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Title: Ruth Fielding in Alaska
The girl miners of snow mountain
Author: Alice B. Emerson
Release Date: July 12, 2023 [eBook #71176]
Language: English
Credits: Bob Taylor, David Edwards and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUTH FIELDING IN ALASKA ***
Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_
[Illustration: “READY? GO!” AND THE CAMERAS CLICKED.
“_Ruth Fielding in Alaska._” _Page 147_
]
Ruth Fielding
in Alaska
OR
THE GIRL MINERS OF SNOW
MOUNTAIN
BY
ALICE B. EMERSON
AUTHOR OF “RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL,” “RUTH
FIELDING AT GOLDEN PASS,” “BETTY GORDON
SERIES,” ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED_
[Illustration: Decoration]
NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Books for Girls
BY ALICE B. EMERSON
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
RUTH FIELDING SERIES
RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL
RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
RUTH FIELDING AMONG THE GYPSIES
RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES
RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE
RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE
RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE
RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS
RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT
RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND
RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST
RUTH FIELDING IN THE GREAT NORTHWEST
RUTH FIELDING ON THE ST. LAWRENCE
RUTH FIELDING TREASURE HUNTING
RUTH FIELDING IN THE FAR NORTH
RUTH FIELDING AT GOLDEN PASS
RUTH FIELDING IN ALASKA
BETTY GORDON SERIES
BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM
BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON
BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL
BETTY GORDON AT BOARDING SCHOOL
BETTY GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP
BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK
BETTY GORDON AND HER SCHOOL CHUMS
BETTY GORDON AT RAINBOW RANCH
BETTY GORDON IN MEXICAN WILDS
CUPPLES & LEON CO., PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
Copyright, 1926, by
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
RUTH FIELDING IN ALASKA
Printed in U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE THREAT 1
II. ALL BUSINESS 9
III. BREAKERS AHEAD 16
IV. THE SPY 24
V. AN OLD ENEMY 32
VI. PREMONITIONS 40
VII. CHESS GOES ALONG 49
VIII. A MAGIC TRIP 56
IX. CHARLIE AGAIN? 62
X. A TANTALIZING GLIMPSE 70
XI. A CHANCE REVELATION 78
XII. DISHEARTENING NEWS 87
XIII. MAN OVERBOARD 94
XIV. KNOCKOUT INN 101
XV. A BOTTOMLESS PIT 110
XVI. TRAPPED 118
XVII. A NIGHTMARE JOURNEY 124
XVIII. COINCIDENCE 130
XIX. THE DWARF 135
XX. A VICIOUS ENEMY 144
XXI. DRAMA 158
XXII. BLOOMBERG STRIKES 172
XXIII. RUTH GOES TO THE RESCUE 181
XXIV. BOARDMAN WAKES UP 188
XXV. THE RECKONING 197
RUTH FIELDING IN ALASKA
CHAPTER I
THE THREAT
“The contents of the missive appear to worry you, Ruth, my love. If
that scowl should freeze on your face, your beauty would be marred
forever.”
Stretched full length on the grass beneath a tree whose branches
spread a grateful shade, Helen Cameron regarded her friend with an
amused and interested smile. As the latter appeared not to notice her
sally, she tried again.
“Can’t you tell me what dreadful news the letter contains?”
Ruth Fielding thus questioned, looked up slowly and sighed. She
gestured with the hand that held her letter.
“It’s from that horrid Bloomberg, Helen,” she said.
“Sol Bloomberg!” Immediately interested, Helen sat up with a jerk and
hugged her knees, gazing expectantly at her chum. “Don’t tell me he,
too, has fallen a victim to your charms, Ruthie Fielding!”
“Don’t be silly.” Ruth spoke in a vague, preoccupied voice. “As a
matter of fact,” she added ruefully, “I imagine whatever feeling Sol
Bloomberg has for me is far from a tender one.”
“Then, what on earth is he writing to you about?” Helen was genuinely
curious. “You aren’t thinking of entering into a business deal with
him, are you?”
Ruth chuckled.
“That deduction is even more absurd than the first one, Helen
Cameron. The mere idea of doing business with——”
“That hard-boiled cheat?” suggested Helen amiably.
“Such language! Nevertheless, Sol Bloomberg is all of that——”
“And then some!” murmured Helen irrepressibly.
“Do you know what he says in this letter?”
“I’ve been trying for some time to find out.”
“He threatens me!” Ruth, sitting cross-legged on the ground, waved
the offending letter for further emphasis. “He actually has the nerve
to threaten me!”
“So you said before.”
“Well, if you are going to be tiresome——”
“I’m not, Ruthie darling. Honest, I’m not. I’m only furiously
interested. What is our old friend Sol threatening you for?”
“Spite mostly, I suppose,” returned Ruth, relapsing once more into
her thoughtful mood. “He wants to frighten me and spoil my pleasure
in the new picture that we filmed at Golden Pass.”
“I hear he has been practically run out of the pictures,” observed
Helen, absently chewing on a bit of grass.
Ruth nodded.
“And of course he blames that all on me.”
“But how can he?” Helen swept back her pretty hair in a puzzled
gesture. “Surely all his troubles have been caused by his own
cheating and double-dealing.”
“Of course they have,” Ruth agreed. “It was Bloomberg, you remember,
who lured Viola Callahan away from the lead in my picture when he
knew to do such a thing at that time would almost certainly ruin the
whole thing——”
“And you fooled him by taking the lead yourself and making a better
leading lady than Viola Callahan ever could,” chuckled Helen.
Ruth tried to bow, which in her cross-legged position was rather a
hard thing to do. Then she frowned and fell silent while she reviewed
the details of her quarrel with Bloomberg.
It all began when she engaged Layton Boardman, an ex-star of
Bloomberg’s, to play the lead in her new Western picture. Though
Bloomberg and Boardman had quarreled, Bloomberg really wanted to
renew the actor’s contract, though at a salary that no actor of
Boardman’s reputation would care to accept.
When the Fielding Film Company signed up Bloomberg’s ex-star at
a good salary, the producer was furious. In retaliation he later
tempted Viola Callahan, Ruth’s leading lady, to come over to him at
a time when Miss Callahan’s desertion would almost certainly ruin
Ruth’s picture.
The fact that Ruth’s picture was not ruined and to avert the
catastrophe she had taken the lead herself—and successfully—had only
served to increase Bloomberg’s dislike of her.
Bloomberg’s own picture, featuring Viola Callahan, was a failure.
This, coupled with the unsavory story of his treachery to the
Fielding Film Company, Ruth’s producing company, served to ruin what
shreds of fortune and reputation he had and practically forced him
out of the producing end of the business.
Ruth supposed, ruefully, that Bloomberg blamed all his misfortunes
upon her because she had dared to sign up Layton Boardman when the
latter was not under contract to Bloomberg or any one else and was
absolutely free to accept any offer that was made him.
“I observed,” drawled Helen, after a considerable silence, “that you
made a love of a leading lady, Ruthie.”
“Thanks, whether I deserve the compliment or not!” was Ruth’s
laughing reply to Helen’s remark. “Anyway, the fact remains that
despite all Bloomberg’s crooked schemes and double-crossing we
managed to triumph in the end, while he——”
“Broke his professional neck,” finished Helen. “I wish it had been
his real one!” she added, with a fierce look that brought a laugh
from Ruth.
“You are getting quite bloodthirsty, Helen Cameron,” she said. “But
at the risk of appearing bloodthirsty myself, I don’t mind saying
that I wish that something not too dreadful would befall our rascally
friend; enough, at any rate, to remove him gently from my life at
present. I have quite enough problems to face without worrying about
Sol Bloomberg!”
“Don’t let it bother you, honey,” said Helen, stretching out lazily
again upon the soft grass. “Just how does he threaten you?” she
added, with a gesture toward the crumpled letter in Ruth’s hand.
“He says he may bring suit against me,” Ruth replied.
“Humph! For what?” Helen retorted. “If anybody ought to bring suit,
it’s you, Ruthie. The man must be crazy.”
“I believe he is—with fury,” said Ruth thoughtfully. “It’s natural
for a man down and out, as Bloomberg is, to rail at the successful,
and in this case he chooses me to vent his spite on.”
“Well, I certainly wouldn’t lie awake nights worrying about him,”
counseled Helen. “What could a failure like Bloomberg do to you whose
reputation is so well established?”
“I don’t know,” said Ruth, playing absently with the letter. “But
this much I can see. I have made a bitter, vindictive enemy of this
man, and I feel that he will leave no stone unturned to do me an
injury. Anyway,” she added, in a lighter tone, “I don’t intend to
worry until I have something more substantial to go on than this
letter. It would be a shame to spoil a day like this—and our ride.”
“Looks as if we weren’t going to get a ride,” grumbled Helen. She
propped herself up on one elbow and scanned the dusty road that wound
along near the Red Mill. “We appear to be forgotten, Ruth Fielding.
Jilted!”
“Not as bad as that, I guess,” laughed Ruth. “It really is barely
time for the boys, you know.”
Tom Cameron, Helen’s twin brother, and Chess Copley, Helen’s fiancé,
had suggested an auto ride to the two girls. Since the day was sultry
and hot, the girls had readily accepted the invitation.
Helen had lunched with Ruth, and now the chums had repaired to the
shaded grounds about the old house to await the arrival of the boys.
Ruth had decided to peruse her morning mail, and among the letters
had found the annoying one from Sol Bloomberg.
The letter reminded the girls forcibly of Ruth’s last venture in
motion picture-making in which the latter had forced her way to
success despite the machinations of this same Bloomberg, and in so
doing had made of the unsuccessful producer a bitter and revengeful
enemy.
Now she tore the paper into tiny bits and with a challenging little
flirt of her fingers scattered the pieces to the four winds. This
accomplished, Ruth felt better, as though, in the act of tearing up
the letter, she had destroyed the potency of Bloomberg’s threat as
well.
But Sol Bloomberg was not a scrap of paper to be so easily disposed
of. His enmity was something to be reckoned with, as Ruth was to
learn full well and to her cost in the days to follow.
But now, as Helen called out that the boys were coming, Ruth put all
premonition of trouble from her mind. For that afternoon at least,
she was determined to leave “shop” behind her.
Tom Cameron had no sooner stepped from the car than she saw there was
some news of an important nature for her. He came to her directly
and held out a yellow envelope.
“Telegram,” he said laconically. “They were just sending it out from
the office when I came along and thought I’d save them the trouble.”
“Thanks, Tom,” and then with a whimsical glance at Helen: “I wonder
if this is another message from Bloomberg!”
The others stood by with interest while Ruth tore open the yellow
envelope. There were so many changes and surprises in the life of
this talented girl, who combined in one person director, author and
screen actress, that her friends were kept continually agog with
interest.
Ruth’s eyes ran hastily through the message. She gave a little cry of
amazement and thrust the telegram toward Tom.
“It’s from Mr. Hammond,” she said in explanation to Chess Copley and
Helen. “He is in business difficulties of some sort——”
“And he wants you to come to New York at once!” ejaculated Tom,
looking up from the telegram. “Now, Ruth Fielding, what do you intend
to do about that?”
CHAPTER II
ALL BUSINESS
Ruth Fielding sank to the grass and stared at the others, her
forehead wrinkling in a puzzled frown.
“I don’t know,” she said, in response to Tom’s question. “There are
really a hundred things I ought to do right here——”
“Oh, there always are, Ruthie,” broke in Helen flippantly. “You are
so busy all the time it makes me weary just to see you work. Why turn
down a perfectly exciting trip to New York—especially when duty calls
you?”
“Do you really think it is my duty to go, Tom?” Ruth’s eyes appealed
to Helen’s twin brother as he stood thoughtfully reading over the
telegram. Tom was Ruth’s business partner in the Fielding Film
Company, and since the young fellow claimed a strictly personal
interest in her as well, the girl had formed the habit of consulting
him in all things.
“I suppose you ought, really,” replied Tom. “Mr. Hammond has been a
very good friend of yours—of ours—Ruth, and I don’t see how in the
world you can ignore an appeal like this.”
“You see!” cried Helen triumphantly. “I knew he’d agree with me!
That’s what twin brothers are for!”
“Just what does Mr. Hammond have to say about his financial
embarrassments?” asked Chess Copley. “Does he go into any details?”
“He can’t very well in a telegram,” Ruth replied. “Here,” taking the
telegram from Tom and handing it over to Chess, “read for yourself
and form your own conclusions.”
This was the message Helen and Chess read together.
“Am in great difficulties concerning production of Girl of Gold.
Can you come to New York immediately? Unable to leave city.”
“J. A. HAMMOND.”
“The Girl of Gold,” Tom was ruminating aloud. “Wasn’t that the
Western picture there was such keen competition over?”
“Yes,” returned Ruth eagerly. “The script was taken from the novel,
you know, that made such a tremendous hit.”
“And the scenes were laid in the gold fields of Alaska,” Helen added
as her contribution. “I remember the book. It certainly was a
thriller.”
“The picture ought to be just as good,” said Ruth thoughtfully. “I
know Mr. Hammond hoped great things from it.”
“I wonder what the difficulties are he speaks about,” said Tom.
Ruth shook her head.
“That we can only find out by a personal interview,” she said. “But
one thing I do know—that whatever his trouble is, it must be pretty
bad or he would never have sent this hurried call to me. What shall I
do, Tom?”
“I know what you’ll do,” said Helen, with decision. “You will
pack your things and take the next train to New York. I know Ruth
Fielding,” with a fond little squeeze of Ruth’s hand, “and my
experience of her is, that she never deserts a friend in distress.
How about it, Tommy-boy?”
Since Helen was one of the very first friends Ruth Fielding had ever
had, her prophecy of Ruth’s future action in regard to Mr. Hammond
was apt to prove a fairly accurate one. For since Ruth, a little girl
of twelve and an orphan, came to the house at the Red Mill to live
with her Uncle Jabez Potter and his sweet-tempered housekeeper, Aunt
Alvirah Boggs, Ruth Fielding and Helen Cameron had been the warmest
and closest of friends.
In point of fact, Tom was probably Ruth’s oldest friend, since she
had met him first and through him, his twin sister, Helen.
The Red Mill was situated just outside the town of Cheslow. About a
mile away in a handsome big house Helen and Tom Cameron lived with
their father, who was a widower and wealthy. In the first volume of
the series, entitled “Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill,” is narrated the
meeting of these young people and their subsequent adventures.
Uncle Jabez Potter was something of a miser and a crabbed old soul to
boot. However, when Ruth contrived to save the old man a considerable
amount of money, his heart relented to the extent of permitting Ruth
to enter boarding school with Helen Cameron. Looking backward, Ruth
always felt that all her good times and adventures dated from those
good old days at Briarwood.
At school and college Ruth’s friends were numerous, but none were
ever quite as dear to her as Helen. While still engaged in school
work, Ruth developed her talent for scenario writing, and from
that small beginning commenced the steady climb that was to lead
eventually to her present success.
Ruth’s school and college friends, interested in the triumphs of
their schoolmate and basking in reflected glory, continued to keep
in touch with her even after the close association of school days
was at an end. A group of them had come on to Cheslow to be present
at the opening night of “Snow-blind,” one of Ruth’s recent pictures,
which had proved a tremendous success.
It was Mr. Hammond, owner and director of the Alectrion Film
Corporation, who had first given Ruth her chance and who had never
afterward failed in kind encouragement and backing. Even when Ruth,
realizing that she had unusual gifts not only in scenario writing
but in directing as well, decided to break away from Mr. Hammond
and organize her own company, the latter had backed her project
whole-heartedly, evincing only sympathy and an inspiring belief in
her ability.
Small wonder then that, upon receipt of this telegram from her old
friend telling of his difficulties and soliciting her aid, Ruth found
it practically impossible to refuse him.
In the volume directly preceding this, entitled, “Ruth Fielding at
Golden Pass,” it was Mr. Hammond himself who had suggested that Ruth
take the lead when her leading lady, at the instigation of Bloomberg,
deserted the company at the last minute.
So now her question to Tom, asking for his advice, was more a
matter of form than anything else. Since the latter had secretly
invested a considerable amount of money in her new and struggling
little business just when she was most desperately in need of help,
gratitude had been added to an already warm feeling for Helen’s twin
brother.
There had been an understanding between these two young people for
some time. For Tom’s sturdy liking for the girl from the Red Mill had
developed into something more ardent as Ruth grew to womanhood. But
as Ruth grew, her ambition grew also. The temptation to determine
just how far her talent would carry her in the motion picture
business was too great for Ruth to resist. So while returning Tom’s
affection, the girl put him off time and time again, pleading her
career as an excuse.
Tom was very patient. He could appreciate Ruth’s enthusiasm, since he
himself had become so vitally interested in pictures. He had as well,
a sincere regard for the girl’s ability.
However, waiting is often very hard, and time and again it was only
Ruth’s appreciation of his patience and forbearance that kept Tom
from open revolt.
So now it was just another example of this same patience and
forbearance when, in reply to Ruth’s question concerning Mr. Hammond,
he said without hesitation:
“Of course you’ll have to go, Ruth. Under the circumstances you
couldn’t do anything else.”
Ruth gave him a grateful glance.
“But you will go, too, Tommy-boy? As my business partner I demand
that you accompany me!”
Tom grinned.
“You don’t need to demand,” he assured her. “I was going anyway.”
“And I’ll be your chaperon, Ruthie,” said Helen amiably. “I’m quite
sure you need one.”
Ruth chuckled.
“I don’t know whether to take that as an insult or not,” she said.
“However, I’d love to have you come along if you care to.”
So Ruth decided that she would send an answering telegram to Mr.
Hammond, saying that she would pack that night and start early the
following morning for New York.
Little did Ruth dream as she made the decision what that trip was
destined to bring forth.
CHAPTER III
BREAKERS AHEAD
“It looks bad, Jim! Bad! Anyway you figure it, the result is the
same. A financial smash and the sort of failure that doesn’t do your
reputation any good in the motion picture business!”
Mr. Hammond was seated in the offices of the Alectrion Film
Corporation in conclave with one of his close business associates,
James McCarty.
The latter was a jolly red-faced Irishman with an habitual smile
wreathing his wide, good-humored mouth. Just now the smile was not in
evidence, in consequence of which James McCarty bore a rather close
resemblance to a sorrowing kewpie.
Mr. Hammond’s own usually cheerful ruddy countenance was grave and
he puffed absently at his cigar, now and then beating a nervous
tattoo with his fingers on the edge of his desk. Even without the
confirmation of his words it could be seen that the head of the
Alectrion Film Corporation was in a state of extreme agitation.
“Anyway you figure it the thing looks bad,” he repeated unhappily.
“Wish I could disagree with you,” said McCarty, with a rueful shake
of his head. “But I can’t and still keep my reputation for tellin’
the truth. You’ve had a streak of bad luck that’s uncanny, that’s
what I call it.”
“And I’d call it something worse than that,” retorted Mr. Hammond
grimly. “There’s the best director I ever had deserting me just at
the most critical time and going over to the enemy. I tell you, I’d
have thought twice about sinking so much cash in ‘The Girl of Gold’
if I hadn’t depended on Baxter to put it across strong.”
“Davidson would have been your next best bet,” said McCarty
mournfully, with a hard pull at his cigar. “I’ve often said he was
pretty near as good as Baxter.”
“Yes, and what does he do just at this time?” demanded Mr. Hammond
bitterly. “Goes and gets typhoid fever, which puts him out of the
picture—literally—for months to come——”
“And you under contract to produce ‘The Girl of Gold’ in six months,”
finished McCarty.
“Aren’t you the fine old comforter!” said Mr. Hammond, a touch of
humor playing about the grim lines of his mouth. “You might just as
well pronounce a death sentence over my forty thousand dollars.”
“Well, it isn’t my fault,” McCarty pointed out, reasonably enough.
“I’m just contributing my little share to the gloomin’ party you
started yourself.” For a moment his grin flashed out, making him look
less like a mournful kewpie. His face sobered almost immediately,
however, as he added: “Anyway, I’m not sayin’ a thing but the truth.”
“Don’t I know it!” retorted Mr. Hammond, the lines of worry furrowed
deep in his face. “If only I could have kept Gordon we might have
inched through some way, though he isn’t nearly as competent as the
other two. But now that he’s starting for Europe——”
“You couldn’t blame him though,” McCarty broke in. “It’s his father
that’s dying and you couldn’t have much respect for the lad if he
didn’t rush to the old man’s side.”
“Who’s blaming him?” retorted Mr. Hammond irritably. “Have I said a
word against him? The only one who is really to blame,” he added with
a grim tightening of his mouth, “is that man Baxter. And some day I’m
going to have the extreme satisfaction of telling him what I think of
him!”
There was a short pause while both men thought uncomfortably of the
gloomy future.
Suddenly Mr. Hammond looked up, and there was a new note in his voice
as he said quietly:
“Jim, there’s just one little twinkling light in all the gloom.”
McCarty gazed at him with interest.
“And would you mind tellin’ me what that is?” he requested.
Mr. Hammond leaned across the desk, his steady gaze holding McCarty’s.
“Jim, I think there is one person who can pull our fat out of the
fire—if she will!”
“‘She’?” repeated McCarty, bewildered. “And now who have you in mind?”
“Miss Fielding,” the other replied quietly. “If I could get her to
direct this picture—I feel sure she could do it with credit to every
one concerned!”
McCarty considered and gradually his expression became less mournful.
A ray of hope shone through his clouds of depression. Suddenly he
leaned forward, bringing his big fist down on the table with a
decisive thump.
“Say, I bet you’ve struck the right lead, old man!” he cried. “That
girl can swing it if anybody can. Look at the work she has done
already!”
“Tremendous!” cried Mr. Hammond, delighted at his friend’s
enthusiasm. “Her last pictures are going across like wild fire. She’s
on her way not only to fame, but wealth.”
“Yeah—that’s just it!” McCarty’s clouds of depression descended
again, almost as black as before. “What makes you think she is going
to step aside from her own business just to help us out of a jam?
Don’t sound reasonable. Not human nature—movin’-picture-business
human nature, anyway. No, old man, wake out of your pleasant little
dream. She’d never do it. Wouldn’t be reasonable to ask her to.”
Mr. Hammond remained thoughtfully silent for a moment or two. Then he
looked at McCarty and smiled.
“I’m not so sure you’re right, Jim. As you say, the motion-picture
business is more or less of a cutthroat proposition—but then, so is
all business, for that matter. But I believe that there are some
individuals in the game who are unselfish enough to reach out a hand
to a comrade in distress. I’m pretty sure—and I’ve known her for a
long time—that Miss Fielding is one of these.”
Still McCarty shook his head dubiously.
“That little lady is running too strong on her own. You’ll never get
her to do it, never in the wide, wide world!”
It was only a short time after this conference that another took
place in the office of the Alectrion Film Corporation. Several of Mr.
Hammond’s associates were present, among them the dubious Mr. James
McCarty.
They were all there sitting in solemn conclave when Ruth Fielding
breezed in with Tom. “Breezed” was exactly the right word for the
manner of her entrance, for Ruth’s rosy face and bright eyes seemed
to bring with them a breath of the spring day. There was one among
the men who saw her at that moment who straightway made a mental note
that Ruth Fielding was far too good looking to be the clever business
woman they made her out to be. Good looks, in this gentleman’s
estimation, did not usually go with brains.
All unconscious of this estimate of herself, Ruth nodded pleasantly
to those in the office she knew; then put out her hand to Mr. Hammond.
The latter greeted her cordially and the next moment grasped Tom’s
hand in a firm grip. The two men were great friends, yet now Mr.
Hammond did not disguise from himself that it was Tom’s negative that
he really feared to this proposition he was about to put to Ruth. He
knew, as most people knew who had come into intimate contact with the
young people, that Tom had been very patient and had waited a long
time for Ruth to “name the day.” And he could not but wonder now and
with a good deal of trepidation just how Tom Cameron would view a
proposition that meant inevitably another postponement of his hopes.
Ruth had a very genuine affection for Tom, he felt sure, despite
her devotion to her career, and his attitude would unquestionably
influence her decision.
Small wonder then that the justly famous Mr. Hammond should show a
trace of nervous apprehension as he introduced the two young people
to his colleagues.
“Now sit down, all of you,” he said with a joviality that was just a
bit strained, “and I’ll outline my little proposition.”
“You said there was some trouble about your ‘Girl of Gold,’” Ruth
interpolated. “I was sorry to hear that.”
“There is trouble, quite serious trouble, Miss Ruth, as you will see
when I am done,” said Mr. Hammond gravely. “Luck has turned her back
on us completely as producers of ‘The Girl of Gold,’ and you,” with a
quick smile, “appear to be our only hope!”
Ruth leaned forward with quickened breath. Just what did he mean by
that? She knew that Tom was watching her thoughtfully and felt a
sudden rush of compunction. Dear old patient Tom!
But Mr. Hammond was speaking, outlining for her as he had outlined
for McCarty a few days before conditions as they were at that time
with the Alectrion Film Corporation.
“The whole proposition, boiled down, amounts to this, Miss
Fielding,” Mr. Hammond concluded. “Because of a lack of first-class
directors we are literally on the rocks, as you can see, and we are
looking to you, selfishly, no doubt, to pull our fat out of the fire.”
Ruth drew a long breath and leaned back. Her cheeks were burning, but
her hands, clasped together in her lap, felt cold.
“Will you do it?” asked Mr. Hammond, and the other gentlemen,
including the dubious McCarty, leaned forward, staring at her.
“It—it’s a very great compliment you are all paying me,” Ruth
replied slowly. “I—I—” her voice trailed off and she looked at Tom
appealingly.
Tom had been deep in thought, but now his eyes met Ruth’s with an
understanding smile. His nod, though almost imperceptible, seemed to
raise a thousand-ton weight from the girl’s heart.
She turned to Mr. Hammond, the blood flaming to her face, her little
fist doubled up upon the table.
“Mr. Hammond,” she cried, with the light of battle in her eye, “I’ll
do it!”
CHAPTER IV
THE SPY
This statement of Ruth’s had an electric effect upon the little group
of men in the office. Marcus Brun, Mr. Hammond’s technical director,
leaned toward the girl with a gleam of genuine admiration in his eyes.
“You’ll find it anything but an easy job, Miss Fielding,” he said.
