CHAPTER VIIIAT CHIPPEWA BAY
Helen pronounced that exodus from the Red Mill “some hustle;” and really it was but a brief time that Ruth allowed for packing, dressing, and getting to Cheslow for the eight-forty-five train, bound north. This was a through train with sleeping cars, and stopped at Cheslow only on special occasions. Ruth determined that this was one of those occasions.
She hustled Ben, the hired man, off to town ahead, and by the good offices of Mercy Curtis a compartment and berth were obtained on that especial train. Mercy kept the wires hot arranging this for her friend.
Meanwhile, Helen rushed home in her car, packed her trunk and bag, had them loaded into the front of the car, and drove up the road again to the Red Mill where she picked up the two Indians and Ruth. Uncle Jabez and Aunt Alvirah were sorry enough to see Ruth go; but this trip promised not to be a long one, for the picture should be made in five or six weeks.
The Cameron’s chauffeur had been instructed by Helen to “burn up the road,” for there was none too much time before the train was due, and he did as he was ordered. Indeed, there were ten minutes to spare when they reached the station platform, and the girls spent that time chatting with Mercy Curtis leaning out of her window of the telegraph office.
“So, you are off on your travels again,” said the lame girl. “I wish I was a butterfly of fashion, too.”
“‘Butterfly,’!” scoffed Helen. “Ruth, at least, is no butterfly. She might be called a busy bee with more truth.”
“Ah-ha, Miss Helen!” returned Mercy, shaking her finger, “you are the improvident grasshopper—no less.”
Helen giggled. “Tom says that that old proverb, ‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard;’ should read: ‘Go to the ant and slug her.’ He does not love work any more than I do.”
Again Ruth’s expression of countenance was one of disapproval, but she made no comment on Tom. The train thundered toward the station, slowing down as though resenting being stopped in its swift career for even a few moments.
Mr. Curtis, the station master, made a point himself of seeing that the baggage of the party was put into the baggage car. The conductorand porter helped the girls aboard, and they found their sections.
Ruth was determined that Wonota should not get out of her sight again, and the Indian girl was to occupy a berth in the stateroom. Totantora was to have had the berth; but when he saw it made up and noted the cramped and narrow quarters offered him, he shook his head decidedly. He spent the night in the porter’s little room at the end of the car, and the porter, when he found out Totantora was an Indian chief, did not dare object for fear of being scalped!
The party reached Hammond the following afternoon. Here they alighted instead of at Redwood, the more popular station of those wishing to reach the Thousand Islands by way of the electric road to Alexandria Bay. Ruth and her party were going direct to Chippewa Bay, for it was upon some of the more northern of the fourteen hundred or more isles that constitute the “Thousand Islands” that Mr. Hammond had arranged for the film company’s activities at this time.
A big touring car was waiting for the party, for one of the telegrams Ruth had caused to be sent the evening before was to Mr. Hammond, and they were glad to leave the Pullman and get into the open air. Totantora, even, desired to walk to Chippewa Bay, for he was tired of thewhite man’s means of locomotion. Ruth and Wonota would not hear to this.
“I guess we have eluded Bilby,” said the girl of the Red Mill; “but I shall not feel that Wonota is safe, Totantora, unless you are near her at all times. You must keep watch of your daughter. She is a valuable possession.”
For once Totantora smiled—although it was grimly.
“A squaw did not use to be counted for much in my nation,” he said. “But Wonota is not like the old squaws.”
“Wonota is quite an up-to-date young woman, let me tell you, Mr Totantora,” Helen told him briskly.
The party remained over night at a small hotel at Chippewa Bay; but in the morning Ruth and her companions entered a motor launch and were transported to an island where the film producing company had been established in several bungalows which Mr. Hammond had rented for the time of their stay.
The water between the small islands was as calm as a mill pond; but the party caught glimpses from the launch of the breadth of the St. Lawrence, its Canadian shore being merely a misty blue line that morning. The rocky and wooded islands were extremely beautiful and as romantic in appearance as the wilderness always is. Nowand then a privately owned island, improved by landscape gardening into a modern summer estate, offered contrast to the wilder isles.
The girls spent most of the day in getting settled. No work on the new picture could be done for a couple of days, and Helen, naturally, looked for amusement. There were canoes as well as motor boats, and both the chums were fond of canoeing. Wonota, of course, was mistress of the paddle; and with her the two white girls selected a roomy canoe and set out toward evening on a journey of exploration among the closer islands.
