ON THE WAY TO BRIARWOOD
If anything had been needed to interest Ruth Fielding deeply in the young
fellow who had been injured at the scene of the railroad wreck, the
occurrence that evening at the Red Mill would have provided it.
It was not enough for her to make a veritable hero of him to Helen, and
Jane Ann, and Tom, when they came over from Outlook the following morning.
When the girl of the Red Mill was really interested in anything or
anybody, she gave her whole-souled attention to it.
She could not be satisfied with Jerry Sheming's brief account of his life
with his half-crazed uncle on some distant place called Cliff Island, and
the domestic tragedy that seemed to be the cause of the old man's final
incarceration in a madhouse.
"Tell me all about yourself--do," she pleaded with Jerry, who was to
remain in bed for several days (Uncle Jabez insisted on it himself, too!),
for the injured leg must be rested. "Didn't you live anywhere else but in
the woods?"
"That's right, Miss," he said, slowly. "I got a little schooling on the
mainland; but it warn't much. Uncle Pete used to guide around parties of
city men who wanted to fish and hunt. At the last I did most of the
guidin'. He said he could trust me, for I hated liquor as bad as him. _My_
dad was killed by it.
"Uncle Pete was a mite cracked over it, maybe. But he was good enough to
me until Rufus Blent came rummagin' round. Somehow he got Uncle Pete to
ragin'."
"Who is this Rufus Blent?" asked Ruth, curiously.
"He's a real estate man. He lives at Logwood. That's the landin' at the
east end o' the lake."
"What lake?"
"Tallahaska. You've heard tell on't?" he asked.
"Yes. But I was never there, of course."
"Well, Miss, Cliff Island is just the purtiest place! And Uncle Pete must
have had some title to it, for he's lived there all his life--and he's
old. Fifty-odd year he was there, I know. He was more than a squatter.
"I reckon he was a bit of a miser. He had some money, and he didn't trust
to banks. So he kept it hid on the island, of course.
"Then the landslide come, and he talked as though it had covered his
treasure box--and in it was papers he talked about. If he could ha' got
those papers he could ha' beat Rufus Blent off.
"That's the understandin' I got of him. Of course, he talked right ragin'
and foolish; but some things he said was onderstandable. But he couldn't
make the judge see it--nor could I. They let Rufus Blent have his way, and
Uncle Pete went to the 'sylum.
"Then they ordered me off the island. I believe Blent wanted to s'arch it
himself for the treasure box. He's a sneakin' man--I allus hated him,"
said Jerry, clenching his fist angrily.
"But they could ha' put me in the jug if I'd tried to fight him. So I come
away. Don't 'spect I'll ever see Tallahaska--or Cliff Island--again," and
the young fellow's voice broke and he turned his face away.
When Jane Ann Hicks heard something of this, through Ruth, she was eager
to help Jerry to be revenged upon the man whom he thought had cheated his
uncle.
"Let me write to Bill Hicks about it," she cried, eagerly. "He'll come on
here and get after this thieving real estate fellow--you bet!"
"I have no doubt that he would," laughed Helen, pinching her. "You'd make
him leave his ranch and everything else and come here just to do that.
Don't be rash, young lady. Jerry certainly did you a favor, but you
needn't take everything he says for the gospel truth."
"I believe myself he's honest," added Ruth, quietly.
"And I don't doubt him either," Helen Cameron said. "But we'd better hear
both sides of it. And a missing treasure box, and papers to prove that an
old hunter is owner of an island in Tallahaska, sounds--well, unusual, to
say the least."
Ruth laughed. "Helen has suddenly developed caution," she said. "What do
you say, Tom?"
"I'll get father to write to somebody at Logwood, and find out about it,"
returned the boy, promptly.
That is the way the matter was left for the time being. The next day they
were to start for school--the girls for Briarwood and Tom for Seven Oaks.
It was arranged that Jerry should remain at the Red Mill for a time. Uncle
Jabez's second opinion of him was so favorable that the miller might
employ him for a time as the harvesting and other fall work came on. And
Jane Ann left a goodly sum in the miller's hands for young Sheming's use.
"He's that independent that he wouldn't take nothing from me but a pair
of cuff links," declared Jane Ann, wiping her eyes, for she was a
tender-hearted girl under her rough exterior. "Says they will do for him
to remember me by. He's a nice chap."
"Jinny's getting sentimental," gibed Tom, slily.
"I'm not over you, Mister Tom!" she flared up instantly. "You're too
'advanced' a dresser."
"And you were the girl who once ran away from Silver Ranch and the boys
out there, because everything was so 'common,'" chuckled Tom.
Ruth shut him off at that. She knew that the western girl could not stand
much teasing.
