CHAPTER X
THE LANDSLIDE
After their perilous adventure, the Outdoor Girls shunned the forestunless they were accompanied by one or more of the cowboys at the ranch.Andy Rawlinson escorted them whenever he could, but his duties asforeman of the ranch kept him very busy and he sometimes appointed oneof the ranch hands to take his place.
However, these excursions became less and less frequent as the girlsbecame more interested in the booming mining town of Gold Run.
This they had visited with Mr. and Mrs. Nelson and Andy, and the wholething made them feel more than ever as if they were living some motionpicture drama.
There was the regulation general store and the inevitable dance hallwhere the lucky miners came to spend their golden nuggets and theunlucky tried to drown their misery in the companionship of others.
Their eyes wide with interest and pleasure and their tongues busy withquestions, the girls cantered down the narrow, crooked wagon road called"Main Street." They read the names over the doors of the dingy littleshops, commenting gayly upon their queerness.
"Peter Levine, Attorney," read Betty aloud from a sign just a littledingier than the rest. Then she drew rein and waited for her mother, whowas riding more slowly with Mr. Nelson. The other girls, who had riddenon ahead, suddenly missed her, saw that she had stopped, and came backcuriously.
"Look, Mother," Betty was saying as they came up. "This is where dearPeter Levine hails from. His checked suit and loud tie must look funnyin that dingy little shop," she added, with a chuckle.
"Well, let's ride along," suggested Mrs. Nelson nervously. "He might seeus and take it into his head to come out. And I don't want to haveanything more to do with him until Allen comes."
"Allen," thought Betty, as they turned and cantered on again. "I wish hewould hurry a little. He seems an awfully long time coming."
After they had seen all that there was to see of the town itself, Andyled them to some of the important mines on the outskirts. They listenedwith lively interest while the young fellow explained to them how theore was extracted from the mountain side where it had lain unmolestedfor thousands of years.
"It almost seems a shame to disturb it," said Amy at this point, and thegirls laughed at her.
"Just give me a chance at it, that's all," said Mollie longingly.
At one of these mines they met the old man and his daughter, Meggy,whose timely arrival a few days before had saved their lives. The twowere in the midst of their work, the girl lifting and hauling with allthe strength of a man, and they scarcely looked up as the party passedthem, although the old man responded with a wave of his hand when AndyRawlinson called to him.
"How's it goin', Dan?" asked the former.
"Oh, well enough, well enough," responded the man, with what seemed tothe girls enforced cheerfulness. "We'll strike gold afore to-morrow,sure."
"Poor old Dan Higgins," said Andy, with a sobering of his good-naturedface. "He's always goin' to strike gold 'to-morrow.' Sure, there's noone I'd rather see strike it rich than Dan an' that girl of his. But I'm'fraid they're jest plumb unlucky. Funny thing, luck--and gold," he wenton to soliloquize. "Some young fellers they come out here, thinkin' theycan get back to the girl at home in a couple o' years with theirpockets plumb full o' nuggets, an' instead, they toil their lives awaytill their hair grows white an' their skin gets crackly like parchment,an' never even a glimpse o' yellow. An' mebbe the feller next to himdrills a hole three feet deep and he strikes a vein. Yes siree, if everthere was a real thing in this world, that thing is luck."
The girls were impressed and their hearts ached for Dan Higgins, hisyears of hope and work and his profitless mine. As for the girl, hisdaughter, Meggy----
"Are you sure Dan Higgins hasn't any chance of striking gold?" askedBetty, gravely.
"Not a bit of it," returned Andy Rawlinson quickly. "There's gold allaround here--everybody thought Dan was mighty lucky when he staked outhis claim. He may find gold yet. But," he added, and there was afatalistic quality in his tone that chilled the girls, "you always haveto reckon on luck."
In the days that followed it became quite the usual thing to see theOutdoor Girls, mounted on their splendid horses, galloping along theopen road or cantering through the town of Gold Run. It was not longbefore they became general favorites in this country where girls oftheir type were scarce, and the girls knew most of the rough butgood-hearted miners by name. But perhaps of them all, their best andstaunchest friends were old Dan Higgins and his daughter, Meggy.
The girls often visited the mine and were always greeted with the utmostheartiness by its owners. Once Betty had caught Meggy looking longinglyat Nigger as he was trying his best to get some nourishment from thestubbly grass, and with the quick impulsiveness that was hers, she askedthe girl if she would like a ride.