“I’m not looking for an easy job,” replied Ruth, turning to him
quickly. “The harder they come, the better. And this—well, if I can
help an old friend——” She paused and her eyes rested for a moment
upon Mr. Hammond.
“It means a trip to Alaska, to the Yukon River,” said McCarty. “The
contract calls for that. No faked-up stuff.”
“I understand—and the pictures will be taken on and around the
Yukon,” answered Ruth firmly.
“It’s a long, hard trip.”
“Many things are hard in this business, Mr. McCarty.”
Mr. Hammond gazed at Ruth in intense admiration. He coughed, and
cleared his throat twice before he could speak, then stretched his
hand across the flat-topped desk.
“Ruth Fielding,” he said, “you’re square!”
It was a great moment for Ruth with all these important men of the
motion-picture world paying her homage. As Tom looked at her and
realized that this was Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill, the girl he had
grown up with, his pride in her knew no bounds. He had a moment of
wondering how he had ever found the courage to ask a girl like this
to marry him and give up a profession in which she was making good so
royally. It would be too bad to waste her talent; even Tom realized
that.
But despite his good sportsmanship and his acknowledgment of Ruth’s
genius, Tom knew that this new work for Mr. Hammond that she had
just pledged herself to undertake would postpone their marriage
indefinitely. Despite the fact that he had tacitly given his consent,
Tom was sore at heart and found it a distinct effort to join in the
spirited conversation that then took place between Ruth and the
members of Mr. Hammond’s official staff.
“‘The Girl of Gold’ is a splendid story and we ought to make it
a still better photoplay,” Ruth was saying enthusiastically. “I
remember what spirited bidding there was at the time you bought the
right to film it, Mr. Hammond.”
“The bidding was both spirited and high,” said the producer ruefully.
“The film rights set me back about forty thousand dollars, Miss Ruth,
and it was that amount we stood to lose in case you were not in a
position at this time to help us out.”
“But I am,” said Ruth with her quick smile. “And I feel already like
the war horse that hears the bugle call! I suppose,” with a glance
toward Raymond Howell, the casting director, “you have an interesting
cast.”
“Well, we think so,” responded Howell, with enthusiasm. “If you are
quite willing, Miss Fielding, we were hoping to sign over Layton
Boardman for the lead. His contract with you has about run out,
hasn’t it?”
“I should lend him to you at all events,” responded Ruth, with a
smile. “I was about to suggest that he was exactly the type to play
Jimmy Drake.”
“There is another interesting feature.” Mr. Hammond leaned toward
Ruth with an anticipatory smile. “You remember Edith Lang, the
crippled actress?”
“Of course,” cried Ruth eagerly. “Is it possible you can use her?”
“Not only possible, but certain,” returned Mr. Hammond, smiling at
Ruth’s enthusiasm. “She is a type made to order for the part of the
crippled society woman in the play who eventually finds out that ‘The
Girl of Gold’ is none other than her own daughter.”
Ruth clapped her hands with enthusiasm.
“Fine! Fine!” she cried. “Those two alone, Boardman and Edith Lang,
are strong enough to carry the play on their own shoulders.”
“They won’t have to,” said Raymond Howell, with conviction. “When
you have a chance to look over our supporting cast, Miss Fielding, I
think you will agree with us that they don’t come any better.”
Ruth’s eyes were shining. Here was an adventure after her own heart.
Not only had she good actors to work with, but a fine vehicle
as well. The film version of “The Girl of Gold” was practically
predestined for success because of the wide popularity of the story
upon which it had been based. And with her own favorite leading man
in the part of Jimmy Drake, the hero of the play, and Edith Lang
playing the heavy emotional rôle, it seemed that the chances of
failure were so remote as to be scarcely considered.
Yet through all her exultation and excitement, Ruth felt a tiny ache
of conscience when she thought of Tom. He was being such a sport
about it—as indeed he had been all along. He could have made it so
hard for her to accept Mr. Hammond’s proposal if he had wanted to.
If he had been irritable or cranky about her work she would not have
minded putting him off so much. As it was——
She stole an anxious little side glance at him and was relieved to
see that he looked quite cheerful. He was speaking to Mr. Hammond
and his voice was cheerful too. Ruth could not have guessed what an
effort it was for Tom to make it so.
“Something has been said about almost everybody but the young lady
that plays the title rôle,” he was remarking with a humorous look.
“Doesn’t she count?”
“Not so much,” answered Mr. Hammond, smiling. “Her part is not nearly
so exacting as that of Boardman or Edith Lang, and we have two or
three stars quite capable of meeting the requirements. We are leaving
the selection to the discretion of our new director here,” turning
with a quizzical smile to Ruth. “I think you will all agree with me
that she has an unusual knack in the selection of leading ladies!”
Ruth knew he referred to her own part in the making of her last
picture when, upon the defection of her leading lady, Viola Callahan,
Ruth had stepped into the lead herself.
She flushed now and looked a bit self-conscious.
“The particular leading lady you have in mind was of your selection,”
she reminded him, and there was a general laugh.
In fact, everything was so pleasant and jolly that it was some time
before they came down to interesting and important details such as
the day on which the new director was to take charge, when they were
to start on location and so forth.
“You can’t start work too soon to suit us, Miss Ruth,” said Mr.
Hammond. “I presume you are both free to begin at once?” with a
glance toward Tom.
“The sooner the better,” the latter replied cheerfully, and Ruth
could have hugged him. That was so exactly the response she would
have made.
“Well, then we might as well get down to business.”
“I think we’ve been doing business already,” remarked Ruth.
“You know what I mean, Miss Ruth. About terms——”
“I’ll leave them entirely to you and Mr. Cameron,” answered the
girl promptly. “You know Mr. Cameron is the financial head of our
concern,” and Ruth gave Tom a smile that made his heart jump.
“Well, then, we’ll fix that end up in the morning,” said Mr. Hammond
to Tom. “Now as to the trip.”
Spreading a map between them on the flat-topped desk, Mr. Hammond
explained the route they would take, outlining the course of their
travels with a heavy blue pencil.
“Your first real stop will be at Seattle,” he pointed out. “The
picture must be filmed at various points along the Yukon River. I
have some pictures here of various locations that may appeal to you
and you can settle on some likely spots without taking the time and
trouble of scouting around on your own account.”
As Ruth accepted the pictures from Mr. Hammond and looked them over
with Tom, she registered a mental vow that in a short time and with
sufficient capital behind her, the Fielding Film Company would be run
with as much efficiency as the Alectrion Film Corporation or any of
the other larger producing concerns.
Take these photographs now! What an improvement that was on the
haphazard system of setting out personally to hunt up locations. What
a saving of time merely to have these pictures filed away where they
might be brought out at a moment’s notice for reference! Why, one
could choose locations enough for the filming of the entire picture
without actually moving from the room! However, Ruth thought it would
be possible to stop at just one of these points along the Yukon—a
small settlement, preferably—and with one such place as a base it
ought to be an easy matter to discover locations in the immediate
vicinity of the settlement that would satisfy the requirements of the
script.
“May we take these with us?” she asked, looking up from the
photographs. “Tom and I will want to look them over carefully——”
“Of course!” said Mr. Hammond heartily. “We and everything that’s
ours belong to you for the present, Miss Ruth.”
“Where do we meet the rest of the company?” Tom asked.
“They have been taking some of the interior scenes at Hollywood and
will meet you at Seattle. From there you can take a steamer that will
carry you to your various locations up the Yukon. Miss Ruth—what is
it——”
For Ruth had made a sudden dash for the door and was tugging at it
frantically.
“Some one,” she gasped, “is out there spying on us!”
CHAPTER V
AN OLD ENEMY
While Ruth Fielding had been in conversation with those in the office
she had noticed a curious thing.
A small triangular corner of glass had been broken from the upper
panel of the door. For a considerable time Ruth had felt that
conviction that comes to every one at times of being closely and
furtively watched. Her eyes, almost against her will, had traveled
repeatedly to that triangular bit of broken glass. Then suddenly she
saw it! That at least could not be imagination! An ear was pressed
close to that tiny aperture and while she stared, momentarily
paralyzed with astonishment, an eye took its place!
With Ruth, to think was to act. No sooner was she convinced that
there was a spy in the hallway outside the door than she was on her
feet, tugging madly at the knob.
As the startled and astonished men in the office behind her rose to
their feet wondering if she had taken leave of her senses the door
yielded to Ruth’s frantic tug and swung inward.
That the spy was completely taken by surprise was evident. The man
who had been stooping to the aperture jerked to an upright position
as Ruth flashed upon him. For a moment he looked straight at the girl
and in that moment Ruth recognized him.
“Charlie Reid!” she gasped. “What are you doing here spying?”
“None of your business!” grumbled the fellow sullenly. “Sol and I
know what we’re doing——”
But just then Charlie Reid caught sight of Ruth’s companions as they
hurried to the office doorway. Turning, he dashed down the almost
empty corridor and, reaching the stairway, took the steps three at a
time and vanished from sight.
“Seemed to be in a pretty big hurry,” observed Tom. “Didn’t wait for
explanations or anything, did he?”
The men ran to the head of the stairs, but the fellow had
disappeared. To follow him on foot would be useless, and if
they waited for an elevator they would have no better chance of
intercepting him.
Bewildered and rather alarmed, they returned to the office to talk
over this startling development.
“Not a soul of us saw his face,” mourned McCarty, but Ruth was quick
to contradict him.
“I did,” she said. “And what’s more, I know him—and so do you all!”
They made her sit down and explain.
“It was Charlie Reid,” she said excitedly. “And as you all know, he
is Sol Bloomberg’s right-hand man. It was Charlie who, as agent for
Bloomberg, first tempted Viola Callahan to break her contract with
me.”
“The rascal!” cried Brun, his big hand doubled into a fist. “And to
think he got away with a whole neck and his information!”
“But why should Charlie Reid want to spy on us?” asked Mr. Hammond.
“Certainly our conversation has been innocent enough and has nothing
whatever to do with Reid, or with Bloomberg either, for that matter.”
“It’s queer, though,” mused Ruth, as though speaking aloud. “Charlie
Reid spying here, trying to find out what he can of my future plans,
right on top of that threatening letter from Sol Bloomberg!”
Naturally the men were more at sea than ever over this reference,
since none but Ruth herself and Helen Cameron knew anything of the
threatening, venomous letter Bloomberg had sent. Ruth had not even
told Tom for fear of needlessly worrying him.
Now, however, it was necessary to make a clean breast of the facts.
In view of what had just happened, the letter from the disgraced
producer took on an added importance.
“It looks to me,” Ruth finished, “as though the planting of Charlie
Reid here to spy upon us and overhear our plans is the first step in
Bloomberg’s scheme of revenge.”
“It isn’t revenge, Miss Ruth; it’s plain spite,” said Mr. Hammond
disgustedly. “That fellow had nothing against you except that you
succeeded where he tried to make you fail.”
“And something tells me,” Ruth said, with a little shrug of her
shoulders, “that he still has my failure at heart and will leave no
stone unturned to accomplish it.”
“Well,” said Tom, with a squaring of his shoulders and a yearning
glance toward the spot in the doorway where Charlie Reid had been,
“if either Bloomberg or that Reid chap gets ugly again and tries to
start something, we’ll show them both they’ve been in a scrap!”
On the whole, however, Mr. Hammond and his associates seemed inclined
to treat Bloomberg and any nefarious schemes he might concoct as
beneath their notice and certainly as nothing to worry about.
“He may have guns, Miss Ruth, but he has no powder and shot,” Mr.
Hammond assured her. “In other words, he is a rattlesnake with
his venom removed. Don’t waste your time worrying about him. And
meanwhile,” he put out his hand as Ruth rose to her feet, “please
believe that we are all undyingly grateful to you for helping us out
in this emergency. I feel as though a thousand tons had been lifted
from my shoulders.”
Ruth smiled, with a return of the fighting gleam in her eye.
“I’m glad to be free to undertake it,” she said. “And—I’ll do my
best!”
“That’s all we ask!” Mr. Hammond assured her, and this sentiment was
echoed with many hearty handshakes by McCarty, Brun and the others.
After Ruth and Tom had left, there was just one among the men in Mr.
Hammond’s office who was not enthusiastic over the success of the
afternoon’s conference. This was Raymond Howell, the casting director.
“I’m not as confident of success as you all seem,” he told them, and
the statement was like a dash of cold water upon their enthusiasm. “I
admit that Miss Fielding is a good director—upon her own field. But I
don’t know that our actors will take kindly to a woman director. They
are not used to them, and this one is so young and good-looking that
it seems impossible that she is as brainy and competent as they say.”
“As we _know_,” Mr. Hammond said quietly. “You have come into our
personnel since Miss Fielding left it, Howell, and that is probably
why you lack confidence in her ability. You said just now that this
girl was a good director in her own field. You forget that this was
her original field, the stepping stone to her present success. No,
my dear fellow, you may safely lull your fears to rest. In my own
mind I have not the slightest doubt that this afternoon’s conference
has saved to the Alectrion Film Corporation a full forty thousand
dollars!”
If Ruth had heard this tribute she would have thrilled with pride at
such a proof of Mr. Hammond’s confidence in her. It would have done
her good too, for, strangely enough, her confidence in herself had
been rather severely shaken by the detection of spying Charlie Reid
that afternoon.
“I don’t like it, Tom. I don’t like it at all,” she said, as they
sped uptown toward the hotel at which they were stopping while in
New York. “Bloomberg wouldn’t have planted Charlie Reid there to
overhear our conference with Mr. Hammond if he hadn’t had a good and
sufficient reason.”
“Perhaps,” said Tom, looking at her flushed face and thinking how
pretty she was, “Bloomberg didn’t plant Charlie at all. How do you
know Reid wasn’t there on his own business?”
But Ruth shook her head positively.
“He has no reason to wish me harm,” she pointed out. “Except as
Bloomberg’s agent. Besides, I don’t believe Charlie Reid has brains
enough to act on his own account. Bloomberg was always the brains,
Charlie the tool. I wish,” she ended, a bit plaintively, “I knew what
the real answer was!”
“Now don’t worry,” Tom protested. “If Bloomberg has any crooked
little game up his sleeve, we’ll find it out soon enough. And when he
starts something we’ll very soon show him who is going to finish it.
You beat him once, Ruth, and that only goes to show you can beat him
again, and worse.”
A dimple appeared at the corner of Ruth’s mouth.
“The law of averages——”
“Oh, bother the law of averages,” Tom interrupted, good-naturedly.
“It isn’t going to work in this case. Besides, here we are at our
station!”
He led her forth upon the subway platform and in a few moments they
were being eagerly greeted by Helen in their suite at the Graymore.
They were to stay over in New York until the following afternoon
at least, since another business conference with Mr. Hammond was
imperative, for Tom, at any rate. Helen was overjoyed at this news
and declared that she would spend the following morning shopping for
the trip to the Yukon.
“Do you really think you ought to go?” Ruth asked, teasing her. “Poor
Chess! It really is cruel to leave him all alone!”
“Oh, but think what a long time we’ll be married!” Helen protested.
“Even Chess couldn’t deny me this wonderful chance for a little fun
before, before——”
“The end?” suggested Tom, with a grin.
“You put it crudely, Tommy-boy,” chuckled Helen, making a face at
him. “But I simply couldn’t miss this trip. Especially since our old
friends Bloomberg and Charlie Reid are stepping into the limelight
again, prepared to give us a few thrills.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Ruth dryly, as she examined the location
photographs Mr. Hammond had given her that afternoon, “if we will
have more thrills than we exactly enjoy before we get through.”
CHAPTER VI
PREMONITIONS
Helen stared at her chum for a moment and her laughing mouth turned
downward, lending an expression of momentary gravity to her merry
face.
“You don’t mean to say, Ruthie Fielding, that you are actually afraid
of Sol Bloomberg?”
Ruth laid down the pictures and for the moment her face reflected the
gravity of Helen’s.
“I _am_ afraid of Sol Bloomberg,” she told them simply. “Not that I
think that he can get the better of me in a long fight. I believe
that when it comes to a matter of endurance I have a far better
chance than Bloomberg to win.”
“You bet you have, especially when you consider your wonderful
support!” broke in Tom, with a grin.
“I am considering him,” said Ruth, with a grateful glance but no
relaxing of her gravity. “That’s one of the things that makes me
pretty sure of winning in a long race.
“But, oh, you don’t realize!” She leaned forward and cupped her
little fighting chin in one hand while she regarded her companions
with an intense earnestness. “It’s impossible for any one to
understand who isn’t situated as I am how many small annoyances,
little enough in themselves, but terrible when you group them all
together, a man like Bloomberg can perpetrate. He knows the picture
business through and through, he knows just how to hit in a vital
spot and just the time to do it. He knows, and Charlie Reid knows
too, that small delays mean actual loss in dollars and cents. He
knows that when a company of actors is worked up to acting pitch that
just some small delay or the introduction of a ludicrous incident
will sometimes completely ruin their morale. He knows—but there!” She
checked herself and looked a little embarrassed at her impassioned
flow of words. “I’m going on dreadfully and you both must think me
a regular kill-joy, but you asked me a question, Helen, and I’ve
answered it the best I know how. I _am_ afraid of Sol Bloomberg!”
And this fear was in no way lessened during the busy, interest-filled
days that followed.
Ruth might gradually have managed to forget Bloomberg had that man
not taken great pains to keep himself alive in her memory. The
threatening letter she had received from him just before the Charlie
Reid incident proved to be only the first of many.
In the beginning Ruth determined to ignore these sneering missives.
But when they continued to pour in upon her she laid the matter in
desperation before Tom, and that young gentleman took a prompt and
decisive hand in the game.
He wrote just one letter to Sol Bloomberg, and though Ruth never knew
exactly what the contents of that letter were, it seemed to have the
desired effect upon her enemy.
Bloomberg’s threatening missives ceased to come. But they had left
their poison in the air behind them and, day or night, Ruth could
never banish completely from her mind the vision of a malignant
Bloomberg, promising dire things should she go on with her plans and
undertake the filming of “The Girl of Gold.”
Lucky for Ruth and for Mr. Hammond’s hopes that hers was a fighting
spirit and that opposition such as Bloomberg’s only made her more
determined to succeed in spite of him.
It had been necessary for them to stay only one night in New York,
since Mr. Hammond, in eager anticipation of Ruth’s acceptance of
his proposition, anxious as he was to start the serious work of
production without further delay, accepted Tom’s terms without
question and immediately. He had already planned out all the details
of the trip, to which it remained only for Ruth to acquiesce.
On reaching Cheslow, reservations were made at once by Tom on the
train that would start the following morning for New York. The girls,
while in New York, had done all the necessary shopping—though Helen
had taken the heavy end of this undertaking, since Ruth was far too
absorbed in her plans and in the scenario of “The Girl of Gold” to
care much what she wore on the trip.
So on this particular evening Ruth was at work in her little study
at the Red Mill, methodically gathering up all the loose ends of her
affairs.
She was leaning over her desk, scanning again the pictures she had
selected of the points they were to visit along the Yukon River
when there was a slight rustling, and she looked around to see Aunt
Alvirah coming into the room.
“I had to come in and sit with you, my pretty, just for a little
while,” said the old woman, half apologetically. “I won’t see you
for so long and I never know when you go away on one of these trips
whether you’ll come back to your old Aunt Alvirah again, or whether
she’ll be here to see you, when you do.”
“Why, Auntie, what a dreadful thing to say!” Ruth was on her feet in
an instant and tenderly led the old woman to a chair. “You mustn’t
talk like that, you know,” taking the wrinkled old hand in both her
young ones and rubbing it gently, “or I won’t have the heart to go at
all!”
“Oh, yes, you will, my pretty. And I wouldn’t hold you back if I
could—I’m that proud of you! But it’s lonesome here at times, and
your uncle, my dear——”
“Oh, I know,” Ruth broke in quickly. “I know just how trying he can
be. But you mustn’t let him worry you, dear. It’s only his age that
makes him so disagreeable, and he really doesn’t mean half he says——”
“There’s the doorbell!” cried the old lady, as a shrill clamor woke
the echoes of the old house. “Oh, my back! and oh, bones! Let me go,
my pretty. I must answer it.”
“I’d like to see you,” mocked Ruth gayly, as she pushed the old woman
back into the chair with a firm and gentle hand. “It’s probably Tom,
anyway.”
Ruth started toward the door, but on the instant there came the click
of a latch and Tom’s cheery whistle sounded within the house.
“Right this way, Tommy-boy,” Ruth called. “Aunt Alvirah and I are
holding a last minute confab. Join us!”
Tom came in, jaunty and joyful.
“I’ve made reservations all the way through to Seattle, though we
have to change at Chicago,” he told Ruth, after greeting Aunt
Alvirah in his usual hearty way. “And, say, Ruthie, I’ve got a
surprise for you. I’ve reserved a compartment for you and Helen for
the whole trip.”
For a moment Ruth’s face radiated pleasure. Then it clouded again as
she asked anxiously:
“What reservations have you made for Tommy-boy?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter about him,” and Tom grinned. “He gets a lower
berth in the Pullman—and lucky enough not to pull an upper,” he
added, throwing his hat in one chair and himself in another. “The
train is just about packed to capacity. It’s the flyer, you know, and
mighty popular.”
“Then I don’t see how you managed to get a compartment,” Ruth said,
puzzled. “You would think they would all have been snapped up long
ago.”
“So they were—from Chicago out, at any rate,” said Tom. “But the
millionaire diamond king that had yours changed his plans at the last
minute and relinquished it. Thus my opportunity, which I grasped with
both fists, and then some.”
“Luxury, thy name is sweet!” sighed Ruth, and went on with her work
of gathering up loose ends.
“Where’s Helen?” asked Aunt Alvirah suddenly.
So quiet had the little old woman been, lost in the depths of the
great chair, that Ruth and Tom had almost forgotten her presence in
the room.
Now they both looked at her with the gentle consideration they always
reserved for the frail old lady.
“Helen’s at home with Chess,” said Tom, with a grin. “Holding hands
with him and sighing a last sad farewell.”
“It _is_ right hard on Chess,” said Aunt Alvirah gently. “In my day
young ladies didn’t keep their future husbands waiting around so
long. It don’t—well, it don’t seem quite fair.”
Ruth guessed that this was meant as a gentle rebuke to her as well as
to Helen. She flushed a little and bent still more intently over her
work.
It was Tom who broke the rather awkward silence.
“Oh, Chess doesn’t blame her,” he said easily. “Thinks she ought to
have all the fun coming to her before she has to settle down. His
chief worry is that he can’t go along with us. Poor old Chess, he
works too hard. Thing he needs is to chuck business for a time and
take a good long vacation.”
“When a man is to be married it’s right he should work hard” said
Aunt Alvirah, looking so prim and sweet that Tom got up and enfolded
her in a bear hug.
“The thing he ought to do, Auntie,” he said, resuming his seat and
stretching out his long legs comfortably before him, “is to be like
me and get himself interested in the movies. Then he can combine
business with pleasure and pleasure with business and everybody’s
happy!”
“I suppose so,” said Aunt Alvirah, with a gentle sigh. “But it wasn’t
so in my day, indeed it wasn’t!”
Not until Aunt Alvirah had gone to bed, complaining patiently of her
back and her bones, did Ruth broach the subject that was nearest her
heart.
She and Tom were alone, and for a long time nothing had been
said between them. They were in the habit of falling into these
comfortable silences. A smile touched the corners of Tom’s wide,
good-humored mouth as he watched Ruth neatly file the last few papers
on her desk.
When it was all done Ruth turned around and answered Tom’s smile in
kind.
“I don’t believe I’ve told you, Tommy-boy,” she said earnestly, “just
how much I appreciate the sacrifice you’ve made.”
“Sacrifice?” repeated Tom, understanding but pretending that he did
not.
“You know what I mean,” said Ruth gently. “It was big of you to give
your consent to my undertaking this for Mr. Hammond. Not every one
would have done that, under the circumstances, Tommy-boy.”
“Oh, I’m quite a remarkable fellow,” agreed Tom, with his cheery
grin. “But then, so are you a remarkable young lady, Ruth Fielding,”
he added gravely. “I don’t suppose any one understands what you are
doing better than I, or appreciates it more. I’m lucky,” with another
grin, just a bit rueful this time, “that you let me hang around at
all!”
But Ruth was suddenly very much in earnest. She leaned forward and
for just a moment let her hand rest lightly over Tom’s.
“Don’t ever say that again, Tommy-boy,” she said. “If I have
succeeded, so have you. You don’t know how much you have helped me.
Why, I just wouldn’t know how to go on without you!”
“As long as you feel that way about it, Ruth,” said Tom, very
sincerely touched, “then I don’t care—a lot—about anything else!”
CHAPTER VII
CHESS GOES ALONG
Despite the fact that she went to bed in a mood of exhilaration and
full of eager anticipation for the start of the trip, Ruth had an
exceedingly bad night.
She dreamed of Sol Bloomberg all during those hours when she should
have been gathering strength for the struggle to come.
She woke at last, heavy-eyed and headachy and with a sense of
depression that even the bright sunlight of a glorious morning did
little to dispel.
Uncle Jabez was in an unusually crabbed mood and inclined to complain
about everything, from the golden eggs, each surrounded by a tempting
little island of white, to the aromatic cup of strong coffee.
It was perhaps her efforts to soothe the cranky old man and so make
things easier for Aunt Alvirah that dissipated Ruth’s own blue
feelings.
At any rate, by the end of breakfast she was all on fire with
enthusiasm again and impatiently eager for the sound of Tom’s motor
horn.
The sound of the motor horn came just as she was hugging Aunt Alvirah
for perhaps the hundredth time and promising her all over again that
she would take care of herself and not get killed in a train wreck or
fall overboard from a steamer.
With a little cry of excitement Ruth reached for her hat and bag. She
was just cramming the former over her dark hair and had reached for
the latter when Tom flung in at the door.
“Come on, Ruthie!” he cried. “Just time to make the train. Hullo,
Uncle Jabez and good-bye. Aunt Alvirah, give me a kiss. Yes, I’ll
take good care of Ruth. I will, on my sacred word of honor! And in
addition I’ll see to it that she writes to you at least once a day,
if not oftener. For that do I get an extra piece of pie when I come
back?”
