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“That’s Edie’s handwriting,” Sally Blanchard said eagerly. “What does it say?”

“‘Good-bye. I am not going any farther with you. Wait, and your friends may overtake you.’ Just that,” said Ann, with disgust. “Can you beat it?”

“What has that wild girl done, do you suppose?” murmured Miss Cullam.

“Oh, she isn’t wild – not so’s you’d notice it,” said Ann. “Believe me, she knows her way about. And she shipped that guide.”

“Discharged Mr. Peters, do you mean?” Ruth asked. Min was not in the room while this conversation was going on.

“H’m. Yes. Mister Peters. He’s some sour dough, I should say! He was paid off and set down with money in his fist between two saloons. They’re across the street from each other, and they tell me he’s been swinging from one bar to the other like a pendulum ever since he was paid off.”

“Poor Min!” sighed Ruth Fielding.

“Huh?” said Ann Hicks. “If he’s got any folks, I’m sorry for ’em, too.”

CHAPTER XII – MIN SHOWS HER METTLE

There were means to be obtained at the Handy Gulch Hotel for the baths that the tourists so much desired, even if tiled bathrooms and hot and cold water faucets were not in evidence.

The party lunched after making fresh toilets, and then set forth to view the “sights.” Ruth inquired of Tom for Min; but their guide had disappeared the moment the party reached the hotel.

“She’s acquainted here, I presume,” said Tom Cameron. “Maybe she doesn’t wish to be seen with you girls. Her outfit is so very different from yours.”

“Poor Min!” murmured Ruth again. “Do you suppose she has found her father?”

Tom could not tell her that, and they trailed along behind the others, up toward the bench where the hydraulic mining was going on.

Only one of the nozzles was being worked – shooting a solid stream three inches in diameter into the hillside, and shaving off great slices that melted and ran in a creamlike paste down into the sluice-boxes. Half a hundred “muckers” were at work with pick and shovel below the bench. The man managing the hydraulic machine stood astride of it, in hip boots and slicker, and guided the spouting stream of water along the face of the raw hill.

The party of spectators stood well out of the way, for the work of hydraulic mining has attached to it no little danger. The force of the stream from the nozzle of the machine is tremendous; and sometimes there are accidents, when many tons of the hillside unexpectedly cave down upon the bench.

The man astride the nozzle, however, took the matter coolly enough. He was smoking a short pipe and plowed along the face of the rubble with his deadly stream as easily as though he were watering a lawn.

“And if he should shoot it this way,” said Tom, “he’d wash us down off the bench as though we were pebbles.”

“Ugh! Let’s not talk about that,” murmured Rebecca Frayne, shivering.

“Oh, girls!” burst out Helen, “see that man, will you?”

“What man?” asked Trix.

“Where man?” demanded Jennie Stone.

“Running this way. Why! what can have happened?” Helen pursued. “Look, Tom, has there been an accident?”

A hatless man came running from the far end of the bench. He was swinging his arms and his mouth was wide open, though they could not hear what he was shouting. The noise of the spurting water and falling rubble drowned most other sounds.

“Why, girls,” shouted Ann Hicks, and her voice rose above the noise of the hydraulic, “that’s the feller that guided us up here. That’s Peters!”

“Flapjack Peters?” repeated Tom. “The man acts as if he were crazy!”

The bewhiskered and roughly dressed man gave evidence of exactly the misfortune Tom mentioned. His eyes blazed, his manner was distraught, and he came on along the bench in great leaps, shouting unintelligibly.

“He is intoxicated. Let us go away,” Miss Cullam said promptly.

But the excitement of the moment held the girls spellbound, and Miss Cullam herself merely stepped back a pace. A crowd of men were chasing the irrepressible Peters. Their shouts warned the fellow at the nozzle of the hydraulic machine.

He turned to look over his shoulder, the stream of water still plowing down the wall of gravel and soil. It bored directly into the hillside and down fell a huge lump, four or five tons of debris.

“Git back out o’ here, ye crazy loon!” yelled the man, shifting the nozzle and bringing down another pile of rubble.

