Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest by Alice B. Emerson

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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:

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