Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point: or, Nita, the Girl Castaway

CHAPTER XVI
RUTH’S SECRET

“What has happened?”

“Where’s Ruth?”

“Mary Cox! why don’t you answer?”

The Fox for once in her career was stunned. She could only shake her head and wring her hands. Helen was the first of the other girls to suspect the trouble, and she cried:

“Ruth’s overboard! That’s the reason Tom has gone in. Oh, oh! why don’t they come up again?”

And almost immediately all the others saw the importance of that question. Ruth Fielding had been down fully a minute and a half now, and Tom had not come up once for air.

Nita had set off running around the head of the inlet, and Crab shuffled along in her wake. The strange girl ran like a goat over the rocks.

Phineas, who had been aboard the motor boat and busy with his famous culinary operations, now came lumbering up to the spot. He listened to a chorused explanation of the situation–tragic indeed in its appearance. Phineas looked up and down the rocky path, and across the inlet, and seemed to swiftly take a marine “observation.” Then he snorted.

“They’re all right!” he exclaimed.

“What?” shrieked Helen.

“All right?” repeated Heavy. “Why, Phineas–”

She broke off with a startled gurgle. Phineas turned quickly, too, and looked over the high boulder. There appeared the head of Ruth Fielding and, in a moment, the head of Tom Cameron beside it.

“You both was swept through the tunnel into the pool behind, sir,” said Phineas, wagging his head.

“Oh, I was never so scared in my life,” murmured Ruth, clambering down to the path, the water running from her clothing in little streams.

“Me, too!” grunted Tom, panting. “The tide sets in through that hole awfully strong.”

“I might have told you about it,” grunted Phineas; “but I didn’t suppose airy one of ye was going for to jump into the sea right here.”

“We didn’t–intentionally,” declared Ruth.

“How ever did it happen, Ruthie?” demanded Heavy.

There was a moment’s silence. Tom grew red in the face, but he kept his gaze turned from Mary Cox. Ruth answered calmly enough:

“It was my own fault. Mary was just coming along to pass me. I had a bite. Between trying to let her by and ‘tending my fish,’ I fell in–and now I have lost fish, line, and all.”

“Be thankful you did not lose your life, Miss Fielding,” said Aunt Kate. “Come right down to the boat and get those wet things off. You, too, Tom.”

At that moment Nita came to the spot. “Is she safe? Is she safe?” she cried.

“Don’t I look so?” returned Ruth, laughing gaily. “And here’s the fish I did catch. I mustn’t lose him.”

Nita stepped close to the girl from the Red Mill and tugged at her wet sleeve.

“What are you going to do to her?” she whispered.

“Do to who?”

“That girl.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Ruth.

“I saw her,” said Nita. “I saw her push you. She ought to be thrown into the water herself.”

“Hush!” commanded Ruth. “You’re mistaken. You didn’t see straight, my dear.”

“Yes, I did,” declared the Western girl, firmly. “She’s been mean to you, right along. I’ve noticed it. She threw you in.”

“Don’t say such a thing again!” commanded Ruth, warmly. “You have no right.”

“Huh!” said Nita, eyeing her strangely. “It’s your own business, I suppose. But I am not blind.”

“I hope not,” sad Ruth, calmly. “But I hope, too, you will not repeat what you just said–to anyone.”

“Why–if you really don’t want me to,” said Nita, slowly.

“Truly, I don’t wish you to,” said Ruth, earnestly. “I don’t even admit that you are right, mind–”

“Oh, it’s your secret,” said Nita, shortly, and turned away.

And Ruth had a word to say to Tom, too, as they hurried side by side to the boat, he carrying the fish. “Now, Tommy–remember!” she said.

“I won’t be easy in my mind, just the same, while that girl is here,” growled Master Tom.

“That’s foolish. She never meant to do it.”

“Huh! She was scared, of course. But she’s mean enough–”

“Stop! somebody will hear you. And, anyway,” Ruth added, remembering what Nita had said, “it’s my secret.”

“True enough; it is.”

“Then don’t tell it, Tommy,” she added, with a laugh.

But it was hard to meet the sharp eye of Mercy Curtis and keep the secret. “And pray, Miss, why did you have to go into the water after the fish?” Mercy demanded.

