CHAPTER XXVTHE 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 askedhim 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, “youthought 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 blowon 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, “islucky, after all!”
Some time had passed since that dramatic scenein 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, MissRuth Fielding, ifyousay 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 excitementthe 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