CHAPTER XXIII
BASHFUL IKE TAKES THE BIT IN HIS TEETH
There was great commotion at Silver Ranch when Jib Pottoway (on a fresh horse he had picked up at the riverside cow camp) rode madly to the ranch-house with the news of what was afoot so far away across Rolling River. From Old Bill down, the friends of Ruth were horror-stricken that she should so recklessly (or, so it seemed) expose herself to the contagion of the fever.
"And for a person who is absolutely nothing to her at all!" wailed Jennie Stone. "Ruth is utterly reckless."
"She is utterly brave," said Madge, sharply.
"She has the most grateful heart in the world," Helen declared. "He saved her life in the canon—you remember it, Mary. Of course she could not leave the poor creature to die there alone."
The Fox had turned pallid and seemed horrified. But she was silent while all the others about the ranch-house, from Old Bill Hicks down to Maria the cook, were voluble indeed. The ranchman might have laid violent hands upon Jib Pot-
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