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CHAPTER V – “THE TRAMPING GAL”

The old clock that had hung in the Red Mill kitchen from the time of Uncle Jabez Potter’s grandfather – and that was early time on the Lumano, indeed! – hesitatingly tolled the hour of four.

Daybreak was just behind the eastern hills. A light mist swathed the silent current of the river. Here and there, along the water’s edge, a tall tree seemed floating in the air, its bole and roots cut off by the drifting mist.

“Oh, it is very, very beautiful here!” sighed Ruth Fielding, kneeling at the open window and looking out upon the awakening world – as she had done many and many another early morning since first she was given this little gable-windowed room for her very own.

The sweet, clean, cool air breathed in upon her bare throat and shoulders, revealed through the lace trimming of her night robe. Ruth loved linen like other girls, and although Uncle Jabez gave her spending money with a rather niggardly hand, she and Aunt Alvirah knew how to make the pennies “go a long way” in purchasing and making her gowns and undergarments.

There lay over a chair, too, a pretty, light blue, silk trimmed crepe-cloth kimona, with warm, fur-edged slippers to match, on the floor. The moment she heard Uncle Jabez rattle the stove-shaker in the kitchen, Ruth slipped into this robe, and thrust her bare feet into the slippers. Her braids she drew over her shoulders – one on either side – as she hurried out of the little chamber and down the back stairs.

She had arrived home from Briarwood the night before. For more than eight months she had seen neither Uncle Jabez nor Aunt Alvirah; and she had been so tired and sleepy on her arrival that she had quickly gone to bed. She felt as though she had scarcely greeted the two old people.

Uncle Jabez was bending over the kitchen stove. He always looked gray of face, and dusty. The mill-dust seemed ground into both his clothes and his complexion.

The first the old man knew of her presence, the arms of Ruth were around his neck.

“Ugh-huh?” questioned the old man, raising up stiffly as the fire began to chatter, the flames flashing under the lids, and turned to face the girl who held him so lovingly. “What’s wanted, Niece Ruth?” he added, looking at her grimly under his bristling brows.

Ruth was not afraid of his grimness. She had learned long since that Uncle Jabez was much softer under the surface than he appeared. He claimed to be only just to her; but Ruth knew that his “justice” often leaned toward the side of mercy.

Her mother, Mary Potter, had been the miller’s favorite niece; when she had married Ruth’s father, Uncle Jabez had been angry, and for years the family had been separated. But when Uncle Jabez had taken Ruth in “just out of charity,” old Aunt Alvirah had assured the heartsick girl that the miller was kinder at heart than he wished people to suppose.

“He don’t never let his right hand know what his left hand doeth,” declared the loyal little old woman who had been so long housekeeper for the miller. “He saved me from the poorhouse – yes, he did! – jest to git all the work out o’ me he could – to hear him tell it!

“But it ain’t so,” quoth Aunt Alvirah, shaking her head. “He saw a lone ol’ woman turned out o’ what she’d thought would be her home till she come to death’s door. An’ so he opened his house and his hand to her. An’ he’s opened his house and hand to you, my pretty; and who knows? mebbe ’twill open wide his heart, too.”

Ruth had been hoping the old man’s heart was open, not only to her, but to the whole world. She knew that, in secret, Uncle Jabez was helping to pay Mercy Curtis’s tuition at Briarwood. He still loved money; he always would love it, in all probability. But he had learned to “loosen up,” as Tom Cameron expressed it, in a most astonishing way. One could not honestly call Uncle Jabez a miser nowadays.

He was miserly in the outward expression of any affection, however. And that apparent coldness Ruth Fielding longed to break down.

Now the girl, all flushed from her deep sleep, and smiling, lifted her rosy lips to be kissed. “I didn’t scarcely say ‘how-do’ to you last night, Uncle,” she said. “Do tell me you’re glad to see me back.”

“Ha! Ye ain’t minded to stay long, it seems.”

“I won’t go to Sunrise Farm if you want me here, Uncle Jabez,” declared Ruth, still clinging to him, and with the same smiling light in her eyes.

“Ha! ye don’t mean that,” he grunted.

He knew she did. His wrinkled, hard old face finally began to change. His eyes tried to escape her gaze.

