"Well, look at the clothes you wore in that show!" cried Jennie. "That head-dress looked wild enough, I must say—and those fringed leggings and all that."

Wonota smiled rather grimly. "The white people expect to see Indians in their national costumes. Otherwise it would be no novelty, would it? Why, some of the girls—Osage girls of pure blood too—at Three Rivers Station wear garments that are quite up to date. You must not forget that at least we have the catalogs from the city stores to choose from, even if we do not actually get to the cities to shop."

"Printer's ink! It is a great thing," admitted Helen. "I don't suppose there are really any wild Indians left."

The four girls and Aunt Kate were whisked in a big limousine to the play, and Wonota enjoyed the brilliant spectacle and the music as much as any of the white girls.

"Believe me," whispered Jennie to Ruth, "give any kind of girl a chance to dress up and go to places like this, and see other girls all fussed up, as your Tommy says—"

"Helen's Tommy, you mean," interposed Ruth.

"Rats!" murmured the plump girl, falling back upon Briarwood Hall slang in her momentary disgust. "Well, anyway, Miss Fielding, what I said is so. Wonota would like to dress like the best dressed girl in the theatre, and wear ropes of pearls and a plume in her hat—see that one yonder! Isn't it superb?"

"The poor birdie that lost it," murmured Ruth.

"I declare, I don't believe you half enjoy yourself thinking of the reverse of the shield all the time," sniffed Jennie Stone. "And yet you do manage to dress pretty good yourself."

"One does not have to be bizarre to look well and up-to-date," declared the girl of the Red Mill. "But that has nothing to do with Wonota."

"I did get off the track, didn't I?" laughed Jennie. "Oh, well! Dress her up, or any other foreign girl, in American fashion and she seems to fit into the picture all right—"

"'Foreign girl' and 'American fashion'?" gasped Ruth. "As—as you sometimes say, Jennie, 'how do you get that way'? Wonota is a better American than we are. Her ancestors did not have to come over in the Mayflower, with Henry Hudson, or with Sir Walter Raleigh."

"Isn't that a fact?" laughed Jennie. "I certainly am forgetting everything I ever learned at school. And, to tell the truth," she added, making a little face at her chum, "I feel better for it. I just crammed at Ardmore and Briarwood."

Helen heard this. She glanced scornfully over Jennie's still too plump figure. "I should say you did," she observed. "You used to create a famine at old Briarwood Hall, I remember. But I would not brag about it, Heavy."

"Crammed my brain, I mean," wailed the plump girl. "Can't you let me forget my avoirdupois at all?"

"It is like the poor," laughed Ruth. "It is always with us, Jennie. We cannot look at you and visualize your skeleton. You are too well upholstered."

This sort of banter did not appeal to the Indian girl. She did not, in fact, hear much of it. All her attention was given to the play on the stage and the brilliant audience. She had traveled considerably with Dakota Joe's show, but she had never seen anything like the audience in this Broadway theatre.

She went back to the Stone domicile in a sort of daze—smiling and happy in her quiet way, but quite speechless. Even Jennie could not "get a rise out of her," as she confessed to Helen and Ruth after they were ready for bed and the plump girl had come in to perch on one of the twin beds her chums occupied for the night.

"But I like this Osage flower," observed Jennie. "And I am just as anxious as I can be to see you make a star actress out of her, Ruthie."

"It will be Mr. Hammond and the director who do that."

"I guess you'll be in it," said Helen promptly. "If it wasn't for your story they would not be able to feature Wonota."

"Anyway," went on Jennie, "I want to go West with you, Ruth—and so does Helen. Don't you, Nell?"

"I certainly do," agreed Ruth's good friend. "Heavy and I are going to tag along, Ruthie, somehow. If there is a chaperone, father said I could go."

"Not Aunt Kate!" cried Jennie. "She says she has had enough. We dragged her down East this summer, but she will not leave Madison Avenue this winter."

"No need of worrying about that. Mother Paisley is going with the company. I have a part for her in my picture. She always looks out for the girls—a better chaperone than Mr. Hammond could hire," said Ruth.

"Fine!" cried Helen. "We'll go, then."

"We will," echoed Jennie.

"I wish you'd go to bed and let me go to sleep," complained the girl of the Red Mill. "I have a hard day's work to-morrow—I feel it."

She was not mistaken in this feeling. At eight Mr. Hammond's assistant telephoned that the director and the company would meet Ruth and Wonota at a certain downtown corner where several of the scenes were to be shot. Dressing rooms in a neighboring hotel had been engaged. Ruth and her charge hastened through their breakfast, and Mr. Stone's chauffeur drove them down to the corner mentioned.

It was a very busy spot, especially about noon. Ruth had seen so much of this location work done, that it did not bother her. She was only to stand to one side and watch, anyway. But Wonota asked:

"Oh! we don't have to do this right out here in public, do we, Miss Fielding?"

"You do," laughed her friend. "Why, the people on the street help make the picture seem reasonable and natural. You need not be frightened."

"But, shall I have to be in that half-Indian costume Mr. Hammond told me to wear? What will people say—or think?"

Ruth was amused. "That's the picture. You will see some of the characters in stranger garments than those of yours before we have finished. And, anyway, in New York you often see the most outlandish costumes on people—Turks in their national dress, Hindoos with turbans and robes, Japanese and Chinese women dressed in the silks and brocades of their lands. Oh, don't worry about bead-trimmed leggings and a few feathers. And your skirt in that costume is nowhere near as short as those worn by three-fourths of the girls you will see."

Aside from Wonota herself, there were few of the characters of the picture of "Brighteyes" appearing in the scenes at this point. Mr. Hammond had obtained a police permit of course, and the traffic officers and some other policemen in the neighborhood took an interest in the affair.

Traffic was held back at a certain point for a few moments so that there would not be too many people in the scene. Wonota could not be hidden. Ruth stood in the street watching the arrangements by the director and his assistants. Two films are always made at the same time, and the two camera men had got into position and had measured with their tapes the field of the picture to be taken.

Ruth had noticed an automobile stopped by the police on the other side of the cross street. She even was aware that two men in it were not dressed like ordinary city men. They had broad-brimmed hats on their heads.

But she really gave the car but a momentary glance. Wonota took up her closest attention. The Indian girl crossed and recrossed the field of the camera until she satisfied the director that her gait and facial expression was exactly what he wanted.

"All right!" he said through his megaphone. "Camera! Go!"

And at that very moment, and against the commanding gesture of the policeman governing the traffic, the car Ruth had so briefly noticed started forward, swerved into the avenue, and ran straight at Ruth as though to run her down!



CHAPTER XI

EVADING THE TRAFFIC POLICE

Ruth had turned her back on the car and did not see it slip out of the crowd of motor traffic and turn into the avenue. But Wonota, the Indian girl, saw her friend's danger. She uttered a loud cry and bounded out of the camera field just as the two camera men began to crank their machines.

"Look out, Miss Fielding!"

The cry startled Ruth, but it did not aid her much to escape. And perhaps the chauffeur of the car only intended to crowd by the girl of the Red Mill and so escape from the traffic hold-up.

At Wonota's scream the director shouted for the camera men to halt. He started himself with angry excitement after the Indian girl. She had utterly spoiled the shot.

But on the instant he was adding his warning cry to Wonota's and to the cries of other bystanders. Ruth, amazed, could not understand what Wonota meant. Then the car was upon her, the mudguard knocked her down, and her loose coat catching in some part of the car, she was dragged for several yards before Wonota could reach her.

Over and over in the dust Ruth had been whirled. She was breathless and bruised. She could not even cry out, the shock of the accident was so great.

The instant the Indian girl reached the prostrate Ruth the motor-car broke away and its driver shot the machine around the nearest corner and out of sight.

A policeman charged after the car at top speed, but when he reached the corner there were so many other cars in the cross street that he could not identify the one that had caused the accident.

To Ruth, Wonota gasped: "That bad man! I knew he would do something mean, but I thought it would be to me."

Ruth could scarcely reply. The director was at her side, as well as other sympathetic people. She was lifted up, but she could not stand. Something had happened to her left ankle. She could bear no weight upon it without exquisite pain.

For the time the taking of the picture was called off. The traffic officer allowed the stalled cars to pass on. A crowd began to assemble about Ruth.

"Do take me into the hotel—somewhere!" she gasped. "I—I can't walk—"

One of the camera men and the director, Mr. Hooley, made a seat with their hands, and sitting in this and with Wonota to steady her, the girl of the Red Mill was hurried under cover, leaving the throng of spectators on the street quite sure that the accident had been a planned incident of the moving picture people. They evidently considered Ruth a "stunt actress."

It was not until Ruth was alone with Wonota in a hotel room, lying on a couch, the Indian girl stripping the shoe and stocking from the injured limb, that Ruth asked what Wonota had meant when she first bounded toward her, shrieking her warning of the motor-car's approach.

"What did you mean, Wonota?" asked the girl of the Red Mill. "Who was it ran over me? I know Mr. Hooley will try to find him, but—"

"That bad, bad Dakota Joe!" interrupted the Indian girl with vehemence, her eyes flashing and the color deeping in her bronze cheeks. "When your friend told us he was in this city, I feared."

"Why, Wonota!" cried Ruth, sitting up in surprise, "do you mean to say that Dakota Joe Fenbrook was driving that car?"

"No. He cannot drive a car. But it was one of his men—Yes."

"I can scarcely believe it. He deliberately ran me down?"

"I saw Dakota Joe in the back of the car just as it shot down toward you, Miss Fielding. He is a bad, bad man! He was leaning forward urging that driver on. I know he was."

"Why, it seems terrible!" Ruth sighed. "Yes, that feels good on my ankle, Wonota. I do not believe it is really sprained. Oh, but it hurt at first! Wrenched, I suppose."

Jim Hooley, the director, had telephoned for Mr. Hammond, and the producer hurried to the hotel. He insisted on bringing a surgeon with him. But by the time of their arrival Ruth felt much easier, and after the medical man had pronounced no real harm done to the ankle, Ruth dressed again, insisting that a second attempt be made to shoot the scene while the sun remained high enough.

