Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island by Alice Emerson

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But the young fellow sprang to Ann's aid, and wrapped the slack of the
rope around a stout sapling on the edge of the pond.

"Easy! Easy!" he admonished. "We don't want to pull them out of the boat.
You _can_ fling a rope; can't you, Miss?"

"I'd ought to," grunted Ann. "I've roped enough steers--Why! you're Jerry
Sheming," she declared, suddenly looking into his face. "Ruth Fielding
wants to see you. Don't you run away before she talks with you."

Then the rope became taut, and the punt began to swing shoreward slowly,
taking in some water and setting the girls to screaming again.

CHAPTER IX

RUTH'S LITTLE PLOT

The punt was in shallow water and the girls who had ventured into it
without oars were perfectly safe before any of the teachers arrived. With
them came Ruth and Helen, and some of the other juniors and seniors. Heavy
took the stump.

"Now! you see what she did?" cried the stout girl, seizing Ann in her arms
the moment she could get ashore. "If she hadn't known how to fling a
lasso, and rope a steer, she'd never have been able to send that rope to
us.

"Three cheers for Ann Hicks, the girl from the ranch, who knows what to do
when folks are drowning in Buchane Pond! One--two--three----"

The cheers were given with a will. Several of the girls who had treated
the western girl so meanly about the dunce cap had been in the boat, and
they asked Ann to shake hands. They were truly repentant, and Ann could
not refuse their advances.

But the western girl was still doubtful of her standing with her mates,
and went back to play with the little ones. Meanwhile she showed Ruth
where Jerry Sheming stood at one side, and the girl from the Red Mill ran
to him eagerly.

"I am delighted to see you!" she exclaimed, shaking Jerry's rough hand. "I
was afraid I wouldn't be able to find you after you left the mill. And I
wanted to."

"I'm glad of your interest in me, Miss Ruth," he said, "but I ain't got no
call to expect it. Mr. Potter was pretty kind to me, and he kept me as
long as there was work there."

"But you haven't got to tramp it, now?"

"Only to look for a steady job. I--I come over this way hopin' I'd hit it
at Lumberton. But they're discharging men at the mills instead of hiring
new ones."

"And I expect you'd rather work in the woods than anywhere else?"
suggested Ruth.

"Why--yes, Miss. I love the woods. And I got a good rifle and shotgun, and
I'm a good camp cook. I can't get a guide's license, but I could go as
assistant--if anybody would take me around Tallahaska."

"Suppose I could get you a job working right where you've always lived--at
Cliff Island?" she asked, eagerly.

"What d'ye mean--Cliff Island?" he demanded, flushing deeply. "I wouldn't
work for that Rufus Blent--nor he wouldn't have me."

"I don't know anything about the man," said Ruth, smiling. "But one of my
chums has invited me to go to Cliff Island for the Christmas holidays. Her
father has bought the place and is building a lodge there."

"Good lands!" ejaculated Jerry.

"Isn't that a coincidence?" Ruth commented. "Now, you wouldn't refuse a
job with Mr. Tingley; would you?"

"Tingley--is that the name?"

"Yes. Perhaps I can get him, through Belle, to hire you. I'll try. Would
you go back?"

"In a minute!" exclaimed Jerry.

"Then I'll try. You see, in four or five weeks, we'll be going there
ourselves. I think it would just be jolly to have you around, for you know
all about the island and everything."

"Yes, indeed, ma'am," agreed Jerry. "I'd like the job."

"So you must write me every few days and let me know where you are. Mrs.
Tellingham won't mind--I'll explain to her," Ruth said, earnestly. "I am
not quite sure that I can go myself, yet. But I'll know for sure in a few
days. And I'll see if Belle won't ask her father to give you work at Cliff
Island. Then, in your off time, you can look for that box your uncle
lost. Don't you see?"

"Oh, Miss! I guess that's gone for good. Near as I could make out o' Uncle
Pete, the landslide at the west end of the island buried his treasure box
a mile deep! It was in one o' the little caves, I s'pose."

"Caves? Are there caves on the island?"

"Lots of 'em. Big ones as well as small. If Uncle Pete wasn't plumb crazy,
he had his money and papers in a hide-out that I'd never found."

"I see Miss Picolet coming this way. She won't approve of my talking with
'a strange young man' so long," laughed Ruth. "You let me know every few
days where you are, Jerry?"

"Yes, ma'am, I will. And thank you kindly."

"You aren't out of funds? You have money?"

"I've got quite a little store," said Jerry, smiling. "Thanks to that nice
black-eyed girl that I helped out of the car window."

