Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest by Alice B. Emerson

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From the mouth of it Mr. Hammond could not judge if Ruth's selection of
locality was a wise one. Certain natural attributes were necessary to
fit the needs of the story she had written. When, after they had ridden
a couple of miles up the canyon, he saw the cliff path and the lip of
the overhanging rock on which the hero of the story and _Brighteyes_'
Indian lover were to struggle, he proclaimed himself satisfied.

"You've got it, I do believe," the producer declared. "This will delight
Jim Hooley, I am sure. We can stake out a net down here under that rock
so if either or both the boys fall, they will land all right. It will be
some stunt picture, and no mistake!"

He wanted to look around the place, however, before riding back, and the
girls dismounted too. The bottom of the canyon was a smooth lawn--the
grass still green. For although the tang of winter was now in the air
even at noon, the weather had been remarkably pleasant. Only on the
distant heights had the snow fallen, and not much there.

There was a silvery stream wandering through the meadow over which the
girls walked. By one pool was a shallow bit of beach, and Ruth, coming
upon this alone, suddenly cried out:

"Oh, Helen! Jennie! I am a Miss Crusoe. Come here and see the
unmistakable mark of my Man Friday."

"What do you mean, you ridiculous thing?" drawled Jennie. "You cannot be
a Crusoe. You are not dressed in skins."

"Well, I like that!" rejoined Ruth, raising her eyebrows in apparent
surprise, "I should think I was covered with skin. Why not? Am I
different from the remainder of humanity?"

Of course they laughed with her as they came to view her discovery upon
the sand. It was the mark of a human foot.

"And no savage, I'll be bound," said Helen. "That is the mark of a
mighty brogan. A white man's foot-covering, no less. See! There is
another footprint."

"He certainly was going away from here," Jennie Stone observed. "Who do
you suppose he is?"

"I wonder if his eyes are blue and if he has a moustache?" queried
Helen, languishingly.

"Bet he has whiskers and chews tobacco. I known these Western men. Bah!"

"Jennie takes all the romance out of it," said Ruth, laughing. "Now I
don't care to meet my Man Friday at all."

They ate a picnic lunch before they rode out of the lovely canyon. Mr.
Hammond was always good company, and he exerted himself to be
interesting to the three girls on this occasion.

"My!" Helen remarked to Jennie, "Ruth does make the nicest friends,
doesn't she? See how much fun--how many good times--we have had through
her acquaintanceship with Mr. Hammond."

Jennie agreed. But her attention was attracted just then to something
entirely different. She was staring up the cliff path that Mr. Hammond
had praised as being just the natural landmark needed for the scene the
company wished to picture.

"Did you see what I saw?" drawled the plump girl. "Or am I thinking too,
too much about mankind?"

"What is the matter with you?" demanded Helen. "I didn't see any man."

"Not up that rocky way--there! A brown coat and a gray hat. Did you
see?"

"Ruth's Man Friday!" ejaculated Helen.

"I shouldn't wonder. But we can't prove it because we haven't the size
of yonder gentleman's boot. Humph I he is running away from us, all
right."

"Maybe he never saw us," suggested Helen.

They called to Ruth and told her of the glimpse they had had of the
stranger.

"And what did he run away for, do you suppose?" demanded Jennie.

"I am sure you need not ask me," said Ruth. "What did he look like?"

"I did not see his face," said Jennie. She repeated what she had
already said to Helen about the stranger's gray hat and brown coat.

Ruth looked somewhat troubled and made no further comment Of course, the
coat and hat were probably like the coat and hat of numberless other men
in the West. But the last time Ruth had seen Dakota Joe Fenbrook, that
individual had been wearing a broad-brimmed gray sombrero and a brown
duck coat.

CHAPTER XXIII

REALITY

Ruth Fielding was not a coward. She had already talked so much about
Dakota Joe that she was a little ashamed to bring up the subject again.
So she made no comment upon the man in the brown coat and gray hat that
Jennie Stone declared she had seen climbing the path up the canyon wall.

Mr. Hammond was not annoyed by it. His mind was fixed upon the scenes
that could be filmed in the canyon. Like Jim Hooley, the director, his
thought was almost altogether taken up with the making of Ruth's
"Brighteyes."

The work of making the picture was almost concluded. Wonota, the Indian
maid, had lost none of her interest in the tasks set her; but she
expressed herself to Ruth as being glad that there was little more to
do.

"I do not like some things I have to do," she confessed. "It is so hard
to look, as Mr. Hooley tells me to, at that hero of yours, Miss
Fielding, as though I admired him."