With such a flood of nonsense did Tom beguile the little old lady and
eventually managed to turn the tears of parting into smiles. Then he
and Ruth hurried to the car where Helen awaited them.
“Where’s Chess?” asked Ruth, noticing the absence of “Lasses.”
“We have to stop and pick him up,” Helen explained. “He wasn’t ready
when we passed by before. Had to get his bag packed.”
“‘His bag packed,’” Ruth repeated, puzzled. “Why in the world would
he have to pack his bag just to see you off?”
“Oh, I forgot you hadn’t heard the latest,” said Helen, with an
innocent air. “Chess is going with us.”
“Going with us!” repeated Ruth helplessly. “Isn’t this sudden?”
“Well—er—yes,” agreed Helen, her eyes dancing. “But then you know
Chess is like that—sort of sudden and unexpected. I think that’s why
he manages to keep me interested most of the time.”
“Tom, won’t you please explain?” Ruth turned in desperation to the
latter. “Helen is the most exasperating girl at times. When did Chess
decide to go along with us? You didn’t say a word about it last
night.”
“And for a very good reason,” said Tom, slowing to a stop before the
Cheslow hotel. “When I got home from your house last night, Ruthie, I
found Lasses still parked on the paternal doorstep. By the time I had
succeeded in running him off the premises by the nape of his neck——”
“Oh, you did not!” Helen interrupted indignantly. “I’d like to see
you!”
“By the time I had succeeded in kicking him out,” Tom went on
imperturbably, “he and my kid sister——”
“Kid sister!” interjected Helen, still indignant. “When we are twins!”
“Had decided that Chess was to go along. Ah,” with a welcoming
tooting of the horn, “if I am not very much mistaken, here comes our
good old friend Lasses in the flesh.”
The fact of it was that there was a man in Seattle who Chess thought
it would be good business to see personally. If he could win over
this man, who was really quite a personage in the world of finance,
to a favorable consideration of the business proposition Chess had
to lay before him, the young fellow felt, and with justice, that the
expenses of this trip and of many others like it would be more than
offset by the making of this valuable new connection. Of course,
there was no reason at all why Chess should go on to Alaska with his
friends, except a natural desire to have one last holiday with Helen
before they married and “settled down.”
Chess carried two suitcases which he declared would serve him
bountifully on the trip.
“All I need is a change or two,” he declared optimistically, as he
flung the grips into the tonneau, narrowly escaping Helen’s feet.
“Plenty for an unpretentious young fellow like me!”
“You talk as if you were only crossing over the state line,” Helen
retorted. “This is no overnight journey, I’ll have you know, Chess
Copley. Seattle is many, many miles away from here.”
“To say nothing of the Yukon,” added Tom, as he swung the car about
in the direction of the station.
“Fourteen days from Seattle to St. Michael,” chanted Helen, as though
reciting a lesson. “And from there overland and by dog sled to the
Yukon. Oh, Adventure, let me hasten to embrace thee before thou
slippest from my grasp!”
“You’ve got your information mixed, Helen,” said her twin. “There
won’t be any dog sled in this trip. We just keep right on steaming up
the Yukon from St. Michael until we come to Knockout Point, which is
the particular little jumping off place that’s been selected.”
“I hope there is a doctor on board,” said Chess, with a mock anxious
glance at his fiancé. “Something tells me we may need his services!”
“Mighty glad you decided to go with us, Chess,” said Ruth, seeing a
revengeful gleam in Helen’s eye and deciding to change the subject
in a hurry. “I must admit the change in your plan is something of a
shock—though of course a very joyful one.”
“Well for you that you added that postscript, woman,” laughed Chess.
“You see, Ruthie, it’s this way. There is some important business to
be attended to——”
“Up the Yukon?” asked Ruth, with a laugh.
“Up the Yukon, young lady, as well as in Seattle, though your very
inflection is an insult,” returned the grinning Chess. “I was going
to send some one else, and then I decided that this little matter
called for really expert attention——”
“Ahem!” loudly from Helen.
“Had an awful time inventing this business in Alaska, didn’t you,
Chess?” and Ruth’s eyes twinkled.
“And of course, under the circumstances, there was only one thing to
do and that was to send myself to take care of the job. Simple, what?”
“Very!” said Ruth, with a smile. “And awfully pleasant. It will make
our party quite complete!”
At that moment the auto turned into the street that led to the
station and they saw the train bowling toward them.
“Just in time!” roared Chess. “Put on steam, old boy! We don’t want
to be left waiting at the church!”
Tom brought the car to a standstill close to the platform and jumped
out, leaving Chess to look after the girls and the luggage.
He rushed into the station and found the telegraph operator, who was
an acquaintance of long standing.
“Say, do me a favor, Banks, old man, will you?” he cried. “Take the
old bus back home when you go and leave it in the garage?”
“Sure,” answered Banks. “Gives me a ride free for nothing. Hurry up,
my lad. There goes the whistle.”
Tom had just time to swing himself up the steps as the train began to
move.
“Pretty close call,” he laughed, as he joined the others. “Got all
your baggage and everything? All set?”
“All set for the Yukon!” cried Chess jubilantly. “Already I hear the
call of the wild!”
CHAPTER VIII
A MAGIC TRIP
“Maybe it was just Helen you heard, Chess,” chuckled Ruth, and Helen
gazed at her chum reproachfully.
“Do you mean to say that I am wild, Ruthie? How can you? Why, there
never was a meeker, more down-trodden——”
“Write it on the ice!” suggested Chess in atrocious slang that Helen
did not even deign to notice.
To prevent one of the good-natured squabbles that so often took
place between these two, Ruth immediately began to talk about their
prospects.
“It seems a long enough journey to Seattle,” she said. “But really
that’s only about the first stage of the journey.”
“Four days and three nights, isn’t it?” asked Helen.
“The flyer makes it in a little better time,” said Tom. “But it’s
approximately that.”
“Then we meet the others of the company,” said Ruth, “and take the
steamer for St. Michael. That’s the chief distributing center, you
know. There we’ll have to take a smaller steamer for the rest of the
way.”
“That’s the part I’ll love,” cried Helen enthusiastically. “It’s
always so much more fun to travel by ship than overland.”
The rest of the trip to New York, though enlivened by high spirits
and merry chatter, was uneventful. The train arrived not only on
time, but a little ahead of it. Which, for that particular line, was
rather unusual.
They had decided to postpone luncheon until they were safely
established on the western bound train. Now, as they gathered up
wraps and other belongings in a flurry of excitement, Helen confessed
to an extreme and gnawing hunger.
“I don’t think I can ever wait till we get on board the train,
Ruthie,” she complained plaintively. “I am really ravenous. If
we should pass a sandwich stand anywhere along the way, don’t be
surprised if I make a wild dash for a frankfurter and rolls, or some
other such delicacy.”
It was necessary for Chess to make a last-minute rush to the ticket
office, since he had made no reservation. He was lucky enough to
secure an upper berth in the same car with Tom, so that the party
would be pretty close together.
“Lucky you could grab off anything, Chess, old boy,” said Tom, as
the latter came up to them panting.
“That’ll be all right,” said Chess. “I’d made up my mind to come if I
had to sleep on the roof.”
“By comparison the upper ought to be quite comfortable,” chuckled
Helen, and Chess was heard to murmur something about “having
suspected before that that girl had no heart and now was quite sure
of it.”
Gayly they allowed an obsequious porter—he was obsequious because
Tom had tipped him generously in advance and commissioned him to let
the young ladies in the compartment lack for no comfort during the
journey—to lead them to their particular private little cubbyhole
which was to be such a luxury to them on the long trip.
Suitcases disposed of, the girls looked about them with all the pride
of possession.
“Oh, isn’t this perfectly scrumptious, Ruthie Fielding?” cried Helen.
“I’ll tell you we are traveling de luxe this time.”
Ruth closed the door of the compartment against curious eyes and sank
down on one of the cushioned seats which at night could be converted
into fairly comfortable beds.
“It’s all perfectly wonderful,” she agreed with Helen. “One usually
doesn’t expect much privacy on a train. But, oh, Tom,” with an
appealing glance at the latter, “how about something to eat?”
“And that time you hit the nail right on the head, Ruthie,” agreed
Tom cheerfully. “I shall order lunch at once, and unless you young
ladies object to our society——”
“We _should_,” murmured Helen.
“We will dine right here in comfort——”
“To say nothing of style!” finished Ruth, with a delighted laugh.
“Oh, Tom, please do!”
Tom rang the bell that would summon the porter and struck an attitude.
“Waiter! The tray!” he declared, and a second later as though the
words and not the bell had summoned the black genii of the train,
there came a knock upon the door.
Tom sent for a menu card and when it came ordered what sounded to
them all like a sumptuous feast.
“The boy is good,” said Chess, when the party was once more alone.
“He ordered enough for another half dozen of us.”
“And I thought this was to be lunch!” sighed Helen.
However, when the order arrived there proved to be no more of it than
the ravenous young people could take care of. It was the merriest
meal they had ever had, and that was saying a good deal, since they
had partaken of many merry meals together.
There was something that appealed to their imagination in the privacy
of the compartment, in the fact that, aboard that crowded train, they
four could be as much alone as though they were in the dining-room of
the house at the Red Mill.
Even the train itself seemed enveloped in the same glamorous mist—a
sort of dream train, speeding them on toward romance and adventure.
The illusion continued during all of that long journey across the
continent. Never once did their spirits flag or that utter boredom
that is so often the accompaniment of a long trip descend upon them.
Chess and Tom declared that they were perfectly comfortable in the
Pullman coach, and as for the girls, they slept as soundly as though
they were back in their own familiar beds at home.
The delight of dining alone in a stateroom never palled, and
they whiled away the long daylight hours of the journey reading
or chatting or discussing with Ruth the filming of Mr. Hammond’s
picture, “The Girl of Gold.” Ruth herself spent many hours in
studying both the novel and the scenario.
As the scenery became more rugged and beautiful they spent more and
more time on the observation platform, sometimes only leaving it
when hunger drove them inside to appease their appetite.
Occasionally the train stopped long enough at way stations to permit
of their stretching cramped legs and lazy muscles in a short walk.
They never failed to take advantage of these occasional breaks and
always came back to the train with an increased eagerness to be on
their way.
It was only at Chicago that an incident occurred that sufficed to
shatter Ruth’s enjoyment of the trip for a time.
In the city of the lakes it was necessary for them to change trains
for points still farther West. Tom had secured a compartment for the
girls on the second train, as well, so that the change was actually
only a matter of shifting their baggage and themselves from one train
to another.
But when they were on the platform and just about to board the
Seattle train, Helen suddenly hissed a sentence in Ruth’s ears that
made the latter stand still as though she had been shot.
“That’s our old friend Charlie Reid, Ruthie! Look quickly! Directly
back of you!”
CHAPTER IX
CHARLIE AGAIN?
Ruth looked, but not in time to see the face of the person Helen
pointed out. To be sure, the back looked familiar and the walk was
strongly reminiscent of Charlie Reid. But she could not be sure.
“Wasn’t it?” hissed Helen, as at the heels of their porter, the boys
bundled them into the train.
Ruth was flushed and excited. She shook her head.
“I only saw his back, Helen. I—don’t know!”
No more was said about it until the girls were safely established in
their new quarters and Chess and Tom had excused themselves to find
their own seats in the sleeper.
“I’m sure it was Charlie Reid, Ruth,” said Helen then. She herself
was tremendously excited, though her emotion was of a different kind
from Ruth’s. To Helen this unlooked-for appearance of Charlie Reid—if
indeed it were he—meant a break in the monotony of the train trip
and a little added interest in things in general. While to Ruth, the
possibility that they had been trailed so far by Charlie Reid meant
only one thing. And that was that Sol Bloomberg was still determined
on harming her in some way.
“If that was really Charlie Reid,” she said tensely, “then I might
just as well bid good-bye right now to my peace of mind, Helen.
Before long it will be gone entirely, broken into a thousand pieces.”
“Which—your peace of mind or Charlie?” asked Helen flippantly.
She came and sat beside Ruth and patted her hand in a manner that was
meant to be soothing and only served at the moment to irritate the
harassed young director.
Ruth drew her hand away as gently as she could and with a resigned
gesture put back a lock of hair that had become dislodged.
“You can laugh all you like, Helen,” she sighed. “But I can tell you,
Sol Bloomberg is nothing to laugh at, and if he has set his little
hound on my trail, it behooves Miss Ruth Fielding to watch her step!”
“I’ll trust you for that,” said Helen.
Seeing that Ruth was really disturbed she did her best to mend the
situation.
“Perhaps it wasn’t Charlie Reid after all,” she suggested, though
in her heart she was almost sure that it was. She, at least, had
obtained a fairly good view of the man’s face. “It was dim in the
station, anyway, and Charlie Reid has a rather ordinary type of face.
I suppose there are thousands of them scattered all over the world.”
But despite Helen’s loyal attempts to get her friend’s mind off the
subject, that day was completely spoiled for Ruth.
It was decided by the two girls, at Ruth’s suggestion, that they
should say nothing concerning their suspicions to the boys just then.
“Time enough when we are sure we are being followed,” said Ruth, and
Helen agreed with her that there was really no end to be gained by
speaking of the incident.
Even had they been right in identifying the man they had glimpsed on
the platform as Charlie Reid, neither Ruth nor Helen could advance
any theory as to why the fellow was following them. But they knew
that if this was indeed Ruth’s enemy, he would sooner or later reveal
his purpose to them, and they were in no hurry for that time to come.
As a matter of fact, as time went on and their journey neared a
close, both Ruth and Helen became nearly convinced that it was not
Charlie Reid they had seen in the station at all. For the person they
had thought was Reid had certainly boarded the train with them.
Knowing this, the girls made repeated excursions throughout the
length of the train and examined every passenger closely while, at
the same time, not appearing to do so.
But they saw no sign of Charlie Reid. Either he had boarded the train
and left it at the very next stop or he was keeping himself well
hidden.
The failure to see anything of Reid helped drive the unpleasant
incident from Ruth’s mind, and by the time they reached Seattle,
Bloomberg had once more faded into a rather dim background.
The morning on which they were due at their destination found them
really sorry to terminate their Arabian Nights’ train trip.
“I never had so much fun,” sighed Helen, as they sat among freshly
packed grips with their hats and wraps close at hand. “After this no
one can ever tell me that traveling is a bore. I shall contradict
them rudely!”
“It has been a lark,” Ruth agreed. “I’ve felt all along as though we
were riding in a private train.”
“Maybe you will be some day; who knows,” said Tom, with a smile, and
Ruth’s own quick smile answered it.
“Not for a considerable time yet, Tom, if ever,” she said. “But it
is sort of fun to play with the idea, isn’t it?”
“May I ask what plans your August Highness has made for us, once we
reach Seattle?” asked Chess.
“Tom knows. He does all that sort of thing for me, you know,” said
Ruth, with a grateful glance at the young fellow. “We are stopping at
the Tevor-Grand, aren’t we, Tom—there to meet the rest of the crowd?”
Tom nodded and Helen said eagerly:
“Who are the crowd, Ruth? Will there be many?”
“About twelve actors, three cameramen and two directors,” said Ruth,
looking remarkably businesslike as she counted them off on her
fingers. “There will be quite a company of us—and all picked players
at that.”
“But why two assistant directors?” Helen asked. “I should think you
were a dozen all rolled into one, Ruthie.”
“She is the big one, of course,” Tom explained, a proud note in his
voice.
“The big cheese, the whole works, so to speak,” Chess interpolated.
“Just about,” returned the grinning Tom. “These two other directors
are merely understudies, you understand, directing the minor scenes
and otherwise taking some of the load off her shoulders.”
“I shouldn’t think they would enjoy being bossed about by a girl,”
said Helen. She had spoken impulsively and was instantly sorry when
she saw a shadow of uneasiness cross Ruth’s face.
“That has worried me just a little,” Ruth confessed. “A woman
director is at a disadvantage with a man because the men in the
company always seem to go on the assumption that she’s no good until
she proves the contrary. There are good woman directors in the moving
picture business——”
“Ladies and gentlemen, the proof is right before your eyes,” murmured
Helen with a mischievous glance at Ruth.
“But they have always had to work twice as hard to prove their
ability as a man in the same position,” finished Ruth.
“All the more credit to the woman when she gets there, then,” said
Helen.
Ruth smiled.
“But that doesn’t make the fight any the easier,” she pointed out.
Tom was about to reassure her on this point when there was a knock on
the door. It was the porter to announce that they were just slowing
into Seattle and to get their suitcases.
Chess gave a whoop of joy and grabbed up his hat.
“All ashore that’s going ashore,” he chortled, dropping the hat long
enough to put Helen’s on her head hindside before, at which the young
lady was tremendously indignant. “Follow me, ladies and gentlemen,
and I will show you the sights of this famous seaport——”
“Oh, Chess, do hush!” cried Helen, as they joined the tide of
humanity sweeping down the aisles. “Every one is looking at you.”
“Might as well give ’em a treat,” replied that youth, with
irrepressible good humor. “No one ever accused me of having a stone
where my heart ought to be!”
Chess’s high spirits were infectious, and before they reached the
street and a taxicab they were all weak with mirth. Chess could be
irresistibly funny when he wanted to, and this was evidently one of
those occasions.
“Aren’t you glad we brought him along?” Helen asked of her chum,
regarding her fiancé as if he were some strange kind of animal. “As a
circus clown, I declare he can’t be beat—oh, dear me, Chess, do ask
that taxi driver to be a little more careful! That time he tried to
upset a truck.”
“Let him have his fun if he likes it,” Chess returned imperturbably.
“He’s entitled to a little recreation in his off hours.”
Despite the seemingly reckless driving of the chauffeur through
traffic that was nothing short of murderous, the four young people
managed to reach the Tevor-Grand Hotel whole and in their right minds.
Tom, as usual thoughtful and reliable, had wired ahead for rooms,
and upon registering his little party at the desk was treated by the
deferential clerk in charge with as much civility as though he had
been an old patron of the hotel.
When Ruth asked about the company, mentioning the names of the
directors, she was informed that they had arrived only a short time
before.
Two porters caught up their luggage and Ruth turned with the others
toward the elevators. Suddenly she gave a little gasp and stood
still, her eyes traveling across the lobby to the door of the writing
room at the farther side.
“Am I dreaming?” she cried. “Or was that really Charlie Reid?”
CHAPTER X
A TANTALIZING GLIMPSE
Helen, being close at Ruth’s side, was the only one to hear the
latter’s startled, half-whispered exclamation.
By the time Tom and Chess had noticed the defection of the two girls
and had started back toward them, Ruth had recovered her composure.
“What’s the idea of holding up the parade?” Chess demanded jovially.
“Is there anything you want? If so I’ll get it for you,” Tom added.
“Oh, millions of things, Tommy-boy,” Helen cried before Ruth could
speak and so betray her agitation. “That really was a very rash
promise, but we won’t take you up on it. What we want most right now
is rest and privacy and perchance a bite of refreshment. Lead on,
lead on!”
Ruth was grateful to her chum for so disguising her own agitation and
dismay. Helen’s continuous chatter as they were carried up in the
elevator prevented either Tom or Chess from noticing or commenting
upon her rather tight-lipped silence.
The elevator stopped and they followed the porter down a rather dark
and gloomy corridor richly carpeted so as to muffle the heaviest
footfall.
They went first to the girls’ rooms. A key was slipped into a lock
and they entered the regulation hotel room, rather stuffy and gloomy,
though comfortably furnished, with a bath attached and a door leading
off into a smaller room. In the larger of the two rooms the bed wore
the disguise of a cretonne-covered couch, thus transforming the
bedroom into a rather attractive sitting room during the daytime.
“Here’s your reception room, Ruth,” said Tom, “where you can meet
your actors and confab to your heart’s content. Like it?”
“All perfectly lovely, Tom dear, although we really didn’t need the
extra room. Still it will be lovely, having the two,” she added
quickly, unwilling to spoil Tom’s satisfaction. “It gives one space
to move about in.”
“And now,” said Helen, making a face at the boys, “clear out of here,
both of you! I know Ruthie wants to rest for a while before she has
all that crowd of actors and cameramen and what not coming down on
her!”
“I suppose,” said Chess, looking doleful, “that business must spoil
our pleasure some time. Why not now!”
Ruth laughed.
“It will be pretty nearly all business with Tom and me from now on,”
she said. “But that needn’t prevent you and Helen from having all the
good times you like.”
“Maybe not,” sighed Helen. “But Chess’s business will stand horribly
in the way of pleasure. I presume for a while I’m doomed to play all
by myself. Hustle your old man, will you, Chess?”
“If he’s to be hustled, yes. But his kind are sometimes annoyingly
deliberate.”
“Oh, well, go to it, you busy bees, and I will laze gloriously while
I look on with pity for all of you. Me for a show this afternoon.”
When the boys had gone to their rooms, only a door or two further
down the corridor, Helen asked Ruth if she had really seen Charlie
Reid in the hotel lobby.
“I can’t be sure,” Ruth answered, her voice low and troubled. “I
just caught a glimpse of a man that looked like him, but as I turned
around he dodged into the door of the writing room.”
“That would seem to show that it was really Charlie Reid you saw,”
Helen pointed out. “For Charlie would surely be careful about letting
you know he was following you just yet.”
“That’s what I thought,” agreed Ruth, a little wearily. “Anyway,
I wouldn’t say anything about it to the boys for a while, Helen.
We’ll wait until Charlie really does something before we complain.
Besides, I can’t even be sure it was Charlie I saw. It may be that
I’m thinking of him so much that I just naturally see him about me
wherever I go.”
“Let’s hope that’s the answer, Ruth dear,” said Helen, going over
to her chum and giving her a warm kiss. “In the meantime don’t go
worrying your head about it. The two of us together are more than a
match for Charlie Reid!”
Ruth was rather glad that Helen had planned to go to a matinée, for
that left her perfectly free to attend to the very important business
at hand—that of meeting and becoming acquainted with the actors,
cameramen and assistant directors with whom she was to be so closely
associated during the next few months.
They began to gather in her room shortly after two o’clock.
Edith Lang came first, accompanied by Layton Boardman, and these two
both Ruth and Tom met with enthusiasm. They had been associated with
the two actors in the making of Ruth’s last picture at Golden Pass
and had liked and admired them immensely.
Boardman, who had taken the lead in Ruth’s picture, was a splendid
actor of Western parts and a fine fellow as well. Edith Lang was the
crippled actress who had given Ruth valuable pointers in an art in
which she herself was very proficient.
Crippled as she had been while engaged in Red Cross work during the
World War, and so more or less exiled from a profession that had been
the breath of life to her, Edith Lang had once more come into her own.
Her part as the cripple in “The Girl of Gold” was a heavy emotional
one, calling for exactly the type of acting which had made Edith Lang
famous.
“I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see you again,” she told
Ruth, grasping the latter’s hands in both her own. “And under such
very happy circumstances! My dear Miss Fielding, can you imagine
slowly starving to death and then having presented to you a feast
sumptuous beyond your wildest imaginings? That is what this rôle
means to me!”
There were others gathering in the doorway, and Ruth went to meet
them eagerly.
There were the two assistant directors, Gerard Bolton and Maurice
Brandt. The former was a stockily built man with extremely broad
shoulders and a forehead that jutted heavily over deep-set gray eyes.
It was the forehead, Ruth decided after a second look, that made him
look so pugnacious, as if, having once got hold of an idea, he would
be extraordinarily slow to relinquish it.
However, he was pleasant enough, and his companion, Maurice Brandt,
was extremely talkative and cordial.
Ruth decided that Maurice Brandt might prove a trifle too
self-assertive upon further acquaintance, and then and there prepared
to resist him with some self-assertiveness of her own.
The leading lady was Alice Lytelly, a fluffy little blonde who ought
to do well in the rather unexacting title rôle. Despite the gushing
greeting of the latter, Ruth read temperament in the stormy blue
eyes of the star and the pouting, too-full, red lips. Ruth had had
experience before with temperamental stars, and she knew just how to
catalogue Miss Lytelly.
There were others in rôles of varying importance, from the tall,
distinguished-looking “father” of the heroine and the pitiful,
humpbacked dwarf who played the villain of the piece to the lad of
eleven, freckle-faced and elfish, who took the part of the star’s
younger brother and who by his astuteness and precocity managed to
discover the designs of the villain and lead the hero to his hiding
place.
This youngster, by name Eben Howe, was to become, as Tom teasingly
said, his rival in Ruth’s affections. However much that may be
an overstatement of fact, it certainly is true that Ruth liked
the mischievous, freckled boy at sight and that Eben developed an
adoration for the young director of the company that was like the
devotion of a good-natured, tail-wagging collie dog.
Such was the general personnel of the company of actors Ruth was to
direct in a moving picture of the first magnitude, “The Girl of Gold.”
The three cameramen, Traymore, Schultz and Atwater, were all pleasant
and competent men, and Ruth felt instinctively that there would be
little friction in her association with them.
Artists, every one of them in their line—in this day of the
“super-film,” there is a great deal more importance to the work of
the cameramen than is generally suspected—they all had heard of her
and respected her ability and had decided to give their best in
service to their youthful “chief.”
Ruth felt this and was grateful for it. But about the actors and the
two directors, she was not so sure. She seemed to sense a slight
undercurrent of resentment toward her—partly, perhaps, because of her
youth, partly because of her sex.
But it was in the person of the dwarf that this resentment seemed to
crystallize. Ruth shuddered merely to look at the deformed, twisted
body of Joe Rumph. Once she caught his deep-set black eyes gazing
intently at her from under beetling brows and beneath that somewhat
sinister look her flesh actually crawled as though some slimy
creature had trailed its length across her.
When it was over and they had all gone off, informed of Ruth’s plans
for the morrow’s start, Ruth flung herself into a chair and pressed a
hand over her eyes as though to shut out some unwelcome vision.
Tom, who had been thoroughly enjoying himself and who had found a
kindred spirit in one of the jovial cameramen, Bert Traymore, looked
surprised at Ruth’s strange gesture. He came over to her anxiously
and rested a hand on her shoulder.
“Buck up, Ruth,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“That horrid Joe Rumph,” cried Ruth, in a muffled voice, hands still
pressed close before her eyes. “Did you notice how he looked at me?
I don’t like him, Tom! Why, I’d just as soon take a venomous snake
along with the company as that man!”