“I was afraid he would get away,” laughed Ruth.

“And who helped you do it?” snapped the lame girl.

“Helped me do what?”

“Helped you tumble in.”

“Now, do you suppose I needed help to do so silly a thing as that?” cried Ruth.

“You needed help to do it the other day on the steamboat,” returned Mercy, slily. “And I saw The Fox following you around that way.”

“Why, what nonsense you talk, Mercy Curtis!”

But Ruth wondered if Mercy was to be so easily put off. The lame girl was so very sharp.

However, Ruth was determined to keep her secret. Not a word had she said to Mary Cox. Indeed, she had not looked at her since she climbed out of the open pool behind the boulder and, well-nigh breathless, reached the rock after that perilous plunge. Tom she had sworn to silence, Nita she had warned to be still, and now Mercy’s suspicions were to be routed.

“Poor, poor girl!” muttered Ruth, with more sorrow than anger. “If she is not sorry and afraid yet, how will she feel when she awakes in the night and remembers what might have been?”

Nevertheless, the girl from the Red Mill did not allow her secret to disturb her cheerfulness. She hid any feeling she might have had against The Fox. When they all met at dinner on the Miraflame, she merely laughed and joked about her accident, and passed around dainty bits of the baked tautog that Phineas had prepared especially for her.

That fisherman’s chowder was a marvel, and altogether he proved to be as good a cook as Heavy had declared. The boys had caught several bass, and they caught more after dinner. But those were saved to take home. The girls, however, had had enough fishing. Ruth’s experience frightened them away from the slippery rocks.

Mary Cox was certainly a very strange sort of a girl; but her present attitude did not surprise Ruth. Mary had, soon after Ruth entered Briarwood Hall, taken a dislike to the younger girl. Ruth’s new club–the Sweetbriars–had drawn almost all the new girls in the school, as well as many of Mary’s particular friends; while the Up and Doing Club, of which Mary was the leading spirit, was not alone frowned upon by Mrs. Tellingham and her assistants, but lost members until–as Helen Cameron had said–the last meeting of the Upedes consisted of The Fox and Helen herself.

The former laid all this at Ruth Fielding’s door. She saw Ruth’s influence and her club increase, while her own friends fell away from her. Twice Ruth had helped to save Mary from drowning, and on neither occasion did the older girl seem in the least grateful. Now Ruth was saving her from the scorn of the other girls and–perhaps–a request from Heavy’s Aunt Kate that Mary pack her bag and return home.

Ruth hoped that Mary would find some opportunity of speaking to her alone before the day was over. But, even when the boys returned from the outer rocks with a splendid string of bass, and the bow of the Miraflame was turned homeward, The Fox said never a word to her. Ruth crept away into the bows by herself, her mind much troubled. She feared that the fortnight at Lighthouse Point might become very unpleasant, if Mary continued to be so very disagreeable.

Suddenly somebody tapped her on the arm. The motor boat was pushing toward the mouth of Sokennet Harbor and the sun was well down toward the horizon. The girls were in the cabin, singing, and Madge was trying to make her brother sing, too; but Bob’s voice was changing and what he did to the notes of the familiar tunes was a caution.

But it was Tom Cameron who had come to Ruth. “See here,” said the boy, eagerly. “See what I picked up on the rocks over there.”

“Over where?” asked Ruth, looking curiously at the folded paper in Tom’s hand.

“Across from where you fell in, Ruth. Nita and that Crab fellow were standing there when I went down the rocks and dived in for you. And I saw them looking at this sheet of newspaper,” and Tom began to slowly unfold it as he spoke.

CHAPTER XVII
WHAT WAS IN THE NEWSPAPER

“Whatever have you got there, Tom?” asked Ruth, curiously.

“Hush! I reckon Crab lost it when you fell in the water and stirred us all up so,” returned the boy, with a grin.

“Lost that paper?”

“Yes. You see, it’s a page torn from the Sunday edition of a New York daily. On this side is a story of some professor’s discoveries in ancient Babylon.”

“Couldn’t have interested Jack Crab much,” remarked Ruth, smiling.

“That’s what I said myself,” declared Tom, hastily. “Therefore, I turned it over. And this is what Crab was showing that Nita girl, I am sure.”

