“Now, what do you eat, and how do you get it?” she asked him.
“My dear young lady!” he cried, “you must not worry about me. I shall be all right. I was just going to cook some bacon when you rode up. That is why I made up a fresh fire. I shall be all right, I assure you.”
Ruth insisted upon rumaging through his stores and cooking the hermit a hearty meal. She marked the fact that certain delicacies were here that the ordinary prospector would not have packed into the wilds. Likewise, there was vastly more tea and sugar than one person could use in a long time.
Ruth was quite sure “the hermit” was not a native of the West. She was exceedingly puzzled as she went about her kindly duties. Then, of a sudden, she was actually startled as well as puzzled. In a corner of the cabin she found hanging on a nail a rubber bathcap on which was stenciled “Ardmore.” It was one of the gymnasium caps from her college.
CHAPTER XVIII—RUTH REALLY HAS A SECRET
Ruth Fielding came back from her ride to Freezeout Camp and said not a word to a soul about her discovery of the young man in the cabin. She had a secret at last, but it was not her own. She did not feel that she had the right to speak even to Helen about it.
She was quite sure “the hermit” had no ill intention toward their party. And if he had a companion that companion could do those at Freezeout no harm.
Just what it was all about Ruth did not know; yet she had some suspicions. However, she rode out to the lone cabin the next day, and the next, to see that the young man was comfortable. “The Hermit Prospector,” as he laughingly called himself, was doing very well.
Ruth brought him two slim poles out of the wood and he fashioned himself a pair of crutches. By means of these he began to hobble around and Ruth decided that he did not need her further ministrations. She did not tell him that she should cease calling, she merely ceased riding that way. For a “hermit” he had seemed very glad, indeed, to have somebody to speak to.
Ruth was exceedingly busy now. The director, Mr. Grimes—a very efficient but unpleasant man—arrived with the remainder of the company, and rehearsals began immediately. Hazel Gray, who had been so fresh and young looking when Ruth and Helen first met her at the Red Mill, was beginning to show the ravages of “film acting.” The appealing personality which had first brought her into prominence in motion pictures was now a matter of “registering.” There was little spontaneity in the leading lady’s acting; but the part she had to play in “The Forty-Niners” was far different from that she had acted in “The Heart of a School Girl,” an earlier play of Ruth’s.