Tom and his father had visited his sister and Ruth at Ardmore; the young fellow was no stranger to the girls whom Ruth had invited to join the party bound for Freezeout Camp. Of course, Jennie Stone knew Helen’s black-eyed twin from old times when they were children.
“Dear me, how you’ve grown, Tommy!” observed the plump girl, looking Tom over with approval.
“For the first time since I’ve known you, Jennie, I cannot return the compliment,” Tom said seriously.
“Gee!” sighed the erstwhile fat girl, ecstatically, “am I not glad!”
That next day all arrived. Ruth and Helen were the last, they reaching the hotel just before bedtime. But Tom was forever wandering through the foyer and parlors to spy a certain hat and figure that he was sure he should know again. He was tempted to tell Helen and her chums about the chauffeur and the strange young lady while they were all enjoying a late supper.
“However, a man alone, with such a number of girls, has to be mighty careful,” so Tom told himself, “that they don’t get something on him. They’d rig me to death, and I guess Tommy had better keep his tongue between his teeth.”
The train on which the party had obtained reservations left the Pennsylvania Station at ten o’clock in the forenoon. Half an hour before that time Tom came down to the hotel entrance ahead of the girls and instructed the starter to bespeak two taxicabs.
As Tom stepped out of the wide open door he saw the motor-car with the monogram on the door, the same chauffeur driving, and the girl with the “stunning” hat in the tonneau. The car was just moving away from the door and it was but a fleeting glimpse Tom obtained of it and its occupants. They did not even glance at him.
“Guess I was fooling myself after all,” he muttered. “At any rate, I fancy they aren’t so greatly interested. They’re not following us, that’s sure.”
The girls came hurrying down, with Miss Cullam in tow, all carrying their hand baggage. Trunks had gone on ahead, although Ruth had warned them all that, once off the train at Yucca, only the most necessary articles of apparel could be packed into the mountain range.
“Remember, we are dependent upon burros for the transportation of our luggage; and there are only just about so many of the cunning little things in all Arizona. We can’t transport too large a wardrobe.”
“Are the burros as cunning as they say they are?” asked Trix Davenport.
“All of that,” said Tom. “And great singers.”
“Sing? Now you are spoofing!” declared the coxswain of Ardmore’s freshman eight.
“All right. You wait and see. You know what they call ’em out there? Mountain canaries. Wait till you hear a love-lorn burro singing to his mate. Oh, my!”
“The idea!” ejaculated Miss Cullam. “What does the boy mean by ‘love-lorn’?”
It was a hilarious party that alighted from the taxicabs in the station and made its way to the proper part of the trainshed. The sleeping car was a luxurious one, and when the train pulled out and dived into the tunnel under the Hudson (“just like a woodchuck into its hole,” Trix said) they were comfortably established in their seats.
Tom had secured three full sections for the girls. Miss Cullam had Lower Two while Tom himself had Upper Five. There was some slight discussion over this latter section, for the berth under Tom had been reserved for a lady.
“Well, that’s all right,” said Tom philosophically. “If she can stand it, I can. Let the conductor fight it out with her.”
“Perhaps she will want you to sleep out on the observation platform, Tommy,” said Jennie Stone, wickedly. “To be gallant you’d do it, of course?”
“Of course,” said Tom, stoutly. “Far be it from me to add to the burden on the mind of any female person. It strikes me that they are mostly in trouble about something all the time.”
“Oh, oh!” cried Helen. “Villain! Is that the way I’ve brought you up?”
Tom grinned at his sister wickedly. “Somehow your hand must have slipped when you were molding me, Sis. What d’you think?”
When the time came to retire, however, there was no objection made by the lady who had reserved Lower Five. Of course, in these sleeping cars the upper and lower berths were so arranged that they were entirely separate. But in the morning Tom chanced to be coming from his berth just as the lady started down the corridor for the dressing room.
“My!” thought Tom. “That’s some pretty girl. Who——”
Then he caught a glimpse of her face, just as she turned it hastily from him. He had seen it once before—just as a certain motor-car was drawing away from the front of the Delorphion Hotel.
“No use talking,” he thought. “I’ve got to take somebody into my confidence about this girl. To keep such a mystery to myself is likely to affect my brain. Humph! I’ll tell Ruth. She can keep a secret—if she wants to,” and he went off whistling to the men’s lavatory at the other end of the car.