Ruth looked at the illustrated sheet that Tom spread before her. There was a girl on a very spirited cow pony, swinging a lariat, the loop of which was about to settle over the broadly spreading horns of a Texas steer. The girl was dressed in a very fancy “cow-girl” costume, and the picture was most spirited indeed. In one corner, too, was a reproduction of a photograph of the girl described in the newspaper article.

“Why! it doesn’t look anything like Nita,” gasped Ruth, understanding immediately why Tom had brought the paper to her.

“Nope. You needn’t expect it to. Those papers use any old photograph to make illustrations from. But read the story.”

It was all about the niece of a very rich cattle man in Montana who had run away from the ranch on which she had lived all her life. It was called Silver Ranch, and was a very noted cattle range in that part of the West. The girl’s uncle raised both horses and cattle, was very wealthy, had given her what attention a single man could in such a situation, and was now having a countrywide search made for the runaway.

“Jane Ann Hicks Has Run Away From a Fortune” was the way the paper put it in a big “scare head” across the top of the page; and the text went on to tell of rough Bill Hicks, of Bullhide, and how he had begun in the early cattle days as a puncher himself and had now risen to the sole proprietorship of Silver Ranch.

“Bill’s one possession besides his cattle and horses that he took any joy in was his younger brother’s daughter, Jane Ann. She is an orphan and came to Bill and he has taken sole care of her (for a woman has never been at Silver Ranch, save Indian squaws and a Mexican cook woman) since she could creep. Jane Ann is certainly the apple of Old Bill’s eye.

“But, as Old Bill has told the Bullhide chief of police, who is sending the pictures and description of the lost girl all over the country, ‘Jane Ann got some powerful hifalutin’ notions.’ She is now a well-grown girl, smart as a whip, pretty, afraid of nothing on four legs, and just as ignorant as a girl brought up in such an environment would be. Jane Ann has been reading novels, perhaps. As the Eastern youth used to fill up on cheap stories of the Far West, and start for that wild and woolly section with the intention of wiping from the face of Nature the last remnant of the Red Tribes, so it may be that Jane Ann Hicks has read of the Eastern millionaire and has started for the Atlantic seaboard for the purpose of lassoing one–or more–of those elusive creatures.

“However, Old Bill wants Jane Ann to come home. Silver Ranch will be hers some day, when Old Bill passes over the Great Divide, and he believes that if she is to be Montana’s coming Cattle Queen his niece would better not know too much about the effete East.”

And in this style the newspaper writer had spread before his readers a semi-humorous account (perhaps fictitious) of the daily life of the missing heiress of Silver Ranch, her rides over the prairies and hills on half-wild ponies, the round-ups, calf-brandings, horse-breakings, and all other activities supposed to be part and parcel of ranch life.

“My goodness me!” gasped Ruth, when she had hastily scanned all this, “do you suppose that any sane girl would have run away from all that for just a foolish whim?”

“Just what I say,” returned Tom. “Cracky! wouldn’t it be great to ride over that range, and help herd the cattle, and trail wild horses, and–and–”

“Well, that’s just what one girl got sick of, it seems,” finished Ruth, her eyes dancing. “Now! whether this same girl is the one we know–”

“I bet she is,” declared Tom.

“Betting isn’t proof, you know,” returned Ruth, demurely.

“No. But Jane Ann Hicks is this young lady who wants to be called ‘Nita’–Oh, glory! what a name!”

“If it is so,” Ruth rejoined, slowly, “I don’t so much wonder that she wanted a fancy name. ‘Jane Ann Hicks’! It sounds ugly; but an ugly name can stand for a truly beautiful character.”

“That fact doesn’t appeal to this runaway girl, I guess,” said Tom. “But the question is: What shall we do about it?”

“I don’t know as we can do anything about it,” Ruth said, slowly. “Of course we don’t know that this Hicks girl and Nita are the same.”

“What was Crab showing her the paper for?”

“What can Crab have to do with it, anyway?” returned Ruth, although she had not forgotten the interest the assistant lighthouse keeper had shown in Nita from the first.

“Don’t know. But if he recognized her–”

“From the picture?” asked Ruth.

