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                             Ruth Fielding
                            In the Red Cross

                                   OR

                           DOING HER BEST FOR
                               UNCLE SAM

                                   BY

                            ALICE B. EMERSON

               Author of "Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill,"
                  "Ruth Fielding in the Saddle," Etc.

                             _ILLUSTRATED_


                                NEW YORK
                         CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
                               PUBLISHERS




                            Books for Girls
                          BY ALICE B. EMERSON
                          RUTH FIELDING SERIES
                       12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
                 Price per volume, 50 cents, postpaid.


                   RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
                   RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL
                   RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
                   RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
                   RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
                   RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
                   RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
                   RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES
                   RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES
                   RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE
                   RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE
                   RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE
                   RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS
                   RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT


               Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York.

                          Copyright, 1918, by
                         Cupples & Leon Company

                     Ruth Fielding in the Red Cross

                          Printed in U. S. A.




                                CONTENTS

         CHAPTER                                              PAGE
              I. Uncle Jabez Is Excited                          1
             II. The Call of the Drum                            9
            III. The Woman in Black                             17
             IV. "Can a Poilu Love a Fat Girl?"                 25
              V. "The Boys of the Draft"                        34
             VI. The Patriotism of the Purse                    39
            VII. On the Way                                     49
           VIII. The Nearest Duty                               56
             IX. Tom Sails, and Something Else Happens          64
              X. Suspicions                                     75
             XI. Said in German                                 81
            XII. Through Dangerous Waters                       90
           XIII. The New Chief                                  99
            XIV. A Change of Base                              107
             XV. New Work                                      118
            XVI. The Days Roll By                              127
           XVII. At the Gateway of the Chateau                 133
          XVIII. Shocking News                                 141
            XIX. At the Wayside Cross                          149
             XX. Many Things Happen                            156
            XXI. Again the Werwolf                             165
           XXII. The Countess and Her Dog                      175
          XXIII. Ruth Does Her Duty                            180
           XXIV. A Partial Exposure                            191
            XXV. Quite Satisfactory                            197




RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS




CHAPTER I--UNCLE JABEZ IS EXCITED


"Oh! Not _Tom_?"

Ruth Fielding looked up from the box she was packing for the local Red
Cross chapter, and, almost horrified, gazed into the black eyes of the
girl who confronted her.

Helen Cameron's face was tragic in its expression. She had been crying.
The closely written sheets of the letter in her hand were shaken, as
were her shoulders, with the sobs she tried to suppress.

"It--it's written to father," Helen said. "He gave it to me to read. I
wish Tom had never gone to Harvard. Those boys there are completely
crazy! To think--at the end of his freshman year--to throw it all up and
go to a training camp!"

"I guess Harvard isn't to blame," said Ruth practically. If she was
deeply moved by what her chum had told her, she quickly recovered her
self-control. "The boys are going from other colleges all over the land.
Is Tom going to try for a commission?"

"Yes."

"What does your father say?"

"Why," cried the other girl as though that, too, had surprised and hurt
her, "father cried 'Bully for Tom!' and then wiped his eyes on his
handkerchief. What can men be made of, Ruth? He knows Tom may be killed,
and yet he cheers for him."

Ruth Fielding smiled and suddenly hugged Helen. Ruth's smile was
somewhat tremulous, but her chum did not observe this fact.

"I understand how your father feels, dear. Tom does not want to be
drafted----"

"He wouldn't be drafted. He is not old enough. And even if they
automatically draft the boys as they become of age, it would be months
before they reached Tom, and the war will be over by that time. But here
he is throwing himself away----"

"Oh, Helen! Not that!" cried Ruth. "Our soldiers will fight for us--for
their country--for honor. And a man's life lost in such a cause is not
thrown away."

"That's the way I feel," said Helen, more steadily. "Tom is my twin. You
don't know what it means to have a twin brother, Ruth Fielding."

"That is true," sighed Ruth. "But I can imagine how you feel, dear. If
you have hopes of the war's being over so quickly, then I should expect
Tom back from training camp safe and sound, and with no chance of ever
facing the enemy. Has he really gone?"

"Oh, yes," Helen told her despondently. "And lots of the boys who used
to go to school with Tom at Seven Oaks. You know, all those jolly
fellows who were at Snow Camp with us, and at Lighthouse Point, and on
Cliff Island, and out West on Silver Ranch--and--and everywhere. Just to
think! We may never see them again."

"Dear me, Helen," Ruth urged, "don't look upon the blackest side of the
cloud. It's a long time before they go over there."