But Peters plunged on and in a moment had the other by the shoulders. With insane strength he tore the miner away from the machine and flung him a dozen feet. The stream of water shifted to the right as the hydraulic machine slewed around.

“Come away! Come away from that, Pop!” shrieked a voice, and the amazed Eastern girls saw Min Peters darting along the bench toward the scene.

Peters sprang astride the nozzle and shifted it quickly back and forth so that the water spread in all directions. He knew how to handle the machine; the peril lay in what he might decide to do with it.

“Come away from that, Pop!” shrieked Min again.

But her father flirted the stream around, threatening the girl and those who followed her. The men stopped. They knew what would happen if that solid stream of water collided with a human body!

“D’you hear me, Pop?” again cried the fearless girl. “You git off that pipe and let Bob have it.”

Bob, the pipeman, was just getting to his feet – wrathful and muddy. But he did not attempt to charge Peters. The latter again swept the stream along the hillside in a wide arc, bringing tons upon tons of gravel and soil down upon the bench. The narrow plateau was becoming choked with it. There was danger of his burying the hydraulic machine, as well as himself, in an avalanche.

The tourist party was in peril, too. They scarcely understood this at the moment, for things were transpiring so quickly that only seconds had elapsed since first Peters had approached.

The miners dared not come closer. But Min showed no fear. She plunged in and caught him around the body, trying to confine his arms so that he could not slew the nozzle to either side.

This helped the situation but little. For half a minute the stream shot straight into the hillside; then another great lump fell.

At the same moment Peters threw her off, and Min went rolling over and over in the mud as Bob had gone. But she was up again in a moment and made another spring for the man.

And then suddenly, quite as unexpectedly as the riot had started, it was all over. The hurtling, hissing stream of water fell to a wabbling, futile out-pouring; then to a feeble dribble from the pipe’s nozzle. The water had been shut off below.

The miners pyramided upon him, and in half a minute Flapjack Peters was “spread-eagled” on the muddy bench, held by a dozen brawny arms.

“Wait! wait!” cried Ruth, running forward. “Don’t hurt him. Take care – ”

“Don’t hurt him, Miss?” growled Bob, the man who had been flung aside. “We ought to nigh about knock the daylights out o’ him. Look what he done to me.”

“But you mustn’t! He’s not responsible,” Ruth Fielding urged.

The miners dragged Peters to his feet and there was blood on his face. Here is where Min showed the mettle that was in her again. She sprang in among the angry miners to her father’s side.

“Don’t none of you forgit he’s my pop,” she threatened in a tone that held the girls who listened spellbound and amazed.

“You ain’t got no call to beat him up. You know he can’t stand red liquor; yet some of you helped him drink of it las’ night. Ain’t that the truth?”

Bob was the first to admit her statement. “I s’pose you’re right, Min. We done drunk with him.”

“Sure! You helped him waste his money. Then, when he goes loco like he always does, you’re for beatin’ of him up. My lawsy! if there’s anything on top o’ this here airth more ornery than that I ain’t never seen it.”

CHAPTER XIII – AN URSINE HOLDUP

Peters was still struggling with his captors and talking wildly. He evidently did not know his own daughter.

“Well, what you goin’ to do with him?” demanded Bob, the pipeman. “We ain’t expected to stand and hold him all day, if we ain’t goin’ to be ’lowed to hang him – the ornery critter!”

“You shet up, Bob Davis!” said Min. “You ain’t no pulin’ infant yourself when you’re drunk, and you know it.”

The other men began laughing at the angry miner, and Bob admitted:

“Well, s’posin’ that’s so? I’m sober now. And I got work to do. So’s these other fellows. What you want done with Flapjack?”

Ruth Fielding was so deeply interested for Min’s sake that she could not help interfering.

“Oh, Min, isn’t there a doctor in this camp?”

“Yes’m. Doc Quibbly. He’s here, ain’t he, boys?”

“The old doc’s down to his office in the tin shack beyant the hotel,” said one. “I seen him not an hour ago.”

“Let’s take your father to the hotel, Min,” Ruth said. “These men will help us, I know. So will Tom Cameron. We will have the doctor look after your father.”

