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, n.o.body 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.
"n.o.body 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."