There came a yell from across the river.  Somebody there had seen what was threatening over Ruth’s head.  Then Jim Hooley cast his glance that way and yelled through his megaphone: 

“Jump, Miss Fielding!  Quick!  Jump into the river!”

But at that moment the man on the boom started for the shore, running frantically for safety.  The key log split with a raucous sound.  The water and drift-stuff, in a mounting wave, poured through the gap, and the noise of it deafened Ruth Fielding to all other sounds.

She did not even glance back and above again at the peril which menaced her from the top of the steep bank.

CHAPTER XIX

IN DEADLY PERIL

“This stunt business,” as Director Hooley called the taking of such pictures as this, is always admittedly a gamble.  After much time and hundreds of dollars have been spent in getting ready to shoot a scene, some little thing may go wrong and spoil the whole thing.

There was nothing the matter with the director’s plans on this occasion; every detail of the “freshet” had been made ready for with exactness and with prodigious regard to detail.

The foreman had cut the key log almost through and the force of the water and debris behind the boom had broken it.  The man barely escaped disaster by reason of agile legs and sharp caulks on his boots.

The backed-up waters burst through.  Up stream, amid the turmoil and murk of the agitated flood, rode Wonota in her canoe, directly into the focus of the great cameras.  To keep her canoe head-on with the flood, and to keep it from being overturned, was no small matter.  It required all the Indian girl’s skill to steer clear of snags and floating logs.  Besides, she must remember to register as she shot down the stream a certain emotion which would reveal to the audience her condition of mind, as told in the story.

Wonota did her part.  She was rods above the breaking dam and she could not see, because of an overhanging tree on Ruth’s side of the stream, any of that peril which suddenly threatened the white girl.  Wonota was as unconscious of what imperiled Ruth as the latter was at first unknowing of the coming catastrophe.

It was Jim Hooley whom the incident startled and alarmed more than anybody else.  He committed an unpardonable sin—­unpardonable for a director!  He forgot, when everything was ready, to order the starting of the camera.  Instead he put his megaphone to his lips and shouted across to Ruth Fielding—­who was not supposed to be in the picture at all: 

“Jump, Miss Fielding!  Quick!  Jump into the river!”

And Ruth did not hear him, loudly as his voice boomed across the flood!  She was deafened by the thunder of the waters and the crashing of the logs in mid-flood.  Her eyes, now that she was sure the foreman was safe on the other bank, were fixed upon the bow of Wonota’s canoe, just coming into sight behind the ware of foaming water and upreared, charging timbers.