The police had endeavored to trace the motor-car that had caused the accident. But it seemed that nobody had noted the numbers on the machine, or even the kind of car it was. Ruth had forbidden Wonota to tell what she revealed to her. If it was Dakota Joe who had run her down there was no use attempting to fasten the guilt of the incident upon him unless they were positive and could prove his guilt.

"And you know, Wonota, you cannot be sure—"

"I saw him. It was for but a moment, but I saw him," said the Indian girl positively.

"Even at that, it would take corroborative testimony to convince the court," mused Ruth.

"I do not understand paleface laws," said Wonota, shaking her head. "If an Indian does something like that to another Indian, the injured one can punish his enemy. And he almost always does."

"But we cannot take the law into our own hands that way."

"Why not?" asked Wonota. "Is a redman so much superior to a white man? If the redman can punish an enemy why cannot a white man?"

"Our law does not leave it in our hands to punish," said Ruth, quietly, though rather staggered by the Indian girl's question. "We have courts, and judges, and methods of criminal procedure. A person who has been injured by another cannot be the best judge of the punishment to be meted out to the one who has harmed him."

"Why not?" demanded Wonota, promptly. "He is the one hurt. Who other than he should deal out punishment?"

Ruth was silenced for the time being. In fact, Wonota looked upon mundane matters from such a different angle that it was sometimes impossible for Ruth to convince her protege that the white man's way was better.

However, this incident gave Ruth Fielding a warning that she did not intend to ignore. A little later she told Mr. Hammond of the Indian girl's suspicion that it was Fenbrook who had been the cause of Ruth's slight injury. It was too late then to set the police on the track of the showman, for on making private inquiry Mr. Hammond found that Dakota Joe's show had already left Brooklyn and was en route for some city in the Middle West.

"But it seems scarcely probable, Miss Ruth," the producer said, "that that fellow would take such a chance. And to hurt you! Why, if he had tried to injure that Indian girl, I might be convinced. She probably saw somebody in the car with a sombrero on—"

"I noticed two men in that car with broad hats," confessed Ruth. "But I gave them only a glance. It doesn't seem very sensible to believe that the man would deliberately hurt me. Yet he did threaten us when he was angry, there at the mill. No getting around that."

Mr. Hammond shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "You will begin to believe that the making of moving pictures is a pretty perilous business."

"It may be." She laughed, yet rather doubtfully. "I am to be on the watch for the 'hand in the dark,' am I not? At any rate when we are hear Dakota Joe again, I will keep a very sharp lookout."

"Yes, of course, Miss Ruth, we'll all do that," returned Mr. Hammond, more seriously now, for he saw that Ruth was really disturbed. "Still, whatever his intentions, I do not believe Fenbrook will have the power to do any real harm. At any rate, keep your courage up, for we are forewarned now, and can take care of ourselves—and of you," he added, with a smile, as he left her.



CHAPTER XII

BOUND FOR THE NORTHWEST

Because of the accident in which Ruth might have been seriously hurt, the company was delayed for a day in New York, Altogether the various shots (some of them of and in one of the tallest office buildings on Broadway) occupied more than a week—more time than Mr. Hammond wished to give to the work in the East.

Nevertheless, Ruth's finished script, as handled deftly by the continuity writer, promised so well that the producer was willing to make a special production of it. The money—and time—cost were important factors in the making of the picture; but the selection of the cast was not to be overlooked. Jim Hooley had chosen the few acting in the Eastern scenes with Wonota, including the hero, whom, to tell the truth, the Indian girl considered a rather wonderful person because she saw him in a dress suit"

"Yes, it is true! No Indian could look so heroic a figure," she whispered to Ruth. "He looks like—like a nobleman. I have read about noblemen in the book of an author named Scott—Sir Walter Scott. Noblemen must look like Mr. Albert Grand."

"And to me he looks like a head waiter," said Ruth, when laughingly relating this to Helen and Jennie.

"Don't let Mr. Grand hear you say that," warned Helen. "They tell me that he refuses to appear in any picture where at least once he does not walk into the scene in a dress suit. He claims his clientele demand it—he looks so perfectly splendid in the 'soup and fish.'"

"Then why laugh at Wonota?" demanded Jennie Stone. "She is no more impressed by his surface qualities than are the movie fans who like Mr. Grand."

"Well, it is a great game," laughed Ruth. "Some of the movie stars have more laughable eccentricities or idiosyncracies than that. I wonder what our Wonota will develop if she becomes a star?"

The development of the Indian girl was promising so far. She had feeling for her part, if it was at first rather difficult for her to express in her features those emotions which, as an Indian, she had considered it proper to hide. She did just enough of this to make her feelings show on the screen, yet without being unnatural in the part of Brighteyes, the Indian maid.

Mr. Hammond was inclined to believe that "Brighteyes" would be a big feature picture. The director was enthusiastic about it as well. And even the camera man (than whom can be imagined no more case-hardened critic of pictures) expressed his belief that it would be a "knockout."

Mr. Hammond arranged for a special car for the cross-continent run, and he took his own family along, as the weather prophesied for the ensuing few weeks was favorable to out-of-door work and living. The special car made it possible for Ruth and her two friends, Helen and Jennie, as well as the Osage Indian girl, to be very comfortably placed during the journey.

Ruth had traveled before this—north, south, east and west—and there was scarcely anything novel in train riding for her. But a journey would never be dull with Jennie Stone and Helen Cameron as companions!

They ruined completely the morale of the car service. The colored porter could scarcely shine the other passengers' shoes he was kept so much at the beck and call of the two wealthy girls, who tipped lavishly. The Pullman conductor was cornered on every possible occasion and led into discourse entirely foreign to his duties. Even the "candy butcher" was waylaid and made to serve the ends of two girls who had perfectly idle hands and—so Ruth declared—quite as idle brains.

"Well, goodness!" remarked Helen, "we must occupy our minds and time in some way. You, Ruthie, are confined to that story of yours about twenty-five hours out of the twenty-four. Even Wonota has thought only for her tiresome beadwork when she is not studying her part with Mr. Hooley and you. I know we'll have fun when we get to the Hubbell Ranch where Mr. Hammond says your picture is to be filmed. I do just dote on cowboys and the fuzzy little ponies they ride."

"And the dear cows!" drawled Jennie. "Do you remember that maniacal creature that attacked our motor-car that time we went to Silver Ranch, years and years and years ago? You know, back in the Paleozoic Age!"

"Quite so," agreed Helen. "I have a photographic remembrance of that creature—ugh! And how he burst our tires!"

"He, forsooth! What a way to speak of a cow!"

"It wasn't a cow; it was a steer," declared Helen confidently.

Ruth retired from the observation platform where her chums were ensconced, allowing them to argue the matter to a finish. It was true that the girl of the Red Mill was very busy most of her waking hours on the train. They all took a recess at Chicago, however, and it was there a second incident occurred that showed Dakota Joe Fenbrook had not forgotten his threat to "get even" with Ruth Fielding and the moving picture producer with whom she was associated.

The special car was sidetracked just outside of Chicago and the whole party motored into the city in various automobiles and on various errands. The Hammonds had relatives to visit. Ruth and her three girl companions had telegraphed ahead for reservations at one of the big hotels, and they proposed to spend the two days and nights Mr. Hammond had arranged for in seeing the sights and attending two particular theatrical performances.

"And I declare!" cried Helen, as they rolled on through one of the suburbs of the city, "there is one of the sights, sure enough. See that billboard, girls?"

"Oh!" cried Wonota, who possessed quite as sharp eyes as anybody in the party.

"We can't escape that man," sighed Jennie, as she read in towering letters the announcement of "Dakota Joe's Wild West and Frontier Round-Up."

"I am sorry the show is here in Chicago," added Ruth with serious mien. "I am still limping. Next time that awful man will manage to lame me completely."

"You ought to have a guard. Tell the police—do!" exclaimed Jennie Stone.

"Tell the police what?" demanded Ruth, with scorn. "We can't prove anything."

"I know it was Joe in that car that ran you down, Miss Fielding," declared Wonota, with anxiety.

"Yes. But nobody else saw him—to recognize him, I mean. We cannot base a complaint upon such little foundation. Nor would it be well, perhaps, to get Dakota Joe into the courts. He is a very vindictive man—he must be——"

"He is very bad man!" repeated Wonota vehemently.

"Yes. That is just it. Why stir up his passions to a greater degree, then?"

"Of course, Ruthie would want to turn 'the other cheek,'" scoffed Jennie.

"I am not going around with a chip on my shoulder, looking for somebody to knock it off," laughed the girl of the Red Mill. "I just want Joe to leave us alone—that's all."

Wonota shook her head and seemed unconvinced of the wisdom of this. She was not a pacifist. She knew, too, the heart of the showman, and perhaps she feared him more than she was willing to tell her new friends.

The four girls made their headquarters at the hotel, and then set forth at once to shop and to look. As the hours of that first day passed Wonota was vastly excited over the new sights. For once she lost that stoic calmness which was her racial trait. The big stores and the tall buildings here in the mid-western city seemed to impress her even more than had those in New York.

There was reason for that. She was, while in New York, so much taken up with the part she was playing in "Brighteyes" that she could think of little else. She saw many things in the stores she wished to buy. Ruth had advanced Wonota some money on her contract with the Alectrion Film Corporation. But when it came right down to the point of buying the things that girls like and long for—little trinkets and articles of adornment—the Indian girl hesitated.

"Buy it if it pleases you," Ruth said, rather wondering at the firmness with which Wonota drew back from selecting and paying for something that cost less than a dollar.

"No, Miss Fielding. Wonota does not need that. Chief Totantora may be lost to me forever. I should not adorn myself, or think of self-adornment. No! I will save my money until I can go to that Europe where the great chief is held a prisoner."

The girls—Helen and Jennie—were both for buying presents for the Indian girl, as she would not use her own money. But Ruth would not allow them to purchase other than the simplest souveniers.

