CHAPTER IVTHE AUTO TOUR
"Hi, Ruth!"
"Hey, Ruth!"
"Straw, Ruth!—why don't you say?" cried the owner of the name, running to the porch and smiling out upon the Cameron twins, who had stopped their automobile at the Red Mill gate on a morning soon following that day on which Uncle Jabez and Ruth had undergone their involuntary ducking in the Lumano.
"Aren't you ready, Ruthie?" cried Helen from the back seat of the car.
"Do hurry up, Ruth—the horses don't want to stand," laughed Tom, who was slim and black haired and black eyed, like his twin. Indeed, the two were so much alike that, dressed in each other's clothing, it is doubtful if they could have been suspected in such disguise.
"But my bag isn't packed yet," cried Ruth. "I didn't know you'd be here so soon."
"Take your toothbrush and powder puff—that's all you girls really need," declared the irrepressible Tom.
"I like that! And on a two days' trip intothe hills," said his sister, beating him soundly with an energetic fist.
"Give him one or two good ones for me, Helen," said Ruth, and ran in to finish her preparations for the journey she was to take with her friends.
"Pshaw!" grumbled the impatient Tom, "going to Uncle Ike's isn't like going to a fancy hotel. And we'll stop over to-night with Fred Larkin's folks—the girls there would lend you and Ruth all you need."
"Hold on!" exclaimed his sister. "Just what have you inyourbag? I know it's heavy. You have all you want——"
"Sure. Pair of socks, two collars, fishing tackle, some books I borrowed of Fred last year, my bicycle wrench—you never know when you are going to need it,—a string of wampum I promised to take to Nealy Larkin—she's a Campfire girl, you know—and an Indian tomahawk for Fred——"
"But, clothes! clothes!" gasped Helen. "Where are your shirts?"
"Oh, I'll borrow a shirt, if I need one," declared Master Tom, grinning. "Uncle Ike's Benjy is about my size, you know. What's the use of carting around so much stuff?"
"I notice you have your bag full of trash," sniffed Helen. "It can plainly be seen that Mrs.Murchiston was called away so suddenly that she could not oversee our packing."
"Come on, Ruth!" shouted Tom again, turning toward the farmhouse.
"Now, don't get her in a flurry," admonished Helen. "She hasn't had but two hours' notice to get ready for this two days' trip. It's a wonder Uncle Jabez would let her go with us at all."
"Oh, Uncle Jabe isn't such a bad old fellow after all," said Tom.
"He's been just as cross and cranky as he can be, ever since he lost his boat in the river the other evening—you know that. And they say he would have been drowned, too, if it hadn't been for Ruthie. What a brave girl she is, Tom!"
"Bravest in seven states!" acknowledged Master Tom, promptly. He had always thought there was nobody just like Ruth, and his sister smiled upon him approvingly.
"I guess she is!" she agreed. "There isn't a girl at Briarwood Hall that will be her match in anything—now that Madge Steele has gotten through. Ruth is going to be head of the senior class before we graduate—you see."
"She'll have to hustle some to beat little Mercy Curtis," grinned Tom. "There'sa sharp suffragette for you!"
Helen laughed. "That's right. But, unfortunatelyfor Mercy, Mrs. Tellingham considers other work beside our books in grading us. Oh, Tommy! we're going to have a dandy time this coming year at school."
"You have my best wishes," returned her brother, with a slightly clouded face. "Bobbins and Busy Izzy and I expect to be drilled like everything, when we get back to Seven Oaks. Professor Darly is a terror."
Ruth came out with her bag then, and in the doorway behind her appeared the little, stooped figure of Aunt Alvirah. The Camerons waved their hands and shouted greetings to her.
"Take good keer of my pretty, Master Tom," shrilled the old lady, hobbling out into the yard. "Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!"
"We'll handle her as if she were made of glass," declared Tom, laughing. "Hop in, Ruthie!"
"Good-bye, Aunt Alvirah!" cried the girl of the Red Mill, clasping the little old lady around the neck and kissing her. Then she waved her hand to Uncle Jabez, who appeared in the mill doorway, and he nodded grimly, as the car started.
Ben appeared at a window and bashfully nodded to the departing pleasure party. The car quickly passed the end of the Cheslow road and sped up the riverside. These lowlands beyond the Red Mill had once been covered bya great flood, and the three friends would never forget their race with the freshet from Culm Falls, at the time the Minturn Dam burst.