One of the largest islands in the group was in sight—Grenadier Island; but that they learned was beyond the American line. They saw it only from a distance, keeping close to the New York shore as they did on this brief voyage. The tall tamaracks and the other trees crowded some of the islands until they seemed veritable jungles.
Some few, however, were bold and precipitous in the extreme. “Just the sort of place for pirate dens and robber caves,” Helen declared, shivering gleefully.
“What a romantic puss you are,” laughed Ruth.
“Well, those cracks in the rock yonder look so dark and dismal. And theremightbe dark-skinned men with red bandanas bound aroundtheir heads, and knives in their belts, along with the rest of the scenery, Ruthie,” complained Helen.
Wonota stared at her. “Do you mean, Miss Helen, that there are cholos—are greasers—in these woods? My geography book that I study shows this country to be far, far from Mexico.”
“Oh, my aunt!” chuckled Helen. “She thinks nobody but Mexicans can wear gay handkerchiefs bound about their noble brows. Wait till you see sure-enough pirates—”
“That is perfect nonsense, Wonota,” said Ruth, warningly. “Helen is only in fun.”
“Ah,” said the practical Indian maid, “I understand English—and American; only I do not always grasp the—er—humor, do you call it?”
“Good!” applauded Ruth. “Serves you right, Helen, for your silly nonsense.”
“The Indians’ fun is different,” explained Wonota, not wishing to offend the white girl.
“You are a pair of old sober-sides, that is what is the matter,” declared Helen gaily. “Oh, Ruth! drive the canoe ashore yonder—on that rocky beach. Did you ever see such ferns?”
They brought the canoe carefully in to the shore, landing on a sloping rock which was moss-grown above the mark of the last flood. Ruth fastened the tow-rope to the staff of a slender sapling. Wonota got out to help Helen gathersome of the more delicately fronded ferns. Ruth turned her back upon them and began climbing what seemed to be a path among the boulders and trees.
This was not a very large island, and it was well out from the American shore, but inside the line between the States and Canada. Although the path Ruth followed seemed well defined, she scarcely thought the island was inhabited.
As they had paddled past it in the canoe there had been no sign of man’s presence. It had been left in the state of nature, and nothing, it seemed, had been done to change its appearance from the time that the first white man had seen it.
Some rods up the ascent Ruth came to an open place—a table of rock that might really have been a giant’s dining-table, so flat and perfectly shaped it was. She could look down upon Helen and Wonota, and they looked up and called to her.
“Look out for the pirates!” shouted Helen, with laughter.
Ruth waved her hand, smiling, and, crossing the rock, parted the brush and stepped out of sight of her friends. Two steps she took through the clinging bushes when a most surprising figure started up before her.
There was plenty of light, even if the sun had gone down. She was not uncertain at all as tothe nature of the figure that confronted her—that of a man.
She saw almost instantly that the old man’s brown eyes were more like a child’s in expression than like an angry man’s. He grinned at her, but the grimace was involuntary or meaningless.
“Hush!” he whispered. “Hush!”
Ruth remained both quiet and speechless, looking into his wrinkled old face calmly. She thought he must be a beggar from his clothing, but she could not imagine him a robber, nor even one of Helen’s “pirates.” As she said nothing the old man repeated his sibilant warning:
“Hush!”
“I am ‘hushing’ just as hard as I can,” whispered the girl in return, and smiling a little now. “Why must I ‘hush’?”
“Hush!” he said again, quite as earnestly. “You are in danger of your life, young woman.”
“Not from you, I am sure,” she returned. “You would not try to hurt me.”
“Hush!” he repeated, looking back over his shoulder into the thicker wood. “They may come at any moment now. And although I am their king, they would kill you. You see, kings aren’t as powerful now as they used to be before the war.”
“So I understand,” agreed Ruth soberly. “But who are you king of—or what?”
“I am King of the Pipes,” whispered the old man. “You don’t know what that means,” he added, scanning her puzzled face. “No. And that’s the secret. You cannot be told.”
“Oh,” murmured Ruth, somewhat amused, yet pitying his evident mental state.
“Hush!” he said again. “You are in danger. Go away from this place at once, and don’t come here again. If my courtiers see you—Ha! Off with her head! I shall have to follow the kingly custom. It is not my fault,” he added, in the same low tone, shaking his head mournfully. “We kings have to lead our lives, you know.”
“It must be a dreadful life, if you have to order people’s heads cut off when they have done you no harm,” Ruth ventured.
“But my people would not believe that you would do no harm,” he explained. “I can see that you are quite harmless. But they have not the intelligence I possess. You understand?”