"Mr. Grand? You do not like him?"

"I could never love him," said the Indian girl with confidence. "He is
too silly. Even when we are about to engage in one of the most thrilling
scenes, he looks first in the handglass to see if his hair is parted
right."

Ruth could not fail to be amused. But she said cautiously:

"But think how he would look to the audience if his hair was tousled
when it was supposed to be well brushed."

"Ah, it is not a manly task," said Wonota, with disgust. "And the Indian
man who is the villain--Tut! He is only half Indian. And he tries to
look both as though he admired me and hated the white man. It makes his
eyes go this way!" and Wonota crossed her eyes until Ruth had to cry
out.

"Don't!" she begged, "Suppose you suffered that deformity?"

"But he doesn't--that Jack Onehorse. Your Brighteyes, I am sure, would
have felt no pity for such an Indian."

"You don't have to feel pity for him," laughed Ruth. "You know, you
shoot him in the end, Wonota."

"Most certainly," agreed Wonota, closing her lips firmly. "He deserves
shooting."

The calm way in which the Indian girl spoke of this taking off of the
Indian lover who became the villain in the end of the moving picture,
rather shocked the young author.

"But," said Jennie, "Wonota it only a single generation removed from
arrant savagery. She calls a spade a spade. You shouldn't blame her. It
is civilization--which is after all a sort of make-believe--that causes
us white folk to refer to a spade as an agricultural implement."

But Ruth would not laugh. She had become so much interested in Wonota by
this time that she wished her to improve her opportunities and learn the
ways--the better ways, at least--of white people.

Mr. Hammond naturally looked at the commercial end of Wonota's
improvement. Nor did Ruth overlook the chance the Osage maid had of
becoming a money-earning star in the moving picture firmament. But she
desired to help the girl to something better than mere money.

Wonota responded to a marked degree to Ruth's efforts. She was naturally
refined. The Indian is not by nature coarse and crude. He is merely
different from the whites. Wonota seemed to select for herself, when she
had the opportunity, the better things obtainable--the better customs
of the whites rather than the ruder ones.

Meanwhile the work of preparing for the scenes of "Brighteyes" to be
shot in the canyon went on. The day came when all the company were
informed that the morrow would see the work begun. At daybreak, after a
hasty breakfast, the motors and vans and the cavalcade of riders left
the Clearwater station for a week--and that the last week of their
stay--up in the lovely canyon Ruth and her two girl chums had found.

"I do declare!" exclaimed the gay Jennie (even the lack of letters from
Henri Marchand could not quench her spirits for long), "this bunch of
tourists does look like an old-time emigrant train. We might be
following the Santa Fe Trail, all so merrily."

"Only there were no motor-cars in those old days," remarked Ruth.

"Nor portable stoves," put in Helen with a smile.

"And I am quite sure," suggested Mr. Hammond, who heard this, "that no
moving picture cameras went along with the old Santa Fe Trailers."

"Yet," said Ruth thoughtfully, "the country about here, at any rate, is
just about as wild as it was in those old days. And perhaps some of the
people are quite as savage as they were in the old days. Oh, dear!"

"Who are you worrying about? William?" asked Helen slyly. "He did sound
savage this morning when he was harnessing those mules to the big
wagon."

But her chum did not reply to this pleasantry. She really had something
on her mind which bothered her. But she did not explain the cause of her
anxiety to the others, even after the arrival of the party in the
canyon.

It looked like a great Gypsy camp when the party was settled on the
sward beside the mountain stream. Mr. Hooley had not seen the location
before, and he was somewhat critical of some points. But finally he
admitted that, unless the place had been built for their need, they
could not really expect to find a location better fitted.

"And thank goodness!" Ruth sighed, when the camera points were severally
decided upon, "after these shots are taken we can head East for good."

"Why, Ruthie! I thought we were having a dandy time," exclaimed Helen.
"Have you lost your old love for the wild and open places?"

"I certainly will be glad to see a porcelain bathtub again," yawned
Jennie, breaking in. "I don't really feel as though a sponge-down in an
icy cold brook with a tarpaulin around one for a bath-house is
altogether the height of luxury."

"It is out here," laughed Helen.

"I do not mind the inconveniences so much," said Ruth reflectively. "The
old Red Mill farmhouse was not very conveniently arranged--above stairs,
at least--until I had it built over at my own expense, greatly to Uncle
Jabez's opposition. It is not the roughing it. That is good for us I
verily believe. But I have a depressing feeling that before the picture
is done something may happen."