"Oh! Ann Hicks. And she's being made much of, now, by the girls, because
she knew how to fling a rope," cried Ruth, looking across the picnic
ground to where her schoolmates were grouped.

"She's all right," said Jerry, enthusiastically. "They ought to be proud
of her--them that was in that boat."

"It will break the ice for Ann," declared Ruth. "I am so glad. Now, I must
run. Don't forget to write, Jerry. Good bye."

She gave him her hand and ran back to join her school friends. Ann had
gone about putting up the children's swing and at first had paid little
attention to the enthusiasm of the girls who had been saved from going
over the dam. But she could not ignore them altogether.

"You're just the smartest girl I ever saw," Heavy declaimed. "We'd all be
in the water, sure enough, if you hadn't got that rope to us. Come on,
Ann! Be a sport. _Do_ wear your laurels kindly."

"I'm just as 'dumb' about books as ever. Flinging that rope didn't make
any difference," growled the western girl.

"I don't care if you don't know your 'A.B., abs,'" cried one of the girls
who had taken a prominent part in the dunce cap trick. "You make me
awfully ashamed of myself for being so mean to you. Please forgive us all,
Ann--that's a good girl."

Ann was awkward about accepting their apologies; and yet she was not
naturally a bad-tempered girl. She was just different from them all--and
felt the difference so keenly!

This sudden reversal of feeling, and their evident offer of friendliness,
made her feel more awkward than ever. She remained very glum while at the
picnic grounds.

But, as Ruth had said, the incident served to break the ice. Ann had
gotten her start. Somebody beside the "primes" gave her "the glad hand and
the smiling eye." Briarwood began to be a different sort of place for the
ranch girl.

There were plenty of the juniors who looked down on her still; but she had
"shown them" once that she could do something the ordinary eastern girl
could not do and Ann was on the _qui vive_ for another chance to "make
good" along her own particular line.

She grew brighter and more self-possessed as the term advanced. Her
lessons, too, she attacked with more assurance.

A few days after Thanksgiving Ruth received a letter in Aunt Alvirah's
cramped hand-writing which assured her that Uncle Jabez would make no
objection to her accepting the invitation to go to Cliff Island for the
holidays.

"And I'll remind him of it in time so't he can send you a Christmas
goldpiece, if the sperit so moves him," wrote Aunt Alvirah, in her
old-fashioned way. "But do take care of yourself, my pretty, in the middle
of that lake."

In telling Belle how happy she was to accept the invitation for the
frolic, Ruth diffidently put forward her request that Mr. Tingley give
Jerry Sheming a job.

"I am quite sure he is a good boy," she told Belle. "He has worked for my
uncle, and Uncle Jabez praised him. Now, Uncle Jabez doesn't praise for
nothing."

"I'll tell father about this Jerry--sure," laughed Belle. "You're an odd
girl, Ruth. You're always trying to do something for somebody."

"Trying to do somebody for somebody, maybe," interposed Mercy, in her
sharp way. "Ruth uses her friends for her own ends."

But Ruth's little plot worked. A fortnight after Thanksgiving she was able
to write to Jerry, who had found a few days' work near the school, that he
could go back to Cliff Island and present himself to Mr. Tingley's
foreman. A good job was waiting for him on the island where he had lived
so long with his uncle, the old hunter.

CHAPTER X

AN EXCITING FINISH

Affairs at Briarwood went at high speed toward the end of the term.
Everybody was busy. A girl who did not work, or who had no interest in her
studies, fell behind very quickly.

Ann Hicks was spurred to do her best by the activities of her mates. She
did not like any of them well enough--save those in the two neighboring
quartette rooms in her dormitory building--to accept defeat from them. She
began to make a better appearance in recitations, and her marks became
better.

They all had extra interests save Ann herself. Helen Cameron was in the
school orchestra and played first violin with a hope of getting solo parts
in time. She loved the instrument, and in the evening, before the
electricity was turned on, she often played in the room, delighting the
music-loving Ann.

Sometimes Ruth sang to her chum's accompaniment. Ruth's voice was so
sweet, so true and tender, and she sang ballads with such feeling, that
Ann often was glad it was dark in the room. The western girl considered it
"soft" to weep, but Ruth's singing brought the tears to her eyes.

Mercy Curtis even gave up her beloved books during the hour of these
informal concerts. Other times she would have railed because she could not
study. Mercy was as hungry for lessons as Heavy Stone was for layer-cake
and macaroons.

"That's all that's left me," croaked the lame girl, when she was in one of
her most difficult moods. "I'll learn all there is to be learned. I'll
stuff my head full. Then, when other girls laugh at my crooked back and
weak legs, I'll shame 'em by knowing more out of books."

