Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island by Alice Emerson

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CHAPTER XXIII

"A BLOW FOR LIBERTY"

Ruth was a healthy girl and particularly free from "nerves"; but she _was_
frightened. She was so proud that she determined not to admit to her
companions that she was lost In the caves.

Indeed, she was not entirely sure that she _was_ lost. Perhaps this was
the way she had come with Jerry. Only, she did not remember passing the
little room with the four tunnels opening out of it.

This first passage into which she had ventured with so much apparent
boldness proved to be the wrong one within a very few moments. She came to
the end of it--against an unbroken wall.

There she remained until she had conquered her nervous sobbing and removed
as well as she could the traces of tears from her face. When she returned
to Tom and Ralph she held the lantern well down, so that the shadow was
cast upon her face.

"How about it, Ruth?" demanded Tom, cheerfully, when she reappeared.

"That's not the one. It is just a pocket," declared Ruth. "Wait till I try
another."

"Well, don't be all night about it," growled Tingley, ungraciously. "We're
wasting a lot of time here."

Ruth did not reply, but took the next tunnel. She followed this for even a
shorter distance before finding it closed.

"Only two more. That's all right!" exclaimed Tom. "Narrows the choice
down, and we'll be surer of hitting the right one--eh, Ruthie?"

She knew that he was talking thus to keep her courage up. Dear old Tom! he
was always to be depended upon.

She gathered confidence herself, however, when she had gone some distance
into the third passage. There was a place where she had to climb upon a
shelf to get along, because the floor was covered with big stones, and she
remembered this place clearly.

So she turned and swung her Tight, calling to the boys. Her voice went
echoing through the tunnel and soon brought a reply and the sound of
scrambling feet.

"Hold up that lantern!" yelled Ralph, rather crossly. "How do you expect
us to see?"

Young Tingley's nerves were "on edge," and like a good many other people
when they get that way, he was short-tempered.

"Now we're all right, are we, Ruth?" cried Tom.

"I remember this place," the girl of the Red Mill replied. "I couldn't be
mistaken. Now you take the lantern, Tom, and lead on."

They pursued the tunnel to its very end. There it branched again and Ruth
boldly took the right hand passage. Whether it was right, or no, she
proposed to attack it firmly.

After a time Tom exclaimed: "Hullo, Ruthie! do you really think this is
right?"

"What do you mean?"

He held up the lantern in silence. Ruth and Ralph crowded forward to look
over his shoulders.

There was a heap of rubbish and earth half-filling the tunnel. It had not
fallen from the roof, although neither that nor the sides of the tunnel
were of solid rock.

"You never came through this place, Ruth!" exclaimed Ralph, in that
"I-told-you-so" tone that is so hard to bear.

"I--I didn't see this place--no," admitted Ruth.

"Of course you didn't!" declared Ralph, crossly. "Why! it's right up
against the end of the tunnel."

"It _does_ look as though we were blocked, Ruthie," said Tom, with less
confidence.

"Then we'll have to go back and try the other passage," returned the girl,
choking a little.

"See here!" cried Tom, suddenly. "Somebody's been digging here. That's
where all this stuff comes from, underfoot."

"Where?" asked the others, crowding forward to look closer. Tom set down
the lantern and picked up a broken spade. There was a cavity in the wall
of this pocket-like passage. With a flourish Tom dug the broken blade of
the spade into the gritty earth.

"This is what Jerry wanted that mattock for, I bet!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, dear, me! do you believe so?" cried Ruth. "Then, right here, is where
he thought he might find his uncle's treasure box."

"Ho, ho!" ejaculated Ralph. "That old hunter was just as crazy as he could
be--father says so."

"Well, that wouldn't keep him from having money; would it?--and might be a
very good reason for his burying it."

"And the papers he declared would prove his title to a part of this
island," Ruth hastened to add.

That didn't please Ralph any too well. "My father owns the island, and
don't you forget it!" he declared.

"Well, we don't have to quarrel about it," snapped Tom, rather disgusted
with the way Ralph was behaving. "Come on! we might as well go back. But
here's one blow for liberty!" and he laughed and flung the spade forward
with all his strength.

Jerry Sheming had never suspected it, or he would not have left the
excavation just as he had. There was but a thin shell beyond where he had
been digging, and the spade in Tom's hand went clear through.

