Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island; Or The Old Hunter's Treasure Box

  Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Emmy and the PG Online DistributedProofreading Team

  Ruth FieldingOn Cliff Island

  OR

  THE OLD HUNTER'S TREASURE BOX

  BY

  ALICE B. EMERSON

  AUTHOR OF "RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL," "RUTHFIELDING AT SILVER RANCH," ETC.

  _ILLUSTRATED_

  NEW YORK

  CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

  PUBLISHERS

  =Books for Girls=

  BY ALICE B. EMERSON

  RUTH FIELDING SERIES

  12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

  Price per volume, 40 cents, postpaid.

  RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL Or, Jasper Parloe's Secret.

  RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL Or, Solving the Campus Mystery.

  RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP Or, Lost in the Backwoods.

  RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT Or, Nita, the Girl Castaway.

  RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH Or, Schoolgirls Among the Cowboys.

  RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND Or, The Old Hunter's Treasure Box.

  RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM Or, What Became of the Raby Orphans.

  RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES Or, The Missing Pearl Necklace.

  CUPPLES & LEON CO., PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK.

  COPYRIGHT, 1915, BYCUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

  RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND

  SHE SHOT OVER THE YAWNING EDGE OF THE CHASM ANDDISAPPEARED]

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I. THE WRECK AT APPLEGATE CROSSING 1

  II. THE PANTHER AT LARGE 9

  III. UNCLE JABEZ HAS TWO OPINIONS 17

  IV. ON THE WAY TO BRIARWOOD 26

  V. A LONG LOOK AHEAD 35

  VI. PICKING UP THE THREADS 42

  VII. "A HARD ROW TO HOE" 49

  VIII. JERRY SHEMING AGAIN 57

  IX. RUTH'S LITTLE PLOT 66

  X. AN EXCITING FINISH 73

  XI. A NUMBER OF THINGS 82

  XII. RUFUS BLENT'S LITTLE WAYS 90

  XIII. FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE 98

  XIV. THE HUE AND CRY 106

  XV. OVER THE PRECIPICE 115

  XVI. HIDE AND SEEK 124

  XVII. CHRISTMAS MORNING 133

  XVIII. FUN ON THE ICE 143

  XIX. BLENT IS MASTER 150

  XX. THE FISHING PARTY 157

  XXI. JERRY'S CAVE 166

  XXII. SNOWED IN 173

  XXIII. "A BLOW FOR LIBERTY" 181

  XXIV. A MIDNIGHT MARAUDER 189

  XXV. THE TREASURE BOX 197

  RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND

  CHAPTER I

  THE WRECK AT APPLEGATE CROSSING

  A September morning has dawned, with only a vague tang of autumn in theair. In the green old dooryard at the Red Mill, under the spreading shadetrees, two girls are shelling a great basket of dried lima beans for thewinter's store.

  The smaller, black-haired girl begins the conversation.

  "Suppose Jane Ann doesn't come, Ruth?"

  "You mean on this morning train?" responded the plumper and moremature-looking girl, whose frank face was particularly attractive.

  "Yes."

  "Then Tom said he would go back to meet the evening train--and we'll gowith him," said Ruth Fielding, with a smile. "But I could not go thismorning and leave poor Aunt Alvirah all these beans to shell."

  "Of course not," agreed her friend, promptly. "And Jane Ann won't feeloffended by our not meeting her at Cheslow, I know."

  "No, indeed, Helen," laughed Ruth. "Jane Ann Hicks is altogether toosensible a girl."

  "Sensible about everything but her name," commented Helen Cameron, makinga little face.

  "And one can scarcely blame her. It _is_ ugly," Ruth responded, with asigh. "Jane Ann Hicks! Dear, dear! how could her Uncle Bill be sothoughtless as to name her that, when she was left, helpless, to hiscare?"

  "He didn't realize that fashions in names change--like everything else,"observed Helen, briskly.

  "I wonder what the girls at Briarwood will say to that name," Ruthpondered.

  "Why The Fox and Heavy will help us make the other girls toe the mark. AndMadge Steele! She's a regiment in herself," declared Helen. "We all hadsuch a fine time at Silver Ranch that the least we can do is to see thatJane Ann is not hazed like the other infants."

  "I expect we all have to stand our share of hazing when we go into freshcompany," said Ruth, reflectively. "But there will not be the same crowdto meet her that met us, dear."

  "And the Sweetbriars will be on hand to preserve order," laughed her chum."Thanks to _you_, Ruthie. Why--oh! see Tom!"

  She jumped up, dropping a lapful of pods, and pointed up the Cheslow road,which here branched from the river road almost opposite the Red Mill.

  "What is the matter?" demanded Ruth, also scrambling to her feet.

  A big touring car was approaching at top speed. They could see that theonly person in it was a black-haired boy, who sat at the steering wheel.

  He brought the machine to an abrupt stop before the gate, and leaped out.Tearing off his goggles as he ran, he approached the two girls in such astate of excitement that he could scarce speak coherently.

  "Oh, Tom! what is it?" gasped Helen, seizing his arm with both hands.

  It took but a single glance to discover the relationship between them.Twins never looked more alike--only Tom's features lacked the delicacy ofoutline which belonged to his sister.

  "Tom!" cried Ruth, on the other side of the excited youth, "don't keep uson tenter-hooks. Surely nothing has happened to Jane Ann?"

  "I don't know! They won't tell us much about it at the station," exclaimedthe boy.

  "There hasn't been a wreck?" demanded Ruth.

  "Yes. At Applegate Crossing. And it is the train from the west that is introuble with a freight. A rear-end collision, I understand."

