WHAT WAS IN THE NEWSPAPER
"Whatever have you got there, Tom?" asked Ruth, curiously.
"Hush! I reckon Crab lost it when you fell in the water and stirred us
all up so," returned the boy, with a grin.
"Lost that paper?"
"Yes. You see, it's a page torn from the Sunday edition of a New
York daily. On this side is a story of some professor's discoveries
in ancient Babylon."
"Couldn't have interested Jack Crab much," remarked Ruth, smiling.
"That's what I said myself," declared Tom, hastily. "Therefore, I
turned it over. And _this_ is what Crab was showing that Nita girl, I
am sure."
Ruth looked at the illustrated sheet that Tom spread before her. There
was a girl on a very spirited cow pony, swinging a lariat, the loop of
which was about to settle over the broadly spreading horns of a Texas
steer. The girl was dressed in a very fancy "cow-girl" costume, and the
picture was most spirited indeed. In one corner, too, was a reproduction
of a photograph of the girl described in the newspaper article.
"Why! it doesn't look anything like Nita," gasped Ruth, understanding
immediately why Tom had brought the paper to her.
"Nope. You needn't expect it to. Those papers use any old photograph to
make illustrations from. But read the story."
It was all about the niece of a very rich cattle man in Montana who
had run away from the ranch on which she had lived all her life. It
was called Silver Ranch, and was a very noted cattle range in that
part of the West. The girl's uncle raised both horses and cattle,
was very wealthy, had given her what attention a single man could in such
a situation, and was now having a countrywide search made for the runaway.
"Jane Ann Hicks Has Run Away From a Fortune" was the way the paper put
it in a big "scare head" across the top of the page; and the text went
on to tell of rough Bill Hicks, of Bullhide, and how he had begun in
the early cattle days as a puncher himself and had now risen to the sole
proprietorship of Silver Ranch.
"Bill's one possession besides his cattle and horses that he took
any joy in was his younger brother's daughter, Jane Ann. She is an
orphan and came to Bill and he has taken sole care of her (for a woman
has never been at Silver Ranch, save Indian squaws and a Mexican cook
woman) since she could creep. Jane Ann is certainly the apple of Old
Bill's eye.
"But, as Old Bill has told the Bullhide chief of police, who is sending
the pictures and description of the lost girl all over the country,
'Jane Ann got some powerful hifalutin' notions.' She is now a
well-grown girl, smart as a whip, pretty, afraid of nothing on four legs,
and just as ignorant as a girl brought up in such an environment would
be. Jane Ann has been reading novels, perhaps. As the Eastern youth
used to fill up on cheap stories of the Far West, and start for that
wild and woolly section with the intention of wiping from the face of
Nature the last remnant of the Red Tribes, so it may be that Jane Ann
Hicks has read of the Eastern millionaire and has started for the
Atlantic seaboard for the purpose of lassoing one--or more--of those
elusive creatures.
"However, Old Bill wants Jane Ann to come home. Silver Ranch will
be hers some day, when Old Bill passes over the Great Divide, and he
believes that if she is to be Montana's coming Cattle Queen his niece
would better not know too much about the effete East."
And in this style the newspaper writer had spread before his readers
a semi-humorous account (perhaps fictitious) of the daily life of the
missing heiress of Silver Ranch, her rides over the prairies and hills on
half-wild ponies, the round-ups, calf-brandings, horse-breakings, and
all other activities supposed to be part and parcel of ranch life.
"My goodness me!" gasped Ruth, when she had hastily scanned all this,
"do you suppose that any sane girl would have run away from all that
for just a foolish whim?"
"Just what I say," returned Tom. "Cracky! wouldn't it be great to
ride over that range, and help herd the cattle, and trail wild horses,
and--and----"
"Well, that's just what one girl got sick of, it seems," finished
Ruth, her eyes dancing. "Now! whether this same girl is the one we
know----"
"I bet she is," declared Tom.
"Betting isn't proof, you know," returned Ruth, demurely.
"No. But Jane Ann Hicks is this young lady who wants to be called
'Nita'--Oh, glory! what a name!"
"If it is so," Ruth rejoined, slowly, "I don't so much wonder that
she wanted a fancy name. 'Jane Ann Hicks'! It sounds ugly; but an ugly
name can stand for a truly beautiful character."
"That fact doesn't appeal to this runaway girl, I guess," said Tom.
"But the question is: What shall we do about it?"
"I don't know as we can do anything about it," Ruth said, slowly. "Of
course we don't know that this Hicks girl and Nita are the same."
"What was Crab showing her the paper for?"
"What can Crab have to do with it, anyway?" returned Ruth, although she
had not forgotten the interest the assistant lighthouse keeper had shown
in Nita from the first.
"Don't know. But if he recognized her----"
"From the picture?" asked Ruth.
