THE FILM HEROINE
When the motion picture girl fell from the sycamore tree into the water,
some of the members of the company, who sat or stood near by panting after
their hard chase cross-lots, actually laughed at their unfortunate
comrade's predicament.
But that was because they had no idea of the strength and treacherous
nature of the Lumano. At this point the eddies and cross-currents made the
stream more perilous than any similar stretch of water in the State.
"Oh, that silly girl!" shouted Mr. Grimes, the director. "There! she's
spoiled the scene again. I don't know what Hammond was thinking of to send
her up here to work with us.
"Hey, one of you fellows! go and fish her out. And that spoils our chance
of getting the picture to-day. Miss Gray will have to be mollycoddled, and
grandmothered, and what-not. Huh!"
While he scolded, the director scarcely gave a glance to the struggling
girl. The latter had struck out pluckily for the shore when she came up
from her involuntary plunge. After the cry she had uttered as she fell,
she had not made a sound.
To swim with one's clothing all on is not an easy matter at the best of
times. To do this in mid-winter, when the water is icy, is well nigh an
impossibility.
Several of the men of the company, more humane than the director, had
sprung to assist the unfortunate girl; but suddenly the current caught her
and she was swerved from the bank. She was out of reach.
"And not a skiff in sight!" exclaimed Tom.
"Oh, dear! The poor thing!" cried his sister. "She's being carried right
down the river. They'll never get her."
"Oh, Tom!" implored Ruth. "Hurry and start. _We must get that girl_!"
"Sure we will!" cried Tom Cameron.
He was already out of the car and madly turning the crank. In a moment the
engine was throbbing. Tom leaped back behind the wheel and the automobile
darted ahead.
The rough road led directly along the verge of the river bank. The
picture-play actors scattered as he bore down upon them. It gave Tom, as
well as the girls, considerable satisfaction to see the director, Grimes,
jump out of the way of the rapidly moving car.
The friends in the car saw the actress, whom Grimes had called both
"Hazel" and "Miss Gray," swirled far out from the shore; but they knew the
current or an eddy would bring her back. She sank once; but she came up
again and fought the current like the plucky girl she was.
"Oh, Helen! she's wonderful!" gasped Ruth, with clasped hands, as she
watched this fight for life which was more thrilling than anything she had
ever seen reproduced on the screen.
Helen was too frightened to reply; but Ruth Fielding often before had
shown remarkable courage and self-possession in times of emergency. No
more than the excited Tom did she lose her head on this occasion.
As has been previously told, Ruth had come to the banks of the Lumano
River and to her Uncle Jabez Potter's Red Mill some years before, when she
was a small girl. She was an orphan, and the crabbed and miserly miller
was her single living relative.
The first volume of the series, entitled "Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill,"
tells of the incidents which follow Ruth's coming to reside with her
uncle, and with Aunt Alvirah Boggs, who was "everybody's aunt" but
nobody's relative.
The first and closest friends of her own age that Ruth made in her new
home were Helen and Tom Cameron, twin children of a wealthy merchant
whose all-year home was not far from the Red Mill. With Helen and Mercy
Curtis, a lame girl, Ruth is sent to Briarwood Hall, a delightfully
situated boarding school at some distance from the girls' homes, and
there, in the second volume of the series, Ruth is introduced to new
scenes, some new friends and a few enemies; but altogether has a
delightful time.
Ensuing volumes tell of Ruth and her chums' adventures at Snow Camp; at
Lighthouse Point; on Silver Ranch, in Montana; on Cliff Island, where
occur a number of remarkable winter incidents; at Sunset Farm during the
previous summer; and finally, in the eighth volume, the one immediately
preceding this present story, Ruth achieves something that she has long,
long desired.
This last volume, called "Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies; Or, The Missing
Pearl Necklace," tells of an automobile trip which Ruth and her present
companions, Helen and Tom Cameron, took through the hills some distance
beyond the Red Mill and Cheslow, their home town.
They fall into the hands of Gypsies and the two girls are actually held
captive by the old and vindictive Gypsy Queen. Through Ruth's bravery
Helen escapes and takes the news of the capture back to Tom. Later the
grandson of the old Gypsy Queen releases Ruth.
While at the camp Ruth sees a wonderful pearl necklace in the hands of
the covetous old Queen Zelaya. Later, when the girls return to Briarwood,
they learn that an aunt of one of their friends, Nettie Parsons, has been
robbed of just such a necklace.
Ruth, through Mr. Cameron, puts the police on the trail of the Gypsies.
The Gypsy boy, Roberto, is rescued and in time becomes a protégé of Mr.
Cameron, while the stolen necklace is recovered from the Gypsy Queen, who
is deported by the Washington authorities.