"That would spoil it all. Let her deny herself in such a cause—it will not hurt her," the girl of the Red Mill said sensibly. "She has an object in life and should be encouraged to follow out her plan for helping Chief Totantora."

"Maybe he is not alive now," said Helen, thoughtfully.

"I would not suggest that," Ruth hastened to rejoin. "As long as she can hope, the better for Wonota. And I should not want her to find out that Totantora has died in captivity, before my picture is finished."

"Whoo!" breathed Jennie. "You sound sort of selfish, Ruthie Fielding."

"For her sake as well as for the sake of the picture," returned the other practically. "I tell you Wonota has got it in her to be a valuable asset to the movies. But I hope nothing will happen to make her fall down on this first piece of work. Like Mr. Hammond, I hope that she will develop into an Indian star of the very first magnitude."



CHAPTER XIII

DAKOTA JOE MAKES A DEMAND

At first Ruth and her friends did not worry about the presence of Fenbrook and his Wild West Show in Chicago.

"Just riding past the billboard of the show isn't going to hurt us," chuckled Jennie Stone.

It was a fact soon proved, however, that the Westerner had made it his business in some way to keep track of the movements of Wonota and her friends. He made this known to them in a most unexpected way, Mr. Hammond called Ruth up at her hotel.

"I must warn you, Miss Fielding" he said, "that I had a very unpleasant meeting with that man, Fenbrook, only an hour ago. He actually had the effrontery to look me up here in Wabash Avenue where I am staying with my family, and practically demanded that I help finance his miserable show because I had taken Wonota from him. He claims now she was his chief attraction, though he would not admit that she was worth a living wage when he had her under contract He was so excited and threatening that I called an officer and had him put out of the house."

"Oh!" murmured Ruth. "Then he is in jail? He will not trouble us, then?"

"He is not in jail. I made no complaint. Just warned him to keep away from here. But he said something about finding Wonota and making trouble."

"I am sure, Mr. Hammond," said Ruth with no little anxiety, "that we had better leave Chicago, then, as soon as possible. And if he comes here to the hotel I will try to have him arrested and kept by the police. I am afraid of him.

"I do not believe he will do anything very desperate—"

"I am not so sure," Ruth interrupted. "Wonota is confident it was he who ran me down in New York. I am afraid of him," she repeated.

"Well, I will arrange for the shortening of our stay here. Mr. Hooley will 'phone you the time we will leave—probably to-morrow morning very early."

Ruth said nothing to the other three girls—why trouble them with a mere possibility?—and they went to the theatre that evening and enjoyed the play immensely. But getting out of the taxicab at the hotel door near midnight, Wonota, who was the first to step out, suddenly crowded back into Ruth Fielding's arms as the latter attempted to follow her to the sidewalk.

"What is the matter, Wonota?" the girl of the Red Mill asked.

"There he is!" murmured the Indian girl, drawing herself up.

"There who is?" was Ruth's demand. Then she saw the object of Wonota's anxiety, Dakota Joe stood under the portico of the hotel entrance. "He's waiting for us!" hissed Ruth. "Stop, girls! Don't get out."

Helen and Jennie, over the heads of the others, saw the man. Jennie was irrepressible of course.

"What do you expect us to do? Ride around all night in this taxi?"

"Call a policeman!" cried Helen, under her breath.

"Come back in here, Wonota," commanded Ruth, making up her mind with her usual assurance. "Say nothing, girls." Then to the driver Ruth observed: "Isn't there a side entrance to this hotel?"

"Yes, ma'am. Round on the other street."

"Take us around to that door. We see somebody waiting here whom we do not wish to speak with."

"All right, ma'am," agreed the taxicab driver.

In two minutes they were whisked around to the other door, and entered the hotel thereby. As they passed through the lobby to the elevators one of the clerks came to Ruth.

"A man has been asking for you, Miss Fielding" he said. "He—he seems a peculiar individual—"

Ruth described Dakota Joe Fenbrook and the clerk admitted that he was the man. "A rather rude person," he said.

"So rude that we do not wish to see him," Ruth told the clerk. "Please keep him away from us. He is annoying, and if he attempts to interfere with me, I will call a policeman."

"Oh, we could allow nothing like that," the clerk hastened to say. "No disturbance would be countenanced by the management of the hotel," and he shook his head. "We will keep him away from you, Miss Fielding."

"Thank you," said Ruth, and followed her friends into the elevator. She felt that they were free of Dakota Joe until morning at least She assured Wonota that she need not worry.

"That bad man may hurt you. I am not afraid," declared the Indian girl. "If I only had him out on the Osage Reservation, I would know what to do to with him."

But she did not explain what treatment she would accord Dokota Joe if she were at home.

It was only seven o'clock when Jim Hooley called on the telephone and told Ruth that, following instructions from Mr. Hammond, he had gathered the company together and that the special car standing in the railroad yard outside Chicago would be picked up by the nine-thirty western bound Continental. The girls had scarcely time to dress and drive to the point of departure. There was some "scrabbling," as Jennie expressed it, to dress, get their possessions together, and get away from the hotel.

"Didn't see Dakota Joe anywhere about, did you?" Helen asked, as their taxi-cab-left the hotel entrance.

"For goodness' sake! he would not have hung about the hotel all night, would he?" demanded Jennie.

"Mr. Hammond seems to be afraid of the man" pursued Helen. "Or we would not be running away like this."

Ruth smiled. "I guess," she said, "that Mr. Hammond is hurrying us on for a different reason. You must remember that he has this company on salary and that the longer we delay on the way to the Hubbell Ranch the more money it is costing him while the company is idle."

It was proved, however, that the picture producer had a good reason for wishing to get out of Dakota Joe's neighborhood. When the four girls in the taxicab rolled up to the gate of the railroad yard and got out with their bags, Dakota Joe himself popped out of hiding. With him a broad-hatted man in a blue suit.

"Hey!" ejaculated the showman, standing directly in Ruth's path. "I got you now where I want you. That Hammond man won't help me, and I told him the trouble I'm in jest because he got that Injun gal away from me. I see her! That's the gal—"

"What do you want of me, Mr. Fenbrook?" demanded Ruth, bravely, and gesturing Wonota to remain behind her. "I have no idea why you should hound me in this way."

"I ain't houndin' you."

"I should like to know what you call it then!" the girl of the Red Mill demanded indignantly.

She was quick to grasp the chance of engaging Fenbrook in an argument that would enable Wonota and the two other girls to slip out of the other door of the taxicab and reach the yard gate. She flashed a look over her shoulder that Helen Cameron understood. She and Jennie and Wonota alighted from the other side of the cab.

"I got an officer here," stammered Dakota Joe. "He's a marshal. That Injun gal's got to be taken before the United States District Court. She's got to show cause why she shouldn't come back to my show and fill out the time of her contract."

"She finished her contract with you, and you know it, Fenbrook," declared Ruth, turning to pay the driver of the cab.

"I say she didn't!" cried Dakota Joe. "Officer! You serve that warrant—Hey! where's that Wonota gone to?"

The Indian girl and Ruth's friends had disappeared. Dakota Joe lunged for the gate. But since the beginning of the war this particular railroad yard had been closed to the public. A man stood at the gate who barred the entrance of the showman.

"You don't come in here, brother," said the railroad man. "Not unless you've got a pass or a permit."

"Hey!" shouted Dakota Joe, calling the marshal. "Show this guy your warrant."

"Don't show me nothin'," rejoined the railroad employee. He let Ruth slip through and whispered: "Your party's aboard your car. There's a switcher coupled on. She'll scoot you all down the yard to the main line. Get aboard."

Ruth slipped through the gate, while the guard stood in a position to prevent the two men from approaching it. The girl heard the gate close behind her.

It was evident that Mr. Hammond had been apprised of Dakota Joe's attempt to bring the Indian girl into court. Of course, the judge would deny his appeal; but a court session would delay the party's journey westward.

Ruth saw the other girls ahead of her, and she ran to the car. Mr. Hammond himself was on the platform to welcome them.

"That fellow is a most awful nuisance. I had to make an arrangement with the railroad company to get us out of here at once. Luckily I have a friend high up among the officials of the company. Come aboard, Miss Ruth. Everybody else is here and we are about to start."



CHAPTER XIV

THE HUBBELL RANCH

"You see, Miss Ruth," Mr. Hammond told the girl of the Red Mill as the special car rolled out of the railroad yard, "this Dakota Joe has become a very annoying individual. We had to fairly run away from him."

"I do not understand," Ruth said. "I think he should be shown his place—and that place I believe is the police station."

"It would be rather difficult to get him into that for any length of time. And in any case," and the picture producer smiled, it would cost more than it would be worth. He really has done nothing for which he can be punished—"

"I don't know. He might have had me killed that time his auto ran me down," interrupted Ruth, indignantly.

"But the trouble is, we cannot prove that," Mr. Hammond hastened to repeat. "I will see that you are fully protected from him hereafter."

Mr. Hammond did not realize what a large undertaking that was to be. But he meant it at the time.

"The man is in trouble—no doubt of it," went on the producer reflectively. "He has had a bad season, and his winter prospects are not bright. I gave him an hour of my time yesterday before I advised you that we would better get away from Chicago."

"But what does he expect of you, Mr. Hammond?" asked Ruth in surprise.

"He claims we are the cause of his unhappy business difficulties. His show in on the verge of disintegrating. He wanted me to back him with several thousand dollars. Of course, that is impossible."

"Why!" cried Ruth, "I would not risk a cent with such a man."

"I suppose not. And I felt no urge to comply with his request. He was really so rough about it, and became so ugly, that I had to have him shown out of the house."

"Goodness! I am glad we are going far away from him."

"Yes, he is not a nice neighbor," agreed Mr. Hammond. "I hope Wonota will repay us for all the bother we have had with Dakota Joe."

"It seems too bad. Of course, it is not Wonota's fault," said Ruth. "But if we had not come across her—if I had not met her, I mean—you would not have been annoyed in this way, Mr. Hammond."

