Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest by Alice B. Emerson

A >> Alice B. Emerson >> Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

An inspiration is all right--even when it strikes one in the middle of
the night. So Jennie Stone remarked. But there had to be something
practical behind such a venture as Ruth Fielding had suggested to the
sleepy girl.

Her thought regarding Princess Wonota of the Osage Tribe was partly due
to her wish to help the Indian girl, and partly due to her desire to
furnish Mr. Hammond and the Alectrion Film Corporation with another big
feature picture.

Ruth and Jennie (who became enthusiastic when she was awake in the
morning) chattered about the idea like magpies from breakfast to lunch.
Then Helen drove over from The Outlook, and she had to hear it all
explained while Ruth and Jennie were making ready to go out in the car
with her.

"You must drive us right to Cheslow," Ruth said, "where I can get Mr.
Hammond on the long-distance 'phone. This is important. I feel that I
have a really good idea."

"But what do you suppose that Dakota Joe will say?" drawled Helen. "He
won't love you, I fear."

"Has he got to know?" demanded Jennie. "Don't be a goose, Helen. This is
all going to be done on the q.t."

"Very well," sniffed the other girl. "Guess you'll find it difficult to
take Wonota away from the Wild West Show without Joe's knowing anything
about it."

"Of course!" laughed Ruth. "But until the fatal break occurs we must not
let him suspect anything."

"I see. It is a fell conspiracy," remarked Helen. "Well, come on! The
chariot awaits, my lady. If I am to drive a bunch of conspirators, let's
be at it."

"Helen would hustle one around," complained Jennie, "if she were in the
plot to kill Caesar."

"Your tense is bad, little lady," said Helen. "Caesar, according to the
books, has been dead some years now. Right-o?"

The girls sped away from the old mill, and in a little while Ruth was
shut into a telephone booth talking with Mr. Hammond in a distant city.
She told him a good deal more than she had the girls. It was his due.
Besides, she had already got the skeleton of a story in her mind and she
repeated the important points of this to the picture producer.

"Sounds good, Miss Ruth," he declared. "But it all depends upon the
girl. If you think she has the looks, is amenable to discipline, and has
some natural ability, we might safely go ahead with it, I will get into
communication by telegraph with the Department of Indian Affairs at
Washington and with the agent at Three Rivers Station, Oklahoma, as
well. We can afford to invest some money in the chance that this Wonota
is a find."

"Fifty-fifty, Mr. Hammond," Ruth told him. "On whatever it costs,
remember, I am just as good a sport as you are when it comes to taking a
chance in business."

He laughed. "I have often doubted your blood relationship to Uncle
Jabez," Mr. Hammond declared "He has no gambler's blood in his old
veins."

"He was born too long before the moving picture came into existence,"
she laughingly returned. "Now I mean to see Wonota again and try to
encourage her to throw in her fortunes with us. At least, I hope to get
her away from that disgusting Dakota Joe."

Later Jennie teasingly suggested: "You should have taken up with his
offer, Ruthie. You could have had free passes to the show in several
towns."

"I don't much wish to see the show again," Ruth declared.

"I bet Mercy Curtis would like to see it," giggled Helen, "if Wonota was
sure to shoot Joe. What a bloodthirsty child that Mercy continues to
be."

"She has changed a lot since we were all children together," Ruth said
reflectively. "And I never did blame Mercy much for being so scrappy.
Because of her lameness she missed a lot that we other girls had. I am
so glad she has practically gotten over her affliction."

"But not her failings of temper," suggested Jennie. "Still, as long as
she takes it out on Dakota Joe, for instance, I don't know but I agree
with her expressions of savage feeling."

"Hear! Hear!" cried Helen.

Despite their expressed dislike for Fenbrook, Helen and Jennie Stone
accompanied Ruth the next day to the afternoon performance of the Wild
West Show at a town much farther away than that at which they had first
met Wonota, the Indian princess.

Wonota was glad to see them--especially glad to see Ruth Fielding. For
Ruth had given her hope for a change. The Indian girl was utterly
disillusioned about traveling with a tent show; and even the promises
Fenbrook had made her of improved conditions during the winter, when
they would show for week-runs in the bigger cities, did not encourage
Wonota to continue with him.

"Yet I would very much like to earn money to spend in searching for the
great Chief Totantora," she confessed to the three white girls. "The
Great Father at Washington can do nothing now to find my father--and I
do not blame the White Father. The whole world is at war and those
peoples in Europe are sick with the fever of war. It is sad, but it
cannot be helped."

"And if you had money how would you go about looking for Chief
Totantora?" Helen asked her curiously.

