Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures | Page 5

An eddy clutched her and drew her swiftly in toward the
bank. Immediately Tom shut off the power and he and Ruth both
leaped out of the car.
A long branch from an adjacent tree had been torn off by the wind and
lay beside the road. Tom seized this and ran with Ruth to the edge of
the water; but he knew the branch was a poor substitute for a rope.
"If she can cling to this, I'll get something better in a moment, Ruth!"
he exclaimed.
Swinging the small and bushy end of the branch outward, Tom dropped
it into the water just ahead of the imperiled girl. Ruth seized the butt
with her strong and capable hands.
"Cut off a length of that fence wire, Tommy," she ordered. "You have
wire-cutters in your auto kit, haven't you?"
"Sure!" cried Tom. "Never travel without 'em since we were at Silver
Ranch, you know. There! She's got it."
Hazel Gray had seized upon the branch. She was too exhausted to reach
the bank of the river without help, and just here the eddy began to
swing her around again, away from the shore.
The men of the company came running now, giving lusty shouts of
encouragement, but--that was all! The director had allowed the girl to
get into a perilous position on the leaning tree without having a boat
and crew in readiness to pick her up if she fell into the river. It was an
unpardonable piece of neglect, and there might still serious
consequences arise from it.
For the girl in the water was so exhausted that she could not long cling
to the limb. It was but a frail support between her and drowning.

When the men arrived Ruth feared to have them even touch the branch
she held, and she motioned them back. She knew that the girl in the
stream was almost exhausted and that a very little would cause her to
lose her hold upon the branch altogether.
"Don't touch it! I beg of you, don't touch it!" cried Ruth, as one excited
man undertook to take the butt of the branch.
"You can't hold it, Miss! you'll be pulled into the water."
"Never fear for me," the girl from the Red Mill returned. "I know what
I am about----Oh, goody! here comes Tom!"
She depended on Tom--she knew that he would do something if
anybody could. She gazed upon the wet, white face of the girl in the
water and knew that whatever Tom did must be done at once. Hazel
Gray was loosing her hold.
"Oh! oh! oh!" screamed Helen, standing in the automobile with clasped
hands. "Don't let her drown, Tommy! Don't let her go down
again--don't!"
Tom came, with grimly set lips, dragging about twenty feet of fence
wire behind him. Luckily it was smooth wire--not barbed. He quickly
made a loop in one end of it and wriggled the other end toward Ruth
and the excited men.
"Catch hold here!" he ordered. "Make a loop as I have, and don't let it
slip through your hands."
"Oh, Tom! you're never going into that cold water?" Ruth gasped,
suddenly stricken with fear for her friend's safety.
But that was exactly what Tom intended to do. There was no other way.
He had seen, too, the exhaustion of the girl in the water and knew that
if her hands slipped from the tree branch, she could never get a grip on
the wire.

Without removing an article of clothing the boy leaped into the stream.
It was over his head right here below the bank, and the chill of the
water was tremendous. As Tom said afterward, he felt it "clear to the
marrow of his bones!"
But he came up and struck out strongly for the face of the girl, which
was all that could be seen above the surface.
Hazel Gray's hold was slipping from the branch. She was blue about
the lips and her eyes were almost closed. The current was tugging at
her strongly; she was losing consciousness. If she was carried away by
the suction of the stream, now dragging so strongly at her limbs, Tom
Cameron would be obliged to loose his own hold upon the wire and
swim after her. And the young fellow was not at all sure that he could
save either her or himself if this occurred.
Yet, perilous as his own situation was, Tom thought only of that of the
actress.
CHAPTER III
AT THE RED MILL
Helen, greatly excited, stood on the seat of the tonneau and cheered her
brother on at the top of her voice. That, in her excitement, she thought
she was "rooting" at a basket-ball game at Briarwood, was not to be
wondered at. Ruth heard