Ruth Fielding In the Saddle; College Girls in the Land of Gold. Emerson Alice B.
make the rest of us girls jealous?”
“Perhaps,” Ruth replied, smiling, then hurried with her chum’s brother into the next car.
“Oh!” exclaimed Ruth suddenly, and she stopped by the door.
“Know her?” asked Tom, with curiosity.
Ruth nodded and hastily turned away so that the girl might not see that she was observed.
“Well, now!” cried Tom. “Tip me off. Explain – elucidate – make clear. I’m as puzzled as I can be.”
“So am I, Tommy,” Ruth told him. “I haven’t the least idea why that girl should be interested in our affairs. And I’m not sure that she is.”
“Who is she?” he demanded.
“She goes to college with us. Not in our class, you understand. I am sure none of our party had an idea Edie Phelps was going West this vacation.”
“Huh!” said Tom suspiciously. “What’s up your sleeve, Ruth?”
“My arm!” she cried, and ran back to the other girls and Miss Cullam, laughing at him.
Edith’s presence on this train was puzzling.
“That was a man’s handwriting on the envelope Helen and I picked up addressed to Edith,” Ruth told herself. “Some man has been writing to her from that Mohave County town. Who? And what for?”
“Not that it is really any of my business,” she concluded.
She did not take Helen into her confidence in the matter. Let the other girls see Edith Phelps if they chanced to; she determined to stir up no “hurrah” over the sophomore.
Besides, it was not at all sure that Edith was going to Arizona. Her presence upon this train did not prove that her journey West had any connection with the letter Edith had received from Yucca.
“Why so serious, honey?” asked Helen a little later, pinching her chum’s arm.
“This is a serious world, my dear,” quoth Ruth, “and we are growing older every minute.”
“What novel ideas you do have,” gibed her chum, big-eyed. But she shook her a little, too. “There you go, Ruthie Fielding! Always having some secret from your owniest own chum.”
“How do you know I have a secret?” smiled Ruth.
“Because of the two little lines that grow deeper in your forehead when you are puzzled or troubled,” Helen told her, rather wickedly. “Sure sign you’ll be married twice, honey.”
“Don’t suggest such horrid possibilities,” gasped the girl of the Red Mill in mock horror. “Married twice, indeed! And I thought we had both given up all intention of being wedded even the first time?”
This chaff was all right to throw in Helen’s eyes; but all the time Ruth expected one of the party to discover the presence of Edith Phelps on the train. She felt that with such discovery there would come an explosion of some kind; and she shrank from having any trouble with the sophomore.
Of course, with Miss Cullam present, Edith was not likely to display her spleen quite so openly as she sometimes did when alone with the other Ardmore girls. But Ruth knew Helen would be so curious to know what Edith’s presence meant that “the fat would all be in the fire.”
It was really amazing that Edith was not discovered before they reached Chicago. After that her reservation was in another car. Then on the fifth night of their journey came something that quite put the sophomore out of Ruth Fielding’s mind, and out of Tom Cameron’s as well.
They had changed trains and were on the trans-continental line when the startling incident happened. The porter had already begun arranging the berths when the train suddenly came to a jarring stop.
“What is the matter?” asked Miss Cullam of the porter. She already had her hair in “curlers” and was longing for bed.
“I done s’pect we broke in two, Ma’am,” said the darkey, rolling his eyes. “Das’ jes’ wot it seems to me,” and he darted out of the car.
There was a long wait; then some confusion arose outside the train. Tom came in from the rear. “Here’s a pretty kettle of fish,” he said.
“What is it, Tommy?” demanded his sister.
“The train broke in two and the front end got over a bridge here, and, being on a down grade, the engineer could not bring his engine to a stop at once. And now the bridge is afire. Come on out, girls. You might as well see the show.”
CHAPTER VI – SOMEBODY AHEAD OF THEM
Even Miss Cullam – in her dressing gown – trailed out of the car after Tom. The sky was alight from the blazing bridge. It was a wooden structure, and burned like a pine knot.
Beyond the rolling cloud of smoke they could see dimly the lamps of the forward half of the train. The coupling having broken between two Pullmans, the engine had attached to it only the baggage and mail coaches, the dining car and one sleeping car.
The other Pullmans and the observation coach were stalled on the east side of the river.
“And no more chance of getting over to-night than there is of flying,” a brakeman confided to Tom and the girls. “That bridge will be a charred wreck before midnight.”
“Oh, goodness me! What shall we do?” was the cry. “Can’t we get over in boats?”
“Where will you get the boats?” sniffed Miss Cullam.
“And the water’s low in the river at this season,” said the brakeman. “Couldn’t use anything but a skiff.”
“What then?” Tom asked, feeling responsibility roweling him. “We’re not destined to remain here till they rebuild the bridge, I hope?”
“The conductor is wiring back for another engine. We’ll pull back to Janesburg and from there take the cross-over line and go on by the Northern Route. It will put us back fully twelve hours, I reckon.”
“Good-night!” exploded Tom.
“Why, what does it matter?” asked Helen, wonderingly. “We have all the time there is, haven’t we?”
“Presumably,” Miss Cullam said drily.
“But I telegraphed ahead to Yucca for rooms at the hotel,” Tom explained, slowly, “and sent a long message to that guide Mr. Hammond told you about, Ruth.”
“Oh!” cried Helen, giggling. “Flapjack Peters – such a romantic name. Mr. Hammond wrote Ruth that he was a ‘character.’”
“‘H. J. Peters,’” Tom read, from his memorandum. “Yes. I told him just when we would arrive and told him that after one night’s sleep at the hotel we’d want to be on our way. But if we don’t get there – ”
“Oh, Tom, there’s Ann, too!” Ruth exclaimed. “She will be at Yucca too early if we are delayed so.”
“I’ll send some more telegrams when we get to Janesburg,” Tom promised Ruth and his sister. “One to Ann Hicks, too.”
“Those people in the forward Pullman will get through on time,” Jennie Stone said. “I’m always losing something. ‘’Twas ever thus, since childhood’s hour, my fondest hopes I’ve seen decay,’ and so forth!”
Tom whispered to Ruth: “That sophomore from Ardmore will get ahead of us. She’s in the forward Pullman.”
“Oh, Edith!” murmured Ruth. “She was in that car, wasn’t she?”
They were all in bed, as were the other tourists in the delayed Pullmans, before the extra locomotive the conductor had sent for arrived. It was coupled to the stalled half of the train and started back for Janesburg without one of the party bound for Yucca being the wiser.
Tom Cameron meant to send the supplementary telegrams from that junction as he had said. Indeed, he had written