black becomes her,” added Helen rather scornfully.
“Mrs. Mantel?” asked Ruth slowly. “I don’t know what to think of her. She seems to be very anxious to help. Yet she does nothing really helpful – only talks.”
“And some of her talk I’d rather not hear,” said Helen sharply.
“I know what you mean,” Ruth rejoined, nodding. “But so many people talk so doubtfully. They are unfamiliar with the history of the Red Cross and what it has done. Perhaps Mrs. Mantel means no harm.”
At that moment Uncle Jabez reappeared with the heavy rifle in his hands. He was still chuckling.
“Calc’late I ain’t heard Aunt Alvirah talk about this gun much of late. One spell – when fust she come here to the Red Mill to keep house for me – she didn’t scurce dare to go into my room because of it. But, of course, ‘twarn’t ever loaded.
“I was some sharpshooter, gals,” he added proudly, patting the stock of the heavy gun. “Here’s a ca’tridge. I’m goin’ to stick it in her an’ you shall hear how she roars. Warn’t no Maxim silencers, nor nothin’ like that, when I used to pot the Johnny Rebs with Old Betsey.”
He flung open the door into the back yard. He raised the rifle to his shoulder, having slipped in the greased cartridge.
“See that sassy jay atop o’ that cherry tree? I bet I kin clutter him up a whole lot – an’ he desarves it,” said Uncle Jabez.
Just then the door into the other kitchen opened, and a little, crooked-backed old woman with a shawl around her shoulders and a cap atop of her thin hair appeared.
“Jabez Potter! What in creation you goin’ to do with that awful gun?” she shrilled.
“I’m a-goin’ to knock the topknot off’n that bluejay,” chuckled Uncle Jabez.
“Stop! Don’t! Gals!” cried the little old woman, hobbling down the two steps into the room. “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones! Gals! stop him! That gun can’t shoot ’cause I went and plugged the barrel!”
At that moment Old Betsey went off with an awful roar.
CHAPTER II – THE CALL OF THE DRUM
There was a flash following the explosion, and Uncle Jabez staggered back from the doorway, his arm across his eyes, while the gun dropped with a crash to the porch. The girls, as well as Aunt Alvirah, shrieked.
“I vum!” ejaculated the miller. “Who done that? What’s happened to Old Betsey?”
“Jabez Potter!” shrilled the little old woman, “didn’t I tell you to git rid o’ that gun long ago? Be you shot?”
“No,” said the miller grimly. “I’m only scare’t. Old Betsey never kicked like that afore.”
Ruth was at his side patting his shoulder and looking at him anxiously.
“Shucks!” scoffed the miller. “I ain’t dead yit. But what made that gun – ”
He stooped and picked it up. First he looked at the twisted hammer, then he turned it around and looked into the muzzle.
“For the good land o’ liberty!” he yelled. “What’s the meanin’ of this? Who – who’s gone and stuck up this here gun bar’l this a-way? I vum! It’s ce-ment – sure’s I’m a foot high.”
“What did you want to tetch that gun for, Jabez Potter?” demanded Aunt Alvirah, easing herself into a low rocker. “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones! I allus warned you ‘twould do some harm some day. That’s why I plugged it up.”
“You – you plugged it up?” gasped the miller. “Wha – what for I want to know?”
“So, if ’twas loaded, no bullet would get out and hurt anybody,” declared the little old woman promptly. “Now, you kin get mad and use bad language, Jabez Potter, if you’ve a mind to. But I’d ruther go back to the poorhouse to live than stay under this ruff with that gun all ready to shoot with.”
The miller was so thunderstruck for a moment that he could not reply. Ruth feared he might fly into a temper, for he was not a patient man. But, oddly enough, he never raged at the little old housekeeper.
“I vum!” he said at last. “Don’t that beat all? An’ ain’t it like a woman? Stickin’ up the muzzle of the gun so’s it couldn’t shoot – but would explode. Shucks!” He suddenly flung up both hands. “Can you beat ’em? You can’t!”
Now that it was all over, and the accident had not caused any fatality, the two girls felt like laughing – a hysterical feeling perhaps. They got Aunt Alvirah into the larger kitchen and left Uncle Jabez to nail up the box that he was going to ship for Ruth to Red Cross headquarters.
The girl of the Red Mill had been gathering the knitted wear and comfort kits from the neighbors around to send on to the Red Cross headquarters, and, in the immediate vicinity of the Red Mill, she knew that the women and girls were doing a better work for the cause than in Cheslow itself.
The mill and the rambling old house that adjoined and belonged to Uncle Jabez Potter stood upon the bank of the Lumano River, and was as beautiful a spot as one might find in that part of the state. Ruth Fielding had always loved it since the first day her eyes had spied it, when as a little girl she had come to live with her cross and crotchety Uncle Jabez.
The miller was a miserly man, and, at first, Ruth had had no pleasant time as a dependent on her uncle. Had it not been for Aunt Alvirah Boggs, who was nobody’s relative but everybody’s aunt, and whom Uncle Jabez had taken from the poorhouse to keep house for him, the lonely little orphan girl would have been quite heartbroken.
With Aunt Alvirah’s help and the consolation of her philosophy, as well as with the aid of the friendship of Helen and Tom Cameron, who were neighbors, Ruth Fielding began to be happy. And really unhappy thereafter she never could be, for something was always happening to her, and the active person is seldom if ever in the doldrums.
In the first volume of the series, “Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill,” these and others of Ruth’s friends were introduced, and the girl began to develop that sturdy and independent character which has made her loved by so many. With Helen she went to Briarwood Hall to boarding school, and there her acquaintance rapidly widened. For some years her course is traced through several volumes, at school and during vacations at different places where exciting and most delightful adventures happen to Ruth and her friends.
In following volumes we meet Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp, at Lighthouse Point, at Silver Ranch, on Cliff Island, at Sunrise Farm, in a Gypsy camp, in Moving Pictures, down in Dixie, and, finally, she graduates from Briarwood Hall, and she and her chums enter Ardmore College. At the beginning of this, the thirteenth volume of the series, Ruth and Helen were quite grown up. Following their first year at Ardmore, Ruth had gone West to write and develop a moving picture for the Alectrion Film Corporation, in which she now owned an interest.
In “Ruth Fielding in the Saddle; or, College Girls in the Land of Gold,” an account of this adventure is narrated, the trip occupying most of the first summer following Ruth’s freshman year. Ruth’s success as a writer of moving-picture scenarios of the better class had already become established. “The Forty-Niners” had become one of the most successful of the big scenarios shown during the winter just previous to the opening of our present story.