“The old doc can dope him a-plenty, I reckon,” said Bob.

“Sure we’ll help you,” said the rough fellows, who were not really hard-hearted after all.

“I dunno’s they’ll let him into the hotel,” Min said.

“Yes they will. We’ll pay for his room and you and the doctor can look out for him,” Ruth declared.

“You are good and helpful, Ruth Fielding,” said Miss Cullam, coming forward, much as she despised the condition of the man, Peters. “How terrible! But one must be sorry for that poor girl.”

“And Min has pluck all right!” cried Jennie Stone, admiringly. “We must help her.”

They were all agreed in this. Even Rebecca and Miss Cullam, who both shrank from the coarseness of the men and the roughness of Min and her father, commiserated the man’s misfortune and were sorry for Min’s strait.

Tom assisted in leading the wildly-talking Peters to the hotel. Ruth and Miss Cullam hurried on in advance to engage a room for the man whom they assured the proprietor was really ill. Min, meanwhile, went in search of the camp’s medical practitioner.

Dr. Quibbly was a gray-bearded man with keen eyes but palsied hands. He had plainly been wrecked by misfortune or some disease; but he had been left with all his mental powers unimpaired.

He took hold of the distraught Peters in a capable manner; and Tom, who remained to help nurse the patient, declared to Ruth and Helen that he never hoped to see a doctor who knew his business better than Dr. Quibbly knew it.

“He had Peters quiet in half an hour. No harmful drug, either. Told me everything he used. Says rest, and milk and eggs to build up the stomach, is all the chap needs. Min’s with him now and I’m going to sleep in my blanket outside the door to-night, so if she needs anybody I’ll be within call.”

It had been rather an exciting experience for the girls and they remained in their rooms for the rest of the day. The hotel proprietor offered to take them around at night and “show them the sights”; but as that meant visiting the two saloons and gambling halls, Miss Cullam refused for the party, rather tartly.

“No offence meant, Ma’am,” said the hotel man, Mr. Bennett. “But most of the tenderfeet that come here hanker to ‘go slumming,’ as they call it. They want to see these here miners at their amusements, as well as at their daily occupations.”

“I’d rather see them at church,” Miss Cullam told him frankly. “I think they need it.”

“Good glory, Ma’am!” exclaimed the man. “We git that, too – once a month. What more kin you expect?”

“I suppose,” Miss Cullam said to her girls, “that a perfectly straight-laced New England old maid could not be set down in a more inappropriate place than a mining camp.”

The speech gave Ruth a suggestion for a scene in the picture play of “The Forty-Niners,” and she would have been delighted to have the Ardmore teacher play a part in that scene.

“However,” she said to Helen, whispering it over in bed that night, “it will be funny. I know Mr. Hammond will bring plenty of costumes of the period of forty-nine, for he wants women in the show. And there will be some character actress who can take the part of an unsophisticated blue stocking from the Hub, who arrives at the camp in the midst of the miner’s revelry.”

“Oh, my!” gasped Helen. “Miss Cullam will think you are making fun of her.”

“No she won’t – the dear thing! She has too much good sense. But she has given me what Tom would call a dandy idea.”

“Isn’t it nice to have Tom – or somebody – to lay our use of slang to?” said Ruth’s chum demurely.

The party did not leave Handy Gulch the next day, nor the day following. There were several excuses given for this delay and they were all good.

One of the ponies had developed lameness; and a burro wandered away and Pedro had to spend half a day searching for him. Perhaps the Mexican lad would have been quicker about this had Min been on hand to hurry him. But having been close beside her father all night she lay down for needed sleep while Tom Cameron and the doctor took her place.

The report from the sickroom was favorable. In a few hours the man who had come so near to bringing about a tragedy in Handy Gulch would be fit to travel. Ruth declared that she would wait for him, and he should go along with the party to Freezeout.

“But you are our guide and general factotum, Min. We depend on you,” she told the sick man’s daughter.

“I dunno what that thing is you called me; but I guess it ain’t a bad name,” said Min Peters. “If you’ll jest let pop trail along so’s I kin watch him he’ll be as good as pie, I know.”

