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CHAPTER XVII – THE MAN IN THE CABIN

Why, of course they could not keep it to themselves! At least, the three girls could not. They simply had to tell Miss Cullam and Tom, and the other Ardmore freshmen and Ann of their discovery.

So every day after that the visitors from the East “went prospecting.” They searched up and down the creek for several miles, turning over every bit of “sparkling” rock they saw and bringing back to the camp innumerable specimens of quartz and mica, until Mr. Hammond declared they were all “gold mad.”

“Why, this place has been petered out for years and years,” he said. “Do you suppose I want my actors leaving me to stake out claims along Freezeout Creek, and spoiling my picture? Stop it!”

The idea of gold hunting had got into the girls, however, as well as into Flapjack Peters and his daughter. The other Western men laughed at them. Gold this side of the Hualapai Range had “petered out.” They looked upon the old-timer as a little cracked on the subject. And, of course, these “tenderfoots” did not know anything about “color” anyway.

Even Miss Cullam searched along the creek banks and up into the low hills that surrounded the valley.

“Who knows,” said the teacher of mathematics, “but that I may find a fortune, and so be able to eschew the teaching of the young for the rest of my life? Gorgeous!”

“But pity the ‘young’,” begged Jennie Stone. “Think, Miss Cullam, how we would miss you.”

“I can hardly imagine that you would suffer,” declared the mathematics teacher. “Really!”

“We might not miss the mathematics,” said Rebecca, wickedly. “But you are the very best chaperon who ever ‘beaued’ a party of girls into the wilds. Isn’t that the truth, Ardmores?”

“It is!” they cried. “Hurrah for Miss Cullam!”

Ruth, however, despite the discovery of the possibly gold-bearing quartz, was not to be coaxed from her work. Each morning she shut herself into the “sanctum sanctorum” and worked faithfully at the scenario. Likewise, Rebecca stuck to the typewriter, for she had work to do for Mr. Hammond now, as well as for Ruth.

Some part of each afternoon Ruth took for exercise in the open. And usually she took this exercise on ponyback.

Riding alone out of the shallow gorge one day, she struck into what seemed to her a bridlepath which led into “dips” and valleys in the hills which she had never before seen. Nothing more had been observed of either the lone horseman or the supposed squaw for so many days that their presence about Freezeout Camp had quite slipped Ruth Fielding’s mind.

Besides, there were so many men at the camp now that to have fear of strangers was never in the girl’s thoughts. She urged her hardy pony into a gallop and sped down hill and up in a most invigorating dash.

Such a ride cleared the cobwebs out of her head and revivified mind and body alike. At the end of this dash, when she halted the pony in an arroyo to breathe, she was cheerful and happy and ready to laugh at anything.

She laughed first at her own nose! It really was ridiculous to think that she smelled wood smoke.

But the pungent odor of burning wood grew more and more distinct. She gazed swiftly all around her, seeing no campfire, of course, in this shallow gulch. But suddenly she gathered up the bridle reins tightly and stared, wide-eyed, off to the left. A faint column of blue smoke rose into the air – she could not be mistaken.

“Here’s a pretty kettle of fish!” thought Ruth. “Another camping party? Who can be living so near Freezeout without giving us a call? The lone horseman? The Indian squaw? Or both?”

She half turned her pony to ride back. It might be some ill-disposed person camping here in secret. Flapjack and Min had intimated there were occasionally ne’er-do-wells found in the range – outlaws, or ill-disposed Indians.

Still, it was cowardly to run from the unknown. Ruth had tasted real peril on more than one occasion. She touched the spur to her pony instead of pulling him around, and rode on.

There was a curve in the arroyo and when she came into the hidden part of the basin the mystery was instantly explained. A fairly substantial cabin – recently built it was evident – stood near a thicket of mesquite. The door was hung on leather hinges and was wide open. Yet there must be some occupant, for the smoke rose through the hole in the roof. It struck Ruth, for several reasons, that the cabin had been built by an amateur.

She held in her pony again and might, after all, have wheeled him and ridden away without going closer, if the little beast had not betrayed her presence by a shrill whinny. Immediately the pony’s challenge was answered from the mesquite where the unknown’s horse was picketed.