"For the goodness gracious grannies!" gasped Tom, scrambling off his
knees. "I--I came near losing that spade altogether."

There was a fall of earth beyond the hole. They heard it rolling and
tumbling down a sharp descent.

"Hold the lantern here, Ruth!" cried Tom, trying to peer into the opening.

Ruth did so. The rays revealed a hole, big enough for a man to creep
through. It gave entrance, it seemed, to another cavern--and one of good
size.

"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed Ruth, seizing Tom's arm. "I just know what this
means."

"You may. _I_ don't," laughed Tom Cameron.

"Why, this other cavern is the one that was buried under the landslide.
Jerry said he knew about where it was, and he's been trying to dig into
it."

"Oh, yes; there was a landslide on this side of the cliff just about the
time father was negotiating for the purchase of the island last summer,"
said Ralph. "We all came up here to look at the place a while afterward.
We camped in a tent about where the lodge now stands. That old crazy
hunter had just been taken away from here. They say he tried to kill
Blent."

"And maybe he had good reason," said Tom. "Blent is without a doubt a
pretty mean proposition."

"Just the same, the island is my father's," declared Ralph, with
confidence. "He bought it, right enough."

"All right. But you think, Ruth, that perhaps it was in this buried cave
that old Mr. Tilton hid his money box?"

"So Jerry said. It looks as though Jerry had been digging here----"

"Let's have another crack at it!" cried Tom, and went to work with the
spade again.

In ten minutes he had scattered considerable earth and made the hole much
larger. They held the lantern inside and saw that the floor of the other
cavity was about on a level with the one in which they stood. Tom slid the
old spade through the hole, and then went through himself.

"Come on! let's take a look," he said, reaching up for Ruth and the
lantern.

"But this isn't finding a way out," complained Ralph. "What will the other
folks say?"

"We'll find the opening later. We couldn't venture outside now, anyway. It
is still storming, you can bet," declared the eager Tom.

Ruth's sharp eyes were peering here and there. The cavern they had entered
was almost circular and had a dome-shaped roof. There were shelves all
around several feet above the floor. Some of these ledges slanted inward
toward the rock, and one could not see much of them.

"Lift me up here, Tom!" commanded the girl. "I want to scramble up on the
ledge."

"You'll hurt yourself."

"Nonsense! Can't I climb a tree almost as well as Ann Hicks?"

He gave her a lift and Ruth scrambled over the edge with a little squeal.

"Oh, oh, oh!" she cried. "Here's something."

"Must be," grunted Tom, trying to climb up himself. "Why, I declare,
Ruthie! that's a box."

"It's a little chest. It's ironbound, too. My! how heavy. I can't lift
it."

"Tumble it down and let's see," commanded Ralph, holding the lantern.

Ruth sat down suddenly and looked at the boys.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know that we've got any right to touch
it. It's padlocked. Maybe it is old Mr. Tilton's treasure-box."

"That would be great!" cried Tom.

"But I don't know," continued Ruth, reflectively. "We would better not
touch it. I wouldn't undertake to advise Jerry what to do if _he_ found
it. But this is what they call 'treasure trove,' I guess. At least, it was
what that Rufus Blent had in mind, all right, when he sold Mr. Tingley the
island with the peculiar reservation clause in the deed."

CHAPTER XXIV

A MIDNIGHT MARAUDER

Meanwhile the boys and girls left behind in Jerry Sheming's old camp began
to find the absence of Ruth and her two companions rather trying. The time
which had elapsed since the three explorers started to find the eastern
outlet of the cave seemed much longer to those around the campfire than to
the trio themselves.

Before the searching party could have reached the brookside, had the
tunnel been perfectly straight, the nervous Belle Tingley wanted to send
out a relief expedition.

"We never should have allowed Ruthie to go," she wailed. "We all should
have kept together. How do we know but they'll find the cave a regular
labyrinth, and get lost in it, and wander around and around, and never
find their way out, or back, and----"

"Oh, for the goodness sake!" ejaculated Mary Cox, "don't be such a
weeping, wailing Sister of Misery, Belle! You not only cross bridges
before you come to them, but, I declare, you build new ones!"