“I just love you, Uncle,” she breathed, softly. “Won’t – won’t you let me?”

“There, there, child!” He tried for a moment to break her firm hold; then he stooped shamefacedly and touched her fresh lips with his own.

Ruth nestled against his big, strong body, and clung a moment longer. His rough hand smoothed her sleek head almost timidly.

“There, there!” he grumbled. “You’re gittin’ to be a big gal, I swow! And what good’s so much schoolin’ goin’ ter do ye? Other gals like you air helpin’ in their mothers’ kitchens – or goin’ to work in the mills at Cheslow. Seems like a wicked waste of time and money.”

But he did not say it so harshly as had been his wont in the old times. Ruth smiled up at him again.

“Trust me, Uncle,” she said. “The time’ll come when I’ll prove to you the worth of it. Give me the education I crave, and I’ll support myself and pay you all back – with interest! You see if I don’t.”

“Well, well! It’s new-fashioned, I s’pose,” growled the old man, starting for the mill. “Gals, as well as boys, is lots more expense now than they used ter be to raise. The ‘three R’s’ was enough for us when I was young.

“But I won’t stop yer fun. I promised yer Aunt Alviry I wouldn’t,” he added, with his hand upon the door-latch. “You kin go to that Sunrise place for a while, if ye want. Yer Aunt Alviry got a trampin’ gal that came along, ter help her clean house.”

“Oh! and isn’t the girl here now?” asked Ruth, preparing to run back to dress.

“Nope. She’s gone on. Couldn’t keep her no longer. And my! how that young ’un could eat! Never saw the beat of her,” added Uncle Jabez as he clumped out in his heavy boots.

Ruth heard more about “that trampin’ girl” when Aunt Alvirah appeared. Before that happened, however, the newly returned schoolgirl proved she had not forgotten how to make a country breakfast.

The sliced corned ham was frying nicely; the potatoes were browning delightfully in another pan. Fluffy biscuits were ready to take out of the oven, and the cream was already whipped for the berries and the coffee.

“Gracious me! child alive!” exclaimed the little old woman, coming haltingly into the room. “You an’ Jabez air in a conspiracy to spile me – right from the start. Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!” and she lowered herself carefully into a chair.

“I did sartain sure oversleep this day. Ben done the chores? An’ ye air all ready, my pretty? Jest blow the horn, then, and yer uncle will come in. My! what a smart leetle housekeeper you be, Ruth. School ain’t spiled ye a mite.”

“Uncle is still afraid it will,” laughed Ruth, kissing the old woman fondly.

“He only says that,” whispered Aunt Alvirah, with twinkling eyes. “He’s as proud of ye as he can stick – I know!”

“It – it would be nice, if he said so once in a while,” admitted the girl.

After the hearty breakfast was disposed of and the miller and his hired man had tramped out again, the old housekeeper and Ruth became more confidential.

“It sartain sure did please me,” said Aunt Alvirah, “when Jabez let me take in that trampin’ gal for a week an’ more. He paid her without a whimper, too. But, she did eat!”

“So he said,” chuckled Ruth.

“Yes. More’n a hired hand in thrashin’ time. I never seen her beat. But I reckon the poor little thing was plumb starved. They never feed ’em ha’f enough in them orphan ‘sylums, I don’t s’pect.”

“From an orphanage?” cried Ruth, with sudden interest born of her remembrance of the mysterious Sadie Raby.

“So I believe. She’d run away, I s’pect. I hadn’t the heart to blame her. An’ she was close-mouthed as a clam,” declared Aunt Alvirah.

“How did you come to get her?” queried the interested Ruth.

“She walked right up to the door. She’d been travelin’ far – ye could see that by her shoes, if ye could call ’em shoes. I made her take ’em off by the fire, an’ then I picked ’em up with the tongs – they was just pulp – and I pitched ’em onto the ash-heap.

“Well, she stayed that night, o’ course. It was rainin’. Your Uncle Jabez wouldn’t ha’ turned a dog out in sech weather. But he made me put her to bed on chairs here.

“It was plain she was delighted to have somebody to talk to – and as that somebody was ‘her pretty,’ the dear old soul was all the more joyful.