Ruth was startled again. No sound came from the cabin, nor could she discover anybody watching her from the jungle. She rode nearer to the cabin door.

It was then that the unshod hoofs of her pony announced her presence to whoever was within. A voice shouted suddenly:

“Hullo!”

The tone in which the word was uttered drove all the fear out of Ruth Fielding’s mind. She knew that the owner of such a voice must be a gentleman.

She rode her pony up to the open door and peered into the dimly lighted interior. There was no window in the cabin walls.

“Hullo yourself!” she rejoined. “Are you all alone?”

“Sure I am. I’m a hermit – the Hermit Prospector. And I bet you are one of those moving picture girls.”

A laugh accompanied the words. Ruth then saw the man, extended at full length in a rude bunk. One foot was bare and it and the ankle was swathed in bandages.

“Sorry I can’t get up to do the honors. Doctor’s ordered me to stay in bed till this ankle recovers.”

“Oh! Is it broken?” cried Ruth, slipping out of her saddle and throwing the reins on the ground before the pony so that he would stand.

“Wrenched. But a bad one. I’m likely to stay here a while.”

“And all alone?” breathed Ruth.

“Quite so. Not a soul to swear at, nor a cat to kick. My horse is out there in the mesquite and I suppose he’s tangled up – ”

“I’ll fix that in a moment,” cried Ruth. “He’d better be tethered here on the hillside before your door. The grazing is good.”

“Well – yes. I suppose so.”

Ruth was off into the mesquite in a flash. She found the whinnying pony. And she discovered another thing. The animal’s lariat had been untangled and his grazing place changed several times.

“You’ve hobbled around a good bit since your ankle was hurt,” she said accusingly, when she returned to the cabin door. “And see all the firewood you’ve got!”

“I expect I did too much after I strained the ankle,” the man admitted gravely. “That’s why it is so bad now. But when a man’s alone – ”

“Yes. When he is alone,” repeated Ruth, eyeing him thoughtfully.

He was a young man and as roughly dressed as any of the teamsters at Freezeout Camp. There was, too, several days’ growth of beard upon his face. But he was a good looking chap, with rather a humorous cast of countenance. And Ruth was quite sure that he was educated and at present in a strange environment.

“Have you plenty of water?” she asked suddenly, for she had seen the spring several rods away.

“Lots,” declared “the hermit.” “See! I’ve a drip.”

He pointed with pride to the arrangement of a rude shelf beside the head of his bunk with a twenty-quart galvanized pail upon it. A pin-hole had been punched in this pail near the bottom, and the water dripped from the aperture steadily into a pint cup on the floor.

“Would you believe it,” he said, with a smile, “the water, after falling so far through the air, is quite cooled.”

“What do you do when the pail is empty?” the girl asked quickly.

“Oh! I shall be able to hobble to the spring by that time. If the cup gets full and I don’t need the water, I pour it back.”

Ruth stood on tiptoe and looked into the pail. Then she brought water from the spring in her own canteen, making several trips, and filled the pail to the brim.

“Now, what do you eat, and how do you get it?” she asked him.

“My dear young lady!” he cried, “you must not worry about me. I shall be all right. I was just going to cook some bacon when you rode up. That is why I made up a fresh fire. I shall be all right, I assure you.”

Ruth insisted upon rumaging through his stores and cooking the hermit a hearty meal. She marked the fact that certain delicacies were here that the ordinary prospector would not have packed into the wilds. Likewise, there was vastly more tea and sugar than one person could use in a long time.

Ruth was quite sure “the hermit” was not a native of the West. She was exceedingly puzzled as she went about her kindly duties. Then, of a sudden, she was actually startled as well as puzzled. In a corner of the cabin she found hanging on a nail a rubber bathcap on which was stenciled “Ardmore.” It was one of the gymnasium caps from her college.

CHAPTER XVIII – RUTH REALLY HAS A SECRET

Ruth Fielding came back from her ride to Freezeout Camp and said not a word to a soul about her discovery of the young man in the cabin. She had a secret at last, but it was not her own. She did not feel that she had the right to speak even to Helen about it.

