“Why don’t you offer Dakota Joe a job in your picture company, too?” drawled Jennie Stone.

“He’d make such a fine ‘bad man.’”

“He certainly would,” agreed Helen.

Just how bad the proprietor of the Wild West Show could be was proved the following day.  Mr. Hammond sent Ruth a telegram In the morning intimating that something had gone wrong with their plans to get Wonota into their employ.

* * * * *

“The Court has given Fenbrook an injunction.  What do you know about it?”

* * * * *

Now, of course, Ruth Fielding did not know anything at all about it.  And after what she had seen of Dakota Joe she had no mind to go to him on behalf of Mr. Hammond and herself.  If the Westerner was balking the attempt to get Wonota out of his clutches, nothing would beat him, Ruth believed, but legal proceedings.

She telegraphed Mr. Hammond to this effect, advising that he put the matter in the hands of the attorney that had drawn the new contract with the Indian girl.

“The goodness knows,” she told Aunt Alvirah and Uncle Jabez, “I don’t want to have anything personally to do with that rough man.  He is just as ugly as he can be.”

“Wal,” snorted the miller, “he better not come around here cutting up his didoes!  Me and Ben will tend to him!”

Ruth could not help being somewhat fearful of the proprietor of the Wild West Show.  If the man really made up his mind to make trouble, Ruth hoped that he would not come to the Red Mill.

Helen and Jennie drove over to the mill to get Ruth that afternoon, and they planned to take Aunt Alvirah out with them.  She had lost her fear of the automobile and had even begun to hint to the miller that she wished he would buy a small car.

“Land o’ Goshen!” grumbled Uncle Jabez, “what next?  I s’pose you’d want to learn to run the dratted thing, Alvirah Boggs?”

“Well, Jabez Potter, I don’t see why not?” she had confessed.  “Other women learns.”

“Huh!  You with one foot in the grave and the other on the gas, eh?” he snorted.

However, Aunt Alvirah did not go out in Helen’s car on this afternoon.  While the girls were waiting for her to be made ready, Helen looked back, up the road, down which she and Jennie had just come.

“What’s this?” she wanted to know.  “A runaway horse?”

Jennie stood up to look over the back of the car.  She uttered an excited squeal.

“Helen!  Ruthie!” she declared.  “It’s that Indian girl—­in all her war-togs, too.  She is riding like the wind.  And, yes!  There is somebody after her!  Talk about your moving picture chases—­this is the real thing!”

“It’s Dakota Joe!” shrieked Helen.  “Goodness!  He must have gone mad.  See him beating that horse he rides.  Why—­”

“He surely has blown up,” stated Jennie Stone with conviction.  “Ruthie! what are you going to do?”