CHAPTER XXIV--THE REAL THING
Freezeout Camp had awakened. Many of the old shacks and cabins had beenrepaired and made habitable for the purposes of the moving picturecompany. The largest dance hall--"The Palace of Pleasure" as it wascalled on the film--was just as Flapjack Peters remembered it, back in anearlier rush for placer gold to this spot.
Behind the rough bar, on the shelves, however, were only empty bottles,or, at most, those filled with colored water. Mr. Hammond had beencareful to keep liquor out of the rejuvenated camp.
Flapjack Peters began to look like a different man. Whether it was hisenforced abstinence from drink, or the fact that he saw ahead thepossibility of wealth and the tall hat and white vest of which he haddreamed, he walked erect and looked every man straight in the eye.
"It gets me!" said Min to Ruth Fielding. "Pop ain't looked like thissince I kin remember."
Two days of this excitement passed. The motion picture people "weregetting down to earth again," as Mr. Grimes said, and the girls werebeginning to expect Tom Cameron's return, when one noon the head of aprocession was seen advancing through the nearest pass in the mountainrange to the west. As Ruth and others watched, the procession began towind down into the shallow gorge where the long "petered-out" placerdiggings of Freezeout had been located, and where the rejuvenated townitself still stood.
"What under the sun can these people want?" gasped Mr. Hammond, thepresident of the film-making company, to Ruth.
The girl of the Red Mill was in riding habit and she had her pony nearat hand. "I'll ride up and see," she said.
But the instant she had sighted the first group of hurrying riders andthe first wagon, she believed she understood. Word of the "strike" atthe old camp had in some way become noised abroad.
Before Edith Phelps and the men she was to hire, with the Kingmanlawyer's aid, reached the ledge her brother had located, other peoplehad heard the news. These were the first of "the gold rush."
She spurred her horse up into the pass and ran the pony half a milebefore she turned him and raced back to Mr. Hammond. She came withflying hair and rosy cheeks to the worried president, bursting with anidea that had assailed her mind.
"Mr. Hammond! It is the greatest sight you ever saw! Get the camera manand hurry right up there to the mouth of the pass. Tell Mr. Grimes----"
"What do you mean?" snapped the president of the Alectrion FilmCorporation. "Do you want to disorganize my whole company again?"
"I want to show you the greatest moving picture that ever was taken!"cried the girl of the Red Mill. "Oh, Mr. Hammond, you _must_ take it! Itmust be incorporated in this film. Why! _it is the real thing!_"
"What is that? A joke?" he growled.
"No joke at all, I assure you," said Ruth, patiently. "You can see themcoming through the pass--and beyond--for miles and miles. Men afoot, onhorseback, in all kinds of wagons, on burros--oh, it is simply great!There are hundreds and hundreds of them. Why, Mr. Hammond! thisFreezeout Camp is going to be a city before night!"
The chief reason why Mr. Hammond was a wealthy man and one of the powersin the motion picture world was because he could seize upon a new ideaand appreciate its value in a moment. He knew that Ruth was a sane girland that she had judgment, as well as imagination. He gaped at her for amoment, perhaps; the next he was shouting for Mr. Grimes, for the cameramen, for the horse wrangler, and for the "call-boy" to round up thecompany.
In half an hour a train set out for the pass, which met the first of theadvance guard of gold seekers pouring down into the valley. Theeager-faced men of all ages and apparently of all walks in life hurriedon almost silently toward the spot where they were told a ledge of freegold had been found.
There were roughly dressed teamsters, herdsmen, nondescripts; there wereMexicans and Indians; there were well dressed city men--lawyers, doctors,other professional men, perhaps. Afterward Ruth read in an Arizonanewspaper that such a typical stampede to any new-found gold or silverstrike had not been seen in a decade.
A camera man set up his machine in a good spot and waited for the wholefilm company to drift along into the pass and join the real gold seekersthat streamed down toward Freezeout.
This idea of Ruth Fielding's was the crowning achievement of her work onthis film. The company came back to the cabins at evening, wearied anddust-choked, to find, as Ruth had prophesied, a veritable city on andnear the creek.
The newcomers had rushed into the hills and staked out their claims,some of them on the very fringe of the valley out of which thegold-bearing ledge rose. Of course, many of these claims would beworthless.
A lively buying and selling of the more worthless claims was alreadyunder way. With the stampede had come storekeepers and wagons offoodstuffs.
That night nobody slept. Mr. Hammond, realizing what this really meant,but feeling none of the itch for digging gold that most of those on thespot experienced, organized a local constabulary. A justice of the peacewas found with intelligence enough, and enough knowledge of the stateordinance, to act as magistrate.
The men were called together early in the morning in the biggest dancehall and the vast majority--indeed, it was almost unanimous--voted thatliquor selling be tabooed at Freezeout.
Several men of unsavory reputations who had come, like buzzards scentingthe carrion from afar, were advised to leave town and stay away. Theymet other men of their stripe on the trail from Handy Gulch and othersuch places, and reported that Freezeout was going to be run "on aSunday-school basis"; there was nothing in it for the usual birds ofprey that infest such camps.
In a few hours the party coming from Kingman with Edith Phelps and thelawyer she had engaged, arrived. The camp about the ridge grew andexpanded in every direction. Most of the claimholders slept on theirclaims, fearing trickery. Shafts were sunk. The Phelps crowd began toset up a small crusher and cyaniding plant that had been trucked overthe trails.
The moving picture was finished at last, before either Mr. Grimes or Mr.Hammond quite lost their minds. Several of the men of the company broketheir contract with the Alectrion Film Corporation and would remain atthe diggings. They believed their claims were valuable.
Tom had returned before this with reports from the assayer and copies ofthe filing of the claims. The specimen from Ruth's claim showed onehundred and eighty dollars to the ton. The ore from Flapjack Peters andMin's claims were, after all, the richest of any of their party, thoughfarther down the ledge. The ore taken from those claims showed twohundred dollars to the ton.
"We're rich--or we're goin' to be," Min declared to the Ardmore girls andMiss Cullam, the last night the Eastern visitors were to remain inFreezeout. "That lawyer of R'yal Phelps is goin' to let pop have somemoney and we're both goin' to send for clo'es--some duds! Wish you couldwait and see me togged up just like a Fourth o' July pony in theparade."
"I wish we could, Min!" cried Jennie Stone.
"You shall come East to visit me later," Ruth declared. "Won't you, Min?We'll all show you a good time there."
"As though you hadn't showed me the best time I ever had already,"choked the Yucca girl. "But I'll come--after I git used to my newclo'es."
"Have you and your father really made a bargain with Royal Phelps?" MissCullam asked, as much interested in the welfare of the suddenly enrichedgirl as her pupils.
"Yes, Ma'am. Pop's going to have an office in the new company, too. AndMr. Phelps is goin' to git backin' from the East and buy up all theadjoinin' claims that he can."
"He'll have all ours, in time," said Helen. "That's lots better thaneach of us trying to develop her little claim. Oh, that Phelps man issmart."
"And what about Edith?" demanded the honest Ruth. "We've got to praiseher, too."
There was silence. Finally, Miss Cullam said dryly: "She seems to haveno very enthusiastic friends in the audience, Miss Fielding."
"Oh, well," Ruth said, laughing, "we none of us like Edith."
"How about liking her brother?" asked Jennie Stone, and she seemed tosay i
t pointedly.