Later he found Ruth on the observation platform. They were alone there for some time and Tom took her into his confidence.
“Don’t tell Helen, now,” he urged. “She’ll only rig me. And I’m bound to have a bad enough time with all you girls, as it is.”
“Poor boy,” Ruth said, commiseratingly. “You are in for a bad time, aren’t you? What about this strange and mysterious female in Lower Five?”
But as he related the details of the mystery, about the chauffeur and all, Ruth grew rather grave.
“As we go through to the dining car for breakfast let us see if we can establish her identity,” she told him. “Never mind saying anything to the other girls about it. Just point her out to me.”
“Say! I’m not likely to spread the matter broadcast,” retorted Tom. “Only I am curious.”
So was Ruth. But she bided her time and sharply scrutinized every female figure she saw in the cars as they trooped through to breakfast. She waited for Tom to point out this “mysterious lady;” but the girl of Lower Five did not appear.
The train was rushing across the prairies in mid-forenoon when Tom came suddenly to Ruth and gave her a look that she knew meant “Follow me.” When she got up Jennie drawled:
“Now, see here, Ruthie! What’s going on between that perfectly splendid brother of Cameron’s and you? Are you trying to make the rest of us girls jealous?”
“Perhaps,” Ruth replied, smiling, then hurried with her chum’s brother into the next car.
“Oh!” exclaimed Ruth suddenly, and she stopped by the door.
“Know her?” asked Tom, with curiosity.
Ruth nodded and hastily turned away so that the girl might not see that she was observed.
“Well, now!” cried Tom. “Tip me off. Explain—elucidate—make clear. I’m as puzzled as I can be.”
“So am I, Tommy,” Ruth told him. “I haven’t the least idea why that girl should be interested in our affairs. And I’m not sure that she is.”
“Who is she?” he demanded.
“She goes to college with us. Not in our class, you understand. I am sure none of our party had an idea Edie Phelps was going West this vacation.”
“Huh!” said Tom suspiciously. “What’s up your sleeve, Ruth?”
“My arm!” she cried, and ran back to the other girls and Miss Cullam, laughing at him.
Edith’s presence on this train was puzzling.
“That was a man’s handwriting on the envelope Helen and I picked up addressed to Edith,” Ruth told herself. “Some man has been writing to her from that Mohave County town. Who? And what for?”
“Not that it is really any of my business,” she concluded.
She did not take Helen into her confidence in the matter. Let the other girls see Edith Phelps if they chanced to; she determined to stir up no “hurrah” over the sophomore.
Besides, it was not at all sure that Edith was going to Arizona. Her presence upon this train did not prove that her journey West had any connection with the letter Edith had received from Yucca.
“Why so serious, honey?” asked Helen a little later, pinching her chum’s arm.
“This is a serious world, my dear,” quoth Ruth, “and we are growing older every minute.”
“What novel ideas you do have,” gibed her chum, big-eyed. But she shook her a little, too. “There you go, Ruthie Fielding! Always having some secret from your owniest own chum.”
“How do you know I have a secret?” smiled Ruth.
“Because of the two little lines that grow deeper in your forehead when you are puzzled or troubled,” Helen told her, rather wickedly. “Sure sign you’ll be married twice, honey.”
“Don’t suggest such horrid possibilities,” gasped the girl of the Red Mill in mock horror. “Married twice, indeed! And I thought we had both given up all intention of being wedded even the first time?”
This chaff was all right to throw in Helen’s eyes; but all the time Ruth expected one of the party to discover the presence of Edith Phelps on the train. She felt that with such discovery there would come an explosion of some kind; and she shrank from having any trouble with the sophomore.
Of course, with Miss Cullam present, Edith was not likely to display her spleen quite so openly as she sometimes did when alone with the other Ardmore girls. But Ruth knew Helen would be so curious to know what Edith’s presence meant that “the fat would all be in the fire.”
It was really amazing that Edith was not discovered before they reached Chicago. After that her reservation was in another car. Then on the fifth night of their journey came something that quite put the sophomore out of Ruth Fielding’s mind, and out of Tom Cameron’s as well.
They had changed trains and were on the trans-continental line when the startling incident happened. The porter had already begun arranging the berths when the train suddenly came to a jarring stop.
“What is the matter?” asked Miss Cullam of the porter. She already had her hair in “curlers” and was longing for bed.