CHAPTER XI
A CHANCE REVELATION
Tom Cameron laughed at Ruth’s statement and tried to reassure her.
But Ruth could not be shaken from her stand.
“Rumph dislikes me and mistrusts me for some reason, Tom,” she
insisted. “I have not been in this profession so long, meeting all
types and kinds of people, without learning a few things—and one
of them is to be able to judge pretty accurately the attitude of
my actors toward me. You don’t know how sensitive a director is to
atmosphere, Tom. I suppose he has to traffic so much in emotions,
both artificial and real, that he becomes supersensitive to them.
Anyway, I know I can always tell whether an actor has confidence
in me and whether he is working for or against me. And this dwarf,
Rumph, is going to work against me every inch of the way! Of that
much I am sure!”
Ruth had removed her hands from before her face and was sitting
with them clasped tightly in her lap. She leaned toward Tom and
spoke with an earnestness that could not fail to impress him. He had
learned long ago to place trust in Ruth’s almost uncanny gift of
reading people and motives. She seemed to know sometimes what her
associates were going to do and how they were going to do it almost
before they were aware of their own designs.
So on this occasion he looked grave and troubled and put one of his
own big hands over her clasped ones.
“I’m sorry you feel this way, Ruth,” he said. “It seems to me Rumph
plays a pretty important part in the picture. It would be rather hard
to get along without him, wouldn’t it?”
To his surprise Ruth shook her head vehemently in the negative.
“Not the way I see it,” she said. “I have watched this—this afflicted
creature work in other pictures, and he has never failed to make
me sick with mingled pity and loathing. I have always felt—I may
be wrong, but I don’t believe so—that the audience agreed with me.
People go to the moving pictures to be amused and, in some cases,
edified, but they don’t go to see monstrosities. It seems to me that
it offends the ordinary normal-minded person to see a deformity, such
as Rumph’s, exploited, brought into the limelight. It seems to me—and
again I may be wrong—that I could make a far more striking, more
powerful picture without Joe Rumph than with him.”
“But the book!” protested Tom. “It is necessary, isn’t it, to make
the film production as near like the finished story as possible?”
“Of course,” said Ruth. “But if you will remember, the villain of the
novel was no such deformed creature as Rumph. He had been crippled,
it is true, in a railroad accident and his spine so hurt that he
would always be a marked man, but he was no such repulsive animal as
this Rumph!”
Ruth shuddered again and Tom laughed ruefully.
“I must admit myself he isn’t any beauty,” he said, beginning to
stride up and down the room. “But if you should get rid of Rumph what
would you do for a villain? No ordinary actor could take that part,
you know.”
“No,” admitted Ruth simply. But there was the queer little secret
look in her face that Tom had often surprised there when Ruth was
seized by inspiration. “No ordinary actor could. But—have you noticed
Carlton Brewer?”
“The one who plays the hero’s best friend—the spineless,
good-natured, devoted lad whose idiocy is always getting him into
laughable scrapes?” Tom wanted to know.
“The same,” said Ruth, her eyes half-closed in dreamy contemplation
of some vision that only she herself could see. “His part in this
picture is not impressive, I’m bound to admit, but I am convinced
that that boy would make a great actor if he had only half a chance.”
“But the cripple part of it,” Tom protested. “Carlton Brewer is one
of the best set-up lads I ever saw.”
“Oh, Tommy, Tommy, you’re funny,” cried Ruth, laughing a little with
suppressed excitement. “Do you mean to tell me that you have been
connected with this profession this long without learning that with
a little artificial make-up the straightest back can be bent and a
most convincing screen cripple made? And incidentally Abe Levy—did
you notice him? The little good-looking, curly-haired Jew with the
cheerful smile—is one of the cleverest make-up men in the profession.
I’m willing to bet that with a little coaxing on my part he could
make the loveliest cripple out of Carlton Brewer that you ever saw!”
Tom stopped before her and gazed down at her with that slightly
bewildered, wholly admiring wonder that was a part of his affection
for the girl.
“I believe anybody would do almost anything for you when you look
like that, Ruth Fielding!” he said.
She made a little face at him and for a while they relapsed into a
thoughtful silence.
At last Tom said:
“If you feel that way about it, I’d be willing to back your judgment
to the limit. Mr. Hammond has given you full leave to exercise your
discretion. Why don’t you discharge Rumph and have it over with?”
But Ruth shook her head, a shadow once more clouding her face.
“Not yet,” she said. “I don’t want to make any radical change until I
feel that I have the full confidence of my company. And it may take
me some time to win that, Tom!”
If Ruth could have been present at a conference of some of her actors
and directors in Layton Boardman’s room, she would have found her
forebodings justified.
Gerard Bolton was speaking at the moment.
“She’s clever, all right,” he admitted. “You can see that. But I
doubt if she has the ability to handle a picture like ‘The Girl of
Gold.’”
“She can do it if any one can,” said Layton Boardman. “Look at the
work she did in ‘Snow-blind’ and this last picture at Golden Pass.”
“She is one of those rare people,” Edith Lang spoke up, also in
Ruth’s support, “who have the imagination and ability not only to
write the script of her plays but to direct the filming as well.”
“She did not write the script for ‘The Girl of Gold,’” Bolton pointed
out.
“No, but I believe she thoroughly understands it,” Edith Lang flashed
back at him.
“That,” retorted the director, with a cynical lifting of eyebrows,
“remains to be seen!”
“I don’t like working under the direction of a woman, never did!” It
was the growling tones of Joe Rumph that broke into the conversation.
“I don’t know what the boss was thinking of to put a kid like that
over us! It’s my belief that this whole thing’s going to be a
complete flop!”
There was a deep and significant silence while the others looked at
him. The dwarf was not popular with his fellow actors. For, where
his terrible deformity might have excited pity, his rough manner
and bitter words rejected it. But at this moment, despite the loyal
defense of the two actors who had worked with Ruth in her last
picture, the consensus of opinion was with Joe Rumph.
From all appearances, Ruth Fielding’s road to success on this
occasion was to be by no means an easy one!
However, the next day, which was to mark the start of the journey to
the Yukon, dawned hopefully clear and bright and Ruth awoke with a
tremendous enthusiasm to start on her great adventure.
Helen was lazy and hard to get up.
After her matinée Helen had done a little window shopping. She was
delighted with the great stores, saying that they reminded her of
those in New York, only that they were “much more fascinating.”
When Chess came back to the hotel from his business interview,
jubilant and declaring that he had “landed his big fish,” Helen
was waiting for him and still blissfully employed in happy mental
contemplation of gorgeous shop windows.
She was very enthusiastic about his good news, however, and gayly
agreed to dine sumptuously with him and go that evening to the best
show in town in honor of the great occasion.
Small wonder, then, that morning found her still sleepy and in no
mood to hurry, as Ruth begged her to.
“You might let a fellow be,” Helen murmured reproachfully, as she
succeeded with great effort in getting her second eye open.
“I’ll let you be in earnest if you don’t get busy and hustle,” Ruth
retorted, as she combed her pretty hair and wound it neatly about
her head. “Are you aware that our steamer leaves Seattle promptly at
nine-thirty? Perhaps,” she added innocently, but with mischievous
intent, “you and Chess like Seattle so much that you would like to
stay here and not go to the Yukon with us, after all!”
With deep resignation Helen got up then and looked sleepily for her
shoe under the bed.
“You can be the most cruel thing when you want to, Ruthie Fielding,”
she complained. “Sometimes I just don’t know how I go on loving you
at all!”
It was only after a wild scramble on Helen’s part—and on Ruth’s, too,
since she was forced to pack Helen’s grip as well as her own—that
they succeeded in reaching the dock in time to board the steamer.
Ruth found her company at the wharf before her and was relieved to
find, as the gangplank was drawn up, that no one had been left behind.
“Except Joe Rumph,” she whispered to Tom, as the space slowly widened
between the ship and the wharf. “I think I could have been quite
content to have left _him_ behind!”
The bustle and activity of the harbor was an inspiration in itself.
Ruth’s eyes sparkled as she gazed out over the busy scene. Ships of
all sizes and descriptions crowded the port. Except for the addition
of many lumber boats, Ruth might almost have imagined herself back in
New York, gazing out over lower New York Harbor.
The steamer was crowded and it was with difficulty that Tom kept his
little flock together. He managed to get them all safely established
finally in the staterooms he had reserved for them, and then came
back to rejoin Ruth, who had lingered on deck, watching the shipping
on Puget Sound.
“Some crowd, eh?” he greeted her buoyantly, as he fought his way
through to her side. “This is the Yukon’s open season, and it seems
as if the whole world had taken advantage of the fact. What are you
thinking about so deeply, Ruth?”
For answer Ruth put a hand upon his arm and held up a finger
warningly.
“Listen!” she said in a low voice.
Somewhere behind them a laughing voice came clearly to their ears.
“Wonder if we’ll run into Sol Bloomberg on this trip?”
“Sol Bloomberg!” returned another voice, surprised. “What’s the idea?”
“Why, hadn’t you heard?” The first speaker was evidently incredulous.
“Bloomberg has gone to Alaska.”
CHAPTER XII
DISHEARTENING NEWS
For a moment it seemed to Ruth as though her heart sank down into the
toes of her shoes.
Sol Bloomberg in Alaska! And they were going there! Instead of
leaving him farther and farther behind with every mile they had
traversed, as she had fondly hoped, their journey was taking them
steadily nearer to a possible meeting with him, with the man who had
vowed “to get even with her if it took him the rest of his life!”
Ruth turned on impulse to face the two speakers. She had thought she
recognized the voices, and now she saw that she was right.
They were two minor actors of the company. While not taking any
important part, they were, nevertheless, practically invaluable to
the company because of their ability to “fit in” at odd and sometimes
critical moments.
They were pleasant lads, both of them, and by name, Todd and Downey.
Now Ruth turned to them eagerly.
“What was that you said about Bloomberg?” she asked, doing her best
to make the tone of the question sound casual. “I couldn’t help
overhearing——”
The taller of the two lads, Todd, smiled pleasantly.
“I was just saying that it would be a good joke if we were to run
into Bloomberg in Alaska,” he repeated obligingly. “I heard that he
had gone somewhere up the Yukon to run a gambling place.”
“Just about the sort of thing you might expect Bloomberg to do,” said
Tom, with a grimace of distaste.
“He was a gambler, you know, before he turned to the motion picture
game,” said Todd. “I suppose now that he is down and out in his
chosen profession, he’s gone back to his old trade.”
“Probably hopes to make a lot of money quick and retrieve his
fortunes,” hazarded Tom.
“H’m!” said Ruth absently. “I hadn’t heard!” She thereupon fell into
a deep study from which Tom found it impossible to arouse her for
some time.
Bloomberg in Alaska running a gambling place! That was why Charlie
Reid had been in New York to spy upon her and not Bloomberg himself.
Again the old questions came to torment her.
Had that been Charlie Reid she and Helen had seen on the station
platform? Was that Reid in the lobby of the Tevor-Grand Hotel?
If so, then there was the probability that the stealthy trailer
would not leave them there. The chances were—and at the thought Ruth
looked about her at the chattering excited crowds uneasily—he might
be aboard that very ship, hidden somewhere in this sea of people!
The thought that Charlie Reid might even at that minute be spying
upon her was so distasteful to Ruth that she made some excuse to Tom
and hurried below to the cabin that she was to share with Helen.
It was a comfortable stateroom, for the steamer was a large one and
boasted every modern convenience and comfort, but at the moment it
seemed like a prison to Ruth.
She managed to shake off the unpleasant thought and replied to
Helen’s cheery greeting in kind.
That young person had kicked off her shoes and was luxuriously
reclining on the bed reading a book she had purchased in Seattle.
Beside her on a chair within easy reach of her groping fingers was a
two-pound box of chocolates.
For just a moment Ruth thought that it would be nice to be like
Helen, relieved of all responsibilities and free to enjoy herself to
her heart’s content.
But even while she thought it Ruth knew that responsibility,
excitement, and the thrill of outwitting an enemy and overcoming
obstacles had become the breath of life to her and that she could
never again be completely content without them.
“Hello, Ruth, you bold, bad adventurer,” Helen greeted her
flippantly. “Come here and share my couch and candy and tell me how
the world goes with you.”
“I’ll share the candy but not the couch,” Ruth laughed. “I have work
to do.”
“That is the chief—I might say, only—trouble with you, Ruth
Fielding,” complained her chum. “You always have so much work to do
that you make me feel like the proverbial sluggard.”
“Well, that’s just what you are,” said Ruth indulgently. “But I
wouldn’t have you change for the world. Why, it rests me just to look
at you!”
“That,” said Helen plaintively, “has all the earmarks of a dirty dig.
But I forgive you, Ruthie—I am far too comfortable even to resent an
insult!”
Ruth laughed and took out the picture Maurice Brandt had submitted
to her, showing enlarged pictures of the interior scene shot at
Hollywood.
But try as she would, she could not keep her mind upon them. Her
thoughts returned again and again to the information she had gleaned
from Todd.
Bloomberg in Alaska! Bloomberg in Alaska! beat a monotonous refrain
over and over in her head.
“And fifteen nice long days to think about it!”
She did not realize that she had spoken aloud until she found Helen
staring at her in amazement.
“For goodness’ sake—to think about what?” inquired that flippant
young lady. “Wake up, Ruthie, you’ve been talking in your sleep.”
Of course, after that there was nothing to do but for Ruth to pass
the news about Bloomberg along to her friend.
“Well,” observed Helen, settling back comfortably to her story, “I
wouldn’t worry about it, if I were you. Alaska’s a large place and we
may not meet Bloomberg after all.”
If Ruth had her doubts about this she very firmly kept them to
herself. And as she saw nothing of Charlie Reid and no one mentioned
Bloomberg’s name again, the days on shipboard gradually settled into
a pleasant, steady routine that temporarily lulled her fears to rest.
Every one seemed to be enjoying himself, and since there was to be no
picture making until they reached shore, there was little chance for
friction between directors and actors.
Meanwhile, Ruth Fielding became better acquainted with the actors and
came to feel that she was making some headway with them.
They were more friendly than they had been at first and no longer
gathered in groups for the purpose, she could not help feeling, of
discussing her.
So it happened that the fifteen days of journey to St. Michael which
Ruth had looked upon as a tiresome, if necessary, delay to picture
making, was not so unprofitable after all. The only two in the
company who were not completely won by their new director’s frank and
friendly manner were Gerard Bolton, the assistant director, and the
humpback, Rumph.
The former maintained his “have to be shown” attitude while Rumph was
openly sullen and unfriendly.
In spite of this, Ruth was very much encouraged. With most of the
company squarely back of her and Gerard Bolton not openly unfriendly,
she could afford to snap her fingers at Joe Rumph. Or so she thought.
But events were soon to prove that Ruth did not know Joe Rumph’s type
as well as she thought she did!
The trip was uneventful up to the fifth day, which was the day of the
big storm.
The wind rose about dinner time and by nine o’clock had lashed itself
to such a frenzy that the passengers left the spray-soaked decks
almost in a body and sought the shelter of their cabins and their
staterooms.
Even below decks the slapping of the waves against the vessel came to
the passengers with an ominous, rumbling, roaring sound.
The wind increased in violence and the rain fell in great, blinding
gusts that beat upon the decks with the violence of hailstones.
“Phew!” cried Helen, peeping out of a porthole, “where do you suppose
all that wind comes from?”
No one answered, for at that moment there came a rending, grinding
noise and the great vessel listed sharply to one side. At the same
moment came a stentorian cry from above decks, the most heart-rending
cry that can be heard aboard ship!
“Man overboard!”
CHAPTER XIII
MAN OVERBOARD
For a moment there was pandemonium on the ship. No one seemed to
know exactly what had happened, and shouts and cries rent the air as
people blocked the stairs and companionways in a mad scramble for the
deck.
Helen and Ruth were among the first to reach the deck, with Chess and
Tom close behind them. There they were jostled by a seething mass of
humanity and swept on toward the railing.
At the cry of “Man overboard” power had been shut off in the engine
room. Fortunately the ship had been proceeding cautiously because of
the storm, so that momentum carried it only a short distance from the
scene of the accident.
Several lifeboats were lowered and rushed to the spot where life
savers had already been thrown to the victim.
A small object was seen bobbing up and down on the water for several
seconds and then disappeared.
“Oh, he will drown before they reach him!” cried Helen, putting a
hand over her eyes.
“No,” cried Ruth, gripping the rail till the knuckles of both hands
showed white, “there he is again! See? One of the life preservers has
reached him. He can hold on now.”
“The boats are making good time,” said Tom, behind her. “He’s as good
as rescued now.”
“Wonder who it is,” said Chess, and an obliging pleasant-faced man
behind him volunteered the information:
“Old chap named Knowles. He was standing near the rail when we grazed
the shoal——”
“Oh, so that’s what we heard below decks!” cried Helen.
“Yes’m,” said the stranger. “There was a grinding shock, if you
remember, and this old boy was jarred loose from his hold on the rail
and went overboard.”
The passengers watched with interest while the first lifeboat reached
the elderly victim and lifted him aboard. The men in the other boats,
seeing that the work of rescue had already been accomplished, turned
back toward the steamer.
“Poor old fellow,” said Ruth commiseratingly. “The shock and the
exposure are enough to kill an elderly man. I wonder,” she added
thoughtfully, “if I couldn’t get him to take some of the tonic I
have in my medicine kit. It might ward off a serious illness.”
Tom grinned.
“There’s the Red Cross nurse on the job again,” he said.
But Ruth did not smile with the others. She meant what she said, and
when the lifeboat reached the ship and the victim was lifted to the
deck, Ruth was one of the first at his side.
The ship’s doctor was already at the spot, well-supplied with
restoratives, and when Ruth begged him to let her help, saying that
she had had experience in nursing with the Red Cross, the physician
smiled indulgently and invited her to the old gentleman’s cabin below.
Ruth ran for her favorite prescription, ignoring the good-natured
rallying of her friends, and entered the old gentleman’s cabin just
as they had made him comfortable in his berth.
The doctor examined the label on the bottle Ruth held out to him and
nodded approvingly.
“Haven’t I met you somewhere before?” he asked, keen eyes narrowed
thoughtfully.
The question surprised Ruth. But as she regarded the kindly,
intelligent face of the physician, memory flashed back to her the
vision of an emergency hospital somewhere back of the firing line;
still figures on narrow cots of pain; soft-footed, busy nurses;
grim-faced, competent surgeons, tireless in their service to humanity.
“I was with the Red Cross in France,” she suggested.
“Of course!” exclaimed the doctor. His manner was immediately cordial
and he spoke as one member of the profession to another. “I have a
fine memory for faces; but as to names—” He waved a deprecating hand.
“Mr. Knowles is lucky in having so capable and willing a volunteer
nurse,” he finished pleasantly.
At the mention of his name, the old gentleman on the bed opened his
eyes wearily. His gaze rested on Ruth and an expression of pleasure
overspread his face.
“This is Miss Fielding, isn’t it?” he asked, as Ruth came toward him
hesitantly.
“Yes,” she said, surprised. “How did you know?”
The old gentleman smiled.
“Your fame has probably traveled faster than you think, my dear,” he
said kindly. “A good many people are interested in the work you are
doing.”
So it happened that Ruth stayed longer than she had intended with Mr.
Knowles and visited the cabin oftener. The more they talked the more
subjects of mutual interest they seemed to discover.
The indulgent doctor, seeing what a beneficial effect the girl’s
presence was having upon his elderly patient, encouraged Ruth to
visit him often and stay on and chat with him.
So started the friendship between Ruth and the lonely old man, a
friendship that was destined to last throughout that long trip to St.
Michael and for some time after, as well.
Mr. Knowles had received no serious injury from his fall overboard.
The shock of the fall and the consequent exposure had to a large
extent been counteracted by the prompt medical attention of the
ship’s doctor and by Ruth’s careful nursing, so that in a day or two
he was able to be on deck much the same as usual.
It was not until Ruth’s friendship with the old gentleman was some
four days old that she learned the history of the Chase girls.
The story must have been very close to the old gentleman’s heart, for
Ruth had several times sensed that he was on the point of making her
his confidante.
On this particular occasion they were both chatting idly and
pleasantly about some trivial amusing incidents that had happened
aboard ship when the old gentleman turned to her suddenly and said:
“Miss Fielding, I am a lonely old man and I was wondering if you
would mind my telling you something that has worried me greatly for
some time past.”
Ruth felt surprised but professed her genuine interest in anything he
might have to say to her.
“Thank you, my dear,” he said gratefully, and for a moment his eyes
sought the hazy horizon where it merged with the gray of the sea.
“If you were not going fairly into their territory, I might not
tell you this,” he said at last. “But since you are going there and
because, being a girl, I feel that you may be interested in the
troubles of two other girls nearly your own age, I would like to tell
you about Mary and Ellen.”
“Mary and Ellen,” Ruth repeated softly. “How pretty they sound when
you put them together, like the names in a story book.”
“Their adventures would read like a story, too.” The old man nodded,
his face grave. “Only in real life these adventures are not so
pleasant.
“These two girls,” he went on after a short pause, “are the daughters
of a very dear friend of mine. His name was Maurice Chase. As young
men together, he and my son were practically inseparable, and
later—later Maurice took the place of a son to me.
“It was only when his health failed and he was threatened with
tuberculosis that he thought of going to Alaska, not only for his
health’s sake but with some wild scheme for making his fortune in
the gold fields.”
“Lots of people have done that before him,” said Ruth.
“Yes; but not middle-aged men with two nearly grown daughters to
support, and with lung trouble to combat, too. It was an unequal
fight, so unequal that death conquered after only two years of
experiment in the gold fields.”
“Oh, and so your friend is dead!” said Ruth, in a hushed voice. “And
the girls—how about them?”
“It was about them that Maurice wrote me just before his death,”
replied Mr. Knowles. It was plain from the emotion in his voice that
he and Maurice Chase had been very good friends indeed. “He had
located a mine, he said——”
“Gold?” interrupted Ruth eagerly, leaning forward in her steamer
chair.
“He thought there was gold,” said the old man soberly. “And that one
thought helped him,” his voice trailed off almost to a whisper, “to
die happy!”
CHAPTER XIV
KNOCKOUT INN
“Wasn’t there gold in Mr. Chase’s mine after all?” asked Ruth eagerly.
Mr. Knowles looked troubled and rubbed a blue-veined hand across his
forehead.
“That’s what I don’t know and what I have come all this way to find
out,” he confessed.
He relapsed into one of his thoughtful pauses, and eager as Ruth was
to hear the rest of this remarkable story she did not hurry him. She
knew that eventually he would tell her everything, for he was even
more eager to disclose the facts than she was to hear them.
“Mary herself wrote to me,” he said, after a moment. “She wrote to
tell me of her father’s death and the fact that she and her sister
Ellen were in desperate trouble.”
“How old are they?” Ruth interrupted long enough to ask.
“Mary has just come of age,” returned the old gentleman. “She seems
to be a sturdy, courageous young person, however, and from her
letter to me it appears she is following in the footsteps of her
father, and with her younger sister Ellen and with the help of three
miners who were friends of her father, is trying to operate the mine
herself.”
“Are the girls all alone—are they living alone?” asked Ruth
breathlessly.
“Yes. But that it not the worst of it,” said Mr. Knowles. He sat
up straight and his thin face flushed with indignation. “These
two plucky children—for they are hardly more—have enemies, wicked
conniving enemies, who are plotting to get the mining claim away from
them.”
“Ah!” Ruth’s eyes were bright. “Then that at least seems to show one
thing!”
“What?” asked the old gentleman, in a puzzled way.
“That there is real gold on the claim. Otherwise these enemies,
whoever they are, would not be so anxious to get hold of it!”
“Yes, I have thought of that,” said Mr. Knowles, and he had never
looked so pathetically helpless as at the moment when he made that
admission. “But even though there is gold in the mine, that will do
the girls little good if their enemies succeed in taking it away from
them before I get there.
“And after all,” he added, with a pitiful shrug of his shoulders,
“what can an old man like me do against such villains as these
probably are? I know nothing of mines or of the laws of the Yukon
country. A sorry protector the girls will find in me, I fear, even
when I have reached them.”
Though Ruth tried to encourage the old gentleman and reassure him as
well as she could, in her heart she was convinced that he had spoken
very near the truth. An unworldly, gentle, dreaming old man, no
matter how kind-hearted and desirous of serving, could probably avail
little against the cold-blooded, hardened type of pioneer buccaneer
who would deliberately attempt to wrest a lawful claim from two
orphaned and defenseless girls.
What Mary and Ellen Chase undoubtedly needed was a young and virile
defender, preferably one acquainted with the ways of the gold country
and so would be best qualified to cope with the kind of pirates these
poor young things were facing.
Mr. Knowles did not again refer to the story during the trip. Ruth
told the sad story to Helen, who expressed the hope that they would
run into the unfortunate girls during their own adventures and
perhaps be able to do something to help them.
Then came the day when the travelers could actually look forward to
landing within a few hours at St. Michael. At that disturbing center
they were to take a smaller steamer for points up the Yukon.
Their ultimate destination was Knockout Point, a little settlement
not far from Dawson City. This was the spot Ruth had chosen for
the filming of the greater part of the picture. It would form, she
thought, a splendid setting full of local color for the main outdoor
scenes of “The Girl of Gold.” If she found it necessary later to take
steamer for the filming of some scenes farther up the river, that all
could be arranged for in due time.
Meanwhile, Knockout Point was their appointed destination.
Good connections were made at St. Michael. The small steamer on which
Tom had taken passage for his party was almost ready to leave as the
great liner docked.
Their quarters aboard the smaller ship were not as commodious as
those they had enjoyed aboard the liner. But once aboard, no one
cared particularly, since the longest part of the journey was now
over and their destination almost in sight.
The one thing Ruth regretted was that, in the excitement of landing,
she had lost sight of her elderly friend, Mr. Knowles. She thought
of him constantly during the rest of the trip and wondered what his
ultimate destination really was.
Then, a few days later, came the great moment when they all gathered
on deck to watch the approach to Knockout Point. As the steamer plied
steadily up the broad river, the excitement of players, cameramen,
and directors grew.
It seemed as though Ruth was everywhere at once, exhorting cameramen
to make sure that precious films and cameras reached shore safely,
seeing that every one had packed and was ready for the landing.
