elding?"

"Oh, I beg Miss Fielding's pardon," stammered the director. "You must
remember that taking such a scene as this costs the corporation a good
deal of money. Miss Fielding's danger, I must say, threw me quite off my
balance. If I didn't have two of the keenest camera men in the business
all this," and he gestured toward the turbulent river, "would have gone
for nothing."

"I can thank Mr. Hooley for what he tried to do for me," smiled Ruth. "I
saw his gestures if I could not hear his voice. That was my salvation.
But I believe it must have been Dakota Joe who started that avalanche of
logs down upon me."

"I'll have the scoundrel looked for," promised Hooley, turning to go
upstream again.

"But don't tell these rough men why you want Dakota Joe," advised the
girl of the Red Mill.

"No?"

"You know how they are--even some of the fellows working for the picture
company. They are pretty rough themselves. I do not want murder done
because of my narrow escape."

The other girls cried out at this, but Mr. Hooley nodded
understandingly.

"I get you, Miss Fielding. But I'll make it so he can't try any capers
around here again. No, sir!"

The girls were left to discuss the awful peril that had threatened, and
come so near to over-coming, Ruth. Helen was particularly excited about
it.

"I do think, Ruth, that we should start right for home. This is
altogether too savage a country. To think of that rascal _daring_ to do
such a thing! For of course it was Dakota Joe who started those logs to
rolling."

"I can imagine nobody else doing it," confessed her chum.

"Then I think you should start East at once," repeated Helen. "Don't you
think so, Jennie?"

"I'd hire a guard," said the plump girl. "This country certainly is not
safe for our Ruth."

"Neither was New York, it seemed," rejoined Ruth, with a whimsical
smile. "Of course we are not sure--"

"We are sure you came near losing your life," interrupted Helen.

"Quite so. I was in danger. But if it was Joe, he has run away, of
course. He will not be likely to linger about here after making the
attempt."

And to this opinion everybody else who knew about it agreed. A search
was made by some of the men for Dakota Joe. It was said he had left for
another logging camp far to the north before daybreak that very morning.
Nobody had seen him since that early hour.

"Just the same, he hung around long enough to start those logs to
rolling. And I am not sur