AS THE MAD HORSE CIRCLED HER, THE GIRL STRUCK
AGAIN AND AGAIN. Page 171

Ruth Fielding

In the Saddle

OR

COLLEGE GIRLS IN

THE LAND OF GOLD

BY

ALICE B. EMERSON

Author of “Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill,”

“Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island,” Etc.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK

CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

Books for Girls

BY ALICE B. EMERSON

RUTH FIELDING SERIES

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York.

Copyright, 1917, by

Cupples & Leon Company

Ruth Fielding in the Saddle

Printed in U. S. A.

CONTENTS

Ruth Fielding in the Saddle

CHAPTER I—WHAT IS COMING

“Will you do it?” asked the eager, black-eyed girl sitting on the deep window shelf.

“If Mr. Hammond says the synopsis of the picture is all right, I’ll go.”

“Oh, Ruthie! It would be just—just scrumptious!”

“We’ll go, Helen—just as we agreed last week,” said her chum, laughing happily.

“It will be great! great!” murmured Helen Cameron, her hands clasped in blissful anticipation. “Right into the ‘wild and woolly.’ Dear me, Ruth Fielding, we do have the nicest times—you and I!”

“You needn’t overlook me,” grumbled the third and rather plump freshman who occupied the most comfortable chair in the chums’ study in Dare Hall.

“That would be rather—er—impossible, wouldn’t it, Heavy?” suggested Helen Cameron, rolling her black eyes.

Jennie Stone made a face like a street gamin, but otherwise ignored Helen’s cruel suggestion. “I’d rather register joy, too——Oh, yes, I’m going with you; have written home about it. Have to tell Aunt Kate ahead, you know. Yes, I’d register joy, if it weren’t for one thing that I see looming before us.”

“What’s that, honey?” asked Ruth.

“The horseback ride from Yucca into the Hualapai Range seems like a doubtful equation to me.”

“Don’t you mean ‘doubtful equestrianism’?” put in the black-eyed girl with a chuckle.

“Perhaps I do,” sighed Jennie. “You know, I’m a regular sailor on horseback.”

“You should have taken it up when we were all at Silver Ranch with Ann Hicks,” Ruth said.

“Oh, say not so!” begged Jennie Stone lugubriously. “What I should have done in the past has nothing to do with this coming summer. I groan to think of what I shall have to endure.”

“Who will do the groaning for the horse that has to carry you, Heavy?” interposed the irrepressible Helen, giving her the old nickname that Jennie Stone now scarcely deserved.

“Never mind. Let the horse do his own worrying,” was the placid reply. The temper of the well nourished girl was not easily ruffled.

“Why, Jennie, think!” ejaculated Helen, suddenly turned brisk and springing down from the window seat. “It will be just the jaunt for you. The physical culturists claim there is nothing so good for reducing flesh and helping one’s poor, sluggish liver as horseback riding.”

“Say!” drawled the other girl, her nose tilted at a scornful angle, “those people say a lot more than their prayers—believe me! Most physical culturists have never ridden any kind of horse in their lives but a hobbyhorse—and they still ride that when they are senile.”

Ruth applauded. “A Daniel come to judgment!” she cried.

“Huh!” sniffed Jennie, suspiciously. “What does that mean?”

“I—I don’t just know myself,” confessed Ruth. “But it sounds good—and Dr. Milroth used it this morning in chapel, so it must be all right.”

“Anything that our revered dean says goes big with me, I confess,” said Jennie. “Oh, girls! isn’t she just a dear?”

“And hasn’t Ardmore been just the delightsomest place for nine months?” cried Helen.

“Even better than Briarwood,” agreed Ruth.

“That sounds almost sacrilegious,” Helen observed. “I don’t know about any place being finer than old Briarwood.”

“There’s Ann!” cried Ruth in a tone that made both the others jump.

“Where? Where?” demanded Helen, whirling about to look out of the window again. The window gave a broad view of the lower slope of College Hill and the expanse of Lake Remona. Dusk was just dropping, for the time was after dinner; but objects were still to be clearly observed. “Where’s Jane Ann Hicks?”

“Just completing her full course at Briarwood Hall,” Ruth explained demurely. “She will go to Montana, of course. But if I write her I know she’ll join us at Yucca just for the fun of the ride.”

“Some people’s idea of fun!” groaned Jennie.

“What are you attempting to go for, then?” demanded Helen, somewhat wonderingly.

“Because I think it is my duty,” the plump girl declared. “You young and flighty freshies aren’t fit to go so far without somebody solid along——”

“‘Solid!’ You said it!” scoffed Helen.

