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

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

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

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

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

“Yes!” cried Helen, breathlessly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVII—THE MAN IN THE CABIN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hullo!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And all alone?” breathed Ruth.

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

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

“Well—yes. I suppose so.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVIII—RUTH REALLY HAS A SECRET

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, we’ve got it! A hundred and thirty-three dollars per ton at the grass-roots. Lawsy! No knowin’ how deep the ledge is. An’ you ladies only took specimens in one spot. We want to take others clean acrosst the ledge—as far as we kin trace it—git ’em assayed, then pick out the best claims before any of these cheapskates around here can ring in on it. Laugh at me, will they? I reckon they’ll find out that Flapjack is wuth something as a prospector after all.”

He quite overlooked the fact that the three college girls had found the ore—and that somebody had uncovered the ledge before them! But Min did not forget these very pertinent facts.

“We got to get a hustle on us,” she announced. “No knowin’ who ’twas that first opened that prospect, Pop. Mebbe he was green, or he ain’t had his samples assayed yet. We got to get in quick.”

“Sure,” agreed Flapjack.

“And the best three claims has got to go to Miss Ruth and Miss Cam’ron and Miss Stone. They found the place. You an’ I, Pop, ‘ll stake out the next best claims. Then the rush kin come. But we want to git more samples assayed first.”

“Is that necessary?” Ruth asked, quite as eager as the others now. Somehow the gold hunting fever gets into one’s blood and effervesces. It was hard for any of them to keep their jubilation from the knowledge of the whole camp.

“We dunno how long this ledge of gold-bearing rock is,” Min explained. “Maybe we only struck the poorest end of it. P’r’aps it’ll run two hundred dollars or more to the ton at the other end. We want to stake off our claims where the ore is richest, don’t we?”

“Let’s stake it all off,” said Helen.

“Couldn’t hold it. Not by law. These big minin’ companies git so many claims because they buy up options from different locaters all along a ledge. There’s ha’f a hundred claims belongs to the Arepo Company, for instance, at one workin’s. No. We’ve got to be careful and keep this secret till we’re sure where the best of the ore lays.”

“Oh, let’s go at once and see!” cried Jennie.

“We’ll go this afternoon,” Ruth said. “All five of us.”

“I hope nobody will find the place before we get there,” Helen observed.

“No more likely now than ’twas before,” Min said sensibly. “Pop’ll sneak out a pick and shovel for us, and meet us over there on the ridge.”

So it was arranged. But the three college girls were so excited that they were scarcely fit for either work or play. They set off eagerly into the hills after lunch and met Flapjack and his daughter as had been appointed.

CHAPTER XIX—SOMETHING UNEXPECTED

“Now, Pop, be sensible!”

“You’re a-goin’ to be a lady,” declared Flapjack.

“Huh! Me, a lady, with them han’s?” and she put forth both her calloused palms. “A fat chance I got!”

With tears in her eyes Ruth Fielding said: “Those hands have earned the right to be a ’lady’s’, Min. If there is gold here in quantity, you shall be all that your father says.”

“Of course she shall!” cried the other college girls in chorus.

“Well, it’ll kill me, I know that,” declared Min. “I’d just about bust wide open with joy.”

Flapjack dug seven holes that afternoon, and they took seven specimens of the rock with the bright specks in it. The college girls thought they could detect an increasing amount of gold in the ore as they advanced up the ledge.

The old prospector insisted upon filling in each hole as they went along and putting back the tufts of bunch grass in order to make the place look as it ordinarily did. Tiny numbered stakes driven down into the loose and gravelly soil was all that marked the places from which the specimens were taken. Of course, the specimens themselves were properly marked, too.

The gold seemed to be right at the grass-roots, as Flapjack had said. He told them the ledge was all of twenty yards wide, with the width increasing as the value of the ore increased. The full length of the ledge was still unexplored, but the depth of the vein of gold-bearing quartz was really the “unknown dimension.”

“But we’re going to be rich, girls!” whispered Jennie Stone, almost dancing, as they went back to the camp at dusk. “Rich! why, I’ve always been rich—or, my father has. I never thought much about it. But to own a real gold mine oneself!”

The thought was too great for utterance. Besides, they had agreed not to whisper about the find at the camp. Not even Miss Cullam knew that the report had come from the assayer regarding the first specimen of ore the girls had found.

