CHAPTER XI--AT HANDY GULCH

Sitting around a blanket spread for a tablecloth at sunrise and eating eggs and bacon with more flapjacks, the incidents of the night seemed less tangible, and certainly less perilous.

"Why, I can't imagine those mild-eyed cows making such a scramble by us as they did," Trix Davenport remarked.

"'Mild-eyed kine' is good--very good indeed," said Jennie Stone. "These long-horns are about as mild-tempered as wolves. I can remember that we saw some of them in tempestuous mood up at Silver Ranch. Isn't that so, Helen?"

"Truly," admitted the black-eyed girl.

"I shall never care even to _eat_ beef if we go through many such experiences as that stampede," Miss Cullam declared. "Let us hurry away from the vicinity of these maddened beasts."

"We'll be off the range to-day," said Min dryly. "Then there won't be nothing to scare you tenderfoots."

"No bears, or wolves, or panthers?" drawled Jennie wickedly.

"Oh, mercy! You don't mean there are such creatures in the hills?" cried Rebecca.

"I don't reckon we'll meet up with such," Min said.

"Shouldn't we have brought guns with us?" asked Sally timidly.

"Goodness! And shoot each other?" cried Miss Cullam.

"Why, you didn't say nothin' about huntin'," said the guide slowly. "Pop's got his rifle with him. But I'm packin' a forty-five; that'll scare off most anything on four laigs. And there ain't no two-legged critters to hurt us."

"I've an automatic," said Tom Cameron quietly. "Didn't know but I might have a chance to shoot a jackrabbit or the like."

"What for?" drawled Min, sarcastically. "We ain't likely to stay in one place long enough to cook such a critter. They're usually tougher'n all git-out, Mister."

"At any rate," said Ruth, with satisfaction, "the party is sufficiently armed. Let us not fear bears or mountain lions."

"Or jackrabbits," chuckled Jennie.

"And are you _sure_ there are no ill-disposed men in the mountains?" asked the teacher.

"Men?" sniffed Min. "I ain't 'fraid of men, I hope! There ain't nothin' wuss than a drunken man, and I've had experience enough with them."

Ruth knew she referred to her father; but she did not tell the other girls and Miss Cullam what Min had confided to her the previous evening.

The trail led them into the foothills that day and before night the rugged nature of the ground assured even Miss Cullam that there was little likelihood of such an unpleasant happening as had startled them the night before.

They halted to camp for the night beside a collection of small huts and tents that marked the presence of a placer digging which had been found the spring before and still showed "color."

There were nearly a dozen flannel-shirted and high-booted miners at this spot, and the sight of the girls from the East had a really startling effect upon these lonely men. There was not a woman at the camp.

The men knocked off work for the day the moment the tourists arrived. Every man of them, including the Mexican water-carrier, was broadly asmile. And they were all ready and willing to show "the ladies from the East" how placer mining was done.

The output of a mountain spring had been brought down an open plank sluice into the little glen where the vein of fine gold had been discovered; and with the current of this stream the gold-bearing soil was "washed" in sluice-boxes.

The miners, rough but good-natured fellows, all made a "clean up" then and there, and each of the visitors was presented with a pinch of gold dust, right from the riffles.

This placer mining camp was run on a community basis, and the camp cook insisted upon getting supper for all, and an abundant if not a delicately prepared meal was the result.

"I'm not sure that we should allow these men to go to so much expense and trouble," Miss Cullam whispered to Ruth and Min Peters.

"Oh, gee!" ejaculated the girl in boy's clothing. "Don't let it worry you for a minute, Miss Cullam. We're a godsend to them fellers. If they didn't spend their money once't in a while they'd git too wealthy," and she chuckled.

"That could not possibly be, when they work so long and hard for a pinch of gold dust," declared the college instructor.

"They fling it away just as though it come easy," returned Min. "Believe me! it's much better for 'em to have you folks here and blow you to their best, than it is for them to go down to Yucca and blow it all in on red liquor."

The miners would have gone further and given up their cabins or their tents to the use of the women. But even Rebecca had enjoyed sleeping out the night before and would not be tempted. The air was so dry and tonic in its qualities that the walls of a house or even of a tent seemed superfluous.

