A BOTTOMLESS PIT
Once within the big bare room assigned to her and Ruth, Helen gave
vent to joyful giggles.
“Ruth, this is too rich,” Helen gurgled. “It’s better than any
circus I was ever at. Within half an hour of landing we meet both a
desperado and a confidence man.”
“Only Sandy Banks isn’t a desperado,” said Ruth, reaching eagerly
for a pitcher of cold water. “And unless I’m very much mistaken, our
friend Slick Jones is far from being a confidence man.”
“Ruth, how can you be so trusting!” Helen removed her hat and coat
and rather gingerly hung them on a row of rusty hooks along the wall
that seemed to be all the closet the room contained. “Didn’t you
hear Sandy say that Slick gambled? And then, look at his name, Slick
Jones!”
“From his hair,” said Ruth, sputtering as she dashed cold water
all over her face and neck. “My, this feels good! Better try some,
Helen.”
“Come on in, the water’s fine,” sang that young lady, as she tossed
a glove toward the dresser and missed. “I’ll do that thing in just
a minute, Ruthie. But first I must roam about this palatial room so
that I may fully appreciate all its beauties and conveniences.”
“Now you’re making fun,” laughed Ruth, as she scrubbed her cheeks
to a healthy red glow. “You mustn’t expect all the conveniences and
luxuries of home at Knockout Point.”
“One oughtn’t to expect much at Knockout Point,” said Helen, with a
chuckle. “Sounds kind of ominous, doesn’t it, Ruthie? Knockout Inn at
Knockout Point! Lucky if we get off without a knockout blow as well.”
“Oh, you’re horrid!” Ruth reproached her. “If anybody gets a knockout
blow it will be Knockout Point. I can tell you that!”
“All right, Ruthie, if you say so,” said Helen, throwing a kiss
toward her chum. “I’ve come to believe that sometimes, most
generally, you mean just what you say!”
When they were rested and refreshed the two girls decided to go on a
short tour of exploration. They had promised to meet Chess and Tom
outside the inn, but they were consumed with a great curiosity to see
the interior of this unusual place first.
The house followed the very simplest style of architecture within
as without. There was one long hall running the full length of the
building, with rooms opening off both sides of it.
On one side were the sleeping apartments, on the other, the living
quarters. These the girls sauntered through and found them, with
the exception of the large living room, as bare and as guiltless of
ornament as the sleeping rooms.
There was a big dining room with two long rough-hewn tables,
stretching from end to end of it. With the exception of the tables
and chairs the room held no furniture save a huge, old-fashioned
sideboard that must have been a hundred years old.
“Wonder how that got here,” said Helen, pointing to this last
curiosity. “I bet that thing is worth real money.”
“Not to me,” laughed Ruth. “I never saw anything half so ugly. But
look, Helen,” she opened the door to another room. “This isn’t bad!”
They had entered the living room, the one apartment that presented
any sort of homelike appearance. One end of the room was practically
taken up by an immense fireplace. Some big, comfortable chairs were
scattered about and in them were cushions that, while faded and worn,
were immaculately clean.
There was a long table in the center of the room on which were lying
some old periodicals and magazines that looked as faded and worn as
the cushions in the chairs.
Some animal skins hung on the walls, effectually mitigating the
bareness of the rafters, and rag rugs were flung over the rough,
unvarnished floors. An oil lamp completed the furnishings.
As the girls advanced further into the room some one rose from the
shadowy far corner of it and looked curiously at them. The newcomers
were rather startled at the apparition since they had supposed the
room to be empty and were glad when the stranger crossed to the hall
and disappeared.
“One of our fellow guests at Knockout Inn,” laughed Helen, as she and
Ruth, arms about each other, sauntered out to the front of the house
where they were to meet Tom and Chess.
There was not much to be done for the rest of that day except to
wander about and become better acquainted with the immediate environs
of their headquarters. On the morrow Ruth planned to start bright and
early in search of locations.
