Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp Part 9

She stood up and found that her weight made little or no impression upon the well-packed snow. There was no wind and, although the air was very keen (the thermometer probably being almost to the zero mark) it was easy for her to move over the drifts. With some little instruction from the rattlesnake man, and after several tumbles-- which were of little moment because he and Fred held her up--Ruth was able to put one foot before the other and shuffle over the snow at a fairly good pace.

The moonlight made the unbroken track as plain as noonday. To Ruth it seemed almost impossible that the hermit could find his way through a forest which showed no mark of any former traveler; but he went on as though it was a turnpike.

Two hours and a half were they on the way, and Ruth had begun to be both tired and cold when they crossed a road on which there were telegraph, or telephone poles and then--a little farther into the Big Woods--they struck a well-defined private track over which sleds had recently traveled.

"You say some of your party and the baggage were coming over to-night,"

said the hermit to Ruth. "They have been along. This is the road to Snow Camp--and there is the light from the windows!"

Ruth saw several points of light directly ahead. They quickly reached a good-sized clearing, in the middle of which stood a two-story log cabin, with a balcony built all around it at the height of the second floor. Sleigh bells jingled as the horses stamped in the yard. The heavy sledges with the luggage and the serving people had just arrived. Ruth Fielding was the first of the pleasure party to arrive at Snow Camp.

CHAPTER IX

"LONG JERRY" TODD

Some dogs began barking, and the hermit's hound replied by baying with his nose in the air--a sound to make anybody s.h.i.+ver! The Rattlesnake Man gave a l.u.s.ty shout, and a door opened, flooding the porch of the big log cabin with lamplight.

"h.e.l.lo!" came the answering shout across the clearing, and a very tall man--as thin as a lath--strode down from the porch and approached them, after sending back the dogs--all but one. This big creature could not be stayed in his impetuous rush over the snow and the next instant he sprang up and put both his forepaws on Ruth's shoulders.

"Oh, Reno!" she cried, fondling Tom Cameron's big mastiff, that had come all the way from Cheslow with them in the baggage car.

"_You_ know me; don't you?"

"Guess that proves her right to be here," said the hermit, more to himself than to the surprised tall man, who was the guide and keeper in charge of Snow Camp. "Your boss lose one of his party off the train, Long Jerry Todd?"

"So I hear. Is this here the gal?" cried the other, in immense surprise. "I swanny!"

"Yep. She's all right. I'll go back," said the rattlesnake man, without further ado, turning in his tracks.

"Oh, sir!" cried Ruth. "I'm so much obliged to you."

But the hermit slipped away on his snowshoes and in less than a minute was out of sight. Then Ruth looked around suddenly for Fred Hatfield. The runaway had disappeared.

"Where's that boy?" she cried.

"What boy?" returned Long Jerry, curiously. "Didn't see no boy here."

"Why, the boy that came here with us. He left the train at Emoryville when I did--you must have seen him."

"I never did," declared the guide. "He must have slipped away. Maybe he's gone into the house. You'd better come in yourself. The women folks will 'tend to you. Why, Miss, you're dead beat!"

Indeed Ruth was. She could scarcely stumble with the guide's help to the porch. She had kicked off the snowshoes and the hermit had taken them with him. Had it not been for the hermit and Fred Hatfield, Ruth Fielding would never have been able to travel the distance from the hermit's cabin to Snow Camp. And the terrible shaking up she had received on the timber cart made her feel like singing old Aunt Alvirah's tune of "Oh, my back and oh, my bones!"

There were two maids whom Mr. Cameron had brought along and they, with two men, had come over from Scarboro (a ride of eight miles, or so) with the luggage. They welcomed Ruth and set her down before a great fire in the dining room, and one of them removed the girl's shoes so that her feet might be dried and warmed, while the other hurried to make some supper for the wanderer.

But as soon as Ruth got her slippers on, and recovered a little from the exhaustion of her trip, two things troubled her vastly. She inquired for the boy again, and learned that he had not been seen about the camp. When she and the hermit had entered the clearing, Fred had undoubtedly taken the opportunity to slip away.

"And in the night--and it so cold, too," thought Ruth. "What will Mr. Cameron say?"

That question brought her to the second of her troubles. Her friends would worry about her all night if she did not find some way of allaying their anxiety.

"Oh, Mary!" she said to the maid. "Where's the telephone? Tom said there was telephone connection here."

"So there is, Miss," returned the maid. "And somebody had better tell Mrs. Murchiston that you're safe. They're all as worried as they can be about you, for the folks at that store by the railroad--where the train stopped--when _they_ was called up as soon as the train reached Scarboro, declared that you had got run away with by a team of mules."

"Which was most certainly true," admitted Ruth. "I never had such a dreadful time in all my life. Run away with by mules, and frightened to death by a great big catamount----"

Mary squealed and covered her ears. "Don't tell me!" she gasped.

"Sure, Miss, there do bes bears, an' panthers, an' wild-cats, an'-- an' I dunno what-all in these woods. Sure, me and Janey will never go out of this house whilst we stay. 'Tain't civilized hereabout."

Ruth laughed rather ruefully. "I guess you're right, Mary," she said. "It doesn't seem to be very civilized here in the backwoods-- and such queer people live here, too. But now! let me telephone."

The maid showed her where it was and Ruth called up Scarboro and got the hotel where the Cameron party was stopping. Almost immediately she heard Mr. Cameron's voice.

"Hullo! Snow Camp? What's wanted?" he asked, in a nervous, jerky way.

"This is me, Mr. Cameron--Ruth, you know. I am all right at Snow Camp."

"Well! That's fine! Thank goodness you're safe!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the merchant, in an entirely different tone. "Why, Ruth, I was just about sending a party out from the store at Emoryville to beat up the woods for you. They say there is a big panther in that district."

"Oh, I know it. The beast frightened us most to death--"

"Who was with you?" interrupted Mr. Cameron.

"Why, that boy! He jumped off the train and I followed to stop him.

Now he's run away again, sir."

"Oh, the boy calling himself Fred Hatfield?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Cameron.

"He's left you?"

"He came here to Snow Camp and then disappeared. I am sorry--"

"You're a good little girl, Ruth. I wanted to bring him up here--and there are people who would be glad to know who he really is."

"But don't you know? Isn't his name Fred Hatfield?" questioned Ruth, in surprise.

"That can't be. Fred Hatfield was shot here in the woods more than a month ago. It was soon after the deer season opened, they tell me, and it is supposed to have been an accident. Young 'Lias Hatfield, half-brother of the real Fred, is in jail here, held for shooting his brother. Who the boy was whom we found and brought from the Red Mill, seems to be a mystery."

"Oh!" cried Ruth, but before she could say more, Mr. Cameron went on:

"We'll all be over in the morning. I hope you have not taken cold, or overtaxed your strength, I must go and tell Helen. She has been frightened half to death about you. Goodnight."

He hung up the receiver, leaving Ruth in rather a disturbed state of mind. The newspaper clipping that had dropped out of the old wallet the strange boy had carried, was the account of the shooting affair.

Mention was made in it about the very frequent mistakes made in the hunting season--mistakes which often end in the death of one hunter by the hand of another.

It said that 'Lias Hatfield and his younger brother, Fred, had had a quarrel and then gone hunting, each taking a different direction. The younger boy had ensconced himself just under the brink of a steep bank at the bottom of which was Rolling River, a swift and deep stream. His brother's story was that he had come up facing this place, having started a young buck not half a mile away. He thought he heard the buck stamping, and blowing, and then saw what he thought was the animal behind a fringe of bushes at the top of this steep river bank.