Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island by Alice Emerson

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Ruth Fielding
On Cliff Island

OR

THE OLD HUNTER'S TREASURE BOX

BY

ALICE B. EMERSON

AUTHOR OF "RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL," "RUTH
FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH," ETC.

_ILLUSTRATED_

NEW YORK

CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

=Books for Girls=

BY ALICE B. EMERSON

RUTH FIELDING SERIES

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

Price per volume, 40 cents, postpaid.

RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
Or, Jasper Parloe's Secret.

RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL
Or, Solving the Campus Mystery.

RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
Or, Lost in the Backwoods.

RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
Or, Nita, the Girl Castaway.

RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
Or, Schoolgirls Among the Cowboys.

RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
Or, The Old Hunter's Treasure Box.

RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
Or, What Became of the Raby Orphans.

RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES
Or, The Missing Pearl Necklace.

CUPPLES & LEON CO., PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK.

COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND

[Illustration: SHE SHOT OVER THE YAWNING EDGE OF THE CHASM AND
DISAPPEARED]

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE WRECK AT APPLEGATE CROSSING 1

II. THE PANTHER AT LARGE 9

III. UNCLE JABEZ HAS TWO OPINIONS 17

IV. ON THE WAY TO BRIARWOOD 26

V. A LONG LOOK AHEAD 35

VI. PICKING UP THE THREADS 42

VII. "A HARD ROW TO HOE" 49

VIII. JERRY SHEMING AGAIN 57

IX. RUTH'S LITTLE PLOT 66

X. AN EXCITING FINISH 73

XI. A NUMBER OF THINGS 82

XII. RUFUS BLENT'S LITTLE WAYS 90

XIII. FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE 98

XIV. THE HUE AND CRY 106

XV. OVER THE PRECIPICE 115

XVI. HIDE AND SEEK 124

XVII. CHRISTMAS MORNING 133

XVIII. FUN ON THE ICE 143

XIX. BLENT IS MASTER 150

XX. THE FISHING PARTY 157

XXI. JERRY'S CAVE 166

XXII. SNOWED IN 173

XXIII. "A BLOW FOR LIBERTY" 181

XXIV. A MIDNIGHT MARAUDER 189

XXV. THE TREASURE BOX 197

RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND

CHAPTER I

THE WRECK AT APPLEGATE CROSSING

A September morning has dawned, with only a vague tang of autumn in the
air. In the green old dooryard at the Red Mill, under the spreading shade
trees, two girls are shelling a great basket of dried lima beans for the
winter's store.

The smaller, black-haired girl begins the conversation.

"Suppose Jane Ann doesn't come, Ruth?"

"You mean on this morning train?" responded the plumper and more
mature-looking girl, whose frank face was particularly attractive.

"Yes."

"Then Tom said he would go back to meet the evening train--and we'll go
with him," said Ruth Fielding, with a smile. "But I could not go this
morning and leave poor Aunt Alvirah all these beans to shell."

"Of course not," agreed her friend, promptly. "And Jane Ann won't feel
offended by our not meeting her at Cheslow, I know."

"No, indeed, Helen," laughed Ruth. "Jane Ann Hicks is altogether too
sensible a girl."

"Sensible about everything but her name," commented Helen Cameron, making
a little face.

"And one can scarcely blame her. It _is_ ugly," Ruth responded, with a
sigh. "Jane Ann Hicks! Dear, dear! how could her Uncle Bill be so
thoughtless as to name her that, when she was left, helpless, to his
care?"

"He didn't realize that fashions in names change--like everything else,"
observed Helen, briskly.

"I wonder what the girls at Briarwood will say to that name," Ruth
pondered.

"Why The Fox and Heavy will help us make the other girls toe the mark. And
Madge Steele! She's a regiment in herself," declared Helen. "We all had
such a fine time at Silver Ranch that the least we can do is to see that
Jane Ann is not hazed like the other infants."