“So, one thing led to another,” pursued Aunt Alvirah, “and I got him to let me keep her to help rid the house up. You know, you wrote me to wait till you come home for house-cleanin’. But I worked Jabez Potter right; I know how to manage him,” said she, nodding and smiling.

“And you didn’t know who the girl was?” asked Ruth, still curious. “Nothing about her at all?”

“Not much. She was short-tongued, I tell ye. But I gathered she had been an orphan a long time and had lived at an institution.”

“Not even her name?” asked Ruth, at last.

“Oh, yes. She told her name – and it was her true one, I reckon,” Aunt Alviry said. “It was Sadie Raby.”

CHAPTER VI – SEEKING THE TRAIL

“I might have known that! I might have known it!” Ruth exclaimed when she heard this. “And if I’d only written you or Uncle Jabez about her, maybe you would have kept her till I came. I wanted to help that girl,” and Ruth all but shed tears.

“Deary, deary me!” cried Aunt Alvirah. “Tell me all about it, my pretty.”

So Ruth related all she knew about the half-wild girl whose acquaintance she had made at Briarwood Hall under such peculiar circumstances. And she told just how Sadie looked and all about her.

“Yes,” agreed Aunt Alvirah. “That was the trampin’ gal sure enough. She was honest, jest as you say. But your uncle had his doubts. However, she looked better when she went away from here.”

“I’m glad of that,” Ruth said, heartily.

“You know one o’ them old dresses of yours you wore to Miss Cramp’s school – the one Helen give you?” said old Aunt Alvirah, hesitatingly.

“Yes, indeed!” said Ruth. “And how badly I felt when the girls found out they were ‘hand-me-downs.’ I’ll never forget them.”

“One of them I fitted to that poor child,” said Aunt Alvirah. “The poor, skinny little thing. I wisht I could ha’ kep’ her long enough to put some flesh on her bones.”

Ruth hugged the little old woman. “You’re a dear, Aunty! I bet you fixed her up nice before she went away.”

“Wal, she didn’t look quite sech a tatterdemalion,” granted Aunt Alvirah. “But I was sorry for her. I am allus sorry for any young thing that’s strayin’ about without a home or a mother. But natcherly Jabez wouldn’t hear to keepin’ her after the cleanin’ was done. It’s his nearness, Ruthie; he can’t help it. Some men chew tobacco, and your Uncle Jabez is close. It’s their nater. I’d ruther have a stingy man about, than a tobacco chewin’ man – yes, indeed I had!”

Ruth laughed and agreed with her. Yet she was very sorry that Sadie Raby, “the tramping girl,” had been allowed to move on without those at the Red Mill, who had sheltered her, discovering her destination.

She learned that Sadie had gone to Cheslow – at least, in that direction – and when Helen came spinning along in one of her father’s cars from Outlook that afternoon, and wanted to take Ruth for a drive, the latter begged to ride “Cheslowward.”

“Besides, we both want to see Dr. Davison – and there’s Mercy’s mother. And Miss Cramp will be glad to see me, I know; we’ll wait till her school is out,” Ruth suggested.

“You’re boss,” declared her chum. “And paying calls ‘all by our lonesomes’ will be fun enough. Tom’s deserted me. He’s gone tramping with Reno over toward the Wilkins Corner road – you know, that place where he was hurt that time, and you and Reno found him,” Helen concluded.

This was “harking back” to the very first night Ruth had arrived at Cheslow from her old home at Darrowtown. But she was not likely to forget it, for through that accident of Master Tom Cameron’s, she had met this very dear friend beside her now in the automobile.

“Oh, dear me! and the fun we used to have when we were little girls – ‘member, Ruthie?” demanded Helen, laughing. “My! isn’t it warm? Is my face shiny?”

“Just a little,” admitted Ruth.

“Never can keep the shine off,” said Helen, bitterly. “Here! you take the wheel and let me find my powder-paper. Tom says he believes I smoke cigarettes and roll them myself,” and Helen giggled.

Ruth carefully changed seats with her chum, who immediately produced the booklet of slips from her vanity case and rubbed the offending nose vigorously.

“Have a care, Helen! you’ll make it all red,” urged Ruth, laughing. “You do go at everything so excitedly. Anybody would think you were grating a nutmeg.”

“Horrid thing! My nose doesn’t look at all like a nutmeg.”