"But we're bound far, far above the dam this time," said Tom. "Fred Larkin lives farther than that—beyond the gorge between the hills, and at the foot of the first pond. We'll get there long before dark unless something happens to this old mill I'm driving."
"There! Tommy's harping on his pet trouble," laughed Helen. "Father won't let us use the new car to go scooting about the country alone in, and Tommy thinks he is abused."
"Well! that 'six' is just eating its head off in the garage," grumbled the boy.
"Just as though it were a horse!" chuckled Ruth.
"You wait! I bet something happens on this trip, because of this old heap of scrap iron that pa calls a car."
"Goodness me!" exclaimed Helen, with some exasperation. "Don't you dare have a breakdown in the hills, Tom! I should be frightened. It's so wild up there beyond Loon Lake."
"You needn't blame me," returned her twin. "I shall do my best."
"And so will the auto—I have no doubt," added Ruth, laughingly. "Cheer up, Helen, dear——"
"I know the rest of it!" interrupted herchum. "'The worst is yet to come!' I—hope—not!"
Ruth Fielding would allow no worrying or criticism in this event. They were out for a good time, and she at once proceeded to cheer up the twins, and laugh at their fears, and interest them in other things.
They crossed the river at Culm Falls—a beautiful spot—and it was beyond the bridge, as the car was mounting the first long rise, that the party of adventurers found their first incident of moment.
Here and there were clearings in the forest upon the right side of the road (on the other side the hill fell abruptly to the river), and little farms. As the party came in sight of one of these farms, a great cry arose from the dooryard. The poultry was soundly disturbed—squawking, cackling, shrieking their protests noisily—while the deep baying of a dog rose savagely above the general turmoil.
"Something doing there!" quoth Tom Cameron, slowing down.
"A chicken hawk, perhaps?" suggested Ruth.
A woman was screaming admonition or advice; occasionally the gruffer voice of a man added to the turmoil. But the dog's barking was the loudest sound.
Suddenly, from around the corner of the barn,appeared a figure wildly running. It was neither the farmer, nor his wife—that was sure.
"Tramp!" exclaimed Tom, reaching for the starting lever again.
At that moment Helen shrieked. After the running man appeared a hound. He had broken his leash, and a more savage brute it would be difficult to imagine. He was following the runner with great leaps, and when the fugitive vaulted the roadside fence, the dog crashed through the rails, tearing down a length of them, and scrambling in the dusty road in an endeavor to get on the trail of the man again.
Only, it was not a man; it was a boy! He was big and strong looking, but his face was boyish. Ruth Fielding stood up suddenly in the car and shrieked to him:
"Come here! This way! Roberto!"
"My goodness! is he a friend of yours, Ruthie?" gasped Tom Cameron.
"He's the Gypsy boy that saved Uncle Jabez," returned Ruth, in a breath.
"Take him aboard—do!" urged Helen. "That awful dog——"
Roberto had heard and leaped for the running-board of the car. Tom switched on the power. Just as the huge hound leaped, and his fore-paws touched the step, the car darted away and the brute was left sprawling.
The car was a left-hand drive, and Tom motioned the panting youth to get in beside him. The dark-faced fellow did so. At first he was too breathless to speak, but his black eyes snapped like beads, and his lips smiled. He seemed to have enjoyed the race with the savage dog, instead of having been frightened by it.
"You save me, Missy, like I save your old man—eh?" he panted, at last, turning his brilliant smile upon Ruth. "Me! that dog mos' have me, eh?"
"What was the matter? How came you to start all that riot?" demanded Tom, looking at the Gypsy youth askance.
Roberto's grin became expansive. The little gold rings in his ears twinkled as well as his eyes.
"I did them no wrong. I slept in the man's haymow. He found me a little while ago. He say I haf topayfor my sleep—eh? How poor Gypsy pay?" and he opened his hands and shrugged his shoulders to show that his pockets were empty.
"Me, no money have got. Can I work? Of course I work—only the farmers do not trust me. They call all Gypsies thieves. Isn't it so, Missy?" and he flashed a glance at Ruth.
"I know, Mr. Joe Bascom drove you out of his orchard," agreed the girl of the Red Mill."But you should have come across the river tous. Uncle Jabez is really grateful to you."
