and it seems as if the whole world had taken advantage of the fact. What are you thinking about so deeply, Ruth?”

For answer Ruth put a hand upon his arm and held up a finger warningly.

“Listen!” she said in a low voice.

Somewhere behind them a laughing voice came clearly to their ears.

“Wonder if we’ll run into Sol Bloomberg on this trip?”

“Sol Bloomberg!” returned another voice, surprised. “What’s the idea?”

“Why, hadn’t you heard?” The first speaker was evidently incredulous. “Bloomberg has gone to Alaska.”