Sitting around a blanket spread for a tablecloth at sunrise and eating eggs and bacon with more flapjacks, the incidents of the night seemed less tangible, and certainly less perilous.
“Why, I can’t imagine those mild-eyed cows making such a scramble by us as they did,” Trix Davenport remarked.
“‘Mild-eyed kine’ is good—very good indeed,” said Jennie Stone. “These long-horns are about as mild-tempered as wolves. I can remember that we saw some of them in tempestuous mood up at Silver Ranch. Isn’t that so, Helen?”
“Truly,” admitted the black-eyed girl.
“I shall never care even to eat beef if we go through many such experiences as that stampede,” Miss Cullam declared. “Let us hurry away from the vicinity of these maddened beasts.”
“We’ll be off the range to-day,” said Min dryly. “Then there won’t be nothing to scare you tenderfoots.”
“No bears, or wolves, or panthers?” drawled Jennie wickedly.
“Oh, mercy! You don’t mean there are such creatures in the hills?” cried Rebecca.
“I don’t reckon we’ll meet up with such,” Min said.
“Shouldn’t we have brought guns with us?” asked Sally timidly.
“Goodness! And shoot each other?” cried Miss Cullam.
“Why, you didn’t say nothin’ about huntin’,” said the guide slowly. “Pop’s got his rifle with him. But I’m packin’ a forty-five; that’ll scare off most anything on four laigs. And there ain’t no two-legged critters to hurt us.”
“I’ve an automatic,” said Tom Cameron quietly. “Didn’t know but I might have a chance to shoot a jackrabbit or the like.”
“What for?” drawled Min, sarcastically. “We ain’t likely to stay in one place long enough to cook such a critter. They’re usually tougher’n all git-out, Mister.”
“At any rate,” said Ruth, with satisfaction, “the party is sufficiently armed. Let us not fear bears or mountain lions.”
“Or jackrabbits,” chuckled Jennie.
“And are you sure there are no ill-disposed men in the mountains?” asked the teacher.
“Men?” sniffed Min. “I ain’t ‘fraid of men, I hope! There ain’t nothin’ wuss than a drunken man, and I’ve had experience enough with them.”
Ruth knew she referred to her father; but she did not tell the other girls and Miss Cullam what Min had confided to her the previous evening.
The trail led them into the foothills that day and before night the rugged nature of the ground assured even Miss Cullam that there was little likelihood of such an unpleasant happening as had startled them the night before.
They halted to camp for the night beside a collection of small huts and tents that marked the presence of a placer digging which had been found the spring before and still showed “color.”
There were nearly a dozen flannel-shirted and high-booted miners at this spot, and the sight of the girls from the East had a really startling effect upon these lonely men. There was not a woman at the camp.
The men knocked off work for the day the moment the tourists arrived. Every man of them, including the Mexican water-carrier, was broadly asmile. And they were all ready and willing to show “the ladies from the East” how placer mining was done.
The output of a mountain spring had been brought down an open plank sluice into the little glen where the vein of fine gold had been discovered; and with the current of this stream the gold-bearing soil was “washed” in sluice-boxes.
The miners, rough but good-natured fellows, all made a “clean up” then and there, and each of the visitors was presented with a pinch of gold dust, right from the riffles.
This placer mining camp was run on a community basis, and the camp cook insisted upon getting supper for all, and an abundant if not a delicately prepared meal was the result.
“I’m not sure that we should allow these men to go to so much expense and trouble,” Miss Cullam whispered to Ruth and Min Peters.
“Oh, gee!” ejaculated the girl in boy’s clothing. “Don’t let it worry you for a minute, Miss Cullam. We’re a godsend to them fellers. If they didn’t spend their money once’t in a while they’d git too wealthy,” and she chuckled.
“That could not possibly be, when they work so long and hard for a pinch of gold dust,” declared the college instructor.
“They fling it away just as though it come easy,” returned Min. “Believe me! it’s much better for ’em to have you folks here and blow you to their best, than it is for them to go down to Yucca and blow it all in on red liquor.”
The miners would have gone further and given up their cabins or their tents to the use of the women. But even Rebecca had enjoyed sleeping out the night before and would not be tempted. The air was so dry and tonic in its qualities that the walls of a house or even of a tent seemed superfluous.