It was not hard to hide their excitement, for there was so much going on at Freezeout Camp. Mr. Grimes was trying to rush the work as much as possible, for the picture actors were complaining constantly regarding their trials and the manifold privations of the situation.

The college girls and Ann Hicks, however, were having the time of their lives. They dressed up in astonishing apparel furnished by the film company and posed as the female populace of Freezeout Camp in some of the episodes. Min, in the part Ruth had especially written for her, was a pronounced success. Miss Gray, of course, as she always did, filled the character of the heroine “to the queen’s taste”—and to Mr. Grimes’ satisfaction as well, which was of much more importance.

The weather was just the kind the “sun worshippers” delighted in. The camera man could grind his machine for six hours a day or more. The film of “The Forty-Niners” grew steadily.

Ruth had practically finished her part of the work; but Rebecca Frayne was kept busy at her typewriter during part of the day. Therefore, Ruth easily got away from the sanctum sanctorum the next forenoon and went up to the ridge again with Flapjack and Min.

It had been settled that Helen and Jennie should remain with the other girls and keep them from wandering about on the easterly side of the stream.

Flapjack had been on the ridge since early light. He was taking samples every few rods, and Min was wrapping them up and marking the ore and the stakes. Beyond a small grove of scrubby trees they came in sight of what Flapjack declared was probably the end of the gold-bearing rock. There was a dip into another arroyo and beyond that a mesquite jungle as far as they could see.

“Well, she’s more’n a ha’f a mile long,” sighed the old prospector. “Ev’ry thing’s got to come to an end in this world they say. We needn’t grow bristles about it—— Great cats! What’s them?”

“Oh, Pop!” shrieked Min, “We ain’t here first.”

“What are those stakes?” asked Ruth, puzzled to see that the peeled posts planted in the gravelly soil should so disturb the equanimity of the prospector and his daughter.

“Somebody’s ahead of us. Two claims staked,” groaned Flapjack. “And layin’ over the best streak of ore in the whole ledge, I bet my hat!”

There were two scraps of paper on the posts. Min ran forward to read the names upon them. Flapjack rested on his pick and said no further word.

Of a sudden Ruth heard the sharp ring of a pony’s hoof on gravel. She turned swiftly to see the pony pressing through the mesquite at the foot of the ridge. Its rider urged the animal up the slope and in a moment was beside them.

“What are you doing on my claim and my partner’s?” the man demanded, and he slid out of his saddle gingerly, slipping rude crutches under his armpits as he came to the ground. He had one foot bandaged, and hobbled toward Ruth and her companions with rather a truculent air.

“What are you doing on my claim?” “the hermit” repeated, and he was glaring so intently at Flapjack that he did not see Ruth at all.

The prospector was smoking his pipe, and he nearly dropped it as he stared in turn at this odd-looking figure on crutches. It was easy enough to see that the claimant to the best options on Freezeout ledge was a tenderfoot.

“Ain’t on your claim,” growled Peters at last.

“Well, that other fellow is,” declared “the hermit,” “Let me tell you that my partner’s gone to Kingman to have the claims recorded. They are so by this time. If you try to jump ’em——”

“Who’s tryin’ to jump anything?” demanded Min, now coming back from examining the notices on the stakes. “Which are you—this here ‘E’ or ‘R’yal?’”

“Royal is my name,” said the man, gruffly.

“Brothers, I s’pose?” said Min.

The young man stared at her wonderingly. “I declare!” he finally exclaimed. “You’re a girl, aren’t you?”

“No matter who or what I am,” said Min Peters, tartly. “You needn’t think you can stake out all this ledge just because you found it first—maybe.”

It was evident that both Flapjack and his daughter considered the appearance of this claimant to the supposedly richest options on the ledge most unfortunate.

“I know my rights and the law,” said the young man quite as truculently as before. “If it’s necessary I’ll stay here and watch those stakes till my—my partner gets back with the men and machinery that are hired to open up these claims.”

“By mighty!” groaned Flapjack. “The hull thing will be spread through Arizony in the shake of a sheep’s hind laig.”

“Well, what of it? You can stake out claims as we did,” snapped “the hermit.” “We are not trying to hog it all.”

“These men you’re bringin’ ‘ll grab off the best options and sell ’em to you. You’re Easterners. You’re goin’ to make a showin’ and then sell the mine to suckers,” said Min bitterly. “We know all about your kind, don’t we, Pop?”