“Well! you look at it. That drawing of the girl on horseback looks more like her than the photographic half-tone,” said Tom. “She looks just that wild and harum-scarum!”

Ruth laughed. “There is a resemblance,” she admitted. “But I don’t understand why Crab should have any interest in the girl, anyway.”

“Neither do I. Let’s keep still about it. Of course, we’ll tell Nell,” said Tom. “But nobody else. If that old ranchman is her uncle he ought to be told where she is.”

“Maybe she was not happy with him, after all,” said Ruth, thoughtfully.

“My goodness!” Tom cried, preparing to go back to the other boys who were calling him. “I don’t see how anybody could be unhappy under such conditions.”

“That’s all very well for a boy,” returned the girl, with a superior air. “But think! she had no girls to associate with, and the only women were squaws and a Mexican cook!”

Ruth watched Nita, but did not see the assistant lighthouse keeper speak to the runaway during the passage home, and from the dock to the bungalow Ruth walked by Nita’s side. She was tempted to show the page of the newspaper to the other girl, but hesitated. What if Nita really was Jane Hicks? Ruth asked herself how she would feel if she were burdened with that practical but unromantic name, and had to live on a lonely cattle ranch without a girl to speak to.

“Maybe I’d run away myself,” thought Ruth. “I was almost tempted to run away from Uncle Jabez when I first went to live at the Red Mill.”

She had come to pity the strange girl since reading about the one who had run away from Silver Ranch. Whether Nita had any connection with the newspaper article or not, Ruth had begun to see that there might be situations which a girl couldn’t stand another hour, and from which she was fairly forced to flee.

The fishing party arrived home in a very gay mood, despite the incident of Ruth’s involuntary bath. Mary Cox kept away from the victim of the accident and when the others chaffed Ruth, and asked her how she came to topple over the rock, The Fox did not even change color.

Tom scolded in secret to Ruth about Mary. “She ought to be sent home. I’ll not feel that you’re safe any time she is in your company. I’ve a mind to tell Miss Kate Stone,” he said.

“I’ll be dreadfully angry if you do such a thing, Tom,” Ruth assured him, and that promise was sufficient to keep the boy quiet.

They were all tired and not even Helen objected when bed was proposed that night. In fact, Heavy went to sleep in her chair, and they had a dreadful time waking her up and keeping her awake long enough for her to undress, say her prayers, and get into bed.

In the other girls’ room Ruth and her companions spent little time in talking or frolicking. Nita had begged to sleep with Mercy, with whom she had spent considerable time that day and evening; and the lame girl and the runaway were apparently both asleep before Ruth and Helen got settled for the night.

Then Helen dropped asleep between yawns and Ruth found herself lying wide-awake, staring at the faintly illuminated ceiling. Of a sudden, sleep had fled from her eyelids. The happenings of the day, the mystery of Nita, the meanness of Mary Cox, her own trouble at the mill, the impossibility of her going to Briarwood next term unless she found some way of raising money for her tuition and board, and many, many other thoughts, trooped through Ruth Fielding’s mind for more than an hour.

Mostly the troublesome thoughts were of her poverty and the seeming impossibility of her ever discovering any way to earn such a quantity of money as three hundred and fifty dollars. Her chum, lying asleep beside her, did not dream of this problem that continually troubled Ruth’s mind.

The clock down stairs tolled eleven solemn strokes. Ruth did not move. She might have been sound asleep, save for her open eyes, their gaze fixed upon the ceiling. Suddenly a beam of light flashed in at one window, swinging from right to left, like the blade of a phantom scythe, and back again.

Ruth did not move, but the beam of light took her attention immediately from her former thoughts. Again and once again the flash of light was repeated. Then she suddenly realized what it was. Somebody was walking down the path toward the private dock, swinging a lantern.

She would have given it no further thought had not a door latch clicked. Whether it was the latch of her room, or another of the bedrooms on this floor of the bungalow, Ruth could not tell. But in a moment she heard the balustrade of the stair creak.

“It’s Izzy again!” thought Ruth, sitting up in bed. “He’s walking in his sleep. The boys did not tie him.”

