CHAPTER XII--MIN SHOWS HER METTLE

There were means to be obtained at the Handy Gulch Hotel for the baths that the tourists so much desired, even if tiled bathrooms and hot and cold water faucets were not in evidence.

The party lunched after making fresh toilets, and then set forth to view the "sights." Ruth inquired of Tom for Min; but their guide had disappeared the moment the party reached the hotel.

"She's acquainted here, I presume," said Tom Cameron. "Maybe she doesn't wish to be seen with you girls. Her outfit is so very different from yours."

"Poor Min!" murmured Ruth again. "Do you suppose she has found her father?"

Tom could not tell her that, and they trailed along behind the others, up toward the bench where the hydraulic mining was going on.

Only one of the nozzles was being worked--shooting a solid stream three inches in diameter into the hillside, and shaving off great slices that melted and ran in a creamlike paste down into the sluice-boxes. Half a hundred "muckers" were at work with pick and shovel below the bench. The man managing the hydraulic machine stood astride of it, in hip boots and slicker, and guided the spouting stream of water along the face of the raw hill.

The party of spectators stood well out of the way, for the work of hydraulic mining has attached to it no little danger. The force of the stream from the nozzle of the machine is tremendous; and sometimes there are accidents, when many tons of the hillside unexpectedly cave down upon the bench.

The man astride the nozzle, however, took the matter coolly enough. He was smoking a short pipe and plowed along the face of the rubble with his deadly stream as easily as though he were watering a lawn.

"And if he should shoot it this way," said Tom, "he'd wash us down off the bench as though we were pebbles."

"Ugh! Let's not talk about that," murmured Rebecca Frayne, shivering.

"Oh, girls!" burst out Helen, "see that man, will you?"

"What man?" asked Trix.

"_Where_ man?" demanded Jennie Stone.

"Running this way. Why! what can have happened?" Helen pursued. "Look, Tom, has there been an accident?"

A hatless man came running from the far end of the bench. He was swinging his arms and his mouth was wide open, though they could not hear what he was shouting. The noise of the spurting water and falling rubble drowned most other sounds.

"Why, girls," shouted Ann Hicks, and her voice rose above the noise of the hydraulic, "that's the feller that guided us up here. That's Peters!"

"Flapjack Peters?" repeated Tom. "The man acts as if he were crazy!"

The bewhiskered and roughly dressed man gave evidence of exactly the misfortune Tom mentioned. His eyes blazed, his manner was distraught, and he came on along the bench in great leaps, shouting unintelligibly.

"He is intoxicated. Let us go away," Miss Cullam said promptly.

But the excitement of the moment held the girls spellbound, and Miss Cullam herself merely stepped back a pace. A crowd of men were chasing the irrepressible Peters. Their shouts warned the fellow at the nozzle of the hydraulic machine.

He turned to look over his shoulder, the stream of water still plowing down the wall of gravel and soil. It bored directly into the hillside and down fell a huge lump, four or five tons of debris.

"Git back out o' here, ye crazy loon!" yelled the man, shifting the nozzle and bringing down another pile of rubble.

But Peters plunged on and in a moment had the other by the shoulders. With insane strength he tore the miner away from the machine and flung him a dozen feet. The stream of water shifted to the right as the hydraulic machine slewed around.

"Come away! Come away from that, Pop!" shrieked a voice, and the amazed Eastern girls saw Min Peters darting along the bench toward the scene.

Peters sprang astride the nozzle and shifted it quickly back and forth so that the water spread in all directions. He knew how to handle the machine; the peril lay in what he might decide to do with it.

"Come away from that, Pop!" shrieked Min again.

But her father flirted the stream around, threatening the girl and those who followed her. The men stopped. They knew what would happen if that solid stream of water collided with a human body!

"D'you hear me, Pop?" again cried the fearless girl. "You git off that pipe and let Bob have it."

Bob, the pipeman, was just getting to his feet--wrathful and muddy. But he did not attempt to charge Peters. The latter again swept the stream along the hillside in a wide arc, bringing tons upon tons of gravel and soil down upon the bench. The narrow plateau was becoming choked with it. There was danger of his burying the hydraulic machine, as well as himself, in an avalanche.

The tourist party was in peril, too. They scarcely understood this at the moment, for things were transpiring so quickly that only seconds had elapsed since first Peters had approached.

The miners dared not come closer. But Min showed no fear. She plunged in and caught him around the body, trying to confine his arms so that he could not slew the nozzle to either side.

This helped the situation but little. For half a minute the stream shot straight into the hillside; then another great lump fell.

At the same moment Peters threw her off, and Min went rolling over and over in the mud as Bob had gone. But she was up again in a moment and made another spring for the man.

And then suddenly, quite as unexpectedly as the riot had started, it was all over. The hurtling, hissing stream of water fell to a wabbling, futile out-pouring; then to a feeble dribble from the pipe's nozzle. The water had been shut off below.

The miners pyramided upon him, and in half a minute Flapjack Peters was "spread-eagled" on the muddy bench, held by a dozen brawny arms.

"Wait! wait!" cried Ruth, running forward. "Don't hurt him. Take care----"

"Don't hurt him, Miss?" growled Bob, the man who had been flung aside. "We ought to nigh about knock the daylights out o' him. Look what he done to me."

"But you mustn't! He's not responsible," Ruth Fielding urged.

The miners dragged Peters to his feet and there was blood on his face. Here is where Min showed the mettle that was in her again. She sprang in among the angry miners to her father's side.

"Don't none of you forgit he's my pop," she threatened in a tone that held the girls who listened spellbound and amazed.

"You ain't got no call to beat him up. You know he can't stand red liquor; yet some of you helped him drink of it las' night. Ain't that the truth?"

Bob was the first to admit her statement. "I s'pose you're right, Min. We done drunk with him."

"Sure! You helped him waste his money. Then, when he goes loco like he always does, you're for beatin' of him up. My lawsy! if there's anything on top o' this here airth more ornery than that I ain't never seen it."