"I should expect it would!" cried Helen, not at all disturbed by the
prophecy. Once Helen had prophesied disaster, and it had come. But she
forgot that now. "I expect something to happen--every day, most likely.
But of course it will be a pleasant and exciting something. Yes,
indeedy!"

Neither of her friends, after all, realized that Ruth Fielding was
actually in fear. She was very anxious every waking moment. That strange
man whom the girls had spied here in the canyon might be a perfectly
harmless person. And then again--

Two days were occupied in placing the paraphernalia and training the
actors in their parts. They all got a working knowledge of what was
expected of them when the picture was being photographed, and the
principals learned their lines. For nowadays almost as much care is
given to what is said by actors before the camera as by those having
speaking parts upon the stage.

The big scene--the really big scene in the drama--was set upon that
overhanging lip of rock that Ruth had spied when first she, with Helen
and Jennie, had ridden up the trail. On that overhanging shelf occurred
the struggle between the white lover of _Brighteyes_ and the Indian who
had trailed him and the girl to this wild spot.

Mr. Grand, in spite of Wonota's scorn of him, was a handsome man and
made as fine an appearance in the out-of-door garments the part called
for as he did in the dress-suit to which he was so much addicted. The
Indian who played the part of the villain was an excellent actor and had
appeared many times on the silver sheet. He was earnest in his desire to
please the director, but he failed sometimes to "keep in the picture"
when he was not actually dominating a scene.

Because of this failing in John Onehorse, Mr. Hooley sent Ruth to the
top of the rock to watch and advise Onehorse as the scene proceeded.

She was quite able by this time to act as assistant director. Indeed, it
was Ruth's ambition to direct a picture of her own in the near future.
She sometimes had ideas that conflicted with those of Mr. Hammond and
his directors, and she wished to try her own way to get certain
results.

Now, however, she was to follow Mr. Hooley's instructions exactly.

The arrangement of the cameras were such, both from below and at the
level of the scene to be shot, that Ruth had to stand upon a narrow
shelf quite out of sight of the actors on the overhanging rock, and
hidden as well from most of the people below. This, to make sure that
she was out of the line of the camera.

Behind her the narrow and broken trail led to the top of the canyon
wall. It was up this trail that Jennie and Helen had seen the "Man
Friday" disappear on the occasion of their first visit to the place.

Patiently, over and over again, Mr. Hooley had the principal characters
try the scene. Below, Wonota, as the heroine, was to run into the camera
field at a certain point in the struggle of the two men on the lip of
rock. To time the Indian girl's entrance was no small task. But at last
the characters seemed to be about letter perfect.

"Look out now! We're going to shoot it!" shouted Jim Hooley through his
megaphone. "Miss Fielding! Keep your eye on Onehorse. Keep him up to the
mark while he waits for Mr. Grand's speech. Now! Ready?"

It was at just this moment that Ruth felt something--something hard and
painful--pressing between her shoulder-blades. She shot a glance over
her shoulder to see the ugly face of Dakota Joe Fenbrook peering out at
her between the walls of a narrow crack in the face of the cliff. The
thing he pressed against her was a long stick, and, with a grin of
menace, he drove that stick more firmly against Ruth's body!

"Ready? Camera! Go!" shouted Mr. Hooley, and the scene was on.

Ruth, with a stifled cry, realized that she was being pushed to the edge
of the steep path. There was a drop of twenty feet and more, and where
she stood there was no net to break the fall!

If Fenbrook pushed her over the brink of the path Ruth knew very well
that the outcome would be even too realistic for a moving picture.

CHAPTER XXIV

WONOTA'S SURPRISE

Ruth Fielding might have cried out. But at that moment the attention of
everyone was so given to the taking of the important scene that perhaps
nobody would have understood her cry--what it meant.

Behind her Dakota Joe stretched forward, pushing the stick into the
small of her back and urging her closer to the brink. The spot on which
she stood was so narrow that it was impossible for her to escape without
turning her body, and the bad man knew very well that the pressure of
the stick kept her from doing that very thing!

The cameras were being cranked steadily, and Mr. Hooley shouted his
orders as needed. Fortunately for the success of the scene, Onehorse did
not need the admonitions of Ruth to "keep in the picture." The point
came where he made his leap for the shoulders of the white man, and it
was timed exactly. The two came to the brink of the rock in perfect
accord with the appearance of Wonota on the ground below.