"Oh, what a mean way to put it!" gasped Helen.

"I don't care, Miss! You never had your back ache you and your legs go
wabbly--No person with a bad back and such aches and pains as I have, was
ever good-natured!"

"Think of Aunt Alvirah," murmured Ruth, gently.

"Oh, well--she isn't just human!" gasped the lame girl.

"She is very human, I think," Ruth returned.

"No. She's an angel. And no angel was ever called 'Curtis,'" declared the
other, her eyes snapping.

"But I believe there must be an angel somewhere named 'Mercy,'" Ruth
responded, still softly.

However, it was understood that Mercy was aiming to be the crack scholar
of her class. There was a scholarship to be won, and Mercy hoped to get it
and to go to college two years later.

Even Jennie Stone declared she was going in for "extras."

"What, pray?" scoffed The Fox. "All your spare time is taken up in eating
now, Miss."

"All right. I'll go in for the heavyweight championship at table,"
declared the plump girl, good-naturedly. "At least, the result will
doubtless be visible."

Ann began to wonder what she was studying for. All these other girls
seemed to have some particular object. Was she going to school without any
real reason for it?

Uncle Bill would be proud of her, of course. She practised assiduously to
perfect her piano playing. That was something that would show out in
Bullhide and on the ranch. Uncle Bill would crow over her playing just as
he did over her bareback riding.

But Ann was not entirely satisfied with these thoughts. Nor was she
contented with the fact that she had begun to make her mates respect her.
There was something lacking.

She had half a mind to refuse Belle Tingley's invitation to Cliff Island.
In her heart Ann believed she was included in the party because Belle
would have been ashamed to ignore her, and Ruth would not have gone had
Ann not been asked.

To tell the truth Ann was hungry for the girls to like her for
herself--for some attribute of character which she honestly possessed. She
had never had to think of such things before. In her western home it had
never crossed her mind whether people liked her, or not. Everybody about
Silver Ranch had been uniformly kind to her.

Belle's holiday party was to be made up of the eight girls in the two
quartette rooms, with Madge Steele, the senior; Madge's brother, Bobbins,
Tom Cameron, little Busy Izzy Phelps, and Belle's own brothers.

"Of course, we've got to have the boys," declared Helen. "No fun without
them."

Mercy had tried to beg off at first; then she had agreed to go, if she
could take half a trunkful of books with her.

Briarwood girls were as busy as bees in June during these last few days of
the first half. The second half was broken by the Easter vacation and most
of the real hard work in study came before Christmas.

There was going to be a school play after Christmas, and the parts were
given out before the holidays. Helen was going to play and Ruth to sing.
It did seem to Ann as though every girl was happy and busy but herself.

The last day of the term was in sight. There was to be the usual
entertainment and a dance at night. The hall had to be trimmed with greens
and those girls--of the junior and senior classes--who could, were
appointed to help gather the decorations.

"I don't want to go," objected Ann.

"Goosie!" cried Helen. "Of course you do. It will be fun."

"Not for me," returned the ranch girl, grimly. "Do you see who is going to
head the party? That Mitchell girl. She's always nasty to me."

"Be nasty to her!" snapped Mercy, from her corner.

"Now, Mercy!" begged Ruth, shaking a finger at the lame girl.

"I wouldn't mind what Mitchell says or does," sniffed The Fox.

"Fibber!" exclaimed Mercy.

"I never tell lies, Miss," said Mary Cox, tossing her head.

"Humph!" ejaculated the somewhat spiteful Mercy, "do you call yourself a
female George Washington?"

"No. Marthy Washington," laughed Heavy.

"Only her husband couldn't lie," declared Mercy. "And at that, they say
that somebody wished to change the epitaph on his tomb to read: 'Here lies
George Washington--for the first time!'"

"Everybody is tempted to tell a fib some time," sighed Helen.

"And falls, too," exclaimed Mercy.

"I must say I don't believe there ever was anybody but Washington that
didn't tell a lie. It's awfully hard to be exactly truthful always," said
Lluella. "You remember that time in the primary grade, just after we'd
come here to Briarwood, Belle?"

"Do I?" laughed Belle Tingley. "You fibbed all right then, Miss."

"It wasn't very bad--and I did _want_ to see the whole school so much.
So--so I took one of my pencils to our teacher and asked her if she would
ask the other scholars if it was theirs.

"Of course, all the other girls in our room said it wasn't," proceeded
Lluella. "Then teacher said just what I wanted her to say: 'You may
inquire in the other classes.' So I went around and saw all the other
classes and had a real nice time.

"But when I got back with the pencil in my hand still, Belle come near
getting me into trouble."