“I done s’pect we broke in two, Ma’am,” said the darkey, rolling his eyes. “Das’ jes’ wot it seems to me,” and he darted out of the car.
There was a long wait; then some confusion arose outside the train. Tom came in from the rear. “Here’s a pretty kettle of fish,” he said.
“What is it, Tommy?” demanded his sister.
“The train broke in two and the front end got over a bridge here, and, being on a down grade, the engineer could not bring his engine to a stop at once. And now the bridge is afire. Come on out, girls. You might as well see the show.”
Even Miss Cullam—in her dressing gown—trailed out of the car after Tom. The sky was alight from the blazing bridge. It was a wooden structure, and burned like a pine knot.
Beyond the rolling cloud of smoke they could see dimly the lamps of the forward half of the train. The coupling having broken between two Pullmans, the engine had attached to it only the baggage and mail coaches, the dining car and one sleeping car.
The other Pullmans and the observation coach were stalled on the east side of the river.
“And no more chance of getting over to-night than there is of flying,” a brakeman confided to Tom and the girls. “That bridge will be a charred wreck before midnight.”
“Oh, goodness me! What shall we do?” was the cry. “Can’t we get over in boats?”
“Where will you get the boats?” sniffed Miss Cullam.
“And the water’s low in the river at this season,” said the brakeman. “Couldn’t use anything but a skiff.”
“What then?” Tom asked, feeling responsibility roweling him. “We’re not destined to remain here till they rebuild the bridge, I hope?”
“The conductor is wiring back for another engine. We’ll pull back to Janesburg and from there take the cross-over line and go on by the Northern Route. It will put us back fully twelve hours, I reckon.”
“Good-night!” exploded Tom.
“Why, what does it matter?” asked Helen, wonderingly. “We have all the time there is, haven’t we?”
“Presumably,” Miss Cullam said drily.
“But I telegraphed ahead to Yucca for rooms at the hotel,” Tom explained, slowly, “and sent a long message to that guide Mr. Hammond told you about, Ruth.”
“Oh!” cried Helen, giggling. “Flapjack Peters—such a romantic name. Mr. Hammond wrote Ruth that he was a ‘character.’”
“‘H. J. Peters,’” Tom read, from his memorandum. “Yes. I told him just when we would arrive and told him that after one night’s sleep at the hotel we’d want to be on our way. But if we don’t get there——”
“Oh, Tom, there’s Ann, too!” Ruth exclaimed. “She will be at Yucca too early if we are delayed so.”
“I’ll send some more telegrams when we get to Janesburg,” Tom promised Ruth and his sister. “One to Ann Hicks, too.”
“Those people in the forward Pullman will get through on time,” Jennie Stone said. “I’m always losing something. ‘’Twas ever thus, since childhood’s hour, my fondest hopes I’ve seen decay,’ and so forth!”
Tom whispered to Ruth: “That sophomore from Ardmore will get ahead of us. She’s in the forward Pullman.”
“Oh, Edith!” murmured Ruth. “She was in that car, wasn’t she?”
They were all in bed, as were the other tourists in the delayed Pullmans, before the extra locomotive the conductor had sent for arrived. It was coupled to the stalled half of the train and started back for Janesburg without one of the party bound for Yucca being the wiser.
Tom Cameron meant to send the supplementary telegrams from that junction as he had said. Indeed, he had written out several—one to his father to relieve any anxiety in the merchant’s mind should he hear of the accident to their train; one to the guide, Peters; one to Ann Hicks to supplement the one already awaiting her at Yucca; and a fourth to the hotel.
But as he wished to put these messages on the wire himself, Tom did not entrust them to the negro porter. Instead he lay down in his berth with only his shoes removed—and he awoke in the morning with the sun flooding the opposite side of the car where the porter had already folded up the berths!
“Good gracious, Agnes!” gasped Tom, appearing in the corridor with his shoes in his hand. “What time is it? Eight-thirty? Is my watch right?”
“Ah reckon so, boss,” grinned the porter. “‘Most ev’rybody’s up an’ dressin’.”
“And I wanted to send those telegrams from Janesburg.”
“Oh Lawsy-massy! Janesburg’s a good ways behint us, boss,” said the porter. “Ef yo’ wants to send ’em pertic’lar from dere, yo’ll have to wait till our trip East, Ah reckon.”