Peters muttered his agreement. Ruth considered that it was now time for her to say another word.

“I am sure,” she began, “that Mr.—er—Royal will only do what is fair. And, of course, we want no more than our rights.”

The man with the injured ankle looked at her curiously. “I’m willing to believe what you say,” he observed. “You have already been kind to me. Though you didn’t come back to see me again. But I don’t know anything about this man and this—er——”

“Miss Peters and her father,” introduced Ruth, briskly, as she saw Min flushing hotly. “And they must stake off their claims next in running to the two you and your partner have staked.”

“No!” exclaimed Min, fiercely. “You and the other two young ladies come first. Then pop and me. It puts us a good ways down the ledge; but it’s only fair.”

The young man looked much worried. He said suddenly:

“How many more of you are informed of the existence of this gold ledge?”

“After my claim,” said Ruth, firmly, “I am going to stake out one for Rebecca Frayne. She needs money more than anybody else in our party—more even than Miss Cullam. The others can come along as they chance to.”

“Great Heavens!” gasped the young man. “How many more of you are there? I say! I’ll make you an offer. What’ll you-all take for your claims, sight-unseen?”

“There! What did I tell you?” grumbled Min Peters. “He’s one o’ them Eastern promoters that allus want to skim the cream of ev’rything.”

CHAPTER XX—THE MAD STALLION

“Oh, hush! hush!” cried Ruth again. “This is no way to talk. We can stake out our claims and the other girls can stake out theirs. You understand we honestly found this ore just the same as you and your partner did?” she added to the lame young man.

“I found it first,” he said, gloomily. “I found it months ago——”

“Great cats!” broke in Flapjack. “Why didn’t you file on it, then, and git started?”

“Yes, Mr. Royal,” said Ruth, puzzled. “Why the delay?”

“Well, you see, I hadn’t any money. I had to write to—to my partner. Ahem! I had to get money through my partner. I was afraid to file on the claim for fear the news would spread and the whole ridge be overrun with prospectors before I could be sure of mine.”

“And what you considered yours was the cream of it all,” repeated Min, quickly.

“Well! I found it, didn’t I?” he demanded.

“We were going to do the same thing ourselves,” Ruth said. “Let us be fair, Min.”

“But this feller means to git it all,” snapped the prospector’s daughter, nodding at “the hermit.”

“It means a lot to me—this business,” the young man muttered. “More than I can tell you. It means everything to me.”

He spoke so earnestly that the trio felt uncomfortable. Even Min did not seem able to ask another personal question. Her father drawled:

“Seems to me I seen you ’round Yucca, didn’t I, Mister?”

“Yes. I stayed there for a while. With a man named Braun.”

“Yep. Out on the trail to Kaster.”

“Yes,” said “the hermit.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Ruth, suddenly. “Was his rural delivery box number twenty-four?”

“What?” asked “the hermit.” “Yes, it was.”

Ruth opened her lips again; then she shut them tightly. She would not speak further of this subject before Flapjack and Min.

“Well,” the latter said irritably. “No use standin’ here all day. We’re goin’ to stake out them claims and put up notices. And we don’t want ’em teched, neither.”

“If mine are not touched you may be sure I shall not interfere with yours,” said the young man stiffly, turning his back on them and hobbling to his waiting pony.

Ruth wanted to say something else to him; then she hesitated. Then the young man rode away, the crutches dangling over his shoulder by a cord.

She left Peters and Min to stake out the claims, having written the notices for her own, and for Helen’s and Jennie’s and Rebecca Frayne’s claims as well. It was agreed that nothing was to be said at the camp about the find. As soon as she arrived she took Helen and Jennie aside and warned them.

“As Min says, we’ll ‘button up our lips,’” Jennie said. “Oh, I can keep a secret! But who will go to Kingman to file on the claims?”

That was what was puzzling Ruth. Flapjack, who knew all about such things—and knew the shortest trail, of course—was not to be trusted. He had money in his pocket and as Min said, a little money drove the man to drink.

“And Min can’t go. She is needed in several further scenes of the picture,” groaned Ruth.

“I tell you what,” Helen said eagerly, “we have just got to take one other person into our confidence.”

“You are right,” agreed Ruth. “I know whom you mean, Nell. Tom, of course.”