"I expect we all have to stand our share of hazing when we go into fresh
company," said Ruth, reflectively. "But there will not be the same crowd
to meet her that met us, dear."

"And the Sweetbriars will be on hand to preserve order," laughed her chum.
"Thanks to _you_, Ruthie. Why--oh! see Tom!"

She jumped up, dropping a lapful of pods, and pointed up the Cheslow road,
which here branched from the river road almost opposite the Red Mill.

"What is the matter?" demanded Ruth, also scrambling to her feet.

A big touring car was approaching at top speed. They could see that the
only person in it was a black-haired boy, who sat at the steering wheel.

He brought the machine to an abrupt stop before the gate, and leaped out.
Tearing off his goggles as he ran, he approached the two girls in such a
state of excitement that he could scarce speak coherently.

"Oh, Tom! what is it?" gasped Helen, seizing his arm with both hands.

It took but a single glance to discover the relationship between them.
Twins never looked more alike--only Tom's features lacked the delicacy of
outline which belonged to his sister.

"Tom!" cried Ruth, on the other side of the excited youth, "don't keep us
on tenter-hooks. Surely nothing has happened to Jane Ann?"

"I don't know! They won't tell us much about it at the station," exclaimed
the boy.

"There hasn't been a wreck?" demanded Ruth.

"Yes. At Applegate Crossing. And it is the train from the west that is in
trouble with a freight. A rear-end collision, I understand."

"Suppose something has happened to the poor girl!" wailed Helen.

"We must go and see," declared Ruth, quick to decide in an emergency. "You
must drive us, Tom."

"That's what I came back for," replied Tom Cameron, mopping his brow. "I
couldn't get anything out of Mercy's father----"

"Of course not," Helen said, briskly, as Ruth ran to the house. "The
railroad employes are forbidden to talk when there is an accident. Mr.
Curtis might lose his job as station agent at Cheslow if he answered all
queries."

Ruth came flying back from the house. She had merely called into the
kitchen to Aunt Alvirah that they were off--and their destination. While
Tom sprang in and manipulated the self-starter, his sister and the girl of
the Red Mill took their seats in the tonneau.

By the time old Aunt Alvirah had hobbled to the porch, the automobile was
being turned, and backed, and then it was off, up the river road. Uncle
Jabez, in his dusty garments, appeared for a moment at the door of the
mill as they flashed past in the big motor car. Evidently he was amazed to
see the three--the girls hatless--starting off at such a pace in the
Camerons' car.

Tom threw in the clutch at high speed and the car bounded over the road,
gradually increasing its pace until the hum of the engine almost drowned
out all speech. The girls asked no questions. They knew that, by following
the river road along the placid Lumano for some distance, they could take
a fork toward the railway and reach Applegate Crossing much quicker than
by going through Cheslow.

Once Tom flung back a word or two over his shoulder. No relief train had
gone from their home station to the scene of the wreck. It was understood
that a wrecking gang, and doctors, and nurses, had started from the
distant city before ever the Cheslow people learned of the trouble.

"Oh! if Jane Ann should be hurt!" murmured Helen for the twentieth time.

"Uncle Bill Hicks would be heartbroken," agreed Ruth.

Although the crossroad, when they struck into it at the Forks, was not so
smooth and well-built as the river highway, Tom did not reduce speed. Mile
after mile rolled away behind them. From a low ridge they caught a glimpse
of the cut where the two trains had come together.

It was the old story of a freight being dilatory in getting out of a block
that had been opened for the passage of an express. The express had run
her nose into the caboose of the freight, and more harm was done to the
freight than to the passenger cars. A great crowd, however, had gathered
about.

Tom ran the car into an open lot beside the tracks, where part of the
railroad fence had been torn away. Two passenger cars were on their sides,
and one or two of the box cars had burst open.

"Look at that!" gasped the boy, whose bright eyes took in much that the
girls missed, for _they_ were looking for Jane Ann Hicks. "That's a
menagerie car--and it's all smashed. See! 'Rival's Circus & Menagerie.'
Crickey! suppose some of the savage animals are loose!"