"Oh,that?" and the boy shrugged his shoulders again. "I do not want pay for what I do—no. I want no money. I would not work a day for all my grandmother's wealth—and she is a miser," and Roberto laughed again, showing all his white, strong teeth.
"But these people back here—this man and his woman—they want me to churn. It is a dog's work—no? I see where the dog haf to churn, but that dog die and they get this new, savage one—and it will not. Me, I think this dog very wise!" and Roberto's merriment broke out again, and he shook with it.
"So I tell them I will not do dog's work, and then he, the man, chases me with his pitchfork, and the woman unloose the dog. Oh, yes! I make a great noise in the henyard. That dog chase me hard. So—I got away as you see," he concluded.
"Say! you're a cool one," declared Tom, with growing admiration.
"But you ought not to be loafing about, sleeping anywhere, and without employment," said Helen, primly.
Roberto's black eyes sparkled. "Why does the little missy say I should work?" he demanded. "There is no need. I return to my people,perhaps. There I curry horses and fill the water pails for the women, and go with my uncle to the horse-fairs where he trades, or be under my grandmother's beck and call—the grandmother whom I tell you is a miser. But I never have money with them, and why should I work for it elsewhere?"
"To get good clothes, and good food, and pay your way everywhere," suggested Tom.
Roberto laughed again. He spread out his strong hands. "These keep me from day to day," he said. "But money burns a hole in my pocket. Or, would you have me like my grandmother? She hoards every penny-piece, and then gloats over her money-box, by the firelight, when the rest of the camp is asleep. Oh, I see her!"
CHAPTER VA PROPHECY FULFILLED
This queer youth interested Ruth Fielding and her friends, the Cameron twins, very much. Roberto was not naturally talkative, it seemed, for he soon dropped into silence and it was hard to get aught out of him but "Yes" and "No." At first, however, he had been excited, and he told them a great deal of his life with the tribe and along the pleasant country roads.
The cities Roberto could not bear. "There is no breath left in them—it is used up by so many," he explained. He did not eschew work because he was lazy, it seemed; but he saw no use in it.
Clothing? Money? Rich food? Other things that people strive for in the main? They were nothing to Roberto. He could sleep under a haystack, crunch a crust of bread, and wear his garments until they fell off him in rags.
But he knew the woods and fields as nobody but a wild boy could. Every whistle and note of every bird was as familiar to him as his ownTzigane speech; and he could imitate them with exactness.
He delighted his new friends, as the car rumbled along. He soon stopped talking much, as I have said, but he answered their multitude of questions, and did not seem to mind being cross-questioned about the life of the Gypsies.
The auto party stopped soon after noon to lunch. It was Roberto who pointed out the spring of clear, cold water for which they searched. He had been over this road before and, it seemed, once along a trail was enough for the young Gypsy. He never forgot.
He went away down the little stream, and made himself very clean before appearing for his share of the food. To the surprise of Ruth and Helen he ate daintily and showed breeding of a kind. Nor was he enamored of the cakes and other dainties that Babette, the Camerons' cook, had put into the lunch hamper, but enjoyed, instead, the more simple viands.
Roberto grew restless of riding in the car soon after luncheon. He thanked them for giving him the lift, but explained that there were paths through the woods leading to the present camp of his tribe that he preferred to follow.
"It is a mark of kindness for you to have brought me this way," he said, softly, bending over Ruth's hand, for he insisted upon consideringher his hostess. He realized that, had it not been for her, the Camerons would have been chary of taking him aboard.
"If you are ever near the Red Mill again," Ruth told him, "be sure to come and speak with Uncle Jabez. He will not forget you, I am sure."
"Of that—pooh!" exclaimed the Gypsy. "I do not want pay for such an act. Do you?"
And that set Ruth Fielding to thinking a bit. Perhaps shehadexpected payment—of a kind—for her action in helping Uncle Jabez in the river. She had hoped he would more freely respond to her affection than he did. Ah! it is hard to do a good act and not secretly hope for some small return. "Virtue is its own reward" is a moral hard to understand!
After Roberto had left them, the trio of friends were occupied in exchanging views regarding the Gypsy boy, and in discussing their several opinions as to what kind of people his folk really were.
"It must be loads of fun to jog along the roads in those caravans, and camp where you please, and all that," said Helen, reflectively. "I believe I'd like it."