"Uh-huh!" admitted Belle, nodding.

"How?" asked somebody.

"She just whispered--right out loud, 'Lluella, that is your pencil and you
know it!' And I had to say--right off, 'It isn't, and I didn't!' Now, what
could I have said else? But it was an awful fib, I s'pose."

The assembled girls laughed. But Ann Hicks was still seriously inclined
not to go into the woods, although she had no idea of telling a fib about
it. And because she was too proud to say to the teacher in charge that she
feared Miss Mitchell's tongue, the western girl joined the
greens-gathering party at the very last minute.

There were two four-seated sleighs, for there was a hard-packed white
track into the woods toward Triton Lake. Old Dolliver drove one, and his
helper manned the other. The English teacher was in charge. She hoped to
find bushels of holly berries and cedar buds as well as the materials for
wreaths.

One pair of the horses was western--high-spirited, hard-bitted mustangs.
Ann Hicks recognized them before she got into the sleigh. How they pulled
and danced, and tossed the froth from their bits!

"I feel just as they do," thought the girl. "I'd love to break out, and
kick, and bite, and act the very Old Boy! Poor things! How they must miss
the plains and the free range."

The other girls wondered what made her so silent. The tang of the frosty
air, and the ring of the ponies' hoofs, and the jingle of the bells put
plenty of life and fun into her mates; but Ann remained morose.

They reached the edge of the swamp and the girls alighted with merry shout
and song. They were all armed with big shears or sharp knives, but the
berries grew high, and Old Dolliver's boy had to climb for them.

Then the accident occurred--a totally unexpected and unlooked for
accident. In stepping out on a high branch, the boy slipped, fell, and
came down to the ground, hitting each intervening limb, and so saving his
life, but dashing every bit of breath from his lungs, it seemed!

The girls ran together, screaming. The teacher almost fainted. Old
Dolliver stooped over the fallen boy and wiped the blood from his lips.

"Don't tech him!" he croaked. "He's broke ev'ry bone in his body, I make
no doubt. An' he'd oughter have a doctor----"

"I'll get one," said Ann Hicks, briskly, in the old man's ear. "Where's
the nearest--and the best?"

"Doc Haverly at Lumberton."

"I'll get him."

"It's six miles, Miss. You'd never walk it. I'll take one of the
teams----"

"You stay with him," jerked out Ann. "I can ride."

"Ride? Them ain't ridin' hosses, Miss," declared Old Dolliver.

"If a horse has got four legs he can be ridden," declared the girl from
the ranch, succinctly.

"Take the off one on my team, then----"

"That old plug? I guess not!" exclaimed Ann, and was off.

She unharnessed one of the pitching, snapping mustangs. "Whoa--easy! You
wouldn't bite me, you know," she crooned, and the mustang thrust forward
his ears and listened.

She dropped off the heavy harness. The bridle she allowed to remain, but
there was no saddle. The English teacher came to her senses, suddenly.

"That creature will kill you!" she cried, seeing what Ann was about.

"Then he'll be the first horse that ever did it," drawled Ann. "Hi, yi,
yi! We're off!"

To the horror of the teacher, to the surprise of Old Dolliver, and to the
delight of the other girls, Ann Hicks swung herself astride of the dancing
pony, dug her heels into his ribs, and the next moment had darted out of
sight down the wood road.

CHAPTER XI

A NUMBER OF THINGS

There may have been good reason for the teacher to be horrified, but how
else was the mustang to be ridden? Ann was a big girl to go tearing
through the roads and 'way into Lumberton astride a horse. Without a
saddle and curb, however, she could not otherwise have clung to him.

Just now haste was imperative. She had a picture in her mind, all the way,
of that boy lying in the snow, his face so pallid and the bloody foam upon
his lips.

In twenty-five minutes she was at the physician's gate. She flung herself
off the horse, and as she shouted her news to the doctor through the open
office window, she unbuckled the bridle-rein and made a leading strap of
it.

So, when the doctor drove out of the yard in his sleigh, she hopped in
beside him and led the heaving mustang back into the woods. Of course she
did not look ladylike at all, and not another girl at Briarwood would have
done it. But even the English teacher--who was a prude--never scolded her
for it.

Indeed, the doctor made a heroine of Ann, Old Dolliver said he never saw
her beat, and the boy, who was so sadly hurt (but who pulled through all
right in the end) almost worshipped the girl from Silver Ranch.

"And how she can ride!" the very girl who had treated Ann the meanest said
of her. "What does it matter if she isn't quite up to the average yet in
recitations? She _will_ be."