“Yes, Tom is perfectly safe,” said Helen. “He won’t even go up there and stake out a claim for himself if I tell him not to. But he will rush to Kingman and file on our claims.”

“And take these specimens of ore to the assayer,” put in Ruth.

It was so agreed, and when Min and her father reappeared at the camp the suggestion was made to them. Evidently the Western girl had been much puzzled about this very thing and she hailed the suggestion with acclaim.

“Seems to me I ought to be the one to file on them claims,” Flapjack said slowly. “And takin’ one more into this thing means spreadin’ it out thinner.”

“I wouldn’t trust you to go to Kingman with money in your pocket,” declared his daughter frankly. “You know, Pop, you said long ago that if ever you did strike it rich you was goin’ to be a gentleman and cut out all the rough stuff.”

“That’s right,” admitted Mr. Peters. “Me for a plug hat and a white vest with a gold watchchain across it, and a good seegar in my mouth. Yes, sir! That’s me. And a feller can’t afford to git ’toxicated and roll ’round the streets with them sort of duds on—no sir! If this is my lucky strike I’ve sure got to live up to it.”

Ruth wondered if clothes were going to make such a vast difference to both Min and her father. Yet lesser things than clothes have been elements of regeneration in human lives.

However, it was agreed that Tom must be taken into the gold hunters’ confidence. He was certainly surprised and wanted to rush right over to look at the ridge. But they showed him the gold-bearing ore instead and he had to be satisfied with that.

For time was pressing. “The hermit’s” partner might return with a crowd of hired workers and trouble might ensue. Without doubt Royal and his mate had intended to open the entire length of the ledge and gain possession of it. The mining law made it imperative that the claims should be of a certain area and each claim must be worked within so many months. But there are ways of circumventing the law in Arizona as well as in other places.

“I wonder who that partner of the lame fellow is?” Ruth murmured, as they were talking it over while Tom Cameron was making his preparations for departure.

“Same name as R’yal,” said Min, briefly. “Must be brothers.”

This statement rather puzzled Ruth. It certainly dissipated certain suspicions she had gained from her visits to the cabin in the distant arroyo, where “the hermit” lived.

Tom left the camp before night, carrying a good map of the trails to the north as far as Kingman. He was supposed to be going on some private errand for himself, and as he had no connection at all with the moving picture activities his departure was scarcely noted.

Besides, Mr. Grimes and the actors were just then preparing for one of the biggest scenes to be incorporated in the film of “The Forty-Niners.” This was the hold-up of the wagon train by Indians and it was staged on the old trail leading south out of Freezeout.

The wagons that had carted the paraphernalia over from Yucca had tops just like the old emigrant wagons in ‘49. There were only a few real Indians in Mr. Grimes’ company; but some of the cowboys dressed in Indian war-dress. For picture purposes there seemed a crowd of them when the action took place.

Everybody went out to see the film taken, and the fight and massacre of the gold hunters seemed very realistic. Indeed, one part of it came near to being altogether too realistic.

One of the punchers working with the company had announced before that there was either a bunch of wild horses in the vicinity, or a lone stallion strayed from some ranch. The horse in question had been sighted several times, and its hoofprints were often seen within half a mile of Freezeout.

The girls, while riding in a party through the hills, had spied the black and white creature, standing on a pinnacle and gazing, snorting, down upon the bridled ponies. The lone horse seemed to be attracted by those of his breed, yet feared to approach them while under the saddle. And, of course, the horses of the outfit were all picketed near the camp.

In the midst of the rehearsal of the Indian hold-up, when the emigrant’s ponies were stampeded by the redskins, the lone horse appeared and, snorting and squealing, tried to join the herd of tame horses and lead them away.

“It’s an ‘old rogue’ stallion, that’s what it is,” Ben Lester, one of the real Indians remarked. He had been to Harvard and had come back to his family in Arizona to straighten out business affairs, and was waiting for the Government to untangle much red tape before getting his share of the Southern Ute grant.

“He acts like he was locoed to me,” declared Felix Burns, the horse wrangler, who, much to his disgust, had to “act in them fool pitchers” as well as handle the stock for the outfit. “Looky there! If he comes for you, beat him off with your quirts. A bite from him might send man or beast jest as crazy as a mad dog.”

“Do you mean that the stallion is really mad?” asked Ruth, who was riding near the Indians, but, of course, out of the focus of the camera.

