Alice B. Emerson

“ Amid the chattering of several high, sing-song voices, and only half seeing what was being done because of the flickering torchlight, Ruth knew that she was being hurried into a tunnel of some size that ran back into the island.
It was rocky all about her—on both sides as well as under foot and overhead. It was a natural tunnel, not one made by man. The figures flitting before her were gnomelike. She saw clearly only the old man who led her, holding her tightly by the arm. ”

“ Ruth’s mind had begun to clear. She remembered the heavy boxes she and Chess had seen brought ashore, and the Chinaman in the speed launch, and then the yellow-faced woman being taken on this very day toward the American shore. The whole puzzle began to fit together like a piece of patchwork.
Chinamen; a high-powered boat going back and forth across the St. Lawrence; a hidden cave on this supposedly uninhabited island; the heavy boxes; the smoking of this vile paste which she now saw a third Chinaman dip out of a tiny bowl, on a stick, and drop into his pipe in the form of a “pill.”
Opium! ”

“ Besides, Jennie was the first of the old Briarwood Hall set to be married, and this was bound to be a gala occasion. This was no “weepy” wedding, but a time of joy. And the bridal party coming down the aisle made as brilliant a picture as had ever been seen in the old church.
The maid of honor in pink was as refreshing to look upon as a bouquet of arbutus. She had always been a pretty, winsome girl. Now she was developing into a handsome young woman, as all Ruth Fielding’s friends declared. ”

“ 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 feather 80 head-dresses, blankets, deerskin leggings, and other garments of Indian manufacture—all grouped to make a brilliant spectacle.
Totantora, a commanding figure, and his daughter as White Fawn, the demure yet dominant princess of the Hurons, stood forth from the background of the other Indians in a graceful picture. ”

“ The young folks trooped back to the pier. Tom did his best to escort Ruth; but to his amazement and anger Chess Copley pushed in front of him and Ruth took the sergeant’s arm.
Helen came along and grabbed her brother with a fierce little pinch. Her eyes sparkled while his smouldered.
“I guess we are relegated to the second row, Tommy-boy,” she whispered. “I do not see what has got into Ruth.”
“It’s not Ruth. The gall of that ’Lasses!” muttered the slangy Tom.
“So you think he is at fault?” rejoined his sister. “Oh, Tommy-boy! you do not know ‘us girls’—no indeed you do not.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ruth told her admonishingly. “Chess thinks a great deal of you, while you treat him too unkindly for utterance.”
“He’d better not think of me too much,” said Helen scornfully. “His head won’t stand it. Tom says ’Lasses never was strong in the deeper strata of college learning.”
Ruth was not to be drawn into any controversy. She called to the young man when, dressed in flannels and standing at his wheel and engine, he came into view.
“Hurrah! Here’s good luck!” shouted Chess, swerving the bow of the Lauriette in toward the island instantly. ”

“ Ruth laughed. “Not to say that Major Marchand is not a fine fellow, I agree with Ann that I don’t want a husband. Not—right—now!”
“Oh! Very well,” said Helen complacently. “But if you thought you’d never be able to get one——”
“Shucks!” exclaimed Ann. “As though our Ruth couldn’t have all she wants if she wants them.” 19
“I really wish you would not speak plurally of them, Ann,” cried Ruth, laughing. “You will make me feel like the Queen of the Amazons. They say she keeps a masculine harem—like a bey, or a sultan, or something of that kind.”
“Be serious,” rejoined Helen. “I mean what I say. ”

“ Up-stream of the cove was a great mass of rock—not one rock, but several huddled together and the cracks between overgrown with brush and vines. Chess brought into use the electric torch again.
He shot the spotlight into the crannies. Was there a path there between two of the big boulders? He drew Ruth’s attention to it with a touch on her arm. She saw that some of the bushes were broken—the vines torn away and dead. 166
“Somebody has been here,” she murmured.
“Of course. That is what we came to find,” said the young man. “We are on the verge of a discovery, Ruth.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ For Tom, no more than Helen, could not see that Ruth’s attitude toward the matter of strenuous occupation for a wealthy young man was a fair one. Tom certainly had none of Uncle Jabez Potter’s blood in his veins. ”

“ This outcome of their innocent adventure was entirely different from anything Ruth had dreamed of. If she did not exactly fear the queer old man who called himself the King of the Pipes, she certainly did fear the men who were with him in this cavern. ”

“ The old woman was alone, however.
“Where is Wonota?” Ruth asked.
Before Aunt Alvirah could reply an automobile siren echoed outside of the house. Aunt Alvirah was smiling and waving at somebody and Ruth hurried to the window to look out.
“Here’s Helen come for you, my pretty, in that beautiful big car of hers,” said Aunt Alvirah. “Isn’t it fine to be rich?”
“Wait till I make a few more pictures, Aunty, and we’ll have a car too. If Uncle Jabez won’t buy one, I’ve made up my mind to get a car if it’s only to take you to drive once in a while.” ”

