Kitabı oku: «Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch; Schoolgirls Among Cowboys», sayfa 9
CHAPTER XXIII – BASHFUL IKE TAKES THE BIT IN HIS TEETH
There was great commotion at Silver Ranch when Jib Pottoway (on a fresh horse he had picked up at the riverside cow camp) rode madly to the ranch-house with the news of what was afoot so far away across Rolling River. From Old Bill down, the friends of Ruth were horror-stricken that she should so recklessly (or, so it seemed) expose herself to the contagion of the fever.
“And for a person who is absolutely nothing to her at all!” wailed Jennie Stone. “Ruth is utterly reckless.”
“She is utterly brave,” said Madge, sharply.
“She has the most grateful heart in the world,” Helen declared. “He saved her life in the cañon – you remember it, Mary. Of course she could not leave the poor creature to die there alone.”
The Fox had turned pallid and seemed horrified. But she was silent while all the others about the ranch-house, from Old Bill Hicks down to Maria the cook, were voluble indeed. The ranchman might have laid violent hands upon Jib Pottoway, only there was so much to do. Such simple medicines as there were in the house were packed to take to Tintacker. Old Bill determined to go over himself, but he would not allow any of the young folks to go.
“And you kin bet,” he added, “that you’ll see Jane Ann come back here a-whizzin’!”
The unfortunate Jib had enough to do to answer questions. The girls would not let him go until he had told every particular of the finding of the man at Tintacker.
“Was he just crazy?” queried Heavy.
“I don’t know whether he’s been loony all the time he’s been hanging around the mines, or not,” growled the Indian. “But I’m mighty sure he’s loco now.”
“If that was him who shot the bear up in the cañon that day, he didn’t appear to be crazy enough to hurt,” said Helen.
“But is this the same man?” queried Mary Cox, and had they not all been so busy pumping Jib of the last particular regarding the adventure, they might have noticed that The Fox was very pale.
When Jib first rode up, however, and told his tale, Bashful Ike Stedman had set to work to run the big touring car out of the shed in which it was kept. During the time the young folk had been at Silver Ranch from the East, the foreman had learned from Tom and Bob how to run the car. It came puffing up to the door now, headed toward the Bullhide trail.
“What in tarnashun you goin’ ter do with that contarption, Ike?” bawled Mr. Hicks. “I can’t go to Tintacker in it.”
“No, yuh can’t, Boss. But I kin go to Bullhide for the sawbones in it, and bring him back, too. We kin git as far as the Rolling River camp in the old steam engine – if she don’t break down. Then we’ll foller on arter yuh a-hawseback.”
“You won’t git no doctor to come ‘way out there,” gasped the ranch owner.
“Won’t I?” returned the foreman. “You wait and see. Ruthie says a doctor’s got to be brought for that feller, and I’m goin’ to git Doc. Burgess if I hafter rope an’ hogtie him – you hear me!”
The engine began to pop again and the automobile rolled away from the ranch-house before Mr. Hicks could enter any further objections, or any of the young folk could offer to attend Ike on his long trip. Fortunately Tom and Bob had seen to it that the machine was in excellent shape, there was plenty of gasoline in the tank, and she ran easily over the trail.
At the Crossing Ike was hailed by Sally Dickson. Sally had been about to mount her pony for a ride, but when the animal saw the automobile coming along the trail he started on the jump for the corral, leaving Miss Sally in the lurch.
“Well! if that ain’t just like you, Ike Stedman!” sputtered the red-haired schoolma’am. “Bringin’ that puffin’ abomination over this trail. Ain’t you afraid it’ll buck and throw yuh?”
“I got it gentled – it’ll eat right off yuh hand,” grinned the foreman of Silver Ranch.
“And I was going to ride in to Bullhide,” exclaimed Sally. “I won’t be able to catch the pony in a week.”
“You hop in with me, Sally,” urged Ike, blushing very red. “I’m goin’ to Bullhide.”
“Go joy-ridin’ with you, Mr. Stedman?” responded the schoolma’am. “I don’t know about that. Are you to be trusted with that automobile?”