“I was referring to character, Miss Cameron,” returned the other shaking her head. “But Ann is certainly a good fellow. I hope she will go, Ruth.”

“I declare, Ruthie,” exclaimed her chum, “you are getting up a regular party!”

“Why not?”

“It will be great fun,” acknowledged the black-eyed girl.

“Of course it will, goosie,” said Jennie Stone. “Isn’t everything that Ruth Fielding plans always fun? Say, Ruth, there are some girls right here at Ardmore—and freshies, too—who would be tickled to death to join us.”

“Goodness!” objected Ruth, laughing at her friend’s exuberance. “I wouldn’t wish to be the cause of a general massacre, so perhaps we’d better not invite any of the other girls.”

“Little Davenport would go,” Jennie pursued. “She’s a regular bear on a pony.”

“Bareback riding, do you mean, Heavy?” drawled Helen.

Except for a look, which she hoped was withering, this was ignored by the plump girl, who went on: “Trix would jump at the chance, Ruth. You know, she has no regular home. She’s just passed around from one family of relations to another during vacations. She told me so.”

“Would her guardian agree?” asked Ruth.

“Nothing easier. She told me he wouldn’t care if she joined that party that’s going to start for the south pole this season. He’s afraid of girls. He’s an old bachelor—and a misogynist.”

“Goodness!” murmured Helen. “There should be something done about letting such savage animals be at large.”

“It’s no fun for poor little Trix,” said Jennie.

“She shall be asked,” Ruth declared. “And Sally Blanchard.”

“Oh, yes!” cried Helen. “She owns a horse, and has been riding three times a week all this spring. Her father believes that horseback riding keeps the doctor away.”

“Improvement on ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away,’” quoted Ruth.

“How about eating an onion a day?” put in Jennie. “That will keep everybody away!”

“Oh, Jennie, we’re not getting anywhere!” declared Helen Cameron. “Are you going to invite a bunch of girls, Ruth, to go West with us?”

This is how the idea germinated and took root. Ruth and Helen had talked over the possibility of making the trip into the Hualapai Range for more than a fortnight; but nothing had as yet been planned in detail.

Mr. Hammond, president of the Alectrion Film Corporation had conceived the idea of a spectacular production on the screen of “The Forty-Niners”—as the title implied, a picture of the early gold digging in the West. He had heard of an abandoned mining camp in Mohave County, Arizona, which could easily and cheaply be put into the condition it was before its inhabitants stampeded for other gold diggings.

Mr. Hammond desired to have most of the scenes taken at Freezeout Camp and he had talked over the plot of the story with Ruth Fielding, whose previous successes as a scenario writer were remarkable. The producer wished, too, that Ruth should visit the abandoned mining camp to get her “local color” and to be on the scene when his company arrived to make the films.

There was a particular reason, too, why Ruth had a more than ordinary interest in this proposed production. Instead of being paid outright for her work as the writer of the scenario, some of her own money was to be invested in the picture. Having taken up the making of motion pictures seriously and hoping to make it her livelihood after graduating from college, Ruth wished her money as well as her brains to work for her.

Nor was the president of the Alectrion Film Corporation doing an unprecedented thing in making this arrangement. In this way the shrewd capitalists behind the great film-making companies have obtained the best work from chief directors, the most brilliant screen stars, and the more successful scenario writers. To give those who show special talent in the chief departments of the motion picture industry a financial interest in the work, has proved gainful to all concerned.

Ruth had walked slowly to the window, and she stood a moment looking out into the warm June dusk. The campus was deserted, but lights glimmered everywhere in the windows of the Ardmore dormitories. This was the evening before Commencement Day and most of the seniors and juniors were holding receptions, or “tea fights.”

“What do you think, girls?” Ruth said thoughtfully. “Of course, we’ll have to have the guide Mr. Hammond spoke about, and a packtrain anyway. And the more girls the merrier.”

“Bully!” breathed the slangy Miss Stone, wiggling in her chair.

“Oh, I vote we do, Ruth. Have ’em all meet at Yucca and——”

Suddenly Ruth cried out and sprang back from the window.

“What’s the matter, dear?” asked Helen, rushing over to her and seizing her chum’s arm.

“What bit you, Ruth Fielding? A mosquito?” demanded Jennie.

“Sh! girls,” breathed the girl of the Red Mill softly. “There’s somebody just under this window—on the ledge!”