“I do miss my morning plunge or shower,” Helen admitted. “I feel as though all this red dust and grit had got into my skin and never would get out again. But one can’t rough it and keep clean, too, I suppose.”
“That water in the sluice looks lovely,” confessed Jennie Stone. “I’d dearly like to go paddling in it if there weren’t so many men about.”
“After all,” said Ruth, “although we are traveling like men we don’t act as they would. Tom slipped off by himself and behind that screen of bushes up there on the hillside he took a bath in the sluice. But there isn’t a girl here who would do it.”
“Oh, lawsy, I didn’t bring my bathing suit,” drawled Jennie. “That was an oversight.”
“Old Tom does get a few things on us, doesn’t he?” commented Helen. “Perhaps being a boy isn’t, after all, an unmitigated evil.”
“But the water’s so co-o-ld!” shivered Trix. “I’m sure I wouldn’t care for a plunge in this mountain stream. Will there be heated bathrooms at Freezeout Camp, Fielding?”
“Humph!” Miss Cullam ejaculated. “The title of the place sounds as though steam heat would be the fashion and tiled bathrooms plentiful!”
The third day of the journey was quite as fair as the previous days; but the way was still more rugged, so they did not travel so far. They camped that night in a deep gorge, and it was cold enough for the fires to feel grateful. Tom and the Mexican kept two fires well supplied with fuel all night. Once a coyote stood on a bank above their heads and sang his song of hunger and loneliness until, as Sally declared, she thought she should “fly off the handle.”
“I never did hear such an unpleasant sound in all my life—it beats the grinding of an ungreased wagon wheel! I wish you would drive him away, Tom.”
So Tom pulled out the automatic that he had been “aching” to use, and sent a couple of shots in the direction of the lank and hungry beast—who immediately crossed the gorge and serenaded them from the other bank!
“What’s the use of killing a perfectly useless creature?” demanded Ruth.
“No fear,” laughed Jennie. “Tom won’t kill it. He’s only shooting holes in the circumambient atmosphere.”
There was a haze over the mountain tops at dawn on the fourth day; but Min assured the girls that it could not mean rain. “We ain’t had no rain for so long that it’s forgotten how,” she said. “But mebbe there’ll be a wind storm before night.”
“Oh! as long as we’re dry——”
“Yes, Miss Ruth,” put in the girl guide. “We’ll be dry, all right. But a wind storm here in Arizona ain’t to be sneezed at. Sometimes it comes right cold, too.”
“In summer?”
“Yep. It can git mighty cold in summer if it sets out to. But we’ll try to make Handy Gulch early and git under cover if the sand begins to sift.”
“Oh me! oh my!” groaned Jennie. “A sand storm? And like Helen I feel already as though the dust was gritted into the pores of my skin.”
“It ain’t onhealthy,” Min returned dryly. “Some o’ these old-timers live a year without seein’ enough water to take a bath in. The sand gives ’em a sort of dry wash. It’s clean dirt.”
“Nothing like getting used to a point of view,” whispered Sally Blanchard. “Fancy! A ‘dry wash!’ How do you feel, Rebecca Frayne?”
“Just as gritty as you do,” was the prompt reply.
“All right then,” laughed Ruth. “We all must have grit enough to hurry along and reach this Handy Gulch before the storm bursts.”
Min told them that there was a “sure enough” hotel at the settlement they were approaching. It was a camp where hydraulic mining was being conducted on a large scale.
“The claims belong mostly to the Arepo Mining and Smelting Company. They have several mines through the Hualapai Range,” said the guide. “This Handy place is quite a town. Only trouble is, there’s two rum sellin’ places. Most of the men’s wages go back to the company through drink and cards, for they control the shops. But some day Arizona is goin’ dry, and then we’ll shut up all such joints.”
“Dry!” coughed Helen. “Could anything be dryer than Arizona is right here and now?”
The seemingly tireless ponies carried the girls at a lope, or a gallop, all that forenoon. It was hard to get the eager little beasts to walk, and they never trotted. Miss Cullam claimed that everything inside of her had “come loose and was rattling around like dice in a box.”
“Dear me, girls,” sighed the teacher, “if this jumping and jouncing is really a healthful exercise, I shall surely taste death through an accident. But good health is something horrid to attain—in this way.”
