“I left my cap here the other day,” Boardman explained, with his eyes still on Mary. “I was coming back to get it.”
“Something must have sent you just at the right time,” said Mary softly. “I shall always be thankful for that.”
Ruth wanted the girls to come back with her to Knockout Point, for that night at least. But Mary refused, saying that they did not dare go so far from the cabin.
“I’m all right,” she assured them, one arm thrown about the trembling shoulders of her sister. “You’re not to worry, really. We’re all right! We are not ‘girl miners,’ as Eddie calls us, for nothing. We know how to face things and to fight.”
So Ruth and Boardman left them at last, though reluctantly, when they saw that Mary could not be moved from her decision, and took the long trail homeward almost in silence.
Once when they were nearing the settlement, the actor clenched his hands and muttered as though he were thinking aloud:
“I should have been quicker on the trigger! I should have used that gun while it was in my hands!”
It was then that Ruth told him how she had happened to go back to the cottage and, seeing Lieberstein busily engaged in examining the fireplace, how she had interrupted him and then thwarted his attempt at escape. Then she related the subsequent hectic events up to the arrival on the scene of Boardman himself.
By the look in his eyes, Ruth saw that she had made one active ally for herself against the plottings of Lieberstein and the man behind him, if only for the sake of Mary Chase.
Nor were the days to follow free from annoying, mysterious incidents.