“I tell yuh I got it gentled,” declared Ike. “And I got to be moving on mighty quick.” He told Sally why in a few words and immediately the young lady was interested.
“That Ruth Fielding! Isn’t she a plucky one for a Down East girl? But she’s too young to nurse that sick man. And she’ll catch the fever herself like enough.”
“Hope not,” grunted Ike. “That would be an awful misfortune. She’s the nicest little thing that ever grazed on this range – yuh hear me!”
“Well,” said Sally, briskly. “I got to go to town and I might as well take my life in my hands and go with you, Ike,” and she swung herself into the seat beside him.
Ike started the machine again. He was delighted. Never before had Sally Dickson allowed him to be alone with her more than a scant few moments at a time. Ike began to swallow hard, the perspiration stood on his brow and he grew actually pale around the mouth. It seemed to him as though everything inside of him rose up in his throat. As he told about it long afterward, if somebody had shot him through the body just then it would only have made a flesh-wound!
“Sally!” he gasped, before her father’s store and the schoolhouse were out of sight.
“Why, Ike! what’s the matter with you? Are you sick?”
“N-no! I ain’t sick,” mumbled the bashful one.
“You’re surely not scared?” demanded Sally. “There hasn’t anything happened wrong to this automobile?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Are you sure? It bumps a whole lot – Ugh! It’s not running away, is it?”
“I tell yuh it’s tame all right,” grunted Ike.
“Then, what’s the matter with you, Ike Stedman?” demanded the schoolmistress, with considerable sharpness.
“I – I’m suah in love with yuh, Sally! That’s what’s the matter with me. Now, don’t you laugh – I mean it.”
“Well, my soul!” exclaimed the practical Sally, “don’t let it take such a hold on you, Ike. Other men have been in love before – or thought they was – and it ain’t given ’em a conniption fit.”
“I got it harder than most men,” Ike was able to articulate. “Why, Sally, I love you so hard that it makes me ache!”
The red-haired schoolmistress looked at him for a silent moment. Her eyes were pretty hard at first; but finally a softer light came into them and a faint little blush colored her face.
“Well, Ike! is that all you’ve got to say?” she asked.
“Why – why, Sally! I got lots to say, only it’s plugged up and I can’t seem to get it out,” stammered Ike. “I got five hundred head o’ steers, and I’ve proven on a quarter-section of as nice land as there is in this State – and there’s a good open range right beside it yet – ”
“I never did think I’d marry a bunch o’ steers,” murmured Sally.
“Why – why, Sally, punchin’ cattle is about all I know how to do well,” declared Bashful Ike. “But you say the word and I’ll try any business you like better.”
“I wouldn’t want you to change your business, Ike,” said Sally, turning her head away. “But – but ain’t you got anything else to offer me but those steers?”
“Why – why,” stammered poor Ike again. “I ain’t got nothin’ else but myself – ”
She turned on him swiftly with her face all smiling and her eyes twinkling.
“There, Ike Stedman!” she ejaculated in her old, sharp way. “Have you finally got around to offering yourself? My soul! if you practiced on every girl you met for the next hundred years you’d never learn how to ask her to marry you proper. I’d better take you, Ike, and save the rest of the female tribe a whole lot of trouble.”
“D’ye mean it, Sally?” cried the bewildered and delighted foreman of Silver Ranch.
“I sure do.”
“Ye-yi-yip!” yelled Ike, and the next moment the big touring car wabbled all over the trail and came near to dumping the loving pair into the gully.
CHAPTER XXIV – COALS OF FIRE
Once Bashful Ike had taken the bit in his teeth, his nickname never fitted him again. He believed in striking while the iron was hot, Ike did. And before the touring car ran them down into Bullhide, he had talked so hard and talked so fast that he had really swept Miss Sally Dickson away on the tide of his eloquence, and she had agreed to Ike’s getting the marriage license and their being wedded on the spot!
But the foreman of Silver Ranch found Dr. Burgess first and made the physician promise to accompany him to Tintacker. The doctor said he would be ready in an hour.
“Gives us just about time enough, Sally,” declared the suddenly awakened Ike. “I’ll have that license and we’ll catch Parson Brownlow on the fly. Come on!”