“ That was why Ruth—as well as Mr. Hammond of the Alectrion Film Corporation—believed that the Indian girl would in time become a successful screen actress. Wonota, though her skin was copper-colored, liked to dress in up-to-date clothes (and did so) and enjoyed the refinements of civilization as much as any white girl of her age.
“It is so pretty here, Miss Ruth,” she said to her mentor. “May I sleep in the other bed off your sitting room? It is sweet of you. How foolish of people wanting to see on the screen how poor Indians live in their ignorance. ”

“ But one girl—and a young one at that—could scarcely be expected (and so the old miller admitted) to combine all the virtues which were worth while in human development.
“Keep a-making of it, Niece Ruth,” Uncle Jabez advised earnestly. “You never can tell when you are going to want more or when your ability to make money is going to stop. I’d sell the Red Mill or give up and never grind another grist for nobody, if I didn’t feel that perhaps by next year I should have to stop, anyway—and another year won’t much matter.” ”

“ Mr. Hammond is a good man; but he is a good business man first of all. I am afraid that you will be obliged to make some changes in the remaining scenes so as to overcome the difficulty of losing Wonota.”
“I will not do it!” cried the girl, this time in anger.
“Better read your contract. If you won’t do it, somebody else will have to. You know, we’ve got a man at the studio who could change Hamlet into a slap-stick comedy over night, if the emergency arose.”
“I will not agree to have my picture ruined,” said Ruth, almost in tears. ”

“ Oh, dear, yes! Being a king is not all it is cracked up to be, I assure you.”
For some reason Ruth felt more alarm because of this last statement of the poor old man than of anything that had gone before. She realized that he, of course, really had no influence with the opium smugglers. But she began to understand that there were other men coming here who might be more savage than the Chinamen.
She remembered that there had been several white men in the launch when she had observed it, and that on one occasion Horatio Bilby had been one of them. ”

“ The millin’ business is just as pretty a business as there is in the world—when once you git used to the dust. No doubt of it.”
“I can see, Uncle Jabez, that you find it so,” said Ruth, but rather doubtfully.
“Of course it is,” said the old man stoutly. “You get fun out of running about the country and looking at things and seeing how other folks live and work. And that’s all right for you. You make money out of it. But what would I get out of gadding about?”
“A broader outlook on life, Uncle Jabez.” ”

“ At least, to use the trite and bombastic moving picture phrase, Wonota, the Indian princess, “photographed like a million dollars.”
The Great War’s abrupt conclusion brought Tom Cameron home just as eager as he had been for two years past to have Ruth agree to his plans for the future. As Ruth saw it (no matter what may have been her secret feeling for Tom) to do as Tom wished would utterly spoil the career on which she had now entered so successfully.
Tom, like most young men in love, considered that a girl’s only career should be a husband and a home. ”

“ Hooley smiled satirically. “You know how it is in the picture business, Miss Fielding. Some unfortunate producer buys a script or a story. The scenario writer ‘saves’ the story by his work on the script. Then the continuity man ‘saves’ it a second time. Then the director ‘saves’ it after he gets it into his hands. We know that the star performer always ‘saves’ it again. And then the film cutter and the title writer each ‘save’ it. ”

“ Being the son of a wealthy merchant and possessing, now that he was of age, a fortune in his own right inherited from 13 his mother’s estate, Tom Cameron, it seemed to Ruth, was just playing with life. ”

“ Poor old soul, she is nobody’s relation, as she often says, but everybody’s aunt.”
“There goes the signal again, and here comes that boat!” exclaimed Helen suddenly.
“What boat?” demanded Ruth, looking in the direction of the distant Canadian island, toward which the canoe, with Totantora and Wonota in it, had now disappeared.
“Turn around—do!” exclaimed Helen. “This way. That is the same boat we saw going by some time ago. The boat with the yellow lady in it, as Wonota called her.” ”

“ Even Wonota (whom Ruth was keeping with her) was gay. And she was so pretty in her beautiful costume that when they arrived at the hotel the young men at the dance vied in their attempts to have her for a partner on the floor.
There was a fine band and the dancing floor was smooth. Even Mr. Hammond went on to the floor, having secured a costume, and Mother Paisley, who acted as chaperon for the moving picture girls, was as light as anybody on her feet and the embodiment of grace.
“Actor folk nowadays,” the old woman told Ruth once, “are not trained as they once were. I came of circus folk. ”

“ The three girls, really glad to be away from the crowd and the confusion of the moving picture camp, settled down to several hours of companionship. Helen could be silent if she pleased, and with her knitting and a novel proceeded to curl up under a tamarack tree and bury herself for the time being.
Helen had not, however, forgotten the “inner woman,” as she pronounced it. ”