There was nothing remarkable about Knockout Point. A half-abandoned
settlement on the river front, with a few shabby stores, a few
scattered houses hardly worthy of the name, an inn, namely Knockout
Inn, and, set some distance back from its more respectable neighbors,
a dance hall and gambling den called The Big Chance.
Naturally the girls and their escorts did not explore this latter
place of amusement very thoroughly, although Ruth did think that on
some future occasion she might be able to use it in her picture,
provided, of course, the management consented.
But even the run-down appearance of the town in general could
do nothing to ruin the scenic grandeur of the mountains in the
background.
Snow Mountain, capped with ice all the year round and raising its
proud crest high above its fellows, inspired the young people with
awe. The crude and ramshackle buildings of Knockout Point seemed to
them utterly out of place there, huddled at the base of the mountain
and profaning the grandeur of the background.
“A wonderful spot for making pictures, Helen,” Ruth murmured finally.
“I can scarcely wait until to-morrow!”
They returned about dinner time to Knockout Inn to find an ample, if
very simple, meal awaiting them.
There in the big bare dining room the moving picture company met for
the first time since landing. In response to Ruth’s questions it
appeared that they were well satisfied with their new quarters (all
save Joe Rumph, who merely glowered and said nothing) and that they
were eager to start the work of rehearsing as soon as their youthful
director gave the word.
But in spite of their friendly attitude toward her, Ruth had again
the uneasy sense that she was on probation, that before she was
whole-heartedly accepted by them she must prove her ability to film a
picture such as “The Girl of Gold.”
“I’ll show them!” thought Ruth valiantly. “To-morrow I will begin to
prove to them exactly what I can do!”
With this determination well fixed in her mind, Ruth resisted all
efforts on the part of Tom and the others to persuade her to take an
after-dinner stroll with them.
“I must go up and look over the script and the book again, so as to
have the story well in mind when I start to hunt locations in the
morning,” she told them. “From now on,” she added, with a smile,
“something tells me I am going to be a very busy girl!”
“You are always that, Ruth Fielding!” sighed Helen. “Well, come on,
boys; no use trying to change her mind!”
In the morning Ruth went out bright and early, getting up before any
one else and leaving a note of explanation for Helen.
Slick Jones, who, as was the case with Sandy Banks of the monstrous
mustache, already felt a boundless admiration for the youthful
director, saw that she was served with a good breakfast, early as the
hour was.
Ruth started off buoyantly on foot, convinced that the location for
the taking of the first big outdoor scene ought to be found somewhere
in the vicinity of Knockout Inn.
The first location decided upon, she could then take more time in
exploring for others. Tom could do some of the scouting about for her
and, knowing just what it was she wanted, could find locations that
he thought would appeal to her.
The start would have been made. And as Ruth, in company with all
other directors, knew, the start was almost as important as the
finish. The first scene shot, the action continued on its own
momentum.
Ruth raised her eyes to the white-capped peak of Snow Mountain
lifting above the little settlement of Knockout Point, and on impulse
Ruth set her feet toward it.
It was the pride of the natives, or so she had been informed by Sandy
Banks the evening before. They even had a superstition about it. Snow
Mountain guarded and protected all in its vicinity, so thought the
simpler people of the Yukon. The nearer one lived to it, the more one
could count upon good fortune!
“So the nearer I come to it,” thought Ruth whimsically, “the more
certain I shall be of finding a good location!”
But to get nearer to the mountain was no easy task, as Ruth soon
learned. In that rare atmosphere distances were deceptive, and the
young motion picture director had to travel for an hour or more
before she reached even the base of the mountain.
It was a hard, hot walk and she rested on a rock at the foot of the
mountain before she started to climb the first of its several heights.
“My, I wish I had come on horseback,” she sighed. “I’m footsore
already. And then to think, I’ve got to walk all that way back!”
She had scarcely spoken the words when a mysterious and horrible
thing happened. The solid ground beneath her feet seemed suddenly to
give way and she felt herself sinking, sinking, into a bottomless
abyss.