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Ruth Fielding
In the Red Cross
OR
DOING HER BEST FOR
UNCLE SAM
BY
ALICE B. EMERSON
Author of "Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill,"
"Ruth Fielding in the Saddle," Etc.
_ILLUSTRATED_
NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Books for Girls
BY ALICE B. EMERSON
RUTH FIELDING SERIES
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
Price per volume, 50 cents, postpaid.
RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL
RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES
RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES
RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE
RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE
RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE
RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS
RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT
Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York.
Copyright, 1918, by
Cupples & Leon Company
Ruth Fielding in the Red Cross
Printed in U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Uncle Jabez Is Excited 1
II. The Call of the Drum 9
III. The Woman in Black 17
IV. "Can a Poilu Love a Fat Girl?" 25
V. "The Boys of the Draft" 34
VI. The Patriotism of the Purse 39
VII. On the Way 49
VIII. The Nearest Duty 56
IX. Tom Sails, and Something Else Happens 64
X. Suspicions 75
XI. Said in German 81
XII. Through Dangerous Waters 90
XIII. The New Chief 99
XIV. A Change of Base 107
XV. New Work 118
XVI. The Days Roll By 127
XVII. At the Gateway of the Chateau 133
XVIII. Shocking News 141
XIX. At the Wayside Cross 149
XX. Many Things Happen 156
XXI. Again the Werwolf 165
XXII. The Countess and Her Dog 175
XXIII. Ruth Does Her Duty 180
XXIV. A Partial Exposure 191
XXV. Quite Satisfactory 197
RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS
CHAPTER I--UNCLE JABEZ IS EXCITED
"Oh! Not _Tom_?"
Ruth Fielding looked up from the box she was packing for the local Red
Cross chapter, and, almost horrified, gazed into the black eyes of the
girl who confronted her.
Helen Cameron's face was tragic in its expression. She had been crying.
The closely written sheets of the letter in her hand were shaken, as
were her shoulders, with the sobs she tried to suppress.
"It--it's written to father," Helen said. "He gave it to me to read. I
wish Tom had never gone to Harvard. Those boys there are completely
crazy! To think--at the end of his freshman year--to throw it all up and
go to a training camp!"
"I guess Harvard isn't to blame," said Ruth practically. If she was
deeply moved by what her chum had told her, she quickly recovered her
self-control. "The boys are going from other colleges all over the land.
Is Tom going to try for a commission?"
"Yes."
"What does your father say?"
"Why," cried the other girl as though that, too, had surprised and hurt
her, "father cried 'Bully for Tom!' and then wiped his eyes on his
handkerchief. What can men be made of, Ruth? He knows Tom may be killed,
and yet he cheers for him."
Ruth Fielding smiled and suddenly hugged Helen. Ruth's smile was
somewhat tremulous, but her chum did not observe this fact.
"I understand how your father feels, dear. Tom does not want to be
drafted----"
"He wouldn't be drafted. He is not old enough. And even if they
automatically draft the boys as they become of age, it would be months
before they reached Tom, and the war will be over by that time. But here
he is throwing himself away----"
"Oh, Helen! Not that!" cried Ruth. "Our soldiers will fight for us--for
their country--for honor. And a man's life lost in such a cause is not
thrown away."
"That's the way I feel," said Helen, more steadily. "Tom is my twin. You
don't know what it means to have a twin brother, Ruth Fielding."
"That is true," sighed Ruth. "But I can imagine how you feel, dear. If
you have hopes of the war's being over so quickly, then I should expect
Tom back from training camp safe and sound, and with no chance of ever
facing the enemy. Has he really gone?"
"Oh, yes," Helen told her despondently. "And lots of the boys who used
to go to school with Tom at Seven Oaks. You know, all those jolly
fellows who were at Snow Camp with us, and at Lighthouse Point, and on
Cliff Island, and out West on Silver Ranch--and--and everywhere. Just to
think! We may never see them again."
"Dear me, Helen," Ruth urged, "don't look upon the blackest side of the
cloud. It's a long time before they go over there."
"We don't know how soon they will be in the trenches," said her friend
hopelessly. "These boys going to war----"
"And I wish I was young enough to go with 'em!" ejaculated a harsh
voice, as the door of the back kitchen opened and the speaker stamped
into the room. "Got that box ready to nail up, Niece Ruth? Ben's
hitching up the mules, and I want to get to Cheslow before dark."
"Oh! Almost ready, Uncle Jabez," cried the girl of the Red Mill, as the
gray old man approached.
He was lean and wiry and the dust of his mill seemed to have been so
ground into his very skin that he was a regular "dusty miller." His
features were as harsh as his voice, and he was seldom as excited as he
seemed to be now.
"Who's going to war now?" he asked, turning to Helen.
"Poor--poor Tom!" burst out the black-eyed girl, and began to dabble her
eyes again.
"What's the matter o' him?" demanded the old miller.
"He'll--he'll be shot--I know he'll be killed, and mangled horribly!"