"I do miss my morning plunge or shower," Helen admitted. "I feel as though all this red dust and grit had got into my skin and never would get out again. But one can't rough it and keep clean, too, I suppose."

"That water in the sluice looks lovely," confessed Jennie Stone. "I'd dearly like to go paddling in it if there weren't so many men about."

"After all," said Ruth, "although we are traveling like men we don't act as they would. Tom slipped off by himself and behind that screen of bushes up there on the hillside he took a bath in the sluice. But there isn't a girl here who would do it."

"Oh, lawsy, I didn't bring my bathing suit," drawled Jennie. "That was an oversight."

"Old Tom does get a few things on us, doesn't he?" commented Helen. "Perhaps being a boy isn't, after all, an unmitigated evil."

"But the water's so co-o-ld!" shivered Trix. "I'm sure I wouldn't care for a plunge in this mountain stream. Will there be heated bathrooms at Freezeout Camp, Fielding?"

"Humph!" Miss Cullam ejaculated. "The title of the place sounds as though steam heat would be the fashion and tiled bathrooms plentiful!"

The third day of the journey was quite as fair as the previous days; but the way was still more rugged, so they did not travel so far. They camped that night in a deep gorge, and it was cold enough for the fires to feel grateful. Tom and the Mexican kept two fires well supplied with fuel all night. Once a coyote stood on a bank above their heads and sang his song of hunger and loneliness until, as Sally declared, she thought she should "fly off the handle."

"I never _did_ hear such an unpleasant sound in all my life--it beats the grinding of an ungreased wagon wheel! I wish you would drive him away, Tom."

So Tom pulled out the automatic that he had been "aching" to use, and sent a couple of shots in the direction of the lank and hungry beast--who immediately crossed the gorge and serenaded them from the other bank!

"What's the use of killing a perfectly useless creature?" demanded Ruth.

"No fear," laughed Jennie. "Tom won't kill it. He's only shooting holes in the circumambient atmosphere."

There was a haze over the mountain tops at dawn on the fourth day; but Min assured the girls that it could not mean rain. "We ain't had no rain for so long that it's forgotten how," she said. "But mebbe there'll be a wind storm before night."

"Oh! as long as we're dry----"

"Yes, Miss Ruth," put in the girl guide. "We'll be _dry_, all right. But a wind storm here in Arizona ain't to be sneezed at. Sometimes it comes right cold, too."

"In summer?"

"Yep. It can git mighty cold in summer if it sets out to. But we'll try to make Handy Gulch early and git under cover if the sand begins to sift."

"Oh me! oh my!" groaned Jennie. "A sand storm? And like Helen I feel already as though the dust was gritted into the pores of my skin."

"It ain't onhealthy," Min returned dryly. "Some o' these old-timers live a year without seein' enough water to take a bath in. The sand gives 'em a sort of dry wash. It's clean dirt."

"Nothing like getting used to a point of view," whispered Sally Blanchard. "Fancy! A 'dry wash!' How do _you_ feel, Rebecca Frayne?"

"Just as gritty as you do," was the prompt reply.

"All right then," laughed Ruth. "We all must have grit enough to hurry along and reach this Handy Gulch before the storm bursts."

Min told them that there was a "sure enough" hotel at the settlement they were approaching. It was a camp where hydraulic mining was being conducted on a large scale.

"The claims belong mostly to the Arepo Mining and Smelting Company. They have several mines through the Hualapai Range," said the guide. "This Handy place is quite a town. Only trouble is, there's two rum sellin' places. Most of the men's wages go back to the company through drink and cards, for they control the shops. But some day Arizona is goin' dry, and then we'll shut up all such joints."

"Dry!" coughed Helen. "Could anything be dryer than Arizona is right here and now?"

The seemingly tireless ponies carried the girls at a lope, or a gallop, all that forenoon. It was hard to get the eager little beasts to walk, and they never trotted. Miss Cullam claimed that everything inside of her had "come loose and was rattling around like dice in a box."

"Dear me, girls," sighed the teacher, "if this jumping and jouncing is really a healthful exercise, I shall surely taste death through an accident. But good health is something horrid to attain--in this way."

