Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill | Page 4

back hastily.
"Whoever it is that's hurt, or wherever he is, we cannot send him help
from here. We'll report the circumstance at the Cheslow Station. Put the
dog in the baggage car. He can find the place where his master is hurt,
from Cheslow as well as from here, it's likely."
"You try to make him follow you, Miss," added the conductor to Ruth.
"He doesn't like me, it's plain."
"Come here, Reno!" Ruth commanded. "Come here, old fellow."

The big dog hesitated, stepped a yard or two after her, stopped, looked
around and across the track toward the swamp meadow, and whined.
Ruth went back to him and put both arms about the noble fellow's neck.
"Come, Reno," she said "Come with me. We will go to find your
master by and by."
She started for the cars again, with one hand on the dog's neck. He
trotted meekly beside her with head hanging. At the open baggage-car
door one of the brakemen lifted her in.
"Come, Reno! Come up, sir!" she said, and the great mastiff, crouching
for an instant, sprang into the car.
Even before they were fairly aboard, the train started. They were late
enough, indeed! But the engineer dared not speed up much for that last
mile of the lap to Cheslow. There might be something ahead on the
track."
"You get out at Cheslow; don't you Miss?" asked the conductor.
"Yes, sir," returned Ruth, sitting down with an air of possession upon
her old-fashioned cowhide trunk that had already been put out by the
door ready for discharging at the next station.
"And you were sitting in the last car. Have you a bag there?"
"Yes, sir, a small bag. That is all."
"I'll send it forward to you," he said, not unkindly, and bustled away.
And so Ruth Fielding was sitting on her own trunk, with her bag in her
lap, and the great mastiff lying on the floor of the baggage car beside
her, when the train slowed down and stopped beside the Cheslow
platform. She had not expected to arrive just in this way at her journey's
end.
CHAPTER III

WHAT HAS HAPPENED?
The baggage-car door was wheeled wide open again and the lamps on
the platform shone in. There was the forward brakeman to "jump" her
down from the high doorway, and Reno, with the little red light still
hung to his collar, bounded after her.
The conductor bustled away to tell the station master about the dog
with the red light, and of the word scrawled on the cloth which Ruth
had found wound around his collar. Indeed, Ruth herself was very
anxious and very much excited regarding this mystery; but she was
anxious, too, about herself. Was Uncle Jabez here to meet her? Or had
he sent somebody to take her to the Red Mill? He had been informed
by Miss True Pettis the week before on which train to expect his niece.
Carrying her bag and followed dejectedly by the huge mastiff, Ruth
started down the long platform. The conductor ran out of the station,
signalled the train crew with his hand, and lanterns waved the length of
the train. Panting, with its huge springs squeaking, the locomotive
started the string of cars. Faster and faster the train moved, and before
Ruth reached the pent-house roof of the little brick station, the
tail-lights of the last car had passed her.
A short, bullet-headed old man, with close-cropped, whitish-yellow
hair, atop of which was a boy's baseball cap, his face smoothly shaven
and deeply lined, and the stain of tobacco at either corner of his mouth,
was standing on the platform. He was not a nice looking old man at all,
he was dressed in shabby and patched garments, and his little eyes
seemed so sly that they were even trying to hide from each other on
either side of a hawksbill nose.
He began to eye Ruth curiously as the girl approached, and she, seeing
that he was the only person who gave her any attention, jumped to the
conclusion that this was Uncle Jabez. The thought shocked her. She
instinctively feared and disliked this queer looking old man. The lump
in her throat that would not be swallowed almost choked her again, and
she winked her eyes fast to keep from crying.

She would, in her fear and disappointment, have passed the old man by
without speaking had he not stepped in front of her.
"Where d'ye wanter go, Miss?" he whined, looking at her still more
sharply out of his narrow eyes. "Yeou be a stranger here, eh?"
"Yes, sir," admitted Ruth.
"Where are you goin'?" asked the man again, and Ruth had enough
Yankee blood in her to answer the query by asking:
"Are you Mr.