But in spite of the discomforts of the mode of travel, the party hugely enjoyed the outing. There were so many new and strange things to see, and one always came back to the same statement: “The air is lovely!”
There were certainly new things to see when they arrived at Handy Gulch just after lunch time, not having stopped for that meal by the way. The camp consisted of fully a hundred wood and sheet-iron shacks, and the hotel was of two stories and was quite an important looking building.
Above the town, which squatted in a narrow valley through which a brawling and muddy stream flowed, was the “bench” from which the gold was being mined. There were four “guns” in use and these washed down the raw hillside into open sluices, the riffles of which caught the separated gold. The girls were shown a nugget found that very morning. It was as big as a walnut.
But most of the precious metal was found in tiny nuggets, or in dust, a grain of which seemed no larger than the head of a common pin.
However, although these things were interesting, the minute the cavalcade rode up to the hotel something much more interesting happened. There was a cry of welcome from within and out of the front door charged Jane Ann Hicks, dressed much as she used to be on the ranch—broad sombrero, a short fringed skirt over her riding breeches, high boots with spurs, and a gun slung at her belt.
“For the good land of love!” she demanded, seizing Ruth Fielding as the latter tumbled off her horse. “Where have you girls been? I was just about riding back to that Yucca place to look for you.”
Jennie and Helen came in for a warm welcome, too. Ann was presented to Miss Cullam and the other two girls before explanations were made by anybody. Then Ruth demanded of the Montana girl a full and particular account of what she had done, and why.
“Why, I reckon that Miss Phelps ain’t a friend of yours, after all?” queried Ann. “She’s one frost, if she is.”
“Now you’ve said something, Nita,” said Jennie Stone. “She is a cold proposition. Can you tell us what she’s doing out here?”
“I don’t know. She sure enough comes from that college you girls attend, don’t she?”
“She does!” admitted Helen. “She truly does. But she’s not a sample of what Ardmore puts forth—don’t believe it.”
“I opine she’s not a sample of any product, except orneriness,” scolded Ann, who was a good deal put out by the strange actions of Edith Phelps. “You see how it was. My train was late. According to the telegram I found waiting for me, you folks should have arrived at Yucca hours ahead of me.”
“And we were delayed,” sighed Ruth. “Go on.”
“I saw this Phelps girl,” pursued Ann Hicks, “and asked her about you folks. She said you’d been and gone.”
“Oh!” was the chorused exclamation from the other girls.
“And she is one of my pupils!” groaned Miss Cullam.
“She didn’t learn to tell whoppers at your college, I guess,” said Ann, bluntly. “Anyhow, she fooled me nicely. She said she was going over this very route you had taken and I could come along. She wouldn’t let me pay any of the expenses—not even tip the guide. Only for my pony.”
“But where is she now?” asked Ruth.
“And where is that Flapjack person—Min’s father?” cried Jennie.
“We got here last night and put up at this hotel,” Ann said, going steadily on with her story and not to be drawn away on any side issues. “We got here last night. Late in the evening somebody came to see this Phelps girl—a man.”
“Goodness!” exclaimed Rebecca. “And she is traveling without a chaperon!”
“‘Chaperon’—huh!” ejaculated Ann. “She didn’t need any chaperon. She can take care of herself all right. Well, she didn’t come back and I went to bed. This morning I found a bit of paper on my pillow—here ’tis——”
“That’s Edie’s handwriting,” Sally Blanchard said eagerly. “What does it say?”
“‘Good-bye. I am not going any farther with you. Wait, and your friends may overtake you.’ Just that,” said Ann, with disgust. “Can you beat it?”
“What has that wild girl done, do you suppose?” murmured Miss Cullam.
“Oh, she isn’t wild—not so’s you’d notice it,” said Ann. “Believe me, she knows her way about. And she shipped that guide.”
“Discharged Mr. Peters, do you mean?” Ruth asked. Min was not in the room while this conversation was going on.
“H’m. Yes. Mister Peters. He’s some sour dough, I should say! He was paid off and set down with money in his fist between two saloons. They’re across the street from each other, and they tell me he’s been swinging from one bar to the other like a pendulum ever since he was paid off.”
“Poor Min!” sighed Ruth Fielding.
“Huh?” said Ann Hicks. “If he’s got any folks, I’m sorry for ’em, too.”