She was quite sure “the hermit” had no ill intention toward their party. And if he had a companion that companion could do those at Freezeout no harm.

Just what it was all about Ruth did not know; yet she had some suspicions. However, she rode out to the lone cabin the next day, and the next, to see that the young man was comfortable. “The Hermit Prospector,” as he laughingly called himself, was doing very well.

Ruth brought him two slim poles out of the wood and he fashioned himself a pair of crutches. By means of these he began to hobble around and Ruth decided that he did not need her further ministrations. She did not tell him that she should cease calling, she merely ceased riding that way. For a “hermit” he had seemed very glad, indeed, to have somebody to speak to.

Ruth was exceedingly busy now. The director, Mr. Grimes – a very efficient but unpleasant man – arrived with the remainder of the company, and rehearsals began immediately. Hazel Gray, who had been so fresh and young looking when Ruth and Helen first met her at the Red Mill, was beginning to show the ravages of “film acting.” The appealing personality which had first brought her into prominence in motion pictures was now a matter of “registering.” There was little spontaneity in the leading lady’s acting; but the part she had to play in “The Forty-Niners” was far different from that she had acted in “The Heart of a School Girl,” an earlier play of Ruth’s.

Mr. Grimes was just as unpleasantly sarcastic as when Ruth first saw him. But he got out of his people what was needed, although his shouting and threatening seemed to Ruth to be unnecessary.

With Ruth Mr. Grimes was perfectly polite. Perhaps he knew better than to be otherwise. He was good enough to commend the scenario, and although he changed several scenes she had spent hard work upon, Ruth was sensible enough to see that he changed them for good cause and usually for the better.

He approved of Min’s part in the play, and he was careful with the Western girl in her scenes. Min did very well, indeed, and even Flapjack made his extra three dollars a day on several occasions when he appeared with the teamsters in the “rough house” scenes in the night life of the old-time mining camp.

The film actors were not an unpleasant company; yet after all they were not people who could adapt themselves to the rude surroundings of the abandoned camp as easily, even, as did the college girls. The women were always fussing about lack of hotel requisites – like baths and electric lights and maids to wait upon them. The men complained of the food and the rude sleeping accommodations.

Ruth learned something right here: All the girls from Ardmore save Rebecca Frayne and Ruth herself came from wealthy families – and Rebecca was used to every refinement of life. Yet the Ardmores took the “roughing it” good-naturedly and never worried their pretty heads about “maid service” and the like.

Some of the film women, seeing Min Peters about in her usual garb, undertook to treat her superciliously. They did not make the mistake twice. Min was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and she intended to be treated with respect. Min was so treated.

Helen Cameron was much amused by the attitude her brother took toward the leading lady, Hazel Gray. Miss Gray was not more than two years older than the twins and when the film actress had first become known to them Tom had been instantly attracted. His case of boyish love had been acute, but brief.

For six months the walls of his study at Seven Oaks were fairly papered with pictures of Hazel Gray in all manner of poses and characterizations. The next semester Tom had gone in for well-known athletes, not excluding many prize fighters, and the pictures of Miss Gray went into the discard.

Now the young actress set out to charm Tom again. He was the only young personable male at Freezeout, save the actors themselves, and she knew them. But Tom gave her just as much attention as he did Min Peters, for instance, and no more.

There was but one girl in camp to whom he showed any special attention. He was always at Ruth’s beck and call if she needed him. Tom never put himself forward with Ruth, or claimed more than was the due of any good friend. But the girl of the Red Mill often told herself that Tom was dependable.

She was not sure that she ever wanted her chum’s brother to be anything more to her than what he was now – a safe friend. She and Helen had talked so much about “independence” and the like that it seemed like sheer treachery to consider for a moment any different life after college than that they had planned.

Ruth was to write plays and sing. Helen was to improve her violin playing and give lessons. They would take a studio together in Boston – perhaps in New York – and live the ideal life of bachelor girls. Helen desired to support herself just as much as Ruth determined to support herself.

“It is dependence upon man for daily bread and butter that makes women slaves,” Helen declared. And Ruth agreed – with some reservations. It began to look to her as though all were dependent upon one another in this world, irrespective of sex.

