“I wish I could let Ike go with ye—that’s what I wish,” grumbled her uncle.
Ruth Fielding secretly wished the same. The direction of the Rolling River Camp lay toward Tintacker. She had asked the foreman about it.
“You’ll be all of thirty mile from the Tintacker claims, Miss Ruth,” Bashful Ike said. “But it’s a straight-away trail from the ford a mile, or so, this side of the camp. Any of the boys can show you. And Jib might spare one of ’em to beau you over to the mine, if so be you are determined to try and find that ‘bug’.”
“I do want to see and speak with him,” Ruth said, earnestly.
“It’s pretty sure he’s looney,” said Ike. “You won’t make nothing out o’ him. I wouldn’t bother.”
“Why, he saved my life!” cried Ruth. “I want to thank him. I want to help him. And—and—indeed, I need very much to see and speak with him, Ike.”
“Ya-as. That does make a difference,” admitted the foreman. “He sure did kill that bear.”
The ponies rattled away behind the heavy wagon, drawn by six mules. In the lead cantered Ricarde and his father, herding the dozen or more half-wild cow-ponies. The Mexican horse-wrangler was a lazy looking, half-asleep fellow; but he sat a pony as though he had grown in the saddle.
Ruth, on her beloved little Freckles, rode almost as well now as did Jane Ann. The other girls were content to follow the mule team at a more quiet pace; but Ruth and the ranchman’s niece dashed off the trail more than once for a sharp race across the plain.
“You’re a darling, Ruthie!” declared Jane Ann, enthusiastically. “I wish you were going to live out here at Silver Ranch all the time—I do! I wouldn’t mind being ‘buried in the wilderness’ if you were along——”