“Just as mad as a dog with hydrophobia—and just as dangerous,” declared Ben. “You ladies keep back. We may have to beat the brute off. He’s a pretty bird, but if he’s locoed, he’d better be dead than afoot—poor creature.”

The strangely acting stallion did not come near enough, however, for the boys to use their quirts. Nor did he bite any of the loose horses. He seemed to have an idea of leading the pack astray, that was all; and when the ponies were rounded up the stallion disappeared again, whistling shrilly, over the nearest ridge.

CHAPTER XXI—A PERIL OF THE SADDLE

“Well, nobody’s disturbed them, that is sure. Tom is pounding away just as fast as he can go for Kingman. Dates and time mean much in establishing mining claims, I believe. But if Tom gets to the county office and files on these claims before this other party can get on the site to jump them—if that is what they really mean to do—in the end we ought to be able to get judgment in the courts.”

Yet, somehow, she could not believe that “the hermit” was the sort of man who would do anything crooked. Satisfied that none of the stakes had been disturbed she returned to her pony and started him into the east again.

In a few moments she found herself following that half-defined path that she had ridden on the day she had first seen the secret cabin and the lame man in it. She had never mentioned this adventure to any of the girls. Ruth was, by nature, cautious without being really secretive. And when a second person was a party to any secret she was not the girl to chatter.

She hesitated, if the pony did not, in following this route. Half a dozen times she might have pulled out and taken a side turn, or ridden into another arroyo and so escaped seeing that hidden cabin again.

It must be confessed, however, that Ruth Fielding was curious. Very curious indeed. And she had reason to be. The gymnasium cap she had seen in “the hermit’s” cabin pointed to a most astounding possibility. She had not believed in the first place that “the hermit” was entirely alone in this wild and lonely spot. Now he had admitted the existence of a partner. Who was it?

She was deep in thought as her pony carried her at an easy canter down into the arroyo at the far end of which the cabin stood. Suddenly her mount lifted his head and challenged.

“Whoa! what’s the matter with you? What are you squealing at?” demanded Ruth, tightening her grasp on the reins.

She glanced around and saw nothing at first. Then the pony squealed again, and as it did so there came an answering equine hail from the mesquite. There was a crash in the bushes; then out upon the open ground charged the lone stallion that had the day before troubled the picture making company.

There was good blood in the handsome brute. He was several hands higher than the cow pony, and his legs were as slender and shapely as a Morgan’s. His muzzle was as glossy as satin; his nostrils a deep red and he blew through them and expanded them with ears pricked forward and yellow teeth bared—making altogether a striking picture, but one that Ruth Fielding would much rather have seen on the screen than here in reality.

She raised her quirt and brought it down upon her pony’s flank. He sprang forward under the lash but was not quick enough to escape the mad stallion. That brute got directly in the path and they collided.

Ruth was almost unseated, while the clashing teeth of the free horse barely grazed her legging. He snapped again at the rump of the plunging pony, but missed.

The girl was seriously frightened. What Ben Lester and the other cowpuncher had said about the stallion seemed to be true. Did he have hydrophobia just the same as a dog that runs mad?

Whether the beast was afflicted with the rabies or not, Ruth did not want either herself or the pony bitten. She had seen enough of half-tamed horses on Silver Ranch in Montana to know that there is scarcely an animal more savage than a wild stallion.

And if this black and white beast had eaten of the loco weed which, in some sections of the Southwest is quite common, he was much more dangerous than the bear Min Peters had shot as they came over from Yucca.

She tried to start her pony along the bottom of the arroyo on the back track; but the squealing stallion had got around behind them and again charged with open jaws, the froth flying from his curled-back lips.

So she wheeled her mount, clinging desperately with her knees to his heaving sides, and once more lashed him with the quirt.

Since she had ridden him that first day out of Yucca Ruth had been in the saddle almost every day since; but so far she had never had occasion to use the whip on her pony. He was a spirited bit of horseflesh, not much more than half the size of the stallion. The quirt embittered him.

Although he wheeled to run, facing down the arroyo again, he began to buck instead. His heels suddenly were thrown out and just grazed the stallion’s nose, while Ruth came close to flying out of her saddle and over his head.

If she was once unhorsed Ruth suddenly realized that her fate would be sealed. The stallion rose up on his hind legs, squealing and whistling, and struck at her with his sharp hoofs.