"About twenty miles on a fast day, eh?" chuckled Tom, with scorn. "Not for me! When Gypsies get to riding in autos—and six-cylinder,up-to-date ones, too—I'll join the first tribe that comes along."
"I declare, Tommy!" laughed his sister, "you are getting to be a 'speed fiend.' Ruth and I will be scared to drive with you."
"It's great to go fast," exclaimed Master Tom. "Here's a straight piece of road ahead, girls. Hold on!"
As he spoke, he manipulated the levers and the car leaped ahead. Ruth's startled "Oh!" was left a quarter of a mile behind. The girls clung to the hand-holds, and Tom crouched behind the windshield and "let her out."
It was a straight piece of road, as he had said. But before they reached the first turn there was another house beside the road—a small farmhouse. Beyond it was a field, with a stone wall, and it chanced that just as the Camerons' car roared down the road, clearing at least thirty miles an hour, the leader of a flock of sheep in that pasture, butted through a place in the stone-fence and started to cross the highway.
One sheep would not have made much trouble; it would have been easy to dodge just one object. But here came a string of the woolly creatures—and greater fools than sheep have not been discovered in the animal world!
The old black-faced ram trotted across the road and through a gap in a fence on the riverside. After him crowded the ewes and youngsters.
The roaring auto frightened the creatures, but they would not give way before it. They knew no better than to follow that old ram through the gap, one after the other.
Tom had shut off the engine and applied the brakes, as the girls shrieked. But he had been going too fast to stop short of the place where the sheep were passing. At the end of the flock came a lamb, bleating and trying to keep up with its mother.
"Oh, the lamb!" shrieked Helen.
"Look out, Tom!" added Ruth.
The lamb did not get across the road. The car struck it, and with a pitiful "baa-a-a!" it was knocked a dozen feet.
In a moment the car stopped. It had scarcely run its entire length past the spot where the lamb was struck. The poor creature lay panting, "baa-aing" feebly, beside the road.
Ruth was out of the tonneau and kneeling beside the creature almost before the wheels ceased to roll. The mother ewe had crowded through the fence. Now she put her foolish face out, and called to the lamb to follow.
"He can't!" almost sobbed Ruth. "He has a broken leg. Oh! what a foolish mother you were to lead him right into danger."
Tom was silent and looked pretty solemn,while Helen was scolding him nervously—although she knew that he was not really at fault.
"If you hadn't been speeding, this wouldn't have happened, Tom Cameron!" she said. "I told you so."
"Oh, all right. You're a fine prophetess," grunted her brother. "Keep on rubbing it in."
The lamb had tried to scramble up, but one of its forelegs certainly was broken. It tumbled over on its side again, and Ruth held it down tenderly and tried to soothe its fear.
"Oh, dear! whatever shall we do?" she murmured. "The poor, poor little thing."
"Guess we'll know pretty soon what we'll do," quoth Master Tom, standing beside the machine and looking back along the road. "Here comes the man that owns him."
"Oh, dear me!" whispered Helen. "Doesn't he look savage?"
"Worse than the old ram there," agreed her brother, for the black-faced leader of the flock was eyeing them through the fence.
CHAPTER VIA TRANSACTION IN MUTTON
The man who approached was a fierce, red-faced individual, with long legs encased to the knees in cowhide boots, overalls, a checked shirt, and a whisp of yellow whisker under his chin that parted and waved, as he strode toward the auto party.
His pale blue eyes were ablaze, and he had worked himself up into a towering rage. Like many farmers (and sometimes for cause), he had evidently sworn eternal feud against all automobilists!
"What d'ye mean, runnin' inter my sheep?" he bawled. "I'll have the law on ye! I'll make ye pay for ev'ry sheep ye killed! I'll attach yer machine, by glory! I'll put ye all in jail! I'll——"
"You're going to have your hands full with allthat, Mister," interrupted Tom Cameron. "And you're excited more than is necessary. I'll pay for all the damage I've done—although there would have been none at all, had your sheep remained in their pasture. This is a county road, I take it."
"By glory!" exclaimed the farmer, arriving at the spot at last. "This road was built for folks ter drive over decent. Nobody reckoned on locomotives, an' sich comin' this way, when 'twas built—no, sir-ree!"
"I'm sorry," began Tom, but the man broke in:
"Thet don't pay me none for havin' all my sheep made into mutton b'fore their time. By glory! I got an attic home full o' 'sorries.' Ye can't git out o' it thet way."