They were all nervous, anyway; at least, the girls were. Ruth and Helen
approached their second year at Briarwood with some anxiety. How would
they be treated? How would the studies be arranged for the coming months
of hard work? How were they going to stand with the teachers?
When the two chums first went to Briarwood they occupied a double room;
but later they had taken in Mercy Curtis, a lame girl. Now that
"triumvirate" could not continue, for Jane Ann had begged to room with
Ruth and Helen.
The western girl, who was afraid of scarcely anything "on four legs or
two" in her own environment, was really nervous as she approached
boarding school. She had seen enough of these eastern girls to know that
they were entirely different from herself. She was "out of their class,"
she told herself, and if she had not been with Ruth and Helen these few
last days before the opening of the school term, she would have run away.
Ruth was going back to school this term with a delightful sense of having
gained Uncle Jabez's special approval. He admitted that schooling such as
she gained at Briarwood was of some use. And he made her a nice present of
pocket-money when she started.
The Cameron auto stopped for her at the Red Mill before mid-forenoon, and
Ruth bade the miller and Aunt Alvirah and Ben--not forgetting Jerry
Sheming, her new friend--good-bye.
"Do--_do_ take care o' yourself, my pretty," crooned Aunt Alvirah over
her, at the last. "Jest remember we're a-honin' for you here at the ol'
mill."
"Take care of Uncle Jabez," whispered Ruth. She dared kiss the grim old
man only upon his dusty cheek. Then she shook hands with bashful Ben and
ran out to her waiting friends.
"Come on, or we'll lose the train," cried Helen.
They were off the moment Ruth stepped into the tonneau. But she stood up
and waved her hand to the little figure of Aunt Alvirah in the cottage
doorway as long as she could be seen on the Cheslow road. And she had a
fancy that Uncle Jabez himself was lurking in the dark opening to the
grist-floor of the mill, and watching the retreating motor car.
There was a quick, alert-looking girl hobbling on two canes up and down
the platform at Cheslow Station. This was Mercy Curtis, the station
agent's crippled daughter.
"Here you are at last!" she cried, shrilly. "And the train already hooting
for the station. Five minutes more and you would have been too late. Did
you think I could go to Briarwood without you?"
Ruth ran up and kissed her heartily. She knew that Mercy's "bark was worse
than her bite."
"You come and see Jane Ann--and be nice to her. She doesn't look it, but
she's just as scared as she can be."
"Of course you'd have some poor, unfortunate pup, or kitten, to mother,
Ruth Fielding," snapped the lame girl.
She was very nice, however, to the girl from Silver Ranch, sat beside her
in the chair car, and soon had Jane Ann laughing. For Mercy Curtis, with
her sarcastic tongue, could be good fun if she wished to be.
Here and there, along the route to Osago Lake, other Briarwood girls
joined them. At one point appeared Madge Steele and her brother, Bob, a
slow, smiling young giant, called "Bobbins" by the other boys, who was
always being "looked after" in a most distressing fashion by his sister.
"Come, Bobby, boy, don't fall up the steps and get your nice new clothes
dirty," adjured Madge, as her brother made a false step in getting aboard
the train. "Will you look out for him, Mr. Cameron, if I leave him in your
care?"
"Sure!" said Tom, laughing. "I'll see that he doesn't spoil his pinafore
or mess up his curls."
"Say! I'd shake a sister like that if I had one," grunted "Busy Izzy"
Phelps, disgustedly.
"Aw, what's the odds?" drawled good-natured Bobbins.
The hilarious crowd boarded the _Lanawaxa_ at the landing, and after
crossing the lake they again took a train, disembarking at Seven Oaks,
where the boys' school was situated.
From here the girls were to journey by stage to Briarwood. There was
dust-coated, grinning, bewhiskered "Old Noah Dolliver" and his "Ark,"
waiting for them.
There was a horde of uniformed academy boys about to greet Tom and his
chums, and to eye the girls who had come thus far in their company. But
Ruth and her friends were not so bashful as they had been the year before.
They formed in line, two by two, and slowly paraded the length of the
platform, chanting in unison the favorite "welcome to the infants" used at
the beginning of each half at Briarwood:
"Uncle Noah, he drove an Ark--
One wide river to cross!
He's aiming to land at Briarwood Park--
One wide river to cross!
One wide river!
One wide river of Jordan!
One wide river!
One wide river to cross!"
The boys cheered them enthusiastically. The girls piled into the coach
with much laughter. Even Mercy had taken part in this fun, for the
procession had marched at an easy pace for her benefit.
Old Dolliver cracked his whip. Tom ran along in the dust on one side and
Bobbins on the other, each to bid a last good-bye to his sister.
Then the coach rolled into the shadow of the cool wood road, and Ruth and
her friends were really upon the last lap of their journey to the Hall.