"Take it the other way around, Miss Ruth," returned her friend, with a quizzical smile. "We should be very glad that you did meet Wonota. Considering what that mad bull would have done to you if she had not swerved him by a rifle shot, a little bother like this is a small price to pay."

"Oh—well!"

"In addition," said Mr. Hammond briskly, "look what we may make out of the Indian girl. She may coin us a mint of money, Ruth Fielding."

"Perhaps," smiled Ruth.

But she was not so eager for money. The thing that fascinated her imagination was the possibility that they might make of Wonota, the Osage maiden, a great and famous movie star. Ruth desired very much to have a part in that work.

She knew, because Mr. Hammond had told her, as well as Wonota herself, that the Osage Indians as a tribe were the wealthiest people under the guardianship of the American Government. Their oil leases were fast bringing the tribe a great fortune. But Wonota, being under age, had no share in this wealth. At this time the income of the tribe was between four and five thousand dollars a day—and the tribe was not large.

"But Wonota can have none of that," explained the Indian maid. "It is apportioned to the families, and Totantora, the head of my family, is somewhere in that Europe where the war is. I can get no share of the money. It is not allowed."

So, with the incentive of getting money for her search, Wonota was desirous of pleasing her white friends in every particular. Besides, ambition had budded in the girl's heart. She wanted to be a screen actress.

"If your 'Brighteyes,' Miss Fielding, is ever shown at Three Rivers Station or Pawhuska, where the Agency is, I know every member of the tribe will go to see the film. When some of the young men of our tribe acted in a round-up picture when I was a little girl, even the old men and great-grandmothers traveled a hundred miles to see the film run off. It was like an exodus, for some of them were two days and nights on the way"

"The Osage Indians are not behind the times, then?" laughed Ruth. "They are movie fans?"

"They realize that their own day has departed. The buffalo and elk have gone. Even the prairie chickens are seen but seldom. Almost no game is found upon our plains, and not much back in the hills. Many of our young men till the soil. Some have been to the Carlisle School and have taken up professions or are teachers. The Osage people are no longer warlike. But some of our young men volunteered for this white man's war."

"I know that," sad Ruth warmly. "I saw some of them over there in France—at least, some Indian volunteers. Captain Cameron worked in the Intelligence Service with some of them. That is the spy service, you know. The Indians were just as good scouts in France and Belgium as they were on their own plains."

"We are always the same. It is only white men who change," declared Wonota with confidence. "The redman is never two-faced or two-tongued."

"Well," grumbled Jennie, afterward, "what answer was there to make to that? She has her own opinion of Lo, the poor Indian, and it would be impossible to shake it."

"Who wants to shake it?" demanded Helen. "Maybe she is right, at that!"

The thing about Wonota that "gave the fidgets" to Jennie and Helen was the fact that she could sit for mile after mile, while the train rocked over the rails, beading moccasins and other wearing apparel, and with scarcely a glance out of the car window. Towns, villages, rivers, plains, woods and hills, swept by in green and brown panorama, and seemed to interest Wonota not at all. It was only when the train, after they changed at Denver, began to climb into the Rockies that the Indian maid grew interested.

The Osage Indians had always been a plains' tribe. The rugged and white-capped heights interested Wonota because they were strange to her. Here, too, were primeval forests visible from the windows of the car. Hemlock and spruce in black masses clothed the mountainsides, while bare-limbed groves of other wood filled the valleys and the sweeps of the hills.

Years before Ruth and her two chums had been through this country in going to "Silver Ranch," but the charm of its mysterious gorges, its tottering cliffs, its deep canyons where the dashing waters flowed, and the generally rugged aspect of all nature, did not fail now to awe them. Wonota was not alone in gazing, enthralled, at the landscape which was here revealed.

Two days of this journey amid the mountains, and the train slowed down at Clearwater, where the special car was sidetracked. Although the station was some distance from the "location" Mr. Hammond's representative had selected for the taking of the outdoor pictures, the company was to use the car as its headquarters. There were several automobiles and a herd of riding ponies at hand for the use of the company. Here, too, Mr. Hammond and his companions were met by the remainder of the performers selected to play parts in "Brighteyes."

There were about twenty riders—cowpunchers and the like; "stunt riders," for the most part. In addition there were more than a score of Indians—some pure blood like Wonota, but many of them halfbreeds, and all used to the moving picture work, down to the very toddlers clinging to their mothers' blankets. The Osage princess was inclined to look scornfully at this hybrid crew at first. Finally, however, she found them to be very decent sort of folk, although none of them were of her tribe.

Ruth and Helen and Jennie met several riders who had worked for Mr. Hammond when he had made Ruth's former Western picture which is described in "Ruth Fielding in the Saddle," and the gallant Westerners were ready to devote themselves to the entertainment of the girls from the East.

There was only one day of planning and making ready for the picture, in which Helen and Jennie could be "beaued" about by the cow-punchers. Ruth was engaged with Mr. Hammond, Jim Hooley, and the camera man and their assistants. Everyone was called for work on the ensuing morning and the automobiles and the cavalcade of pony-riders started for the Hubbell Ranch.

Wonota rode in costume and upon a pony that was quite the equal of her own West Wind. This pet she had shipped from the Red Mill to her home in Oklahoma before going to New York. The principal characters had made up at the car and went out in costume, too, They had to travel about ten miles to the first location.

The Hubbell Ranch grazed some steers; but It was a horse ranch in particular. The country was rugged and offered not very good pasturage for cattle. But the stockman, Arad Hubbell, was one of the largest shippers of horses and mules in the state.

It was because of the many half-broken horses and mules to be had on the ranch that Mr. Hammond had decided to make "Brighteyes" here. The first scenes of the prologue—including the Indian scare—were to be taken in the open country near the ranch buildings. Naturally the buildings were not included in any of the pictures.

A train of ten emigrant wagons, drawn by mules, made an imposing showing as it followed the dusty cattle trail. The train wound in and out of coulees, through romantic-looking ravines, and finally out upon the flat grass-country where the Indians came first into view of the supposedly frightened pilgrims.

Helen and Jennie, as well as Ruth herself, in the gingham and sunbonnets of the far West of that earlier day, added to the crowd of emigrants riding in the wagons. When the Indians were supposed to appear the excitement of the players was very realistic indeed, and this included the mules! The stock was all fresh, and the excitement of the human performers spread to it. The wagons raced over the rough trail in a way that shook up severely the girls riding in them.

"Oh—oo!" squealed Jennie Stone, clinging to Ruth and Helen. "What are they trying to do? I'll be one m-a-ass of bruises!"

"Stop, William!" commanded Ruth, trying to make the driver of their wagon hear her. "This is too—too realistic."

The man did not seem to hear her at all. Ruth scrambled up and staggered toward the front, although Mr. Hooley had instructed the girls to remain at the rear of the wagons so that they could be seen from the place where the cameras were stationed.

"Stop!" cried Ruth again. "You will tip us over—or something."

There was good reason why William did not obey. His six mules had broken away from his control entirely.

A man must be a master driver to hold the reins over three span of mules; and William was as good as any man in the outfit. But as he got his team into a gallop the leaders took fright at the charging Indians on pony-back, and tried to leave the trail.

William was alone on the driver's seat. He put all his strength into an attempt to drag the leaders back into the trail and—the rein broke!

Under ordinary circumstances this accident would not have been of much moment. But to have pulled the other mules around, and so throw the runaways, would have spoiled the picture. William was too old a movie worker to do that.

When Ruth stumbled to the front of the swaying wagon and seized his shoulder he cast rather an embarrassed glance back at her.

"Stop them! Stop!" the girl commanded.

"I'd like mighty well to do it, Miss Fielding," said William, wagging his head, "but these dratted mules have got their heads and—they—ain't—-no notion o' stoppin' this side of the ranch corrals."

Ruth understood him. She stared straight ahead with a gaze that became almost stony. This leading wagon was heading for the break of a ravine into which the trail plunged at a sharp angle. If the mules were swerved at the curve the heavy wagon would surely overturn.

In twenty seconds the catastrophe would happen!



CHAPTER XV

PURSUING DANGER

When a mule is once going, it is just as stubborn about stopping as it is about being started if it feels balky. The leading span attached to the covered wagon in which Ruth and her two chums, Helen Cameron and Jennie Stone, rode had now communicated their own fright to the four other animals. All six were utterly unmanageable.

"Do tell him to stop, Ruth!" shrieked Jennie Stone from the rear of the wagon.

The next moment she shot into the air as the wheels on one side bounced over an outcropping boulder. She came down clawing at Helen to save herself from flying out of the end of the wagon.

"Oh! This is too much!" shouted Helen, quite as frightened as her companion. "I mean to get out! Don't a-a-ask me to—to act in moving pictures again. I never will!"

"Talk about rough stuff!" groaned Jennie. "This is the limit."

Neither of them realized the danger that threatened. Of the three girls only Ruth knew what was just ahead. The maddened mules were dragging the emigrant wagon for a pitch into the ravine that boded nothing less than disaster for all.

In the band of Indians riding for the string of covered wagons Wonota had been numbered. She could ride a barebacked pony as well as any buck in the party. She had removed her skirt and rode in the guise of a young brave. The pinto pony she bestrode was speedy, and the Osage maid managed him perfectly.

Long before the train of wagons and the pursuing band of Indians got into the focus of the cameras, Wonota, as well as her companions, saw that the six mules drawing the head wagon were out of control. The dash of the frightened animals added considerable to the realism of the picture, as they swept past Jim Hooley and his camera men; but the director was quite aware that disaster threatened William's outfit.

"Crank it up! Crank it!" he commanded the camera men. "It looks as if we were going to get something bigger than we expected."

Mr. Hammond stood behind him. He saw the three white girls in the rear of the wagon. It was he who shouted:

"That runaway must be stopped! It's Miss Fielding and her friends in that wagon. Stop them!"

"Great Scott, Boss! how you going to stop those mules?" Jim Hooley demanded.