The Indian girl came, gun in hand, as though just from the chase. As she
ran into the field of the camera Hooley shouted his advice and she
obeyed his words to the letter. Until----

She raised her eyes, quite as she was told. But she looked beyond Grand
and Onehorse struggling on the rock. It was to another figure she
looked--that of Ruth being forced over the verge of the narrow path.

The girl of the Red Mill was half crouched, striving to push back
against the thrust of the stick in Dakota Joe's hands. The upper part of
Fenbrook's body was plainly visible from Wonota's station at the foot of
the cliff, and his wicked face could be mistaken for no other.

"Now! The gun!" shouted Mr. Hooley. "Wonota! Come alive!"

The Indian girl obeyed--as far as springing into action went. The gun
she held went to her shoulder, but its muzzle did not point at the
actors above her. Instead, the threatening weapon pointed directly at
the head of the villain who was forcing Ruth off her insecure footing on
the narrow path.

"What are you doing, Wonota? Wonota!" shouted Mr. Hooley, who could not
see Ruth at all.

The Indian girl made no reply. She drew bead upon the head of Dakota
Joe, and his glaring eyes were transfixed by the appearance of the
gaping muzzle of Wonota's gun.

He dropped the stick with which he had forced Ruth to the edge of the
path. She fell sideways, dizzy and faint, clinging to the rough rock
with both hands. As it was, she came near rolling over the declivity
after all.

But it was Dakota Joe, in his sudden panic, who came to disaster. He had
always been afraid of Wonota. She was a dead shot, and he believed that
she would not shrink from killing him.

Now it appeared that the Indian girl held his life in her hands. The
muzzle of her weapon looked to Dakota Joe at that moment as big as the
mouth of a cannon!

He could see her brown finger curled upon the trigger. Each split second
threatened the discharge of the gun.

With a stifled cry he tried to leap out of the crack and along the path
down which he had come so secretly. But he stumbled. His riding boots
were not fit for climbing on such a rugged shelf. Stumbling again, he
threw out one hand to find nothing more stable to clutch than the empty
air!

"Wonota!" shouted Hooley again. "Stop!" He raised his hand, stopping the
cameras.

And at that moment there hurtled over the edge of the path a figure
that, whirling and screaming, fell all the distance to the bottom of the
canyon. Helen and Jennie, for a breathless instant, thought it must be
Ruth, for they knew where she had been hidden. But the voice that roared
fear and imprecations was not at all like Ruth Fielding's!

"Who's that?" shouted Mr. Hammond, likewise excited. "He's spoiled that
shot, I am sure."

Ruth sat up on the shelf and looked over.

"Oh!" she cried. "Is he killed?"

"He ought to be, if he isn't," growled Mr. Hooley. "What did you do that
for, Wonota?"

The Indian girl advanced upon the man writhing on the ground. Dakota Joe
saw her coming and set up another frightened yell.

"Don't let her shoot me! Don't let her!" he begged.

"Shut up!" commanded Mr. Hammond. "The gun only has blanks in it. We
don't use loaded cartridges in this business. Why! hanged if it isn't
Fenbrook."

"Now you have busted me up!" groaned the ex-showman. "I got a broken
leg. And I believe my arm's broken too. And that gal done it."

As Jennie said later, however, he could scarcely "get away with that."
Ruth came down and told what the rascal had tried to do to her. For a
little while it looked as though some of the rougher fellows might do
the dastardly Joe bodily harm other than that caused by his fall. But
Mr. Hammond hurried him in a motor-car to Clearwater, and there, before
the moving picture company returned, he was tried and sent to the State
penitentiary.

The great scene had to be taken over again--a costly and nerve-racking
experience. Like Ruth herself, Helen and Jennie were glad now when the
work was finished and they could head for the railroad.

"Guess you were right, Ruthie," agreed Jennie. "Something did happen. As
Aunt Alvirah would have said, you must have felt it in your bones."

"I feel it in my body, anyway," admitted Ruth. "I got dreadfully bruised
when I fell on that path. My side is all black and blue."

The misadventures of the occasion were soon forgotten however,
especially when the girls reached Clearwater and found a box waiting for
them at the express office. Unsuspicious Wonota was called into the
stateroom in the special car, and there her white friends displayed to
her delighted gaze the "trousseau," as Jennie insisted upon calling the
pretty frock and other articles sent on by Madame Jone.