"I am not trying to. I'll pay for any sheep I have hurt or killed," Tom said, unable to keep from grinning at the excited farmer.
"And don't ye git sassy none, neither!" commanded the man. "I'm one o' the school trustees in this deestrict, an' the church clerk. I got some influence. I guess if I arrested ye right naow—an' these gals, too—the jestice of the peace would consider I done jest right."
"Oh!" murmured Helen, clinging to Ruth's hand.
"He can't do it," whispered the latter.
"I feel sure, sir," said Tom, politely, "that it will be unnecessary for you to go to such lengths. I will pay satisfactory damages. There is the lamb we struck—and the only beast that is hurt."
The man had given but one glance to the lamb that lay on the grass beside the girls. He did not look to be any too tender-hearted, and the littlecreature's accident did not touch him at all—save in the region of his pocketbook.
He stepped to the gap in the fence, kicked the bleating ewe out of the way in a most brutal manner, and proceeded to count his flock. He had to do this twice before he was assured that none but the lamb was missing.
"You see," Tom said, quietly, "I have turned only one of your sheep into mutton—for I suppose this lamb must be killed."
"Oh, no, Tom!" cried Ruth, who was bending over the little creature again. "I am sure its leg will mend."
The farmer snorted. "Don't want no crippled critters erbout. Ye'll hafter pay me full price for that lamb, boy—then I'll give it to the dogs. 'Tain't no good the way it is."
Ruth had tied the leg firmly with her own handkerchief—which was of practical size. "If we could put it in splints, and keep the lamb still, it would mend," she declared to Helen.
"What do you consider the thing worth, sir?" asked Tom.
"Four dollars," declared the farmer, promptly. It was not worth two, even at the present price of lamb, for the creature was neither big nor fat.
"Here you are," said Tom, and thrust four one-dollar notes into his hand.
The man stared at them, and from them toTom. He really seemed disappointed. Perhaps he wished he had said more, when Tom did not haggle over the price.
"Wal, I'll take it along to the house then," said the farmer. "An' when ye come this road ag'in, young man, ye better go a leetle slow—yaas, a leetle slow!"
"I certainly shall—as long as you have gaps in your sheep pasture fence," returned Tom, promptly.
"Git out'n the way, leetle gal," said the man, brushing Ruth aside. "I'll take him——"
The lamb struggled to get on its feet. The sudden appearance of the man frightened the animal.
"Stop that!" cried Ruth. "You'll hurt the poor thing."
"I'll knock him in the head, when I git to the chopping block," said the farmer, roughly. "Shucks! it's only a lamb."
"Don't you dare!" Ruth cried, standing in front of the quivering creature. "You are cruel."
"Hoity-toity!" cried the farmer. "I guess I kin do as I please with my own."
Helen clung to Ruth's hand and tried to draw her away from the rough man. Even Tom hesitated to arouse the farmer's wrath further. But the girl from the Red Mill stamped her foot and refused to move.
"Don't you dare touch it!" she exclaimed. "It isn't your lamb."
"What's that?" he demanded, and then broke into a hoarse laugh. "Thet thar's a good one! I raised thet lamb——"
"And we have just bought it—paid you your own price for it," cried Ruth.
"Crickey! that's so, Ruthie," Tom Cameron interposed. "Of course he doesn't own it. If you want the poor thing, we'll take it along to Fred Larkin's place."
"Say!" exclaimed the farmer. "What does this mean? I didn't sell ye the carcass of thet thar lamb; I only got damages——"
"You sold it. You know you did," Ruth declared, firmly. "I dare you to touch the poor little thing. It is ours—and I know its life can be saved."
"Pick it right up, girls, and come on," advised Tom, starting his engine. "We have the rights of it, and if he interferes, we'll just run on to the next town and bring a constable back with us. I guess we can call upon the authorities, too. What's sauce for the goose, ought to be sauce for the gander."
The man was stammering some very impolite words, and Tom was anxious to get his sister and Ruth away. The girls lifted the lamb in upon the back seat and laid it tenderly upon somewraps. Then the boy leaped into the front seat and prepared to start.