Tom did not feel much like laughing. In fact, he felt a good deal of annoyance. He made some further enquiries and discovered that it would be an hour yet before the train would linger long enough at any station for him to file telegrams.
They spent one more night “sleeping on shelves,” as Jennie Stone expressed it, than they had counted upon. Miss Cullam went to her berth with a groan.
“Believe me, my dears,” she announced, “I shall welcome even a saddle as a relief from these cars. You are all nice girls, if I do say it, who perhaps shouldn’t. I flatter myself I have had something to do with molding your more or less plastic minds and dispositions. But I must love you a great deal to ever attempt another such long journey as this for you or with you.”
“Oh, Miss Cullam!” cried Trix Davenport, “we will erect a statue to you on Bliss Island—right near the Stone Face. And on it shall be engraved: ‘Nor granite is more enduring than Miss Cullam.’”
“I wonder,” murmured the teacher, “if that is complimentary or otherwise?”
But they all loved her. Miss Cullam developed very human qualities indeed, take her away from mathematics!
The party was held up for two hours at Kingman, waiting for a local train to steam on with them to their destination. And there Tom learned something which rather troubled him.
Telegrams were never received direct at Yucca. The railroad business was done by telephone, and all the messages sent to Yucca were telephoned through to the station agent—if that individual chanced to be on hand. Otherwise they were entrusted to the rural mail carrier. One could almost count the inhabitants of Yucca on one’s fingers and toes!
“Jiminy!” gasped Tom, when he learned these particulars. “I bet I’ve made a mess of it.”
He tried to find out at the Kingman station what had become of the final messages he had sent. The operator on duty when they arrived was now off duty, and he lived out of town.
“If they were mailed, son,” observed the man then at the telegraph table, “you will get to Yucca about two hours before the mail gets there. Here comes your train now.”
Had the girls not been so gaily engaged in chattering, they must have noticed Tom’s solemn face. He was disturbed, for he felt that the comfort of the party, as well as the arrangements for the trip into the hills, was his own particular responsibility.
It was late afternoon when the combination local (half baggage and freight, and half passenger) hobbled to a stop at Yucca. Besides a dusty looking individual in a cap who served the railroad as station agent, there was not a human being in sight.
“What a jolly place!” cried Jennie Stone, turning to all points of the compass to gaze. “So much life! We’re going to have a gay time in Yucca, I can see.”
“Sh!” begged Trix. “Don’t wake them up.”
“Awaken whom, my dear?” drawled Sally Blanchard.
“The dead, I think,” said Helen. “This place must be the understudy for a graveyard.”
At that moment a gray muzzle was thrust between the rails of a corral beside the track and an awful screech rent the air, drowning the sound of the locomotive whistle as the train rolled away.
“For goodness’ sake! what is that?” begged Rebecca, quite startled.
“Mountain canary,” laughed Helen. “That is what will arouse you at dawn—and other times—while we are on the march to Freezeout.”
“You don’t mean to say,” demanded Trix, “that all that sound came out of that little creature?” And she ran over to the corral fence the better to see the burro.
“And he didn’t need any help,” drawled Jennie. “Oh! you’ll get used to little things like that.”
“Never to that little thing,” said Miss Cullam, tartly. “Can’t he be muzzled?”
Meanwhile Tom had seized upon the station agent. He was a long, lean, “drawly” man, with seemingly a very languid interest in life.
“What telegrams?” he drawled.
Tom explained more fully and the man referred to a memorandum book he carried in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt.
“Yep. Three messages received over the ’phone from Kingman station. All delivered.”
“Good!” Tom exclaimed, with vast relief.
“Four days ago,” added the station agent.
That was a dash of cold water. “Didn’t you receive other telegrams in the same way yesterday?”
“Not a one.”
“Where have they gone, then?”
“I wouldn’t be here ’twixt eight and ‘leven. They’d come over the wire to Kingman, and the op’rator there would mail ’em. Mail man’s due any time now.”
“Well,” groaned Tom, “let’s go up to the hotel and see if they’ve reserved the rooms for us, if we are late.”
“And where’s Jane Ann Hicks?” queried Ruth, in some puzzlement. “She ought to be here to greet us.”
“What about that guide—the Flapjack person?” added Helen. “Didn’t you telegraph him, Tommy?”
“Who d’you mean—Flapjack Peters?” asked the station agent, interested. “Why, he lit out for some place in the Hualapai this forenoon, beauin’ a party of these here tourists—or, so I heard tell.”