"I must go over there myself. I must search through that German
country."

"Plucky girl!" ejaculated Jennie. "But not a chance!"

"You think not, lady?" asked Wonota, anxiously.

"We three have been to Europe--to France. We know something about the
difficulties," said Ruth, quietly. "I understand how you feel, Wonota.
And conditions may soon change. We believe the war will end. Then you
can make a proper search for your father."

"But not unless I have much money," said Wonota quickly. "The Osage
people have valuable oil lands on their reservation. But it will be some
years before money from them will be available, so the agent tells me.
That is why I came with this show."

"And that is why you wish to keep on earning money?" suggested Ruth
reflectively.

"That is why," Wonota returned, nodding.

At this point in the conversation the showman himself came up. He
smirked in an oily manner at the white girls and tried to act kindly
toward his pretty employee. Wonota scarcely looked in the man's
direction, but Ruth of course was polite in her treatment of Dakota Joe.

"I see you're doin' like I asked you, ma'am," he hoarsely whispered
behind his hairy hand to the girl of the Red Mill. "What's the
prospect?"

"I could scarcely tell you yet, Mr. Fenbrook," Ruth said decidedly.
"Wonota must decide for herself, of course."

"Humph! Wal, if she knows what's best for her she'll aim to stay right
with old Dakota Joe. I'm her best friend."

Ruth left the girl at this time with some encouraging words. She had
told her that if she, Wonota, could get a release from her contract with
the showman there would be an opportunity for her to earn much more
money, and under better conditions, in the moving picture business.

"Oh!" cried Wonota with sparkling eyes, "do you think I could act for
the movies? I have often wanted to try."

"There it is," said Helen, as the girls drove home. "Even the Red Indian
is crazy to act in the movies. Can you beat it?"

"Well," Ruth asked soberly, "who is there that is not interested in
getting his or her picture taken? Not very many. And when it comes to
appearing on the silver sheet--well, even kings and potentates fall for
that!"

Ruth was so sure that Wonota could be got into the moving pictures and
that Mr. Hammond would be successful in making a star of the Indian
girl, that that very night she sat up until the wee small hours laying
out the plot of her picture story--the story which she hoped to make
into a really inspirational film.

There was coming, however, an unexpected obstacle to this
achievement--an obstacle which at first seemed to threaten utter failure
to her own and to Mr. Hammond's plans.

CHAPTER VII

DAKOTA JOE'S WRATH

It was a crisp day with that tang of frost in the air that makes the old
shiver and the young feel a tingling in the blood. Aunt Alvirah drew her
chair closer to the stove in the sitting-room. She had a capable
housework helper now, and even Jabez Potter made no audible objection,
for Ruth paid the bill, and the dear old woman had time to sit and talk
to "her pretty" as she loved to do.

"Oh, my back and oh, my bones!" she murmured, as she settled into her
rocking-chair. "I am a leetle afraid, my pretty, that you will have your
hands full if you write pictures for red savages to act. It does seem to
me they air dangerous folks to have anything to do with.

"Why, when I was a mite of a girl, I heard my great-grandmother tell
that when she was a girl she went with her folks clean acrosst the
continent--or, leastways, beyond the Mississippi, and they drove in a
big wagon drawed by oxen."

"Goodness! They went in an emigrant train?" cried Ruth.

"Not at all. 'Twarn't no train," objected Aunt Alvirah. "Trains warn't
heard of then. Why, _I_ can remember when the first railroad went
through this part of the country and it cut right through Silas
Bassett's farm. They told him he could go down to the tracks any time he
felt like going to town, wave his hat, and the train would stop for
him."

"Well, wasn't that handy?" cried the girl.

"It sounded good. But Silas didn't have it on paper. First off they did
stop for him if he hailed the train. He didn't go to town more'n three
or four times a year. Then the railroad changed hands. 'There arose up a
new king over Egypt which knew not Joseph'--you know, like it says in
the Bible. And when Silas Bassett waved his hat, the train didn't even
hesitate!"

Ruth laughed, but reminded her that they were talking about her
great-grandmother's adventures in the Indian country years and years
before.

"Yes, that's a fact," said Aunt Alvirah Boggs. "She did have exciting
times. Why, when they was traveling acrosst them Western prairies one
day, what should pop up but a band of Indians, with tall feathers in
their hair, and guns--mebbe bow and arrows, too. Anyway, they scare't
the white people something tremendous," and the old woman nodded
vigorously.

"Well, the neighbors who were traveling together hastened to turn their
wagons so as to make a fortress sort of, of the wagon-bodies, with the
horses and the cattle and the humans in the center. You understand?"