"Fiddle-de-dee!" grunted Uncle Jabez, but his tone of voice was not as
harsh as his words sounded. "I never got shot, nor mangled none to speak
of, and I was fightin' and marchin' three endurin' years."
"_You_, Uncle Jabez?" cried Ruth.
"Yep. And I wish they'd take me again. I can go a-soldierin' as good as
the next one. I'm tough and I'm wiry. They talk about this war bein' a
dreadful war. Shucks! All wars air dreadful. They won't never have a
battle over there that'll be as bad as the Wilderness--believe me! They
may have more battles, but I went through some of the wust a man could
ever experience."
"And--and you weren't shot?" gasped Helen.
"Not a bit. Three years of campaigning and never was scratched. Don't
you look for Tom Cameron to be killed fust thing just because he's going
to the wars. If more men didn't come back from the wars than git killed
in 'em how d'ye s'pose this old world would have gone on rolling?
Shucks!"
"I never knew you were a soldier, Uncle Jabez," Ruth Fielding said.
"Wal, I was. Shucks! I was something of a sharpshooter, too. And we old
fellers--course I was nothin' but a boy, _then_--we could shoot. We'd
l'arn't to shoot on the farm. Powder an' shot was hard to git and we
l'arn't to make every bullet count. My old Betsey--didn't ye ever see my
Civil War rifle?" he demanded of Ruth.
"You mean the old brown gun that hangs over your bed and that Aunt
Alvirah is so much afraid of?"
"That's old Betsey. Sharpe's rifle. In them days it was jest about the
last thing in weepons. I brung it home after the Grand Army of the
Potomac was disbanded. Know how I did it? Government claimed all the
guns; but I took old Betsey apart and me an' my mates hid the pieces
away in our clothes, and so got her home. Then I assembled her again,"
and Uncle Jabez broke into a chuckle that was actually almost startling
to the girls, for the miller seldom laughed.
"Say!" he exclaimed, in his strange excitement. "I'll show her to ye."
He hurried out of the room, evidently in search of "Old Betsey." Helen
said to the miller's niece:
"Goodness, Ruth! what has happened to your Uncle Jabez?"
"Just what has happened to Tom--and your father," returned the girl of
the Red Mill. "I've seen it coming on. Uncle Jabez has been getting more
and more excited ever since war was declared. You know, when we came
home from college a month ago and decided to remain here and help in the
Red Cross work instead of finishing our sophomore year at Ardmore, my
decision was really the first one I ever made that Uncle Jabez seemed to
approve of immediately.
"He is thoroughly patriotic. When I told him I could study later--when
the war was over--but that I must work for the soldiers now, he said I
was a good girl. What do you think of _that_?"
"Cheslow is not doing its share," Helen said thoughtfully, her mind
switched by Ruth's last words to the matter that had completely filled
her own and her chum's thoughts for weeks. "The people are not awake.
They do not know we are at war yet. They have not done half for the Red
Cross that they should do."
"We'll make 'em!" declared Ruth Fielding. "We must get the women and
girls to pull together."
"Say, Ruth! what do you think of that woman in black--you know, the
widow, or whoever she is? Dresses in black altogether; but maybe it's
because she thinks black becomes her," added Helen rather scornfully.
"Mrs. Mantel?" asked Ruth slowly. "I don't know what to think of her.
She seems to be very anxious to help. Yet she does nothing really
helpful--only talks."
"And some of her talk I'd rather not hear," said Helen sharply.
"I know what you mean," Ruth rejoined, nodding. "But so many people talk
so doubtfully. They are unfamiliar with the history of the Red Cross and
what it has done. Perhaps Mrs. Mantel means no harm."
At that moment Uncle Jabez reappeared with the heavy rifle in his hands.
He was still chuckling.
"Calc'late I ain't heard Aunt Alvirah talk about this gun much of late.
One spell--when fust she come here to the Red Mill to keep house for
me--she didn't scurce dare to go into my room because of it. But, of
course, 'twarn't ever loaded.
"I was some sharpshooter, gals," he added proudly, patting the stock of
the heavy gun. "Here's a ca'tridge. I'm goin' to stick it in her an' you
shall hear how she roars. Warn't no Maxim silencers, nor nothin' like
that, when I used to pot the Johnny Rebs with Old Betsey."
He flung open the door into the back yard. He raised the rifle to his
shoulder, having slipped in the greased cartridge.
"See that sassy jay atop o' that cherry tree? I bet I kin clutter him up
a whole lot--an' he desarves it," said Uncle Jabez.
Just then the door into the other kitchen opened, and a little,
crooked-backed old woman with a shawl around her shoulders and a cap
atop of her thin hair appeared.
"Jabez Potter! What in creation you goin' to do with that awful gun?"
she shrilled.
"I'm a-goin' to knock the topknot off'n that bluejay," chuckled Uncle
Jabez.
"Stop! Don't! Gals!" cried the little old woman, hobbling down the two
steps into the room. "Oh, my back! and oh, my bones! Gals! stop him!
That gun can't shoot 'cause I went and plugged the barrel!"
At that moment Old Betsey went off with an awful roar.