But Wonota did not ask anybody as to the method of stopping the runaway. She was perfectly fearless—of either horses or mules. She lashed her pinto ahead of the rest of the Indian band, cut across a curve of the trail, and bore down on the runaway wagon.

"That confounded girl is spoiling the shot!" yelled Hooley.

"Never mind! Never mind!" returned Mr. Hammond. "She is going to do something. There!"

And Wonota certainly did do something. Aiming her pinto across the noses of the lead-mules, she swerved them off the trail before they reached that sharp turn at the break of the rough hill. The broken rein made it impossible for the driver to swerve the leaders that way; but Wonota turned the trick.

William stood up, despite the bounding wagon, his foot on the brake, yanking with all his might at the jaws of the other four mules. All six swung in a wide circle. But William admitted that it was the Indian girl who started the crazed mules into this path.

The wheels dipped and bounced, threatening each moment to capsize the wagon. But the catastrophe did not occur. The other Indians rode down upon the head of the string of wagons madly, with excited whoops. For once the whole crowd forgot that they were making a picture.

And that very forgetfulness on the part of the actors made the picture a great success The finish was not quite as Ruth had written the story, or as Hooley had planned to take it. But it was better!

"It's a peach! It's a peach! The shot was perfect!" the director cried, smiting Mr. Hammond on the back in his excitement. "What do you know about that, Boss? Can't we let her stand as the camera has it?"

"I believe it is a good shot," agreed Mr. Hammond. "We'll try it out to-night in the car." One end of the special car was arranged as a projection room. "If the Indians did not hide the wagon too much, that dash of the girl was certainly spectacular."

"It was a peach," again declared the director. "And nobody will ever see that she is a girl instead of a man. We got one good shot, here, Mr. Hammond, whether anything else comes out right or not."

The girls who had taken the parts of emigrant women in the runaway wagon were not quite so enthusiastic over the success of the event, not even when the director sent his congratulations to them. All three were determined that if a "repeat" was demanded, they would refuse to play the parts again.

"I don't want to ride in anything like that wagon again," declared Ruth. "It was awful."

"Enough is enough," agreed Helen. "Another moment, and we would have been out on our heads."

"I'm black and blue—or will be—from collar to shoes. What a jouncing we did get! Girls, do you suppose that fellow with the shaggy ears did it on purpose?"

"Whom do you mean—William or one of the mules?" asked Helen.

"I am sure William was helpless," said Ruth. "He was just as much scared as we were. But Wonota was just splendid!"

"I am willing to pass her a vote of thanks," groaned Jennie. "But we can't expect her to be always on hand to save us from disaster. You don't catch me in any such jam again."

"Oh, nothing like this is likely to happen to us again," Ruth said. "We're just as safe taking this picture as we would be at home—at the Red Mill, for instance."

"I don't know about that," grumbled Helen. "I feel that more trouble is hanging over us. I feel it in my bones."

"You'd better get a new set of bones," said Ruth cheerfully. "Yours seem to be worse, even, than poor Aunt Alvira's."

"Nell believes that life is just one thing after another," chuckled Jennie Stone. "Having struck a streak of bad luck, it must keep up."

"You wait and see," proclaimed Helen Cameron, decisively nodding her head.

"That's the easiest thing in the world to do—wait," gibed Ruth.

"No, it isn't, either. It's the hardest thing to do," declared Jennie, and Ruth thought she could detect a shade of sadness in the light tone the plump girl adopted. "And especially when—as Nell predicts—we are waiting for some awful disaster. Huh—" and the girl shuddered as realistically as perfect health and unshaken nerves and good nature would permit—"are we to pass our lives under the shadow of impending peril?"

It did seem, however, as though Helen had come under the mantle of some seeress of old. Jennie flatly declared that "Nell must be a descendant of the Witch of Endor."

The company managed to make several scenes that day without further disaster. Although in taking a close-up of the charging Indian chief one of the camera men was knocked down by the rearing pony the chief rode, and a perfectly good two hundred dollar camera was smashed beyond hope of repair.

"It's begun," said Helen, ruefully. "You see!"

"If you have brought a hoodoo into this outfit, woe be it to you!" cried Ruth.

"It is not me," proclaimed her chum. "But I tell you something is going to happen."

They worked so late that it was night before the company took the trail for Clearwater Station. There was no moon, and the stars were veiled by a haze that perhaps foreboded a storm.

This coming storm probably was what caused the excitement in a horse herd that they passed when half way to the railroad line. Or it might have been because the motor-cars, of which there were four, were strange to the half-wild horses that the bunch became frightened.

"There's something doing with them critters, boys!" William, who was riding ahead, called back to the other pony riders, who were rear guard to the automobiles. "Keep yer eyes peeled!"

His advice was scarcely necessary. The thunder of horse-hoofs on the turf was not to be mistaken. Through the darkness the stampeding animals swept down upon the party.

"Git, you fellers!" yelled another rider. "And keep a-goin'! Jest split the wind for the station!"

The horsemen swept past the jouncing motor-cars. Some of the women in the cars screamed. Helen cried:

"What did I tell you!"

"Don't—dare—tell us anything more!" jerked out Jennie.

Through the murk the girls saw the heads and flaunted manes of the coming horses. Just what harm they might do to the motor-cars, which could not be driven rapidly on this rough trail, Ruth and her two chums did not know. But the threat of the wild ponies' approach was not to be ignored.



CHAPTER XVI

NEWS AND A THREAT

A stampede of mad cattle is like the charge of a blind and insane monster. River, nor ravine, nor any other obstruction can halt the mad rush of the horned beasts. They pile right into it, and only if it is too steep or too high do they split and go around.

A stampede of horses is different in that the equine brain appreciates danger more clearly than that of the sullen steer. Behind a cattle stampede is often left an aftermath of dead and crippled beasts. But horses are more canny. A wild horse seldom breaks a leg or suffers other injury. It is not often that the picked skeleton of a horse is found in the hills.

This herd belonging to the Hubbell ranch charged through the night directly across the trail along which the moving picture company was riding. Those on horseback could probably escape; but the motor-cars could not be driven very rapidly over the rough road.

The girls screamed as the cars bumped and jounced. Out of the darkness appeared the up-reared heads and tossing manes of the ponies. There were possibly three hundred in the herd, and they ran en masse, snorting and neighing, mad with that fear of the unknown which is always at the root of every stampede.

The automobile in which Ruth Fielding and her two friends, Helen and Jennie, were seated was the last of the string. It seemed as though it could not possibly escape the stampede of half-wild ponies, even if the other cars did.

"Get down in the car, girls!" shouted Ruth, suiting her action to her word. "Don't try to jump or stand up. Stoop!"

There was good reason for her command. The plunging horses seemed almost upon the car. Indeed one leader—a big black stallion,—snorting and blowing, jumped over the rear of the car, clearing it completely, and bounded away upon the other side of the trail.

He was ahead of the main stampede, however. All that found the motor-car in the path could not perform his feat. Some would be sure to plunge into the car where Ruth and Helen and Jennie crouched.

Suddenly there rode into view, coming from the head of the string of cars, a wild rider, plying whip and heel to maddened pinto pony.

"Wonota! Go back! You'll be killed!" shrieked Ruth. And then she added: "The picture will be ruined if you are hurt."

Even had the Indian girl heard Ruth's cry she would have given it small attention. Wonota was less fearful of the charging ponies than were the punchers and professional riders working for Mr. Hammond.

At least, she was the first to visualize the danger threatening the girls in the motor-car, and she did not wait to be told what to do. Up ahead the men were shouting and telling each other that Miss Fielding was in danger. But Wonota went at the charging horses without question.

She forced her snorting pinto directly between the motor-car and the stampede. She lashed the foremost horses across their faces with her quirt. She wheeled her mount and kept on beside the motor-car as its driver tried to speed up along the trail.

The mad herd seemed intent on keeping with the motor-train. Wonota gave the pinto his head and lent her entire attention to striking at the first horses in the stampede. Her quirt brought squeals of pain from more than one of the charging animals.

She fell in behind the car at last, and the scattering members of the stampede swept by. Back charged several of the pony riders, but too late to give any aid. The chauffeur of Ruth's car slackened his dangerous pace and yelled:

"It's all over, you fellers! We might have been trod into the ground for all of you. It takes this Injun gal to turn the trick. I take off my hat to Wonota."

"I guess we all take off our hats to her!" cried Helen, sitting up again. "She saved us—that is what she did!"

"Good girl, Wonota!" Ruth exclaimed, as the snorting pinto brought its rider up beside the motor-car again.

"It was little to do," the Indian girl responded modestly. "After all you have done for me, Miss Fielding. And I am not afraid of horses."

"Them horses was something to be afraid of—believe me!" ejaculated one of the men. "The gal's a peach of a rider at that."

Here Helen suddenly demanded to know where Jennie was.

"I do believe she's burrowed right through the bottom of this tonneau!"

"Haven't either!" came in the muffled voice of the fleshy girl, and she began to rise up from under enveloping robes. "Take your foot off my arm, Nell. You're trampling me awfully. I thought it was one of those dreadful horses!"

"Well—I—like—that!" gasped Helen.

"I didn't," Jennie groaned, finally coming to the surface—like a porpoise, Ruth gigglingly suggested, to breathe! "I was sure one of those awful creatures was stamping on me. If I haven't suffered this day! Such spots as were not already black and blue, are now properly bruised. I shall be a sight."

"Poor Heavy!" said Ruth. "You always have the hard part. But, thank goodness, we escaped in safety!"

"Do let's go to a hotel somewhere and stay a week to recuperate," begged the fleshy girl, as they rode on toward the railroad town. "One day of movie making calls for a week of rest—believe me!"

"You and Helen can remain at the car—"

"Not me!" cried Helen Cameron. "I do not wish to be in the picture again, but I want to see it made."

After they arrived at the special car, where a piping hot supper was ready for them, the girls forgot the shock of their adventure. Jennie, however, groaned whenever she moved.

"'Tis too bad that fat girl got so bunged up," observed one of the punchers to Helen Cameron. "I see she's a-sufferin'."

