Ruth really had little doubt about Min’s ability to play the part that she had thought out for her. Only, would she do it? Would she feel that her own character and condition in life was being held up to ridicule? Ruth had to be careful about that.
On returning to the camp she said nothing about the discoveries she had made along the bank of the stream. But that evening, after supper, as the whole party were grouped before the cabins they had now made fairly comfortable, Trix Davenport suddenly startled them all by crying:
“See there! Who’s that?”
“Who’s where, Trixie?” asked Jennie, lazily. “Are you seeing things?”
“I certainly am,” said the diminutive girl.
“So do I!” Sally exclaimed. “There’s a man on horseback.”
In the purple dusk they saw him mounting a distant ridge east of the stream—almost on the confines of the valley on that side. It was only for a minute that he held in his horse and seemed to be gazing down at the fire flickering in the principal street of Freezeout Camp.
Then he rode on, out of sight.
CHAPTER XVI—NEW ARRIVALS
“‘The lone horseman riding into the purple dusk,’ à la the sensational novelist,” chuckled Jennie Stone. “Who do you suppose that was, Min?”