There were blank faces among the newly arrived visitors from the East. But only Tom Cameron really felt disturbed. It looked to him as though somebody had got ahead of them!
“You needn’t be ‘fraid of not findin’ room at Lon Crujes’ hotel,” drawled the station agent. “He don’t often have more’n two visitors at a time there, and them’s mostly travelin’ salesmen. Only when somebody’s shippin’ cattle. And there ain’t no cattlemen here now.”
“Well, that is some relief, at least,” Helen said promptly. “Come on, Tommy! Lead the procession. Take Miss Cullam’s bag, too. The rest of us will carry our own.”
“How can we get the trunks up to the hotel?” asked Ruth, beginning to realize that Tom, to whom she had left all the arrangements, was in a “pickle.”
“Let’s see what the hotel looks like first,” returned Helen’s twin, setting off along the dusty street.
A dog barked at the procession; but otherwise the inhabitants of Yucca showed a disposition to remain incurious. It was not necessary to ask the way to Lon Crujes’ hotel; it was the only building in town large enough to be dignified by the name of “Yucca House.”
A Mexican woman in a one-piece garment gathered about her waist by a man’s belt from which an empty gun-sheath dangled, met the party on the porch of the house. She seemed surprised to see them.
“You ain’t them folks that telegraphed Lon you was comin’, are you?” she asked. “Don’t that beat all!”
“I telegraphed ahead for rooms—yes,” Tom said.
“Well, the rooms is here all right—by goodness, yes!” she said, still staring. Such an array of feminine finery as the girls displayed had probably never dawned upon Mrs. Crujes’ vision before. “Nobody ain’t run off with the rooms. We ain’t never crowded none in this hotel, ‘cept in beef shippin’ time.”
“Well, how about meals?” Tom asked quietly.
“If Lon gets home with a side of beef he went for, we’ll be all right,” the woman said. “You kin all come in, I reckon. But say! who was them gals here yesterday, then, if ’twasn’t you.”
“What girls?” asked Ruth, who remained with Tom to inquire.
“Have they gone away again?” demanded Tom.
“By goodness, yes! Two gals. One was tenderfoot all right; but ‘tother knowed her way ’round, I sh’d say.”
“Ann?” queried Ruth of Tom.
“Must have been. But the other—Say, Mrs. Crujes, tell us about them, will you, please?” he asked the Mexican woman.
“Why, this tenderfoot gal dropped off the trans-continental. Jest the train we expected you folks on. I s’pose you was the folks we expected?”
“That’s right. We’re the ones,” said Tom, hastily. “Go on.”
“The other lady, she come later. She’s Western all right.”
“Ann is from Montana,” Ruth said, deeply interested.
“So she said. I reckoned she never met up with the Eastern gal before, did she?”
“But who is the girl you speak of—the one from the East?” gasped Ruth.
“Huh! Don’t you know her neither?”
“I’m not sure I couldn’t guess,” Ruth declared. Tom kept his lips tightly closed.
“They made friends, then,” explained the woman. “The gal you say you know, and the tenderfoot. And they went off together this morning with Flapjack——”
“Not with our guide?” cried Ruth. “Oh, Tom! what can it mean?”
“Got me,” grunted the young fellow.
“Why! it is the most mysterious affair,” Ruth repeated. “I can’t understand it.”
“Leave it to me,” said Tom, quickly. “You go in with the other girls and primp.”
“Primp, indeed!”
“I suppose you’ll have to here, just the same as anywhere else,” the boy said, with a quick grin. “I’ll look around and see what’s happened. Of course, that Flapjack person can’t have gone far.”
“And Ann wouldn’t have run away from us, I’m sure,” Ruth sent back over her shoulder as she entered the hotel.
Before the Mexican woman could waddle after Ruth, Tom hailed her again. “Say!” he asked, “where can I find this Peters chap?”
“The Señor Flapjack?”
“Yes. Fine name, that,” he added in an undertone.
“He it is who is famous at making the American flapjack—si si!” said the woman. “But he is gone I tell you. I know not where. Maybe Lon, he can tell you when he come back with the beef—by goodness, yes!”
“But he lives here in town, doesn’t he? Hasn’t he a family?”
“Oh, sure! He’s got Min.”
“Who’s Min? A Chinaman?”