"Miss Stone's avoirdupois is forever making her trouble," laughed Helen, rather wickedly.

"Huh?" demanded the man. "Alfy Dupoy? Who's that? Her feller?"

"Oh, dear me, no!" gasped Helen. "His name is Henri Marchand. I shall have to tell her that."

"Needn't mind," returned the man. "I can't be blamed for misunderstanding half what you Easterners say. You got me locoed right from the start."

The joke had to be told when the three friends retired that night, and it was perhaps fortunate that Jennie Stone possessed an equable disposition.

"I am the butt of everybody's joke," she said, complacently. "That is what makes me so popular. You see, you skinny girls are scarcely noticed. It is me the men-folk give their attention to."

"Isn't it nice to be so perfectly satisfied with one's self?" observed Helen, scornfully. "Come on, Ruthie! Let's sleep on that."

There were other topics to excite the friends in the morning, even before the company got away for the "location." Mail which had followed them across the continent was brought up from the post-office to the special car. Helen and Ruth were both delighted to receive letters from Captain Tom.

In the one to Ruth the young man acknowledged the receipt of her letter bearing on the matter of Chief Totantora. He said that news of the captured Wild West performers had drifted through the lines long before the armistice, and that he had now set in motion an inquiry which might yield some important news of the missing Osage chieftain—if he was yet alive—before many weeks. As for his own return, Tom could not then state anything with certainty.

* * * * *

"Nobody seems to know," he wrote. "It is all on the knees of the gods—and a badgered War Department. But perhaps I shall be with you, dear Ruth, before long."

* * * * *

Ruth did not show her letter to her girl friends. Jennie had received no news from Henri, and this disaster troubled her more than her bruised flesh. She went around with a sober face for at least an hour—which was a long time for Jennie Stone to be morose.

William, the driver who had handled the emigrant wagon the day before, came along as the men were saddling the ponies for the ride out to the ranch. He had an open letter in his hand that he had evidently just received.

"Say!" he drawled, "didn't I hear something about you taking this Injun gal away from Dakota Joe's show? Ain't that so, Miss Fielding?"

"Her contract with that man ran out and Mr. Hammond hired her," Ruth explained.

"And that left the show flat in Chicago?" pursued William.

"It was in Chicago the last we saw of it," agreed Ruth. "But Wonota had left Dakota Joe's employ long before that—while the show was in New England."

"Wal, I don't know how that is," said William. "I got a letter from a friend of mine that's been ridin' with Dakota Joe. He says the show's done busted and Joe lays it to his losing this Injun gal. Joe's a mighty mean man. He threatens to come out here and bust up this whole company," and William grinned.

"You want to tell Mr. Hammond that," said Ruth, shortly.

"I did," chuckled William. "But he don't seem impressed none. However, Miss Fielding, I want to say that Dakota Joe has done some mighty mean tricks in his day. Everybody knows him around here—yes, ma'am! If he comes here, better keep your eyes open."



CHAPTER XVII

THE PROLOGUE IS FINISHED

"We must do something very nice for Wonota," Helen Cameron said seriously. "She has twice within a few hours come to our succor. I feel that we might all three have been seriously injured had she not turned the mules yesterday, and frightened off those mad horses on the trail last evening."

"'Seriously injured,' forsooth!" grumbled Jennie Stone. "What do you mean? Didn't I show you my bruises? I was seriously injured as it was! But I admit I feel grateful—heartily grateful—to our Indian princess. I might have suffered broken bones in addition to bruised flesh."

"We could not reward her," Ruth Fielding said decidedly. "I would not hurt her feelings for the world."

"We can do something nice for her, without labeling it a reward, I should hope," Helen Cameron replied. "I know what I would like to do."

"What is that?" asked Jennie, quickly.

"You remember when they dressed Wonota up in that evening frock there in New York? To take the ballroom picture, I mean?"

"Indeed, yes!" cried Jennie Stone. And she looked too sweet for anything."

"She is a pretty girl," agreed Ruth.

"I saw her preening before the mirror," said Helen, smiling. "That she is an Indian girl doesn't make her different from the other daughters of Eve."

"Somebody has said that the fashion-chasing women must be daughters of Lilith," put in Jennie.

"Never mind. Wonota likes pretty frocks. You could see that easily enough. And although some of the Osage girls may follow the fashions in the mail order catalogs, I believe Wonota has been brought up very simply. 'Old-fashioned,' you may say."

"Fancy!" responded Jennie. "An old-fashioned' Indian."

"I think Helen is right," said Ruth, quietly. "Wonota would like to have pretty clothes, I am sure."

"Then," said Helen, with more animation, "let us chip in—all three of us—and purchase the very nicest kind of an outfit for Wonota—a real party dress and 'all the fixin's,' girls! What say?"

"I vote 'Aye!'" agreed Jennie.

"The thought is worthy of you, Helen," said Ruth proudly. "You always do have the nicest ideas. And I am sure it will please Wonota to be dressed as were some of the girls we saw in the audiences at the theatres we took her to."

"But!" ejaculated Jennie Stone, "we can't possibly get that sort of clothes out of a mail-order catalog."

"I know just what we can do, Jennie. There is your very own dressmaker—that Madame Jone you took me to."

"Oh! Sure! Mame Jones, you mean!" cried the fleshy girl with enthusiasm. "Aunt Kate has known Mame since she worked as an apprentice with some Fifth Avenue firm. Now Madame Jone goes to Paris—when there is no war on—twice a year. She will do anything I ask her to."

"That is exactly what I mean," Helen said. "It must be somebody who will take an interest in Wonota. Send your Madame Jone a photograph of Wonota—"

"Several of them," exclaimed Ruth, interested as well, although personally she did not care so much for style as her chums. "Let the dressmaker get a complete idea of what Wonota looks like."

"And the necessary measurements," Helen said. "Give her carte blanche as to goods and cost—"

"Would that be wise?" interposed the more cautious Ruth.

"Leave it to me!" exclaimed Jennie Stone with confidence. "We shall have a dandy outfit, but Mame Jones will not either overcharge us or make Wonota's frock and lingerie too outre."

"It win be fine!" declared Helen.

"I believe it will," agreed the girl of the Red Mill.

"It will be nothing less than a knock-out," crowed Jennie, slangily.

The three friends had plenty of topics of conversation besides new frocks for Ruth's Indian star. The work of making the scenes of the prologue of "Brighteyes" went on apace, and although they all escaped acting in any of the scenes, they watched most of them from the sidelines.

Mr. Hooley had found a bright little girl (although she had no Indian blood in her veins) to play the part of the sick child in the Indian wigwam. These shots were taken in a big hay barn near the special car standing at Clearwater, and with the aid of the electric plant that had been set up here the "interiors" were very promising.

Several other "sets" were built in this make-shift studio, for all the scenes were not out-of-door pictures. The prologue scenes, however, aside from the interior of the chief's lodge, were made upon the open plain on the Hubbell Ranch not more than ten miles from the Clearwater station. Two weeks were occupied in this part of the work, for outside scenes are not shot as rapidly as those in a well equipped studio. When these were done the company moved much farther into the hills. They were to make the remaining scenes of "Brighteyes" in the wilderness, far from any human habitation more civilized than a timber camp.

Benbow Camp lay well up behind Hubbell Ranch, yet in a well sheltered valley where scarcely a threat of winter had yet appeared. A big crew of lumbermen was at work on the site, and many of these men Mr. Hammond used as extras in the scenes indicated in Ruth's script.

Ruth had now gained so much experience in the shooting of outdoor scenes that her descriptions in this story of "Brighteyes," the Indian maid, were easily visualized by the director. Besides, she stood practically at Jim Hooley's elbow when the story was being filmed. So, with the author working with the director, the picture was almost sure to be a success. At least, the hopes of all—including those of Mr. Hammond, who had already put much money into the venture—began to rise like the quicksilver in a thermometer on a hot day.

The small river on which locations had been arranged for was both a boisterous and a picturesque stream. There were swift rapids ("white water" the woodsmen called it) with outthrust boulders and many snags and shallows where a canoe had to be very carefully handled. Several scenes as Ruth had written them were of the Indian girl in a canoe. Wonota handled a paddle with the best of the rivermen at Benbow Camp. There was no failure to be feared as to the picture's requirements regarding the Indian star, at least.

Having seen the scenes of the prologue shot and got the company on location at Benbow Camp, Mr. Hammond went back to the railroad to get into communication with the East. He had other business to attend to besides the activities of this one company.

Scenes along the bank and at an Indian camp set up in a very beautiful spot were shot while preparations for one of the big scenes on the stream itself were being made.

The text called for a freshet on the river, in which the Indian maid is caught in her canoe. The disturbed water and the trash being borne down by the current was an effect arranged by Jim Hooley's workmen. The timbermen working for the Benbow Company helped.

A boom of logs was chained across the river at a narrow gorge. This held back for two nights and a day the heavy cultch floating down stream, and piled up a good deal of water, too, for the boom soon became a regular dam. Below the dam thus made the level of the stream dropped perceptibly.

"I am going to put Wonota in her canoe into the stream above the boom," Hooley explained. "When the boom is cut the whole mass will shoot down ahead of the girl. But the effect, as it comes past the spot where the cameras are being cranked, will be as though Wonota was in the very midst of the freshet. She handles her paddle so well that I do not think she will be in any danger."

"But you will safeguard her, won't you, Mr. Hooley?" asked Ruth, who was always more or less nervous when these "stunt pictures" were being taken.

"There will be two canoes—and two good paddlers in each—on either side of Wonota's craft, but out of the camera focus of course. Then, we will line up a lot of the boys along the shore on either side. If she gets a ducking she won't mind. She understands. That Indian girl has some pluck, all right," concluded the director with much satisfaction.

"Yes, Wonota's courageous," agreed Ruth quietly.

Arrangements were made for the next morning. Ruth went with Mr. Hooley to the bunkhouse to hear him instruct the timbermen hired from the Benbow Company and who were much interested in this "movie stuff."