It was a moment of grave peril for Ruth Fielding.

Again and again she beat her mount, and again and again he went up into the air, landing stiff-legged, and with all four feet close together. Then she swung the stinging lash across the face of the stallion.

It was a cruel blow and it laid open the satiny, black skin of the angry brute right across his nose. He squealed and fell back. The pony whirled and again Ruth struck at their common enemy.

Lashing the stallion seemed a better thing than punishing her own frightened mount, and as the mad horse circled her the girl struck again and again, once cutting open the stallion’s shoulder and drawing blood in profusion.

The fight was not won so easily, however. The pony danced around and around trying to keep his heels to the stallion; the latter endeavored to get in near enough to use either his fore-hoofs in striking, or his teeth to tear the girl or her mount.

And then Ruth unexpectedly heard a shout. Somebody at the top of his voice ordered her to “Lie down on his neck—I’m going to fire!”

She saw nothing; she had no idea where this prospective rescuer stood; but she was wise enough to obey. She seized the pony’s mane and lay as close to his neck as possible. The next instant the report of a heavy rifle drowned even the squealing of the stallion.

He had risen on his hind feet, his fore-hoofs beating the air, the foam flying from his lips, his yellow teeth gleaming. A more frightful, threatening figure could scarcely be imagined, it seemed to the girl of the Red Mill in her dire peril.

At the rifle shot he toppled over backward, crashing to the earth with a scream that was almost human. There he lay on his back for a minute.

Out of the brush hobbled the young man named Royal. He was getting around without his crutches now. The gun in his hand was still smoking.

“Have you a rope?” he shouted. “If you have I’ll noose him.”

“No. I haven’t a rope, though Ann is always telling me never to ride without one in this country.”

“I think she’s right—whoever Ann is,” said the young man, with that humorous twist to his features that Ruth so liked. “A rope out here is handier than a little red wagon. Come on, quick! I only creased that stallion. He may not have had the fight all taken out of him—the ferocious beast!”

The black and white horse was already trying to struggle to his feet. Perhaps he was not badly hurt. Ruth controlled her pony, and he was headed down the arroyo.

“Where is your horse, Mr. Royal?” she asked the lame young man.

He started and looked a little oddly at her when she called him that; but he replied:

“My horse is down at the cabin. I was just trying my legs a little. Glory! I almost turned my ankle again that time.”

He was hobbling pretty badly now, for he had been too excited while shooting the mad stallion to be careful of his lame ankle. Ruth was out of the saddle in a moment.

“Get right up here,” she commanded. “We’ll get to your cabin and be safe. I can go back to camp by another way.”

“Not alone,” he declared, firmly, as he scrambled into her place on the pony. “I’ll ride with you. That beast is not done for yet.”

But the stallion did not pursue them. He stood rather wabblingly and shook his head, and turned in slow circles as though he were dazed. The rifle shot had not, however, permanently injured him.

They were quickly out of the sight of the scene of Ruth’s peril. The young man looked down at her, trudging hot and dusty beside the pony, and his face crinkled into a broad smile again.

“You’re some girl,” he said. “I’d dearly love to know your name and just who you are. My—That is, my partner says you are a bunch of movie actors over there at Freezeout. But, of course, that old-timer who was up on the ridge and the girl in—er—overalls, were not actors. How about you?”

“Yes,” said Ruth, amusedly. “I act. Sometimes.”

“Get out!”

“I did. Out of my saddle to give you my seat. You should be more polite.”

He burst into open laughter at this. “You’re all right,” he declared. “Do you mind telling me your name?”

“Fielding. Miss Fielding, Mr. Royal.”

He grinned at her wickedly. “You’ve got only half of my name,” he said.

“Indeed?” she cried. “Yes, I suppose, like other people, you must have a first name.”

“I have a last name,” he chuckled.

“What?” Ruth gasped. “Isn’t Royal——”

“That is what I was christened. Phelps is the rest of it—Royal Phelps.”

“I knew it! I felt it!” declared Ruth, stopping in the trail and making the pony stop, too. “You are Edith Phelps’ brother. I was puzzled as I could be, for I believed, since the first day I met you, that must be so and that she had been with you at that cabin.”

“Why,” he asked curiously, “how did you come to know my sister?”

“Go to college with her,” said Ruth, shortly, and moving on again. “And she was on the train with us coming West.”