"She's Old Man Trouble's favorite daughter," said Heavy. "Didn't you know
_that_? Now, Miss Fuss-Budget, stop croaking. Nothing's going to happen to
Ruthie."

"Not with Tom on hand, you can wager," added Helen, with every confidence
in her twin brother.

But at last the watches of the party could not be doubted. Two hours had
crept by and it was getting very late in the evening. Some of the party
were, as Ann said, "yawning their heads off." Lluella and Heavy had camped
down upon the old buffalo-robe before the fire and were already more than
half asleep.

"I do wish they'd come back," muttered Bob Steele to Isadore Phelps. "We
can't tell in here whether the storm has stopped, or not. I don't just
fancy staying in this cave all night if there's any possible chance of
getting to Mr. Tingley's house."

"Don't know what can be keeping those folks. I believe I could have crept
on my hands and knees through the whole hill, and back again, before this
time," returned Busy Izzy, in a very sleepy voice.

"Now, you can talk as you please," said Ann Hicks, with sudden decision,
"but I'm going a short distance along that tunnel and see if the lantern
is in sight."

"I'm with you!" exclaimed Bob.

"Me, too," joined in Helen, jumping up with alacrity.

"Now, some more of you will go off and get lost," cried Belle. "I--I wish
we were all home. I'm--I'm sorry we came to this old island."

"Baby!" ejaculated her brother, poking her. "Do be still. Ralph isn't
going to get lost--what d'ye think he is?"

"How'll we see our way?" Helen asked Bob and Ann.

"Feel it. We'll go in the dark. Then we can see their lantern the
quicker."

"There's no wood here fit for torches," Bob admitted. "And I have plenty
of matches. Come on! We sha'n't get lost."

"What do you really suppose has happened to them?" demanded Helen of Bob,
as soon as they were out of hearing of the camp.

"Give it up. Something extraordinary--that's positive," declared the big
fellow.

They crept through the tunnel, Bob lighting a match occasionally, until
they reached the first crack in the roof, open to the sky. It was not
snowing very hard.

"Of course they wouldn't have tried climbing up here to get out," queried
Helen.

"Of course not!" exclaimed Ann. "What for?"

"No," said Bobbins. "They kept straight ahead--and so will we."

In five minutes, however, when they stopped, whispering, in a little
chamber, Ann suddenly seized her companions and commanded them to hold
their breath!

"I hear something," she whispered.

The others strained their ears to hear, too. In a moment a stone rattled.
Then there sounded an unmistakable footstep upon the rock. Somebody was
approaching.

"They're coming back?" asked Helen, doubtfully.

"Hush!" commanded Ann again. "Whoever it is, he has no light. It can't be
Ruth."

Much heavier boots than those the girl of the Red Mill wore now rattled
over the loose stones. Ann pulled the other two down beside her where she
crouched in the corner.

"Wait!" she breathed.

"Can it be some wild animal?" asked Helen.

"With boots on? I bet!" scoffed Bob.

It was pitch dark. The three crouching together in the corner of the
little chamber were not likely to attract the attention of this marauder,
if all went well. But their hearts beat fast as the rustle of the
approaching footsteps grew louder.

There loomed up a man's figure. It looked too big to be either Tom or
Ralph, and it passed on with an assured step. He needed no lamp to find a
path that seemed well known.

"Who--what----"

"Hush, Helen!" commanded Ann.

"But he's going right to the cave--and he carried a gun."

"I didn't see the gun," whispered Ann.

"I did," agreed Bob, squeezing Helen's arm. "It was a rifle. Do you
suppose there is any danger?"

"It couldn't be anybody hunting us, do you suppose?" queried Helen, in a
shaken voice. "Anybody from the house?"

"Preston!" exclaimed Ann.

"How would he know the way to get into this tunnel?" returned Bob. "Come
on! let's spy on him. I'm worried now about Tom and the others."

"You don't suppose anything has happened to Ruthie?" whispered Helen. "Oh!
you don't believe _that_, Bobbins?"

"Come on!" grunted the big fellow, and took the advance.

They were careful of their own footsteps over the loose stones. The person
ahead acted as though he had an idea he was alone.

Nor did they overtake him until they had passed the open crack in the roof
of the tunnel. Somebody laughed in the cavern ahead--then the girls all
shouted.