CHAPTER II—EAVESDROPPING

Helen tiptoed to the window and peered out suddenly. She expected to catch the eavesdropper, but——

“Why, there’s nobody here, Ruth,” she complained.

“No-o?”

“Not a soul. The ledge is bare away to the end. You—you must have been mistaken, dear.”

Ruth looked out again and Jennie Stone crowded in between them, likewise eager to see.

“I know there was a girl there,” whispered Ruth. “She lay right under this window.”

“But what for? Trying to scare us?” asked Helen.

“Trying to break her own neck, I should think,” sniffed Jennie. “Who’d risk climbing along this ledge?”

“I have,” confessed Helen. “It’s not such a stunt. Other girls have.”

“But why?” demanded the plump freshman. “What was she here for?”

“Listening, I tell you,” Helen said.

“To what? We weren’t discussing buried treasure—or even any personal scandal,” laughed Jennie. “What do you think, Ruth?”

“That is strange,” murmured the girl of the Red Mill reflectively.

“The strangest thing is where she could have gone so quickly,” said Helen.

“Pshaw! around the corner—the nearest corner, of course,” observed Jennie with conviction.

“Oh! I didn’t think of that,” cried Ruth, and went to the other window, for the study shared during their freshman year by her and Helen Cameron was a corner room with windows looking both west and south.

When the trio of puzzled girls looked out of the other open window, however, the wide ledge of sandstone which ran all around Dare Hall just beneath the second story windows was deserted.

“Who lives along that way?” asked Jennie, meaning the occupants of the several rooms the windows of which overlooked the ledge on the west side of the building.

“Why—May MacGreggor for one,” said Helen. “But it wouldn’t be May. She’s not snoopy.”

“I should say not! Nor is Rebecca Frayne,” Ruth said. “She has the fifth room away. And girls! I believe Rebecca would be delighted to go with us to Arizona.”

“Oh—well——Could she go?” asked Helen pointedly.

“Perhaps. Maybe it can be arranged,” Ruth said reflectively.

She seemed to wish to lead the attention of the other two from the mystery of the girl she had observed on the ledge. But Helen, who knew her so well, pinched Ruth’s arm and whispered:

“I believe you know who it was, Ruthie Fielding. You can’t fool me.”

“Sh!” admonished her friend, and because Ruth’s influence was very strong with the black-eyed girl, the latter said no more about the mystery just then.

Ruth Fielding’s influence over Helen had begun some years before—indeed, almost as soon as Ruth herself, a heart-sore little orphan, had arrived at the Red Mill to live with her Uncle Jabez and his little old housekeeper, Aunt Alvirah, “who was nobody’s relative, but everybody’s aunt.”

Helen and her twin brother, Tom Cameron, were the first friends Ruth made, and in the first volume of this series of stories, entitled, “Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill,” is related the birth and growth of this friendship. Ruth and Helen go to Briarwood Hall for succeeding terms until they are ready for college; and their life there and their adventures during their vacations at Snow Camp, at Lighthouse Point, at Silver Ranch, at Cliff Island, at Sunrise Farm, with the Gypsies, in Moving Pictures and Down in Dixie are related in successive volumes.

Following this first vacation trip Ruth and Helen, with their old chum Jennie Stone, entered Ardmore College, and in “Ruth Fielding at College; Or, The Missing Examination Papers,” the happenings of the chums’ freshman year at this institution for higher education are narrated.

The present story, the twelfth of the series, opens during the closing days of the college year. Ruth’s plans for the summer—or for the early weeks of it at least—are practically made.

The trip West, into the Hualapai Range of Arizona for the business of making a moving picture of “The Forty-Niners” had already stirred the imagination of Ruth and her two closest friends. But the idea of forming a larger party to ride through the wilds from Yucca to Freezeout Camp was a novel one.

“It will be great fun,” said Helen again. “Of course, old Tom will go along anyway——”

“To chaperon us,” giggled Jennie.

“No. To see we don’t fall out of our saddles,” Ruth laughed. “Now! let’s think about it, girls, and decide on whom we shall invite.”

“Trix and Sally,” Jennie said.

“And Ann Hicks!” cried Helen. “You write to her, Ruth.”

“I will to-night,” promised her chum. “And I’m going to speak to Rebecca Frayne at once.”

“I’ll see Beatrice,” stated Jennie, moving toward the door.

“And I’ll run and ask Sally. She’s a good old scout,” said Helen.

But as soon as the plump girl had departed, Helen flung herself upon Ruth. “Who was she? Tell me, quick!” she demanded.

