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

A September morning has dawned, with only a vague tang of autumn in the air. In the green old dooryard at the Red Mill, under the spreading shade trees, two girls are shelling a great basket of dried lima beans for the winter'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 more mature-looking girl, whose frank face was particularly attractive.

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

"And one can scarcely blame her. It is ugly," Ruth responded, with a sigh. "Jane Ann Hicks! Dear, dear! how could her Uncle Bill be so thoughtless as to name her that, when she was left, helpless, to his care?"

"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," Ruth pondered.

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

"I expect we all have to stand our share of hazing when we go into fresh company," said Ruth, reflectively. "But there will not be the same crowd to 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 the only 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 a state 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 of outline which belonged to his sister.

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

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

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

"Yes. At Applegate Crossing. And it is the train from the west that is in trouble 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. "You must drive us, Tom."

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

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

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

By the time old Aunt Alvirah had hobbled to the porch, the automobile was being turned, and backed, and then it was off, up the river road. Uncle Jabez, in his dusty garments, appeared for a moment at the door of the mill as they flashed past in the big motor car. Evidently he was amazed to see the three-the girls hatless-starting off at such a pace in the Camerons' 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 drowned out all speech. The girls asked no questions. They knew that, by following the river road along the placid Lumano for some distance, they could take a fork toward the railway and reach Applegate Crossing much quicker than by going through Cheslow.

Once Tom flung back a word or two over his shoulder. No relief train had gone from their home station to the scene of the wreck. It was understood that a wrecking gang, and doctors, and nurses, had started from the distant 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 so smooth and well-built as the river highway, Tom did not reduce speed. Mile after mile rolled away behind them. From a low ridge they caught a glimpse of the cut where the two trains had come together.

It was the old story of a freight being dilatory in getting out of a block that had been opened for the passage of an express. The express had run her nose into the caboose of the freight, and more harm was done to the freight than to the passenger cars. A great crowd, however, had gathered about.

Tom ran the car into an open lot beside the tracks, where part of the railroad 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 the girls missed, for they were looking for Jane Ann Hicks. "That's a menagerie 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 traveling menagerie. Down in the gully that was here crossed by the narrow span of the railroad trestle, there was a thick jungle of saplings and brush out of which a few taller trees rose, their spreading limbs almost touching the sides of the ravine.

It must be confessed that the boy was drawn more toward this point of interest than toward the passenger train where Jane Ann might possibly be lying injured. But Ruth and Helen ran toward this latter spot, where the crowd 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 poor fellow--"

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

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

"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 eyes suddenly. Ruth saw that they were kind, brown eyes, with a deal of patience in their glance. He was not the sort of chap to make much of a trifle.

"But you can't walk on it," exclaimed Jane Ann, who was a large-framed girl with even blacker hair than Helen's-straight as an Indian's-and with flashing eyes. She was expensively dressed, although her torn frock and coat were not in very good taste. She showed plainly a lack of that motherly 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 busy up there with other passengers?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A black panther!" gasped Tom.

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