“Quite,” said Ruth. “And I will go right away. Thank you for your kindness.”
“That is right, young woman. Go away. And do not return. It is not safe here.”
“Can’t—can’t I do anything for you?”
“Hush!” warned the old man. “No, I do not think you can. I do not care to divide my power with any consort. And, unless you are of noble blood I could not make you Queen of the Pipes.That would never do. Such a mésalliance would never do. My people would never stand for it—oh, never!”
“I quite understand that,” said Ruth, having difficulty to keep from smiling.
“Now go, young woman,” the man said pompously. “And do not return.”
“I will obey you,” said Ruth soberly. “If you are sure I cannot help you.”
“Hush!” he warned her again, waving his hand. “They are likely to come at any moment. And then—”
The girl backed through the bushes and stepped upon the table-like rock. She would have bade him good-bye, but he hissed after her another sibilant “hush!” and disappeared as mysteriously as he had come.
Ruth descended to the canoe and waited until they were well away from the island before she said a word to the other girls about the queer old man.
CHAPTER IXA FILM MYSTERY
“I told you there were pirates there,” Helen declared that evening, when she and Ruth were in the room they shared together. Wonota slept in a room adjoining and had already retired.
“I don’t think that poor old man was a pirate,” returned Ruth, smiling a little.
“Didn’t he tell you he was ’king of the pirates’?” demanded Helen.
Ruth laughed outright. “He said he was ’king of the pipes’—whatever that may mean. Poor old fellow!”
“Well, it seems he most certainly had been ‘smoking the pipe’—or do they call it ‘hitting the pipe’?”
“Don’t ask me to aid you with any information on slang,” admonished her friend. “I don’t suppose he is really king of anything except of a country of his dreams—poor fellow.”
“Dear me!” grumbled Helen. “You never will boost romance, Ruth Fielding. Maybe there are pirates on that island.”
“Or pipes,” said Ruth calmly.
“Never mind. When the boys come I am going to shoo them on to that place.”
“What boys?” demanded Ruth in surprise.
“The Copleys arrive to-morrow. And their place is not five miles away from this very spot. We’ll get a motor-boat and go down there to-morrow evening and welcome them. I got a telegram from Tom when I came back from canoeing. I forgot to tell you.”
“Tom!” exclaimed Ruth, and for perhaps the first time in her life she seemed undesirous of hearing about Tom Cameron.
Helen gave her a somewhat puzzled side glance as she found the telegram and gave it to her chum, who read:
“Vacation begins to-morrow. Will be with you next day. Tom.”
“Vacation begins to-morrow. Will be with you next day. Tom.”
Helen giggled. “You can make up your mind that he knows Chess Copley has started for this neck of woods. Tom is becoming Mr. Jealous Jellaby. Did you ever?”
“I am sorry Tom considers it necessary to take a vacation when he has only just begun work with your father, Helen.”
“There you go again!” exclaimed her chum.“I don’t understand you at all, Ruth Fielding. Tom doesn’t have to work.”
“It might be better if he did,” said Ruth, and refused to discuss the point further that evening.
The next day was just as lovely as that first one. Preparations were under way all over the island Mr. Hammond had rented for the making of the picture which Ruth had written. The continuity was being studied by Mr. Hooley, the director; and the principals had been furnished with their detail.
The ordinary participants in the filming of a picture—the “extras”—seldom know much about the story. They merely appear in certain scenes and do what they are told. As the scenes are not made in sequence these actors of the smaller parts have little idea of the story itself.
Ruth, under the advice of Mr. Hammond, had chosen a certain series of incidents relating to early French-Canadian history, and it began with an allegory of the bringing of the Christian religion to the Indians by the first French priests. This allegory included the landing of the French upon the shore of a rocky island where they were met by the wondering Indians, and Mr. Hooley’s assistant had chosen the spot for this scene to be “shot,” not far from the place where the company had its headquarters.
Ruth paid little attention to the locations untilthe moment arrived for the camera work. In fact, after supplying the detailed script she had little to do with the preparation of the picture until the scenes were made. She had never made continuity, as it is called, for that is more or less of a mechanical process and is sure to interfere with the creative faculty of the screen writer.
In the afternoon of this day Helen engaged a motor-boat, and she and Ruth set out for the Copley island, which was some miles away, toward Alexandria Bay. Caretakers and servants had been at work there for some time, it was evident, for the lawns were neatly shaved, the gardens in full growth, and the family were already comfortably settled in their summer home.