“For pity’s sake, Ike!” gasped the young lady. “You take my breath away.”
“We ain’t got no time to fool,” declared Ike. And within the hour he was a Benedict and Sally Dickson had become Mrs. Ike Stedman.
“And I’m going over to Tintacker with you, Ike,” she declared as they awaited before the doctor’s office in the big automobile. “That poor fellow over there will need somebody more’n Ruth Fielding to nurse him. It takes skill to bring folks out of a fever spell. I nursed Dad through a bad case of it two year ago, and I know what to do.”
“That’s all right, Sally,” agreed Ike. “I’ll make Old Bill give me muh time, if need be, and we’ll spend our honeymoon at Tintacker. I kin fix up one of the old shacks to suit us to camp in. I don’t wish that poor feller over there any harm,” he added, smiling broadly at the pretty girl beside him, “but if it hadn’t been that he got this fever, you an’ I wouldn’t be married now, honey.”
“You can thank Ruth Fielding – if you want to be thankful to anybody,” returned Sally, in her brisk way. “But maybe you won’t be so thankful a year or two from now, Ike.”
Dr. Burgess came with his black bag and they were off. The automobile – as Sally said herself – behaved “like an angel,” and they reached Silver Ranch (after halting for a brief time at the Crossing for Sally to pack her bag and acquaint Old Lem Dickson of the sudden and unexpected change in her condition) late at night. Old Bill Hicks was off for Tintacker and the party remained only long enough to eat and for Bob Steele to go over the mechanism of the badly-shaken motor-car.
“I’ll drive you on to the river myself, Ike,” he said. “You are all going on from there on horseback, I understand, and I’ll bring the machine back here.”
But when the newly-married couple and the physician had eaten what Maria could hastily put before them, and were ready to re-enter the car, Mary Cox came out upon the verandah, ready to go likewise.
“For pity’s sake, Mary!” gasped Heavy. “You don’t want to ride over to the river with them.”
“I’m going to those mines,” said The Fox, defiantly.
“What for?” asked Jane Ann, who had arrived at the ranch herself only a short time before.
“That’s my business. I am going,” returned The Fox, shortly.
“Why, you can’t do any such thing,” began Jane Ann; but Mary turned to Ike and proffered her request:
“Isn’t there room for me in the car, Mr. Stedman?”
“Why, I reckon so, Miss,” agreed Ike, slowly.
“And won’t there be a pony for me to ride from the river to Tintacker?”
“I reckon we can find one.”
“Then I’m going,” declared Mary, getting promptly into the tonneau with the doctor and Sally. “I’ve just as good a reason for being over there – maybe a better reason for going – than Ruth Fielding.”
None of her girl friends made any comment upon this statement in Mary’s hearing; but Madge declared, as the car chugged away from the ranch-house:
“I’ll never again go anywhere with that girl unless she has a change of heart! She is just as mean as she can be.”
“She’s the limit!” said Heavy, despondently. “And I used to think she wasn’t a bad sort.”
“And once upon a time,” said Helen Cameron, gravely, “I followed her leadership to the neglect of Ruth. I really thought The Fox was the very smartest girl I had ever met.”
“But she couldn’t hold the Up and Doing Club together,” quoth the stout girl.
“Ruth’s Sweetbriars finished both the Upedes and the Fussy Curls,” laughed Madge, referring to the two social clubs at Briarwood Hall, which had been quite put-out of countenance by the Sweetbriar Association which had been inaugurated by the girl from the Red Mill.
“And The Fox has never forgiven Ruth,” declared Heavy.
“What she means by forcing herself on this party at Tintacker, gets my time!” exclaimed Jane Ann.
“Sally will make her walk a chalk line if she goes over there with her,” laughed Helen. “Think of her and Ike getting married without a word to anybody!”
Jane Ann laughed, too, at that. “Sally whispered to me that she never would have taken Ike so quick if it hadn’t been for what we did at the party the other night. She was afraid some of the other girls around here would see what a good fellow Ike was and want to marry him. She’s always intended to take him some time, she said; but it was Ruth that settled the affair at that time.”