"Oh! don't suggest such a thing," begged his sister.

Tom saw an excited crowd of men near the broken cage cars of the traveling
menagerie. Down in the gully that was here crossed by the narrow span of
the railroad trestle, there was a thick jungle of saplings and brush out
of which a few taller trees rose, their spreading limbs almost touching
the sides of the ravine.

It must be confessed that the boy was drawn more toward this point of
interest than toward the passenger train where Jane Ann might possibly be
lying injured. But Ruth and Helen ran toward this latter spot, where the
crowd of passengers was thickest.

Suddenly the crowd parted and the girls saw a figure lying on the ground,
with a girl about their own age bending over it. Ruth screamed, "Jinny!"
and at the sound of the pet name her uncle's cow punchers had given her,
the girl from Silver Ranch responded with an echoing cry.

"Oh, Ruth! And Helen! I'm not hurt--only scratched. But this poor
fellow----"

"Who is he?" demanded Helen Cameron, as she and Ruth arrived beside their
friend.

The figure on the ground was a very young man--a boy, in fact. He was
roughly dressed, and sturdily built. His eyes were closed and he was very
pale.

"He got me out of the window when the car turned over," gasped Jane Ann.
"Then he fell with me and has either broken his leg, or twisted it----"

"Only strained, Miss," spoke the victim of the accident, opening his eyes
suddenly. Ruth saw that they were kind, brown eyes, with a deal of
patience in their glance. He was not the sort of chap to make much of a
trifle.

"But you can't walk on it," exclaimed Jane Ann, who was a large-framed
girl with even blacker hair than Helen's--straight as an Indian's--and
with flashing eyes. She was expensively dressed, although her torn frock
and coat were not in very good taste. She showed plainly a lack of that
motherly oversight all girls need.

"They'll come and fix me up after a time," said the strange youth,
patiently.

"That won't do," declared Ruth, quickly. "I suppose the doctors are busy
up there with other passengers?"

"Oh, yes," admitted Jane Ann. "Lots of people were hurt in the cars a good
deal worse than Mr.--Mr.----?"

"My name's Jerry Sheming, Miss," said the youth. "Don't you worry about
me."

"Here's Tom!" cried Helen. "Can't we lift him into the car? We'll run to
Cheslow and let Dr. Davison look at his leg," she added.

Tom, understanding the difficulty at a glance, agreed. Between the four
young folk they managed to carry Jerry Sheming to the car. They had
scarcely got him into the tonneau when a series of yells arose from the
crowd down near the derailed freight train.

"Look out! Take care of that panther! I told you she was out!" shouted one
voice above the general uproar.

Ruth Fielding and her friends, startled indeed, ran to the brow of the
hill. One of the wide-branched trees rose from the bottom of the ravine
right below them. Along one of the branches lay a long, cat-like body.

"A black panther!" gasped Tom.

CHAPTER II

THE PANTHER AT LARGE

"Say! let's get out of here!" exclaimed the girl from the West. "I don't
want to be eaten up by that cat--and Uncle Bill would make an awful row
over it. Come on!"

She seized Ruth's hand and, leaving Tom to drag his sister with him, set
off at full speed for the motor car, wherein Jerry Sheming, the stranger,
still lay helpless.

Helen was breathless from laughter when she reached the car. Jane Ann's
desire not to be eaten up by the panther because of what Mr. Bill Hicks,
of Bullhide, Montana, would say, was so amusing that Tom's twin forgot her
fright.

"Stop your fooling and get in there--quick!" commanded the anxious boy,
pushing his sister into the tonneau. With the injured Jerry, the back of
the car was well filled. Tom leaped into the front seat and tried to start
the car.

"Quick, Tom!" begged Ruth Fielding. "There's the panther."

"Panther! What panther?" demanded Jerry, starting up in his seat.

