CHAPTER XIII

NEW WORRIES

It was the day after her adventure with the stampeding cattle and Ruth was taking a morning of rest before starting once more on a hunt for suitable locations.

The two girls, Helen and Ruth, were up in Ruth’s room which various soft and colorful articles from their trunks had made livable, talking over plans for the picture and Ruth’s almost miraculous escape the day before. At least, Ruth was trying to talk of her picture and Helen could not be deflected from the theme of Ruth’s adventure, which interested her vividly.

“Just think, only a little thing like chance or fate or whatever you call it kept me from being there myself,” Helen observed. “I had a horror of those savage looking steers.”

“It’s nothing to what I have now,” said Ruth, with a reminiscent shudder.

“But think of the romance!” Helen was not to be stopped. “Think of having Layton Boardman save you!”

“He didn’t,” said Ruth dryly.

“Well, he tried to, which is the same thing,” Helen said in a tone of reproach. Ruth chuckled.

“It isn’t at all the same kind of thing, I assure you,” she retorted, “as you would very well realize if you had been in my shoes.”

“Well, you had Tom, anyway, and a whole raft of cowboys, when Boardman got kicked by his horse.”

“He didn’t get kicked by a horse! How many times do I have to tell you?” Ruth laid down her papers in despair and Helen smiled mischievously at her.

“I knew I’d make you stop working by fair means or foul,” she said shamelessly.

“And I don’t feel like working--not a little bit,” Ruth confessed. “I’d just like to let go--for a little while, anyway.”

“Well, why don’t you? Every one has to rest sometimes, you know, even Ruth Fielding, whether she knows it or not. Here, take a chocolate and give me a full and complete account of yesterday.”

“But I don’t want to talk about yesterday,” Ruth objected, accepting the candy. “I tell you, if you had been there you wouldn’t be so keen on the subject.”

“Poor Ruthie!” Helen reached over and patted her chum’s hand. “You did have a dreadful shaking up. Wasn’t it lucky that Tom happened to be coming home just then?”

“It was very lucky,” sighed Ruth, resigning herself to a discussion of the subject since Helen, quite evidently, could be induced to talk of nothing else. “I certainly wasn’t much use myself. I couldn’t move a finger.”

There was a short silence while Ruth dreamed over plans for her picture and Helen reviewed mentally the events of the day before.

“I suppose Tom was put out to find handsome Layton on the ground before him,” said Helen, and Ruth shook herself impatiently.

“Layton, as you call him, was certainly on the ground most literally,” she said, with a frown. “And I don’t know whether you know that my interest in his injury is far more professional than personal.”

Helen nodded.

“I suppose you mean that having him laid up may delay your picture.”

“That’s certainly what I do mean!” Ruth sat up energetically and began to look more like her old fighting self. “It seems to me that there’s an evil sprite following me this trip----”

“Have you been to see him yet?”

Ruth shook her head.

“I was going to pretty soon. Tell you the truth,” she looked at Helen seriously, “I’m almost afraid to. I’m so afraid that he may have something more than a sprained ankle, and then--” She shrugged her shoulders eloquently.

“A good many of the pictures can be taken without him, can’t they?” asked Helen sympathetically. “Pictures where he doesn’t appear?”

“A few. But he appears in most of them. He plays a very strong lead all through. Of course,” she stopped to consider, “we could take pictures of the rodeo and the avalanche----”

“Oh, are we really going to have an avalanche?” Helen’s eyes sparkled. “What fun!”

“An avalanche!” repeated Ruth. “Why, of course. That’s the main part of the picture.”

Helen was leaning forward now, alert and eager.

“It will be artificial, of course?”

Ruth smiled.

“We could hardly ask Mother Nature to give us a special demonstration as a favor,” she said. “Of course the avalanche will be the result of carefully planted dynamite. But it will be as real looking as ingenuity can make it.”

“I’ll count on you for that,” said Helen, regarding her chum admiringly. “But I really didn’t know we were going to have anything so exciting. Isn’t it--” she paused and regarded her friend uncertainly, “isn’t it a bit dangerous?”

“A certain amount of danger always attaches to anything like that,” said Ruth carelessly. “There are always a lot of unforeseen things that may happen. Still, we’ve taken every possible precaution, and that’s the best we can do.”

“Cost a heap of money I suppose?” said Helen, after another short pause.

Ruth nodded.

“More than I care to think about. Which reminds me that I must have a business talk with Tom to-night and find out just how we stand. I, personally, have some dead steers to pay for, too, I suppose,” and the girl sighed.

“I don’t see why ‘personally.’ You didn’t kill the steers.”

“No; but they were killed in my cause.”

“I think Tom will look after that in spite of your hands-off independence. You don’t treat Tommy-boy right, Ruthie.”

Ruth made no response to this observation, and the girls were silent for a while.

“Seen anything suspicious about Viola lately?” asked Helen as Ruth sorted out her papers and put them away.

“No, and I’m letting a sleeping dog lie,” replied Ruth emphatically.

“With all apologies to Viola,” chuckled Helen.

“I’ve about come to the conclusion,” Ruth added as she got up and began to straighten her hair before the mirror over the washstand, “that her conference with Bloomberg’s agent didn’t mean anything. I have enough trouble without worrying about that.”

“It isn’t your worrying that matters,” observed Helen. “It’s what Viola does.”

“Oh, well, we’ll let the matter rest. As a matter of fact, so far, Viola has done nothing wrong. I suppose I’m too suspicious.”

“Where are you going?” asked Helen as Ruth turned toward the door.

“Over to see Layton Boardman,” said Ruth, with a faint smile. “I’ve got to know the worst.”

“I’d offer to come, too,” Helen’s lazy teasing voice floated out after her, “if I were not perfectly well aware that three’s a crowd.”

Ruth shrugged impatiently. She wished others would stop being so foolish about her and Layton Boardman. The whole thing was ridiculous.

She went to Boardman’s door and knocked. He called to her to come in. She opened the door and entered the room, leaving the door open behind her.

The actor was in bed, but as Ruth entered a quick smile played over his white face. Ruth went to him quickly and took the hand he had stretched impulsively toward her.

“I’m sorry you were hurt,” she said, bending over him solicitously. “Is there anything that I can do?”

It chanced that at that moment Tom was passing through the hall in search of Ruth. He saw her hand in Layton Boardman’s, saw the girl bending over him.

With a grim tightening of his lips Tom went on past the door and down the hall.