"I tell ye what it is!" exclaimed the farmer, coming close to the car. "This ain't no better than highway robbery. I never expected ter have ye take the carcass away, when I told ye sich a low price——"
"I have paid its full value, and you don't own a thread of its wool, Mister," said Tom, feeling the engine throb under him now. "I'm going to start——"
"You wait! I ain't got through with you——"
Just then the car started. The man had been holding to the end of the seat. He foolishly tried to continue his hold.
The car sprang ahead suddenly, the farmer was swung around like a top, and the last they saw of him he was sitting in the middle of the dusty road, shaking both fists after the car, and yelling at the top of his voice. Just what he said, it was perhaps better that they did not hear!
"Wasn't he a mean old thing?" cried Tom, when the car was purring along steadily.
"And wasn't Ruth smart to see that he had no right to this poor little sheep?" said Helen, admiringly.
"What you going to do with it, Ruthie?" demanded Tom, glancing back at the lamb. "Goingto sell it to a butcher in Littletop? That's where Fred Larkin's folk live, you know."
"Sell it to a butcher!" exclaimed Ruth, in scorn. "That's what the farmer would have done—butchered it."
"It is the fate of most sheep to be turned into mutton," returned Tom, his eyes twinkling.
"And then the mutton is turned into boys and girls," laughed Ruth. "But if I have my way, this little fellow will never become either a Cameron, or a Fielding."
"Oh! I wouldn't want to eat him—after seeing him hurt," cried Helen. "Isn't he cunning? See! he knows we are going to be good to him."
"I hope he knows it," her chum replied. "After all, it doesn't take much to assure domestic animals of our good intentions toward them."
"Well," said Tom, grinning, "I promise not to eat this lamb, if you make a point of it, but if I don't get something to eat pretty soon, I assure you he'll be in grave danger!"
They made Littletop and the Larkins' residence before Tom became too ravenous, however; and the younger members of the Larkin family welcomed the adventurers—including the lamb—with enthusiasm.
Fred Larkin had some little aptitude for medicine and surgery—so they all said, at least—and he set the broken leg and put splints upon it.Then they put the little creature in one of the calf pens, fed it liberally, and Fred declared that in ten days it would be well enough to hop around.
The little Larkin folk were delighted with the lamb for a pet, so Ruth knew that she could safely trust her protégé to them.
There was great fun that night, for the neighboring young folk were invited to meet the trio from Cheslow and the Red Mill, and it was midnight before the girls and boys were still. Therefore, there was no early start made for the second day's run.
Breakfast was late, and it was half-past nine before Tom started the car, and they left Littletop amid the cheers and good wishes of their friends.
"We must hustle, if we want to get to Uncle Ike's before dark," Tom declared. "So you will have to stand for some scorching, girls."
"See that you don't kill anything—or even maim it," advised his sister. "You are out four dollars for damages already."
"Never you mind. I reckon you girls won't care to be marooned along some of these wild roads all night."
"Nor to travel over them by night, either," advised Ruth. "My! we haven't seen a house for ten miles."
"It's somewhere up this way that those Gypsyfriends of Roberto are encamped—as near as I could make out," Tom remarked.
"My! I wouldn't like to meet them," his sister said.
"They wouldn't hurt us—at least, Roberto didn't," laughed Ruth.
"That's all right. But Gypsiesdocarry off people——"
"And eat them?" scoffed Tom. "How silly, Nell!"
"Well, Mr. Smartie! they might hold us for ransom."
"Like regular brigands, eh?" returned Tom, lightly. "Thatwouldbe an adventure worth chronicling."
"You can laugh——Oh!"
As she was speaking, Helen saw a head thrust out of the bushes not far along the road they traveled.
"What's the matter?" demanded Ruth, seizing her arm.
"Look there!" But the car was past the spot in a moment. "Somebody was watching us, and dodged back," declared Helen, anxiously.
"Oh, nonsense!" laughed her brother.
But before they took the next turn they looked back and saw two men standing in the road, talking. They were rough-looking fellows.
"Gypsies!" cried Helen.
However, they saw nobody else for a few miles. Now they were skirting one of the lakes in the upper chain, some miles above the gorge where the dam was built, and the scenery was both beautiful and rugged. There were few farms.
On a rising stretch of road, the engine began to miss, and something rattled painfully in the "internal arrangements" of the car. Tom looked serious, stopped several times, and just coaxed her slowly to the summit of the hill.
"Now don't tell us that we're going to have a breakdown!" cried Helen.
"Do you think those are thunder-heads hanging over the mountain?" asked Ruth, seriously.