The lithe, black beast appeared just then over the brow of the hill. The
men who had started after the beast were below in the ravine, yelling, and
driving the creature toward them. The motor car was the nearest object to
attract the great cat's wrath, and there is no wild beast more savage and
treacherous.

Tom was having trouble in starting the car. Besides, it was headed
directly for the huge cat, and the latter undoubtedly had fastened its
cruel gaze upon the big car and its frightened occupants.

Ruth Fielding and her friends had been in serious difficulties before.
They had even (in the woods of the Northern Adirondacks and in the
foothills of the Montana Rockies) met peril in a somewhat similar form.
But here, with the panther creeping toward them, foot by foot, the young
friends had no weapon of defense.

Ruth had often proved herself both a courageous and a sensible girl.
Coming from her old home where her parents had died, a year and a half
before, she had received shelter at the Red Mill, belonging to her great
uncle, Jabez Potter, at first as an object of charity, for Uncle Jabez was
a miserly and ill-tempered old fellow. The adventures of the first book of
this series, entitled "Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill; Or, Jasper Parloe's
Secret," narrate how Ruth won her way--in a measure, at least--to her
uncle's heart.

Ruth made friends quickly with Helen and Tom Cameron, and when, the year
previous, Helen had gone to Briarwood Hall to school, Ruth had gone with
her, and the fun, friendships, rivalries, and adventures of their first
term at boarding school are related in "Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall;
Or, Solving the Campus Mystery."

In "Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp; Or, Lost in the Backwoods," the third
volume of the series, are told the mid-winter sports of our heroine and
her friends; and later, after the school year is concluded, we find them
all at the seaside home of one of the Briarwood girls, and follow them
through the excitement and incidents of "Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse
Point; Or, Nita, the Girl Castaway."

When our present story opens Ruth and the Camerons have just returned from
the West, where they had spent a part of the summer vacation with Jane Ann
Hicks, and their many adventures are fully related in the fifth volume of
the series, entitled "Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch; Or, Schoolgirls Among
the Cowboys."

Few perils they had faced, however, equalled this present incident. The
black panther, its gleaming eyes fixed upon the stalled motor car and the
young folk in it, crouched for only a moment, with lashing tail and bared
fangs.

Uttering another half-stifled snarl, the beast bounded into the air. The
distance was too great for the brute to pass immediately to the car; but
it was plain that one more leap would bring her aboard.

"Start it! Quick, Tom!" gasped Helen.

"I--I can't!" groaned her brother.

"Then we must run----"

"Sit still!" commanded Jane Ann, with fire in her eye. "I'm not going to
run from that cat. I hate 'em, anyway----"

"We can't leave Mr. Sheming," said Ruth, decidedly. "Try again, Tommy."

"Oh, don't bother about me," groaned the young man, who was still a
stranger to them. "Don't be caught here on my account."

"It will not do us any good to run," cried Ruth, sensibly. "Oh, Tommy!"

And then the engine started. The electric starter had worked at last. Tom
threw in his clutch and the car lunged ahead just as the snarling cat
sprang into the air again.

The cat and the car were approaching each other, head on. The creature
could not change its course; nor could Tom Cameron veer the car very well
on this rough ground.

He had meant to turn the car in a big circle and make for the road again.
But that flashing black body darting through the air was enough to shake
the nerve of anybody. The car "wabbled." It shot towards the tracks, and
then back again.

Perhaps that was a happy circumstance, after all. For as the car swerved,
there was a splintering crash, and the windshield was shivered. The body
of the panther shot to one side and the motor car escaped the full shock
of the charge.

Over and over upon the ground the panther rolled; and off toward the road,
in a long, sweeping curve, darted the automobile.

"Lucky escape!" Tom shouted, turning his blazing face once to look back at
the party in his car.

"Oh! More than luck, Tommy!" returned Ruth, earnestly.

"It was providential," declared Helen, shrinking into her seat again and
beginning to tremble, now that the danger was past.