In the end, the five thousand dollars reward offered by Nettie's aunt
comes to Ruth. She is enriched beyond her wildest dreams, and above all,
is made independent of the niggardly charity of her Uncle Jabez who seems
to love his money more than he does his niece.
Unselfishness was Ruth's chief virtue, though she had many. She could
never refuse a helping hand to the needy; nor did she fear to risk her own
convenience, sometimes even her own safety, to relieve or rescue another.
In the present case, none knew better than Ruth the treacherous currents
of the Lumano. It had not been so many months since she and her uncle,
Jabez Potter, out upon the Lumano in a boat, had nearly lost their lives.
This present accident, that to the young moving-picture actress, was at a
point some distance above the Red Mill.
"If she is carried down two hundred yards farther, Tom, she will be swept
out into mid-stream," declared Ruth, still master of herself, though her
voice was shaking.
"And then--good-night!" answered Tom. "I know what you mean, Ruth."
"She will sink for the last time before the current sweeps her in near the
shore again," Ruth added.
"Oh, don't!" groaned Helen. "The poor girl."
Tom had driven the automobile until it was ahead of the struggling Hazel
Gray. An eddy clutched her and drew her swiftly in toward the bank.
Immediately Tom shut off the power and he and Ruth both leaped out of the
car.
A long branch from an adjacent tree had been torn off by the wind and lay
beside the road. Tom seized this and ran with Ruth to the edge of the
water; but he knew the branch was a poor substitute for a rope.
"If she can cling to this, I'll get something better in a moment, Ruth!"
he exclaimed.
Swinging the small and bushy end of the branch outward, Tom dropped it
into the water just ahead of the imperiled girl. Ruth seized the butt with
her strong and capable hands.
"Cut off a length of that fence wire, Tommy," she ordered. "You have
wire-cutters in your auto kit, haven't you?"
"Sure!" cried Tom. "Never travel without 'em since we were at Silver
Ranch, you know. There! She's got it."
Hazel Gray had seized upon the branch. She was too exhausted to reach the
bank of the river without help, and just here the eddy began to swing her
around again, away from the shore.
The men of the company came running now, giving lusty shouts of
encouragement, but--that was all! The director had allowed the girl to get
into a perilous position on the leaning tree without having a boat and
crew in readiness to pick her up if she fell into the river. It was an
unpardonable piece of neglect, and there might still serious consequences
arise from it.
For the girl in the water was so exhausted that she could not long cling
to the limb. It was but a frail support between her and drowning.
When the men arrived Ruth feared to have them even touch the branch she
held, and she motioned them back. She knew that the girl in the stream was
almost exhausted and that a very little would cause her to lose her hold
upon the branch altogether.
"Don't touch it! I beg of you, don't touch it!" cried Ruth, as one excited
man undertook to take the butt of the branch.
"You can't hold it, Miss! you'll be pulled into the water."
"Never fear for me," the girl from the Red Mill returned. "I know what I
am about----Oh, goody! here comes Tom!"
She depended on Tom--she knew that he would do something if anybody could.
She gazed upon the wet, white face of the girl in the water and knew that
whatever Tom did must be done at once. Hazel Gray was loosing her hold.
"Oh! oh! oh!" screamed Helen, standing in the automobile with clasped
hands. "Don't let her drown, Tommy! Don't let her go down again--_don't_!"
Tom came, with grimly set lips, dragging about twenty feet of fence wire
behind him. Luckily it was smooth wire--not barbed. He quickly made a loop
in one end of it and wriggled the other end toward Ruth and the excited
men.
"Catch hold here!" he ordered. "Make a loop as I have, and don't let it
slip through your hands."
"Oh, Tom! you're never going into that cold water?" Ruth gasped, suddenly
stricken with fear for her friend's safety.
But that was exactly what Tom intended to do. There was no other way. He
had seen, too, the exhaustion of the girl in the water and knew that if
her hands slipped from the tree branch, she could never get a grip on the
wire.
Without removing an article of clothing the boy leaped into the stream.
It was over his head right here below the bank, and the chill of the water
was tremendous. As Tom said afterward, he felt it "clear to the marrow of
his bones!"
But he came up and struck out strongly for the face of the girl, which was
all that could be seen above the surface.
Hazel Gray's hold was slipping from the branch. She was blue about the
lips and her eyes were almost closed. The current was tugging at her
strongly; she was losing consciousness. If she was carried away by the
suction of the stream, now dragging so strongly at her limbs, Tom Cameron
would be obliged to loose his own hold upon the wire and swim after her.
And the young fellow was not at all sure that he could save either her or
himself if this occurred.
Yet, perilous as his own situation was, Tom thought only of that of the
actress.