"For _me_?" asked Wonota, for once showing every indication of delight
without being ordered to do so by the director. "All for me? Oh, it is
too much! How my father, Chief Totantora, would stare could he see me
in those beautiful things. Wonota's white sisters are doing too much for
her. There is no way by which she can repay their kindness."

"Say!" said Jennie bluntly, "if you want to pay Ruth Fielding, you just
go ahead and become a real movie star--a real Indian star, Wonota. I can
see well enough that then she will get big returns on her investment.
And in any case, we are all delighted that you are pleased with our
present."

CHAPTER XXV

OTHER SURPRISES

It was not merely a matter of packing up and starting for the East. It
would be a week still before the party would separate--some of the
Westerners starting for California and the great moving picture studios
there, while Ruth and her friends with Mr. Hammond and his personal
staff would go eastward.

It had been arranged that Wonota should return to the Osage Agency for a
short time. Meanwhile Ruth had promised to try to do another scenario in
which the young Indian girl would have an important part.

Mr. Hammond was enthusiastic, having seen some of the principal scenes
of "Brighteyes" projected. He declared to Ruth:

"She is going to be what our friend the camera man calls 'a knock-out.'
There is a charm about Wonota--a wistfulness and naturalness--that I
believe will catch the movie fans. Maybe, Miss Fielding, we are on the
verge of making one of the few really big hits in the game."

"I think she is quite worthy of training, Mr. Hammond," agreed the girl
of the Red Mill. "When I get to work on the new picture I shall want
Wonota with me. Can it be arranged?"

"Surely. Her contract takes that into consideration. Unless her father
appears on the scene, for the next two years Wonota is to be as much
under your instruction as though she were an apprentice," and he
laughed.

Mention of Chief Totantora did not warn Ruth of any pending event. The
thing which happened was quite unexpected as far as she was concerned.

The westbound train halted at Clearwater one afternoon, while the three
white girls were sitting on the rear platform of their car busy with
certain necessary needlework--for there were no maids in the party. Ruth
idly raised her eyes to see who got off the train, for the station was
in plain view.

"There are two soldiers," she said. "Look! Boys coming home from 'over
there,' I do believe. See! They have their trench helmets slung behind
them with their other duffle. Why----"

She halted. Helen had looked up lazily, but it was Jennie who first
exclaimed in rejoinder to Ruth's observation:

"Dear me, it surely isn't my Henri!"

"No," said Ruth slowly, but still staring, "there is no horizon blue
uniform in sight."

"Don't remind us of such possibilities," complained Helen Cameron with a
deep sigh. "If Tom--"

"It _is_!" gasped Ruth, under her breath, and suddenly the other girls
looked at her to observe an almost beatific expression spread over the
features of the girl of the Red Mill.

"Ruthie!" cried Helen, and jumped up from her seat.

"My aunt!" murmured Jennie, and stared as hard as she could along the
beaten path toward the station.

The two figures in uniform strode toward the special car. One straight
and youthful figure came ahead, while the other soldier, as though in a
subservient position, followed in the first one's footsteps.

Wonota was coming across the street toward the railroad. She, too, saw
the pair of uniformed men. For an instant the Indian girl halted. Then
she bounded toward the pair, her light feet fairly spurning the ground.

"My father! Chief Totantora!" the white girls heard her cry.

The leading soldier halted, swung about to look at her, and said
something to his companion. Not until this order was given him did the
second man even look in the direction of the flying Indian maid.

Ruth and her friends then saw that he was a man past middle age, that
his face was that of an Indian, and that his expression was quite as
stoical as the countenances of Indians are usually presumed to be.

But Wonota had learned of late to give way to her feelings. No white
girl could have flung herself into the arms of her long-lost parent with
more abandon than did Wonota. And that not-withstanding the costume she
wore--the very pretty one sent West from the Fifth Avenue modiste's
shop!

Perhaps the change in his lovely daughter shocked Totantora at first, He
seemed not at all sure that this was really his Wonota. Nor did he put
his arms about her as a white father would have done. But he patted her
shoulder, and then her cheek, and in earnest gutturals he conversed a
long time with the Indian maid.

Meanwhile the three white girls had their own special surprise. The
white soldier, who was plainly an officer, advanced toward the special
car. His bronzed and smiling face was not to be mistaken even at that
distance. Helen suddenly cried:

"Hold me, somebody! I know I'm going to faint! That's Tommy-boy."

Ruth, however, gave no sign of fainting. She dashed off the steps of the
car and ran several yards to meet the handsome soldier. Then she halted,
blushing to think of the appearance she made. Suppose members of the
company should see her?

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