“Chink? Can you beat it?” ejaculated the woman, grinning broadly. “Min’s his daughter. See that house down there with the front painted yellow?”
“Yes,” admitted Tom, rather abashed.
“That’s where Flapjack, he live. Sure! And Min can tell you where he’s gone and how long he’ll be away.”
The hotel proprietor’s wife disappeared, bustling away to attend to the wants of this party of guests that was apt to swamp her entire menage. Tom hesitated about searching out the guide’s daughter alone. “Min” promised embarrassing possibilities to his mind.
“Jiminy! we’re up against it, I believe,” he thought. “They’ll all blame me, I suppose. I ought not to have gone to sleep night before last and missed sending those last telegrams from Janesburg.
“Father will say I wasn’t ‘tending to business properly. I wonder what I’d better do.”
Ruth suddenly reappeared. She had merely gone inside to get rid of her bag and assure Miss Cullam that there were some matters she and Tom had to attend to. Now she approached her chum’s brother with a question that excited and startled him.
“What under the sun could have made her act so, do you suppose, Tom?”
“That girl. She’s gone off with our guide and all.”
“Who do you mean? Jane Ann Hicks?”
“Goodness! I don’t understand Ann’s part in it, either. But she’s not the leading spirit, it is evident.”
“Who do you mean, then?” Tom demanded.
“Edith Phelps. Of course it is she. She arrived here on the trans-continental train on time. Tommy, she was in correspondence with somebody here in Yucca. Helen and I saw the envelope. And it puzzled us. Her being on the train puzzled me more. And now——”
“Oh, Jiminy!” ejaculated Tom Cameron. “The mystery deepens. Rival picture company, maybe, Ruth. How about it?”
“I don’t think it’s that,” said Ruth Fielding, reflectively. “I am sure Edie Phelps has no connection with movie people—no, indeed!”
“Well, let’s go along and see Flapjack’s daughter,” Tom proposed. “I don’t want to make the acquaintance of any strange girl without somebody to defend me,” and he grinned at the girl of the Red Mill.
“Oh, yes. We know just how desperately timid you are, Tommy-boy,” she told him, smiling. “I will be your shield and buckler. Lead on.”
The house had a yellow front, but was elsewhere left bare of paint. It stood away from its neighbors and, as Ruth and Tom Cameron approached it, it seemed deserted. From other houses they were frankly watched by slatternly women and several idle men.
Tom rapped gently at the front door. There was no reply and after repeating the summons several times Ruth suggested that they try a rear entrance.
“Huh!” complained the boy. “This Min they tell of must be deaf.”
“Or bashful. Perhaps she is nothing but a child and is afraid of us.”
Tom merely grunted in reply, and led the way into a weed-grown yard. The fence was of wire and laths—the kind bought by the roll ready to set up; but it was very much dilapidated. The fence had never been finished at the rear and up on a scrubby side hill behind the house a man was wielding an axe.
“Maybe he knows something about this Flapjack Peters person,” grumbled Tom.
“Knock on the back door,” ordered Ruth Fielding briskly. “If that guide has a daughter she must know where he’s gone, and for how long. It’s the most mysterious thing!”
“It gets me,” admitted Tom, knocking again.
“Mr. Hammond said that he knew this guide and that he believed he was a fairly trustworthy person. He is what they call an ‘old-timer’—been living here or hereabout for years and years. Just the person to find Freezeout Camp.”
“Well, there must be other men who know their way about the hills,” and Tom turned his back to the door to look straight away across the valley toward the faint, blue eminences that marked the Hualapai Range.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” sighed Ruth, likewise looking at the mountains. “How clear the air is! See that peak away to the north? We saw it from the car window. That is the tallest mountain in the range—Hualapai Peak. Oh, Tom!”
“Yes?” he asked.
“That man looks awfully funny to me. Do you see——?”
Tom wheeled to look at the person chopping wood a few rods away. The woodchopper wore an old felt hat; from underneath its brim flowed several straggly locks of black hair.
“Must be an Indian,” muttered Tom.
“It must be a woman!” exclaimed Ruth. “It is a woman, Tom! I’m going to ask her——”
“What?” demanded the youth; but he trailed along behind the self-reliant girl of the Red Mill.
The woodchopper did not even raise her head as the two young folks approached. She beat upon the log she was splitting with the old axe and showed not the least interest in their presence.
