Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp/Chapter 23
CHAPTER XXIII
A DOUBLE CAPTIVITY
"It's a ghost!" gasped Belle as the voice out of the storm died away down the wind.
"So are you!" snapped Madge. "What would a ghost want any help for? Ridiculous!"
"Goodness me!" drawled Heavy. "Seems to me even a disembodied spirit might feel the need of help if it was out in such a gale as this."
"I mean that we only thought we heard the voice," chattered Belle.
"Funny we should all think with such unanimity," scoffed Ruth. "That was certainly a very able-bodied spirit—There!"
Again the cry came brokenly through the storm.
"Somebody lost like ourselves," said Lluella, with a shiver.
"And he sees the light of our fire," Jennie Stone urged.
"We must help, whoever it is," Ruth cried. "Shout, girls! Maybe he wants to know the way"
"The fire will show him," said Madge, quickly.
"Perhaps he is hurt," said Helen.
"Shout!" commanded Ruth.
They raised their voices in a ragged chorus of cries. "Again!" cried Ruth, and that time they sent their halloo out into the storm with more vigor and unanimity. Once more, after they had waited a full minute, they could plainly distinguish the word "Help!"
"This won't do," said Ruth, briskly. "Whoever it is cannot get to us."
"And we can't get to him!" cried Lluella.
"I am going to try. I'll go alone. You girls keep hollering. I won't go out of earshot," promised Ruth.
"Don't do it, Ruthie! You'll be lost," cried Helen. "Then whatever should we do?"
"I won't get lost—not if you girls continue to shout," returned her chum.
She had buttoned her coat about her and pulled the skating cap she wore down over her ears, yet not too low to muffle them. Again the cry came wandering through the storm. Ruth started down the bank of the gully; the cry came from the other side of the hollow, she was sure—almost directly opposite the ledge on which they had taken shelter.
When she plunged off the ledge she at once entered the wall of driving, smothering snow. It almost took her breath, it was so deep under her feet and shrouded her about so much like a mantle. Had she ventured this way when first she and her friends had descended to the ledge, Ruth must have actually sunk out of sight in the soft drifts.
But the sifting snow had packed harder and harder as the storm increased. After all, she sank only to her knees and soon found that she was plunging over rather than through the great drifts that filled the gully. How broad this gully was—or how deep when the snow was out of it—she could not imagine. Nor did she give a thought to these things now.
Again she heard the muffled cry for help; but it sounded louder. She had made no mistake in the direction she had taken. The person needing succor was directly in front of the ledge, but could not get over to the fire.
She glanced back over her shoulder. The leaping flames she could not see; but their glow made a round spot of rosy light against the screen of the falling snow. The mystery of the sight terrified her for a moment. Would she ever be able to fight her way back to that ledge?
"Our Father, help me!" was her unspoken prayer, and then she plunged on.
She heard the shrill cries of her friends behind; ahead the lost one shouted out once more.
"Here! here! This way! Help!"
"I'm coming!" responded Ruth Fielding and, beaten as she was by the gale behind, kept steadily on.
The way began to rise before her. She was ascending the other bank of the gully. Suddenly through the snow-wreath that surrounded her she saw something waving. She sprang forward with renewed courage, crying again:
"I'm coming!"
The next moment she seized somebody's gloved hand. "Oh, oh!" cried a shrill, terrified voice. "Who are you? Help me! I am freezing. I can't walk"
"Fred Hatfield!" gasped the amazed girl. "Is it you? What is the matter?"
"Take me to that house. I see the light, but I cannot reach it. Help me, for God's sake!" cried the boy.
She could see his white, pinched face as he lay there more than half buried in the snow. His eyes were feverish and wild and he certainly did not know Ruth.
"Help me out! help me out!" he continued to beg. "My leg is caught."
But it was more weakness and exhaustion than aught else that held the boy in the drift, as Ruth very soon found out when she laid hold of his shoulders and exerted her strength. In a few moments, what with her pulling and his scrambling, the boy was out of the drift.
He had clung to the rifle—Tom Cameron's weapon, of course—and into his belt was stuck a knife and a camp hatchet.
"Why, how did you get here in this storm?" demanded Ruth, as he lay panting at her feet.
"I got lost—from my—my camp," he responded. "I'm frozen! I can't feel my feet at all"
"Come across to the fire," urged Ruth. "We girls are lost from Snow Camp. But we're all right so far. My! how the snow blows."
Facing the storm they could hardly make headway at all. Indeed, the youth fell within a few yards and Ruth was obliged to drag him through the drifts.
Her friends continued to shout, and occasionally she stood upright, made a megaphone of her hands, and returned their hail. But her strength—all of it—finally had to be given to the boy. She seized him by the shoulders and fairly dragged him toward the other side of the gully, thus walking against the wind, backwards. Occasionally she threw a glance over her shoulder to make sure that she was making straight for the campfire.
The girls' voices drew nearer and finally, at the foot of the slope leading up to the camp, she was forced to halt and drop her burden.
"Come down and help me, Madge!" she cried. "It's a boy—a boy! He can't help himself. Come quick!"
The girls were only a few yards away, but so fiercely did the wind blow that Ruth had to repeat her call for help before Madge Steele understood. Then the big girl dropped down off the ledge and plowed her way toward Ruth and her burden.
"The poor fellow! who is he?" gasped Madge, as together they raised the strange boy and started up the sharp ascent.
"Not Tom! Oh! it's never Tom?" shrieked Helen at the top of the hill.
"No, no!" gasped Ruth. "It's—the—boy—that—ran away."
They got him upon the dry ledge of rock before the fire. His cheeks showed frostbitten spots, and Jennie began to rub them with snow. "That's the way to treat frostbite," she declared. "Take off his boots. If his feet are frosted we'll have to treat them the same way."
Helen and Belle obeyed Heavy, who seemed quite practical in this emergency. Ruth had no strength, or breath, for the time being, but lay beside the fire herself. Meanwhile Madge and Lluella scrapped the red coals out from the rock and swept the platform clean with green branches. Ruth and the runaway boy were drawn into this cozy retreat and soon the boy began to weep and cry out as the heat got into his feet. It was very painful to have the frost drawn out in this manner.
It was now after midnight and the storm still raged. Madge and Jennie floundered out for more fuel. The hatchet the boy carried was of great aid to them in this work and soon they had piled on the ledge sufficient wood to keep the blaze alive until dawn.
By this time the strange youth had been thawed out and was dropping asleep against the warm rock. Helen and Belle agreed to stand the next watch, and to feed the fire. Both Ruth and Madge needed sleep, the former aching in every muscle from her fight to bring the rescued one in.
"We're doubly captives now," the girl of the Red Mill whispered to Madge before she dropped asleep. "If it should stop snowing we couldn't try to get back to camp and leave this chap here. And it is certain sure that he could not travel himself, nor could we carry him."
"You are right, Ruth," returned Madge. "This addition to our party makes our situation worse instead of better."
"But maybe it will all come out right in the end, dear."
"Let us hope so."
"What a boy of mystery he is!'
"Yes."
"Do you think we'll ever get to the bottom of his trouble?"
"Let us hope so."
Then both girls turned over, to get what sleep they could under such trying circumstances.