“I declare! Ruth does influence a whole lot of folk, doesn’t she?” murmured Heavy. “I never saw such a girl.”
And that last was the comment Dr. Burgess made regarding the girl of the Red Mill after the party arrived at Tintacker. They reached the mine just at daybreak the next morning. Mary Cox had kept them back some, for she was not a good rider. But she had cried and taken on so when Sally and Ike did not want her to go farther than the river, that they were really forced to allow her to continue the entire journey.
Dr. Burgess examined the sick man and pronounced him to be in a very critical condition. But he surely had improved since the hour that Ruth and Jib Pottoway had found him. Old Bill Hicks had helped care for the patient during the night; but Ruth had actually gone ahead with everything and – without much doubt, the doctor added – the stranger could thank her for his life if he did recover.
“That girl is all right!” declared the physician, preparing to return the long miles he had come by relays of horses to the ranch-house, and from thence to Bullhide in the automobile. “She has done just the right thing.”
“She’s a mighty cute young lady,” admitted Bill Hicks. “And this chap – John Cox, or whatever his name is – ought to feel that she’s squared things up with him over that bear business – ”
“Then you have learned his name?” queried Tom Cameron, who was present.
“I got the coat away from him when he was asleep in the night,” said Mr. Hicks. “He had letters and papers and a wad of banknotes in it. Ruth’s got ’em all. She says he is the man with whom her Uncle Jabez went into partnership over the old Tintacker claims. Mebbe the feller’s struck a good thing after all. He seems to have an assayer’s report among his papers that promises big returns on some specimens he had assayed. If he dug ’em out of the Tintacker Claim mebbe the old hole in the ground will take on a new lease of life.”
At that moment Mary Cox pushed forward, with Sally holding her by the arm.
“I’ve got to know!” cried The Fox. “You must tell me. Does the – the poor fellow say his name is Cox?”
“Jest the same as yourn, Miss,” remarked Old Bill, watching her closely. “Letters and deeds all to ‘John Cox.’”
“I know it! I feared it all along!” cried The Fox, wringing her hands. “I saw him in the cañon when he shot the bear and he looked so much like John – ”
“He’s related to you, then, Miss?” asked the doctor.
“He’s my brother – I know he is!” cried Mary, and burst into tears.
CHAPTER XXV – AT THE OLD RED MILL AGAIN
The mist hovered over the river as though loth to uncover the dimpling current; yet the rising sun was insistent – its warm, soft September rays melting the jealous mist and uncovering, rod by rod, the sleeping stream. Ruth, fresh from her bed and looking out of the little window of her old room at the Red Mill farmhouse, thought that, after all, the scene was quite as soothing and beautiful as any of the fine landscapes she had observed during her far-western trip.
For the Briarwood Hall girls were back from their sojourn at Silver Ranch. They had arrived the night before. Montana, and the herds of cattle, and the vast cañons and far-stretching plains, would be but a memory to them hereafter. Their vacation on the range was ended, and in another week Briarwood Hall would open again and lessons must be attended to.
Jane Ann Hicks would follow them East in time to join the school the opening week. Ruth looked back upon that first day at school a year ago when she and Helen Cameron had become “Infants” at Briarwood. They would make it easier for Jane Ann, remembering so keenly how strange they had felt before they attained the higher classes.
The last of the mist rolled away and the warm sun revealed all the river and the woods and pastures beyond. Ruth kissed her hand to it and then, hearing a door close softly below-stairs, she hurried her dressing and ran down to the farmhouse kitchen. The little, stooping figure of an old woman was bent above the stove, muttering in a sort of sing-song refrain:
“Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!”
“Then let somebody else save your back and bones, Aunt Alviry!” cried Ruth, putting her arms around the old housekeeper’s neck. “There! how good it is to see you again. Sit right down there. You are to play lady. I am going to get the breakfast.”
“But your Uncle Jabez wants hot muffins, my pretty,” objected Aunt Alvirah.
“And don’t you suppose anybody can make muffins but you?” queried Ruth, blithely. “I made ’em out to Silver Ranch. Maria, the Mexican cook, taught me. Even Uncle Jabez will like them made by my recipe – now you see if he doesn’t.”
