"What are you doing, Wonota? Wonota!" shouted Mr. Hooley, who could not see Ruth at all.
The Indian girl made no reply. She drew bead upon the head of Dakota Joe, and his glaring eyes were transfixed by the appearance of the gaping muzzle of Wonota's gun.
He dropped the stick with which he had forced Ruth to the edge of the path. She fell sideways, dizzy and faint, clinging to the rough rock with both hands. As it was, she came near rolling over the declivity after all.
But it was Dakota Joe, in his sudden panic, who came to disaster. He had always been afraid of Wonota. She was a dead shot, and he believed that she would not shrink from killing him.
Now it appeared that the Indian girl held his life in her hands. The muzzle of her weapon looked to Dakota Joe at that moment as big as the mouth of a cannon!
He could see her brown finger curled upon the trigger. Each split second threatened the discharge of the gun.
With a stifled cry he tried to leap out of the crack and along the path down which he had come so secretly. But he stumbled. His riding boots were not fit for climbing on such a rugged shelf. Stumbling again, he threw out one hand to find nothing more stable to clutch than the empty air!
"Wonota!" shouted Hooley again. "Stop!" He raised his hand, stopping the cameras.
And at that moment there hurtled over the edge of the path a figure that, whirling and screaming, fell all the distance to the bottom of the canyon. Helen and Jennie, for a breathless instant, thought it must be Ruth, for they knew where she had been hidden. But the voice that roared fear and imprecations was not at all like Ruth Fielding's!
"Who's that?" shouted Mr. Hammond, likewise excited. "He's spoiled that shot, I am sure."