Ruth Fielding In the Saddle; College Girls in the Land of Gold

CHAPTER XV – MORE DISCOVERIES

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.

CHAPTER XVI – NEW ARRIVALS

“‘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.”

“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’.”