There were means to be obtained at the Handy Gulch Hotel for the baths that the tourists so much desired, even if tiled bathrooms and hot and cold water faucets were not in evidence.
The party lunched after making fresh toilets, and then set forth to view the “sights.” Ruth inquired of Tom for Min; but their guide had disappeared the moment the party reached the hotel.
“She’s acquainted here, I presume,” said Tom Cameron. “Maybe she doesn’t wish to be seen with you girls. Her outfit is so very different from yours.”
“Poor Min!” murmured Ruth again. “Do you suppose she has found her father?”
Tom could not tell her that, and they trailed along behind the others, up toward the bench where the hydraulic mining was going on.
Only one of the nozzles was being worked—shooting a solid stream three inches in diameter into the hillside, and shaving off great slices that melted and ran in a creamlike paste down into the sluice-boxes. Half a hundred “muckers” were at work with pick and shovel below the bench. The man managing the hydraulic machine stood astride of it, in hip boots and slicker, and guided the spouting stream of water along the face of the raw hill.
The party of spectators stood well out of the way, for the work of hydraulic mining has attached to it no little danger. The force of the stream from the nozzle of the machine is tremendous; and sometimes there are accidents, when many tons of the hillside unexpectedly cave down upon the bench.
The man astride the nozzle, however, took the matter coolly enough. He was smoking a short pipe and plowed along the face of the rubble with his deadly stream as easily as though he were watering a lawn.
“And if he should shoot it this way,” said Tom, “he’d wash us down off the bench as though we were pebbles.”
“Ugh! Let’s not talk about that,” murmured Rebecca Frayne, shivering.
“Oh, girls!” burst out Helen, “see that man, will you?”
“What man?” asked Trix.
“Where man?” demanded Jennie Stone.
“Running this way. Why! what can have happened?” Helen pursued. “Look, Tom, has there been an accident?”
A hatless man came running from the far end of the bench. He was swinging his arms and his mouth was wide open, though they could not hear what he was shouting. The noise of the spurting water and falling rubble drowned most other sounds.
“Why, girls,” shouted Ann Hicks, and her voice rose above the noise of the hydraulic, “that’s the feller that guided us up here. That’s Peters!”
“Flapjack Peters?” repeated Tom. “The man acts as if he were crazy!”
The bewhiskered and roughly dressed man gave evidence of exactly the misfortune Tom mentioned. His eyes blazed, his manner was distraught, and he came on along the bench in great leaps, shouting unintelligibly.
“He is intoxicated. Let us go away,” Miss Cullam said promptly.
But the excitement of the moment held the girls spellbound, and Miss Cullam herself merely stepped back a pace. A crowd of men were chasing the irrepressible Peters. Their shouts warned the fellow at the nozzle of the hydraulic machine.
He turned to look over his shoulder, the stream of water still plowing down the wall of gravel and soil. It bored directly into the hillside and down fell a huge lump, four or five tons of debris.
“Git back out o’ here, ye crazy loon!” yelled the man, shifting the nozzle and bringing down another pile of rubble.
But Peters plunged on and in a moment had the other by the shoulders. With insane strength he tore the miner away from the machine and flung him a dozen feet. The stream of water shifted to the right as the hydraulic machine slewed around.
“Come away! Come away from that, Pop!” shrieked a voice, and the amazed Eastern girls saw Min Peters darting along the bench toward the scene.
Peters sprang astride the nozzle and shifted it quickly back and forth so that the water spread in all directions. He knew how to handle the machine; the peril lay in what he might decide to do with it.
“Come away from that, Pop!” shrieked Min again.
But her father flirted the stream around, threatening the girl and those who followed her. The men stopped. They knew what would happen if that solid stream of water collided with a human body!
“D’you hear me, Pop?” again cried the fearless girl. “You git off that pipe and let Bob have it.”
Bob, the pipeman, was just getting to his feet—wrathful and muddy. But he did not attempt to charge Peters. The latter again swept the stream along the hillside in a wide arc, bringing tons upon tons of gravel and soil down upon the bench. The narrow plateau was becoming choked with it. There was danger of his burying the hydraulic machine, as well as himself, in an avalanche.
The tourist party was in peril, too. They scarcely understood this at the moment, for things were transpiring so quickly that only seconds had elapsed since first Peters had approached.