“The girl under that window?”

“Of course. You know, Ruthie.”

“I—I suspect,” her chum said slowly.

“Tell me!”

“Edie Phelps.”

“There!” exclaimed Helen, her black eyes fairly snapping with excitement. “I thought so.”

“You did?” asked Ruth, puzzled. “Why should she be listening to us? She’s never shown any particular interest in us Briarwoods.”

“But for a week or two I’ve noticed her hanging around. It’s something concerning this vacation trip she wants to find out about, I believe.”

“Why, how odd!” Ruth said. “I can’t understand it.”

“I wish we’d caught her,” said Helen, sharply, for she did not like the sophomore in question. Edith Phelps had been something of a “thorn in the flesh” to the chums during their freshman year.

“Well, I don’t know,” Ruth murmured. “It would only have brought on another quarrel with her. We’d better ignore it altogether I think.”

“Humph!” sniffed Helen. “That doesn’t satisfy my curiosity; and I’m frank to confess that I’m bitten deep by that microbe.”

“Oh well, my dear,” said Ruth, teasingly, “there are many things in this life it is better you should not know. Ahem! I’m going to see Rebecca.”

Helen ran off, too, to Sarah Blanchard’s room. Many of the girls’ doors were ajar and there was much visiting back and forth on this last evening; while the odor of tea permeated every nook and cranny of Dare Hall.

Rebecca’s door was closed, however, as Ruth expected. Rebecca Frayne was not as yet socially popular at Ardmore—not even among the girls of her own class.

In the first place she had come to college with an entirely wrong idea of what opportunities for higher education meant for a girl. Her people were very poor and very proud—a family of old New England stock that looked down upon those who achieved success “in trade.”

Had it not been for Ruth Fielding’s very good sense, and her advice and aid, Rebecca could never have remained at Ardmore to complete her freshman year. During this time, and especially toward the last of the school year, she had learned some things of importance besides what was contained within the covers of her textbooks.

But Ruth worried over the possibility that before their sophomore year should open in September, the influence at home would undo all the good Rebecca Frayne had gained.

“I’ve just the thing for you, Becky!” Ruth Fielding cried, carrying her friend’s study by storm. “What do you think?”

“Something nice, I presume, Ruth Fielding. You always are doing something uncommonly kind for me.”

“Nonsense!”

“No nonsense about it. I was just wondering what I should ever do without you all this long summer.”

“That’s it!” cried Ruth, laughing. “You’re not going to get rid of me so easily.”

“What do you mean?” asked Rebecca, wonderingly.

“That you’ll go with us. I need you badly, Becky. You’ve learned to rattle the typewriter so nicely——”

“Want me to get an office position for the summer near you?” Rebecca asked, the flush rising in her cheek.

“Better than that,” declared Ruth, ignoring Rebecca’s flush and tone of voice. “You know, I told you we are going West.”

“You and Cameron? Yes.”

“And Jennie Stone, and perhaps others. But I want you particularly.”

“Oh, Ruth Fielding! I couldn’t! You know just how dirt poor we are. It’s all Buddie can do to find the money for my soph year here. No! It is impossible!”

“Nothing is impossible. ‘In the bright lexicon of youth,’ and so forth. You can go if you will.”

“I couldn’t accept such a great kindness, Ruth,” Rebecca said, in her hard voice.

“Better wait till you learn how terribly kind I am,” laughed Ruth. “I have an axe to grind, my dear.”

“An axe!”

“Yes, indeedy! I want you to help me. I really do.”

“To write?” gasped Rebecca. “You know very well, Ruth Fielding, that I can scarcely compose a decent letter. I hate that form of human folly known as ‘Lit-ra-choor.’ I couldn’t do it.”

“No,” said Ruth, smiling demurely. “I am going to write my own scenario. But I will get a portable typewriter, and I want you to copy my stuff. Besides, there will be several copies to make, and some work after the director gets there. Oh, you’ll have no sinecure! And if you’ll go and do it, I’ll put up the money but you’ll be paying all the expenses, Becky. What say?”

Ruth knew very well that if she had offered to pay Rebecca a salary the foolishly proud girl would never have accepted. But she had put it in such a way that Rebecca Frayne could not but accept.

“You dear!” she said, with her arms about Ruth’s neck and displaying as she seldom did the real love she felt for the girl of the Red Mill. “I’ll do it. I’ve an old riding habit of auntie’s that I can make over. And of course, I can ride.”