Knockout Point was a straggling settlement, extending along the bank
of the broad Yukon for a quarter of a mile or more. It had several
docks, one about ready to fall apart, and a dusty, straggling main
street of one and two story buildings. It had, in years gone by,
gained its name from a fierce fight between a gold hunter and a
desperado of that vicinity, in which the desperado had gotten the
worst of the combat.
“Doesn’t look much like New York, does it?” remarked Chess.
“New York!” cried Helen. “Why, it can’t compare with—with Cheslow!”
“Some pretty high mountains in the background,” went on the young man.
“Yes, and they look grand, don’t they? I suppose we’ll do some
mountain climbing while we are here.”
Ruth thought of and wondered about Mary and Ellen Chase. She wished
she had asked Mr. Knowles more about them. The old gentleman had not
said in just what part of Alaska their mine was located, except that
it was near Snow Mountain.
However, he had known that her destination was Knockout Point and
had mentioned the possibility of her meeting with these unfortunate
girls. Was Snow Mountain and the property of Mary and Ellen Chase,
then, somewhere in the neighborhood of Knockout Point?
Unable to answer the question to her satisfaction, Ruth was sorry
that she had not found more time to spend with the old gentleman
during the last days of the trip. He had seemed so lonesome and
bewildered and troubled! If only she had found out definitely the
location of the Chase mine, she or Tom or some of the rest of them
might have found a way to help the girls and the old gentleman at the
same time.
Well, it was too late now! They had reached the dock and from that
time on other and more important duties claimed her attention.
Tom was bargaining with an evil-looking person, whose huge mustache
and overhanging eyebrows seemed to Helen to proclaim him a desperado
of the worst sort, an opinion she confided in an undertone to Ruth.
The name of this dangerous-looking individual was Sandy Banks, and
the girls were later to learn that the only fierce part of Sandy
was his appearance. In reality he was the simplest and gentlest of
men, always ready to do a service for his fellow men, and an ardent
admirer and champion of all women.
When Tom presented him to Ruth and Helen, this gallant cavalier bent
low over the hand of each of them, his mustache sweeping upward in a
grand and impressive manner.
Helen suppressed a giggle. But Ruth only smiled, for she had seen the
simple friendliness in the eyes of this great hulking fellow and knew
at once just what type of man he was.
Besides, her mind was working busily along professional lines. This
Sandy Banks would contribute excellent local color to her picture
if he could be persuaded to act for a day or two as an extra. Ruth
stowed this thought away in a corner of her brain to be brought
forward again when the time was ripe.
Meanwhile Sandy readily agreed to transport the motion picture
company and its paraphernalia to Knockout Inn, where Tom had already
telegraphed ahead for reservations.
“You purty nigh scairt Slick Jones into his grave,” said their new
acquaintance, with a deep-chested chuckle. “You come near fillin’ up
his hull place—which ain’t worryin’ Slick none, since he leaves nigh
onto every cent he kin scrape together down to The Big Chance. Well,
sir, where do you want them things stowed?”
Tom gave instructions in regard to the trunks and other luggage, but
the cameramen decided to carry their precious cameras with them.
“So far from home it ain’t any use taking chances with them, Miss
Fielding,” said Schultz, with a grin.
Finding that Knockout Inn was not far from the river front, they all
determined to walk, leaving only the luggage to Sandy Banks’ rattling
old wagon and dispirited horse.
So they filed along behind this equipage, keeping at a safe distance
from the dust flung up by its wheels, quite willing that Sandy should
take the lead and that he should proceed as slowly as possible. It
was glorious to be on land again after the long ship journey, and
every one was in high spirits. Every one, that is, except the dwarf
who brought up the rear in a sort of sulky isolation, seeming like a
dark blot upon the gayety of the party.
They found Knockout Inn a typical settlement building, a long low,
one-story structure with more sheds and outhouses than there was
building itself.
The proprietor came out to meet them in person as Sandy drew his
horse to a standstill before the door. The motion picture company
straggled up, feeling, and perhaps looking, like a band of gypsies on
the trail.
There was a smile on the habitually doleful countenance of Slick
Jones and his hair, black and sleek, brushed straight back from a
rather low and bulging forehead, shone with unusual brilliance. Slick
was famous among his neighbors for this style of hair dressing, for
no matter how careless the rest of his attire might be, Slick’s hair
was always sleek and polished like a piece of patent leather.
“Glad to meet you!” he said now, with a manner that was evidently
intended to match his hair. “My place ain’t much on looks, but I’m
aimin’ to make it comfortable. Sandy, there! Step lively, my lad.
This way, ladies and gents! This way!”
CHAPTER XV
A BOTTOMLESS PIT
Once within the big bare room assigned to her and Ruth, Helen gave
vent to joyful giggles.
“Ruth, this is too rich,” Helen gurgled. “It’s better than any
circus I was ever at. Within half an hour of landing we meet both a
desperado and a confidence man.”
“Only Sandy Banks isn’t a desperado,” said Ruth, reaching eagerly
for a pitcher of cold water. “And unless I’m very much mistaken, our
friend Slick Jones is far from being a confidence man.”
“Ruth, how can you be so trusting!” Helen removed her hat and coat
and rather gingerly hung them on a row of rusty hooks along the wall
that seemed to be all the closet the room contained. “Didn’t you
hear Sandy say that Slick gambled? And then, look at his name, Slick
Jones!”
“From his hair,” said Ruth, sputtering as she dashed cold water
all over her face and neck. “My, this feels good! Better try some,
Helen.”
“Come on in, the water’s fine,” sang that young lady, as she tossed
a glove toward the dresser and missed. “I’ll do that thing in just
a minute, Ruthie. But first I must roam about this palatial room so
that I may fully appreciate all its beauties and conveniences.”
“Now you’re making fun,” laughed Ruth, as she scrubbed her cheeks
to a healthy red glow. “You mustn’t expect all the conveniences and
luxuries of home at Knockout Point.”
“One oughtn’t to expect much at Knockout Point,” said Helen, with a
chuckle. “Sounds kind of ominous, doesn’t it, Ruthie? Knockout Inn at
Knockout Point! Lucky if we get off without a knockout blow as well.”
“Oh, you’re horrid!” Ruth reproached her. “If anybody gets a knockout
blow it will be Knockout Point. I can tell you that!”
“All right, Ruthie, if you say so,” said Helen, throwing a kiss
toward her chum. “I’ve come to believe that sometimes, most
generally, you mean just what you say!”
When they were rested and refreshed the two girls decided to go on a
short tour of exploration. They had promised to meet Chess and Tom
outside the inn, but they were consumed with a great curiosity to see
the interior of this unusual place first.
The house followed the very simplest style of architecture within
as without. There was one long hall running the full length of the
building, with rooms opening off both sides of it.
On one side were the sleeping apartments, on the other, the living
quarters. These the girls sauntered through and found them, with
the exception of the large living room, as bare and as guiltless of
ornament as the sleeping rooms.
There was a big dining room with two long rough-hewn tables,
stretching from end to end of it. With the exception of the tables
and chairs the room held no furniture save a huge, old-fashioned
sideboard that must have been a hundred years old.
“Wonder how that got here,” said Helen, pointing to this last
curiosity. “I bet that thing is worth real money.”
“Not to me,” laughed Ruth. “I never saw anything half so ugly. But
look, Helen,” she opened the door to another room. “This isn’t bad!”
They had entered the living room, the one apartment that presented
any sort of homelike appearance. One end of the room was practically
taken up by an immense fireplace. Some big, comfortable chairs were
scattered about and in them were cushions that, while faded and worn,
were immaculately clean.
There was a long table in the center of the room on which were lying
some old periodicals and magazines that looked as faded and worn as
the cushions in the chairs.
Some animal skins hung on the walls, effectually mitigating the
bareness of the rafters, and rag rugs were flung over the rough,
unvarnished floors. An oil lamp completed the furnishings.
As the girls advanced further into the room some one rose from the
shadowy far corner of it and looked curiously at them. The newcomers
were rather startled at the apparition since they had supposed the
room to be empty and were glad when the stranger crossed to the hall
and disappeared.
“One of our fellow guests at Knockout Inn,” laughed Helen, as she and
Ruth, arms about each other, sauntered out to the front of the house
where they were to meet Tom and Chess.
There was not much to be done for the rest of that day except to
wander about and become better acquainted with the immediate environs
of their headquarters. On the morrow Ruth planned to start bright and
early in search of locations.
There was nothing remarkable about Knockout Point. A half-abandoned
settlement on the river front, with a few shabby stores, a few
scattered houses hardly worthy of the name, an inn, namely Knockout
Inn, and, set some distance back from its more respectable neighbors,
a dance hall and gambling den called The Big Chance.
Naturally the girls and their escorts did not explore this latter
place of amusement very thoroughly, although Ruth did think that on
some future occasion she might be able to use it in her picture,
provided, of course, the management consented.
But even the run-down appearance of the town in general could
do nothing to ruin the scenic grandeur of the mountains in the
background.
Snow Mountain, capped with ice all the year round and raising its
proud crest high above its fellows, inspired the young people with
awe. The crude and ramshackle buildings of Knockout Point seemed to
them utterly out of place there, huddled at the base of the mountain
and profaning the grandeur of the background.
“A wonderful spot for making pictures, Helen,” Ruth murmured finally.
“I can scarcely wait until to-morrow!”
They returned about dinner time to Knockout Inn to find an ample, if
very simple, meal awaiting them.
There in the big bare dining room the moving picture company met for
the first time since landing. In response to Ruth’s questions it
appeared that they were well satisfied with their new quarters (all
save Joe Rumph, who merely glowered and said nothing) and that they
were eager to start the work of rehearsing as soon as their youthful
director gave the word.
But in spite of their friendly attitude toward her, Ruth had again
the uneasy sense that she was on probation, that before she was
whole-heartedly accepted by them she must prove her ability to film a
picture such as “The Girl of Gold.”
“I’ll show them!” thought Ruth valiantly. “To-morrow I will begin to
prove to them exactly what I can do!”
With this determination well fixed in her mind, Ruth resisted all
efforts on the part of Tom and the others to persuade her to take an
after-dinner stroll with them.
“I must go up and look over the script and the book again, so as to
have the story well in mind when I start to hunt locations in the
morning,” she told them. “From now on,” she added, with a smile,
“something tells me I am going to be a very busy girl!”
“You are always that, Ruth Fielding!” sighed Helen. “Well, come on,
boys; no use trying to change her mind!”
In the morning Ruth went out bright and early, getting up before any
one else and leaving a note of explanation for Helen.
Slick Jones, who, as was the case with Sandy Banks of the monstrous
mustache, already felt a boundless admiration for the youthful
director, saw that she was served with a good breakfast, early as the
hour was.
Ruth started off buoyantly on foot, convinced that the location for
the taking of the first big outdoor scene ought to be found somewhere
in the vicinity of Knockout Inn.
The first location decided upon, she could then take more time in
exploring for others. Tom could do some of the scouting about for her
and, knowing just what it was she wanted, could find locations that
he thought would appeal to her.
The start would have been made. And as Ruth, in company with all
other directors, knew, the start was almost as important as the
finish. The first scene shot, the action continued on its own
momentum.
Ruth raised her eyes to the white-capped peak of Snow Mountain
lifting above the little settlement of Knockout Point, and on impulse
Ruth set her feet toward it.
It was the pride of the natives, or so she had been informed by Sandy
Banks the evening before. They even had a superstition about it. Snow
Mountain guarded and protected all in its vicinity, so thought the
simpler people of the Yukon. The nearer one lived to it, the more one
could count upon good fortune!
“So the nearer I come to it,” thought Ruth whimsically, “the more
certain I shall be of finding a good location!”
But to get nearer to the mountain was no easy task, as Ruth soon
learned. In that rare atmosphere distances were deceptive, and the
young motion picture director had to travel for an hour or more
before she reached even the base of the mountain.
It was a hard, hot walk and she rested on a rock at the foot of the
mountain before she started to climb the first of its several heights.
“My, I wish I had come on horseback,” she sighed. “I’m footsore
already. And then to think, I’ve got to walk all that way back!”
She had scarcely spoken the words when a mysterious and horrible
thing happened. The solid ground beneath her feet seemed suddenly to
give way and she felt herself sinking, sinking, into a bottomless
abyss.
CHAPTER XVI
TRAPPED
That the abyss into which she had fallen was not bottomless at all,
Ruth found out to her sorrow when she came down with a thump upon
something that was extremely solid and very hard.
For a moment she was dazed and half stunned by the fall and sat where
she had fallen, groping in bewilderment for some explanation of this
phenomenon.
She had stumbled into some brushwood that must have pretty
effectually hidden a hole of some sort. A bear trap, possibly. She
had heard that they set traps of this sort for Bruin, covering a hole
in the ground with a clever camouflage of twigs and leaves.
However, they would hardly set traps so near the settlement. Bears
did not venture this close to humanity as a rule.
Ruth shook herself impatiently. What did it matter how this awful
thing had happened? The important thing was that it had and that
she was now faced with the necessity of getting herself out of the
predicament as well as she could.
Very cautiously Ruth got to her feet. Groping with her fingers along
the dirt walls of the hole into which she had fallen, she moved
forward a step or two.
It was fearfully dark down there, and suddenly Ruth was conscious of
a chilling terror.
Suppose this dark hole was the entrance to the cave of some animal?
Suppose her fingers, groping in the darkness, were to touch, not the
earth sides of the hole, but the fur or cold snout of some creature
of the wild!
“Come, come, this will never do!” she said aloud, and gained some
measure of assurance from the sound of her own voice. “There must be
a way out of this. Perhaps I can get up again the way I came in!”
She looked up and saw far above her head a dim glimmer of light.
Again that chill of horror shook her.
Impossible to scale the sheer sides of the hole without the aid of a
rope in the hands of some one above.
“Oh, Tom, Tom, if I had only done what you begged me to and not
started out alone in this country that is so strange to me! Oh, what
shall I do? What can I do?”
With a great effort Ruth managed to control her rising panic. In an
emergency like this it would never do to lose her head. And, really,
she had been in much tighter places before.
She forced herself to think slowly and carefully.
It was evident that there was little chance of getting out of this
place the way she had entered it. Then, too, there was little
likelihood that a rescue party would be sent out after her for hours
to come.
Her very independence and self-sufficiency, Ruth realized now a bit
ruefully, might well prove her undoing. In her capacity of director
she was accustomed to roaming around for hours alone in search of
locations. So, until several hours had elapsed, no one would feel any
particular alarm over her absence.
In such circumstances Ruth saw that she must, if she could, be her
own salvation.
She could not go up, but there was a bare possibility that she might
go forward.
“If I only had matches with me,” she muttered beneath her breath. “As
it is, I can’t see a foot before my face!”
She groped forward again, and after feeling about cautiously for what
seemed to her an endless time finally felt her hand slip forward into
emptiness.
“A hole!” she thought, with transient triumph.
“Then there is some sort of passage leading from this place!”
However, it takes the highest form of courage to go forward,
accompanied by pitch darkness, into an unexplored place. Even Ruth,
valiant as she always was in the face of emergency, hesitated for a
moment before this test of courage. Then——
“Carry on, Ruth,” she said. “Better any known thing than this
uncertainty!”
She did not really mean that. The cautious half of her begged that
she stay where she was, for hours, if necessary, until the inevitable
rescue party came to her aid, rather than venture into that black
hole of mystery into which her hand had slid. But—would they be able
to pick up her trail?
“I don’t even know that I can get all of myself into that hole,” she
murmured, turning her thoughts resolutely to the present situation.
She forced herself forward again and found that the aperture was
large enough to admit her if she entered in a stooping posture.
There was one more moment of indecision. Then, like a swimmer
prepared to plunge head-first into icy water, she gave a little gasp
and entered the opening.
It was so narrow that her body grazed both sides of it as she groped
slowly and painfully forward. She was now in complete darkness. The
air was heavy and devitalized, and Ruth found herself breathing with
difficulty.
Ahead of her there came a faint and ominous sound—the staccato drop
of pebbles on the earth floor of the tunnel.
That sound caught at Ruth’s breath and for a moment she pressed a
hand hard against her wildly beating heart.
Who knew at what moment the tunnel might cave in, burying her beneath
a smothering weight of dirt and rock? Ruth knew that this was an
actual and imminent peril.
She tried to turn with some vague idea in her mind of returning to
the comparative safety of the place she had left.
But the movement of her shoulders against the sides of the tunnel
brought with it such a terrifying rattle of stones that Ruth decided
to push on at any cost.
“There must be an outlet somewhere!” she gasped sobbingly. “There
must be! There must!”
All the time she knew that the chances were that the tunnel ended in
a dead wall of dirt and rock. Any moment now her hand might touch a
solid surface, showing that she had reached the farther end of the
underground passage.
Still her hand groping ahead of her touched nothing and she pushed
on, panting, almost smothered, nearly exhausted.
“What a hideous, nightmare place!” she sobbed. “How could I have
fallen into such a trap! How could I?”
Still she struggled on, losing all sense of time or distance,
commanding her aching muscles to move automatically, convinced in a
dazed, half-delirious sort of way, that she would never come to the
end of this maddening tunnel because there _was_ no end.
“Tom! Helen!” she kept muttering over and over, staggering,
stumbling, falling to her knees and forcing herself to her feet again
to stagger and stumble on. “I’ll never see you again! Never! This is
the end! I can’t get out! I can’t, I can’t—I—can’t——”
The words died out in a vague silence of utter incredulity. She must
have gone out of her head. She must be mad at last.
There, before her, the faintest beckoning glimmer, was light!
CHAPTER XVII
A NIGHTMARE JOURNEY
Ruth Fielding began to laugh and then to cry—her throat working
convulsively.
She forced her exhausted muscles to action again, ran, stumbled,
fell, and ran again, bruising arms and knees and shoulders without
knowing, without caring!
“Light! Light!” she cried over and over again, her voice weird and
smothered in that breathless place. “There is a way out. There is!”
But the beckoning light was cruelly deceptive. It seemed so near and
yet appeared ever to recede as Ruth’s eager hands groped toward it.
Several times she gave up the unequal struggle and sank to the
ground, with all the strength gone from her limbs.
Then up again and on, sometimes crawling on hands and knees,
sometimes struggling to an upright position and, by an almost
superhuman effort holding to it, staggering onward—upward—always
toward that summoning, faint glimmer of light.
At last, to lie within an arm’s throw of it, laughing, weeping,
hysterical, panting with exhaustion.
Then crawling, inch by inch, painfully, groping toward that tiny
aperture!
At last, face close to it, the pungent breath of the woods drawn deep
down into aching lungs!
Ruth rested for a while, gathering her depleted forces for the last
great effort, to drag herself up and through the opening.
Tired fingers groping, Ruth at last managed to gain a hold on the
roots and soft dirt about the edge of the hole. But her strength was
gone. The fearful knowledge came to her that she could not, unaided,
draw herself out of that dreadful place. Her fingers were growing
numb.
Suddenly the blue of the sky above her was blotted out. Still
clinging to the edge of the hole with what little strength was left
her, Ruth looked up.
A face was bending over her—the face of a girl on which was written
surprise and horror.
“Oh, help me!” begged Ruth. “I can’t hold on——”
“Give me your hand,” commanded the girl briskly. “Hold on with one
hand and try to help yourself while I pull. Here we go!”
There followed a heart-breaking moment of slipping and pulling when
it seemed that they both must fall into the pit together.
But the strange girl was strong and Ruth was desperate. One last,
hard pull, and Ruth found herself lying upon a bed of soft moss and
sweet-scented flowers.
She lay for a moment, panting, trying to regain her strength. Her
rescuer bent over her anxiously.
“Do you feel better?” asked the latter. “Can you—do you think you can
walk?”
“Of course,” returned Ruth, and struggled to her feet. She swayed
unsteadily and was amazed to find how weak she was.
The strange girl put a slender, strong young arm about her shoulders
and spoke with an air of quiet authority.
“You must come with me—please,” she said. “Our cabin is only a short
distance away. Look—there it is through the trees. There you can rest
until you are stronger and can tell me just what has happened.”
Ruth said no more, but allowed her new friend to lead her down a
narrow path that led to a small cottage. It was the rudest kind of
little dwelling, built, as even Ruth could see, by one who was an
amateur at such work. A lonely enough place, Ruth thought, to house
such a pretty young creature as this girl who walked beside her.
As they neared the house Ruth saw another figure framed in the
doorway.
Her new acquaintance must have followed the direction of her glance,
for she said quickly:
“My sister. We live here together.”
Ruth turned startled eyes upon the girl.
“Not alone?” she cried.
The girl nodded sadly.
“There is no one else since father died,” she said, and Ruth could
see the quick tears spring to her eyes.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Ruth felt as though she had unwittingly put her
finger upon a throbbing wound.
She was glad that they had reached the house and so temporarily put
an end to conversation.
She found the other sister younger and more immature than the one
who had so luckily encountered her in the woods. She was a thin and
gangling girl, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old, and not, at
first sight, so attractive as her sister. However, the younger sister
had a sweet face, and, Ruth thought, gave promise of beauty later on.
The sisters led Ruth eagerly into the one main room of the cabin.
Ruth was to learn later that there was a tiny sleeping apartment
partitioned off from this kitchen, dining room and sitting room
combined.
They seemed pitifully pleased at having a visitor and hovered over
her with such eagerness to serve that Ruth was quite won by them.
The older girl brought her a drink of refreshingly cold well water at
once, which Ruth drank gratefully.
Then the sisters coaxed her to let them give her a cup of tea and
perhaps a fried egg and a bit of bacon. But Ruth protested that she
was not in the least hungry and only needed a short rest before she
would be perfectly fit and able to start back to her friends.
“If you will show me the way,” she added, with her bright friendly
smile.
“Indeed we will. Although we would like so much to keep you with us.”
The younger of the two girls said this with a wistful tone and look.
It was pathetic, too, Ruth thought, to see how the younger of the two
girls leaned upon the strength and courage of the elder.
She was about to ask the sisters as tactfully as she could how it
happened that they were alone in this remote place when the older
girl forestalled her by asking a question of her own.
“If you don’t mind telling me,” she said gravely, “I’d like to know
what happened to you before I came along and helped you out of that
hole.”
“I fell into another hole!” said Ruth.
The sisters were mystified at that, and so Ruth explained the
harrowing circumstances that preceded the fortunate discovery of her
plight by this new friend.
The older girl listened with grave interest, while the younger
interrupted often with eager questions.
The latter would have kept Ruth talking of her own affairs
indefinitely, had not the young director adroitly switched the
conversation to a subject which had aroused her curiosity.
“I don’t want to appear to pry,” she said, with her pleasant smile.
“But I do feel that I owe a debt of gratitude to the young lady who
helped me out of a very bad scrape indeed. And how am I going to
express my gratitude,” she added gayly, “when I don’t even know the
young lady’s name?”
The older girl smiled at this—a slow, grave smile that seemed
characteristic of her.
“I am sorry,” she said. “We should have told you before. I am Mary
Chase and this is my sister, Ellen.”
CHAPTER XVIII
COINCIDENCE
For a minute Ruth sat staring at the girl, wondering whether she
might believe the evidence of her ears.
“Did you say Mary Chase?” she queried finally. “Are you sure? Oh, I
don’t mean that, my dear!” she added quickly, as the faces of both
girls expressed surprise and wonderment. “I was only thinking that my
falling into that hole back yonder might have some purpose after all!”
The girls looked more bewildered than before and Mary said slowly:
“I don’t believe we quite understand you.”
“Of course you don’t,” replied Ruth, and drew her chair a little
closer to the sisters. “Now listen, my dears, and I will tell you of
an extraordinary coincidence.”
While they listened in a wondering silence Ruth told them of her
meeting with their father’s friend, Mr. Knowles, and that he had
explained to her a great deal concerning them, including their fight
with the rascals who were attempting to get hold of their property.
“It’s wonderful—your knowing all about us!” said Ellen, in her eager,
shy voice. “Then that makes us—” she hesitated, then finished with a
blush at her boldness, “not really strangers after all.”
“It ought to make us the best of friends,” said Ruth heartily, and it
struck at her warm heart to see how the two girls brightened at her
words.
“Mr. Knowles has been here,” Mary volunteered.
A look of doubt and sadness came into her eyes as she added:
“He is very good, but I’m afraid he won’t be able to help us very
much. He seemed more bewildered than we are when we tried to explain
to him. I don’t know—I don’t know,” in a half-whisper, as though she
were speaking to herself, “what is going to become of us!”
Ruth leaned toward the girl impulsively.
“Don’t you think you could trust me enough to tell me about it,
Mary?” she said. “I don’t know that I should understand any better
than Mr. Knowles. But I should like to try.”
“You are very good!” said Mary, reaching out a hand to Ruth.
“Indeed you are!” said Ellen. “It is so long,” she added softly,
“since we have had another woman to talk to.”
“It is that man Lieberstein who is making all the trouble,” said
Mary, her face flushing with indignation as she mentioned the name of
her enemy. “He says he located the claim before Dad did.”
“Which is perfectly silly!” Ellen broke in swiftly. “He never came
here until after Dad had taken out his papers and started to work the
mine.”
“Have you the papers?” asked Ruth quickly.
Mary looked nervously about her as though even then she was afraid of
being spied upon.
“We have them, yes,” she half-whispered, and for a moment there stole
into her face a look of grim resolution that made her look many years
older. “And we are going to keep them. One of us,” with swift glance
toward her sister, “is always awake when the other sleeps. We still
have Dad’s shotgun, you see,” she added swiftly.
“You see we are trying to work the mine ourselves,” Ellen
volunteered. She spoke as casually as though operating a mine were an
ordinary occupation for young women of sixteen and twenty-one. “Old
Eddie Jones is trying to help us, and two other miners that used to
be friends of father’s.”
“We would do very well, too,” said Mary quickly, and Ruth liked the
determined gleam in her eyes, “if it wasn’t for that old cave-in. We
have to dig down through a lot of dirt and rock before we can reach
gold. It’s pretty slow going,” she added simply, “if you haven’t the
right kind of equipment.”
Ruth frowned with quick pity. She was silent for a moment, thinking
deeply.
“You are afraid this man, Lieberstein, will get hold of your father’s
papers and then lay claim to the mine?” she asked.