The miners dared not come closer. But Min showed no fear. She plunged in and caught him around the body, trying to confine his arms so that he could not slew the nozzle to either side.
This helped the situation but little. For half a minute the stream shot straight into the hillside; then another great lump fell.
At the same moment Peters threw her off, and Min went rolling over and over in the mud as Bob had gone. But she was up again in a moment and made another spring for the man.
And then suddenly, quite as unexpectedly as the riot had started, it was all over. The hurtling, hissing stream of water fell to a wabbling, futile out-pouring; then to a feeble dribble from the pipe’s nozzle. The water had been shut off below.
The miners pyramided upon him, and in half a minute Flapjack Peters was “spread-eagled” on the muddy bench, held by a dozen brawny arms.
“Wait! wait!” cried Ruth, running forward. “Don’t hurt him. Take care——”
“Don’t hurt him, Miss?” growled Bob, the man who had been flung aside. “We ought to nigh about knock the daylights out o’ him. Look what he done to me.”
“But you mustn’t! He’s not responsible,” Ruth Fielding urged.
The miners dragged Peters to his feet and there was blood on his face. Here is where Min showed the mettle that was in her again. She sprang in among the angry miners to her father’s side.
“Don’t none of you forgit he’s my pop,” she threatened in a tone that held the girls who listened spellbound and amazed.
“You ain’t got no call to beat him up. You know he can’t stand red liquor; yet some of you helped him drink of it las’ night. Ain’t that the truth?”
Bob was the first to admit her statement. “I s’pose you’re right, Min. We done drunk with him.”
“Sure! You helped him waste his money. Then, when he goes loco like he always does, you’re for beatin’ of him up. My lawsy! if there’s anything on top o’ this here airth more ornery than that I ain’t never seen it.”
Peters was still struggling with his captors and talking wildly. He evidently did not know his own daughter.
“Well, what you goin’ to do with him?” demanded Bob, the pipeman. “We ain’t expected to stand and hold him all day, if we ain’t goin’ to be ’lowed to hang him—the ornery critter!”
“You shet up, Bob Davis!” said Min. “You ain’t no pulin’ infant yourself when you’re drunk, and you know it.”
The other men began laughing at the angry miner, and Bob admitted:
“Well, s’posin’ that’s so? I’m sober now. And I got work to do. So’s these other fellows. What you want done with Flapjack?”
Ruth Fielding was so deeply interested for Min’s sake that she could not help interfering.
“Oh, Min, isn’t there a doctor in this camp?”
“Yes’m. Doc Quibbly. He’s here, ain’t he, boys?”
“The old doc’s down to his office in the tin shack beyant the hotel,” said one. “I seen him not an hour ago.”
“Let’s take your father to the hotel, Min,” Ruth said. “These men will help us, I know. So will Tom Cameron. We will have the doctor look after your father.”
“The old doc can dope him a-plenty, I reckon,” said Bob.
“Sure we’ll help you,” said the rough fellows, who were not really hard-hearted after all.
“I dunno’s they’ll let him into the hotel,” Min said.
“Yes they will. We’ll pay for his room and you and the doctor can look out for him,” Ruth declared.
“You are good and helpful, Ruth Fielding,” said Miss Cullam, coming forward, much as she despised the condition of the man, Peters. “How terrible! But one must be sorry for that poor girl.”
“And Min has pluck all right!” cried Jennie Stone, admiringly. “We must help her.”
They were all agreed in this. Even Rebecca and Miss Cullam, who both shrank from the coarseness of the men and the roughness of Min and her father, commiserated the man’s misfortune and were sorry for Min’s strait.
Tom assisted in leading the wildly-talking Peters to the hotel. Ruth and Miss Cullam hurried on in advance to engage a room for the man whom they assured the proprietor was really ill. Min, meanwhile, went in search of the camp’s medical practitioner.
Dr. Quibbly was a gray-bearded man with keen eyes but palsied hands. He had plainly been wrecked by misfortune or some disease; but he had been left with all his mental powers unimpaired.
He took hold of the distraught Peters in a capable manner; and Tom, who remained to help nurse the patient, declared to Ruth and Helen that he never hoped to see a doctor who knew his business better than Dr. Quibbly knew it.
“He had Peters quiet in half an hour. No harmful drug, either. Told me everything he used. Says rest, and milk and eggs to build up the stomach, is all the chap needs. Min’s with him now and I’m going to sleep in my blanket outside the door to-night, so if she needs anybody I’ll be within call.”