However, Tom was one of those dependable creatures that, if you wanted him, was right at hand. Ruth let the matter rest at that and did not disturb her mind much over questions of personal growth and expansion, or over the woman question.

Her thought, indeed, was so much taken up with the picture that was being made that she had little time to bother with anything else. She almost forgot the lame young man in the distant cabin and ceased to wonder as to who his companion might be. She certainly had quite forgotten the specimens of ore which had been sent to the Handy Gulch assayer’s office until unexpectedly the report arrived.

Helen and Jennie, as well as Peters and his daughter, were interested in this event. The others of the Ardmore party had only heard of the supposed find and had not even seen the uncovered bit of ledge from which the ore had been taken.

“Why, perhaps we are all rich!” breathed Jennie Stone. “Beyond the dreams of avarice! How much does he say?”

“One hundred and thirty-three dollars to the ton. And it’s ‘free gold,’” declared Ruth. “It can be extracted by the cyaniding process. That can be done on the spot, and cheaply. Where there is much sulphide in the ore the gold must be extracted by the hydro-electric process.”

“Goodness, Ruth! How did you learn so much?” gasped Helen.

“By using my tongue and ears. What were they given us for?”

“To taste nice things with and drape ‘spit-curls’ over,” giggled Jennie.

They went to Peters and Min and displayed the report. The old prospector could have given the thing away in the exuberance of his joy if it had not been for the good sense his daughter displayed.

“Hush up, Pop,” she commanded. “You want to put all these bum actors on to the strike before we’ve laid out our own claims? We want to grab off the cream of this find. You know it must be rich.”

“Rich? Say, girl, rich ain’t no name for it. I know what this Freezeout proposition was when it was placer diggings. Where so much dust and nuggets come from along a crick bed, we knowed there must be a regular mother lode somewheres here. Only we never supposed it was on that side of the stream an’ so far away. It looked like the old bed of the crick lay to the west.

“Well, we’ve got it! A hundred and thirty-three dollars per ton at the grass-roots. Lawsy! No knowin’ how deep the ledge is. An’ you ladies only took specimens in one spot. We want to take others clean acrosst the ledge – as far as we kin trace it – git ’em assayed, then pick out the best claims before any of these cheapskates around here can ring in on it. Laugh at me, will they? I reckon they’ll find out that Flapjack is wuth something as a prospector after all.”

He quite overlooked the fact that the three college girls had found the ore – and that somebody had uncovered the ledge before them! But Min did not forget these very pertinent facts.

“We got to get a hustle on us,” she announced. “No knowin’ who ’twas that first opened that prospect, Pop. Mebbe he was green, or he ain’t had his samples assayed yet. We got to get in quick.”

“Sure,” agreed Flapjack.

“And the best three claims has got to go to Miss Ruth and Miss Cam’ron and Miss Stone. They found the place. You an’ I, Pop, ‘ll stake out the next best claims. Then the rush kin come. But we want to git more samples assayed first.”

“Is that necessary?” Ruth asked, quite as eager as the others now. Somehow the gold hunting fever gets into one’s blood and effervesces. It was hard for any of them to keep their jubilation from the knowledge of the whole camp.

“We dunno how long this ledge of gold-bearing rock is,” Min explained. “Maybe we only struck the poorest end of it. P’r’aps it’ll run two hundred dollars or more to the ton at the other end. We want to stake off our claims where the ore is richest, don’t we?”

“Let’s stake it all off,” said Helen.

“Couldn’t hold it. Not by law. These big minin’ companies git so many claims because they buy up options from different locaters all along a ledge. There’s ha’f a hundred claims belongs to the Arepo Company, for instance, at one workin’s. No. We’ve got to be careful and keep this secret till we’re sure where the best of the ore lays.”

“Oh, let’s go at once and see!” cried Jennie.

“We’ll go this afternoon,” Ruth said. “All five of us.”

“I hope nobody will find the place before we get there,” Helen observed.

“No more likely now than ’twas before,” Min said sensibly. “Pop’ll sneak out a pick and shovel for us, and meet us over there on the ridge.”

So it was arranged. But the three college girls were so excited that they were scarcely fit for either work or play. They set off eagerly into the hills after lunch and met Flapjack and his daughter as had been appointed.