"Good hunting!" exclaimed the girl from the ranch. "Think of charging a
wildcat with one of these smoke wagons! My! wouldn't it make Bashful Ike's
eyes bulge out? I reckon he wouldn't believe we had such hunting here in
the East--eh?" and her laugh broke the spell of fear that had clutched
them all.

"That critter beats the biggest bobcat I ever heard of," remarked Jerry
Sheming. "Why! a catamount isn't in it with that black beast."

"Where'd it go?" asked Tom, quite taken up with the running of the car.

"Back to the ravine," said Ruth. "Oh! I hope it will do no damage before
it is caught."

Just now the four young friends had something more immediate to think
about. This Jerry Sheming had been "playing 'possum." Suddenly they found
that he lay back in the tonneau, quite insensible.

"Oh, oh!" gasped Helen. "What shall we do? He is--Oh, Ruth! he isn't
_dead_?"

"Of a strained leg?" demanded Jane Ann, in some disgust.

"But he looks so white," said Helen, plaintively.

"He's just knocked out. It's hurt him lots more than he let on," declared
the girl from Silver Ranch, who had seen many a man suffer in silence
until he lost the grip on himself--as this youth had.

In half an hour the car stopped before Dr. Davison's gate--the gate with
the green lamps. Jerry Sheming had come to his senses long since and
seemed more troubled by the fact that he had fainted than by the injury to
his leg.

Ruth, by a few searching questions, had learned something of his story,
too. He had not been a passenger on the train in which Jane Ann was riding
when the wreck occurred. Indeed, he hadn't owned carfare between stations,
as he expressed it.

"I was hoofin' it from Cheslow to Grading. I heard of a job up at
Grading--and I needed that job," Jerry had observed, drily.

This was enough to tell Ruth Fielding what was needed. When Dr. Davison
asked where the young fellow belonged, Ruth broke in with:

"He's going to the mill with me. You come after us, Doctor, if you think
he ought to go to bed before his leg is treated."

"What do you reckon your folks will say, Miss?" groaned the injured youth.
And even Helen and Tom looked surprised.

"Aunt Alvirah will nurse you," laughed Ruth. "As for Uncle Jabez----"

"It will do Uncle Jabez good," put in Dr. Davison, confidently. "That's
right, Ruthie. You take him along to your house. I'll come right out
behind you and will be there almost before Tom, here, and your uncle's Ben
can get our patient to bed."

It had already been arranged that Jane Ann should go on to Outlook, the
Camerons' home. She would remain there with the twins for the few days
intervening before the young folk went back to school--the girls to
Briarwood, and Tom to Seven Oaks, the military academy he had entered when
his sister and Ruth went to their boarding school.

"How you will ever get your baggage--and in what shape--we can only
guess," Tom said to the Western girl, grinning over his shoulder as the
car flew on toward the Red Mill. "Guess you'll have to bid a fond farewell
to all the glad rags you brought with you, and put on some of Ruth's, or
Helen's."

"I'd look nice; wouldn't I?" she scoffed, tossing her head. "If I don't
get my trunks I'll sue the railroad company."

The car arrived before the gate of the cottage. There was the basket of
beans just where Ruth and Helen had left them. And Aunt Alvirah came
hobbling to the door again, murmuring, "Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!"
and quite amazed when she saw Ben come running to help Tom Cameron into
the house with the youth from the railroad wreck.

"Though, landy's sake! I don't know what your Uncle Jabez will say when he
comes back from town and finds this boy in the best bed," grumbled Aunt
Alvirah, after a bit, when she and Ruth were left alone with Jerry
Sheming, and the others had gone on in the car, hurrying so as not to be
late for luncheon at Outlook.

CHAPTER III

UNCLE JABEZ HAS TWO OPINIONS

Dr. Davison came, found that Jerry's leg was not broken, left liniment,
some quieting medicine to use if the patient could not sleep, and went
away. Still Uncle Jabez had not returned from town.

