as 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."

"Say!" said Jennie bluntly, "if you want to pay Ruth Fielding, you just
go ahead and become a real movie star--a real Indian star, Wonota. I can
see well enough that then she will get big returns on her investment.
And in any case, we are all delighted that you are pleased with our
present."

CHAPTER XXV

OTHER SURPRISES

It was not merely a matter of packing up and starting for the East. It
would be a week still before the party would separate--some of the
Westerners starting for California and the great moving picture studios
there, w