Still, it was cowardly to run from the unknown. Ruth had tasted real peril on more than one occasion. She touched the spur to her pony instead of pulling him around, and rode on.
There was a curve in the arroyo and when she came into the hidden part of the basin the mystery was instantly explained. A fairly substantial cabin—recently built it was evident—stood near a thicket of mesquite. The door was hung on leather hinges and was wide open. Yet there must be some occupant, for the smoke rose through the hole in the roof. It struck Ruth, for several reasons, that the cabin had been built by an amateur.
She held in her pony again and might, after all, have wheeled him and ridden away without going closer, if the little beast had not betrayed her presence by a shrill whinny. Immediately the pony’s challenge was answered from the mesquite where the unknown’s horse was picketed.
Ruth was startled again. No sound came from the cabin, nor could she discover anybody watching her from the jungle. She rode nearer to the cabin door.
It was then that the unshod hoofs of her pony announced her presence to whoever was within. A voice shouted suddenly:
“Hullo!”
The tone in which the word was uttered drove all the fear out of Ruth Fielding’s mind. She knew that the owner of such a voice must be a gentleman.
She rode her pony up to the open door and peered into the dimly lighted interior. There was no window in the cabin walls.
“Hullo yourself!” she rejoined. “Are you all alone?”
“Sure I am. I’m a hermit—the Hermit Prospector. And I bet you are one of those moving picture girls.”