But in spite of the discomforts of the mode of travel, the party hugely enjoyed the outing. There were so many new and strange things to see, and one always came back to the same statement: "The air _is_ lovely!"

There were certainly new things to see when they arrived at Handy Gulch just after lunch time, not having stopped for that meal by the way. The camp consisted of fully a hundred wood and sheet-iron shacks, and the hotel was of two stories and was quite an important looking building.

Above the town, which squatted in a narrow valley through which a brawling and muddy stream flowed, was the "bench" from which the gold was being mined. There were four "guns" in use and these washed down the raw hillside into open sluices, the riffles of which caught the separated gold. The girls were shown a nugget found that very morning. It was as big as a walnut.

But most of the precious metal was found in tiny nuggets, or in dust, a grain of which seemed no larger than the head of a common pin.

However, although these things were interesting, the minute the cavalcade rode up to the hotel something much more interesting happened. There was a cry of welcome from within and out of the front door charged Jane Ann Hicks, dressed much as she used to be on the ranch--broad sombrero, a short fringed skirt over her riding breeches, high boots with spurs, and a gun slung at her belt.

"For the good land of love!" she demanded, seizing Ruth Fielding as the latter tumbled off her horse. "Where have you girls been? I was just about riding back to that Yucca place to look for you."

Jennie and Helen came in for a warm welcome, too. Ann was presented to Miss Cullam and the other two girls before explanations were made by anybody. Then Ruth demanded of the Montana girl a full and particular account of what she had done, and why.

"Why, I reckon that Miss Phelps ain't a friend of yours, after all?" queried Ann. "She's one frost, if she is."

"Now you've said something, Nita," said Jennie Stone. "She is a cold proposition. Can you tell us what she's doing out here?"

"I don't know. She sure enough comes from that college you girls attend, don't she?"

"She does!" admitted Helen. "She truly does. But she's not a sample of what Ardmore puts forth--don't believe it."

"I opine she's not a sample of any product, except orneriness," scolded Ann, who was a good deal put out by the strange actions of Edith Phelps. "You see how it was. My train was late. According to the telegram I found waiting for me, you folks should have arrived at Yucca hours ahead of me."

"And we were delayed," sighed Ruth. "Go on."

"I saw this Phelps girl," pursued Ann Hicks, "and asked her about you folks. She said you'd been and gone."

"Oh!" was the chorused exclamation from the other girls.

"And _she_ is one of my pupils!" groaned Miss Cullam.

"She didn't learn to tell whoppers at your college, I guess," said Ann, bluntly. "Anyhow, she fooled me nicely. She said she was going over this very route you had taken and I could come along. She wouldn't let me pay any of the expenses--not even tip the guide. Only for my pony."

"But where is she now?" asked Ruth.

"And where is that Flapjack person--Min's father?" cried Jennie.

"We got here last night and put up at this hotel," Ann said, going steadily on with her story and not to be drawn away on any side issues. "We got here last night. Late in the evening somebody came to see this Phelps girl--a man."

"Goodness!" exclaimed Rebecca. "And she is traveling without a chaperon!"

"'Chaperon'--huh!" ejaculated Ann. "She didn't need any chaperon. She can take care of herself all right. Well, she didn't come back and I went to bed. This morning I found a bit of paper on my pillow--here 'tis----"

"That's Edie's handwriting," Sally Blanchard said eagerly. "What does it say?"

"'Good-bye. I am not going any farther with you. Wait, and your friends may overtake you.' Just that," said Ann, with disgust. "Can you beat it?"

"What has that wild girl done, do you suppose?" murmured Miss Cullam.

"Oh, she isn't wild--not so's you'd notice it," said Ann. "Believe me, she knows her way about. And she shipped that guide."

"Discharged Mr. Peters, do you mean?" Ruth asked. Min was not in the room while this conversation was going on.

"H'm. Yes. _Mister_ Peters. He's some sour dough, I should say! He was paid off and set down with money in his fist between two saloons. They're across the street from each other, and they tell me he's been swinging from one bar to the other like a pendulum ever since he was paid off."

"Poor Min!" sighed Ruth Fielding.

"Huh?" said Ann Hicks. "If he's got any folks, _I'm_ sorry for 'em, too."