CHAPTER XIX – SOMETHING UNEXPECTED

The old prospector was wild with joy. He had already dug several holes down to the surface of the ledge along the ridge north of the spot where the first sample of gold-bearing rock had been secured. He claimed that each spot showed an increase in the amount of gold in the rock.

“It’s ha’f a mile long, I bet. An’ the farther you go, the richer it gits. I tell you, we’re goin’ all to be as rich as red mud! Whoop!”

“Hold in your hosses, Pop,” commanded Min, sensibly. “Them folks down in camp may see you prancin’ around here, and they’ll either think you are crazy or know that you’ve struck pay dirt. And we don’t want ’em in on this yet.”

“By mighty! Listen here, girl!” gasped the old man. “We’re goin’ to be rich, you and me. You’re goin’ to dress in the fanciest clo’es there is. You’ll look a lot finer than that there leadin’ lady actress girl. Believe me!”

“Now, Pop, be sensible!”

“You’re a-goin’ to be a lady,” declared Flapjack.

“Huh! Me, a lady, with them han’s?” and she put forth both her calloused palms. “A fat chance I got!”

With tears in her eyes Ruth Fielding said: “Those hands have earned the right to be a ’lady’s’, Min. If there is gold here in quantity, you shall be all that your father says.”

“Of course she shall!” cried the other college girls in chorus.

“Well, it’ll kill me, I know that,” declared Min. “I’d just about bust wide open with joy.”

Flapjack dug seven holes that afternoon, and they took seven specimens of the rock with the bright specks in it. The college girls thought they could detect an increasing amount of gold in the ore as they advanced up the ledge.

The old prospector insisted upon filling in each hole as they went along and putting back the tufts of bunch grass in order to make the place look as it ordinarily did. Tiny numbered stakes driven down into the loose and gravelly soil was all that marked the places from which the specimens were taken. Of course, the specimens themselves were properly marked, too.

The gold seemed to be right at the grass-roots, as Flapjack had said. He told them the ledge was all of twenty yards wide, with the width increasing as the value of the ore increased. The full length of the ledge was still unexplored, but the depth of the vein of gold-bearing quartz was really the “unknown dimension.”

“But we’re going to be rich, girls!” whispered Jennie Stone, almost dancing, as they went back to the camp at dusk. “Rich! why, I’ve always been rich – or, my father has. I never thought much about it. But to own a real gold mine oneself!”

The thought was too great for utterance. Besides, they had agreed not to whisper about the find at the camp. Not even Miss Cullam knew that the report had come from the assayer regarding the first specimen of ore the girls had found.

It was not hard to hide their excitement, for there was so much going on at Freezeout Camp. Mr. Grimes was trying to rush the work as much as possible, for the picture actors were complaining constantly regarding their trials and the manifold privations of the situation.

The college girls and Ann Hicks, however, were having the time of their lives. They dressed up in astonishing apparel furnished by the film company and posed as the female populace of Freezeout Camp in some of the episodes. Min, in the part Ruth had especially written for her, was a pronounced success. Miss Gray, of course, as she always did, filled the character of the heroine “to the queen’s taste” – and to Mr. Grimes’ satisfaction as well, which was of much more importance.

The weather was just the kind the “sun worshippers” delighted in. The camera man could grind his machine for six hours a day or more. The film of “The Forty-Niners” grew steadily.

Ruth had practically finished her part of the work; but Rebecca Frayne was kept busy at her typewriter during part of the day. Therefore, Ruth easily got away from the sanctum sanctorum the next forenoon and went up to the ridge again with Flapjack and Min.

It had been settled that Helen and Jennie should remain with the other girls and keep them from wandering about on the easterly side of the stream.

Flapjack had been on the ridge since early light. He was taking samples every few rods, and Min was wrapping them up and marking the ore and the stakes. Beyond a small grove of scrubby trees they came in sight of what Flapjack declared was probably the end of the gold-bearing rock. There was a dip into another arroyo and beyond that a mesquite jungle as far as they could see.

“Well, she’s more’n a ha’f a mile long,” sighed the old prospector. “Ev’ry thing’s got to come to an end in this world they say. We needn’t grow bristles about it – Great cats! What’s them?”

