Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest by Alice B. Emerson

A >> Alice B. Emerson >> Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

"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.

Letters from Tom Cameron! He was coming home! Indeed, he would have
started before Ruth and Helen received the messages he wrote. And in
Ruth's letter he promised a great surprise. What that surprise was the
girl of the Red Mill could not imagine.

"Doesn't he say anything about a surprise for me?" demanded Jennie
Stone.

"He doesn't say a word about you in my letter, Heavy," said Helen
wickedly.

"Why, Jennie, he doesn't know you are with us here in the West," Ruth
said soothingly.

"I don't care," sputtered the fat girl. "He must know about my Henri.
And not a word have I heard from or about him in a month. If the war is
over, surely Henri must be as free as Tom Cameron."

"I suppose some of the soldiers have to stay along the Rhine, Jennie,
dear," replied Ruth. "Maybe Henri is one of those guarding the
frontier."

"He is holding the German hordes back, single-handed, from _la belle_
France," put in Helen, smiling.

"Oh, cat's foot!" snapped Jennie. "The Germans are just as glad to stop
fighting as we are. They certainly don't need Henri in the army any
longer. I am going to write to his mother!"

CHAPTER XXI

A BULL AND A BEAR

Wonota had known nothing of what was supposed to have been a deliberate
attempt to injure Ruth Fielding until some hours after the occurrence.
She had not much to say about it, but, like the three white girls, she
was sure the guilty man was Dakota Joe.

As William had said, Fenbrook was a "mighty mean man," and the Osage
maid knew that to be a fact. She nodded her head gravely as she
commented upon the incident that might have ended so seriously.

"That Dakota Joe is bad. Chief Totantora would have sent him to the
spirit land long since, had he been here. There are white men, Miss
Fielding, who are much worse than any redman."

"I will grant you that," sighed Ruth. "Badness is not a matter of blood,
I guess. This Fenbrook has no feeling or decency. He is dangerous."

"I should have shot him," declared the Osage girl confidently. "I am
afraid I have done wrong in not doing so before."

"How can you talk so recklessly!" exclaimed Ruth, and she was really
troubled. "Shooting Dakota Joe would make you quite as bad as he is. No,
no! That is not the way to feel about it."

But Wonota could not understand this logic.

And yet, Wonota in other ways was not at all reckless or ferocious. She
possessed a fund of sympathy, and was kindly disposed toward everybody
When one of the cook's helpers cut his foot with an ax, she aided in the
rough surgery furnished by the camp boss, and afterwards nursed the
invalid while he was confined to his bunk and could not even hop about.

All the men liked her, and after a time they did not speak carelessly of
her as "that Injun gal." She seemed to be of a different caliber from
the other Indians engaged in making the picture. At least, she was more
intelligent.

The girls from the East did not lose their personal interest in Wonota
in the least degree. But of course while the various scenes were being
made even Ruth did not give all her attention to either the Indian
maiden or to the shooting of the picture.

The great freshet scene, when developed and tried out in the projection
room at Clearwater, proved to be a very striking film indeed. If
"Brighteyes" was to rise to the level of that one scene, every reel of
the picture must be photographed with great care.

While the director and Mr. Hammond and the company in general worked
over some of the lumber-camp scenes, retaking or arranging for the shots
over and over again, Ruth rode with her two chums on many a picturesque
trail around Benbow Camp, Hubbell Ranch and the Clearwater station of
the railroad.

They were quite sure that Dakota Joe Fenbrook had left this part of the
country--and left in a hurry. If he learned that his attempt on Ruth
Fielding's life was not successful, he must have learned it some time
after the occurrence. Just where the "bad man" had gone after leaving
Benbow on the run, nobody seemed to know.

Ruth and Helen and Jennie were in the saddle almost every day. They
found much to interest them on the various trails they followed. They
even discovered and visited several pioneer families--"nesters" in the
language of the cowpunchers and stockmen--who welcomed the Eastern girls
with vast curiosity.