Chess Copley must have been on the watch (could it be possible that he had inside information about this early visit of Helen and Ruth?) for he came running down to the dock before the gardener could reach that point to fasten the boat’s line.
“Hurrah!” he shouted. “I was just wondering if we would see you girls to-day; and if you hadn’t come I should have got out our launch and tried to find your camp this evening.”
“Oh, hullo, Chess,” Helen said coolly as she stepped ashore, refusing his assistance. “Where are the girls?”
“There they are—waiting for you on the porch,” he said, rather subdued it would seem by her bruskness.
Helen started directly for the wide veranda of the villa-like house that topped the higher part of the island. There were several acres of grounds about the Copley house, for the whole island was cultivated to the water’s edge. There was nothing wild left in the appearance of the property, save a few of the tall forest trees that had been allowed to stand and some huge boulders almost covered with climbing vines.
Ruth gave Chess her hand—and he squeezed it warmly. She gave him a frank smile, and Chess seemed comforted.
“Nell’s dreadfully tart with a fellow,” he grumbled. “She’s nothing like she used to be. But you are kind, Ruth.”
“You should not wear your heart on your sleeve,” she told him briskly, as they followed Helen Cameron toward the veranda.
The two girls from the moving picture camp passed a pleasant evening with their New York friends. The Copley girls always managed to gather, Helen declared, “perfectly splendid house parties;” and they had brought with them several companionable girls and young men.
Music and dancing filled the evening, and it was ten o’clock when the two chums from Cheslowsought their motor-boat and set out for the camp on the Chippewa Bay island. Chess Copley had kept by Ruth’s side almost all the evening, and although Helen treated him so cavalierly, she seemed provoked at her chum for paying the young man so much attention.
“I don’t understand what you see in Chess,” she said in a vexed tone to the girl of the Red Mill. “He’s nothing much.”
“He is pleasant, and you used to like him,” said Ruth quietly.
“Humph!” Helen tossed her head. “I found him out. And he’s not to be compared with Tommy-boy.”
“I quite agree with you—that is, considering Tom as a brother,” observed Ruth, and after that refused to be led into further discussion regarding Chess Copley.
It was not often that Ruth and Helen had a disagreement. And this was not really of importance. At least, there was no sign of contention between them in the morning.
To tell the truth, there was so much going on, on this day, that the girls could scarcely have found time to quarrel. The sun was bright and the sky cloudless. It was an ideal day for out-of-door “shots,” and the camera men and Mr. Hooley had the whole company astir betimes.
The few real Indians, besides Wonota and Totantora,in the company, and all those “extras” who were dressed as aborigines, got into their costumes before breakfast. Soon after eight o’clock the company got away in barges, with launches to tow them through the quiet waterways.
In a costume play like this that had been planned, the participants naturally make a very brilliant spectacle wherever they appear. But among the islands of Chippewa Bay there were few spectators at this time save the wild fowl.
“And they,” Helen said, “might be descendants of the very birds who looked on the actual first appearance of the white man in this wilderness. Isn’t it wonderful?”
When Mr. Hooley, megaphone in hand and stationed with the two cameras on one of the decked-over barges, had got his company in position and the action was begun, it was indeed an impressive picture. Of course, a scene is not made off-hand—not even an outdoor pageant like this. The detail must be done over and over again before the cranks of the cameras are turned. It was almost noon before Mr. Hooley dared tell the camera men to “shoot the scene.”
The flag-decorated barge bearing the Frenchmen to the rocky shore moved forward into focus in a stately way, while the Indians gathered in a spectacular group on the sloping shore—tier upon tier of dark faces, wearing nodding featherhead-dresses, blankets, deerskin leggings, and other garments of Indian manufacture—all grouped to make a brilliant spectacle.
Totantora, a commanding figure, and his daughter asWhite Fawn, the demure yet dominant princess of the Hurons, stood forth from the background of the other Indians in a graceful picture. Helen was delighted and could not help shouting to the Osage girl that she was “great”—a remark which elicited a frown from the director and an admonition from Ruth.
Behind the grouped Indians was the greenery of the primeval forest with which this rocky island seemed to be covered. The cameras whirred while the barge containing the actors representing the Frenchmen pushed close into the shore and the whites landed.
A boy carried ashore the great cross, and with him came a soldier bearing the lilies of France, the standard of which he sank into the turf. The detail of costume and armament had been carefully searched out by Ruth herself, and the properties were exact. She was sure that this part of the picture at least could not be criticised but to be praised.
