CHAPTER XV--MORE DISCOVERIES
A quick but thorough search of the abandoned mining camp revealed noliving person save the party of tourists themselves.
Ruth's inquiry for the persons who had built the campfire aroused thecuriosity of Min Peters and her father, and they made someinvestigations for which the girl from the East scarcely saw the reason.
"If we've got neighbors here, might's well know who they are," saidFlapjack, who was gradually finding his voice and was "spunking up,"according to his daughter's statement.
Peters was particularly anxious to please. He felt deeply thehumiliation of what he had gone through at Handy Gulch, and wished toshow Ruth and the other girls that he was of some account.
No Indian could have scrutinized the vicinity of the dead campfire whichRuth had found more carefully than he did. Finally he announced that twomen had been here at the abandoned settlement the night before.
"One big feller and a mighty little man. I don't know what to make ofthat little feller's footprints," said the old prospector. "Mebbe heain't only a boy. But they camped here--sure. And they've gone on--rightout through the dry watercourse an' toward the east. I reckon they washarmless."
"They surely will be harmless if they keep on going and never comeback," laughed Ruth. "But I hope there are not many idlers hanging aboutthis neighbourhood. I suppose there are some bad characters in thesehills?"
"About as bad as tramps are in town," said Min, scornfully. "You folksfrom the East do have funny ideas. Ev'ry other man out here ain't atrain robber nor a cattle rustler. No, ma'am!"
"The movie company will supply all those, I fancy," chuckled JennieStone. "Going to have a real, bad road agent in your play, Ruthie?"
"Never mind what I am going to have," retorted Ruth, shaking her head."I mean to have just as true a picture as possible of the old-time golddiggings; and that doesn't mean that guns are flourished every minute ortwo. Mr. Peters can help me a lot by telling me what he remembers ofthis very camp, I know."
Flapjack was greatly pleased at this. Although Ruth continued to keepMin, the girl guide, to the fore, she saw that the girl's father wasgoing to be vastly pleased by being made of some account.
It was he who advised which of the cabins should be made habitable forthe party. One was selected for the girls and Miss Cullam to sleep in;another for the men; and a third for a kitchen.
But Flapjack made supper that night in the open as usual. For the firsttime he proudly displayed to the girls from the East the talent by whichhis nickname originated.
Min made a great "crock" of batter and greased the griddles for him.Flapjack stood, red faced and eager, over the bed of live coals andhandled the two griddles in an expert manner.
The cakes were as large as breakfast plates, and were browned to abeautiful shade--one fried in each griddle. When the time came to turnthem, Flapjack Peters performed this delicate operation by tossing theminto the air, and with such a sleight of hand that the flapjacksexchanged griddles in their "turnover".
"Dear me!" murmured Miss Cullam. "Such acrobatic cooking I never beheld.But the cakes are remarkably tasty."
"Aeroplane pancakes," suggested Tom Cameron. "Believe me, they are aslight as they fly, too."
That night the party was particularly jolly. They had reached theirdestination and, as Miss Cullam said in relief, without dire mishap.
The girls were, after all, glad to shut a door against the whole outsideworld when they went to bed; although the windows were merely holes inthe cabin walls through which the air had a perfectly free circulation.
There were six bunks in the cabin; but only one of them was put inproper condition for use. Miss Cullam was given that and the girlsrolled up in their blankets on the floor, with their saddles, as usual,for pillows.
"We have got so used to camping out of doors," Helen Cameron said, "thatwe shall be unable to sleep in our beds when we get home."
In the morning, however, the first work Min started was to fill bagswith dried grass from the hillsides and make mattresses for all thebunks. Tom had brought along hammer and nails as well as a saw, and withthe old prospector's assistance he repaired the remainder of the bunksin the girls' cabin and put up three new ones. There was plenty ofbuilding material about the camp.
Ruth, meantime, cleared out a fourth cabin. Here was set up thetypewriter, and she and Rebecca Frayne planned to make the hut theirworkshop.
"You girls, as long as you don't leave the confines of the camp alone,are welcome to go where you please, only, save, and excepting to thesanctum sanctorum," Ruth said at lunch time. "I am going to put up asign over the door, 'Beware.'"
"But surely, Ruth, you're not going to work _all_ the time?" complainedHelen.
"How are we going to have any fun, Ruth Fielding, if you keep out ofit?" demanded Ann Hicks.
"I shall get up early and work in the forenoon. While the mood is on meand my mind is fresh, you know," laughed Ruth. "That is, I shall do thatafter I really get to work. First I must 'soak in' local color."
She did this by wandering alone through the shallow gorge, from thefirst, or lower "diggings," up to the final abandoned claim, where thegold pockets had petered out. There were hundreds of places about theold camp where the gold hunters had dug in hope of finding the preciousmetal.
Ruth really knew little about this work. But she had learned fromhearing Min and her father talk that, wherever there was gold in"pockets" and "streaks" in the sand there must somewhere near be "amother lode." Flapjack confessed to having spent weeks looking for thatmother lode about Freezeout Camp. It had never been discovered.
"And after the Chinks got through with this here place, you couldn'tfind a pinch of placer gold big enough t' fill your pipe," the oldprospector announced. "I reckon she's here somewhere; but there won'tnobody find her now."
Ruth saw some things that made her wonder if somebody had not beenlooking for gold here much more recently than Flapjack Peters supposed.In three separate places beside the brawling stream that ran down thegorge, it seemed to her the heaped up sand was still wet. She knew about"cradling"--that crude manner of separating gold from the soil; and itseemed to her as though somebody had recently tried for "color" alongthe edge of this stream.
However, Ruth Fielding's mind was fixed upon something far differentfrom placer mining. She was brooding over a motion picture, and she wasdetermined to turn out a better scenario than she had ever beforewritten.
Hazel Gray, whom Ruth and her chum, Helen, had met a year and a halfbefore, and who had played the heroine's part in "The Heart of aSchoolgirl," was to come on with Mr. Hammond and his company to play thechief woman's part in the new drama. For there was to be a strong loveinterest in the story, and that thread of the plot was already quiteclear in Ruth's mind.
She had recently, however, considered Min Peters as a foil for HazelGray. Min was exactly the type of girl to fit into the story of "TheForty-Niners. As for her ability to act----
"There is no girl who can't act, if she gets the chance, I am sure,"thought Ruth. "Only, some can act better than others."
Ruth really had little doubt about Min's ability to play the part thatshe had thought out for her. Only, would she do it? Would she feel thather own character and condition in life was being held up to ridicule?Ruth had to be careful about that.
On returning to the camp she said nothing about the discoveries she hadmade along the bank of the stream. But that evening, after supper, asthe whole party were grouped before the cabins they had now made fairlycomfortable, Trix Davenport suddenly startled them all by crying:
"See there! Who's that?"
"Who's where, Trixie?" asked Jennie, lazily. "Are you seeing things?"
"I certainly am," said the diminutive girl.
"So do I!" Sally exclaimed. "There's a man on horseback."
In the purple dusk they saw him mounting a distant ridge east of thestream--almost on the confines of the valley on that side. It was onlyfor a minute that he held in his ho
rse and seemed to be gazing down atthe fire flickering in the principal street of Freezeout Camp.
Then he rode on, out of sight.