Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest Part 25

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 princ.i.p.als 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 a.s.sistant 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 princ.i.p.al 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 n.o.body 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."