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."