"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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 handgla.s.s 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 coa.r.s.e 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--