At the sudden radiance that flooded Meggy's face, Betty turned awayabashed. She felt as though she had been given a glimpse of the girl'ssoul.
Meggy had her ride, and in the days that followed she had many othersand the girl's fondness for Betty became almost worship. She liked theother girls, for they were always kind to her, but Betty was her idol.
"I have wanted all my life to own a horse," she confided to the LittleCaptain one day, as she stroked Nigger's shining coat with almostreverent fingers. "It would be the first thing I would buy for myself ifdad should strike it rich." Her tone was brave, but the eyes that soughther father's toiling figure were sad. "Poor old dad," she said softly,"I don't think he would keep on any longer, if it wasn't for me."
On one of their visits to the mine the girls were astonished to findtheir mysterious musician there ahead of them. He seemed to be trying tohelp, but from where the girls watched unobserved, it looked as thoughhe were more in the way than anything else.
Meggy was the first to discover them, and as she called out a greeting,the Hermit of Gold Run rose quickly to his feet and disappeared into thewoods.
"Poor fellow," said Meggy, looking pityingly after him. "We let him tryto help us because it seems to amuse him, but he really doesn't know howto work with his hands. His fingers were made for the fiddle."
"I certainly would like to find out more about that man," said Mollie,her forehead puckered into a puzzled frown. "He sure does act prettyfunny."
"We'll have to visit him again some day," said Betty lightly, and thenturned to question Meggy on the progress of the mine.
On their way home they took up the subject of the strange musician whosequeer comings and goings had begun to be of more than usual interest tothem.
"He acts--in a--a stealthy way," said Grace, striving for the exactwords to express her meaning. "He positively sneaked away from us thismorning. It seems to me people don't act like that unless they areafraid of something."
"He might just be afraid of people," Betty reminded her. "Or he maydislike people and want to be left alone. That would account for thename of 'hermit' that the natives around here have given him."
"But an ordinary hermit wouldn't be able to play like a virtuoso,"objected Amy.
"Well, nobody said he was an ordinary hermit," retorted Mollie.
"To change the subject before you girls get to the hair-pulling stage,"laughed Betty, as she turned Nigger's head toward the ranch, "I wish wecould do something for Dan Higgins and Meggy. It's a shame for thatsplendid, loyal girl to have to spend all her youth, when she might behaving good times like other girls, in doing the kind of work that'sonly fit for a man to do."
"And she's so brave about it, too," added Grace admiringly. "She keepsher head up like a thoroughbred."
"I've asked her to come over to the ranch," Betty went on thoughtfully."She has a passion for horses, you know, and I told her we'd have AndyRawlinson pick her out a beauty from the corrals. I could see that shewas awfully tempted, but she said no, she couldn't leave her father."
"Probably the real reason she refused was because she hadn't decentclothes to wear," said Mollie sagaciously. "The poor girl is alm
ost inrags."
"I wish we could help," sighed Betty. "But she and her father are proud,like most of the other people around here. They just have to stand ontheir own feet."
"I wonder if they have enough to eat," mused Amy. "It would be dreadfulto think of them actually hungry."
"Oh, I guess there's no danger of that," said Mollie. "As long as thereare wild animals in the woods and Dan Higgins and Meggy have guns theywon't starve to death."
"And maybe they really will find gold, anyway," said Grace hopefully.
They rode along silently for a while. In their abstraction they hadtaken the long way home, instead of cutting directly across the ranch inthe direction of the house. They were on a rather narrow trail, sonarrow, that they could not ride two abreast but were strung out insingle file, Indian fashion. On one side of them rose the mountain, hugeand majestic, and on the other was a sheer drop of a hundred feet or sointo a rocky canyon.
The girls had always loved this ride because of the wonderful view itafforded them of the surrounding country. But that very morning DanHiggins had warned them not to go that way.
"The mountain is pow'ful oncertain," the old man had told them. "Part ofit is apt to fall on you any time if you get too close to it."
Betty thought of this warning, but too late. An ominous rumbling jerkedher eyes upward and she saw a sight that almost froze the blood in herveins. It seemed indeed to her terrified fancy as if the whole mountainwere falling upon them. A great mass of dirt and brush and rock washurtling down upon them with sickening velocity. A landslide--and theywere directly in its path!