Ruth Fielding In the Saddle; College Girls in the Land of Gold

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

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

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

“Sure,” agreed Flapjack.

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

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

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

“Let’s stake it all off,” said Helen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIX – SOMETHING UNEXPECTED

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

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

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

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

“Now, Pop, be sensible!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Brothers, I s’pose?” said Min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The young man looked much worried. He said suddenly:

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XX – THE MAD STALLION

Somehow Ruth Fielding could not find herself subscribing to this opinion of “the hermit” so flatly stated by Min Peters. She begged the prospector’s daughter to hush.

“Let us not say anything to each other that we will later be sorry for. Of course, we all understand – and must admit – that the finding of this gold-bearing ledge is a matter that cannot be long kept from the general public.”

“Sure! There’ll be a rush,” growled Flapjack.

“And when this feller’s men git here they’ll hog it all,” declared Min.

“They won’t hog our claims – not unless I’m dead,” said her father violently.

“Oh, hush! hush!” cried Ruth again. “This is no way to talk. We can stake out our claims and the other girls can stake out theirs. You understand we honestly found this ore just the same as you and your partner did?” she added to the lame young man.

“I found it first,” he said, gloomily. “I found it months ago – ”

“Great cats!” broke in Flapjack. “Why didn’t you file on it, then, and git started?”

“Yes, Mr. Royal,” said Ruth, puzzled. “Why the delay?”

“Well, you see, I hadn’t any money. I had to write to – to my partner. Ahem! I had to get money through my partner. I was afraid to file on the claim for fear the news would spread and the whole ridge be overrun with prospectors before I could be sure of mine.”

“And what you considered yours was the cream of it all,” repeated Min, quickly.

“Well! I found it, didn’t I?” he demanded.

“We were going to do the same thing ourselves,” Ruth said. “Let us be fair, Min.”

“But this feller means to git it all,” snapped the prospector’s daughter, nodding at “the hermit.”

“It means a lot to me – this business,” the young man muttered. “More than I can tell you. It means everything to me.”

He spoke so earnestly that the trio felt uncomfortable. Even Min did not seem able to ask another personal question. Her father drawled:

“Seems to me I seen you ’round Yucca, didn’t I, Mister?”

“Yes. I stayed there for a while. With a man named Braun.”

“Yep. Out on the trail to Kaster.”

“Yes,” said “the hermit.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Ruth, suddenly. “Was his rural delivery box number twenty-four?”

“What?” asked “the hermit.” “Yes, it was.”

Ruth opened her lips again; then she shut them tightly. She would not speak further of this subject before Flapjack and Min.

“Well,” the latter said irritably. “No use standin’ here all day. We’re goin’ to stake out them claims and put up notices. And we don’t want ’em teched, neither.”

“If mine are not touched you may be sure I shall not interfere with yours,” said the young man stiffly, turning his back on them and hobbling to his waiting pony.

Ruth wanted to say something else to him; then she hesitated. Then the young man rode away, the crutches dangling over his shoulder by a cord.

She left Peters and Min to stake out the claims, having written the notices for her own, and for Helen’s and Jennie’s and Rebecca Frayne’s claims as well. It was agreed that nothing was to be said at the camp about the find. As soon as she arrived she took Helen and Jennie aside and warned them.

“As Min says, we’ll ‘button up our lips,’” Jennie said. “Oh, I can keep a secret! But who will go to Kingman to file on the claims?”

That was what was puzzling Ruth. Flapjack, who knew all about such things – and knew the shortest trail, of course – was not to be trusted. He had money in his pocket and as Min said, a little money drove the man to drink.

“And Min can’t go. She is needed in several further scenes of the picture,” groaned Ruth.

“I tell you what,” Helen said eagerly, “we have just got to take one other person into our confidence.”

“You are right,” agreed Ruth. “I know whom you mean, Nell. Tom, of course.”

“Yes, Tom is perfectly safe,” said Helen. “He won’t even go up there and stake out a claim for himself if I tell him not to. But he will rush to Kingman and file on our claims.”

“And take these specimens of ore to the assayer,” put in Ruth.

It was so agreed, and when Min and her father reappeared at the camp the suggestion was made to them. Evidently the Western girl had been much puzzled about this very thing and she hailed the suggestion with acclaim.

“Seems to me I ought to be the one to file on them claims,” Flapjack said slowly. “And takin’ one more into this thing means spreadin’ it out thinner.”

“I wouldn’t trust you to go to Kingman with money in your pocket,” declared his daughter frankly. “You know, Pop, you said long ago that if ever you did strike it rich you was goin’ to be a gentleman and cut out all the rough stuff.”

“That’s right,” admitted Mr. Peters. “Me for a plug hat and a white vest with a gold watchchain across it, and a good seegar in my mouth. Yes, sir! That’s me. And a feller can’t afford to git ’toxicated and roll ’round the streets with them sort of duds on – no sir! If this is my lucky strike I’ve sure got to live up to it.”

Ruth wondered if clothes were going to make such a vast difference to both Min and her father. Yet lesser things than clothes have been elements of regeneration in human lives.

However, it was agreed that Tom must be taken into the gold hunters’ confidence. He was certainly surprised and wanted to rush right over to look at the ridge. But they showed him the gold-bearing ore instead and he had to be satisfied with that.

For time was pressing. “The hermit’s” partner might return with a crowd of hired workers and trouble might ensue. Without doubt Royal and his mate had intended to open the entire length of the ledge and gain possession of it. The mining law made it imperative that the claims should be of a certain area and each claim must be worked within so many months. But there are ways of circumventing the law in Arizona as well as in other places.