  "Suppose something has happened to the poor girl!" wailed Helen.

  "We must go and see," declared Ruth, quick to decide in an emergency. "Youmust drive us, Tom."

  "That's what I came back for," replied Tom Cameron, mopping his brow. "Icouldn't get anything out of Mercy's father----"

  "Of course not," Helen said, briskly, as Ruth ran to the house. "Therailroad employes are forbidden to talk when there is an accident. Mr.Curtis might lose his job as station agent at Cheslow if he answered allqueries."

  Ruth came flying back from the house. She had merely called into thekitchen to Aunt Alvirah that they were off--and their destination. WhileTom sprang in and manipulated the self-starter, his sister and the girl ofthe Red Mill took their seats in the tonneau.

  By the time old Aunt Alvirah had hobbled to the porch, the automobile wasbeing turned, and backed, and then it was off, up the river road. UncleJabez, in his dusty garments, appeared for a moment at the door of themill as they flashed past in the big motor car. Evidently he was amazed tosee the three--the girls hatless--starting off at such a pace in theCamerons' car.

  Tom threw in the clutch at high speed and the car bounded over the road,gradually increasing its pace until the hum of the engine almost drownedout all speech. The girls asked no questions.
They knew that, by followingthe river road along the placid Lumano for some distance, they could takea fork toward the railway and reach Applegate Crossing much quicker thanby going through Cheslow.

  Once Tom flung back a word or two over his shoulder. No relief train hadgone from their home station to the scene of the wreck. It was understoodthat a wrecking gang, and doctors, and nurses, had started from thedistant city before ever the Cheslow people learned of the trouble.

  "Oh! if Jane Ann should be hurt!" murmured Helen for the twentieth time.

  "Uncle Bill Hicks would be heartbroken," agreed Ruth.

  Although the crossroad, when they struck into it at the Forks, was not sosmooth and well-built as the river highway, Tom did not reduce speed. Mileafter mile rolled away behind them. From a low ridge they caught a glimpseof the cut where the two trains had come together.

  It was the old story of a freight being dilatory in getting out of a blockthat had been opened for the passage of an express. The express had runher nose into the caboose of the freight, and more harm was done to thefreight than to the passenger cars. A great crowd, however, had gatheredabout.

  Tom ran the car into an open lot beside the tracks, where part of therailroad fence had been torn away. Two passenger cars were on their sides,and one or two of the box cars had burst open.

  "Look at that!" gasped the boy, whose bright eyes took in much that thegirls missed, for _they_ were looking for Jane Ann Hicks. "That's amenagerie car--and it's all smashed. See! 'Rival's Circus & Menagerie.'Crickey! suppose some of the savage animals are loose!"

  "Oh! don't suggest such a thing," begged his sister.

  Tom saw an excited crowd of men near the broken cage cars of the travelingmenagerie. Down in the gully that was here crossed by the narrow span ofthe railroad trestle, there was a thick jungle of saplings and brush outof which a few taller trees rose, their spreading limbs almost touchingthe sides of the ravine.

  It must be confessed that the boy was drawn more toward this point ofinterest than toward the passenger train where Jane Ann might possibly belying injured. But Ruth and Helen ran toward this latter spot, where thecrowd of passengers was thickest.

  Suddenly the crowd parted and the girls saw a figure lying on the ground,with a girl about their own age bending over it. Ruth screamed, "Jinny!"and at the sound of the pet name her uncle's cow punchers had given her,the girl from Silver Ranch responded with an echoing cry.

  "Oh, Ruth! And Helen! I'm not hurt--only scratched. But this poorfellow----"

  "Who is he?" demanded Helen Cameron, as she and Ruth arrived beside theirfriend.

  The figure on the ground was a very young man--a boy, in fact. He wasroughly dressed, and sturdily built. His eyes were closed and he was verypale.

  "He got me out of the window when the car turned over," gasped Jane Ann."Then he fell with me and has either broken his leg, or twisted it----"

  "Only strained, Miss," spoke the victim of the accident, opening his eyessuddenly. Ruth saw that they were kind, brown eyes, with a deal ofpatience in their glance. He was not the sort of chap to make much of atrifle.

  "But you can't walk on it," exclaimed Jane Ann, who was a large-framedgirl with even blacker hair than Helen's--straight as an Indian's--andwith flashing eyes. She was expensively dressed, although her torn frockand coat were not in very good taste. She showed plainly a lack of thatmotherly oversight all girls need.

  "They'll come and fix me up after a time," said the strange youth,patiently.

  "That won't do," declared Ruth, quickly. "I suppose the doctors are busyup there with other passengers?"

  "Oh, yes," admitted Jane Ann. "Lots of people were hurt in the cars a gooddeal worse than Mr.--Mr.----?"

  "My name's Jerry Sheming, Miss," said the youth. "Don't you worry aboutme."

  "Here's Tom!" cried Helen. "Can't we lift him into the car? We'll run toCheslow and let Dr. Davison look at his leg," she added.

  Tom, understanding the difficulty at a glance, agreed. Between the fouryoung folk they managed to carry Jerry Sheming to the car. They hadscarcely got him into the tonneau when a series of yells arose from thecrowd down near the derailed freight train.

  "Look out! Take care of that panther! I told you she was out!" shouted onevoice above the general uproar.

  Ruth Fielding and her friends, startled indeed, ran to the brow of thehill. One of the wide-branched trees rose from the bottom of the ravineright below them. Along one of the branches lay a long, cat-like body.

  "A black panther!" gasped Tom.