NEW WORRIES
It was the day after her adventure with the stampeding cattle and Ruth
was taking a morning of rest before starting once more on a hunt for
suitable locations.
The two girls, Helen and Ruth, were up in Ruth’s room which various soft
and colorful articles from their trunks had made livable, talking over
plans for the picture and Ruth’s almost miraculous escape the day
before. At least, Ruth was trying to talk of her picture and Helen could
not be deflected from the theme of Ruth’s adventure, which interested
her vividly.
“Just think, only a little thing like chance or fate or whatever you
call it kept me from being there myself,” Helen observed. “I had a
horror of those savage looking steers.”
“It’s nothing to what I have now,” said Ruth, with a reminiscent
shudder.
“But think of the romance!” Helen was not to be stopped. “Think of
having Layton Boardman save you!”
“He didn’t,” said Ruth dryly.
“Well, he tried to, which is the same thing,” Helen said in a tone of
reproach. Ruth chuckled.
“It isn’t at all the same kind of thing, I assure you,” she retorted,
“as you would very well realize if you had been in my shoes.”
“Well, you had Tom, anyway, and a whole raft of cowboys, when Boardman
got kicked by his horse.”
“He didn’t get kicked by a horse! How many times do I have to tell you?”
Ruth laid down her papers in despair and Helen smiled mischievously at
her.
“I knew I’d make you stop working by fair means or foul,” she said
shamelessly.
“And I don’t feel like working--not a little bit,” Ruth confessed. “I’d
just like to let go--for a little while, anyway.”
“Well, why don’t you? Every one has to rest sometimes, you know, even
Ruth Fielding, whether she knows it or not. Here, take a chocolate and
give me a full and complete account of yesterday.”
“But I don’t want to talk about yesterday,” Ruth objected, accepting the
candy. “I tell you, if you had been there you wouldn’t be so keen on the
subject.”
“Poor Ruthie!” Helen reached over and patted her chum’s hand. “You did
have a dreadful shaking up. Wasn’t it lucky that Tom happened to be
coming home just then?”
“It was very lucky,” sighed Ruth, resigning herself to a discussion of
the subject since Helen, quite evidently, could be induced to talk of
nothing else. “I certainly wasn’t much use myself. I couldn’t move a
finger.”
There was a short silence while Ruth dreamed over plans for her picture
and Helen reviewed mentally the events of the day before.
“I suppose Tom was put out to find handsome Layton on the ground before
him,” said Helen, and Ruth shook herself impatiently.
“Layton, as you call him, was certainly on the ground most literally,”
she said, with a frown. “And I don’t know whether you know that my
interest in his injury is far more professional than personal.”
Helen nodded.
“I suppose you mean that having him laid up may delay your picture.”
“That’s certainly what I do mean!” Ruth sat up energetically and began
to look more like her old fighting self. “It seems to me that there’s an
evil sprite following me this trip----”
“Have you been to see him yet?”
Ruth shook her head.
“I was going to pretty soon. Tell you the truth,” she looked at Helen
seriously, “I’m almost afraid to. I’m so afraid that he may have
something more than a sprained ankle, and then--” She shrugged her
shoulders eloquently.
“A good many of the pictures can be taken without him, can’t they?”
asked Helen sympathetically. “Pictures where he doesn’t appear?”
“A few. But he appears in most of them. He plays a very strong lead all
through. Of course,” she stopped to consider, “we could take pictures of
the rodeo and the avalanche----”
“Oh, are we really going to have an avalanche?” Helen’s eyes sparkled.
“What fun!”
“An avalanche!” repeated Ruth. “Why, of course. That’s the main part of
the picture.”
Helen was leaning forward now, alert and eager.
“It will be artificial, of course?”
Ruth smiled.
“We could hardly ask Mother Nature to give us a special demonstration as
a favor,” she said. “Of course the avalanche will be the result of
carefully planted dynamite. But it will be as real looking as ingenuity
can make it.”
“I’ll count on you for that,” said Helen, regarding her chum admiringly.
“But I really didn’t know we were going to have anything so exciting.
Isn’t it--” she paused and regarded her friend uncertainly, “isn’t it a
bit dangerous?”
“A certain amount of danger always attaches to anything like that,” said
Ruth carelessly. “There are always a lot of unforeseen things that may
happen. Still, we’ve taken every possible precaution, and that’s the
best we can do.”
“Cost a heap of money I suppose?” said Helen, after another short pause.
Ruth nodded.
“More than I care to think about. Which reminds me that I must have a
business talk with Tom to-night and find out just how we stand. I,
personally, have some dead steers to pay for, too, I suppose,” and the
girl sighed.
“I don’t see why ‘personally.’ You didn’t kill the steers.”
“No; but they were killed in my cause.”
“I think Tom will look after that in spite of your hands-off
independence. You don’t treat Tommy-boy right, Ruthie.”
Ruth made no response to this observation, and the girls were silent for
a while.
“Seen anything suspicious about Viola lately?” asked Helen as Ruth
sorted out her papers and put them away.
“No, and I’m letting a sleeping dog lie,” replied Ruth emphatically.
“With all apologies to Viola,” chuckled Helen.
“I’ve about come to the conclusion,” Ruth added as she got up and began
to straighten her hair before the mirror over the washstand, “that her
conference with Bloomberg’s agent didn’t mean anything. I have enough
trouble without worrying about that.”
“It isn’t your worrying that matters,” observed Helen. “It’s what Viola
does.”
“Oh, well, we’ll let the matter rest. As a matter of fact, so far, Viola
has done nothing wrong. I suppose I’m too suspicious.”
“Where are you going?” asked Helen as Ruth turned toward the door.
“Over to see Layton Boardman,” said Ruth, with a faint smile. “I’ve got
to know the worst.”
“I’d offer to come, too,” Helen’s lazy teasing voice floated out after
her, “if I were not perfectly well aware that three’s a crowd.”
Ruth shrugged impatiently. She wished others would stop being so foolish
about her and Layton Boardman. The whole thing was ridiculous.
She went to Boardman’s door and knocked. He called to her to come in.
She opened the door and entered the room, leaving the door open behind
her.
The actor was in bed, but as Ruth entered a quick smile played over his
white face. Ruth went to him quickly and took the hand he had stretched
impulsively toward her.
“I’m sorry you were hurt,” she said, bending over him solicitously. “Is
there anything that I can do?”
It chanced that at that moment Tom was passing through the hall in
search of Ruth. He saw her hand in Layton Boardman’s, saw the girl
bending over him.
With a grim tightening of his lips Tom went on past the door and down
the hall.