This was after the holidays, however. There was too short a time before
Belle Tingley and her friends started for Cliff Island for Ann to
particularly note the different manner in which the girls in general
treated her.

The party went on the night train. Mr. Tingley, who had some influence
with the railroad, had a special sleeper side-tracked at Lumberton for
their accommodation. This sleeper was to be attached to the train that
went through Lumberton at midnight.

Therefore they did not have to skip all the fun of the dance. This was one
of the occasions when the boys from the Seven Oaks Military Academy were
allowed to mix freely with the girls of Briarwood. And both parties
enjoyed it.

Belle's mother had arrived in good season, for she was to chaperone the
party bound for Logwood, at the head of Tallahaska Lake. She passed the
word at ten o'clock, and the girls got their hand-baggage and ran down to
the road, where Old Dolliver waited for them with his big sleigh. The boys
walked into town, so the girls were nicely settled in the car when Tom
Cameron and his chums reached the siding.

Belle Tingley's two brothers were not too old to be companions for Tom,
Bob, and Isadore Phelps. And they were all as eager for fun and
prank-playing as they could be.

Mrs. Tingley had already retired and most of the girls were in their
dressing gowns when the boys arrived. The porter was making up the boys'
berths as the latter tramped in, bringing on their clothing the first
flakes of the storm that had been threatening all the evening.

"Let the porter brush you, little boy," urged Madge, peering out between
the curtains of her section and admonishing her big brother. "If you get
cold and catch the croup I don't know what sister _will_ do! Now, be a
good child!"

"Huh!" grunted Isadore Phelps, trying to collect enough of the snow to
make a ball to throw at her. "I wonder at you, Bobbins. Why don't you make
her behave? Treatin' you like an over-grown kid."

"I'd never treat _you_ that way, Master Isadore," said Madge, sweetly.
"For you very well know that you're not grown at all!"

At that Isadore _did_ gather snow--by running out for it. He brought back
a dozen snowballs and the first thing the girls knew the missiles were
dropping over the top of the curtains into the sheltered spaces devoted to
the berths.

There _was_ a great squealing then, for some of the victims were quite
ready for bed, and the snow was cold and wet. Mrs. Tingley interfered
little with the pranks of the young folk, and Izzy was careful not to
throw any snow into _her_ compartment.

But the tease did not know when to stop. He was usually that way--as Madge
said, Izzy would drive a willing horse to death.

It was Heavy and Ann, however, who paid him back in some of his own coin.

The boys finally made their preparations for bed. Izzy paraded the length
of the car in his big robe and bed slippers, for a drink of ice water.

Before he could return, Heavy and Ann bounced out in their woolen kimonas
and seized him. By this time the train had come in, the engine had
switched to the siding, picked up their sleeper, and was now backing down
to couple on to the train again.

The two girls ran Izzy out into the vestibule, Heavy's hand over his
mouth so that he could not shout to his friends for help. The door of the
vestibule on the off side was unlocked. Ann pushed it open.

The snow was falling heavily--it was impossible to see even the fence that
bounded the railroad line on this side. The cars came together with a
slight shock and the three were thrown into a giggling, struggling heap on
the platform.

"Lemme go!" gasped Izzy.

"Sure we will!" giggled Heavy, and with a final push she sent him flying
down the steps. Then she shut the door.

She did not know that every other door on that side of the long train was
locked. Almost immediately the train began to move forward. It swept away
from the Lumberton platform, and it was fully a minute before Heavy and
Ann realized what they had done.

"Oh, oh, oh!" shrieked the plump girl, running down the aisle. "Busy Izzy
is left behind."

"Stop your joking," exclaimed Tom, peering out of his berth, which was an
upper. "He's nothing of the kind."

"He is! He is!"

"Why, he's all ready for bed," declared one of the Tingley boys. "He
wouldn't dare----"

"We threw him out!" wailed Heavy. "We didn't know the train was to start
so quickly."

"Threw him off the train?" cried Mrs. Tingley, appearing in her boudoir
cap and gown. "What kind of a menagerie am I supposed to preserve order
in----?"

"You can make bully good preserved ginger, Ma," said one of her sons, "but
you fall short when it comes to preserving _order_."

Most of the crowd were troubled over Isadore's absence. Some suggested
pulling the emergency cord and stopping the train; others were for
telegraphing back from the next station. All were talking at once, indeed,
when the rear door opened and in came the conductor, escorting the
shivering Isadore.

"Does this--this _tyke_ belong in here?" demanded the man of brass
buttons, with much emphasis.

They welcomed him loudly. The conductor shook his head. The flagman on the
end of the train had helped the boy aboard the last car as the train
started to move.

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