“You’d better make your habit into bloomers and a divided skirt,” laughed Ruth. “That’s how Jane Ann—and Helen and Jennie, too—will dress, as well as your humble servant. There are women who ride sidesaddle in the West; but they do not ride into the rough trails that we are going to attempt. In fact, most of ’em wear trousers outright.”

“Goodness! My aunt would have a fit,” murmured Rebecca Frayne.

CHAPTER III—THE LETTER FROM YUCCA

Before Dare Hall was quiet that night it was known throughout the dormitory that six girls of the freshman class were going to spend a part of the summer vacation in the wilds of Arizona.

“Like enough we’ll never see any of them again,” declared May MacGreggor. “The female of the species is scarce in ‘them parts,’ I understand. They will all six get married to cowboys, or gold miners, or——”

“Or movie actors,” snapped Edith Phelps, with a toss of her head. “I presume Fielding is quite familiar with any quantity of ‘juvenile leads’ and ‘stunt’ actors as well as ‘custard-pie comedians.’”

“Oh, behave, Edie!” chuckled the Scotch girl. “I’d love to go with ’em myself, but I must help mother take care of the children this summer. There’s a wild bunch of ‘loons’ at my house.”

Fortunately, Helen Cameron did not hear Edith’s criticism. Helen had a sharp tongue of her own and she had no fear now of the sophomore. Indeed, both Ruth and Helen had quite forgotten over night their suspicions regarding the girl at their study window. They arose betimes and went for a last run around the college grounds in their track suits, as they had been doing for most of the spring. The chums had gone in for athletics as enthusiastically at Ardmore as they had at Briarwood Hall.

Just as they set out from the broad front steps of Dare and rounded the corner of the building toward the west, Ruth stopped with a little cry. There at her feet lay a letter.

“Somebody’s dropped a billet-doux,” said Helen. “Or is it just an envelope?”

Ruth picked it up and turned it over so that she could see its face. “The letter is in it,” she said. “And it’s been opened. Why, Helen!”

“Yes?”

“It’s for Edie Phelps.”

Helen had already glanced upward. “And right under our windows,” she murmured. “I bet she dropped it when——”

“I suppose she did,” said Ruth, as her chum’s voice trailed off into silence. Suddenly Helen, who was looking at the face of the envelope, gasped.

“Look!” she exclaimed. “See the return address in the corner?”

“Wha——Why, it says: ‘Box 24, R. F. D., Yucca, Arizona!’”

“Yucca, Arizona,” repeated Helen. “Just where we are going. Ruth! there is something very mysterious about this. Do you realize it?”

“It is the oddest thing!” exclaimed Ruth.

“Edith getting letters from out there and then creeping along that ledge under our windows to listen. Well, I’d give a cent to know what’s in that letter.”

“Oh, Helen! We couldn’t,” cried Ruth, quickly, folding the envelope and slipping it between the buttons of her blouse.

“Just the same,” declared her chum, “she was eavesdropping on us. We ought to be excused if we did a little eavesdropping on her by reading her letter.”

But Ruth set off immediately in a good, swinging trot, and Helen had to close her lips and put her elbows to her sides to keep up with her. Later, when they had taken their morning shower and had dressed and all the girls were trooping down the main stairway of Dare Hall in answer to the breakfast call, Ruth spied Edith Phelps and hailed her, drawing the letter from her bosom.

“Hi, Edith Phelps! Here’s something that belongs to you.”

The sophomore turned quickly to face the girl of the Red Mill, and with no pleasant expression of countenance. “What have you there?” she snapped.

“A letter that you dropped,” said Ruth, quietly.

“That I dropped?” and she came quickly to seize the proffered missive. “Ha! I suppose you took pains to read it?”

Ruth drew back, paling. The thrust hurt her cruelly and although she would not reply, the sophomore’s gibe did not go without answer. Helen’s black eyes flashed as she stepped in front of her chum.

“I can assure you Ruth and I do not read other people’s correspondence any more than we listen to other people’s private conversation, Phelps,” she said directly. “We found that letter under our window where you dropped it last night!”

Ruth caught at her arm; but the stroke went home. Edith Phelps’ face reddened and then paled. Without further speech she hurried away with the letter gripped tightly in her hand. She did not appear at breakfast.

“It’s terrible to be always ladylike,” sighed Helen to Ruth. “I just know we have seen one end of a mystery. And that’s all we are likely to see.”

“It is the most mysterious thing why Phelps should be interested in our affairs, and be getting letters from Yucca,” admitted Ruth.