"Yes," Ruth agreed. "I have seen pictures of such a camp, with the
Indians attacking."

"Yes. Well, but you see," cackled the old woman suddenly, "them, Indians
didn't attack at all. They rode down at a gallop, I expect, and scared
the white folks a lot But what they come for was to see if there was a
doctor in the party. Those Indians had heard of white doctors and knowed
what they could do. The chief of the tribe had a favorite child that was
very sick, and he come to see if a white doctor could save his child's
life."

"Oh!" cried Ruth, her eyes sparkling. "What an idea!"

"Well, my pretty, I dunno," said Aunt Alvirah. "'Twas sensible enough, I
should say, for that Indian chief to want the best doctoring there was
for his child. The medicine men had tried to cure the poor little thing
and failed. I expect even Red Indians sometimes love their children."

"Why, of course, Aunt Alvirah. And you ought to see how lovable this
girl Wonota is."

"Mm--well, mebbe. Anyway, there was a doctor in that party my
great-grandmother traveled with, and he rode to the Indian village and
cured the sick child. And for the rest of their journey across them
plains Indians, first of one tribe, then of another, rode with the party
of whites. And they never had no trouble."

"Isn't that great!" cried Ruth.

And when she told Helen and Jennie about it--and the idea it had given
Ruth for a screen story--her two chums agreed that it was "perfectly
great."

So Ruth was hard at work on a scenario, or detailed plot, even before
Mr. Hammond made his arrangements with the Indian Department for the
transferring of the services of Princess Wonota from Dakota Joe's Wild
West Show to the Alectrion Film Corporation for a certain number of
months.

The matter had now gone so far that it could not be kept from Dakota
Joe. He had spent money and pulled all the wires he could at the
reservation to keep "Dead-Shot" Wonota in his employ. At first he did
not realize that any outside agency was at work against him and for die
girl's benefit.

Ruth and her friends drove to a distant town to see the Indian girl when
the Wild West Show played for two days. They attended the matinee and
saw Wonota between the two performances and had dinner with her at the
local hotel. After dinner they all went to an attorney's office, where
the papers in the case were ready, and Wonota signed her new contract
and Helen and Jennie were two of the witnesses thereto. Mr. Hammond
could not be present, but he had trusted to Ruth's good sense and
business acumen.

In a week--giving Dakota Joe due notice--the old contract would be dead
and Wonota would be at liberty under permission from the Indian Agent to
leave the show. As Helen stopped the car before the torch-lighted
entrance to the show for Wonota to step out, Dakota Joe strode out to
the side of the road. He was scowling viciously.

"What's the matter with you, Wonota?" he demanded. "You trying to queer
the show? You ain't got no more'n enough time to dress for your act. Get
on in there, like I tell you."

Instead of propitiating Ruth now, he showed her the ugly side of his
character.

"I guess you been playin' two-faced, ain't you, ma'am?" he growled as
Wonota fled toward the dressing tent "I thought you was a friend of
mine. But I believe you been cuttin' the sand right out from under my
feet. Ain't you?"

"I do not know what you mean, Mr. Fenbrook," said Ruth sharply.

"You're Ruth Fielding, ain't you?" he demanded.

"Yes. That is my name."

"So they tell me," growled Dakota Joe. "And you are coupled up with this
Hammond feller that they tell me has put in a bid for Wonota over and
above what she's wuth, and what I can pay. Ain't that so?"

"If you wish to discuss the matter with Mr. Hammond I will give you his
address," Ruth said with dignity. "I am not prepared to discuss the
matter with you, Mr. Fenbrook."

"Is that so?" he snarled. "Well, ma'am, whether you want to talk or
don't want to talk, things ain't goin' all your way. No, ma'am! I got
some rights. The courts will give me my rights to Wonota. I'm her
guardian, I am. Her father, Totantora, is dead, and I'll show you
folks--and that Injun agent--just where you get off in this business!"

"Go on," said Ruth to Helen, without answering the angry man. But when
the car had gone a little way along the road, the girl of the Red Mill
exclaimed:

"Dear me! I fear that man will make trouble. I--I wish Tom were here."

"Don't say a word!" gasped Helen. "But not only because he could handle
this Western bully do I wish Tommy-boy was home and the war was over."

"Why don't you offer Dakota Joe a job in your picture company, too?"
drawled Jennie Stone.

"He'd make such a fine 'bad man.'"

"He certainly would," agreed Helen.

Just how bad the proprietor of the Wild West Show could be was proved
the following day. Mr. Hammond sent Ruth a telegram In the morning
intimating that something had gone wrong with their plans to get Wonota
into their employ.

