Page:Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch.djvu/15

Rh ing around yere again I declare I'll bounce a bucket off his head. He's the biggest gump!"

"Come on yere, gal!" snapped her father. "I ain't said nothin' about Ike. This yere's Bill Hicks an' all his crowd comin' up from Bullhide in a blamed ol' steam waggin."

Sally ran out through the store and reached the piazza just as the snorting automobile came near and slowed down. A lithe, handsome, dark girl was at the wheel; beside her was a very pretty, plump girl with rosy cheeks and the brightest eyes imaginable; the third person crowded into the front seat was a youth who looked so much like the girl who was running the machine that they might have changed clothes and nobody would have been the wiser—save that Tom Cameron's hair was short and his twin sister, Helen's, was long and curly. The girl between the twins was Ruth Fielding.

In the big tonneau of the car was a great, tall, bony man with an enormous "walrus" mustache and a very red face; beside him sat a rather freckled girl with snapping black eyes, who wore very splendid clothes as though she was not used to them. With this couple were a big, blond boy and three girls—one of them so stout that she crowded her companions on the seat into their individual corners, and packed them in there somewhat after the nature of sardines in a can.