It was three o’clock before the party disembarked and went back to the camp for a delayed lunch. The remainder of the afternoon was devoted to the taking of several “close-ups” and aninterior scene that had been built on the island rather than in the city studio of the Alectrion Film Corporation.
The films taken earlier in the day were developed, and that evening after dinner Ruth and Helen joined Mr. Hammond and Mr. Hooley in the projection room to see a “run” of the strip taken at the island where the Frenchmen landed.
“Do you know that that island is the one we landed on ourselves the other evening, Ruth?” Helen remarked, as they took their seats and waited in the darkness for the operator to project the new film.
“Do you mean it? I did not notice. The island where I met that strange old man?”
“The pirate—yes,” giggled Helen. “Only we went ashore at the far end of it.”
“I never thought of it—or of him,” admitted Ruth. “Poor, crazy old fellow—”
The machine began its whirring note and they fell silent. Upon the silver sheet there took shape and actuality the moving barge with its banners and streamers and costumed actors. Then a flash was given of the Indians gathering on the wild shore—wondering, excited, not a little fearful of the strange appearance of the white men. The pageant moved forward to its conclusion—the landing of the strangers and the setting up of the banners and the cross.
But suddenly Ruth shrieked aloud, and Mr. Hammond shouted to the operator to “repeat.” The dense underbrush had parted behind the upper tier of Indians and in the aperture thus made appeared a face and part of the figure of a man—a wild face with straggling hair and beard, and the upper part of his body clad in the rags of a shirt.
“What in thunder was that, Hooley?” cried Mr. Hammond. “Somebody butted in. It’s spoiled the whole thing. I thought your men warned everybody off that island?”
“I never saw that scarecrow before,” declared the director, quite as angrily.
But Ruth squeezed Helen’s hand hard.
“The King of the Pipes,” she whispered.
CHAPTER XA SMELL OF SMOKE
The discovery of the face and figure of the old man whom Ruth had once met and spoken with on the island thrust out of the undergrowth and showing through a good part of the length of film that had been made that first day, caused a good deal of disturbance. The King of the Pipes, as he had called himself, was entirely “out of the picture.” His representation on the celluloid could not be removed. And he had been in focus for so many feet of the film that it was utterly impossible to cut it, and thus save the picture.
“It is a wretched piece of business,” Mr. Hammond said to Ruth, as they came from the projection room after seeing the reel run off again and again. “The entire scene will have to be made over. And, aside from that irremediable fault, I consider the work remarkably good. Mr. Hooley may never again be able to get it so good.”
Ruth and Helen had told him about the oldcrazy man—a hermit, perhaps—and Mr. Hammond had given instructions that before the retaking of the scene was tried the island should be searched for the King of the Pipes.
“Whoever, or whatever, he is,” the producer said, “he’s got to be looked after while we are making this picture. He is likely to burst most unexpectedly into any of the outdoor scenes, and on any location, and break up the show. This is going to cost money, Miss Ruth.”
“I know it, Mr. Hammond. But it never crossed my mind that it was on that very island I had my meeting with the man.”
“When Hooley tries to shoot the picture again we must send somebody up into that island to watch for the old fellow. He’d better be under confinement, anyway, if he’s crazy.”
“The poor old thing.” Ruth sighed. “I don’t think he means any harm—”
“He’s harmed us all right,” grumbled the president of the Alectrion Film Corporation. “I tell you, a day’s work like this—with such salaries as we pay, and supplies and all—mounts into real money.”
“Oh,” said Ruth, “some of the film can be saved. All that until the Frenchmen land—”
“We won’t dare risk it. In a costume story like this somebody is sure to get his dress, or armor, or something, different next time fromwhat it was to-day. And if we try to save any part of this piece of film the change will show up in the finished picture. Every critical spectator will see the break and will comment upon it. Might as well make up our minds to take the loss; but we must be sure that a similar accident does not occur again.”
“Will Mr. Hooley risk taking the scene over on that island?” asked Ruth thoughtfully.
“Why not? It is a fine location—couldn’t be beat. We’ve got to shoo that old man out of it, that’s all.”
The girl had an idea that if she could meet the queer old man again she might be able to convince him that some other island would serve quite as well for his “kingdom” as that particular isle. At any rate, she hated the thought of his being abused or roughly treated.
Soon after the fiasco in the projection room, Tom Cameron arrived by motor-boat from the town across the bay. Now, Ruth was secretly very glad to see Tom. She always would be glad to see his sunny face, no matter how or when. But she could not approve of his being here at the Thousand Islands at this particular time.
