“Oh, see here!” she cried, in amazement as well as fear.  “See!  What can it mean?  See what’s drawn on this cloth—­”

It was a single word—­ a word smeared across the rag in shaking, uneven letters: 

“Help!”

“By George!” exclaimed one of the brakemen.  “The little girl’s right.  That spells ‘Help!’ plain enough.”

“It—­ it is written in something red, sir,” cried Ruth, her voice trembling.  “See!  It is blood!”

“I tell you we’ve wasted a lot of time here,” declared the conductor.  “I am sorry if anybody is hurt, but we cannot stop for him.  Get back to the cars, please, gentlemen.  Do you belong aboard?” he added, to Ruth.  “Get aboard, if you do.”

“Oh, sir!  You will not leave the poor dog here?” Ruth asked.

“Not with that red lamp on his collar—­ no!” exclaimed the conductor.  “He will be fooling some other engineer—­”

He reached to disentangle the wire from the dog’s collar; but Reno uttered a low growl.

“Plague take the dog!” ejaculated the conductor, stepping 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.