"And how some of these folks can live in such Wild places, and in such
perfectly barren cabins, I do not see," groaned Helen Cameron after a
visit to one settler's family near a wild canyon to the west of Benbow
Camp. "That woman and those girls! Not a decent garment to their backs,
and the men so rough and uncouth. I would not stay there on a bet--not
for the best man who ever breathed."

"That woman's husband isn't the best man who ever breathed," said
Jennie, grimly. "But perhaps he is the best man she ever knew. And,
anyway, having as the boys say 'got stuck on him,' now she is plainly
'stuck with him.' In other words she has made her own bed and must lie
in it."

"Why should people be punished for their ignorance?" complained Helen.

"Nature's way," said Ruth confidently. "Civilization is slowly changing
that--or trying to. But nature's law is, after all, rather harsh to us."

"If I was one of those girls we saw back there," Helen continued, "I
would run away."

"Run where?" asked Ruth slyly. "With a movie company? Or a Wild West
Show?"

"Either. Anything would be better than that hut and the savagery of
their present lives."

"They don't mind it so much," admitted Jennie. "I asked one of them. She
was looking forward to a dance next week. She said they had three of
four through the year--and they seemed to be reckoned as great treats,
but all a girl could expect."

"And think how much we demand," said Ruth thoughtfully. "Welladay! Maybe
we have too much--too much of the good things of the earth."

"Bah!" exclaimed Helen, with disgust. "One can't get too much of the
good things. No, ma'am! Take all you can----"

"And give nothing?" suggested Ruth, shaking her head.

"Nobody can say with truth that you are selfish, Ruthie Fielding," put
in Jennie. "In fact, you are always giving, and never taking."

Ruth laughed at this. "You are wrong," she said. "The more you give the
more you get. At least, I find it so. And we are getting right now, on
this trip to the great Northwest, much more than we are giving. I feel
as though I would be condemned if I did not do something for these
hard-working people who are doing their part in developing this
country--the settlers, and even the timbermen."

"You want to be a lady Santa Claus to that bunch of roughnecks at Benbow
Camp, do you?" laughed Jennie.

"Well, I would like to help somebody besides Wonota. What do you hear
from your New York dressmaker about Wonota's new outfit, Jennie?"

"It will be shipped right out here to Clearwater before long," announced
the plump girl, with new satisfaction. "Won't Wonota be surprised?"

"And delighted!" added Helen, showing satisfaction too.

At that very moment they rode out of a patch of wood which had hidden
from the girls' eyes a piece of lowland fringed by a grove of northern
cottonwood trees. On the air was borne a deep bellow--a sound that none
of the three had noted before.

"What is that?" demanded Helen, startled and half drawing in her
snorting pony.

"Oh, listen!" cried Jennie. "Hear the poor cow."

Ruth was inclined to doubt. "When you hear a 'cow' bellowing in this
country, look out. It may be a wild steer or a very ugly bull. Let us go
on cautiously."

All three of the ponies showed signs of trepidation, and this fact added
to Ruth's easily aroused anxiety.

"Have a care," she said to Helen and Jennie. "I believe something is
going on here that spells danger--for us at least."

"It's down in the swamp. See the way the ponies look," agreed Jennie.

They quickly came to a break in the cottonwood grove on the edge of the
morass. Instantly the ponies halted, snorting again. Ruth's tried to
rear and turn, but she was a good horsewoman.

"Oh, look!" squealed Helen. "A bear!"

"Oh, look!" echoed Jennie, quite as excited. "A bull!"

"Well, I declare!" exclaimed Ruth, her hands full for the moment with
the actions of her mount. "One would think you were looking at a picture
of Wall Street--with your bulls and your bears I Let me see--do!"

CHAPTER XXII

IN THE CANYON

Ruth wheeled her mount the next moment and headed it again in the right
direction. She saw at last what had caused her two companions such
wonder.