Ruth led the way around in front of her and demanded:
“Do you know where Mr. Peters’ daughter is? We had business with him, and they tell us he is away from home.”
At that the woman in men’s shabby habiliments raised her head and looked at them.
“Jiminy!” exploded Tom, but under his breath. “It is a girl!”
Ruth was quite as curious as her companion; but she was wise enough to reveal nothing in her own countenance but polite interest.
The masquerader was both young and pretty; only the perspiration had poured down her face and left it grimy. Her hands were red and rough—calloused as a laboring man’s and with blunted fingers and broken nails.
When she stood up straight, however, even the overalls and jumper she wore, and the broken old hat upon her head, could not hide the fact that she was of a graceful figure.
“I beg your pardon,” said Ruth again. “Can you tell me where Miss Peters is?”
“I can tell you where Min Peters is, if you want to know so bad,” drawled the girl, red suffusing her bronzed cheeks and a little flash coming into her big gray eyes.
“That—that must be the person we wish to see.”
“Then see her,” snapped the other ungraciously. “An’ I s’pose you fancy folks think her a sight, sure ’nuff.”
“You mean you are Mr. Peters’ daughter?” Ruth asked, doubtfully.
“I’m Flapjack’s girl,” the other said, biting her remarks off short.
“Oh!” cried Ruth. “Then you can tell us all about it.”
“How it happens that your father is not here at Yucca to meet us?”
“Huh! What would he want to meet you for?” asked the girl, shaking back her straggly hair.
“Why, it was arranged by Mr. Hammond that Mr. Peters should guide us into the Range. We are going to Freezeout Camp.”
“Wha-at?” drawled Min Peters in evident surprise. “You, too?”
Tom here put in a word. “I am the one who telegraphed to Mr. Peters when we were on the way here. It was understood through Mr. Hammond that Mr. Peters was to hold himself in readiness for our party.”
“Then what about them other girls?” demanded the girl, with sudden vigor. “They done fooled pop, did they?”
“I don’t understand what you mean by ‘those other girls,’” Ruth hastened to say.
“Why, pop’s already started for the hills. I I dunno whether he’s goin’ to Freezeout or not. There ain’t nobody at that old camp, nohow. Dunno what you want to go there for.”
Ruth waived that matter to say, eagerly:
“How many girls are there in this party your father has gone off with?”
“Two. He ‘spected more I reckon, for there’s a bunch of ponies down in Jeb’s corral. But the girl that bossed the thing said you-all had backed out. It looked right funny to me—two girls goin’ off there into the hills. And she was a tenderfoot all right.”
“You mean the girl who ‘bossed’ the affair?” asked Tom, curiously.
“Yep. The other girl seemed jest driftin’ along with her. She knowed how to ride, and she brought her own saddle and rope with her. But that there tenderfoot started off sidesaddle, like a missioner.”
“A ‘missioner?’” repeated Ruth, curiously.
“These here women that sometimes come here teachin’ an’ preachin’. They most all of ’em ride sidesaddle. Many of ’em on a burro at that. ’Cause a burro don’t never git out of a walk if he kin help it. But I’ve purty near broke my neck teachin’ four or five of the ponies to stand for a sidesaddle—poor critters. I rid ’em with a blanket wrapped ’round me to git ’em used to a skirt flappin’,” and she spoke in some amusement.
“Well,” Ruth said, more briskly, “I don’t exactly understand those girls going without us. One of them I am sure is our friend. The girl who evidently engaged your father is not a stranger to us; but she was not of our party.”
“What in tarnation takes you ‘way into them mountains to Freezeout?” demanded Min Peters. “There ain’t a sign of color left there, so pop says; and he’s prospected all through the range on that far side. Why, he remembers Freezeout when it was a real camp. And I kin tell you there ain’t much left of it now.”
“Oh!” cried Ruth. “Have you seen it?”
“Sure. I been all through the Range with pop. He didn’t have nobody to leave me with when I was little. I ain’t never had no chance like other girls,” said Min, in no very pleasant tone. “Why I ain’t scurcely human, I reckon!”
At that Ruth laughed frankly at her. “What nonsense!” she cried. “You are just as human and just as much of a girl as any of us. As I am. Your clothes don’t even hide the fact that you are a girl. But I suppose you wear them because you can work easier in men’s garments?”
“And that’s where you s’pose mighty wrong,” snapped Min.
“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!”
“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——
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.”