B.
Ruth Fielding In the Saddle / College Girls in the Land of Gold
CHAPTER I – WHAT IS COMING
“Will you do it?” asked the eager, black-eyed girl sitting on the deep window shelf.
“If Mr. Hammond says the synopsis of the picture is all right, I’ll go.”
“Oh, Ruthie! It would be just – just scrumptious!”
“We’ll go, Helen – just as we agreed last week,” said her chum, laughing happily.
“It will be great! great!” murmured Helen Cameron, her hands clasped in blissful anticipation. “Right into the ‘wild and woolly.’ Dear me, Ruth Fielding, we do have the nicest times – you and I!”
“You needn’t overlook me,” grumbled the third and rather plump freshman who occupied the most comfortable chair in the chums’ study in Dare Hall.
“That would be rather – er – impossible, wouldn’t it, Heavy?” suggested Helen Cameron, rolling her black eyes.
Jennie Stone made a face like a street gamin, but otherwise ignored Helen’s cruel suggestion. “I’d rather register joy, too – Oh, yes, I’m going with you; have written home about it. Have to tell Aunt Kate ahead, you know. Yes, I’d register joy, if it weren’t for one thing that I see looming before us.”
“What’s that, honey?” asked Ruth.
“The horseback ride from Yucca into the Hualapai Range seems like a doubtful equation to me.”
“Don’t you mean ‘doubtful equestrianism’?” put in the black-eyed girl with a chuckle.
“Perhaps I do,” sighed Jennie. “You know, I’m a regular sailor on horseback.”
“You should have taken it up when we were all at Silver Ranch with Ann Hicks,” Ruth said.
“Oh, say not so!” begged Jennie Stone lugubriously. “What I should have done in the past has nothing to do with this coming summer. I groan to think of what I shall have to endure.”
“Who will do the groaning for the horse that has to carry you, Heavy?” interposed the irrepressible Helen, giving her the old nickname that Jennie Stone now scarcely deserved.
“Never mind. Let the horse do his own worrying,” was the placid reply. The temper of the well nourished girl was not easily ruffled.
“Why, Jennie, think!” ejaculated Helen, suddenly turned brisk and springing down from the window seat. “It will be just the jaunt for you. The physical culturists claim there is nothing so good for reducing flesh and helping one’s poor, sluggish liver as horseback riding.”
“Say!” drawled the other girl, her nose tilted at a scornful angle, “those people say a lot more than their prayers – believe me! Most physical culturists have never ridden any kind of horse in their lives but a hobbyhorse – and they still ride that when they are senile.”
Ruth applauded. “A Daniel come to judgment!” she cried.
“Huh!” sniffed Jennie, suspiciously. “What does that mean?”
“I – I don’t just know myself,” confessed Ruth. “But it sounds good – and Dr. Milroth used it this morning in chapel, so it must be all right.”
“Anything that our revered dean says goes big with me, I confess,” said Jennie. “Oh, girls! isn’t she just a dear?”
“And hasn’t Ardmore been just the delightsomest place for nine months?” cried Helen.
“Even better than Briarwood,” agreed Ruth.
“That sounds almost sacrilegious,” Helen observed. “I don’t know about any place being finer than old Briarwood.”
“There’s Ann!” cried Ruth in a tone that made both the others jump.
“Where? Where?” demanded Helen, whirling about to look out of the window again. The window gave a broad view of the lower slope of College Hill and the expanse of Lake Remona. Dusk was just dropping, for the time was after dinner; but objects were still to be clearly observed. “Where’s Jane Ann Hicks?”
“Just completing her full course at Briarwood Hall,” Ruth explained demurely. “She will go to Montana, of course. But if I write her I know she’ll join us at Yucca just for the fun of the ride.”
“Some people’s idea of fun!” groaned Jennie.
“What are you attempting to go for, then?” demanded Helen, somewhat wonderingly.
“Because I think it is my duty,” the plump girl declared. “You young and flighty freshies aren’t fit to go so far without somebody solid along – ”
“‘Solid!’ You said it!” scoffed Helen.
“I was referring to character, Miss Cameron,” returned the other shaking her head. “But Ann is certainly a good fellow. I hope she will go, Ruth.”
“I declare, Ruthie,” exclaimed her chum, “you are getting up a regular party!”
“Why not?”
“It will be great fun,” acknowledged the black-eyed girl.
“Of course it will, goosie,” said Jennie Stone. “Isn’t everything that Ruth Fielding plans always fun? Say, Ruth, there are some girls right here at Ardmore – and freshies, too – who would be tickled to death to join us.”
“Goodness!” objected Ruth, laughing at her friend’s exuberance. “I wouldn’t wish to be the cause of a general massacre, so perhaps we’d better not invite any of the other girls.”
“Little Davenport would go,” Jennie pursued. “She’s a regular bear on a pony.”
“Bareback riding, do you mean, Heavy?” drawled Helen.
Except for a look, which she hoped was withering, this was ignored by the plump girl, who went on: “Trix would jump at the chance, Ruth. You know, she has no regular home. She’s just passed around from one family of relations to another during vacations. She told me so.”
“Would her guardian agree?” asked Ruth.
“Nothing easier. She told me he wouldn’t care if she joined that party that’s going to start for the south pole this season. He’s afraid of girls. He’s an old bachelor – and a misogynist.”
“Goodness!” murmured Helen. “There should be something done about letting such savage animals be at large.”
“It’s no fun for poor little Trix,” said Jennie.
“She shall be asked,” Ruth declared. “And Sally Blanchard.”
“Oh, yes!” cried Helen. “She owns a horse, and has been riding three times a week all this spring. Her father believes that horseback riding keeps the doctor away.”
“Improvement on ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away,’” quoted Ruth.
“How about eating an onion a day?” put in Jennie. “That will keep everybody away!”
“Oh, Jennie, we’re not getting anywhere!” declared Helen Cameron. “Are you going to invite a bunch of girls, Ruth, to go West with us?”
This is how the idea germinated and took root. Ruth and Helen had talked over the possibility of making the trip into the Hualapai Range for more than a fortnight; but nothing had as yet been planned in detail.
Mr. Hammond, president of the Alectrion Film Corporation had conceived the idea of a spectacular production on the screen of “The Forty-Niners” – as the title implied, a picture of the early gold digging in the West. He had heard of an abandoned mining camp in Mohave County, Arizona, which could easily and cheaply be put into the condition it was before its inhabitants stampeded for other gold diggings.
Mr. Hammond desired to have most of the scenes taken at Freezeout Camp and he had talked over the plot of the story with Ruth Fielding, whose previous successes as a scenario writer were remarkable. The producer wished, too, that Ruth should visit the abandoned mining camp to get her “local color” and to be on the scene when his company arrived to make the films.
There was a particular reason, too, why Ruth had a more