Tom had grown up to be one of those young men who do not know what they want to do in life, and the reaction from the strain of his military life had, as was natural, intensified thistendency to drift. After the time that he had determined to be a soldier, then to go West and hunt Indians and grizzly bears, and then shifted to the desire to be a pirate or a policeman, Tom Cameron had really expressed very little taste for any commercial pursuit.
He had made his mark in his preparatory school and college in several lines of athletics. But a boy in his position would scarcely become a professional baseball player or pull an oar for a living. To tell the truth, Tom had never shown much aptitude for his father’s business. Dry goods did not interest him.
Yet when he had come home after the armistice Ruth thought he was going to buckle right down to business with Mr. Cameron’s firm. There seemed to be a super-abundant supply of energy in Tom that had to be worked off. And Ruth thought it would be worked off properly under the yoke of business. Besides, Mr. Cameron was getting no younger, and he ought to have the support of his only son in business affairs.
But the last winter, since Ruth and the Cameron twins had returned from the Northwest, things had not gone with Tom quite as the girl of the Red Mill would have chosen.
Yet she felt that it was not really her business to interfere. Indeed, she did not purpose to interfere. If she undertook to advise Tom it wouldplease him only too well—that she knew, of course.
For Tom considered Ruth quite as much his property as Helen—only in a slightly different way. And if Ruth showed in any manner that she considered Tom her property—well, it would be all off, to use one of Helen’s favorite expressions.
There was no engagement between Ruth and Tom—not even a tacitly recognized one. In times of stress and need Tom had proved himself to be a very good friend indeed, and Ruth fully appreciated this. But during this past winter he had been somewhat spoiled—or so the girl thought.
In the first place, Helen was determined to make a hero of her handsome brother. Captain Cameron was pushed to the fore by his sister in every possible way and manner. Helen had many gay friends in New York—she had met them through the Stones, for Helen had often been with Jennie when Ruth was elsewhere and more seriously engaged.
Naturally Tom had been one with his sister in gay parties, dances, theater groups, supper crowds, and all the rest. Business had gone by the board with Tom; and before Ruth realized it the young returned soldier had lapsed into a butterfly existence that busy Ruth did not approve.Especially, did she believe, was such an aimless life bad for Tom Cameron.
She met him in the living room of the bungalow, however, with her usual warmth; perhaps “lack of warmth” would be the better expression. For although Ruth was always quietly cordial with most people, she was never “hail fellow, well met” with anybody, unless it was her own, dear, old girl friends of Briarwood Hall.
She resisted, however, making any criticism upon Tom’s presence in the moving picture camp. Everybody in the house—and there were several members of the company there besides Mr. Hammond and the director—greeted Tom Cameron cordially. He was a favorite with them all.
And the minute Totantora heard of Tom’s arrival, the Osage chief appeared at the door, standing with glittering eyes fixed on the ex-captain and unmoved expression of countenance while he waited to catch Tom’s attention.
“Bless my heart!” cried the rollicking Tom, “here’s my old buddy! Totantora, how are you?”
They shook hands, the Indian gravely but with an expression in his eyes that revealed a more than ordinary affection for the young white man. In France and along the Rhine Totantora, the Osage chief, had become the sworn follower ofthe drygoods merchant’s son—a situation to cause remark, if not wonder.
Tom had learned a few words of the Osage tongue and could understand some of Totantora’s gutturals. What the chief said seemed at one point to refer to Ruth, who, quite unconscious, was talking with Mr. Hammond across the room. Tom glanced at Ruth’s back and shook his head slightly. But he made no audible comment upon what the Indian said.
He did not, indeed, see much of Ruth that night; but in one moment of privacy she said to Tom:
“Do you want to make an early morning excursion—before Lazybones Helen is roused from her rosy slumbers?”
“Bet you!” was Tom’s boyish reply.
“Six o’clock, then, at the dock. If you are there first rouse out Willie, the boatman, and offer him a five dollar bill from me to take us through the islands in theGem. That’s his boat.”
“I’ll find him to-night and make sure,” said Tom promptly.
“You are a faithful servitor,” laughed Ruth, and left him before Tom could take any advantage of her kindness.
The appointment was kept to the letter and minute in the morning. Helen was still asleep when Ruth dressed and stole out of the bungalow.Not many of the people on the island, save the cooks and dining-room employees, were astir. But Tom and the boatman—and theGem—were at the dock in readiness.