“And you did not know where she was coming? Of course not! It was a secret.”

“She knew where we were coming,” said Ruth, briefly.

“Then you’re not a movie actress?”

“I’m a freshman at Ardmore. But I do act—once in a while. There are a party of us girls from Ardmore, with one of the teachers, roughing it at Freezeout Camp. The movie people are there, too. We are acquainted with them.”

“Well, I’m mighty sorry my sister isn’t here——”

“Is she your partner, Mr. Phelps?” Ruth asked.

“Sure thing! And a bully good one. When I was hurt and couldn’t ride so far, she set off alone to find her way over the trails to Kingman.”

“Oh!” Ruth cried. “Aren’t you worried about her? Have you heard——?”

“Not a word. But it isn’t time yet. Edith is a smart girl,” declared the brother with confidence. “She’ll make it all right. I don’t expect her back for a week yet.”

“Oh! but we expect Tom——”

“What Tom?” asked Phelps, suspiciously.

“My chum’s brother. He started—started day before yesterday—for Kingman to file on our claims. We expect him back in ten days, or two weeks at the longest. Why, we shall probably be all through taking the pictures by that time!”

“Look here, Miss Fielding,” said the young man, his face suddenly gloomy. “Can’t you fix it so we can buy up your claims along that ridge? It means a lot to me.”

“Why, Mr. Phelps!” exclaimed Ruth, “don’t you suppose it means something to the rest of us? If it is really a valuable gold deposit.”

“Not what it means to me,” he returned soberly, and rode in silence the rest of the way to the cabin.

CHAPTER XXII—RUTH HEARS SOMETHING

The character the tale about Edith’s brother had given that young man did not seem to fit this “hermit” either. This fellow seemed so gentlemanly and so amusing, that she could scarcely believe him the worthless character he was pictured. Yet, his presence here in the wilds, and Edith’s coming out to him so secretly, pointed to a mystery that teased the girl of the Red Mill.

When they came to the cabin door, and Royal Phelps slid carefully out of her saddle, Ruth said easily:

“I wish you’d tell me all about yourself, Mr. Phelps. I am curious—and frank to say so.”

“I don’t blame you,” he admitted, smiling suddenly again—and Ruth thought that smile the most disarming she had ever seen. Royal Phelps might have been disgraced at college, but she believed it must have been through his fun-loving disposition rather than because of any viciousness.

“I don’t blame you for feeling curiosity,” the young man repeated, seating himself gingerly in the doorway. “If I had a chair I’d offer it to you, Miss Fielding.”

“Thanks. I’ll hop on my pony. I’ll get yours for you before I go.”

“Wait a bit,” he urged. “I am going with you when you return to that town. That wild beast of a horse may be rampaging around again.”

“Ugh!” ejaculated Ruth with no feigned shudder. “He was awful!”

“Now you’ve said something! But you are a mighty cool girl, Miss Fielding. What Edie would have done——”

“She would have done quite as well as I, I have no doubt,” Ruth hastened to say. “And I have been in the West before, Mr. Phelps.”

“Yes? You are really a movie actor?”

“Sometimes.”

“And a college girl?”

“Always!” laughed his visitor.

“I believe you are puzzling me intentionally.”

“I told you that I was puzzled about you.”

“I suppose so,” he laughed. “Well, tit for tat. You tell me and I’ll tell you.”

“I trust to your honor,” she said, with mock seriousness. “I will tell you my secret. Really, I am not a movie actress—save by brevet.”

“I thought not!” he exclaimed with warmth.

“Why, they are very nice folk!” Ruth told him. “Much nicer than you suppose. I am really writing the scenario Mr. Hammond is producing.”

“Goodness!” he exclaimed. “A literary person?”

“Exactly.”

“But why didn’t Edie tell me something about you? She went over there and took a peep at you.”

“I fancied so. The girls thought her an Indian squaw. That would please Edie—if I know her at all,” said Ruth with sarcasm.

“I’ll have to tell her,” he grinned.

“Better not. She does not like us any too well. Us freshmen, I mean. You know,” Ruth decided to explain, “there is an insurmountable wall between freshmen and sophs.”

“I ought to know,” murmured Royal Phelps, and his face clouded.

Ruth, determined to get to the root of this mysterious matter, thrust in a deep probe: “I believe you have been to college, Mr. Phelps?”

He reddened to his ears. “Oh, yes,” he answered shortly.