She crept out of bed softly so as not to awaken Helen or the other girls and went to the door. When she opened it and peered out, there was no ghostly figure “tight-roping it” on the balustrade. But she heard a sound below–in the lower hall. Somebody was fumbling with the chain of the front door.

“He’s going out! I declare, he’s going out!” thought Ruth and sped to the window.

She heard the jar of the big front door as it was opened, and then pulled shut again. She heard no step on the porch, but a figure soon fluttered down the steps. It was not Isadore Phelps, however. Ruth knew that at first glance. Indeed, it was not a boy who started away from the house, running on the grass beside the graveled walk.

Ruth turned back hastily and looked at the other bed–at Mercy’s bed. The place beside the lame girl was empty. Nita had disappeared!

CHAPTER XVIII
ANOTHER NIGHT ADVENTURE

Ruth was startled, to say the least, by the discovery that Nita was absent. And how softly the runaway girl must have crept out of bed and out of the room for Ruth–who had been awake–not to hear her!

“She certainly is a sly little thing!” gasped Ruth.

But as she turned back to see what had become of the figure running beside the path, the lantern light was flashed into her eyes. Again the beam was shot through the window and danced for a moment on the wall and ceiling.

“It is a signal!” thought Ruth. “There’s somebody outside besides Nita–somebody who wishes to communicate with her.”

Even as she realized this she saw the lantern flash from the dock. That was where it had been all the time. It was a dark-lantern, and its ray had been intentionally shot into the window of their room.

The figure she had seen steal away from the bungalow had now disappeared. If it was Nita–as Ruth believed–the strange girl might be hiding in the shadow of the boathouse.

However, the girl from the Red Mill did not stand idly at the window for long. It came to her that somebody ought to know what was going on. Her first thought was that Nita was bent on running away from her new friends–although, as as far as any restraint was put upon her, she might have walked away at any time.

“But she ought not to go off like this,” thought Ruth, hurrying into her own garments. By the faint light that came from outside she could see to dress; and she saw, too, that Nita’s clothing had disappeared.

“Why, the girl must have dressed,” thought Ruth, in wonder. “How could she have done it with me lying here awake?”

Meanwhile, her own fingers were busy and in two minutes from the time she had turned from the window, she opened the hall door again and tiptoed out.

The house was perfectly still, save for the ticking of the big clock. She sped down the stairway, and as she passed the glimmering face of the time-keeper she glanced at it and saw that the minute hand was just eight minutes past the hour.

In a closet under the stairs were the girls’ outside garments, and hats. She found somebody’s tam-o’-shanter and her own sweater-coat, and slipped both on in a hurry. When she opened the door the chill, salt air, with not a little fog in it, breathed into the close hall.

She stepped out, pulled the door to and latched it, and crossed the porch. The harbor seemed deserted. Two or three night lights sparkled over on the village side. What vessels rode at anchor showed no lights at their moorings. But the great, steady, yellow light of the beacon on the point shone steadily–a wonderfully comforting sight, Ruth thought, at this hour of the night.

There were no more flashes of lantern light from the dock. Nor did she hear a sound from that direction as she passed out through the trimly cut privet hedge and took the shell walk to the boathouse. She was in canvas shoes and her step made no sound. In a moment or two she was in the shadow again.

Then she heard voices–soft, but earnest tones–and knew that two people were talking out there toward the end of the dock. One was a deep voice; the other might be Nita’s–at least, it was a feminine voice.

“Who under the sun can she have come here to meet?” wondered Ruth, anxiously. “Not one of the boys. This can’t be merely a lark of some kind–”

Something scraped and squeaked–a sound that shattered the silence of the late evening completely. A dog instantly barked back of the the bungalow, in the kennels. Other dogs on the far shore of the cove replied. A sleep-walking rooster began to crow clamorously, believing that it was already growing day.

The creaking stopped in a minute, and Ruth heard a faint splash. The voices had ceased.

“What can it mean?” thought the anxious girl. She could remain idle there behind the boathouse no longer. She crept forth upon the dock to reconnoiter. There seemed to be nobody there.

And then, suddenly, she saw that the catboat belonging to Mr. Stone’s little fleet–the “Jennie S.” it was called, named for Heavy herself–was some distance from her moorings.