“Oh, Pop!” shrieked Min, “We ain’t here first.”

“What are those stakes?” asked Ruth, puzzled to see that the peeled posts planted in the gravelly soil should so disturb the equanimity of the prospector and his daughter.

“Somebody’s ahead of us. Two claims staked,” groaned Flapjack. “And layin’ over the best streak of ore in the whole ledge, I bet my hat!”

There were two scraps of paper on the posts. Min ran forward to read the names upon them. Flapjack rested on his pick and said no further word.

Of a sudden Ruth heard the sharp ring of a pony’s hoof on gravel. She turned swiftly to see the pony pressing through the mesquite at the foot of the ridge. Its rider urged the animal up the slope and in a moment was beside them.

“What are you doing on my claim and my partner’s?” the man demanded, and he slid out of his saddle gingerly, slipping rude crutches under his armpits as he came to the ground. He had one foot bandaged, and hobbled toward Ruth and her companions with rather a truculent air.

“What are you doing on my claim?” “the hermit” repeated, and he was glaring so intently at Flapjack that he did not see Ruth at all.

The prospector was smoking his pipe, and he nearly dropped it as he stared in turn at this odd-looking figure on crutches. It was easy enough to see that the claimant to the best options on Freezeout ledge was a tenderfoot.

“Ain’t on your claim,” growled Peters at last.

“Well, that other fellow is,” declared “the hermit,” “Let me tell you that my partner’s gone to Kingman to have the claims recorded. They are so by this time. If you try to jump ’em – ”

“Who’s tryin’ to jump anything?” demanded Min, now coming back from examining the notices on the stakes. “Which are you – this here ‘E’ or ‘R’yal?’”

“Royal is my name,” said the man, gruffly.

“Brothers, I s’pose?” said Min.

The young man stared at her wonderingly. “I declare!” he finally exclaimed. “You’re a girl, aren’t you?”

“No matter who or what I am,” said Min Peters, tartly. “You needn’t think you can stake out all this ledge just because you found it first – maybe.”

It was evident that both Flapjack and his daughter considered the appearance of this claimant to the supposedly richest options on the ledge most unfortunate.

“I know my rights and the law,” said the young man quite as truculently as before. “If it’s necessary I’ll stay here and watch those stakes till my – my partner gets back with the men and machinery that are hired to open up these claims.”

“By mighty!” groaned Flapjack. “The hull thing will be spread through Arizony in the shake of a sheep’s hind laig.”

“Well, what of it? You can stake out claims as we did,” snapped “the hermit.” “We are not trying to hog it all.”

“These men you’re bringin’ ‘ll grab off the best options and sell ’em to you. You’re Easterners. You’re goin’ to make a showin’ and then sell the mine to suckers,” said Min bitterly. “We know all about your kind, don’t we, Pop?”

Peters muttered his agreement. Ruth considered that it was now time for her to say another word.

“I am sure,” she began, “that Mr. – er – Royal will only do what is fair. And, of course, we want no more than our rights.”

The man with the injured ankle looked at her curiously. “I’m willing to believe what you say,” he observed. “You have already been kind to me. Though you didn’t come back to see me again. But I don’t know anything about this man and this – er – ”

“Miss Peters and her father,” introduced Ruth, briskly, as she saw Min flushing hotly. “And they must stake off their claims next in running to the two you and your partner have staked.”

“No!” exclaimed Min, fiercely. “You and the other two young ladies come first. Then pop and me. It puts us a good ways down the ledge; but it’s only fair.”

The young man looked much worried. He said suddenly:

“How many more of you are informed of the existence of this gold ledge?”

“After my claim,” said Ruth, firmly, “I am going to stake out one for Rebecca Frayne. She needs money more than anybody else in our party – more even than Miss Cullam. The others can come along as they chance to.”

“Great Heavens!” gasped the young man. “How many more of you are there? I say! I’ll make you an offer. What’ll you-all take for your claims, sight-unseen?”

“There! What did I tell you?” grumbled Min Peters. “He’s one o’ them Eastern promoters that allus want to skim the cream of ev’rything.”