“Yes; and he will do it if he can,” returned Mary. “When we both have
to be away from the cabin we leave one of the old prospectors here to
guard the papers.”
“Just what have you to prove your claim?” asked Ruth.
“A map of the mine and signed papers proving that Dad was really the
one who staked the claim,” said Mary. “We keep them all in—” she
paused while the slow color flooded her face.
Ruth never knew how near Mary had come to revealing the secret to her
of the real hiding place of her dead father’s precious papers. But
Mary suspected Max Lieberstein, and so was suspicious of every one
else. Now, to cover her confusion, she said, with a grim little smile:
“You see, if we lose the papers we lose everything. And that’s why
we keep Dad’s shotgun always handy!”
“Who is this Lieberstein, anyway?” asked Ruth suddenly. “Where does
he come from?”
“Dawson City,” answered Ellen.
“I wish he were back there now!” cried Mary, speaking with a swift,
passionate rush of words. “I wish I had some way of sending him back
so that he would never, never dare come here again!”
“He is close by, then?” It was more a statement than a question.
Mary nodded.
“He stays at The Big Chance at Knockout Point,” she said.
“The Big Chance is run by a new man,” Ellen contributed, with
apparent irrelevance. “His name is Sol Bloomberg.”
Ruth rose from her chair so swiftly that it overturned and went
clattering on the bare board floor. She caught Mary by the shoulders
and shook her, scarcely knowing what she did.
“Sol Bloomberg!” she cried. “Proprietor of The Big Chance! Oh, this
is too much! I can’t believe it!”
CHAPTER XIX
THE DWARF
For the second time within an hour the Chase girls looked alarmed at
Ruth’s vehemence. Seeing their bewilderment, Ruth strove to collect
herself and to dissemble her dismay at this new and startling bit of
information.
Slowly she picked up the overturned chair and reseated herself. Her
hands shook as she clasped them tight in her lap and her face was
white.
“Sol Bloomberg running The Big Chance! I might have guessed it
before. I should have inquired——”
“But why do you care that Sol Bloomberg is running The Big Chance?”
Mary Chase inquired, puzzled. “I wish Ellen had not told you!”
“Oh, no, no! It’s all right,” said Ruth hastily, forcing her stiff
lips to smile. “I happen to be acquainted with Bloomberg, that’s all;
and if this is the same man, I certainly know little good of him.”
“He is a bad man!” Ellen burst out with almost childish fury. “I
have heard that he cheats at cards, but he does it so cleverly that
nobody can catch him in the act. He is a bad man, and I think he
wants our claim as much as Lieberstein—and maybe more!”
“Hush, Ellen! You should not say such things unless you know,”
cautioned Mary, but the younger sister persisted stubbornly.
“I can’t see any harm in saying what one believes,” she protested.
“Bloomberg is a bad man and I hate him as much as I do Lieberstein.”
Ruth had been watching the girl with an intent interest. Now she rose
quickly from her chair.
“You may be right, my dear,” she said. “Anyway, I thank you for what
you have told me, and for what you, Mary, have done for me, and I
will try to help you both as much as I possibly can.”
“Oh, but you are not going so soon?” cried Ellen. “I thought perhaps
you might stay and keep us company for a little.”
“No, I must go back now!” Ruth spoke quickly, almost feverishly.
With Bloomberg in the neighborhood she had the instinct to return to
her company as quickly as possible. “I will come to see you again as
often as I can and speak to friends about you, and you must come and
watch us sometimes at our work.”
“Work!” they cried.
“What kind of work do you do?” added Mary.
Ruth saw that she would not be able to get away without some sort of
explanation, so she wisely compromised.
“Show me to the road and point out my way back to Knockout Point,”
she said, “and I will explain to you about my work as we go.”
As the road was near and nothing could possibly happen in the
little time they would be away from the cabin, both the Chase girls
accompanied Ruth.
“Oh, will you let us come and watch you some time if we can find some
one to stay at the cabin while we are away?” asked Ellen, the words
stumbling over each other in her eagerness, after the tale was told.
“Of course,” said Ruth, putting her arm about the younger girl.
“As soon as we start to take the first picture you may sit on the
fence—provided there is one!—and watch to your heart’s content.”
Ellen sighed with complete happiness at the prospect, and even Mary’s
troubled eyes brightened.
“If I could only act in the moving pictures just once I think I
should die happy,” said Ellen. “I would even—forgive Lieberstein!”
Ruth laughed at that extravagance, and then they found that they had
reached the road.
The girls were sorry over the prospect of parting with their
new-found friend. But Ruth was on fire to get back to Knockout Point,
to tell Tom what she had heard about Bloomberg.
“It’s a long way back to the river front,” said Mary. “It would be a
long tramp, even for some one who is used to walking——”
“Well, I’m that some one—” Ruth was beginning when Ellen interrupted.
“Look there!” she cried, pointing to a cloud of dust that appeared in
the distance. “Dust means horsemen. Some one is coming this way——”
“And coming fast!” finished Ruth hopefully.
Horsemen meant the possibility of a lift back to Knockout Point,
or at least the conveying of a message there to her friends. Ruth
was still weak from her terrible experience in the tunnel and the
prospect of a long walk along an unknown road had not appealed to her
as much as she had been pleased to pretend.
“If it’s Lieberstein—” Mary was beginning when an exclamation of
sheer joy from Ruth clipped the sentence short.
Ruth started running down the middle of the road toward the horsemen
at the imminent peril of being run down by them.
“Tom! Chess!” she shrieked. “Oh, I never was so glad to see any one
in my life!”
Tom and Chess reined in their horses sharply and swung to the
ground. It was then that Ruth saw the identity of the third rider.
“Mr. Boardman!” she cried. “It was good of you to come! I suppose,”
looking at Tom’s white, drawn face, “that this is a sort of rescue
party?”
“Thank goodness it was successful,” said Tom, and took Ruth’s
outstretched hand in a grip that hurt. “We’ve just about had heart
failure!”
“Been standing on our heads for the last two hours,” Chess
corroborated. “Thought you were gone for good this time, Ruth.”
“What happened?” asked Tom, regarding the girl closely. “Have you
been running into danger again, Ruth?”
“I’ve been falling into holes—or rather a hole!” retorted Ruth,
making light of her adventure. “But by good luck I managed to stumble
out again. I’m all right now, thanks to that same good luck—and Mary
Chase!”
Ruth turned to the two girls. They had retreated to the side of the
road and were looking on, Mary gravely, Ellen with a shy interest at
this meeting between Ruth and her friends.
Ruth made the introductions in a laughing manner that helped to put
the two girls at their ease, and before she rode away with Tom and
Chess and Layton Boardman, Ruth made the two sisters promise that
they would get one of the friendly old miners to take charge of the
mine and the cabin long enough for them to run down once or twice and
watch motion pictures in the making.
As the two girls turned to go Ruth was surprised and amused to catch
a look of admiration in the eyes of Layton Boardman as they rested
upon the elder of the Chase girls.
She spoke of this to Tom as she rode before him in the saddle.
“Did you see Layton Boardman look at Mary?”
“Which was Mary?” asked Tom indifferently. At the moment he was so
glad to get Ruth back safe that all the Marys in the world held small
interest for him.
“The older girl—the tall one, you know, with the grave face,” Ruth
explained. “Our actor looked at her as if he really saw her. And
since he is such a woman hater, you must admit that’s unusual.”
“I admit nothing of the sort,” Tom laughed. “Even a cat can look at a
king!”
“Only this time it happened to be a queen,” said Ruth, with a chuckle.
She fell silent after that, trying to recall all that Mary Chase and
her sister Ellen had told her about Max Lieberstein and Sol Bloomberg.
Was it true, as the two girls seemed to think, that these rascals
were working together to get the Chase claim for themselves? If so,
Ruth vowed that she would defeat Sol Bloomberg, and Lieberstein, too.
Busy days followed for Ruth, days of rush and strain that sometimes
found her tired out and depressed, sometimes jubilant and confident
of the success of her great undertaking.
They found suitable locations in plenty in and about Knockout Point.
In fact, their chief embarrassment seemed to be in the matter of
selecting the best. It was an embarrassment of riches.
Setting about her work with her usual vim and enthusiasm, Ruth
gradually won the confidence of her company. It needed only the
filming of the first big outdoor scene, with Ruth here and there and
everywhere at once, commanding, directing, coaching, to prove to them
her unusual directing ability.
Even Gerard Bolton, the skeptical, was convinced, and from that time
on became one of Ruth’s most loyal and enthusiastic supporters.
There were only two flies in Ruth’s ointment of content. But they
were enough to keep her constantly on the anxious seat.
The first and perhaps the most annoying, was Sol Bloomberg of The
Big Chance, whom she had found to be in truth her old enemy and the
author of those threatening letters.
The fact that he had as yet made no move to hinder her in the work
of picture-making reassured Ruth not at all. She knew Bloomberg and
his talent for disguising his true purpose until the moment came to
strike.
Ruth felt that sooner or later he would aim a deadly blow at her. She
had no defense, since she could not possibly tell from what angle he
would strike.
The second fly, also an annoying one, was Joe Rumph, the dwarf.
His original unfriendly feeling toward Ruth had been fanned into a
flame of enmity by her decision to tone down the part he had to play
in several different scenes of the picture.
Mr. Hammond had told her to use her judgment in all such matters.
So when Ruth thought that the story would be stronger and more
interesting without too much display of the dwarf’s atrocious
ugliness, she said so—always, of course, in a mild and tactful way.
Then one day on the lot when they were getting ready to shoot the
last of a series of several scenes, matters came to a climax between
Ruth and the actor.
For some time past Rumph had been “hogging” some of Boardman’s best
scenes, insisting on retaining the limelight when he should long
since have been a victim to the “fade-out.”
Ruth had spoken to him several times about this, and the last
time her voice was sharp with annoyance. The scene had been going
excellently, and if Rumph had kept to his place would undoubtedly
have been one of the best in the series.
As it was he bid fair to spoil all her work and possibly a good many
feet of expensive film.
Ruth was more patient and long-suffering than most directors, who
often “go up in the air” at the slightest provocation. But when Rumph
insolently ignored her instructions again, even her patience gave way
beneath the strain.
“Mr. Rumph,” she said, going close to the actor and speaking very
quietly, “I would like you to understand that as long as I am
director here, you are to do exactly as I say.”
“And if you are to remain director here,” said Joe Rumph with calm
insolence, “then I don’t care to act any longer under your direction.”
“Then go!” cried Ruth. “Your resignation is accepted. If you care to,
you may leave to-day. Mr. Cameron will settle with you,” and Ruth
turned at once to the script she held in her hand.
CHAPTER XX
A VICIOUS ENEMY
It is probable that the other actors of Ruth’s company were as much
startled by this ultimatum as Joe Rumph himself. The dwarf had become
so accustomed to thinking of himself as being invaluable to Ruth in
the making of her picture that her easy acceptance of his threat to
leave came as an unpleasant surprise to him.
He stared at Ruth as if doubtful whether or not to believe his ears.
He started to speak, thought better of it, and with a horrible frown
on his heavy-featured face, turned and stalked off the “lot.”
Tom, who had been watching the scene with clenched fists, ready to
chastise Rumph if his manner became too offensive, hurried up to Ruth.
“It’s all right, Tommy-boy,” she said quickly and so softly that no
one else could hear. “I’ve been just waiting for this chance. I’m so
happy that he gave me the opportunity. Now you just watch me!”
She called to Carlton Brewer, the actor who had played the chum of
the hero and who, in Ruth’s estimation, possessed unusual acting
ability.
With a wave of her hand she summoned Abe Levy, the make-up man, and
the three drew a little aside from the others, talking eagerly and
earnestly.
“Can you do it?” Ruth asked at last of Levy. “Can you make him into
the kind of cripple who will arouse a sort of reluctant sympathy from
the audience even in his villainies but that will not shock their
sensibilities by a too-hideous deformity?”
“Can I!” retorted Levy, with all the enthusiasm of a genuine artist.
“You watch me, Miss Fielding! You just keep your eye on me! If I
don’t turn out the finest hunchback you ever saw inside of half an
hour, then my name ain’t Abe Levy and I’m here to tell the world
about it!”
Carlton Brewer stepped close to Ruth. It was evident that he was
deeply moved and was finding it difficult to express what he felt.
“I can’t tell you what it means to me, Miss Fielding,” he said
gruffly. “This chance to prove that I’m something besides a glorified
extra. I’ll make good if it’s in me—and that’s a promise!”
Ruth’s smile was radiant.
“I know it’s in you!” she cried. “That’s part of my business—to judge
men—and I’ve been watching you very closely, Mr. Brewer. I’ve an idea
that you know Joe Rumph’s part better than he knows it himself!”
Brewer grinned, a boyish disarming grin that made him very attractive.
“Of course _I_ think I could play it much better!”
Ruth’s eyes gleamed and she laughed exuberantly.
“Prove it!” and with a wave of her hand consigned him to the care of
the make-up man.
“Attention, everybody!” she cried, returning to the scene. “We’ll
rehearse that scene again, leaving out temporarily the part of the
villain. Mr. Boardman, please! Miss Lytelly, you have just stumbled
upon your lover in the clearing. He is unconscious. You think he is
dead. You are forgetful of your own danger. You forget everything
as you turn his face so that you may see it! Can you cry? Good!
Everybody ready?”
The scene was enacted not once but several times, and each time Ruth
criticized one point or another and changed this or that, until she
had it exactly as she desired.
“Now then, do it just like that,” she cried at last. She looked at
the two cameramen who were doing the shooting. “Ready?” And as they
nodded, she threw up her hand. “Ready? Go!” And then the cameras
clicked and the much-rehearsed scene was recorded on the strips of
film.
At the end Ruth felt a light touch on her arm and found Edith Lang
beside her. Tears were streaming down the face of the temperamental
actress, but her face was wreathed in smiles.
“Fine! Excellent!” she cried. “It takes a clever actress to make me
weep. But you, my dear Miss Fielding, you bring out the best that is
in us. You stir the imagination, the emotions, like skilled fingers
on the sensitive strings of a harp. You are wonderful, wonderful, my
dear Ruth Fielding. I have never worked under a director just like
you.”
Athrill with a fine elation, Ruth turned and grasped the actress’
hands in both her own.
“And to-morrow comes your own big act!” she cried. “The most
dramatic, the climactic scene of the play. I am looking forward to
that!”
“And I!” said Edith Lang softly.
It was only after the day’s work was done that Ruth’s mood became a
little less exuberant.
She and Tom were walking slowly toward the inn, both thoughtful and
unusually quiet.
“That was a bold move of yours,” Tom said gravely—“sending Joe Rumph
away.”
“He resigned,” Ruth countered. Then as Tom made no remark: “Just the
same, I am sure I did the right thing, Tom.”
“So am I, as far as the filming of the play is concerned,” Tom
replied loyally. “I ought to know enough to trust your judgment by
this time, Ruth. It isn’t that. I was just thinking that Joe Rumph
might make an unpleasant enemy.”
“Oh, Tommy,” Ruth was suddenly weary and plaintive, “haven’t we
enough enemies, already? Please, please, don’t borrow trouble—or a
new enemy!”
Still, had Ruth known that at that very moment Joe Rumph was in
converse with a deadly enemy of hers she might have thought a little
more concerning Tom’s warning.
There were three of them in the private back room of The Big
Chance—Sol Bloomberg, characteristically chewing on a great black
cigar, a man named Max Lieberstein and Joe Rumph.
“We ought to be able to pull it off, the three of us together,” the
latter was saying, heavy brows drawn down over smoldering eyes.
“Yeah! Kill two birds with one stone!” Bloomberg spoke with relish.
“We’ll spoil Ruth Fielding’s picture for her and oust those Chase
girls at the same time. Real gold in that mine, eh, Max?”
Lieberstein grinned evilly.
“So much gold there is there, Sol, you an’ me ain’t got no call to
worry the rest of our lives yet. Easy, Sol, easy! Like taking candy
from a baby!”
Which was exactly what it was!
Everybody was present to see Edith Lang in her big scene. Mary and
Ellen Chase had left their cabin with Eddie Jones as guard long
enough to come down and watch the work of picture taking.
There was another little romance in progress, too, that had nothing
to do with the making of motion pictures, and both Ruth and Helen
were watching it from one side with truly feminine pleasure and
interest.
To-day Helen pressed her chum’s arm as Ruth was passing and said
softly:
“Look over there, Ruth,” pointing to where Layton Boardman, a
handsome and romantic-looking figure, was talking earnestly to Mary
Chase. There was a look in his eyes that was plain for all to read.
“Our cowboy friend has fallen head over ears at last!”
Ruth laughed and her eyes softened as she saw the trusting look in
Mary’s pretty, upturned face.
“Layton Boardman will wake up now, if he never has before,” she
said softly. “And, Helen dear, I am so glad. Poor Mary Chase needs a
protector if ever girl did in this world!”
This was the day of Edith Lang’s big scene, and all were agog with
interest. The company were all fond of the actress personally, and
even the stars of the play never thought to be jealous of her ability.
Miss Lang herself was strung up to acting pitch and feverishly eager
for her big moment.
There was some preliminary work to be done before Miss Lang appeared
on the scene, but having rehearsed this thoroughly the day before,
Ruth gave orders to start work at once.
Everything went beautifully up to the entrance of Edith Lang.
“Now, Miss Lang!” cried Ruth excitedly. “You come on the scene just
as the villain—Carlton Brewer in the rôle this time and a perfect
example of the marvelous deception of which Levy and a cameraman
are capable—just as the villain is in the act of jumping the claim
staked off by your daughter the day before. Because she is ill, you
have come in her place to protect your property. Panting, exhausted,
almost fainting, you still defy the thief— Right! Fine!— He starts
to run—you get in his way— Good! Good!— He grapples with you—his
fingers are about your throat— You feel yourself choking— Desperate,
fainting, your groping fingers rest upon something hard— Good!— His
gun— You draw it forth— You——”
Her voice trailed off and with incredulity and anger she stared at
the cameramen.
“Go on!” she cried frantically. “Don’t stop here! Can’t you see you
are ruining the film?”
Bert Traymore shook his head despairingly and his face puckered up as
though he were about to cry.
“No use, Miss Fielding. Some one has been tampering with the
magazines and cut off several hundred feet of film!”
Ruth experienced a moment of physical sickness. Edith Lang’s
big scene had been ruined, the morale of her company seriously
threatened, and all for the loss of a few hundred feet of film!
Of course the scene could be shot again, Miss Lang could undoubtedly
work herself up to “acting pitch” again, but for that day at least no
more could be expected of her.
Meanwhile her company had gathered about her in consternation. Edith
Lang was almost in tears with vexation and the sudden shift of her
emotions. Bert Traymore was standing staring at his camera with a
bewildered, hang-dog expression that at any other time would have
appealed to Ruth’s sense of humor. For a cameraman to come off for a
day’s work with an insufficient amount of film in his magazines is
an offense that ordinarily costs him his position. Atwater, who had
been grinding his machine from another angle, was in a like situation.
In this case Ruth was not inclined to be too hard on the jovial
Traymore and his comrade. She was not forced to hunt very far or very
long for the origin of this tampering. Bloomberg, with his allies,
had evidently started on the campaign of obstruction. This, Ruth
felt, was only the first of a long series of annoyances.
She carried off the situation as well as she could. Traymore and
Atwater were let off with a warning to examine their magazine boxes
more carefully in the future and to be sure hereafter that they had
the required length of film before starting out on a day’s work.
Of course there was a good deal of gossip among the actors, but Ruth
told them nothing concerning her suspicions.
With her own intimate friends she was hardly more communicative.
Though Helen and Tom were wrathful over the episode and Chess
sympathetic, Ruth made scarcely any comment.
“I’ve been expecting something of the sort,” was all she would say.
“From now on I can see that this thing is going to be a fight between
me and Bloomberg, and I’ve got to conserve my forces to win.”
After a period of concentrated thought Helen looked at Ruth oddly.
“Do you know, Ruth Fielding,” she said, “I have been thinking a lot
lately about our old friend, Charlie Reid.”
Ruth’s glance tacitly requested her to go on.
“I have a feeling that we were right when we suspected Charlie of
following us. Or perhaps he wasn’t really following us, but was
coming out here to join Bloomberg at The Big Chance. He probably
found out all he wanted to know in New York about you and your new
agreement with Mr. Hammond.”
“But we haven’t even caught a glimpse of him here,” protested Ruth.
“Aren’t you rather jumping at conclusions, Helen?”
“Perhaps,” replied Helen, with a shrug of her shoulders. “But you
mark my words, Ruth. I’ll wager about anything I own that Charlie
Reid will flash into the picture sometime before we leave Knockout
Point for good.”
“Maybe you’re right,” said Ruth, with a troubled frown. “Bloomberg
would almost certainly stay at a safe distance and make use of a
tool, and Charlie Reid certainly seems to have the bad-penny habit of
always turning up just when you want him least!”
Ruth worked hard in the days that followed, and in her haste there
was a suggestion of panic. Every scene that was shot without the
interference of Bloomberg she counted that much gained. Every morning
when she awoke her heart sank with the thought that perhaps this
was the day Bloomberg had chosen to strike. For that he intended to
strike she had not the slightest doubt.
Several unexplained accidents occurred, slight in themselves but
serving to annoy and irritate actors and directors alike and to cause
considerable delay and money loss.
There was the time, for instance, when the make-up man found his
pet jar of yellow grease paint missing just as he was making up the
extras for a big outdoor scene.
The boy actor, Eben Howe, came to Ruth in a state of great excitement.
“Say, Miss Fielding, I bet I know who run off with that grease
paint,” he said, his eyes fairly starting out of his freckled face.
“I saw Joe Rumph sneakin’ around the place just yesterday. I’d know
that crooked back anywhere. But when I called out to him, just
friendly like, he give me a dirty look and beat it. I bet it was
him,” came with all the gravity of the youthful detective, “was after
that yellow paint!”
“Probably he thought it would improve his beauty, Eben,” Tom laughed.
But when the boy had gone, Tom and Ruth exchanged glances.
“So Rumph is in this, too,” she said slowly. “They’re pressing us
pretty hard, Tom!”
“Now don’t worry,” Tom tried to reassure her. “If they don’t do
anything worse, we’ll be lucky.”
“Yes!” said Ruth. “_If_ they don’t!” and Tom did not miss the
emphasis on the “if.”
But despite the worries and setbacks, they came to a time when all
the big exterior scenes had been shot. At a few of the locations Mary
and Ellen Chase had been present, though it was not often that they
could leave their work at the mine nor dared to relax their guard of
the cabin, even when they left one of the three miners in charge.
In those days Ruth came upon unexpected proof that she had not been
wrong in her conviction that Layton Boardman really admired the elder
of the Chase girls.
The actor talked to her whenever he had a chance, and once Ruth came
upon them at an unsuspected rendezvous in the woods. Mary was talking
earnestly and Boardman was listening with the greatest attention,
watching the girl all the time with that strange new look in his eyes.
Ruth stole away so quietly that neither one of them knew they had
been observed. Safely out of earshot, she chuckled softly.
“I knew it,” she said to the empty woods. “It looks as if Layton
Boardman were beginning to wake up at last!”
When Ruth was faced with the problem of where to make her interior
cabin scene her mind went naturally to the Chase cabin.
When she suggested this to the girls they were happy to find that
anything they owned could be of use to Ruth. The cabin was hers, they
told her, for as long as she desired it.
So for the greater part of a day Ruth, Tom, and their electricians
spent their time at the cabin, arranging the proper lighting for the
important interior scene.
When the work was finished and they were on their way home, Ruth
decided that she wanted to look over the lighting arrangements once
more.
Tom proposed that he return with her, but Ruth begged him to go on
to the settlement. She might want to roam about the cabin and its
environs for some time and she knew that Tom was very tired that day,
having worked over his books the night before until dawn.
Ruth became so absorbed in the work that the lateness of the hour
escaped her attention. Now, as she once more came in sight of the
Chase house, she saw to her surprise that twilight was stealing over
the woods.
Was it this fact, she wondered, that made her feel suddenly nervous
and apprehensive? Certainly she had been out on the edge of evening
many times before and had never experienced this sensation.
She glanced about her uneasily, and as she did so thought she saw a
shadowy figure slip about the corner of the cabin. Her breath coming
quickly, she hastened her steps and passed softly around to the rear
of the house, and crept to the window.
What she saw there was enough to bring her heart into her throat.
There was a moment of hesitation; then, swift as light, Ruth darted
to the kitchen door.
At the slight sound she made the stooped figure of the man at the
hearth straightened quickly. With a venomous look at Ruth and a
muttered word he darted straight for her as she still stood in the
doorway.
Hardly knowing what she did, conscious only of her necessity of
stopping the rascal, Ruth stepped back, and as he passed her with a
snarl of rage, put out her foot to trip him.
He came down heavily, for he was a large man, and lay inert,
stretched out on his face.
CHAPTER XXI
DRAMA
Alarmed by the commotion, Mary and Ellen Chase came running from the
inner room.
Ellen was trembling violently, the picture of terror. But Mary’s chin
was up and in her hand she carried her father’s old shotgun!
“What is it, Miss Fielding? Oh, what has happened? What have you
done?”
“I don’t know,” said Ruth, trembling herself now with the reaction
and the fear that she had injured the intruder more severely than she
had intended. “This man was trying to pry up a stone of your hearth,
Mary, and when he attempted to escape I tripped him up. Come and help
me turn him over and see how badly he’s hurt.”
“Is—do you suppose—he’s dead?” asked Mary hesitantly, as she started
to obey.
Before either of the girls could touch him the man answered Mary’s
question by turning over of his own accord and trying rather
waveringly to sit up, showing a large and swollen bump on his head.
The girls stepped back, staring at him as though he were some reptile.
“Lieberstein!” cried Mary, with all the contempt and loathing she
felt for this man in her voice. “So it was you, was it? Again! Prying
and sneaking around like any common thief. You’re lucky that you
only got tripped up and hit on the head. If I’d seen you first—” she
did not finish the sentence, but made a significant gesture with
her father’s old shotgun. “I’m not sure,” she added with a grim
expression on her girlish face, “that I oughtn’t to use it yet!”
The man got unsteadily to his feet, holding to the edge of the door
casing for support.