Then, there was Miss Cullam’s reason for not wishing to start. She said she was “saddle sick.”

“I have been seasick, and trainsick; but I think saddlesick must be the worst, for it lasts longer. I can lie in bed now,” said the poor woman, “and feel myself wabbling just as I do in that hateful saddle.

“Oh, dear, me, Ruthie Fielding! I wish I had never agreed to come without demanding a comfortable carriage.”

“They tell me that there are places on the trail before we get to Freezeout so narrow that a carriage can’t be used. The wagons are going miles and miles around so as to escape the rough places of the straighter trail.”

“Goodness!” exclaimed Miss Cullam in disgust. “Is it necessary to get to Freezeout Camp in such a short time? I tell you right now: I am going to rest in bed for two days.”

And she did. The girls were not worried, however. They found plenty to see and to do about the mining town. As for Ruth, she set to work on her scenario, and kept Rebecca Frayne busy with the typewriter, too. She sketched out the scene she had mentioned to Helen, and it was so funny that Rebecca giggled all the time she was typewriting it.

“Goodness!” murmured Ruth. “I hope the audiences will think it is as funny as you do. The only trouble is, unless a good deal of the conversation is thrown on the screen, they will miss some of the best points. Dear me! Such is fate. I was born to be a humorist – a real humorist – in a day and age when ‘custard-pie comedians’ have the right-of-way.”

The third day the party started bright and early on the Freezeout trail. Flapjack Peters was well enough to ride; and he was woefully sorry for what he had done. But he was still too much “twisted” in his mind to be able to tell Ruth just how he came to start away from Yucca with Edith Phelps and Ann Hicks, instead of waiting for the entire party to arrive.

Ann had told all she knew about it at her meeting with Ruth. It remained a mystery why Edith had come to Yucca; why she had kept Ann and her friends apart; and why at Handy Gulch she had abandoned both Ann and Flapjack Peters.

“She met a man here, that’s all I know,” said Ann, with disgust.

“Maybe it was the man who wrote her from Yucca,” said Helen to Ruth.

“‘Box twenty-four, R. F. D., Yucca, Arizona,’” murmured Ruth. “We should have made inquiries in Yucca about the person who has his mail come to that postbox.”

“These hindsights that should have been foresights are the limit!” groaned Helen. “We must admit that Edie Phelps has put one over on us. But what it is she has done I do not comprehend.”

“That is what bothers me,” Ruth said, shaking her head.

They set off on this day from the Gulch in a spirit of cheerfulness, and ready for any adventure. However, none of the party – not a soul of it – really expected what did happen before the end of the day.

As usual the pony cavalcade got ahead of the burros in the forenoon. The little animals would go only so fast no matter what was done to them.

“You could put a stick of dynamite under one o’ them critters,” Min said, “and he’d rise slow-like. ‘Hurry up’ ain’t knowed to the burros’ language – believe me!”

The pony cavalcade was halted most surprisingly about noon, and in a way which bid fair to delay the party until the burros caught up, if not longer. They had got well into the hills. The cliffs rose on either hand to towering heights. Thick and scrubby woods masked the sides of the gorge through which they rode.

“It is as wild as one could imagine,” said Miss Cullam, riding with Tom in the lead. “What do you suppose is the matter with my pony, Mr. Cameron?”

Tom had begun to be puzzled about his own mount – a wise old, flea-bitten gray. The ponies had pricked their ears forward and were snuffing the air as though there was some unpleasant odor assailing their nostrils.

“I don’t know just what is the matter,” Tom confessed. “But these creatures can see and smell a lot that we can’t, Miss Cullam. Perhaps we had better halt and – ”

He got no further. They were just rounding an elbow in the trail. There before them, rising up on their haunches in the path, were three gray and black bears!

“Ow-yow!” shrieked Jennie Stone. “Do you girls see the same things I do?”

To those ahead, however, it seemed no matter for laughter. The bears – evidently a female with two cubs – were too close for fun-making.

