“Oh, dear, me, Ruthie Fielding! I wish I had never agreed to come without demanding a comfortable carriage.”
“They tell me that there are places on the trail before we get to Freezeout so narrow that a carriage can’t be used. The wagons are going miles and miles around so as to escape the rough places of the straighter trail.”
“Goodness!” exclaimed Miss Cullam in disgust. “Is it necessary to get to Freezeout Camp in such a short time? I tell you right now: I am going to rest in bed for two days.”
And she did. The girls were not worried, however. They found plenty to see and to do about the mining town. As for Ruth, she set to work on her scenario, and kept Rebecca Frayne busy with the typewriter, too. She sketched out the scene she had mentioned to Helen, and it was so funny that Rebecca giggled all the time she was typewriting it.
“Goodness!” murmured Ruth. “I hope the audiences will think it is as funny as you do. The only trouble is, unless a good deal of the conversation is thrown on the screen, they will miss some of the best points. Dear me! Such is fate. I was born to be a humorist—a real humorist—in a day and age when ‘custard-pie comedians’ have the right-of-way.”
The third day the party started bright and early on the Freezeout trail. Flapjack Peters was well enough to ride; and he was woefully sorry for what he had done. But he was still too much “twisted” in his mind to be able to tell Ruth just how he came to start away from Yucca with Edith Phelps and Ann Hicks, instead of waiting for the entire party to arrive.
Ann had told all she knew about it at her meeting with Ruth. It remained a mystery why Edith had come to Yucca; why she had kept Ann and her friends apart; and why at Handy Gulch she had abandoned both Ann and Flapjack Peters.
“She met a man here, that’s all I know,” said Ann, with disgust.
“Maybe it was the man who wrote her from Yucca,” said Helen to Ruth.
“‘Box twenty-four, R. F. D., Yucca, Arizona,’” murmured Ruth. “We should have made inquiries in Yucca about the person who has his mail come to that postbox.”