"Sure of it!" responded Helen.
"You are a regular 'calamity howler'!" exclaimed Tom. "By Jove! this old millisgoing to kick up rusty."
"There's a house!" cried Ruth, gaily, standing up in the back to look ahead. "Now we're all right if the machine has to be repaired, or a storm bursts upon us."
But when the car limped up and stopped in the sandy road before the sagging gate, the trio saw that their refuge was a windowless and abandoned structure that looked as gaunt and ghostly as a lightning-riven tree!
CHAPTER VIIFELLOW TRAVELERS
"Well! this is a pretty pickle!" groaned Tom, at last as much disturbed as Helen had been. "It's no use, girls. We'll have to stop here till the storm is over. It is coming."
"Well, that will be fun!" cried Ruth, cheerfully. "Of course we ought to be storm-bound in a deserted house. That is according to all romantic precedent."
"Humph! you and your precedent!" grumbled her chum. "I'd rather it was a nice roadside hotel, or tearoom. That would be something like."
"Come on! we'll take in the hamper, and make tea on the deserted hearthstone," said Ruth. "Tom can stay out here and repair his old auto."
"Tom will find a shelter for the machine first, I reckon. There! hear the thunder? We are going to get it, and I must raise the hood of the tonneau, too," proclaimed the lad. "Go on with your hamper and wraps. I see sheds back there, and I'll try to coax the old Juggernaut into that lane and so to the sheds."
He did as he proposed during the next few minutes, while the girls approached the deserted dwelling, with the hamper. The lower front windows were boarded, and the door closed. But the door giving entrance from the side porch was ajar.
"'Leave all hope behind, ye who enter here,'" quoted Helen, peering into the dusky interior. "It looks powerful ghostly, Ruthie."
"There are plenty of windows out, so we'll have light enough," returned the girl of the Red Mill. "Don't be a 'fraid cat,' Helen."
"That's all right," grumbled her chum. "You're only making a bluff yourself."
Ruth laughed. She was not bothered by fears of the supernatural, no matter what the old house was, or had been. Now, a good-sized rat might have made her shriek and run!
Into the house stepped Ruth Fielding, in her very bravest manner. The hall was dark, but the door into a room at the left—toward the back of the house—was open and through this doorway she ventured, the old, rough boards of the floor creaking beneath her feet.
This apartment must have been the dining-room. There was a high, ornate, altogether ugly mantle and open fireplace at one end of the room. At the other, there stood, fastened to the wall, or built into it, a china closet, the doors of whichhad been removed. These ugly, shallow caverns gaped at them and promised refuge to spiders and mice. On the hearth was a heap of crusted gray ashes.
"What a lonesome, eerie sort of a place," shivered Helen. "Wish the old car had kept running——"
"Through the rain?" suggested Ruth, pointing outside, where the air was already gray with approaching moisture.
Down from the higher hills the storm was sweeping. They could smell it, for the wind leaped in at the broken windows and rustled the shreds of paper still clinging to the walls of the dining-room.
"This isn't a fit place to eat in," grumbled Helen.
"Let's go above stairs. Carry that alcohol stove carefully, dear. We'll have a nice cup of tea, even if it does——"
"Oh!" shrieked Helen, as a long streak of lightning flew across their line of vision.
"Yes. Even in spite ofthat," repeated Ruth, smiling, and raising her voice that she might be heard above the cannonade of thunder.
"I don't like it, I tell you!" declared her chum.
"I can't say that I do myself, but I do not see how we are to help it."
"I wish Tom was inside here, too."
Ruth had glanced through the window and seen that Master Tom had managed to get the auto under a shed at the back. He was industriously putting up the curtains to the car, and making all snug against the rain, before he began to tinker with the machinery.
There was a faint drumming in the air—the sound of rain coming down the mountain side, beating its "charge" upon the leaves as it came. There were no other sounds, for the birds and insects had sought shelter before the wrathful face of the storm.
Yes! there was one other. The girls had not heard it until they began climbing the stairs out of the side entry. Helen clutched Ruth suddenly by the skirt.
"Hear that!" she whispered.
"Say it out loud, dear, do!" exclaimed the girl of the Red Mill. "There is never anything so nerve-shaking as a stage whisper."
"There! you heard it?"
"The wind rustling something," said Ruth, attempting to go on.
"No."
