“Sally will make her walk a chalk line if she goes over there with her,” laughed Helen. “Think of her and Ike getting married without a word to anybody!”
Jane Ann laughed, too, at that. “Sally whispered to me that she never would have taken Ike so quick if it hadn’t been for what we did at the party the other night. She was afraid some of the other girls around here would see what a good fellow Ike was and want to marry him. She’s always intended to take him some time, she said; but it was Ruth that settled the affair at that time.”
“I declare! Ruth does influence a whole lot of folk, doesn’t she?” murmured Heavy. “I never saw such a girl.”
And that last was the comment Dr. Burgess made regarding the girl of the Red Mill after the party arrived at Tintacker. They reached the mine just at daybreak the next morning. Mary Cox had kept them back some, for she was not a good rider. But she had cried and taken on so when Sally and Ike did not want her to go farther than the river, that they were really forced to allow her to continue the entire journey.
Dr. Burgess examined the sick man and pronounced him to be in a very critical condition. But he surely had improved since the hour that Ruth and Jib Pottoway had found him. Old Bill Hicks had helped care for the patient during the night; but Ruth had actually gone ahead with everything and—without much doubt, the doctor added—the stranger could thank her for his life if he did recover.
“That girl is all right!” declared the physician, preparing to return the long miles he had come by relays of horses to the ranch-house, and from thence to Bullhide in the automobile. “She has done just the right thing.”
“She’s a mighty cute young lady,” admitted Bill Hicks. “And this chap—John Cox, or whatever his name is—ought to feel that she’s squared things up with him over that bear business——”
“Then you have learned his name?” queried Tom Cameron, who was present.
“I got the coat away from him when he was asleep in the night,” said Mr. Hicks. “He had letters and papers and a wad of banknotes in it. Ruth’s got ’em all. She says he is the man with whom her Uncle Jabez went into partnership over the old Tintacker claims. Mebbe the feller’s struck a good thing after all. He seems to have an assayer’s report among his papers that promises big returns on some specimens he had assayed. If he dug ’em out of the Tintacker Claim mebbe the old hole in the ground will take on a new lease of life.”
At that moment Mary Cox pushed forward, with Sally holding her by the arm.