“I wonder who that partner of the lame fellow is?” Ruth murmured, as they were talking it over while Tom Cameron was making his preparations for departure.

“Same name as R’yal,” said Min, briefly. “Must be brothers.”

This statement rather puzzled Ruth. It certainly dissipated certain suspicions she had gained from her visits to the cabin in the distant arroyo, where “the hermit” lived.

Tom left the camp before night, carrying a good map of the trails to the north as far as Kingman. He was supposed to be going on some private errand for himself, and as he had no connection at all with the moving picture activities his departure was scarcely noted.

Besides, Mr. Grimes and the actors were just then preparing for one of the biggest scenes to be incorporated in the film of “The Forty-Niners.” This was the hold-up of the wagon train by Indians and it was staged on the old trail leading south out of Freezeout.

The wagons that had carted the paraphernalia over from Yucca had tops just like the old emigrant wagons in ‘49. There were only a few real Indians in Mr. Grimes’ company; but some of the cowboys dressed in Indian war-dress. For picture purposes there seemed a crowd of them when the action took place.

Everybody went out to see the film taken, and the fight and massacre of the gold hunters seemed very realistic. Indeed, one part of it came near to being altogether too realistic.

One of the punchers working with the company had announced before that there was either a bunch of wild horses in the vicinity, or a lone stallion strayed from some ranch. The horse in question had been sighted several times, and its hoofprints were often seen within half a mile of Freezeout.

The girls, while riding in a party through the hills, had spied the black and white creature, standing on a pinnacle and gazing, snorting, down upon the bridled ponies. The lone horse seemed to be attracted by those of his breed, yet feared to approach them while under the saddle. And, of course, the horses of the outfit were all picketed near the camp.

In the midst of the rehearsal of the Indian hold-up, when the emigrant’s ponies were stampeded by the redskins, the lone horse appeared and, snorting and squealing, tried to join the herd of tame horses and lead them away.

“It’s an ‘old rogue’ stallion, that’s what it is,” Ben Lester, one of the real Indians remarked. He had been to Harvard and had come back to his family in Arizona to straighten out business affairs, and was waiting for the Government to untangle much red tape before getting his share of the Southern Ute grant.

“He acts like he was locoed to me,” declared Felix Burns, the horse wrangler, who, much to his disgust, had to “act in them fool pitchers” as well as handle the stock for the outfit. “Looky there! If he comes for you, beat him off with your quirts. A bite from him might send man or beast jest as crazy as a mad dog.”

“Do you mean that the stallion is really mad?” asked Ruth, who was riding near the Indians, but, of course, out of the focus of the camera.

“Just as mad as a dog with hydrophobia – and just as dangerous,” declared Ben. “You ladies keep back. We may have to beat the brute off. He’s a pretty bird, but if he’s locoed, he’d better be dead than afoot – poor creature.”

The strangely acting stallion did not come near enough, however, for the boys to use their quirts. Nor did he bite any of the loose horses. He seemed to have an idea of leading the pack astray, that was all; and when the ponies were rounded up the stallion disappeared again, whistling shrilly, over the nearest ridge.

CHAPTER XXI – A PERIL OF THE SADDLE

Helen and Jennie, as they had promised, kept away from the ridge where the gold-bearing rock had been found. But the next afternoon when Ruth went for a gallop over the hills she chose a direction that would bring her around to the rear of the ledge.

She left her pony and climbed the hill on foot. For some distance along the length of the ledge and toward what was believed to be the richer end, Flapjack and Min had staked out the claims. They followed the two staked by the lame young man and his partner, and “R. Fielding” was on the notice stuck up on the one next to the claims of the mysterious young man and his partner.

“Well, nobody’s disturbed them, that is sure. Tom is pounding away just as fast as he can go for Kingman. Dates and time mean much in establishing mining claims, I believe. But if Tom gets to the county office and files on these claims before this other party can get on the site to jump them – if that is what they really mean to do – in the end we ought to be able to get judgment in the courts.”

Yet, somehow, she could not believe that “the hermit” was the sort of man who would do anything crooked. Satisfied that none of the stakes had been disturbed she returned to her pony and started him into the east again.

In a few moments she found herself following that half-defined path that she had ridden on the day she had first seen the secret cabin and the lame man in it. She had never mentioned this adventure to any of the girls. Ruth was, by nature, cautious without being really secretive. And when a second person was a party to any secret she was not the girl to chatter.

She hesitated, if the pony did not, in following this route. Half a dozen times she might have pulled out and taken a side turn, or ridden into another arroyo and so escaped seeing that hidden cabin again.

It must be confessed, however, that Ruth Fielding was curious. Very curious indeed. And she had reason to be. The gymnasium cap she had seen in “the hermit’s” cabin pointed to a most astounding possibility. She had not believed in the first place that “the hermit” was entirely alone in this wild and lonely spot. Now he had admitted the existence of a partner. Who was it?

She was deep in thought as her pony carried her at an easy canter down into the arroyo at the far end of which the cabin stood. Suddenly her mount lifted his head and challenged.

“Whoa! what’s the matter with you? What are you squealing at?” demanded Ruth, tightening her grasp on the reins.

She glanced around and saw nothing at first. Then the pony squealed again, and as it did so there came an answering equine hail from the mesquite. There was a crash in the bushes; then out upon the open ground charged the lone stallion that had the day before troubled the picture making company.

There was good blood in the handsome brute. He was several hands higher than the cow pony, and his legs were as slender and shapely as a Morgan’s. His muzzle was as glossy as satin; his nostrils a deep red and he blew through them and expanded them with ears pricked forward and yellow teeth bared – making altogether a striking picture, but one that Ruth Fielding would much rather have seen on the screen than here in reality.