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.