CHAPTER XIV – AT FREEZEOUT CAMP

There is nothing really savage looking about a bear unless it is savage. Otherwise a bear has a rather silly looking countenance. These three bears had been walking peacefully down the trail, and were surprised at the sudden appearance of the cavalcade of ponies from around the bend, for such wind as was stirring was blowing down the trail.

The larger bear, the mother of the two half-grown cubs, instantly realized the danger of their position. It may have looked like an ursine hold-up to the tourists; but old Mother Bear was quite sure she and her cubs were in man-peril.

She growled fiercely, cuffing her cubs right and left and sending them scuttling and whining off into the bushes. She roared at the startled pony riders and did not descend from her haunches.

She looked terrible enough then. Her teeth, fully displayed, promised to tear and rend both ponies and riders if they came near enough.

Miss Cullam was speechless with fright. The ponies had halted, snorting; but for the first minute or so none of them backed away from the threatening beast.

The hair rose stiffly on the bear’s neck and she uttered a second challenging growl. Tom had pulled out his automatic; but he had already learned that at any considerable distance this weapon was not to be depended upon. Min’s forty-five threw a bullet where one aimed; not so the newfangled weapon.

Besides, the bear was a big one and it really looked as though a pistol ball would be an awfully silly thing to throw at it.

Rebecca Frayne had just begun to cry and Sally Blanchard was begging everybody to “come away,” when Min Peters slipped around from the rear to the head of the column.

“Hold on to your horses, girls,” she whispered shrilly. “Mebbe some of ’em’s gun-shy. Steady now – and we’ll have bear’s tongue and liver for supper.”

“Oh, Minnie!” squealed Helen.

Min was not to be disturbed from her purpose by any hysterical girl. She was not depending upon her forty-five for the work in hand. She had brought her father’s rifle from Handy Gulch; and now it came in use most opportunely.

The bear was still on its haunches and still roaring when Min got into position. The beast was an easy mark, and the Western girl dropped on one knee, thus steadying her aim, for the rifle was heavy.

The bear roared again; then the rifle roared. The latter almost knocked Min over, the recoil was so great. But the shot quite knocked the bear over. The heavy slug of lead had penetrated the beast’s heart and lungs.

She staggered forward, the blood spouted from her wide open jaws as well as from her breast; and finally she came down with a crash upon the hard trail. She was quite dead before she hit the ground.

There was screaming enough then. Everybody save Ann Hicks and Tom, perhaps, had quite lost his self-control. Such a jabbering as followed!

“Goodness me, girls,” drawled Jennie Stone at last, raising her voice so as to be heard. “Goodness me! Min just wasted that perfectly good lead bullet. We could easily have talked that poor bear to death.”

It had been rather a startling incident, however, and they were not likely to stop talking about it immediately. Miss Cullam was more than frightened by the event; she felt that she had been misled.

“I had no idea there were actually wild creatures like those bears in this country, Ruth Fielding. I certainly never would have come had I realized it. You could not have hired me to come on this trip.”

“But, dear Miss Cullam,” Ruth said, somewhat troubled because the lady was, “I really had no idea they were here.”

“I assure you,” Helen said soberly, “that the bears did not appear by my invitation, much as I enjoy mild excitement.”

“‘Mild excitement’!” breathed Rebecca Frayne. “My word!”

“And those other two bears are loose and may attack us,” pursued Miss Cullam.

“They were only cubs, Miss,” said Min, who, with her father, was already at work removing the bear’s pelt. “They’re running yet. And I shouldn’t have shot this critter only it might have done some damage, being mad because of its young. We may have to explain this shootin’ to the game wardens. There’s a closed season for bears like there is for game birds. There ain’t many left.”

“And do they really want to keep any of the horrid creatures alive?” demanded Trix Davenport.

“Yes. Bear shootin’ attracts tenderfoots; and tenderfoots have money to spend. That’s the how of it,” explained Min.

The ponies did not like the smell of the bear, and they were all drawn ahead on the trail. But the cavalcade waited for Pedro and the burros to overtake them; then the load on one burro was transferred to the ponies and the pelt and as much of the bear meat as they could make use of in such warm weather was put upon the burro.