The chums had no further opportunity of talking this matter over, for it was at breakfast that Rebecca Frayne threw her bomb. At least, Jennie Stone said it was such. Rebecca came over to Miss Comstock’s table where the chums and Jennie sat and demanded:

“Ruth Fielding! who is going to chaperon your party?”

“What? Chaperon?” murmured Ruth, quite taken aback by the question.

“Of course. You say Helen’s brother is going. And there will be a guide and other men. We’ve got to have a chaperon.”

“Oh!” gasped Helen. “Poor old Tommy! If he knew that! He won’t bite you, Rebecca.”

“You girls certainly wouldn’t dream of going on that long journey unless you were properly attended?” cried Rebecca, horrified.

“What do you think we need?” demanded Jennie Stone. “A trained nurse, or a governess?”

Rebecca was thoroughly shocked. “My aunt would never hear of such a proceeding,” she affirmed. “Oh, Ruth Fielding! I want to go with you; but, of course, there must be some older woman with us.”

“Of course—I presume so,” sighed Ruth. “I hadn’t thought that far.”

“Whom shall we ask?” demanded Helen. “Mrs. Murchiston won’t go. She’s struck. She says she is too old to go off with any harum-scarum crowd of school girls again.”

“I like that!” exclaimed Jennie, in a tone that showed she did not like it at all. “We have got past the hobbledehoy age, I should hope.”

Miss Comstock, the senior at their table, had become interested in the affair, and she suggested pleasantly:

“We Ardmores often try to get the unattached members of the faculty to fill the breach in such events as this. Try Miss Cullam.”

“Oh, dear me!” muttered Helen.

Ruth said briskly, “Miss Cullam is just the person. Do you suppose she has her summer free, Miss Comstock?”

“She was saying only last evening that she had made no plans.”

“She shall make ’em at once,” declared Ruth, jumping up and leaving her breakfast. “Excuse me, Miss Comstock. I am going to find Miss Cullam, instantly.”

It was Miss Cullam, too, who had worried most about the lost examination papers which Ruth had been the means of finding (as related in “Ruth Fielding at College”); and the instructor of mathematics had taken a particular interest in the girl of the Red Mill and her personal affairs.

“I haven’t ridden horseback since I was a girl,” she said, in some doubt. “And, my dear! you do not expect me to ride a-straddle as girls do nowadays? Never!”

“Neither will Rebecca,” chuckled Ruth. “But we who have been on the plains before, know that a divided skirt is a blessing to womankind.”

“I do not think I shall need that particular blessing,” Miss Cullam said, rather grimly. “But I believe I will accept your invitation, Ruth Fielding. Though perhaps it is not wise for instructors and pupils to spend their vacations together. The latter are likely to lose their fear of us——”

“Oh, Miss Cullam! There isn’t one of us who has a particle of fear of you,” laughed Ruth.

“Ahem! that is why some of you do not stand so well in mathematics as you should,” said the teacher dryly.

That was a busy day; but the party Ruth was forming made all their plans, subject, of course, to agreement by their various parents and guardians. In one week they were to meet in New York, prepared to make the long journey by train to Yucca, Arizona, and from that point into the mountains on horseback.

Helen found time for a little private investigation; but it was not until she and Ruth were on the way home to Cheslow in the parlor car that she related her meager discoveries to her chum.

“What did you ever learn about Edie Phelps?” Helen asked.

“Oh! Edie? I had forgotten about her.”

“Well, I didn’t forget. The mystery piques me, as the story writers say,” laughed Helen. “Do you know that her father is an awfully rich man?”

“Why, no. Edith doesn’t make a point of telling everybody perhaps,” returned Ruth, smiling.

“No; she doesn’t. You’ve got to hand it to her for that. But, then, to blow about one’s wealth is about as crude a thing as one can do, isn’t it?”

“Well, what about Edith’s father?” asked Ruth, curiously.

“Nothing particular. Only he is one of our ‘captains of industry’ that the Sunday papers tell about. Makes oodles of money in mines, so I was told. Edith has no mother. She had a brother——”

“Oh! is he dead?” cried Ruth, with sympathy.

“Perhaps he’d better be. He was rusticated from his college last year. It was quite a scandal. His father disowned him and he disappeared. Edith felt awfully, May says.”

“Too bad,” sighed Ruth.

“Why, of course, it’s too bad,” grumbled Helen. “But that doesn’t help us find out why Edie is so much interested in our going to Yucca; nor how she comes to be in correspondence with anybody in that far, far western town. What do you think it means, Ruthie?”