“So you’re the one who tripped me up,” he snarled to Ruth, ignoring
Mary and her threatening gun. “Well, young lady, the next time you
try it, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
Ruth stepped close to him and in her eyes was a glitter before which
his own gaze fell sullenly to the ground.
“And you might as well understand one thing,” she said in an even
tone. “These girls are not as friendless and defenseless as you seem
to think! You and the man, or men, back of you stop annoying them or
you will be extremely sorry.”
Her scorn seemed to infuriate the man. He lost all caution and for a
moment the mean and sinister soul of him peered forth for all to see.
“You think you’re smart, don’t you?” he snarled. “Well, I’ll tell you
something. If you don’t watch out, Sol Bloomberg will get your goat,
and get it good, you—you——”
“Don’t dare call her names!” cried a valiant voice, and Lieberstein
whirled about to see himself looking into the barrel of Mary’s weapon.
At that he lost what little self-control he had left. He lunged
at the girl and knocked up the barrel of the gun just as Mary’s
nerveless finger pulled the trigger.
The shot went wild. At the same moment the man was seized by the
shoulder from behind and sent whirling into the bushes.
“You swine!” cried the raging voice of Layton Boardman. “Clear out of
here before I use this gun on you in earnest!”
He caught the gun from Mary, but before he could raise it to his
shoulder Lieberstein scuttled off into the shrubbery with all the
fleetness of a frightened rabbit.
Boardman was laughing softly, but there was no merriment in his mirth.
“The scoundrel!” he gritted. “Wish I’d used the gun on him. Good mind
to do it after all!”
He started forward toward the spot where Lieberstein disappeared.
But Mary caught at his arm.
“Oh, let him go! Let him go!” she cried. “He won’t be back soon
again. I—I think you taught him a lesson, Mr. Boardman!”
Ruth went over to Ellen, who was sobbing against the door frame and
put an arm about her. Then she turned to the actor.
“It was lucky for us that you came just then, Mr. Boardman,” she
said gravely. “Something pretty dreadful might have happened if you
hadn’t.”
“I left my cap here the other day,” Boardman explained, with his eyes
still on Mary. “I was coming back to get it.”
“Something must have sent you just at the right time,” said Mary
softly. “I shall always be thankful for that.”
Ruth wanted the girls to come back with her to Knockout Point, for
that night at least. But Mary refused, saying that they did not dare
go so far from the cabin.
“I’m all right,” she assured them, one arm thrown about the trembling
shoulders of her sister. “You’re not to worry, really. We’re all
right! We are not ‘girl miners,’ as Eddie calls us, for nothing. We
know how to face things and to fight.”
So Ruth and Boardman left them at last, though reluctantly, when
they saw that Mary could not be moved from her decision, and took the
long trail homeward almost in silence.
Once when they were nearing the settlement, the actor clenched his
hands and muttered as though he were thinking aloud:
“I should have been quicker on the trigger! I should have used that
gun while it was in my hands!”
It was then that Ruth told him how she had happened to go back to
the cottage and, seeing Lieberstein busily engaged in examining the
fireplace, how she had interrupted him and then thwarted his attempt
at escape. Then she related the subsequent hectic events up to the
arrival on the scene of Boardman himself.
By the look in his eyes, Ruth saw that she had made one active ally
for herself against the plottings of Lieberstein and the man behind
him, if only for the sake of Mary Chase.
Nor were the days to follow free from annoying, mysterious incidents.
At one time it was Boardman’s revolver that was missing, and one had
to be borrowed from an extra who could manage to do without it.
At another time it was Alice Lytelly’s special costume which it was
necessary for her to wear in certain scenes of the picture. This
entailed a hurried trip to the general store and a new dress made as
near in the style of the original as possible.
As a result of these delays and hindrances not only Ruth but the
actors as well became nervous and irritable.
“Lucky,” thought Ruth, grasping at what straws of comfort she could
find, “that most of the biggest and most important scenes have
already been filmed. Sol Bloomberg at least cannot spoil those!”
Which only goes to show that, even yet, Ruth had no adequate idea of
the lengths to which a vindictive nature like Bloomberg’s would be
willing to go in order to cripple or disable an enemy.
One day Ruth and Helen took the long-contemplated trip to the Chase
mine. They had arranged with Ellen to meet the latter at an early
hour and go with her to the mine, since Mary would already be at work
there.
They went on horseback to the little path leading into the woods
where Tom and Chess and Layton Boardman had come upon Ruth and the
Chase girls on the occasion of Ruth’s first meeting with them.
There Ellen met them and said that they had better tether the horses
in the woods since the trail from there on was so rocky and steep
that it could only be ascended on foot.
They led the horses some little distance from the road and tethered
them securely.
Both girls were in tune with the glorious day and the beauty of the
northern scenery. The climb up the little path that wound about Snow
Mountain was a delight to them. New and beautiful vistas opened up to
them at every turn of the trail.
Now they skirted sheer, precipitous descents, where one misstep would
mean almost certain death. Again they plunged into heavy woodland
where wild flowers grew in a riot of color, showing vivid faces even
in the crevices of the rocks.
“What I like about this country,” said Helen, delighted, “is that you
can have both summer and winter at once. Here the air is as mild and
balmy as a southern spring, while up there—” She did not finish the
sentence, but instead, waved her hand toward the shining crest of
Snow Mountain, dazzling in the light of the brilliant northern sun.
“It is a beautiful country,” agreed Ellen. “We love it, Mary and I,
even though it has not been very kind to us.”
It was quite a long climb, and both Helen and Ruth were considerably
winded by the time they reached the little shack far up on the side
of the mountain which marked the location of the Chase mine.
They found Mary and the old miners hard at work near the choked-up
mouth of the mine. They were busy digging out débris with pickax and
shovel.
They had made good progress, but it seemed to both Ruth and Helen
that there was still a discouragingly long way to go before the mouth
of the mine could be opened and the actual work of gold-digging
continued.
Mary’s eyes brightened when she saw them and she came toward her new
friends with hands outstretched.
“You look tired,” she said. “It was a long climb, wasn’t it?”
They answered that it was, and then Mary introduced the three old
miners. They came forward in a rather embarrassed group, a trio
of gnarled and weatherbeaten old fellows who had spent a lifetime
looking for a fortune that never materialized.
They were self-conscious and shy in conversation with Helen and Ruth
and seemed glad when they were able to return to their tedious and
discouraging labor.
“They will scarcely take any pay from us,” said Mary in a low voice,
tears in her eyes as she looked at these loyal old friends. “They
loved Dad and they feel sure if we can once get the stones and
débris cleared away we will find real pay dirt.”
“Old Uncle Eddie has rheumatism,” said Ellen, indicating one of
the old men who limped painfully when he walked. “He should have a
doctor.”
“And we haven’t the money to pay one,” said Mary sadly.
Later the girls took them to the little shack and showed them a
hidden jar half-filled with gold dust that had been sifted from the
sand.
“Dad found this before he died,” Mary told her new friends, adding
simply: “That is why he was so sure the mine was good.”
But though Ruth and Helen stayed for some time longer and tried to
appear as encouraging and cheerful as they could, they were in a
saddened and thoughtful mood as they took the long trail homeward.
Ellen accompanied them again, in her capacity of guide to the spot
where they had left their horses tethered; then said good-bye to them
swiftly and hurried back toward the cabin. She had left some one
in charge there, but was afraid the guardian might be gone if she
remained too long away.
“They never will be able to do anything up at the mine with the
equipment they have,” said Helen, as she and Ruth cantered slowly
on toward Knockout Point. “It is like trying to catch a whale with a
bent pin on the end of a string.”
Ruth nodded.
“It is the most pathetic sight I ever saw,” she said. “Those three
old men working like slaves for the girls just because they liked
their father——”
“And no money to pay a doctor for that poor old fellow’s rheumatism,”
Helen added. “I declare, Ruth, if I thought the old man would take
it, I’d pay for the doctor myself!”
But though Ruth and Helen were both depressed by their visit to the
Chase mine, they were glad that they had made it. It gave them a
better idea of the stupendous task before Mary and Ellen Chase and
increased their admiration and respect for these plucky girls and the
manner in which they set about to overcome the obstacles in their
path.
That they were not the only ones to admire the Chase girls Ruth was
informed by Tom in a laughing conversation they had a few days after
her trip to the Chase mine.
“Layton Boardman is in a bad way, poor chap,” laughed Tom. He and
Ruth were taking a quiet stroll along the one main street of Knockout
Point after a busy day. “He confided to me to-day that for a long
time he was feeling queer and thought he was coming down with some
sickness or other. What was his surprise then, to find it was only
love!”
Ruth looked up at him, eyes suddenly eager, in spite of her amusement.
“Tom! Then he is in love with Mary!”
Tom nodded.
“It affects ’em that way sometimes,” he said, with a whimsical laugh.
“Well, I am glad,” said Ruth and added with a fine enthusiasm: “She
deserves all the good luck that comes her way. She is the pluckiest
girl I know!”
“Except one!” said Tom, and looked at Ruth.
Meanwhile Ruth was working steadily on her picture.
Despite the setbacks and nerve-racking delays, several of the
finishing outdoor scenes of minor importance were filmed about the
cabin and on Snow Mountain. Ruth was beginning to hope that all might
yet be well.
Then, one day when she was out alone searching for a new location on
Snow Mountain, Ruth stepped on something hard and the next moment two
sets of sharp, inexorable steel teeth clamped upon her walking boot.
Feeling sick with shock and apprehension Ruth looked down and found
that her foot was tightly caught in the jaws of a trap.
Lucky for her that her boots were made of heavy, tough leather, or
those cruel steel teeth would have cut through to the bone.
As it was, the pressure was sickeningly painful.
With a little moan Ruth sank to the ground, wrenching the trapped
foot as she did so.
“This is too much,” she said aloud in her anxiety. Looking up at the
snow-crested top of Snow Mountain she smiled a crooked twisted little
smile. “Snow Mountain! They say you bring good luck. And I have had
nothing but the worst of luck ever since I saw you! I wish,” she
cried, with a sudden burst of helpless fury, “I had never seen you!”
As the seconds raced into minutes and the minutes dragged into hours
and still no help came to her, Ruth began to feel as though release
would never come.
She worked at the steel jaws of the trap, calmly at first, then
feverishly, until her fingers were bruised and bleeding with the
effort to free the imprisoned foot.
It was of no use. She had known from the first that she might as well
try to push Snow Mountain from its resting place as to attempt to
open the cruel trap with her bare fingers.
She was hungry and thirsty and utterly exhausted. Would she have to
spend the night there? she wondered, dully.
Meanwhile, back at headquarters, Tom had heard news of vital
importance to Ruth, news that had sent him rushing grimly after her.
Luckily she had told him the general direction of her wanderings, so
that, once on his way, it took him only a short time to find her.
His cries of “Ruth! Ruth! Where are you?” brought an answering,
sobbing cry from the girl.
His heart full of apprehension, Tom plunged through the bushes in the
direction of that pitiful cry.
He found the girl huddled on the ground, her face white and drawn
with pain, a gallant smile of welcome touching her pale lips.
He saw at once what the matter was and set to work without waste of
words to liberate the imprisoned foot. He searched about until he
found two flat slabs of stone, then wedged these in between the steel
jaws of the cruel trap. He managed at last, by exerting his utmost
strength, to loosen them just enough to permit Ruth to drag her foot
and ankle through.
“Lucky for me, Tom, that you happened along just then,” she said
unsteadily, as Tom stooped gently to unlace the boot.
Something in his face as he glanced pityingly at her warned the girl
that all was not well.
“Tom!” she cried, clutching at his arm, a sudden cold terror at her
heart. “Something has happened! You can’t keep anything from me! I
know too well. Tom, please tell me!”
“Let’s wait till we see how the poor foot is,” Tom muttered. He went
on unlacing the boot and kept his eyes resolutely averted from hers.
“Tom!” Her clutch on his arm was imperative, frantic. “Whatever has
happened that you are afraid to tell me, don’t torture me by putting
it off this way. Can’t you see I must know at once?”
Tom took her cold hand in both his own and from that moment all
pretense was gone. The depth of his apprehension showed plainly in
his troubled face.
“You’re a brick, Ruth,” he said. “I know you will take this standing
as you have taken everything else. But it’s a pretty tough one. Two
magazines of films have disappeared!”
CHAPTER XXII
BLOOMBERG STRIKES
Ruth looked at Tom for a moment, completely stunned by the force of
this revelation.
“Gone!” she exclaimed. “Tell me! Who found out about the missing
magazines and when?”
“Bert Traymore—just a short time ago,” Tom answered jerkily. He
drew off the boot and saw with a pang of pity that Ruth’s ankle was
swollen and puffy. “As soon as he told me I came to find you.”
“Have you done anything—sent any one to track down the thief?” Ruth’s
voice was quiet as she put the questions. No time now for hysteria,
she told herself sternly. This occasion called for all the grit and
stamina she possessed. No need to ask who was at the bottom of the
theft. This was Bloomberg’s revenge—the blow she had been waiting for
and dreading ever since she had heard that her enemy was at Knockout
Point. To outwit such a man as Bloomberg called for calm nerve
and a cool mind. To give way now would be merely to play into Sol
Bloomberg’s hands.
Tom nodded in reply to her question.
“I’ve already sent several of the boys to scout about. And I’ve
detailed a couple of them to shadow Bloomberg and watch his slightest
move. By the way,” he looked up with the faintest grim lifting of the
corners of his mouth, “we have one bit of startling information from
the most promising young detective in our midst.”
“Eben!” cried Ruth. “What is it, Tom? Oh, hurry!”
“He says he saw Charlie Reid coming out of The Big Chance the other
evening. It was just on the edge of dusk, and he says he can’t swear
to the man’s identity, but he’s just about certain it was Reid. He
lived in the same apartment house with Reid a winter or so ago, and
knows the fellow. Of course,” Tom added, with a deprecating shrug of
his shoulders, “the kid’s mistaken. Charlie Reid is safe in New York
right now.”
“No!” said Ruth quickly, “I believe Eben is right, Tom; and I’ll tell
you why.”
In short, jerky, breathless sentences she told him then of the
impression both she and Helen had had that they were being followed
and of the two occasions when they had caught sight of some one who
looked strikingly like Charlie Reid.
“So!” said Tom, his eyes narrowed to a steely glitter. “We have
_that_ rascal to deal with, too, have we? Well, the more the merrier!”
“You—you don’t think the ankle is broken, do you, Tom?” she asked,
regarding the injured member anxiously. “It—it wiggles!”
“Then it isn’t broken,” said Tom, admiring her pluck and the
unquenchable humor that never failed her even in the most desperate
predicament. “I think it’s only bruised by the pressure, and perhaps
a strained tendon or two. Luckily I came on horseback—and the mare’s
husky enough to carry us both.”
Before Ruth could protest he lifted her in his arms and carried her
over to the spot where he had left his horse grazing on the stubby
grass.
They rode back to Knockout Point to find the entire company in a
state of excitement and alarm.
Carried to her room by Tom, who still would not let her put her foot
to the ground, Ruth sent at once for her assistant directors and the
cameramen.
“What you need is to rest for a little, Ruthie,” protested Helen. To
the latter and Chess, Tom had explained briefly how he had found Ruth
and released her from the steel jaws of the trap. “Your poor foot
must pain you terribly.”
“It’s nothing!” cried Ruth, impatient of anything that might delay
her search for the missing films. “By to-morrow the ankle will be
well again. But the magazines! Tom, why don’t those people hurry?”
They came before she had finished speaking the words—a solemn-visaged
group of men, fully realizing the gravity of the situation.
“Sit down, please,” she said curtly. “Now please tell me whose fault
it is that this thing happened to-day. I suppose you know,” she
added, her steady gaze holding them, “just what it means!”
“We know only too well, Miss Fielding,” said Bert Traymore, with a
worried frown. “We had the take-up boxes locked in the big chest.
There was a padlock besides——”
“And that was forced as well as the lock,” said Schultz.
“What was taken?” Ruth’s anxiety made the words sting like the lash
of a whip.
“Magazines seven and ten,” said Atwater, and added in a gloomy voice,
as though he thought the worst might as well be told at once: “Miss
Lang’s big scene was in number ten.”
Ruth sprang to her feet; then knitted her brows in an effort to keep
back an exclamation of pain and impatience. That ankle again!
“I must go at once and see—” she began, but Tom interrupted her with
more than his usual firmness.
“You can’t go anywhere just now. See, you can hardly walk!”
“Was there no clew to the thief?” asked Ruth, after a moment.
“Nothing but a few greasy fingermarks, Miss Fielding,” replied
Schultz.
“But we’ve got to get back those films!” cried Ruth, her eyes
suddenly blazing in her white face as she turned fiercely upon the
three cameramen. “You are responsible for the magazines. You allowed
two of them to be stolen. Now you’ve got to get them back for me! Do
you hear? Get them back for me!”
When Schultz and Traymore and Atwater left the conference some time
later they were three very much subdued and anxious men. No one
wanted more than they to recover the missing magazines and no one
knew better than they how difficult, perhaps impossible, a task this
would be.
For a long time after they had left her Ruth sat silent in the big
chair, chin on palm, eyes brooding.
“It’s hard, hard luck, Helen,” she said, when the latter would have
comforted her. “Or rather, I might say, it’s Bloomberg! He seems to
have been a little too clever for me, after all. My, how tired I am!”
This mood of desolation lasted through a phantom-filled, restless
night, but was partially dissolved by the sun of a brilliant northern
day. When the first rays of the sun streamed across her face Ruth
threw back the covers and anxiously regarded her injured ankle.
“You aren’t nearly so swollen as you were yesterday,” she said
presumably addressing the ankle. “And I don’t believe you will be
nearly so painful!”
Very gingerly and carefully she tested the truth of this bold
assertion, resting the foot lightly on the floor, then adding more
pressure when the expected pain failed to register.
To her delight she found that she could walk. The ankle was naturally
still sore and painful, but by hobbling and by taking the burden of
her weight mostly on the well foot she could manage to get about
without too much discomfort.
Pausing in the midst of these experiments to find Helen’s eyes fixed
sleepily upon her, Ruth smiled.
“I’m only a make-believe cripple,” she cried, with an attempt at
gayety. “Who knows? Ruth Fielding may defeat Sol Bloomberg yet!”
But though the injury to Ruth’s ankle was far less serious than she
had dared to hope, still the young director found herself greatly
handicapped in the serious work of the day. It was plain to her that
she must favor the ankle and go lightly on it for that day at least.
To use it too much while it was still so tender meant that she might
be laid up for days to come.
“You and Chess will have to follow the thief,” she told Tom after
breakfast that morning. “If Eben was right about seeing Charlie
Reid at The Big Chance, then I believe he is certainly the fellow
Bloomberg would employ and the man you have to find. His trail ought
still to be fresh and comparatively easy to follow if you start at
once. Perhaps you may find the films and bring them back to me by
night. Oh, boys, please try! You know what it means to me—to us, Tom!”
“We’ll get those films if it takes a leg!” promised Tom.
“If it takes both of ’em!” Chess added vehemently.
The girls watched the two boys ride off in a cloud of dust, waving to
them until they could no longer be seen.
In spite of Helen’s earnest efforts to keep her chum quiet and save
the ankle from further injury, Ruth could not sit still. She was the
victim of an intolerable restlessness; inertia was positive agony to
her.
She had another conference with her cameramen. They took her to the
chest in which they had locked up the precious, daylight loaded
films.
With lugubrious countenance Schultz, Traymore and Atwater showed her
the padlock that had been forced in their absence, the place where
the stolen magazines had rested.
The films necessary for the day’s work of the cameramen are contained
in daylight loading boxes, or magazines. These magazines are
carefully loaded in a dark room and so become daylight loading in the
camera. Ruth knew that in the motion picture camera, these magazines
are interchangeable, the film passing out of the top magazine through
the mechanism of the camera and into the lower magazine. Here it is
wound up and carefully protected against light, to be developed later
in the laboratory. The lower box is called the “take-up magazine,”
and when this is removed the top magazine is put in its place and a
freshly loaded box takes the place of the empty one.
It was two of these precious take-up magazines, neatly labeled as to
the exact nature of their contents, that had been filched from the
chest.
“I wonder,” said Ruth moodily, “why the thief did not take them all?”
“If there were only one or two men operating they could not get away
with any more,” said Traymore, haggard lines of worry on his usually
merry countenance. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that this has
happened, Miss Fielding. I could hardly sleep last night——”
“I guess none of us could!” Again Ruth’s worry made her words more
brusque than she intended. “We must have the locks replaced at once,
and please see that some one guards this chest night and day from now
on. Although,” she added unhappily, speaking more to herself than to
Traymore, “it is very much like locking the stable after the favorite
colt is gone!”
After this conference it was impossible for Ruth to remain quiet.
“Let’s get a couple of mounts somewhere and ride up in the woods a
way,” she suggested to Helen. “Certainly that can’t hurt my miserable
old ankle.”
“We might ride as far as the Chase cabin,” said Helen, a bit
doubtfully. “They would be glad to see you.”
“The very thing! I want to learn how they are making out in
protecting their claim.”
“Oh, I guess they are all right.”
“Let us hope so,” and Ruth sighed. “Oh, my, what a lot of trouble all
of us are having!” she added.
CHAPTER XXIII
RUTH GOES TO THE RESCUE
In one or two of the minor scenes, Ruth had been able to use Sandy
Banks and Slick Jones as extras. The two added a great deal to the
local color of the scenes in which they were used and Ruth only
regretted that she had not been able to use them more frequently.
As it was, the money the young director had given them in return
for “enjoyin’ themselves,” as they put it, had made them Ruth’s
great friends. As for Slick Jones, the best he had was none too good
for this favorite of his. The result was that the girls now found
themselves mounted on a pair of gentle though high-spirited colts
that seemed aware of the distinguished company they were in and
carried themselves accordingly.
It was a relief to Ruth to be doing something again. As the two girls
cantered along through the woods in the general direction of the
Chase cabin Ruth listened absently to Helen’s chatter. Her actual
thoughts were with the Chase girls.
They soon entered the tiny path that led to the Chase cabin. Here
the branches of the trees swept so low that the girls were forced to
dismount and tie their horses and proceed the rest of the distance on
foot.
Ruth’s ankle was unexpectedly painful, and she leaned rather heavily
on Helen’s supporting arm as they approached the cabin.
“Foolish child!” Helen was scolding. “You have no business to be
getting around at all to-day. Serve you right if you were laid up for
a week after this escapade——”
“Sh-h!” warned Ruth, her fingers tightening nervously on Helen’s arm.
“There are voices inside the cabin. Listen—a man’s voice!”
They stood still and listened, holding their breath so as not to lose
the slightest sound from the cabin.
They were close now. There was the low, heartbroken sound of a girl
sobbing—Ellen probably—another passionately raised woman’s voice and
the threatening growl of a man.
“A little closer!” urged Ruth, pulling Helen toward the window where
they might gain a glimpse of the room.
Cautiously they approached the house, avoiding the door so that no
sudden rush from within might take them by surprise. Stealing to one
of the windows they peered in and saw a tableau that might have
chilled the stoutest heart.
Ellen was crouched in the far corner of the cabin, on her drawn young
face an expression of terror. Characteristically, Mary bravely held
the old shotgun, but her hands shook so—with excitement as much as,
or more than, with fear, Ruth decided—that they could scarcely bear
the weight of it.
The third figure was that of a man. The girls outside could not see
his face, but even with his back to them he suggested sickeningly the
beast of prey, stalking his victim relentlessly and about to spring.
“Lieberstein!” whispered Ruth.
She shrank back from the window and faced Helen, a fierce light in
her eyes.
“Ride back to town, quick!” she cried. “Get some of the boys and
bring them here. I’ll try to hold Lieberstein if I can!”
“But your ankle——”
“Never mind me!” cried Ruth. “Helen, please don’t stop to argue!
Those two girls need help!”
“All right. I’ll be back with some one in a jiffy!”
In a flash she was off, running swiftly and noiselessly toward the
spot where they had left the horses.
Ruth approached the window again and looked in. She knew what
Lieberstein had come after. Mary had whispered to her only a short
time before—having come to know Ruth and to trust her—that her
father’s precious papers had been hidden by Ellen and herself in an
old cow horn back of a loose stone in the hearth. But when Ruth came
upon Lieberstein prowling close to the hiding place, Mary had become
alarmed and hidden the papers in a new spot. Where they were now she
had never revealed even to Ruth, for Mary Chase had learned caution
in a hard school!
Mary had been holding the shotgun, but as Ruth looked, the bully
wrenched it from her hands and kicked it contemptuously into one
corner of the cabin.
He sneered at Mary and advanced toward her, hands upraised
threateningly.
“You’ll threaten me, will you, you little rat!” Ruth heard him
say. “Well, I told you, didn’t I, that you’d get fresh with Max
Lieberstein once too often? I’m not goin’ to be put off any longer.
Now! will you tell me where you hid those papers your Dad set such
store by or won’t you?”
“I won’t!” cried Mary, undaunted, and reached behind her for the cane
her father had sometimes used.
“Drop that!” ordered Lieberstein, and sprang forward.
Ruth waited for no more.
She hobbled as swiftly as she could on her painful ankle to the door
and cautiously opened it. The two in the far corner of the room were
too engrossed to notice her. And Ellen, reaching with trembling hands
for a chair, seemed not to see her either.
The shotgun lay before Ruth. In a flash inspiration came to her. She
stooped and picked up the weapon, then retreated quickly toward the
door again.
“Hands up!” she cried in a clear, sharp voice. “We’ve got you!”
The ruse worked. Taken completely by surprise and thinking probably
that the girl was followed by a score of others, the cowardly rascal
whirled about, at the same time lifting his hands above his head.
“Now,” cried Ruth, eyes blazing. “You utter one more threat to that
girl if you dare!”
By this time Lieberstein began to realize that he had been the victim
of a clever ruse. He had been tricked, fooled, by a mere girl.
The fury of such a nature as Lieberstein’s beneath such provocation
can only be imagined. He was white with rage, and advanced upon Ruth
with both fists upraised.
“You—you—” he sputtered. “I’ll show you——”
But there was something about Ruth and her attitude as she stood
facing him that made him pause despite himself. For in that moment
the anger of the young director quite matched Lieberstein’s. And
she possessed one great advantage over him in that her mind became
more clear and calm the greater rage she felt and functioned with an
almost uncanny swiftness and accuracy.