"We don't know how soon they will be in the trenches," said her friend
hopelessly. "These boys going to war----"

"And I wish I was young enough to go with 'em!" ejaculated a harsh
voice, as the door of the back kitchen opened and the speaker stamped
into the room. "Got that box ready to nail up, Niece Ruth? Ben's
hitching up the mules, and I want to get to Cheslow before dark."

"Oh! Almost ready, Uncle Jabez," cried the girl of the Red Mill, as the
gray old man approached.

He was lean and wiry and the dust of his mill seemed to have been so
ground into his very skin that he was a regular "dusty miller." His
features were as harsh as his voice, and he was seldom as excited as he
seemed to be now.

"Who's going to war now?" he asked, turning to Helen.

"Poor--poor Tom!" burst out the black-eyed girl, and began to dabble her
eyes again.

"What's the matter o' him?" demanded the old miller.

"He'll--he'll be shot--I know he'll be killed, and mangled horribly!"

"Fiddle-de-dee!" grunted Uncle Jabez, but his tone of voice was not as
harsh as his words sounded. "I never got shot, nor mangled none to speak
of, and I was fightin' and marchin' three endurin' years."

"_You_, Uncle Jabez?" cried Ruth.

"Yep. And I wish they'd take me again. I can go a-soldierin' as good as
the next one. I'm tough and I'm wiry. They talk about this war bein' a
dreadful war. Shucks! All wars air dreadful. They won't never have a
battle over there that'll be as bad as the Wilderness--believe me! They
may have more battles, but I went through some of the wust a man could
ever experience."

"And--and you weren't shot?" gasped Helen.

"Not a bit. Three years of campaigning and never was scratched. Don't
you look for Tom Cameron to be killed fust thing just because he's going
to the wars. If more men didn't come back from the wars than git killed
in 'em how d'ye s'pose this old world would have gone on rolling?
Shucks!"

"I never knew you were a soldier, Uncle Jabez," Ruth Fielding said.

"Wal, I was. Shucks! I was something of a sharpshooter, too. And we old
fellers--course I was nothin' but a boy, _then_--we could shoot. We'd
l'arn't to shoot on the farm. Powder an' shot was hard to git and we
l'arn't to make every bullet count. My old Betsey--didn't ye ever see my
Civil War rifle?" he demanded of Ruth.

"You mean the old brown gun that hangs over your bed and that Aunt
Alvirah is so much afraid of?"

"That's old Betsey. Sharpe's rifle. In them days it was jest about the
last thing in weepons. I brung it home after the Grand Army of the
Potomac was disbanded. Know how I did it? Government claimed all the
guns; but I took old Betsey apart and me an' my mates hid the pieces
away in our clothes, and so got her home. Then I assembled her again,"
and Uncle Jabez broke into a chuckle that was actually almost startling
to the girls, for the miller seldom laughed.

"Say!" he exclaimed, in his strange excitement. "I'll show her to ye."

He hurried out of the room, evidently in search of "Old Betsey." Helen
said to the miller's niece:

"Goodness, Ruth! what has happened to your Uncle Jabez?"

"Just what has happened to Tom--and your father," returned the girl of
the Red Mill. "I've seen it coming on. Uncle Jabez has been getting more
and more excited ever since war was declared. You know, when we came
home from college a month ago and decided to remain here and help in the
Red Cross work instead of finishing our sophomore year at Ardmore, my
decision was really the first one I ever made that Uncle Jabez seemed to
approve of immediately.

"He is thoroughly patriotic. When I told him I could study later--when
the war was over--but that I must work for the soldiers now, he said I
was a good girl. What do you think of _that_?"

"Cheslow is not doing its share," Helen said thoughtfully, her mind
switched by Ruth's last words to the matter that had completely filled
her own and her chum's thoughts for weeks. "The people are not awake.
They do not know we are at war yet. They have not done half for the Red
Cross that they should do."

"We'll make 'em!" declared Ruth Fielding. "We must get the women and
girls to pull together."

"Say, Ruth! what do you think of that woman in black--you know, the
widow, or whoever she is? Dresses in black altogether; but maybe it's
because she thinks black becomes her," added Helen rather scornfully.

"Mrs. Mantel?" asked Ruth slowly. "I don't know what to think of her.
She seems to be very anxious to help. Yet she does nothing really
helpful--only talks."

"And some of her talk I'd rather not hear," said Helen sharply.

"I know what you mean," Ruth rejoined, nodding. "But so many people talk
so doubtfully. They are unfamiliar with the history of the Red Cross and
what it has done. Perhaps Mrs. Mantel means no harm."

At that moment Uncle Jabez reappeared with the heavy rifle in his hands.
He was still chuckling.

"Calc'late I ain't heard Aunt Alvirah talk about this gun much of