“But it will – if you don’t look out,” laughed Ruth. “Oh, dear, me! here comes a big wagon. Do you suppose I can get by it safely?”

“If he gives you any room. There! he has begun to turn out. Now, just skim around him.”

Ruth was careful and slowed down. This did not suit the fly-away Helen. “Come on!” she urged. “We’ll never even get to the old doctor’s house if you don’t hurry.”

She began to manipulate the levers herself and soon they were shooting along the Cheslow road at a speed that made Ruth’s eyes water.

They came safely to the house with the green lamps before it, and ran in gaily to see their friend, Dr. Davison. For the moment the good old gentleman chanced to be busy and waved them into the back office to wait until he was free.

Old Mammy, who presided over the doctor’s old-fashioned establishment, had spied the girls and almost immediately the tinkling of ice in a pitcher announced the approach of one of Mammy’s pickaninny grandchildren with a supply of her famous lemonade and a plate of cakes.

“Mammy said you done git hungery waitin’,” declared the grinning, kinky-haired child who presented herself with the refreshments. “An’ a drink on one o’ dese yere dusty days is allus welcome, misses.”

Then she giggled, and darted away to the lower regions of the house, leaving the two chums to enjoy the goodies. Helen was cheerfully curious, and had to go looking about the big office, peeking into the bookcases, looking at the “specimens” in bottles along the shelf, trying to spell out and understand the Latin labels on the jars of drugs.

“Miss Nosey!” whispered Ruth, admonishingly.

“There you go! hitting my nose again,” sighed Helen. And then she jumped back and almost screamed. For in fooling with the knob of a narrow closet door, it had snapped open, the door swung outward, and Helen found herself facing an articulated skeleton!

“Goodness gracious me!” exclaimed Helen.

“Oh, no,” giggled Ruth. “It’s not you at all. It’s somebody else.”

“Funny!” scoffed Helen. Then she laughed, too. “It’s somebody the doctor’s awfully choice of. Do you suppose it was his first patient?”

“Hush! Suppose he heard you?”

“He’d laugh,” returned Helen, knowing the kindly old physician too well to be afraid of him in any case. “Now, behave! Don’t say a word. I’m going to dress him up.”

“What?” gasped Ruth.

“You’ll see,” said the daring Helen, and she seized an old hat of the doctor’s from the top of the bookcase and set it jauntily upon the grinning skull.

“My goodness! doesn’t he look terrible that way? Oh! I’ll shut the door. He wiggles all over —just as though he were alive!”

Just then they heard the doctor bidding his caller good-bye, or Helen might have done some other ridiculous thing. The old gentleman came in, rubbing his hands, and with his eyes twinkling. He was a man who had never really grown old, and he liked to hear the girls tell of their school experiences, chuckling over their scrapes and antics with much delight.

“And how has my Goody Two-sticks gotten along this year?” he asked, for he was much interested in Mercy Curtis and her improvement, both physically and mentally. Had it not been for the doctor, Mercy might never have gotten out of her wheelchair, or gone to Briarwood Hall.

“She’s going to beat us all,” Helen declared, with enthusiasm. “Isn’t she, Ruth?”

“She will if we don’t work pretty hard,” admitted the girl of the Red Mill, who was hoping herself to be finally among the first few members of her class at the Hall. “But I would rather see Mercy win first place, I believe, than anybody else – unless it is you, Helen.”

“Don’t you fret,” laughed Helen. “You’ll never see little me at the head of the class – and you know it.”

The two friends did not bore the physician by staying too long, but after he bade them good-bye at the door, Helen ran down the path giggling.

“What do you suppose he’ll say when he finds that hat on the skeleton?” she demanded, her eyes dancing.

“He’ll say, ‘That Helen Cameron was in here – that explains it!’ You can’t fool Dr. Davison,” laughed Ruth.

Ruth had taken Helen into her confidence ere this about the strange runaway, Sadie Raby, and during their call at the doctor’s, she had asked that gentleman if he had seen the tramping girl, after the latter had left the Red Mill. But he had not. Oddly enough, however, Ruth found some trace of Sadie at Mercy’s house, where the girls in the automobile next went to call.

Mercy’s mother had taken the girl in for a night, and fed her. The latter had asked Mr. Curtis about the trains going west, but he had sold Sadie no ticket.

