"Oh, Helen! she"s wonderful!" gasped Ruth, with clasped hands, as she watched this fight for life which was more thrilling than anything she had ever seen reproduced on the screen.
Helen was too frightened to reply; but Ruth Fielding often before had shown remarkable courage and self-possession in times of emergency. No more than the excited Tom did she lose her head on this occasion.
As has been previously told, Ruth had come to the banks of the Lumano River and to her Uncle Jabez Potter"s Red Mill some years before, when she was a small girl. She was an orphan, and the crabbed and miserly miller was her single living relative.
The first volume of the series, ent.i.tled "Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill,"
tells of the incidents which follow Ruth"s coming to reside with her uncle, and with Aunt Alvirah Boggs, who was "everybody"s aunt" but n.o.body"s relative.
The first and closest friends of her own age that Ruth made in her new home were Helen and Tom Cameron, twin children of a wealthy merchant whose all-year home was not far from the Red Mill. With Helen and Mercy Curtis, a lame girl, Ruth is sent to Briarwood Hall, a delightfully situated boarding school at some distance from the girls" homes, and there, in the second volume of the series, Ruth is introduced to new scenes, some new friends and a few enemies; but altogether has a delightful time.
Ensuing volumes tell of Ruth and her chums" adventures at Snow Camp; at Lighthouse Point; on Silver Ranch, in Montana; on Cliff Island, where occur a number of remarkable winter incidents; at Sunset Farm during the previous summer; and finally, in the eighth volume, the one immediately preceding this present story, Ruth achieves something that she has long, long desired.
This last volume, called "Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies; Or, The Missing Pearl Necklace," tells of an automobile trip which Ruth and her present companions, Helen and Tom Cameron, took through the hills some distance beyond the Red Mill and Cheslow, their home town.
They fall into the hands of Gypsies and the two girls are actually held captive by the old and vindictive Gypsy Queen. Through Ruth"s bravery Helen escapes and takes the news of the capture back to Tom. Later the grandson of the old Gypsy Queen releases Ruth.
While at the camp Ruth sees a wonderful pearl necklace in the hands of the covetous old Queen Zelaya. Later, when the girls return to Briarwood, they learn that an aunt of one of their friends, Nettie Parsons, has been robbed of just such a necklace.
Ruth, through Mr. Cameron, puts the police on the trail of the Gypsies.
The Gypsy boy, Roberto, is rescued and in time becomes a protege of Mr.
Cameron, while the stolen necklace is recovered from the Gypsy Queen, who is deported by the Washington authorities.
In the end, the five thousand dollars reward offered by Nettie"s aunt comes to Ruth. She is enriched beyond her wildest dreams, and above all, is made independent of the n.i.g.g.ardly charity of her Uncle Jabez who seems to love his money more than he does his niece.
Unselfishness was Ruth"s chief virtue, though she had many. She could never refuse a helping hand to the needy; nor did she fear to risk her own convenience, sometimes even her own safety, to relieve or rescue another.
In the present case, none knew better than Ruth the treacherous currents of the Lumano. It had not been so many months since she and her uncle, Jabez Potter, out upon the Lumano in a boat, had nearly lost their lives.
This present accident, that to the young moving-picture actress, was at a point some distance above the Red Mill.
"If she is carried down two hundred yards farther, Tom, she will be swept out into mid-stream," declared Ruth, still master of herself, though her voice was shaking.
"And then--good-night!" answered Tom. "I know what you mean, Ruth."
"She will sink for the last time before the current sweeps her in near the sh.o.r.e again," Ruth added.
"Oh, don"t!" groaned Helen. "The poor girl."
Tom had driven the automobile until it was ahead of the struggling Hazel Gray. An eddy clutched her and drew her swiftly in toward the bank.
Immediately Tom shut off the power and he and Ruth both leaped out of the car.
A long branch from an adjacent tree had been torn off by the wind and lay beside the road. Tom seized this and ran with Ruth to the edge of the water; but he knew the branch was a poor subst.i.tute for a rope.
"If she can cling to this, I"ll get something better in a moment, Ruth!"
he exclaimed.
Swinging the small and bushy end of the branch outward, Tom dropped it into the water just ahead of the imperiled girl. Ruth seized the b.u.t.t with her strong and capable hands.
"Cut off a length of that fence wire, Tommy," she ordered. "You have wire-cutters in your auto kit, haven"t you?"
"Sure!" cried Tom. "Never travel without "em since we were at Silver Ranch, you know. There! She"s got it."
Hazel Gray had seized upon the branch. She was too exhausted to reach the bank of the river without help, and just here the eddy began to swing her around again, away from the sh.o.r.e.
The men of the company came running now, giving l.u.s.ty shouts of encouragement, but--that was all! The director had allowed the girl to get into a perilous position on the leaning tree without having a boat and crew in readiness to pick her up if she fell into the river. It was an unpardonable piece of neglect, and there might still serious consequences arise from it.
For the girl in the water was so exhausted that she could not long cling to the limb. It was but a frail support between her and drowning.
When the men arrived Ruth feared to have them even touch the branch she held, and she motioned them back. She knew that the girl in the stream was almost exhausted and that a very little would cause her to lose her hold upon the branch altogether.
"Don"t touch it! I beg of you, don"t touch it!" cried Ruth, as one excited man undertook to take the b.u.t.t of the branch.
"You can"t hold it, Miss! you"ll be pulled into the water."
"Never fear for me," the girl from the Red Mill returned. "I know what I am about----Oh, goody! here comes Tom!"
She depended on Tom--she knew that he would do something if anybody could.
She gazed upon the wet, white face of the girl in the water and knew that whatever Tom did must be done at once. Hazel Gray was loosing her hold.
"Oh! oh! oh!" screamed Helen, standing in the automobile with clasped hands. "Don"t let her drown, Tommy! Don"t let her go down again--_don"t_!"
Tom came, with grimly set lips, dragging about twenty feet of fence wire behind him. Luckily it was smooth wire--not barbed. He quickly made a loop in one end of it and wriggled the other end toward Ruth and the excited men.
"Catch hold here!" he ordered. "Make a loop as I have, and don"t let it slip through your hands."
"Oh, Tom! you"re never going into that cold water?" Ruth gasped, suddenly stricken with fear for her friend"s safety.
But that was exactly what Tom intended to do. There was no other way. He had seen, too, the exhaustion of the girl in the water and knew that if her hands slipped from the tree branch, she could never get a grip on the wire.
Without removing an article of clothing the boy leaped into the stream.
It was over his head right here below the bank, and the chill of the water was tremendous. As Tom said afterward, he felt it "clear to the marrow of his bones!"
But he came up and struck out strongly for the face of the girl, which was all that could be seen above the surface.
Hazel Gray"s hold was slipping from the branch. She was blue about the lips and her eyes were almost closed. The current was tugging at her strongly; she was losing consciousness. If she was carried away by the suction of the stream, now dragging so strongly at her limbs, Tom Cameron would be obliged to loose his own hold upon the wire and swim after her.
And the young fellow was not at all sure that he could save either her or himself if this occurred.
Yet, perilous as his own situation was, Tom thought only of that of the actress.
CHAPTER III
AT THE RED MILL
Helen, greatly excited, stood on the seat of the tonneau and cheered her brother on at the top of her voice. That, in her excitement, she thought she was "rooting" at a basket-ball game at Briarwood, was not to be wondered at. Ruth heard her chum screaming:
"S.B.--Ah-h-h!