“Don’t come another step!” she commanded in a voice that was as
clear and cold as the dropping of icicles. “Under the circumstances
I wouldn’t mind much if this gun did go off. And if you come much
closer, maybe it will. Keep that hand up, please!”
The command was so sharp and was accompanied by such a suggestive
motion of the shotgun that Lieberstein obeyed almost automatically.
His right hand that had been wandering toward his belt joined the
left above his head.
Ruth was excited and strangely exhilarated. She was holding the
scoundrel! If she could only keep this up for a short time longer
Helen would be back with some one from Knockout Point. Her ears
strained for the sound of approaching aid.
“You’ve got the drop on me this time,” snarled Lieberstein, his face
purple with rage. “Ruth Fielding, the great director, on the job
again! You’d better keep out of this, you——”
“Stop!”
It was Mary’s voice. She and Ellen had crept close to Ruth. Mary
grasped the heavy cane. Ellen had raised the chair above her head,
ready for action.
“You stop!” cried Mary again, her eyes steely as she looked at
Lieberstein. “Ruth Fielding is my friend. She has been kind to Ellen
and me. You are a fiend. Don’t you dare call her names.”
This new attack seemed to drive Lieberstein beyond himself with fury.
He ignored Ruth and the shotgun and charged down upon Mary, face
livid.
“Hands up—you!”
Lieberstein whirled about.
In the doorway stood Layton Boardman!
CHAPTER XXIV
BOARDMAN WAKES UP
Mary and Ellen Chase were as startled and surprised to see Layton
Boardman as Lieberstein himself, though his interference meant
something quite different to them.
For a moment the eyes of Boardman and Mary met, and that one look
told more than a great many words could have done. He moved a little
closer to the girl and then turned his attention again to the
cowering Lieberstein.
It was characteristic of Ruth that, even in that moment of strain and
tense expectancy, the uppermost thought in her mind was professional.
“Our leading man was never in better form in his life,” was her
unspoken comment upon the scene. “What a picture this would make!
Almost,” with a whimsical smile, “true to life!”
As Boardman advanced into the cabin, driving Lieberstein before him,
they saw that he was not alone. Helen followed him, breathless and
disheveled, but triumphant. After her came several young miners whom
Ruth recognized as having been much in Boardman’s company recently.
These gathered about the now cringing Lieberstein, muttering threats
and scowling at him. One, more eager than the rest, reached out a
hand as though to seize the fellow by his collar, but Boardman pushed
him aside.
“Not yet, Nick!” he said. “We’ll give the cur just one more chance.
Now listen, you!” He placed himself directly before Lieberstein and
forced the cowering, sullen fellow to meet his eyes. “We’re telling
you something to-day, and a lapse of memory on the subject will cost
you your dog’s life. That’s as sure as that the sun will come up
to-morrow. Am I right, boys?”
There was an eager, growling assent from the miners as they pressed a
little closer.
“We’re givin’ you just one more chance to beat it! You savvy?” As
he often did when excited or greatly moved, Boardman dropped back
into the cowboy dialect—a hangover from those wild days on the ranch
when his name was still unknown to picturedom. “We’ve got a lot o’
patience, but where you’re concerned, it’s wearin’ thin, brother. We
don’t like you and we don’t like your way of doin’ things. If we find
you’ve cleared out for good before sundown to-morrow, you’ll have
saved your yellow skin. But if you don’t take our advice, why— You
tell him, fellows!” turning to his companions.
“The nearest tree!” said one.
“And a good stout rope!” added another.
Still a third made a significant gesture with both hands, a gesture
strongly reminiscent of the twisted neck of a barnyard fowl.
While Ruth felt sure that these threats were made simply for the
purpose of frightening the cowardly Lieberstein from the neighborhood
of Knockout Point, the gestures of the young miners were vivid enough
to make her feel uncomfortable. And she was conscious all of a sudden
that she was very tired and that her ankle was paining her.
Lieberstein’s face was a study of conflicting emotions.
“I’ll get out!” he muttered, with an ugly look. “You bunch of——”
Boardman took a menacing step forward and there was a deep grumble
from the others.
“You might,” suggested the actor gently, his eyes again narrowed to
a steely glitter, “try beatin’ it now. Brother, I’m goin’ to start
countin’ five——”
He started counting, still in that gentle drawl, marking off the
counts on his fingers.
Lieberstein, crouching now like a cornered animal, seemed about to
spring upon his tormentor. But the odds were too heavy against him.
As Boardman’s soft voice drawled out the number “four,” he turned and
bolted from the place.
The others followed him to the door of the cabin, Mary still clinging
to Boardman, and heard him crash off through the bushes. Like hunting
dogs balked of their quarry, the miners started after him.
“No funny business, boys!” Boardman warned them. “Just see where he
goes and _that_ he goes. If he is still in the settlement to-morrow,
bring him to me!”
Then Layton Boardman turned to Mary Chase and drew her to him.
“Your worries are all over, girl,” Ruth and Helen heard him murmur
softly. “You can put away your dad’s old shotgun in the darkest
corner you’ve got. For you’re never going to need it any more!”
“The close-up,” murmured Ruth to Helen, as they turned away.
“And for us,” Helen finished whimsically, “the fade-out!”
So it was that the problem of Mary Chase and her sister Ellen was a
problem no longer, even though the affairs of “the girl miners of
Snow Mountain,” as Eddie Jones called them, still needed adjusting.
Max Lieberstein left Knockout Point on the very night of the trouble
at the cabin. Evidently he realized that Boardman and his friends
meant very serious business.
In a day or so Boardman met Mr. Knowles again. The old gentleman had
accomplished something for his young friends—and a very important
something it turned out to be.
He had brought a man from Dawson City to look over the Chase mine and
ascertain whether it was as valuable as its owner had thought it to
be before his death.
The report of this man was such as to raise the girls to the seventh
heaven of delight. According to this expert the Chase mine was a rich
one.
“It’s all your doing, Ruth Fielding!” said Mary, on one occasion when
Ruth again visited the cabin and heard the great news. “Our dear old
friends up at the mine are crazy with delight over our good fortune.”
“It’s theirs, too, now,” said Ellen. “Or part of it.” And she went on
to tell that she and Mary had decided to turn over a part interest in
the mine to the three old men who had been so loyal to them in the
time of their trouble.
“Uncle Eddie can have that famous doctor up from Seattle to see him
now,” she finished. “When we told him, he—he cried!”
“We all did,” confessed Mary, with a smile. “I guess you would have
thought we were all crazy if you could have seen us when we got the
good news.”
“We all joined hands and danced around like mad, even Uncle Eddie,”
said Ellen, adding with a chuckle: “Then we all sat down and cried.”
“I’m not so sure but what I’m going to weep, too,” cried Ruth, with
eyes suspiciously bright. “Just to be in the swim, you know.”
But in her solitary moments Ruth was not at all gay. The problem of
the Chase girls was definitely removed from her mind, but she was
still living through one of the most trying times of her life.
Although Chess and Tom had thoroughly searched the settlement and its
vicinity, had faithfully followed up the slightest clew, there was
still no trace of the missing film magazines.
Without them the picture as a whole was ruined. They contained the
best, the most powerful scenes of the play. Edith Lang’s big scene,
reënacted after the first failure, was one of them. Several scenes
with Carlton Brewer, the man who had taken the place of the dwarf,
Joe Rumph, were also among those missing.
Brewer had been fine in those scenes, too. Neither Ruth’s confidence
in the cleverness of her make-up man, Abe Levy, nor in the ability
of the actor had been misplaced.
Brewer had acted the part of the cripple powerfully and well. Where
Joe Rumph had over-emphasized the part, he emphasized it just enough.
In fact, he fitted in so admirably with her conception of the part
as it should be played that Ruth was delighted and more than ever
confident of the wisdom of her choice.
Now these scenes were gone! The thief with wicked and unerring
cunning had taken the very heart of the play. And the worst of it was
that there was no time for a retake, even if it were possible to do
the scene as well a second time.
The Yukon’s open season was wearing on. Only in summer, when the
ice in the river disappears for a few short weeks, is the river
navigable. Winter comes suddenly and soon in Alaska, and those who
linger too long are apt to wake up some morning to find the river
blocked with ice and themselves marooned for no one knows how long.
None of the actors cared to remain in Alaska over the severe winter.
And besides, Alice Lytelly was wanted in Hollywood.
No, there would be no time for the refilming of those important
scenes. That, Ruth knew, was definitely out of the question. Her one
chance lay in finding the lost films—and that chance, even Tom and
the optimistic Chess, began to think was exceedingly slim.
And to fail here meant only one thing, that for the first time in her
film career Ruth must face defeat!
Knowing this, Ruth wondered how she found the courage to go on at
all. But on she did go, just the same, automatically directing the
last few scenes on Snow Mountain until all were at last complete.
The picture was finished and, more than that, in every way it lived
up to Ruth’s own high standards. And—the heart of it was gone!
Tom felt that Bloomberg might have another reason for the theft of
Ruth’s films, besides the obvious one of attempting to ruin her
picture.
“He may think it’s a good chance to make some easy money,” he said.
“Bloomberg may simply have hidden the films and then, when he gets
ready, will demand money for the return of them.”
One day when Tom and Chess were off on their indefatigable search and
Ruth had started off alone to walk and indulge her gloomy thoughts,
she saw a rider dashing toward her through a cloud of dust.
The man drew rein close to her and held out a torn and dirty scrap of
paper.
“I found this wrapped around a stone and thrown into the middle of
the road,” he told her, panting. “I guess, ma’am, it’s meant for you.”
Ruth opened the crumpled scrap of paper addressed to her with
trembling fingers.
On it were scrawled a few words in writing she recognized as Tom’s.
“Prisoners in a cabin at lower end of Bear Creek. Help us!”
The signature, scarcely legible, was, “Tom.”
CHAPTER XXV
THE RECKONING
Ruth stared at the crumpled bit of paper for a moment of quick
thought.
It was evident that Tom and Chess had stumbled into a trap of some
sort. It might be a trap deliberately set by Bloomberg and his tools.
Or it might have been—and here Ruth’s breath caught in a gasp of
hope—that the boys had struck a real trail at last and stumbled upon
the hiding place of the films.
At any rate, there was no time to be lost. Tom and Chess were
probably both in deadly peril. She must get help to them at once!
She turned swiftly to the man who had brought the message.
He was one of Boardman’s friends and admirers—a miner who had been a
cowboy in the same territory in the actor’s ranching days. Now he had
quieted his horse and stood at a little distance from Ruth, eager to
serve, but respectful.
“Can you get together a few men,” she asked him breathlessly.
“Perhaps the same that ran Max Lieberstein out of town? It seemed to
me,” she added, by way of hurried explanation, “that they were brave
resolute men, and that’s the kind we’ll need just now.”
“Reckon I can get all you want, ma’am,” the lad replied eagerly.
Then, hesitating: “It’s about Mr. Cameron, ain’t it, ma’am?”
“He and his friend are prisoners,” answered Ruth. “Here!” and she
thrust the crumpled paper into his hands. “Read this!”
The young fellow read the brief message, frowning. A grim smile
touched the corners of his mouth as he handed the paper back to Ruth.
“Guess we know whose work this is, ma’am,” he said, and added as he
sprang to his horse and wheeled it about: “I’ll fetch the boys.”
“Meet me at Knockout Inn,” gasped Ruth. “I want to get Mr. Boardman,
too.”
The miner nodded and was off in a cloud of dust.
Ruth hurried back to the inn, her mind awhirl with confused and
torturing thoughts.
How had Tom and Chess stumbled into the lion’s den? Had it been a
trap set for them by Bloomberg? Or had they actually discovered the
hiding place of the films and because of this been captured and held
by the enemy?
Useless to ask herself these questions now. The thing to do—the only
thing to do—was to reach the boys at once, to rescue them before the
vindictive Bloomberg and his confederates, thinking perhaps that Tom
and Chess knew too much concerning the whereabouts of the films,
might do their prisoners some serious injury.
The films! The films! Her precious films! Ruth clenched her hands
against the hope that she might recover them after all. She must
not torture herself with hopes for which there was, as yet, no real
foundation.
Tom and Chess were in trouble, perhaps desperate trouble. She must
think of them exclusively now.
Arrived at Knockout Inn she found that Kid Curry, the lad who had
brought her the message from Tom, had already arrived with “the
boys.” Curry was explaining the situation to Layton Boardman in curt,
gruff sentences when Ruth came up to them.
Helen flew down the steps of the inn and flung her arms about her
chum.
“Ruth!” she cried, her pretty face drawn with anxiety, “what is this
I hear about the boys?”
“Let’s get started and I’ll tell you,” said Ruth. She scarcely knew
her own voice, it sounded so strained and queer.
Boardman came up to her, chin thrust out, his determined eyes
gleaming under heavy brows.
“We’ll get them, Miss Fielding!” he promised grimly. “There is not
a man here but what has some private and personal grudge against
Bloomberg. May the Fates help him if we lay hands on him to-day!”
“Then let us hurry—hurry!” begged Ruth passionately. “We must not
waste a moment! Are you all ready?”
“Ready!” cried Boardman, and there came eager assent from the men.
At Boardman’s request, two horses had been made ready for the girls.
They sprang to the saddle and intimated by slackened rein that the
animals might set their own pace.
It was a good one, and as the posse dashed along the dusty road it
presented a formidable appearance.
“Mean business, Slick, I reckon,” said Sandy Banks, twirling the
upturning ends of his magnificent mustache thoughtfully. “Wouldn’t
care to be in that Bloomberg’s shoes, no way you might look at it.”
“I’d like to be in Bloomberg’s pocket though,” said the mournful
Slick Jones, feeling ruefully of his own flat wallet. “Might get back
some of what’s owing me from that there sneakin’ crook. You can take
it from me, my lad, that whatever Sol Bloomberg gets, it ain’t one,
two, three to what’s owin’ him!”
Meanwhile, Boardman and Kid Curry had taken the lead in the rescue
party.
“You know Bear Creek better than I do,” Ruth explained. Then, as she
felt again the urge of haste: “Oh, we must hurry! Hurry!”
But when they had nearly reached their destination it was Ruth who
again took the lead. She knew that the cabin must be approached
with great caution. To warn Bloomberg of their approach would rob
their attack of the great advantage it now possessed, the element of
surprise.
The party proceeded cautiously on foot, Helen and Ruth close
together, the men following one by one, as stealthy and grim as
Indians. Not so much as a snapped twig betrayed their approach.
“There’s the cabin,” Helen whispered suddenly, as a tumble-down hut
loomed through the thinning shrubbery. “Oh, Ruth,” with a moment of
sheer panic, “what is happening to Chess—to Tom—inside that place!”
“Sh-h!” whispered Ruth. “Helen, dear, we shall soon find out!”
Ruth Fielding was trembling with excitement. Her knees felt weak,
unable to bear her weight. But she forced herself to go forward,
praying a little wildly beneath her breath.
“Oh, Lord, keep them safe! Just a little longer—just a moment
longer—” Her dry lips formed the words but no sound came.
They reached the cabin and managed, in accordance with a whispered
command from Layton Boardman, to surround it without disturbing
whoever might be within.
Her heart pounding in her throat, Ruth crept close to a window and
looked within. Helen was close beside her. Her cold hand stole into
Ruth’s and held it tight.
The pane was so encrusted with dirt that for a moment it was
impossible to see what was within the room. Then one by one objects
began to stand out more clearly.
Tom and Chess were lying on the floor, hands bound behind them. Their
clothing was disheveled, their faces encrusted with dirt. Grouped
about them in various attitudes were three men—Sol Bloomberg, chewing
his inevitable unlighted cigar and evidently taking huge delight
in the proceedings; Joe Rumph, scowling, grotesque, hideous in his
deformity; and—Charlie Reid!
Then, Charlie Reid had followed them all the way from New York! It
had been Charlie Reid, then, and no other, whom Eben Howe had seen
furtively leaving the door of Knockout Inn! It was Charlie Reid, too,
in all probability, who had stolen the films, acting, as always, as
the tool of Sol Bloomberg!
“So!” the girls heard Bloomberg say, his oily voice thick and
gloating with triumph, “you thought you would be so smart, didn’t
you? What good has it done you to find the films? I ask you that?”
Ruth’s heart leaped at the words and she gripped Helen’s arm.
“By the time your friends find you,” Bloomberg’s mocking voice went
on, “those films will be where you cannot touch them—and me also.
Where will your great Ruth Fielding be then, I ask you——”
“Right here, Sol Bloomberg!” Ruth spoke from the open doorway, her
head held high, eyes flashing. Behind her stood Layton Boardman and
several of the miners. “And now,” her voice rang through the place,
“where are my films?”
Bloomberg stared as though he had seen a ghost. His cigar hung limp
from flaccid lips. Then with a roar like a wounded bull, he sprang to
his feet and dashed for the window.
The move was so sudden and catlike that the rascal was fairly through
the window before any one could move to stop him.
The next moment there came a report, followed by a cry of rage and
pain. Ruth and Helen rushed to the window. Bloomberg was prostrate on
the ground, blood streaming from a wound in his leg. Above him stood
Kid Curry, the smoking revolver still in his hand.
“You will tote two aces, you sneakin’ crook!” growled the lad,
touching the wounded man contemptuously with his foot. “Next time
maybe I won’t shoot so low!”
Ruth turned back into the room. Her hands were clenched, her mouth
felt dry.
It took only a glance to show her that both Rumph and Charlie Reid
were in the hands of Boardman and his men.
She rushed over to Tom. He had struggled to a sitting position and
was trying to spit out the filthy rag that gagged him.
With the aid of Boardman’s knife, Ruth freed him.
“Tom, what have they done to you? Are you hurt? Oh, Tom!”
“I’m all right,” said Tom thickly, his tongue swollen and cracked.
“Get the—films——”
“The films!” gasped Ruth. “Where, Tom?”
Tom nodded toward the farther end of the room.
“Trapdoor,” he muttered. “Uneven place—pry up—films there——”
Before he had finished Ruth and Boardman were down on their knees
beside the place Tom indicated. It took them only a moment to find
the uneven spot in the flooring—another to lift the loosened section
and disclose the hole beneath!
Ruth gave a strangled laugh and plunged her hand into the aperture.
“The films!” she cried. “My precious films! Tom—Helen—I think I’ll
just die—of joy!”
“‘The Girl of Gold,’” said Layton Boardman, looking gravely down upon
her, “is saved!”
* * * * *
Such rejoicing as there was at Knockout Point that night!
Tom and Chess appeared little the worse for the wear and tear of
their harrowing experience. Stiff and sore they were, for a fact, but
so elated over the success of their detective work that a few small
bodily ills meant nothing to them.
They had, it appeared, chanced to see Charlie Reid emerge from the
back door of The Big Chance. The fellow had glanced furtively along
the street, but had not looked up to the second story window of a
near-by building where Tom and Chess were, talking and joking with
Sandy Banks. The two young men had hurried down the stairs and had
followed Reid to the cabin and had crept upon him as he was in the
act of looking into the hiding place of the films, apparently to see
if they were still safe.
But suddenly, just when they had seemed in sight of victory, they had
been set upon from behind by Bloomberg and the powerful Rumph. They
had both been knocked out by a vicious blow on the head and when
they came back to consciousness found themselves gagged and bound.
“I managed to get my hands loose,” said Tom, “and when nobody was
looking scribbled the note to you, Ruth. I had to wait until they had
turned their backs for a minute, and then I chucked the note wrapped
in a stone I found on the cabin floor as far out of the door as I
could. It must have landed pretty far down the ravine and it was just
luck that any one found it.”
Every one was hilarious, especially the cameramen, who insisted on
having a special feast that night at Knockout Point, for which they
would stand treat.
“Anything up to a million dollars,” cried Bert Traymore, slapping Tom
on the back. “That’s the way I feel to-night!”
“Glad to get your films back?” Tom asked a little later, as he stood
close to Ruth, smiling at the merry scene. “Just a little?”
“And how about getting you back?” asked Ruth, her eyes full of
gratitude as she lifted them to Tom. “You took such risks, Tom—you
and Chess. I am so thankful we got to the cabin—in time!
“And Snow Mountain,” she added softly, after a short pause filled
with pleasant thoughts, “_is_ lucky, after all!”
Some time had passed since that dramatic scene in the tumble-down
cabin near Knockout Point—time enough to permit Ruth and her company
to accomplish the return journey through the wonderful country of
blue glaciers and midnight sun back to Seattle and from there by the
more prosaic overland route to New York.
They came triumphantly, bearing with them the completed film version
of “The Girl of Gold.”
Bloomberg had been taken to a hospital at Dawson City, there to await
trial for theft when he had sufficiently recovered from his wound.
Charlie Reid and Joe Rumph were also under restraint, to be tried as
his confederates.
“Didn’t I tell you we could beat the whole pack of them?” Tom said
once, when the company were nearing New York. “Neither Bloomberg nor
Charlie Reid will bother you for some time to come.”
“Which,” Ruth answered with a sigh of utter content, “is a tremendous
comfort to me, Tommy-boy!”
Mr. Hammond was on hand in New York to greet Ruth with hearty
enthusiasm and congratulations.
“Wait till you see the film before you praise me too much,” Ruth
warned him, laughing.
“We’ll arrange for a special view at once,” Mr. Hammond told her.
“But meanwhile, Miss Ruth Fielding, if _you_ say the film is good, I
am quite willing to take your word.”
Within a few days after their return to New York, Ruth and Tom and
some members of their company, together with Helen and Chess, found
themselves assembled in the projection room for a private view of
“The Girl of Gold.”
Mr. Hammond was there, of course, and the same group of men who had
first met Ruth in his office, including Jim McCarty and the dubious
Raymond Howell. Ruth had descried the author of the book, too, who
came in late just as the lights went down. No wonder the hand of the
young director was cold as she slipped it into Helen’s.
“Don’t be nervous, honey,” said the latter, with a warm squeeze of
the hand. “As our friend, Mary Chase, would say, ‘you have no call to
be!’”
“I had a letter from Mary to-day,” Ruth answered. “She says the men
that Mr. Knowles and Layton Boardman set to working the mine have
found it richer in gold than they originally supposed. She is coming
on with Ellen as soon as she can leave the mine——”
“And then Mary and your handsome actor will be married,” concluded
Helen happily. “What a darling little romance we stumbled into, Ruth
Fielding!”
“Hush!” said Ruth, pressing her fingers. “It has started!”
When the lights went up again Ruth was surrounded by an enthusiastic
group of actors, directors and friends.
Mr. Hammond pushed his way through them and held out his hand.
“The best you have ever done, Ruth Fielding!” he said. “You have
convinced even the most skeptical. I can’t,” with a ring of true
emotion in his voice, “ever thank you enough.”
“Your enthusiasm is all the thanks I want,” cried Ruth, eyes shining.
But when the author of the book himself found his way to Ruth and
told her that he would not have a scene, a gesture, changed, it
seemed to Ruth that her cup of happiness was full.
It was a long, long time before Tom could separate her from the group
of her ardent admirers and say a word alone to her.
“It was great, Ruth,” he told her, with enthusiasm. “You’ve done what
no other person in this room could do!”
“With your help, Tom,” the girl reminded him gently. “The picture
would have been ruined, you know, if you—and Chess—had not recovered
the stolen films.”
Her glance chanced to rest upon Chess and Helen. Under cover of the
general excitement the two were holding hands like a couple of
children. They were quite patently absorbed in each other.
Ruth laughed as a whimsical recollection crossed her mind.
“I thought Chess was going to the Yukon on business!” she said. “To
me the business end of it seemed conspicuous by its absence!”
Tom grinned.
“Chess believes in never letting business interfere with pleasure,”
he said. “Anyway, we all had a good time,” looking down at her.
“Didn’t we?”
“Yes,” said Ruth, rousing herself from a dreamy musing. “We did, Tom.
But the ending is the best of all!”
THE END
THE RUTH FIELDING SERIES
By ALICE B. EMERSON
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_12mo. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors. Price 50 cents per volume.
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Ruth Fielding was an orphan and came to live with her miserly uncle.
Her adventures and travels make stories that will hold the interest
of every reader.
Ruth Fielding is a character that will live in juvenile fiction.
1. RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
2. RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL
3. RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
4. RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
5. RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
6. RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
7. RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
8. RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES
9. RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES
10. RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE
11. RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE
12. RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE
13. RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS
14. RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT
15. RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND
16. RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST
17. RUTH FIELDING IN THE GREAT NORTHWEST
18. RUTH FIELDING ON THE ST. LAWRENCE
19. RUTH FIELDING TREASURE HUNTING
20. RUTH FIELDING IN THE FAR NORTH
21. RUTH FIELDING AT GOLDEN PASS
22. RUTH FIELDING IN ALASKA
23. RUTH FIELDING AND HER GREAT SCENARIO
24. RUTH FIELDING AT CAMERON HALL
25. RUTH FIELDING CLEARING HER NAME
26. RUTH FIELDING IN TALKING PICTURES
27. RUTH FIELDING AND BABY JUNE
28. RUTH FIELDING AND HER DOUBLE
29. RUTH FIELDING AND HER GREATEST TRIUMPH
30. RUTH FIELDING AND HER CROWNING VICTORY
These books may be purchased wherever books are sold
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volume._
_Postage 10 cents additional._
1. THE SECRET OF THE RED SCARF
A case of mistaken identity at a masquerade leads Kay into a
delightful but mysterious secret.
2. THE STRANGE ECHO
Lost Lake had two mysteries—an old one and a new one. Kay, visiting
there, solves both of them by deciphering a strange echo.
3. THE MYSTERY OF THE SWAYING CURTAINS
Heavy draperies swaying in a lonely mansion give the clue which is
needed to solve a mystery that has defied professional investigators
but proves to be fun for the attractive and clever Kay Tracey.
4. THE SHADOW ON THE DOOR
Was the shadow on the door made by a human being or an animal?
Apparently without explanation Kay Tracey, after some exciting work
solved the mystery and was able to help a small child out of an
unfortunate situation.
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 30 Changed: the entire picture without actualling
to: the entire picture without actually
pg 118 Changed: Bears did not venture thus close
to: Bears did not venture this close
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