“She was very reticent,” Mrs. Curtis told Ruth. “She was so independent and capable-acting, in spite of her tender years, that I did not feel as though it was my place to try to stop her. She seemed to have some destination in view, but she would not tell me what it was.”

“I wonder if that wasn’t what Aunt Alvirah meant?” queried Ruth, thoughtfully, as she and Helen drove away. “That Sadie is awfully independent. I wish you had seen her.”

“Maybe she’s going to find her twin brothers that she told you about,” suggested Helen. “I wish I had seen her.”

“And maybe you’ve guessed it!” cried Ruth. “But that doesn’t help us find her, for she didn’t say where Willie and Dickie had been taken when they were removed from the orphanage.”

“Gracious, Ruthie!” exclaimed her chum, laughing. “You’re always worrying over somebody else’s troubles.”

CHAPTER VII – WHAT TOM CAMERON SAW

Of course, Ruth was not at all sure that she could do anything for Sadie Raby if she found her. Perhaps, as Helen said, she was fond of shouldering other people’s burdens.

It did seem to the girl of the Red Mill as though it were a very dreadful thing for Sadie to be wandering about the country all alone, and without means to feed herself, or get anything like proper shelter.

In her secret heart Ruth was thinking that she might have been as wild and neglected if Uncle Jabez, with all his crankiness, had not taken her in and given her a home at the Red Mill.

They stopped and saw Ruth’s old school teacher and then, it being past mid-afternoon, Helen turned the headlights of the car toward home again. As the machine slid so smoothly along the road toward the Lumano and the Red Mill, Ruth suddenly uttered a cry and pointed ahead. A huge dog had leaped out of a side road and stood, barring their way and barking.

“Reno! dear old fellow!” Ruth said, as Helen shut off the power. “He knows us.”

“Tom must be near, then. That’s the Wilkins Corner road,” Helen observed.

As the car came to a halt and the big mastiff tried to jump in and caress the girls with his tongue – poor fellow! he knew no better, though Helen scolded him – Ruth stood up and shouted for her friend’s twin brother.

“Tom! Tom! A rescue! a rescue! We’re being eaten up by a great four-legged beast – get down, Reno! Oh, don’t!”

She fell back in her seat, laughing merrily, and keeping the big dog off with both hands. A cheery whistle came from the wood. Reno started and turned to look. He had had his master back for only a day, but Tom’s word was always law to the big mastiff.

“Down, sir!” sang out Tom Cameron, and then he burst into view.

“Oh, Tom! what a sight you are!” gasped Ruth.

“My goodness me!” exclaimed his sister. “Have you been in a fight?”

“Down, Reno!” commanded her brother again. He came striding toward them. If he had not been so disheveled, anybody could have seen that, dressed in his sister’s clothes, and she in his, one could scarcely have told them apart. A boy and a girl never could look more alike than Tom and Helen Cameron.

“What has happened to you?” demanded Ruth, quite as anxious as Tom’s own sister.

“Look like I’d been monkeying with the buzz-saw – eh?” he demanded, but a little ruefully. “Say! I’ve had a time. If it hadn’t been for Reno – ”

“Why, Reno has hurt himself, too!” exclaimed Ruth, hopping out of the car and for the first time noticing that there was a cake of partially dried blood on the dog’s shoulder.

“He isn’t hurt much. And neither am I. Only my clothes torn – ”

“And your face scratched!” ejaculated Helen.

“Oh – well —that’s nothing. That was an accident. She didn’t mean to do it.”

“Who didn’t mean to do it? What are you talking about?” screamed his sister, at last fully aroused. “You’ve been in some terrible danger, Tom Cameron.”

“No, I haven’t,” returned Tom, beginning to grin again. “Just been playing the chivalrous knight.”

“And got his face scratched!” tittered Ruth.

“Aw – well – Now wait! let me tell you,” he began.

“Now he’s going to make excuses,” cried Helen. “You have gotten into trouble, you reckless boy, and want to make light of it.”

“Gee! I’d like to see you make light of it,” exclaimed Tom, with some vexation. “If you can make head or tail of it – And that girl!”

“There he goes again,” said Ruth. “He has got to tell us. It is about a girl,” and she laughed, teasingly.