In a deep hole near the edge of the morass was a huge Hereford bull.
Most of the cattle in that country were Herefords.

The animal had without doubt become foundered in the swamp hole; but
that was by no means the worst that had happened to him. While held more
than belly-deep in the sticky mud he had been attacked by the only kind
of bear in all the Rockies that, unless under great provocation, attacks
anything bigger than woodmice.

A big black bear had flung itself upon the back of the bellowing,
struggling bull and was tearing and biting the poor creature's head and
neck--actually eating the bull by piecemeal!

"Oh, horrors!" gasped Helen, sickened by the sight of the blood and the
ferocity of the bear. "Is that a dreadful grizzly? How terrible!"

"It's eating the poor bull alive!" Jennie cried.

Ruth had never ridden out from camp since Dakota Joe's last appearance
without carrying a light rifle in her saddle scabbard. She rode a
regular stockman's saddle and liked the ease and comfort of it.

Now she seized her weapon and cocked It.

"That is not a grizzly, girls!" she exclaimed. "The grizzly is
ordinarily a tame animal beside this fellow. The blackbear is the
meat-eater--and the man-killer, too. I learned all about that in our
first trip out here to the West."

"Quick! Do something for that poor steer!" begged Helen. "Never mind
lecturing about it."

But Ruth had been wasting no time while she talked. She first had to get
her pony to stand She knew it was not gun-shy. It was only the scent and
sight of the bear that excited it.

Once the pony's four feet were firmly set, the girl of the Red Mill, who
was no bad shot, raised her rifle and sighted down the barrel at the
little snarling eyes of Bruin behind his open, red jaws. The bear
crouched on the bull's back and actually roared at the girls who had
come to disturb him at his savage feast.

Ruth's trigger-finger was firm. It was an automatic rifle, and although
it fired a small ball, the girl had drawn a good bead on the bear's
most vulnerable point--the base of his wicked brain! The several bullets
poured into that spot, severing the vertebrae and almost, indeed,
tearing the head from the brute's shoulders!

"Oh, Ruth! You've done for him!" cried Helen, with delight.

"But the poor bull!" murmured Jennie. "See! He can't get out. He's done
for."

"I am afraid they are both done for," returned Ruth. "Take this gun,
Jennie. Let me see if I can rope the bull and help him out."

She swung the puncher's lariat she carried hung from her saddle-bow with
much expertness. She had practised lariat throwing on her previous trips
to the West. But although she was able to encircle the bull's bleeding
head with the noose of the rope, to drag the creature out of the morass
was impossible.

He was sunk in the mire too deeply, and he was too far gone now to help
himself. The bear had rolled off the back of the bull and after a few
faint struggles ceased to live. But Bruin's presence made it very
difficult for the girls to force their ponies closer to the dying bull.

Therefore, after all, Ruth had to abandon her lariat, tying the end of
it to a tree and by this means keeping the bull from sinking out of
sight after she had put a merciful bullet into him.

As they rode near the Hubbell Ranch they stopped and told of their
adventure at the swamp, and a party of the boys rode out and saved both
bear and bull meat from the coyotes or from cougars that sometimes came
down from the hills.

The three girls had not been idly riding about the country during these
several days which had been punctuated, as it were, with the adventure
of the bull and the bear. That very day they had found the canyon which
Mr. Hammond and the director had been hoping to find and use in filming
some of the most thrilling scenes of "Brighteyes."

As Ruth was the writer of the scenario it was natural that she should be
quite capable of choosing the location. The lovely and sheltered canyon
offered all that was needed for the taking of the scenes indicated.

The girls went back the next day, taking Mr. Hammond with them. This
time they merely glanced at the spot where the bear and the bull had
died, and they did not visit the family of nesters at all. The shadowy
mouth of the canyon, its sides running up steeply into the hills, was
long in sight before the little cavalcade reached it.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10