It had been rather an exciting experience for the girls and they remained in their rooms for the rest of the day. The hotel proprietor offered to take them around at night and “show them the sights”; but as that meant visiting the two saloons and gambling halls, Miss Cullam refused for the party, rather tartly.
“No offence meant, Ma’am,” said the hotel man, Mr. Bennett. “But most of the tenderfeet that come here hanker to ‘go slumming,’ as they call it. They want to see these here miners at their amusements, as well as at their daily occupations.”
“I’d rather see them at church,” Miss Cullam told him frankly. “I think they need it.”
“Good glory, Ma’am!” exclaimed the man. “We git that, too—once a month. What more kin you expect?”
“I suppose,” Miss Cullam said to her girls, “that a perfectly straight-laced New England old maid could not be set down in a more inappropriate place than a mining camp.”
The speech gave Ruth a suggestion for a scene in the picture play of “The Forty-Niners,” and she would have been delighted to have the Ardmore teacher play a part in that scene.
“However,” she said to Helen, whispering it over in bed that night, “it will be funny. I know Mr. Hammond will bring plenty of costumes of the period of forty-nine, for he wants women in the show. And there will be some character actress who can take the part of an unsophisticated blue stocking from the Hub, who arrives at the camp in the midst of the miner’s revelry.”
“Oh, my!” gasped Helen. “Miss Cullam will think you are making fun of her.”
“No she won’t——the dear thing! She has too much good sense. But she has given me what Tom would call a dandy idea.”
“Isn’t it nice to have Tom—or somebody—to lay our use of slang to?” said Ruth’s chum demurely.
The party did not leave Handy Gulch the next day, nor the day following. There were several excuses given for this delay and they were all good.
One of the ponies had developed lameness; and a burro wandered away and Pedro had to spend half a day searching for him. Perhaps the Mexican lad would have been quicker about this had Min been on hand to hurry him. But having been close beside her father all night she lay down for needed sleep while Tom Cameron and the doctor took her place.
The report from the sickroom was favorable. In a few hours the man who had come so near to bringing about a tragedy in Handy Gulch would be fit to travel. Ruth declared that she would wait for him, and he should go along with the party to Freezeout.
“But you are our guide and general factotum, Min. We depend on you,” she told the sick man’s daughter.
“I dunno what that thing is you called me; but I guess it ain’t a bad name,” said Min Peters. “If you’ll jest let pop trail along so’s I kin watch him he’ll be as good as pie, I know.”
Then, there was Miss Cullam’s reason for not wishing to start. She said she was “saddle sick.”
“I have been seasick, and trainsick; but I think saddlesick must be the worst, for it lasts longer. I can lie in bed now,” said the poor woman, “and feel myself wabbling just as I do in that hateful saddle.
“Oh, dear, me, Ruthie Fielding! I wish I had never agreed to come without demanding a comfortable carriage.”
“They tell me that there are places on the trail before we get to Freezeout so narrow that a carriage can’t be used. The wagons are going miles and miles around so as to escape the rough places of the straighter trail.”
“Goodness!” exclaimed Miss Cullam in disgust. “Is it necessary to get to Freezeout Camp in such a short time? I tell you right now: I am going to rest in bed for two days.”
And she did. The girls were not worried, however. They found plenty to see and to do about the mining town. As for Ruth, she set to work on her scenario, and kept Rebecca Frayne busy with the typewriter, too. She sketched out the scene she had mentioned to Helen, and it was so funny that Rebecca giggled all the time she was typewriting it.
“Goodness!” murmured Ruth. “I hope the audiences will think it is as funny as you do. The only trouble is, unless a good deal of the conversation is thrown on the screen, they will miss some of the best points. Dear me! Such is fate. I was born to be a humorist—a real humorist—in a day and age when ‘custard-pie comedians’ have the right-of-way.”
The third day the party started bright and early on the Freezeout trail. Flapjack Peters was well enough to ride; and he was woefully sorry for what he had done. But he was still too much “twisted” in his mind to be able to tell Ruth just how he came to start away from Yucca with Edith Phelps and Ann Hicks, instead of waiting for the entire party to arrive.
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.
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?”
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.
“‘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.
“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.”