Dinner had been a farce. Ben, the hired man, was fed as usual; but Ruth
and Aunt Alvirah did not feel like eating; and, considering his fever, it
was just as well, the doctor said, if the patient did not eat until later.

Jerry Sheming was a fellow of infinite pluck. The pain he had endured
during his rough ride in the automobile must have been terrific. Yet he
was only ashamed, now, that he had fainted.

"First time I ever heard of a Sheming fainting--or yet a Tilton, Miss," he
told Ruth.

"I don't believe you belong near here?" suggested Ruth, who sat beside
him, for he seemed restless. "I don't remember hearing either of those
names around the Red Mill."

"No. I--I lived away west of here," replied Jerry, slowly. "Oh, a long
ways."

"Not as far as Montana? That is where Jane Ann comes from."

"The girl I helped through the car window?" he asked, quickly.

"Yes. Miss Hicks."

"I did not mean really West," he said. "But it's quite some miles. I had
been walking two days--and I'm some walker," he added, with a smile.

"Looking for work, you said?" questioned Ruth, diffident about showing her
interest in the young fellow, yet deeply curious.

"Yes. I've got to support myself some way."

"Haven't you any folks at all, Mr. Jerry?"

"I ain't a 'mister,'" said the youth. "I'm not so much older than you and
your friends."

"You seem a lot older," laughed Ruth, tossing back her hair.

"That's because I have been working most of my life--and I guess livin' in
the woods all the time makes a chap seem old."

"And you've lived in the woods?"

"With my uncle. I can't remember anybody else belongin' to me--not very
well. Pete Tilton is _his_ name. He's been a guide and hunter all his
life. And of late years he got so queer--before they took him away----"

"Took him away?" interrupted Ruth, "What do you mean by that?"

"Why, I'll tell you," said Jerry, slowly. "He got wild towards the last.
It was something about his money and papers that he lost. He kep' 'em in a
box somewhere. There was a landslide at the west end of the island."

"The island? What island?"

"Cliff Island. That's where we lived. Uncle Pete said he owned half the
island, but Rufe Blent cheated him out of it. That's what made him so
savage with Blent, and he come pretty near killin' him. At least, Blent
told it that way.

"So they took poor Uncle Pete into court, and they said he wasn't safe to
be at large, and sent him to the county asylum. Then--well, there wasn't
no manner o' use my stayin' around there. Rufe Blent warned me off the
island. So I started out to hunt a job."

The details were rather vague, but Ruth felt a little diffident about
asking for further particulars. Besides, it was not long before Uncle
Jabez came home.

"What do ye reckon your Aunt Alvirah keeps that spare room for?" demanded
the old miller, with his usual growl, when Ruth explained about Jerry.
"For to put up tramps?"

"Oh, Uncle! he isn't just a _tramp_!"

"I'd like to know what ye call it, Niece Ruth?" grumbled Uncle Jabez.

"Think how he saved Jane Ann! That car was rolling right down the
embankment. He pulled her through the window and almost the next moment
the car slid the rest of the way to the bottom, and lots of people--people
in the chairs next to her--were badly hurt. Oh, Uncle! he saved her life,
perhaps."

"That ain't makin' it any dif'rent," declared Uncle Jabez. "He's a tramp
and nobody knows anything about him. Why didn't Davison send him to the
hospital? The doc's allus mixin' us up with waifs an' strays. He's got
more cheek than a houn' pup----"

"Now, Jabez!" cried the little old lady, who had been bending over the
stove. "Don't ye make yourself out wuss nor you be. That poor boy ain't
doin' no harm to the bed."

"Makin' you more work, Alviry."

"What am I good for if it ain't to work?" she demanded, quite fiercely.
"When I can't work I want ye sh'd take me back to the poor farm where ye
got me--an' where I'd been these last 'leven years if it hadn't been for
your charity that you're so 'fraid folks will suspect----"

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