The marauder stopped, uttering an astonished ejaculation. Bob and the two
girls halted, too, but in a moment the person ahead turned, and came
striding toward them, evidently fleeing from the sound of the voices.

Ann and Helen were really frightened, and with faint cries, shrank back.
Bob _had_ to be brave. He leaped forward to meet the person with the
rifle, crying:

"Hold on, there!"

"Ha!" exclaimed the other and advanced the rifle until the muzzle touched
Bob Steele's breast. The boy was naturally frightened--how could he help
being? But he showed pluck. He did not move.

"What do you want in here? Who are you?" asked Bob, quietly.

"Goodness me!" gasped the other, and dropped the butt of his rifle to the
ground. "You sure did startle me. You're one of those boys staying with
the Tingleys?"

"Yes."

"And here's a couple of the girls. Not Ruth Fielding?"

"Oh, Jerry Sheming!" cried Ann, running forward. "You might have shot him
with that gun."

"Not unless I'd loaded it first," replied Jerry, with a quiet chuckle.
"But you folks scared me quite as much as I did you--Why, it's Miss Hicks
and Miss Cameron."

"Where is Ruth?" demanded Ann, anxiously.

"And Tom?" joined in Helen.

"And how did you get back here to Cliff Island?" asked Bob. "We understood
that you'd been railroaded out of the country."

"Hold on! hold on!" exclaimed Jerry. "Let's hear first about Miss
Fielding. Where's she gone? How came you folks in this cave?"

Helen was the one who told him. She related all the circumstances very
briefly, but in a way to give Jerry a clear understanding of the
situation.

"They've wandered off to the right. I know where they must be," said
Jerry, decidedly. "I'll go find them. And then I'll get you all out of
here. It has almost stopped snowing now."

"But how did you find your way back here to the island?" Bob demanded
again.

"I ain't going to be beat by Blent," declared Jerry Sheming, doggedly. "I
am going to have another look through the caves before I leave for good,
and don't you forget it.

"The engine on that train yesterday morning broke a piston rod and had to
stop down the lake shore. I hopped off and hid on the far bank, watching
the island. If you folks hadn't come over this way to fish this morning,
I'd been across before the storm began.

"I was pretty well turned around in the storm, and have been traveling a
long time. But I got to the brook at last, and then worked my way up it
and into the other end of this cave. I was going up there after my
lantern----"

"Ruth and the others have it," explained Helen, quickly.

"Then I'll go find them at once. I know my way around pretty well in the
dark. I couldn't get really lost in this cave," and Jerry laughed,
shortly.

"I've got matches if you want them," said Bob.

"Got a plenty, thanks. You folks go back to your friends, and I'll hunt
out Miss Fielding in a jiffy."

Jerry turned away at once, and soon passed out of their sight in the
gloom. As Helen and the others hurried back to the anxious party at the
campfire, Jerry went straightway to the most satisfactory discovery of all
his life.

CHAPTER XXV

THE TREASURE BOX

When Jerry met Ruth and her companions coming slowly from the little cave,
the boys bearing the heavy, ironbound box between them, he knew instantly
what it was--his uncle's chest in which he had kept his money and papers.

"It's yours to hide again if you want to, Jerry," Ruth told him, when the
excitement of the meeting had passed, and explanations were over. "It was
what both you and Rufus Blent have been looking for, and I believe you
have the best right to it"

"It belongs to Uncle Pete. And Uncle Pete shall have it," declared the
backwoods boy. "Why, do you know, I believe if Uncle Pete once had this
box in his possession again that he might recover his mind?"

"Oh, I hope so!" Ruth cried.

First, however, the crowd of young folk had to be led through the long
tunnel and out into the open air. It was agreed that nothing was to be
said to anybody but Mr. Tingley about the treasure box. And the boys and
girls, too, agreed to say nothing at the house about Jerry's having
returned to his cave.

When they reached the brook, there were lights about the island, and guns
being fired. The entire household of Tingley Lodge was out on the hunt for
the lost ones.

The boys and girls were home and in bed in another hour, and Mrs. Tingley
was vastly relieved.

"Never again will I take the responsibility of such a crowd!" declared the
harassed lady. "My own children are enough; a dozen and a half active
young ones like these would send me to the madhouse in another week!"

