“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 sure but that he had help,” Jim Hooley said, talking the matter over later, after Mr. Hammond had arrived from the railroad and had been told about the incident, “He is a dangerous fellow, that Fenbrook.”

“He has made himself a nuisance,” agreed Mr. Hammond.  “Tell William and the other boys to keep their eyes open for him.  The moment he appears again—­if he does appear—­let them grab him.  I will get a warrant sworn out at Clearwater for his arrest.  We will put him in jail until our picture is finished, at least.”