"Something squeaks—mice, I do believe."
"Mice would starve to death here," declared Helen.
"How smart of you! That is right," agreedRuth. "Come on. Let us see what it is—if it's upstairs."
Helen clung close to her and trembled. There was the rustling, squeaking sound again. Ruth pushed on (secretly feeling rather staggered by the strange noise), and they entered one of the larger upper chambers.
Immediately she saw an open stovepipe hole in the chimney. "The noise comes from that," she declared, setting down the basket and pointing.
"But what is it?" wailed her frightened chum.
"The wind?"
"Never!"
The lightning flashed again, and the thunder rolled nearer. Helen screamed, crouched down upon the floor, and covered her ears, squeezing her eyelids tight shut too.
"Dreadful! dreadful!" she gasped.
Still the silence outside between the reports of thunder; but the rustling in the chimney continued. Ruth looked around, found a piece of broken window-sash on the floor, and approached the open pipe-hole.
"Here's for stirring up Mr. Ghost," she said, in a much braver tone than she secretly felt.
She always felt her responsibility with Helen. The latter was of a nervous, imaginary temperament, and it was never well for her to get herself worked up in this way.
"Oh, Ruth! Don't! Suppose it bites you!" gasped Helen.
At that Ruthdidlaugh. "Whoever heard of a ghost with teeth?" she demanded, and instantly thrust the stick into the gaping hole.
There was a stir—a flutter—a squeaking—and out flopped a brown object about the size of a mouse. Helen shrieked again, and even Ruth darted back.
"A mouse!" cried Helen.
"Right—a flittermouse!" agreed Ruth, suddenly bursting into a laugh. "The chimney's full of them."
"Oh, let's get out!"
"In this rain?" and Ruth pointed to the window, where now the drops were falling, big and fast—the vanguard of the storm.
"But if a bat gets into your hair!" moaned Helen, rocking herself on her knees.
Ruth opened the big hamper, seized a newspaper, and swooped down upon the blind, fluttering brown bat. Seizing it as she would a spider, she ran to the window and flung it out, just as the water burst into the room in a flood.
Then she ran to the pipe-hole and thrust the paper into it, making a "stopper" which would not easily fall out. She dragged Helen to the other side of the room, where the floor was dry and they were out of the draught.
There the two girls cowered for some moments, hugged close together, Helen hiding her eyes from the intermittent lightning against Ruth's jacket. The thunder roared overhead, and the rain dashed down in torrents. For ten minutes it was as hard a storm as the girl of the Red Mill ever remembered seeing. Such tempests in the hills are not infrequent.
When the thunder began to roll away into the distance, and the lightning was less brilliant, the girls could take some notice of what else went on. The fierce drumming of the rain continued, but there seemed to be a noise in the lower part of the building.
"Tom has come in," said Helen, with satisfaction.
"He must have gotten awfully wet, then, getting here from that shed," Ruth returned. "Hush!"
Somebody sneezed heavily. Helen opened her mouth to cry out, but Ruth put her palm upon her lips, effectually smothing the cry.
"Sh!" the girl of the Red Mill admonished. "Let him find us."
"Oh! that will be fun," agreed Helen.
Ruth did not look at her. She listened intently. There was a heavy, scraping foot upon the floor below. Tohermind, it did not sound like Tom at all.
She held Helen warningly by the wrist and they continued to strain their ears for some minutes. Then an odor reached them which Ruth was sure did not denote Tom's presence in the room below. It was the smell of strong tobacco smoked in an ancient pipe!
"What's that?" sniffed Helen, whisperingly.
Uncle Jabez smoked a strong pipe and Ruth could not be mistaken as to the nature of this one. She remembered the two men who had hidden in the bushes as the car rolled by, not many miles back on this road.
"Let's shout for Tom and bring him in here," Helen suggested.
"Perhaps get him into trouble? Let's try and find out, first, what sort of people they are," objected Ruth, for they now heard talking and knew that there were at least two visitors below.
Rising quietly, Ruth crept on tiptoe to the head of the stair. The drumming rain helped smother any sound she might have made.
Slowly, stair by stair, Ruth Fielding let herself down until she could see into the open doorway of the dining room. Two men were squatting on the hearth, both smoking assiduously.
They were rough looking, unlovely fellows, and the growl of their voices did not impress Ruth as being of a quality to inspire confidence.