But the girls from Briarwood and their boy friends continued to have a
delightful time during the remainder of their stay at Cliff Island,
although their adventures were less strenuous than those that have been
related. They went away, in the end, to take up their school duties,
pronouncing their vacation on the island one of the most enjoyable they
had ever experienced.

"Something to keep up our hearts for the rest of the school year,"
declared Heavy. "And you'll like us better, too, when we're gone, Mrs.
Tingley. We _all_--even The Fox, here--have a good side to our
characters."

Even Ann Hicks went back to Briarwood with pleasant expectations. She had
learned to understand her mates better during this holiday, and all the
girls at Briarwood were prepared to welcome the western girl now with more
kindness than before.

We may believe that Ruth and her girl friends were all busy and happy
during that next half-year at Briarwood, and we may meet them again in the
midst of their work and fun in the next volume of the series, entitled
"Ruth Fielding at Sunrise Farm; Or, What Became of the Raby Orphans."

Ruth Fielding, however, did not leave Cliff Island before being assured
that the affairs of Jerry Sheming and his uncle would be set right. As it
chanced, the very day the crowd had gone fishing Mr. Tingley had received
a letter from the head doctor of the hospital, to whom the gentleman had
written inquiring about old Peter Tilton.

The patient had improved immensely. That he was eccentric was true, but he
had probably always been so, the doctor said. The old man was worrying
over the loss of what he called his treasure box, and when Ruth confided
to Mr. Tingley the truth about Jerry's return and the discovery of the
ironbound box, Mr. Tingley determined to take matters into his own hands.

He first went to the cave and had a long talk with Jerry. Then he had his
team of horses put to the sledge, and he and Jerry and the box drove the
entire length of Lake Tallahaska, struck into a main road to the county
asylum, and made an unexpected call upon the poor old hunter, who had been
so long confined in that institution.

"It was jest what Uncle Pete needed to wake him up," Jerry declared to
Ruth, when he saw her some weeks later. "He knowed the box and had always
carried the key of it about his neck on a string. They didn't know what it
was at the 'sylum, but they let him keep the key.

"And when he opened it, sure enough there was lots of papers and a couple
of bags of money. I don't know how much, but Mr. Tingley got Uncle Pete to
trust a bank with the money, and it'll be mine some day. Uncle Pete's
going to pay my way through school with some of it, he says."

"But the title to the island?" demanded the excited girl of the Red Mill.
"How did that come out? Did your uncle have any deed to it? What of that
mean old Rufus Blent?"

"Jest you hold your hosses, Miss Ruth," laughed Jerry. "I'm comin' to
that."

"But you are coming to it awfully slow, Jerry," complained the eager girl.

"No. I'll tell you quick's I can," he declared. "Uncle Pete had papers. He
had been buying a part of the island from Blent on installments, and had
paid the old rascal a good part of the price. But when Blent found out
that uncle's papers were buried under the landslide he thought he could
play a sharp trick and resell to Mr. Tingley. You see, the installment
deeds were not recorded.

"However, Mr. Tingley's lawyers made old Blent get right down and howl for
mercy--yes, they did! There was a strong case of conspiracy against him.
That's still hanging fire.

"But Mr. Tingley says he will not push that, considering Rufus did all he
was told to about the title money. He gave Uncle Pete back every cent he
had paid in on the Cliff Island property, with interest compounded, and a
good lump sum of money beside as a bonus.

"Then Uncle Pete made Mr. Tingley's title good, and we're going to live at
the lodge during the closed season, as caretakers. That pleases Uncle
Pete, for he couldn't be very well content anywhere else but on Cliff
Island."

"Oh, Jerry! I am so glad it has come out all right for you," cried the
girl of the Red Mill. "And so will all the other girls be when I tell
them. And Uncle Jabez and Aunt Alvirah--for _they_ are interested in your
welfare, too."

"You're mighty kind, Miss Ruth," said the backwoods boy, bashfully.
"I--I'm thinking I've got a lot more to thank _you_ for than I ever can
express right proper."

"Oh, no! no more to me than to other folks," cried Ruth Fielding,
earnestly, for it had always been her natural instinct to help people, and
she did not wish to be thanked for it.

That being the case, neither Jerry nor the writer must say anything more
about the matter.

THE END

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