The girl of the Red Mill had already made some acquaintances among the rough but kindly fellows. She stepped into the long, shed-like bunkhouse to speak to one of her acquaintances, and there, at the end of the plank table, partaking of a late supper that the cook had just served him, was no other than Dakota Joe Fenbrook, the erstwhile proprietor of the Wild West and Frontier Round-Up.



CHAPTER XVIII

AN ACCIDENT THREATENING

Probably the ex-showman was not as surprised to see Ruth Fielding as she was to see him. But he was the first, nevertheless, to speak.

"Ho! so it's you, is it?" he growled, scowling at the girl of the Red Mill. "Reckon you didn't expect to see me."

"I certainly did not," returned Ruth tartly. "What are you doing at Benbow Camp, Mr. Fenbrook?"

"I reckon you'd be glad to hear that I walked here," sneered the showman, and filled his cheek with a mighty mouthful. He wolfed this down in an instant, and added, with a wide grin: "But I didn't. I saved my horse an' outfit from the smash, and enough loose change to bring me West—no thanks to you."

"I am sorry to hear you have failed in business, Mr. Fenbrook," Ruth said composedly. "But I am sorrier to see that you consider me in a measure to blame for your misfortune."

"Oh, don't I, though!" snarled Dakota Joe. "I know who to thank for my bust-up—you and that Hammond man. Yes, sir-ree!"

"You are quite wrong," Ruth said, calmly. "But nothing I can say will convince you, I presume."

"You can't soft-sawder me, if that's what you mean," and Dakota Joe absorbed another mighty mouthful.

Ruth could not fail to wonder if he ever chewed his food. He seemed to swallow it as though he were a boa-constrictor.

"I know," said Dakota Joe, having swallowed the mouthful and washed it down with half a pannikin of coffee, "that you two takin' that Injun gal away from me was the beginning of my finish. Yes, sir-ree! I could ha' pulled through and made money in Chicago and St. Louis, and all along as I worked West this winter. But no, you fixed me for fair."

"Wonota had a perfect right to break with you, Mr. Fenbrook," Ruth said decidedly, and with some warmth. "You did not treat her kindly, and you paid her very little money."

"She got more money than she'd ever saw before. Them Injuns ain't used to much money. It's jest as bad for 'em as hootch. Yes, sir-ree!"

"She was worth more than you gave her. And she certainly was worthy of better treatment. But that is all over. Mr. Hammond has her tied up with a hard and fast contract. Let her alone, Mr. Fenbrook."

"Aw, don't you fret," growled the man. "I ain't come out here to trouble Wonota none. The little spitfire! She'd shoot me just as like's not if she took the notion. Them redskins ain't to be trusted—none of 'em. I know 'em only too well."

Ruth went out of the shack almost before the man had ceased speaking. She did not want anything further to do with him. She was exceedingly sorry that Dakota Joe had appeared at Benbow Camp just when the moving picture company was getting to work on the important scenes of "Brighteyes." Besides, she felt a trifle anxious because Mr. Hammond himself did not chance to be here under the present circumstances. He might be better able to handle Dakota Joe if the ruffian made trouble.

She said nothing to Jim Hooley about Dakota Joe. She did not wish to bother the director in any case. She had come to appreciate Hooley as, in a sense, a creative genius who should have his mind perfectly free of all other subjects—especially of annoying topics of thought—if he was to turn out a thoroughly good picture. Hooley fairly lived in the picture while the scenes were being shot. He must not be troubled by the knowledge of the possibility of Dakota Joe's being at Benbow Camp for some ulterior purpose.

Ruth told the girls about the man's appearance when she returned to the shacks where the members of the moving picture company were spending the night. And she warned Wonota in particular, and in private.

"He is as angry with us as he can be," the girl of the Red Mill told the Osage maiden. "I think, if I were you, Wonota, I would beware of him."

"Beware of Dakota Joe?" repeated Wonota.

"Yes."

"I would beware of him? I would shoot him?" said the Osage girl with suddenly flashing eyes. "That is what you mean?"

Ruth laughed in spite of her anxiety. "Beware" was plainly a word outside the Indian girl's vocabulary.

"Don't talk like a little savage," she admonished Wonota, more severely than usual. "Of course you are not to shoot the man. You are just to see that he does you no harm—watch out for him when he is in your vicinity."

"Oh! I'll watch Dakota Joe all right," promised Wonota with emphasis. "Don't you worry about that, Miss Fielding. I'll watch him."

To Ruth's mind it seemed that the ex-showman, in his anger, was likely to try to punish the Indian girl for leaving his show, or to do some harm to the picture-making so as to injure Mr. Hammond. He had already (or so Ruth believed) endeavored to hurt Ruth herself when she was all but run over in New York. Ruth did not expect a second attack upon herself.

The next morning—the really "great day" of the picture taking—all at the camp were aroused by daybreak. There was not a soul—to the very cook of the timber-camp outfit—who was not interested in the matter. The freshet Jim Hooley had planned had to be handled in just the right way and everything connected with it must be done in the nick of time.

Wonota in her Indian canoe—a carefully selected one and decorated in Indian fashion—was embarked on the sullen stream above the timber-boom. The holding back of the water and the driftwood had formed an angry stretch of river which under ordinary circumstances Ruth and the other girls who had accompanied her West thought they would have feared to venture upon. The Indian girl, however, seemed to consider the circumstances not at all threatening.

With her on the river, but instructed to keep on either side and well out of the focus of the cameras, were two expert rivermen, each in a canoe. These men were on the alert to assist Wonota if, when the dam was broken, she should get into any difficulty.

Below the dam the men were arranged at important points, so that if the logs and drift threatened to pile up after the boom was cut, they could jump in with their pike-poles and keep the drift moving. On one shore the cameras were placed, and Jim Hooley, with his megaphone, stood on a prominent rock.

Across from the director's station Ruth found a spot at the foot of a sheer bank to the brow of which a great pile of logs had been rolled, ready for the real freshet in the spring when the log-drives would start. She had a good view of all that went on across the river, and up the stream.

Jennie suggested that she and Helen accompany Ruth and watch the taking of the picture from that vantage point, a proposal to which Helen readily agreed. But Ruth evaded this suggestion of her two friends, for she wanted to keep her whole mind on her work, and when Helen and Jennie were with her she found it impossible to keep from listening to their merry chatter, nor could she keep herself from being drawn into it. The upshot was that, after some discussion by the three girls, Ruth set off alone for her station under the brow of the steep river bank.

About ten o'clock, in mid-forenoon, Hooley was satisfied that everything was ready to shoot the picture. One of the foremen of Benbow Camp—the best ax wielder of the crew—ran out on the boom to a point near the middle of the frothing stream and began cutting the key-log. It was a ticklish piece of work; but these timbermen were used to such jobs.

The gash in the log showed wider and wider. Where Ruth stood she cocked her head to listen to the strokes of the axman. It seemed to her that there was a particularly strange echo, flattened but keen, as though reverberating from the bank of the river high above her head.

"Now, what can that be?" she thought, and once looked up the slope to the heap of logs which were held in place by chocks on the very verge of the steep descent.

If those logs should break away, Ruth realized that she was right in the path of their descent. It would not be easy for her to escape, dry-footed, In either direction, for the bank of the river, both up, and down stream, was rough.

But, of course, that chopping sound was made by the man cutting the boom. Surely nobody was using an ax up there on the pile of logs. She glanced back to the man teetering on the boom log. The gap in it was wide and white. He had cut on the down-river side. Already the pressure from up stream was forcing the gash open, wider and wider——

There came a yell from across the river. Somebody there had seen what was threatening over Ruth's head. Then Jim Hooley cast his glance that way and yelled through his megaphone:

"Jump, Miss Fielding! Quick! Jump into the river!"

But at that moment the man on the boom started for the shore, running frantically for safety. The key log split with a raucous sound. The water and drift-stuff, in a mounting wave, poured through the gap, and the noise of it deafened Ruth Fielding to all other sounds.

She did not even glance back and above again at the peril which menaced her from the top of the steep bank.



CHAPTER XIX

IN DEADLY PERIL

"This stunt business," as Director Hooley called the taking of such pictures as this, is always admittedly a gamble. After much time and hundreds of dollars have been spent in getting ready to shoot a scene, some little thing may go wrong and spoil the whole thing.

There was nothing the matter with the director's plans on this occasion; every detail of the "freshet" had been made ready for with exactness and with prodigious regard to detail.

The foreman had cut the key log almost through and the force of the water and debris behind the boom had broken it. The man barely escaped disaster by reason of agile legs and sharp caulks on his boots.

The backed-up waters burst through. Up stream, amid the turmoil and murk of the agitated flood, rode Wonota in her canoe, directly into the focus of the great cameras. To keep her canoe head-on with the flood, and to keep it from being overturned, was no small matter. It required all the Indian girl's skill to steer clear of snags and floating logs. Besides, she must remember to register as she shot down the stream a certain emotion which would reveal to the audience her condition of mind, as told in the story.

Wonota did her part. She was rods above the breaking dam and she could not see, because of an overhanging tree on Ruth's side of the stream, any of that peril which suddenly threatened the white girl. Wonota was as unconscious of what imperiled Ruth as the latter was at first unknowing of the coming catastrophe.

It was Jim Hooley whom the incident startled and alarmed more than anybody else. He committed an unpardonable sin—unpardonable for a director! He forgot, when everything was ready, to order the starting of the camera. Instead he put his megaphone to his lips and shouted across to Ruth Fielding—who was not supposed to be in the picture at all:

"Jump, Miss Fielding! Quick! Jump into the river!"

And Ruth did not hear him, loudly as his voice boomed across the flood! She was deafened by the thunder of the waters and the crashing of the logs in mid-flood. Her eyes, now that she was sure the foreman was safe on the other bank, were fixed upon the bow of Wonota's canoe, just coming into sight behind the ware of foaming water and upreared, charging timbers.

It was a great sight—a wonderful sight. No real freshet could have been more awful to behold. Mr. Hooley's feat was a masterstroke!

