Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill | Page 7

man. While the men were bringing
the senseless body up the steep bank her mind ran riot with the
possibilities that lay in store for her because of this accident to the
dry-goods merchant's son.
And now the bearers were at the top of the bank, and she could see the
limp form borne by them-- a man holding the body under the arms and
another by his feet. But, altogether, it looked really as though they
carried a limp sack between them.
"Fust time I ever see that boy still," murmured Jasper Parloe.
"Cracky! He's pale; ain't he?" said another man.
Doctor Davison dropped on one knee beside the body as they laid it
down. The lanterns were drawn together that their combined light
might illuminate the spot. Ruth saw that the figure was that of a youth

not much older than herself-- lean, long limbed, well dressed, and with
a face that, had it not been so pale, she would have thought very nice
looking indeed.
"Poor lad!" Ruth heard the physician murmur. "He has had a hard fall--
and that's a nasty knock on his head."
The wound was upon the side of his head above the left ear and was
now all clotted with blood. It was from this wound, in some moment of
consciousness, that he had traced the word "Help" on his torn
handkerchief, and fastened the latter, with the lamp of his motorcycle,
to the dog's collar.
Here was the machine, bent and twisted enough, brought up the bank
by two of the men.
"Dunno what you can do for the boy, Doctor," said one of them; "but it
looks to me as though this contraption warn't scurcely wuth savin'."
"Oh, we'll bring the boy around all right," said Doctor Davison, who
had felt Tom Cameron's pulse and now rose quickly. "Lift him
carefully upon the stretcher. We will get him into bed before I do a
thing to him. He's best as he is while we are moving him."
"It'll be a mighty long way to his house," grumbled one of the men.
"I believe yeou!" rejoined Jasper Parloe. "Three miles beyond Jabe
Potter's mill."
"Pshaw!" exclaimed Doctor Davison, in his soft voice. "You know
we'll not take him so far. My house is near enough. Surely you can
carry him there."
"If you say the word, Doctor," said the fellow, more cheerfully, while
old Parloe grunted.
They were more than half an hour in getting to the turn in the main
road where she could observe the two green lights before the doctor's

house. There the men put the stretcher down for a moment. Jasper
Parloe grumblingly took his turn at carrying one end.
"I never did see the use of boys, noway," he growled. "They's only an
aggravation and vexation of speret. And this here one is the
aggravatingest and vexationingest of any I ever see."
"Don't be too hard on the boy, Jasper," said Doctor Davison, passing on
ahead, so as to reach his house first.
Ruth remained behind, for the old gentleman walked too fast for her.
Before the men picked up the stretcher again there was a movement
and a murmur from the injured boy.
"Hullo!" said one of the men. "He's a-talkin', ain't he?"
"Jest mutterin'," said Parloe, who was at Tom's head. "'Tain't nothi
But Ruth heard the murmur of the unconscious boy, and the words
startled her. They were:
"It was Jabe Potter-- he did it! It was Jabe Potter-- he did it!"
What did they mean? Or, was there no meaning at all to the muttering
of the wounded boy? Ruth saw that Parloe was looking at her in his sly
and disagreeable way, and she knew that he, too, had heard the words.
"It was Jabe Potter-- he did it!" Was it an accusation referring to the
boy's present plight? And how could her Uncle Jabez-- the relative she
had not as yet seen-- be the cause of Tom Cameron's injury? The spot
where the boy was hurt must have been five miles from the Red Mill,
and not even on the Osago Lake turnpike, on which highway she had
been given to understand the Red Mill stood.
Not many moments more and the little procession was at the gateway,
on either side of which burned the two green lamps.
Jasper Parloe, who had been relieved, shuffled off into the darkness.
Reno after one pleading look into the face of the hesitating Ruth,

followed the stretcher on which his master lay, in at the gate.
And Ruth Fielding, beginning again to feel most embarrassed and
forsaken, was left alone where the two green eyes winked in the warm,
moist darkness of the Spring night.
CHAPTER V
THE GIRL IN THE AUTOMOBILE
The men who had