“And then did you come out here to go into the mining business?” she continued, with some cruelty, for he was writhing.

“After the pater put me out—yes,” he said, looking directly at her now, even though his face flamed.

Ruth was doubly assured that Royal Phelps could not be as black as he was painted. “Though I do not believe any painter could reflect the Italian sunset hue that now mantles his brow,” she thought.

“I am sorry that you have had trouble with your father. Is it insurmountable?” she asked him quietly, and with the air that always gave even strangers confidence in Ruth Fielding.

“I hope not,” he admitted. “I was mad enough when I came away. I just wanted to ‘show him.’ But now I’d like to show him. Do—do you get me?”

“There is no difference in the words, but a great deal in the inflection, Mr. Phelps,” Ruth said quietly.

“Well. You’re an understandable girl. After I had come a cropper at Harvard—silly thing, too, but made the whole faculty wild,” and here he grinned like a naughty small boy at the remembrance—“the pater said I wasn’t worth the powder to blow me to Halifax. And I guess he was right. But he’d not given me a chance.

“Said I’d never done a lick of work and probably wouldn’t. Said I was cut out for a rich man’s wastrel or a tramp. Said I shouldn’t be the first with his money. Told James to show me the outer portal with the brass plate on it, and bring in the ‘welcome’ mat so that I wouldn’t stand there and think it meant me.

“So I came away from there,” finished Royal Phelps with a wry face.

“Oh, that was terrible!” Ruth declared with clasped hands and all the sympathy that the most exacting prodigal could expect. “But, of course, he didn’t mean it.”

“Mean it? You don’t know Costigan Phelps. He never says anything he doesn’t mean. Let me tell you it won’t be a slippery day when I show up at the paternal mansion. The pater certainly will not run out and fall on either my neck or his own. There’ll be nobody at the home plate to see me coming and hail me: ‘Kill the fatted prodigal; here comes the calf!’ Believe me!”

“Oh, Mr. Phelps!” begged Ruth. “Don’t talk that way. I know just how you feel. And you are trying to hide it——”

“With airy persiflage—yes,” he admitted, turning serious. “Well, pater’s made a lot of money in mines. I said to Edie: ‘I’ll shoot for the West and locate a few and so attract his attention to the Young Napoleon of mines in his own field.’ It looked easy.”

“Of course,” whispered Ruth.

“But it wasn’t.”

“Of course again,” and the girl smiled.

“Grin away. It helps you to bear it,” scoffed Royal Phelps. “But it doesn’t help the ‘down and outer’ a bit to grin. I know. I’ve tried it ever since last fall.”

“Oh!”

“I finally got to rummaging out through these hills. I came with a party of sheep herders. You know the Prodigal Son only herded hogs. That’s an aristocratic game out here in the West beside sheep herding. Believe me!

“It puts a man in the last row when he fools with sheep. When I went down to Yucca nobody would have anything to do with me but old Braun. And he was owning sheep right then.

“If I went into a place the fellows would hold their noses and tiptoe out. You know, it’s a joke out here: A couple of fellows made a bet as to which was the most odoriferous—a sheep or a Greaser. So they put up the money and selected a judge.

“They brought the sheep into the judge’s cabin and the judge fainted. Then they brought in the Greaser and the sheep fainted. So, you see, aside from Greasers, I didn’t have many what you’d call close friends.”

Ruth’s lips formed the words “Poor boy!” but she would not have given voice to them for the world. Still, for some reason, Royal Phelps, who was looking directly at her, nodded his head gratefully.

“Tough times, eh? Well, I’d seen something up here in these hills. I’d been studying about mineral deposits—especially gold signs. I saved enough money to get a small outfit and this pony I ride. I’d brought my gun on from the East. I started out prospecting with scarcely a grubstake. But nobody around here would have trusted a tenderfoot like me. I was bound to do it on my lonely, if I did it at all.”

“Weren’t you afraid to start off alone?” asked Ruth. “Mr. Peters says it is dangerous for one to go prospecting.”

“Yes. But lots of the old-timers do. And this ‘new-timer’ did it. Nothing bit me,” he added dryly.

“So I came back here and knocked up this cabin. Pretty good for ‘mamma’s baby boy,’ isn’t it?” and he laughed shortly. “That’s what some of the Lazy C punchers called me when I first came into their neighborhood.