oncluded. "If Bilby is here, he
is here for no good purpose, I can be sure. And if he has a boat like
that at his command, we must keep double watch."

"You think he would try to abduct Wonota again?" queried Chess.

"I would believe that fellow capable of anything," she returned. "I mean
anything that did not call for personal courage on his part."

"Humph!" murmured Chess thoughtfully. "I wonder what he was doing with
the Chinaman in his party. You know, sometimes Chinamen are smuggled
across from Canada against the emigration laws of the States."

He headed the _Lauriette_ for the camp then, and they arrived there in a
rather serious mood.

CHAPTER XII

THE DANCE AT ALEXANDRIA BAY

"You might have been mistaken, I suppose, Miss Ruth?" suggested Mr.
Hammond, the president of the film corporation, sitting at his desk in
the room of the main bungalow which he used as an office. "It was growing
dark when that speed boat passed you and your friend, was it not?"

"Not out on the river, Mr. Hammond. It was light enough for us to see the
men in that boat plainly. Just as sure as one of them was a Chinaman, the
short, fat man was Horatio Bilby."

"It doesn't seem possible that the fellow would chase away up here after
us when he so signally failed down below. My lawyer tells me that he had
no real authority from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to secure Wonota's
services, after all."

"He is a man who would not need much authority to attempt any mean
thing," said the girl hotly.

"That may be true," admitted Mr. Hammond. "But it seems quite too
sensational." He smiled, adding: "Quite too much like a movie plot, eh?"

"You say yourself that he has obtained the production rights to those
'Running Deer' stories that have appeared in the _Gotham Magazine_," said
Ruth, with earnestness. "They are good stories, Mr. Hammond. I have read
them."

"Yes. I believe they are pretty good material for pictures. That is, if
they were handled by a practical scenario writer like yourself."

"It is too bad you did not get them."

"Well, Bilby was ahead of us there. Somehow, he got backing and bought
the picture and dramatic rights to the tales outright. He can find
somebody besides Wonota to play _Running Deer_."

"He seems to have set his heart on our Wonota."

"Yes. He did make Totantora a whacking good offer. I must admit he did. I
could not begin to see such a price for the girl's services. And on a
mere speculatio