“Say! I don’t know which one of you is the worse,” said Tom, ruefully. “Listen, will you?”

“Go ahead,” said Helen, solemnly.

“Well, Reno and I were hiking along the Wilkins Corner road yonder. It was just about where your Uncle Jabe’s wagon, Ruth, knocked me down into the gully that time – remember?”

Ruth nodded.

“Well, I heard somebody scream. It was a girl. Reno began to growl and I held him back till I located the trouble. There was a campfire down under that bank and the scream came from that direction.

“‘Go to it, old boy!’ I says, and let Reno go. I had no reason to believe there was real trouble,” Tom said, wagging his head. “But I followed him down the bank just the same, for although Reno wouldn’t bite anybody unless he had to, he does look ugly – to strangers.

“Well, what do you think? There were a couple of tramps at the fire, and Reno was holding them off from a girl. He showed his teeth all right, and one of them had his knife out. He was an ugly looking customer.”

“My goodness! a girl?” gasped his sister. “What sort of a looking girl?”

“She wasn’t bad looking,” Tom said. “Younger than us – mebbe twelve, or so. But she’d been sleeping out in her clothes – you could see she had. And her face and hands were dirty.

“‘What were they trying to do to you?’ I asked her.

“‘Trying to get my money,’ says she. ‘I ain’t got much, but you bet I want that little.’

“‘I guess you can keep it,’ I said. ‘But if I were you, I’d hike out of this.’

“‘I’m going to,’ says she. ‘I’m going just as fast as I can to the railroad and jump a train. These fellers have been bothering me all day. I’m glad you came along. Thanks.’

“And with that she started to move off. But the tramps were real ugly, and one of them jumped for her. I tripped him up,” said Tom, grinning again now in remembrance of the row, “and then there certainly was a fuss.”

“Oh, Tom!” murmured Helen.

“Well, I had Reno, didn’t I? The man I tripped fell into the fire, but was more scared than hurt. But the other fellow – the one with the knife – slashed at Reno, and cut him.

“Well! you never saw such a girl as that tramping girl was – ”

“What’s that?” gasped Ruth. “Oh, Helen!”

“It might be Sadie Raby – eh?” queried her chum.

“Hel-lo!” exclaimed Master Tom, turning curious. “What do you girls know about her? Sadie Raby – that’s what she said her name was.”

“My goodness me! What do you think of that?” cried his sister.

“And where is she now?” demanded Ruth.

“Aw, wait till I tell you all about it,” complained Tom. “You girls take the wind all out of my sails.”

“All right. Go ahead,” begged his sister.

“So, that Sadie girl, she came back to my help, and when one of the fellows had me down, and Reno was holding the other by the wrist, she started to dig into the face of the rascal who held me. And once she scratched me by mistake,” added Tom, laughing.

“But between us – mostly through Reno’s help – we frightened them off. They hobbled away through the bushes. Then I took her to the railroad, and waited at the tank till a train came along and stopped.”

“And put her aboard, Tom!” cried Ruth.

“Yes. It was a freight. I bribed the conductor with two dollars to let her ride as far as Campton. I knew those two tramps would never catch her there. Why! what’s the matter?”

“Goodness me!” exclaimed Helen, with disgust. “Doesn’t it take a boy to spoil everything?”

“Why – what?” began Tom.

“And her name was Sadie Raby?” demanded Ruth.

“That’s what she said.”

“We just wanted to see her, that’s all,” said his sister. “Ruth did, anyway. And I’d have been glad to help her.”

“Well, I helped her, didn’t I?” demanded Tom, rather doggedly.

“Yes. Just like a boy. What do you suppose is to become of a girl like her traveling around the country?”

“She seemed to want to get to Campton real bad. I reckon she has folks there,” said Tom, slowly.

“She’s got no folks – if her story is true,” said Ruth, quietly, “save two little brothers.”

“And they’re twins, like us, Tom,” said Helen, eagerly. “Oh, dear! it’s too bad Ruth and I didn’t come across Sadie, instead of you.”

Tom began to laugh at that. “You’d have had a fine time getting her away from those tramps,” he scoffed. “She didn’t have but a little money, and they would have stolen that from her if it hadn’t been for Reno and me.”