“I haven’t the least idea,” declared the girl of the Red Mill, shaking her head.

CHAPTER IV—A WEEK AT HOME

Mr. Cameron met the chums en route, and the next morning they arrived at Seven Oaks in time to see Tom receive his diploma from the military and preparatory school. Tom, black-eyed and as handsome in his way as Helen was in hers, seemed to have interest only in Ruth.

“Goodness me! that boy’s got a regular crush on you, Ruthie!” exclaimed Helen, exasperated. “Did you ever see the like?”

“Dear Tom!” sighed Ruth Fielding. “He was the very first friend—of my own age, I mean—that I found in Cheslow when I went there. I have to be good to Tommy, you know.”

“But he’s only a boy!” cried the twin sister, feeling herself to be years older than her brother after spending so many months at college.

“He was born the same day you were,” laughed Ruth.

“That makes no difference. Boys are never as wise or as old as girls——”

“Until the girls slip along too far. Then they sometimes want to appear young instead of old,” said the girl of the Red Mill practically. “I suppose, in the case of girls who have not struck out for themselves and gone to college or into business or taken up seriously one of the arts, it is so the boys will continue to pay them attentions. Thank goodness, Helen! you and I will be able to paddle our own canoes without depending upon any ‘mere male,’ as Miss Cullam calls them, for our bread and butter.”

“You certainly can paddle your own boat,” Helen returned admiringly, leaving the subject of the “mere male.” “Father says you have become a smart business woman already. He approves of this venture you are going to make in the movies.”

But Uncle Jabez did not approve. Ruth had written to Aunt Alvirah regarding the manner in which she expected to spend the summer, and there was a storm brewing when she reached the Red Mill.

Set upon the bank of the Lumano River, the old red mill with the sprawling, comfortable story-and-a-half farmhouse attached, made a very pretty picture indeed—so pretty that already one of Ruth’s best scenarios had been filmed at the mill and people all over the country were able to see just how beautiful the locality was.

When Ruth got out of the automobile that had brought them all from the Cheslow station and ran up the shaded walk to the porch, a little, hoop-backed old woman came almost running to the door to greet her—a dear old creature with a face like a withered russet apple and very bright, twinkling eyes.

“Oh, my pretty! Oh, my pretty!” Aunt Alvirah cried. “I feared you never would come.”

“Why, Auntie!” Ruth murmured, taking Aunt Alvirah in her arms and leading her back to the low rocking chair by the window where she usually sat.

There was a rosy-cheeked country girl hovering over the supper table, who smiled bashfully at the college girl. Uncle Jabez, as he had promised, had hired somebody to relieve the little old woman of the heaviest of her housekeeping burdens.

“Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!” groaned Aunt Alvirah as she settled back into her chair. “Dear child! how glad we shall be to have you at home, if only for so short a while.”

“What does Uncle Jabez say?” whispered Ruth.

“He don’t approve, Ruthie. You know, he never has approved of your doing things that other gals don’t do.”

“But, Aunt Alvirah, other girls do do them. Can’t he understand that the present generation of girls is different from his mother’s generation?”

Aunt Alvirah wagged her head seriously. “I’m afraid not, my pretty. Jabez Potter ain’t one to l’arn new things easy. You know that.”

Ruth nodded thoughtfully. She expected a scene with the old miller and she was not disappointed. It came after supper—after Uncle Jabez had retired to the sitting-room to count his day’s receipts as usual; and likewise to count the hoard of money he always kept in his cash-box.

Uncle Jabez Potter was of a miserly disposition. Aunt Alvirah often proclaimed that the coming of his grand-niece to the Red Mill had barely saved the old man from becoming utterly bound up in his riches. Sometimes Ruth could scarcely see how he could have become more miserly than he already was.

“No, Niece Ruth, I don’t approve. You knowed I couldn’t approve of no sech doin’s as this you’re attemptin’. It’s bad enough for a gal to waste her money in l’arnin’ more out o’ books than what a man knows. But to go right ahead and do as she plumb pleases with five thousand dollars—or what ye’ve got left of it after goin’ off to college and sech nonsense. No——”

The miller’s feelings on the subject were too deep for further utterance. Ruth said, firmly:

“You know, Uncle Jabez, the money was given to me to do what I pleased with.”

“Another foolish thing,” snarled Uncle Jabez. “That Miz Parsons had no business to give ye five thousand dollars for gettin’ back her necklace from the Gypsies—a gal like you!”