But behind and above Ruth was a scene of disaster that held those on the opposite bank speechless—after Hooley's first mighty shout of warning. At least, all but the camera men were so transfixed by the thing that was happening above the unconscious Ruth.

Trained to their work, the camera men had been ready to crank their machines when Hooley grabbed up his megaphone. The boom had burst, the flood poured down, and the Indian maid's canoe came into the range of their lenses.

It was the most natural thing in the world that they should begin cranking—and this they did! Alone among all those on the far bank of the stream, the camera men were blind to Ruth's danger.

"She'll be killed!" shrieked Jennie Stone, while Helen Cameron ran to the water's edge, stretching forth her arms to Ruth as though she would seize her from across the stream.

The next moment the water flooded up around Helen's ankles. The stream was rising, and had Jennie not dragged her back, Helen would have been knee-deep in the water—perhaps have been injured herself by one of the flying logs.

Ruth was out of reach of the logs in the stream, although they charged down with mighty clamor, their ends at times shooting a dozen feet into the air, the bark stripping in ragged lengths, displaying angry gashes along their flanks. It was from that great heap of logs above, on the brink of the steep bank, that Ruth was in danger.

A fringe of low brush had hidden the foot of the logpile up there. This hedge had also hidden from the observation of the party across the stream the villains who must have deliberately knocked out the chocks which held the high pile of timbers from skidding down the slope.

Mr. Hooley had seen the logs start. Squeezed out by the weight of the pile, the lower logs, stripped of bark and squealing like living creatures started over the brink. They rolled, faster and faster, down upon the unwarned Ruth Fielding. And behind the leaders poured the whole pile, gathering speed as the avalanche made headway!

The turmoil of the river and the crashing logs would have smothered the sound of the avalanche until it was upon the girl of the Red Mill. No doubt of that. But providentially Ruth flashed a glance across the stream. She saw the party there all screaming at her and waving their arms madly. Jennie was just dragging Helen back from the rising flood of the turbulent river. Ruth saw by their actions that they were trying to draw her attention to something behind her.

She swung about and looked up the almost sheer bluff.

Ruth Fielding was not lacking in quick comprehension. A single glance at the descending avalanche of logs was sufficient to make her understand the peril. She knew that she could not clear the hurtling timbers by running either up stream or down. The way was too rough. As well as Jim Hooley, she knew that escape was only possible by leaping into the river. And that chance was rather uncertain.

Ruth was dressed for the rough outdoor life she was living. She wore high, laced boots, a short skirt, knickerbockers, a blouse, and a broad-brimmed hat.

When she turned to face the turbulent stream the rocking timbers coming down with the released water almost filled the pool before the endangered girl.

Had she worn caulks on the soles of her boots, as did the foreman who had cut the boom, and been practised as he was in "running the logs," Ruth would have stood a better chance of escaping the plunging avalanche. As it was, she was not wholly helpless.

She had picked up a peavey one of the timbermen had left on this bank and was using is as a staff as she watched the "freshet" start. Warned now of the danger she was in, the girl of the Red Mill seized this staff firmly in both hands and poised herself to leap from the boulder to which she had stepped.

Only a moment did she delay—just long enough to select the most promising log in the smother of foam and water before her. Then she leaped outward, striking down with the pike-staff and sinking its sharp point in the log to which she jumped.

Behind her the timbers poured down the bluff, landed on their splintering ends on the rocks, and then—many of them—pitched their long lengths into the angry river.

The spray flew yards high. It curtained, indeed, all that occurred for the next few moments upon this side of the stream. However much the scene, arranged by Jim Hooley might need the attention of the moving picture makers, here was a greater and more dangerous happening, in which Ruth Fielding was the leading participant!



CHAPTER XX

GOOD NEWS

Tragedy was very dose indeed at that moment to the girl of the Red Mill. Many adventures had touched Ruth nearly; but nothing more perilous had threatened her than this.

She balanced herself on the rushing log with the help of the peavey. She was more than ordinarily sure-footed. But if the log she rode chanced to be hit by one of the falling timbers loosened from their station on top of the bluff—that would be the end of the incident, and the end of the girl as well!

Perhaps it was well that Helen and Jennie could no longer see their chum. The curtain of spray thrown up by the plunging logs from above hid the whole scene for several minutes.

Then out of the turmoil on the river shot the log on which Ruth stood, appearing marvelously to her friends on the other bank.

"Ruth! Ruth Fielding!" shrieked Helen, so shrilly that her voice really could be heard. "Are you alive?"

Ruth waved one hand. She held her balance better now. She shot a glance behind and saw Wonota in the canoe coming down the rapids amid the snags and drifting debris—a wonderful picture!

Jim Hooley, almost overcome by the shock and fright, suddenly beheld his two camera men cranking steadily—as unruffled as though all this uproar and excitement was only the usual turmoil of the studio!

"Bully, boys!" the director shouted. "Keep at it!" Then through the megaphone: "Eyes on the camera, Wonota! Your lover is in the water—you must save him! Nobody else can reach him There! He's going down again! Bend forward—look at him—at the camera! That's it! When he appears again that log is going to hit him if you do not swerve the canoe in between the log and him—There! With your paddle! Shoot the canoe in now!"

He swerved the megaphone to the men waiting on the bank: "Look out for Miss Fielding, some of you fellows. The rest of you stand ready to grab Wonota when that canoe goes over."

Again to the Indian girl: "Now, Wonota! Pitch the paddle away. Lean over—grab at his head. There it is!"

The Indian girl did as instructed, leaning so far that the canoe tipped. Mr. Hooley raised his hand. He snapped his fingers. "There! Enough!" he shouted, and the cameras stopped as the canoe canted the Indian girl headfirst into the stream. The rest of that scene would be taken in quiet water.

While the man waded in to help Wonota, Ruth reached the bank and sprang off her log before she was butted off. Helen and Jennie ran to her, and such a hullabaloo as there was for a few minutes!

Jim Hooley came striding down to the three Eastern girls, flushed and with scowling brow.

"I want to know who did that?" he shouted. "No thanks to anybody but my camera men that the whole scene wasn't a fizzle. And what would Mr. Hammond have said? Who were those men, Miss Fielding?"

"What men?" asked Ruth in wonder.

"Up there on the other bank? Those that knocked the chocks out from under that heap of logs? You don't suppose that avalanche of timber started all by itself?"

"I don't know what you are talking about, Mr. Hooley," declared Ruth Fielding.

"And surely," Helen added quickly, "you do not suppose that it was her fault? She might have been killed."

"I got a glimpse of a man dodging out of the way just as that pile of logs started. I saw the flash of the sun on his ax," and the director was very much in earnest.

It was Jennie who put into words the thought that had come both to Ruth and Helen as well:

"Where is that awful Dakota Joe? He was here last night. He has tried to harm our Ruthie before. I do believe he did it!"

"Who's that?" demanded the director. "The man who had Wonota in his show?"

"Yes, Mr. Hooley. He was here last night. I spoke with him up in the bunk-house while you were telling the boys about this scene," Ruth said gravely.

"The unhung villain!" exclaimed the director. "He tried to ruin our shot."

Jennie stared at him with open mouth as well as eyes.

"Well!" she gasped after a minute. "That is what you might call being wrapped up in one's business, sure enough! Ruined your shot, indeed! How about ruining a perfectly good girl named Ruth Fielding?"

"Oh, I beg Miss Fielding's pardon," stammered the director. "You must remember that taking such a scene as this costs the corporation a good deal of money. Miss Fielding's danger, I must say, threw me quite off my balance. If I didn't have two of the keenest camera men in the business all this," and he gestured toward the turbulent river, "would have gone for nothing."

"I can thank Mr. Hooley for what he tried to do for me," smiled Ruth. "I saw his gestures if I could not hear his voice. That was my salvation. But I believe it must have been Dakota Joe who started that avalanche of logs down upon me."

"I'll have the scoundrel looked for," promised Hooley, turning to go upstream again.

"But don't tell these rough men why you want Dakota Joe," advised the girl of the Red Mill.

"No?"

"You know how they are—even some of the fellows working for the picture company. They are pretty rough themselves. I do not want murder done because of my narrow escape."

The other girls cried out at this, but Mr. Hooley nodded understandingly.

"I get you, Miss Fielding. But I'll make it so he can't try any capers around here again. No, sir!"

The girls were left to discuss the awful peril that had threatened, and come so near to over-coming, Ruth. Helen was particularly excited about it.

"I do think, Ruth, that we should start right for home. This is altogether too savage a country. To think of that rascal daring to do such a thing! For of course it was Dakota Joe who started those logs to rolling."

"I can imagine nobody else doing it," confessed her chum.

"Then I think you should start East at once," repeated Helen. "Don't you think so, Jennie?"

"I'd hire a guard," said the plump girl. "This country certainly is not safe for our Ruth."

"Neither was New York, it seemed," rejoined Ruth, with a whimsical smile. "Of course we are not sure—"

"We are sure you came near losing your life," interrupted Helen.

"Quite so. I was in danger. But if it was Joe, he has run away, of course. He will not be likely to linger about here after making the attempt."

And to this opinion everybody else who knew about it agreed. A search was made by some of the men for Dakota Joe. It was said he had left for another logging camp far to the north before daybreak that very morning. Nobody had seen him since that early hour.

"Just the same, he hung around long enough to start those logs to rolling. And I am not sure but that he had help," Jim Hooley said, talking the matter over later, after Mr. Hammond had arrived from the railroad and had been told about the incident, "He is a dangerous fellow, that Fenbrook."

"He has made himself a nuisance," agreed Mr. Hammond. "Tell William and the other boys to keep their eyes open for him. The moment he appears again—if he does appear—let them grab him. I will get a warrant sworn out at Clearwater for his arrest. We will put him in jail until our picture is finished, at least."

They did not believe at the time that Ruth was in any further peril from Dakota Joe. As for the girls, they were particularly excited just then by some news Mr. Hammond had brought with him from the post-office.