"Well! you look at it. That drawing of the girl on horseback looks more
like her than the photographic half-tone," said Tom. "She looks just
that wild and harum-scarum!"
Ruth laughed. "There _is_ a resemblance," she admitted. "But I don't
understand why Crab should have any interest in the girl, anyway."
"Neither do I. Let's keep still about it. Of course, we'll tell
Nell," said Tom. "But nobody else. If that old ranchman is her uncle he
ought to be told where she is."
"Maybe she was not happy with him, after all," said Ruth, thoughtfully.
"My goodness!" Tom cried, preparing to go back to the other boys who
were calling him. "I don't see how anybody could be unhappy under such
conditions."
"That's all very well for a boy," returned the girl, with a superior
air. "But think! she had no girls to associate with, and the only women
were squaws and a Mexican cook!"
Ruth watched Nita, but did not see the assistant lighthouse keeper
speak to the runaway during the passage home, and from the dock to the
bungalow Ruth walked by Nita's side. She was tempted to show the page of
the newspaper to the other girl, but hesitated. What if Nita really
_was_ Jane Hicks? Ruth asked herself how _she_ would feel if she were
burdened with that practical but unromantic name, and had to live on
a lonely cattle ranch without a girl to speak to.
"Maybe I'd run away myself," thought Ruth. "I was almost tempted to
run away from Uncle Jabez when I first went to live at the Red Mill."
She had come to pity the strange girl since reading about the one who
had run away from Silver Ranch. Whether Nita had any connection with
the newspaper article or not, Ruth had begun to see that there might be
situations which a girl couldn't stand another hour, and from which
she was fairly forced to flee.
The fishing party arrived home in a very gay mood, despite the incident
of Ruth's involuntary bath. Mary Cox kept away from the victim of the
accident and when the others chaffed Ruth, and asked her how she came
to topple over the rock, The Fox did not even change color.
Tom scolded in secret to Ruth about Mary. "She ought to be sent home.
I'll not feel that you're safe any time she is in your company. I've
a mind to tell Miss Kate Stone," he said.
"I'll be dreadfully angry if you do such a thing, Tom," Ruth assured
him, and that promise was sufficient to keep the boy quiet.
They were all tired and not even Helen objected when bed was proposed
that night. In fact, Heavy went to sleep in her chair, and they had a
dreadful time waking her up and keeping her awake long enough for her to
undress, say her prayers, and get into bed.
In the other girls' room Ruth and her companions spent little time in
talking or frolicking. Nita had begged to sleep with Mercy, with whom
she had spent considerable time that day and evening; and the lame girl
and the runaway were apparently both asleep before Ruth and Helen got
settled for the night.
Then Helen dropped asleep between yawns and Ruth found herself lying
wide-awake, staring at the faintly illuminated ceiling. Of a sudden,
sleep had fled from her eyelids. The happenings of the day, the mystery
of Nita, the meanness of Mary Cox, her own trouble at the mill, the
impossibility of her going to Briarwood next term unless she found some
way of raising money for her tuition and board, and many, many other
thoughts, trooped through Ruth Fielding's mind for more than an hour.
Mostly the troublesome thoughts were of her poverty and the seeming
impossibility of her ever discovering any way to earn such a quantity
of money as three hundred and fifty dollars. Her chum, lying asleep
beside her, did not dream of this problem that continually troubled
Ruth's mind.
The clock down stairs tolled eleven solemn strokes. Ruth did not move.
She might have been sound asleep, save for her open eyes, their gaze
fixed upon the ceiling. Suddenly a beam of light flashed in at one
window, swinging from right to left, like the blade of a phantom scythe,
and back again.
Ruth did not move, but the beam of light took her attention immediately
from her former thoughts. Again and once again the flash of light was
repeated. Then she suddenly realized what it was. Somebody was walking
down the path toward the private dock, swinging a lantern.
She would have given it no further thought had not a door latch clicked.
Whether it was the latch of her room, or another of the bedrooms on this
floor of the bungalow, Ruth could not tell. But in a moment she heard
the balustrade of the stair creak.
"It's Izzy again!" thought Ruth, sitting up in bed. "He's walking in
his sleep. The boys did not tie him."
She crept out of bed softly so as not to awaken Helen or the other girls
and went to the door. When she opened it and peered out, there was no
ghostly figure "tight-roping it" on the balustrade. But she heard a
sound below--in the lower hall. Somebody was fumbling with the chain of
the front door.
"He's going out! I declare, he's going out!" thought Ruth and sped
to the window.
She heard the jar of the big front door as it was opened, and then pulled
shut again. She heard no step on the porch, but a figure soon fluttered
down the steps. It was not Isadore Phelps, however. Ruth knew that at
first glance. Indeed, it was not a boy who started away from the house,
running on the grass beside the graveled walk.
Ruth turned back hastily and looked at the other bed--at Mercy's bed.
The place beside the lame girl was empty. Nita had disappeared!