Ruth gave Willie his instructions. He was to make a landing at the far end of the island on which the picture had been taken the day before. It was too early for any of Mr. Hooley’s men to be over there looking for the old man whose face had spoiled several hundred feet of good film. Ruth wished, if possible, to first interview the strange man.
She took Tom into her confidence at once about the King of the Pipes. She did not believe the man was so crazy that he ought to be shut up in an asylum. He was merely “queer.” And if they could get him off the island and out of the way while the picture was being shot, he might then go back to his hermit life and play at being king all he wished to.
“What a lark!” exclaimed Tom, looking at the matter a good deal as his twin sister did. “And you are constantly falling in with queer characters, Ruth.”
“You might better say they are falling in with me, for I am sure I do not intentionally hunt them up,” complained Ruth. “And this poor old man has cost us money enough.”
“It is too bad,” was Tom’s comment.
“Worse than that, perhaps Mr. Hooley will never again get as fine an allegorical picture as he did yesterday. They were all in the spirit of the piece when the shot was made.”
They arrived at the sloping stone beach and landed as Ruth and the girls had before disembarked. Ruth led Tom up the rough path into the woods beyond the table-rock. The trees stood thick, and the bushes were thorny, but they pushed through to an open space surrounding an old, gnarled, lightning-riven beech. The top of this monarch of the ancient forest had been broken off and the line of its rotted trunk and branches could be marked amid the undergrowth. But the staff of it stood at least thirty feet in height.
“What a spread of shade it must have given in its day,” said Tom. “All these other tall trees have grown up since the top broke off.”
“Quite so,” agreed Ruth. “But where do you suppose that queer old man has his camp?”
They looked all about the island, coming back at last to the riven beech. But they found no mark of human occupancy on the island.
“I smell wood smoke, just the same,” Tom declared, sniffing the air. “There is a fire somewhere near.”
They saw no smoke, however, nor did they find any cavity in the rocks that seemed to have beenoccupied by man or used as the rudest kind of camp.
“Maybe he doesn’t live on this island after all,” said Tom. “He could get to half a dozen other islands from here in a light canoe. Or even on a raft.”
“He spoke as though he considered this particular island his kingdom,” rejoined Ruth. “This was the only place he warned me away from—not from the islands in general. I don’t understand it at all, Tom. And I don’t want the men to be unkind to him.”
“Well, it looks to me,” observed her friend, “that if we cannot find him, they will be unable to find him as well. So I wouldn’t worry, Ruth.”
But the girl went back to the Gem and sailed again to the headquarters of the moving picture company not at all satisfied as to the result of their undertaking.
CHAPTER XIBILBY AGAIN
The work of picture making that day went without a hitch. Mr. Hooley sent several men into the woods above the spot on the shore of the “Kingdom of Pipes,” as Helen insisted upon calling the island where the prologue of the picture was made, and they remained on watch there during the activities of the company below.
When the film was developed and run off in the projection room that evening it was pronounced by all—even by Mr. Hammond—as good in detail as the spoiled reel.
From that point the work went on briskly, for the weather remained perfect for picture taking. Ruth was busy; but she could give some time to enjoyment, too, especially in the evening; and that next evening when Chess Copley appeared in his own motor-boat, theLauriette, she was glad to join a moonlight boating party which ventured as far as Alexandria Bay, where they had supper and danced at the pavilion, returning to the picture camp in the early hours of the morning.
Ruth was Chessleigh’s particular guest on this occasion, and Tom and Helen Cameron went in another launch.
The moonlight upon the islands and the passages of silvery water between them was most beautiful. And Ruth enjoyed herself immensely. That is, she found the occasion enjoyable until they got back to the bungalow and had bidden the Copleys and their party good night. Then the girl of the Red Mill found her roommate rather irritable. Helen pouted and was frankly cross when she spoke.
“I don’t see what you find so interesting in Chess Copley,” she observed, brushing her hair before the glass.
“He is nice I think,” replied Ruth placidly.
“And you just ignore Tommy-boy.”
“I could not very well refuse Chess when he invited me into his launch. I did not know you and Tom were going in the other boat.”
“Well, I wasn’t going with Chess. And I wouldn’t let Tommy tag after you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so foolish, Helen,” sighed her chum.
“If you act this way,” declared the rather unreasonable Helen, “you’ll spoil our whole visit at the Thousand Islands.”
“My goodness!” exclaimed Ruth, for once showing exasperation, “you do not talk very sensibly,Helen. I have come here to work, not to play. Please bear that in mind. If you think I spoil your sport I will not join any other evening parties.”