The breeze was very light; but the sail was raised and had filled, and the catboat was drifting quite rapidly out beyond the end of the dock. It was so dark in the cockpit that Ruth could not distinguish whether there were one or two figures aboard, or who they were; but she realized that somebody was off on a midnight cruise.

“And without saying a word about it!” gasped Ruth. “Could it be, after all, one of the boys and Nita? Are they doing this just for the fun of it?”

Yet the heavy voice she had heard did not sound like that of either of the three boys at the bungalow. Not even Bob Steele, when his unfortunate voice was pitched in its very lowest key, could rumble like this voice.

The girl of the Red Mill was both troubled and frightened. Suppose Nita and her companion should be wrecked in the catboat? She did not believe that the runaway girl knew anything about working a sailboat. And who was her companion on this midnight escapade? Was he one of the longshoremen?

Suddenly she thought of Jack Crab. But Crab was supposed to be at the lighthouse at this hour; wasn’t he? She could not remember what she had heard about the lighthouse keeper’s assistant.

Nor could Ruth decide at once whether to go back to the house and give the alarm, or not. Had she known where Phineas, the boatkeeper, lodged, she would certainly have tried to awaken him. He ought to be told that one of the boats was being used–and, of course, without permission.

The sail of the catboat drifted out of sight while she stood there undecided. She could not pursue the Jennie S. Had she known where Phineas was, they might have gone after the catboat in the Miraflame; but otherwise Ruth saw no possibility of tracking the two people who had borrowed the Jennie S.

Nor was she sure that it was desirable to go in, awaken the household, and report the disappearance of Nita. The cruise by night might be a very innocent affair.

“And then again,” murmured Ruth, “there may be something in it deeper than I can see. We do not really know who this Nita is. That piece in the paper may not refer to her at all. Suppose, instead of having run away from a rich uncle and a big cattle ranch, Nita comes from bad people? Mrs. Kirby and the captain knew nothing about her. It may be that some of Nita’s bad friends have followed her here, and they may mean to rob the Stones!

“Goodness! that’s a very bad thought,” muttered Ruth, shaking her head. “I ought not to suspect the girl of anything like that. Although she is so secret, and so rough of speech, she doesn’t seem to be a girl who has lived with really bad people.”

Ruth could not satisfy herself that it would be either right or wise to go in and awaken Miss Kate, or even the butler. But she could not bring herself to the point of going to bed, either, while Nita was out on the water.

She couldn’t think of sleep, anyway. Not until the catboat came back to the dock did she move out of the shadow of the boathouse. And it was long past one o’clock when this occurred. The breeze had freshened, and the Jennie S. had to tack several times before the boatman made the moorings.

The starlight gave such slight illumination that Ruth could not see who was in the boat. The sail was dropped, the boat moored, and then, after a bit, she heard a heavy step upon the dock. Only one person came toward her.

Ruth peered anxiously out of the shadow. A man slouched along the dock and reached the shell road. He turned east, moving away toward the lighthouse. It was Jack Crab.

“And Nita is not with him!” gasped Ruth. “What has he done with her? Where has he taken her in the boat? What does it mean?”

She dared not run after Crab and ask him. She was really afraid of the man. His secret communication with Nita was no matter to be blurted out to everybody, she was sure. Nita had gone to meet him of her own free will. She was not obliged to sail away with Crab in the catboat. Naturally, the supposition was that she had decided to remain away from the bungalow of her own intention, too.

“It is not my secret,” thought Ruth. “She was merely a visitor here. Miss Kate, even, had no command over her actions. She is not responsible for Nita–none of us is responsible.

“I only hope she won’t get into any trouble through that horrid Jack Crab. And it seems so ungrateful for Nita to walk out of the house without saying a word to Heavy and Miss Kate.

“I’d best keep my own mouth shut, however, and let things take their course. Nita wanted to go away, or she would not have done so. She seemed to have no fear of Jack Crab; otherwise she would not have met him at night and gone away with him.

“Ruth Fielding! you mind your own business,” argued the girl of the Red Mill, finally going back toward the silent house. “At least, wait until we see what comes of this before you tell everything you know.”

And so deciding, she crept into the house, locked the door again, got into her room without disturbing any of the other girls, and so to bed and finally to sleep, being little the wiser for her midnight escapade.