"He is as angry with us as he can be," the girl of the Red Mill told the Osage maiden. "I think, if I were you, Wonota, I would beware of him."
"Beware of Dakota Joe?" repeated Wonota.
"Yes."
"I would beware of him? I would shoot him?" said the Osage girl with suddenly flashing eyes. "That is what you mean?"
Ruth laughed in spite of her anxiety. "Beware" was plainly a word outside the Indian girl's vocabulary.
"Don't talk like a little savage," she admonished Wonota, more severely than usual. "Of course you are not to shoot the man. You are just to see that he does you no harm—watch out for him when he is in your vicinity."
"Oh! I'll watch Dakota Joe all right," promised Wonota with emphasis. "Don't you worry about that, Miss Fielding. I'll watch him."
To Ruth's mind it seemed that the ex-showman, in his anger, was likely to try to punish the Indian girl for leaving his show, or to do some harm to the picture-making so as to injure Mr. Hammond. He had already (or so Ruth believed) endeavored to hurt Ruth herself when she was all but run over in New York. Ruth did not expect a second attack upon herself.
The next morning—the really "great day" of the picture taking—all at the camp were aroused by daybreak. There was not a soul—to the very cook of the timber-camp outfit—who was not interested in the matter. The freshet Jim Hooley had planned had to be handled in just the right way and everything connected with it must be done in the nick of time.
Wonota in her Indian canoe—a carefully selected one and decorated in Indian fashion—was embarked on the sullen stream above the timber-boom. The holding back of the water and the driftwood had formed an angry stretch of river which under ordinary circumstances Ruth and the other girls who had accompanied her West thought they would have feared to venture upon. The Indian girl, however, seemed to consider the circumstances not at all threatening.