And the miller certainly praised the muffins – by eating a full half dozen of them. Of course, he did not say audibly that they were good.
And yet, Uncle Jabez had a much more companionable air about him than he had ever betrayed before – at least, within the knowledge of Ruth Fielding. He smiled – and that not grimly – as the girl related some of her experiences during her wonderful summer vacation.
“It was a great trip – and wonderful,” she sighed, finally. “Of course, the last of it was rather spoiled by Mary Cox’s brother being so ill. And the doctors found, when they got the better of the fever, that his head had been hurt some months before, and that is why he had wandered about there, without writing East – either to his folks or to you, Uncle Jabez. But he’s all right now, and Mary expects to bring him home from Denver, where he stopped over, in a few days. She’ll be home in time for the opening of school, at least,” and here Ruth’s voice halted and her face changed color, while she looked beseechingly at Uncle Jabez.
The miller cleared his throat and looked at her. Aunt Alvirah stopped eating, too, and she and Ruth gazed anxiously at the flint-like face of the old man.
“I got a letter from that lawyer at Bullhide, Montana, two days ago, Niece Ruth,” said Uncle Jabez, in his harsh voice. “He has been going over the Tintacker affairs, and he has proved up on that young Cox’s report. The young chap is as straight as a string. The money he got from me is all accounted for. And according to the assayers the new vein Cox discovered will mill as high as two hundred dollars to the ton of ore. If we work it as a stock company it will make us money; but young Cox being in such bad shape physically, and his finances being as they are, we’ll probably decide to sell out to a syndicate of Denver people. Cox will close the contract with them before he comes East, it may be, and on such terms,” added Uncle Jabez with a satisfaction that he could not hide, “that it will be the very best investment I ever made.”
“Oh, Uncle!” cried Ruth Fielding.
“Yes,” said Uncle Jabez, with complacency. “The mine is going to pay us well. Fortunately you was insistent on finding and speaking to young Cox. If you had not found him – and if he had not recovered his health – it might have been many months before I could have recovered even the money I had put into the young man’s scheme. And – so he says —you saved his life, Ruthie.”
“That’s just talk, Uncle,” cried the girl. “Don’t you believe it. Anybody would have done the same.”
“However that may be, and whether it is due to you in any particular that I can quickly realize on my investment,” said the miller, rising suddenly from the table, “circumstances are such now that there is no reason why you shouldn’t have another term or two at school – if you want to go.”
“Want to go to Briarwood! Oh, Uncle!” gasped Ruth.
“Then I take it you do want to go?”
“More than anything else in the world!” declared his niece, reverently.
“Wall, Niece Ruth,” he concluded, with his usual manner. “If your Aunt Alviry can spare ye – ”
“Don’t think about me, Jabez, don’t think about me,” cried the little old woman. “Just what my pretty wants – that will please her Aunt Alviry.”
Ruth ran and seized the hard hand of the miller before he could get out of the kitchen. “Oh, Uncle!” she cried, kissing his hand. “You are good to me!”
“Nonsense, child!” he returned, roughly, and went out.
Ruth turned to the little old woman, down whose face the tears were coursing unreproved.
“And you, too, Auntie! You are too good to me! Everybody is too good to me! Look at the Camerons! and Jennie Stone! and all the rest. And Mary Cox just hugged me tight when we came away and said she loved me – that I had saved her brother’s life. And Mr. Bill Hicks – and Jimsey and the other boys. And Bashful Ike and Sally made me promise that if ever I could get out West again I should spend a long time at their home —
“Oh, dear, me Aunt Alvirah,” finished the girl of the Red Mill, with a tearful but happy sigh, “this world is a very beautiful place after all, and the people in it are just lovely!”
There were many more adventures in store for Ruth, and what some of them were will be related in the next volume of this series, to be entitled: “Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island; Or, The Old Hunter’s Treasure Box,” in which will be related the particulars of a most surprising mystery.
“Only one Ruthie!” mused old Jabez. “Only one, but she’s quite a gal – yes, quite a gal!”
And we agree with him; don’t we, reader?