“Not that either the skin or the meat’s much good this time o’ year. She ain’t got fatted up yet after sucklin’ them cubs. But, anyway, you kin say ye had bear meat when you git back East,” Min declared practically.

The girls went on after that with their eyes very wide open. Miss Cullam declared that she knew she never would forget how those three bears looked standing on their hind legs and “glaring” at her.

“Glaring!” repeated Jennie Stone. “All I could see was that old bear’s open mouth. It quite swallowed up her eyes.”

“What an acrobatic feat!” sighed Trix Davenport. “You do have an imagination, Jennie Stone.”

The event did not pass over as a matter for laughter altogether; the girls had really been given a severe fright. Min was obliged to ride ahead, or the tourists never would have rounded a bend in the trail in real comfort. It was probable that the Western girl had a hearty contempt for their cowardice. “But what could you expect of tenderfoots?” she grumbled to Ann Hicks.

“D’you know,” said the girl from Silver Ranch to the girl guide, “that is what I used to think about these Eastern girlies – that they were only babies. But just because they are gun-shy, and are unused to many of the phases of outdoor life with which you and I are familiar, Min, doesn’t make them altogether useless.

“Believe me, my dear! when it comes to book learning, and knowing how to dress, and being used to the society game, these girls from Ardmore are sharks!”

“I reckon that’s right,” agreed Min. “I watched ’em come off the train in Yucca, and they looked like they’d just stepped out of a mail-order house catalogue. Such fixin’s!” and the girl who had never worn proper feminine clothing sighed longingly at the remembrance of the Ardmore girls’ traveling dresses and hats.

The more Min saw of the Eastern girls, the more desirous she was of being like them – in some ways, at least. She might sneer at their lack of physical courage; nevertheless, she was well aware that they were used to many things of which she knew very little. And there never was a girl born who did not long for pretty clothes, and who did not wish to appear attractive in the eyes of others.

Helen and Jennie had not forgotten their idea of dressing their guide in some of their furbelows.

“Just wait till our trunks get to that Freezeout place, along with your movie people, Ruth,” said Jennie. “We’ll just doll poor Min all up.”

“That’s an idea!” exclaimed the girl of the Red Mill, her mind quick to absorb any suggestion relative to her art. “I can put Min in the picture – if she will agree. Show her as she is, then have her metamorphosised into a pretty girl – for she is pretty.”

“From the ugly caterpillar to the butterfly,” cried Helen.

“A regular Bret Harte character – queen of the mining camp,” said Jennie. “You can give me a share of your royalties, Ruth, for this suggestion.”

Ruth had so many ideas in her head for scenes at the mining camp that she was anxious to get over the trail and reach Freezeout. By this time Mr. Hammond and his outfit must have arrived at Yucca.

The trail was rough, however, and the cavalcade of college girls could travel only about so fast. Those unfamiliar with saddle work, like Miss Cullam, found the journey hard enough.

At night they had to camp in the open, after leaving Handy Gulch; and because of the appearance of the bears, there were two guards set at night, and the fires were kept up. Tom and Pedro took half the watch, and then Min and her father took their turn.

Nothing happened of moment, however, during the three nights that ensued before the party reached the abandoned camp of Freezeout. They came down into the “draw” or arroyo in which the old mining camp lay late one afternoon. A more deserted-looking place could scarcely be imagined.

There were half a hundred log cabins, of assorted sizes and in different stages of dilapidation. The air was so dry and so little rain fell in this part of Arizona that the log walls of the structures were in fairly good condition, and not all the roofs had fallen in.

Min and her father, with Tom Cameron, searched among the cabins to find those most suitable for occupancy. But it was Ruth Fielding who discovered something that startled the whole party.

“See here! See here!” she called. “I’ve found something.”

“What is it?” asked Tom. “More bears?”

“No. Somebody has been ahead of us here. Perhaps we are not alone in having an interest in this Freezeout place.”

“What do you mean, Ruthie?” cried Helen, running to her chum.

“Here are the remains of a campfire. The ashes are still warm. Somebody camped here last night, that is sure. Do you suppose they are here now?”