The next evening when the Copley party came over to get acquainted with some of the moving picture people and arrange for a big dance on Saturday night, Ruth was as good as her word, and remained in Mr. Hammond’s office, recasting certain scenes in her story that Mr. Hooley proposed to make next day.
Helen was sure Ruth was “mad” and kept out of the way intentionally. She told Tom so. But she did not choose to relieve Chess Copley’s loneliness when she saw him mooning about.
Whenever Chess tried to speak to Helen in private she ran away from him. Whether it was loyalty to her brother, Tom, or some other reason that made Helen treat Copley so unkindly, the fact remained that Chess was plainly not in Helen’s good books, although she made much of the two Copley girls.
The next day Ruth was quite as busy, for the making of the picture was going ahead rapidly while the good weather lasted. This story she had written was more of a pageant than anything she had yet essayed. The scenes were almost all “on location,” instead of being filmed under a glass roof.
Helen and Tom did not seem to understand that their friend could not go off fishing or sailing or otherwise junketing whenever they would like to have her. But picture making and directors, and especially sunlight, will not wait, and so Ruth tried to tell them.
It was Chess Copley, after all, who seemed to have the better appreciation of Ruth’s situation just at this time. Before a week had passed he was almost always to be found at Ruth’s beck and call; for when she could get away from the work of picture making, Chess turned up as faithfully as the proverbial bad penny.
“You are not a bad penny, however, Chess,” she told him, smiling. “You are a good scout. Now you may take me out in your motor-boat. If it is too late to fish, we can at least have a run out into the river. How pretty it is to-day!”
“If everybody treated me as nicely as you do, Ruth,” he said, rather soberly, “my head would be turned.”
“Cheer up, Chess,” she said, laughing. “I don’t say the worst is yet to come. Perhaps the best will come to you in time.”
“You say that only to encourage me I fear.”
“I certainly don’t say it to discourage you,” she confessed. “Going around like a faded lily isn’tgoing to help you a mite—and so I have already told you.”
“Huh! How’s a fellow going to register joy when he feels anything but?”
“You’d make a poor screen actor,” she told him. “See Mr. Grand to-day. He has an ulcerated tooth and is going to the Bay to-night to have it treated. Yet, as the French voyageur, he had to make love to Wonota and Miss Keith, both. Some job!”
“That fellow makes love as easy as falling off a log,” grumbled Chess. “I never saw such a fellow.”
“But the girls flock to see him in any picture. If he were my brother—or husband—I would never know when he was really making love or just registering love. Still actors live in a world of their own. They are not like other people—if they are really good actors.”
Copley’sLaurietteshot them half way across the broad St. Lawrence before sunset, and from that point they watched the sun sink in the west and the twilight gather along the Canadian shore and among the islands on the American side.
When Chessleigh was about to start the engine again and head for the camp—and dinner—they suddenly spied a powerful speed boat coming out from the Canadian side. It cleaved the water like the blade of a knife, throwing up a silver waveon either side. And as it passed theLaurietteRuth and her companion could see several men in her cockpit.
“There are those fellows again,” Chess remarked. “Wonder what they are up to? That boat passed our island yesterday evening and the crowd in her then acted to me as though they were drunk.”
“I should think——Why!” exclaimed Ruth suddenly breaking off in what she was first going to say, “one of those men is a Chinaman.”
“So he is,” agreed Chessleigh Copley.
“And that little fat man—see him? Why, Chess! it looks like——”
“Who is it?” asked the young fellow, in surprise at Ruth’s excitement.
“It’s Bilby!” gasped Ruth. “That horrid man! I I hoped we had seen the last of him. And now he’s right here where we are working with Wonota.”
She had said so much that she had to explain fully about Bilby, while they sat and watched the speed boat disappear up the river. Ruth was sure she had made no mistake in her identification of the rival picture producer who had made her so much trouble back at the Red Mill.
“I must tell Mr. Hammond at once,” she concluded. “If Bilby is here, he is here for no good purpose, I can be sure. And if he has a boatlike that at his command, we must keep double watch.”
“You think he would try to abduct Wonota again?” queried Chess.
“I would believe that fellow capable of anything,” she returned. “I mean anything that did not call for personal courage on his part.”
“Humph!” murmured Chess thoughtfully. “I wonder what he was doing with the Chinaman in his party. You know, sometimes Chinamen are smuggled across from Canada against the emigration laws of the States.”
He headed theLauriettefor the camp then, and they arrived there in a rather serious mood.