“Ride back to town, quick!” she cried. “Get some of the boys and bring them here. I’ll try to hold Lieberstein if I can!”
“But your ankle——”
“Never mind me!” cried Ruth. “Helen, please don’t stop to argue! Those two girls need help!”
“All right. I’ll be back with some one in a jiffy!”
In a flash she was off, running swiftly and noiselessly toward the spot where they had left the horses.
Ruth approached the window again and looked in. She knew what Lieberstein had come after. Mary had whispered to her only a short time before—having come to know Ruth and to trust her—that her father’s precious papers had been hidden by Ellen and herself in an old cow horn back of a loose stone in the hearth. But when Ruth came upon Lieberstein prowling close to the hiding place, Mary had become alarmed and hidden the papers in a new spot. Where they were now she had never revealed even to Ruth, for Mary Chase had learned caution in a hard school!
Mary had been holding the shotgun, but as Ruth looked, the bully wrenched it from her hands and kicked it contemptuously into one corner of the cabin.
He sneered at Mary and advanced toward her, hands upraised threateningly.
“You’ll threaten me, will you, you little rat!” Ruth heard him say. “Well, I told you, didn’t I, that you’d get fresh with Max Lieberstein once too often? I’m not goin’ to be put off any longer. Now! will you tell me where you hid those papers your Dad set such store by or won’t you?”
“I won’t!” cried Mary, undaunted, and reached behind her for the cane her father had sometimes used.