“But she had offered the reward to anybody who would find it,” Ruth explained patiently.

Uncle Jabez ploughed right through this statement and shook his head like an angry bull. “And then the court had no business givin’ it over to Mister Cameron to take care on’t for ye. I was the proper person to be made your guardeen.”

Ruth had no reply to make to this. She knew well enough that she would never have touched any of the money until she was of age had Uncle Jabez once got his hands upon it.

“The money’s airnin’ ye good int’rest in the Cheslow bank. That’s where it oughter stay. Wastin’ it makin’ them foolish movin’ pictuers——”

“But, Uncle!” she told him desperately; “you know that my scenarios are earning money. See how much money my ‘Heart of a Schoolgirl’ has made for the building of the new dormitory at Briarwood. And this last picture that Mr. Hammond took here at the mill is bound to sell big.”

“Huh!” grunted the miller, not much impressed. “Mebbe it’s all right for you to spend your spare time writin’ them things; but it ain’t no re’l business. Can’t tell me!”

“But it is a business—a great, money-making business,” sighed Ruth. “And I am determined to have my part in it. It is my chance, Uncle Jabez—my chance to begin something lasting——”

“Nonsense! Nonsense!” he declared angrily. “Ye’ll lose your money—that’s what ye’ll do. But lemme tell you, young lady, if you do lose it, don’t ye come back here to the Red Mill expectin’ me ter support ye in idleness. For I won’t do it—I won’t do it!” and he stamped away to bed.

The few days she spent at home were busy ones for Ruth Fielding. Naturally, she and Helen had to do some shopping.

“For even if we are bound for the wilds of Arizona, there will be men to see us,” said the black-eyed girl frankly. “And it is the duty of all females to preen their feathers for the males.”

“Just so,” growled her twin. “I expect I shall have to stand with a gun in both hands to keep those wild cowpunchers and miners away from you two when we reach Yucca. I remember how it was at Silver Ranch—and you were only kids then.”

“‘Kids,’ forsooth!” cried his sister. “When will you ever learn to have respect for us, Tommy? Remember we are college girls.”

“Oh! you aren’t likely to let anybody forget that fact,” grumbled Tom, who felt a bit chagrined to think that his sister and her chum had arrived at college a year ahead of him. He would enter Harvard in the fall.

During this busy week, Ruth spent as much time as possible with Aunt Alvirah, for the little old woman showed that she longed for “her pretty’s” company. Uncle Jabez went about with a thundercloud upon his face and disapproval in his every act and word.

Before Saturday a telegram came from Ann Hicks. She had arrived at Silver Ranch, conferred with Uncle Bill, and it was agreed that she should meet Ruth and the other girls at Yucca on the date Ruth had named in her letter. The addition of Ann to the party from the East would make it nine strong, including Miss Cullam as chaperon and Tom Cameron as “courier.”

Tom was to make all the traveling arrangements, and he went on to New York a day before Ruth and Helen started from Cheslow. There he had a small experience which afterward proved to be important. At the time it puzzled him a good deal.

It had been agreed that the party bound for Arizona should meet at the Delorphion Hotel. Therefore, Tom took a taxicab at the Grand Central Terminal for that hostelry. Mr. Cameron had engaged rooms for the whole party by telephone, for he was well known at the Delorphion, and all Tom had to do was to hand the clerk at the desk his card and sign his name with a flourish on the register.

The instant he turned away from the desk to follow the bellhop Tom noted a young man, after a penetrating glance at him, slide along to the register, twirl it around again, and examine the line he, Tom, had written there. The young fellow was a stranger to Tom. He was dressed like a chauffeur. Tom was sure he had never seen the young man before.

“Now, wouldn’t that bother you?” he muttered, eyeing the fellow sharply as he crossed the marble-floored rotunda to the elevators. “Does he think he knows me? Or is he looking for somebody and is putting every new arrival through the third degree?”

He half expected the chauffeur person to follow him to the elevator, and he lingered behind the impatient bellhop for half a minute to give the stranger a chance to accost him if he wished to.

But immediately after the fellow had read Tom’s name on the book, he turned away and went out, without vouchsafing him another glance.

“Funny,” thought Tom Cameron. “Wonder what it means.”

However, as nothing more came of it—at least, not at once—he buried the mystery under the manifold duties of the day. He met a couple of school friends at noon and went to lunch with them; but he returned to the hotel for dinner.

It was then he spied the same chauffeur again. He was helping a young lady out of a private car before the hotel entrance and a porter was going in ahead with two big traveling bags.