* * * * *

"The Court has given Fenbrook an injunction. What do you know about it?"

* * * * *

Now, of course, Ruth Fielding did not know anything at all about it. And
after what she had seen of Dakota Joe she had no mind to go to him on
behalf of Mr. Hammond and herself. If the Westerner was balking the
attempt to get Wonota out of his clutches, nothing would beat him, Ruth
believed, but legal proceedings.

She telegraphed Mr. Hammond to this effect, advising that he put the
matter in the hands of the attorney that had drawn the new contract with
the Indian girl.

"The goodness knows," she told Aunt Alvirah and Uncle Jabez, "I don't
want to have anything personally to do with that rough man. He is just
as ugly as he can be."

"Wal," snorted the miller, "he better not come around here cutting up
his didoes! Me and Ben will tend to him!"

Ruth could not help being somewhat fearful of the proprietor of the Wild
West Show. If the man really made up his mind to make trouble, Ruth
hoped that he would not come to the Red Mill.

Helen and Jennie drove over to the mill to get Ruth that afternoon, and
they planned to take Aunt Alvirah out with them. She had lost her fear
of the automobile and had even begun to hint to the miller that she
wished he would buy a small car.

"Land o' Goshen!" grumbled Uncle Jabez, "what next? I s'pose you'd want
to learn to run the dratted thing, Alvirah Boggs?"

"Well, Jabez Potter, I don't see why not?" she had confessed. "Other
women learns."

"Huh! You with one foot in the grave and the other on the gas, eh?" he
snorted.

However, Aunt Alvirah did not go out in Helen's car on this afternoon.
While the girls were waiting for her to be made ready, Helen looked
back, up the road, down which she and Jennie had just come.

"What's this?" she wanted to know. "A runaway horse?"

Jennie stood up to look over the back of the car. She uttered an excited
squeal.

"Helen! Ruthie!" she declared. "It's that Indian girl--in all her
war-togs, too. She is riding like the wind. And, yes! There is somebody
after her! Talk about your moving picture chases--this is the real
thing!"

"It's Dakota Joe!" shrieked Helen. "Goodness! He must have gone mad. See
him beating that horse he rides. Why--"

"He surely has blown up," stated Jennie Stone with conviction. "Ruthie!
what are you going to do?"

CHAPTER VIII

A WONDERFUL EVENT

Wonota was a long way ahead of the Westerner. She was light and she
bestrode a horse with much more speed than the one Dakota Joe rode. She
lay far along her horse's neck and urged it with her voice rather than a
cruel goad.

The plucky pony was responding nobly, although it was plain, as it came
nearer to the girls before the old mill farmhouse, that it had traveled
hard. It was thirty miles from the town where the Wild West Show was
performing to the Red Mill.

"Oh, Wonota!" cried Jennie Stone, beckoning the Indian girl on. "What is
the matter?"

Ruth had not waited to get any report from Wonota. She turned and dashed
for the house. Already Sarah, the maid-of-all-work, had started through
the covered passage to the mill, shrieking for Ben, the hired man.

Ben and the miller ran down the long walk to roadside. Jabez Potter was
no weakling despite his age, while Ben was a giant of a fellow, able to
handle two ordinary men.

Wonota pulled her pony in behind Helen's car, whirling to face her
pursuer. She did not carry the light rifle she used in her act. Perhaps
it would have been better had she been armed, for Dakota Joe was quite
beside himself with wrath. He came pounding along, swinging his whip and
yelling at the top of his voice.

"What's the matter with that crazy feller?" demanded the old miller in
amazement. "He chasin' that colored girl?"

"She's not colored. She is my Indian princess, Uncle Jabez," Ruth
explained.

"I swanny, you don't mean it! Hi, Ben!" But nobody had to tell Ben what
to do. As Fenbrook drew in his horse abruptly, the mill-hand jumped into
the road, grabbed Dakota Joe's whip-hand, broke his hold on the reins,
and dragged the Westerner out of the saddle. It was a feat requiring no
little strength, and it surprised Dakota Joe as much as it did anybody.

"Hey, you! What you doin'?" bawled Dakota Joe, when he found himself
sitting on the hard ground, staring up at the group.

"Ain't doing nothing," drawled Ben. "It's done. Better sit where you be,
Mister, and cool off."

"What sort o' tomfoolishness is this?" asked the miller again. "Makin'
one o' them picture-shows right here on the public road? I want to
know!"

At that, and without rising from his seat in the road, Dakota Joe
Fenbrook lifted up his voice and gave his opinion of all moving picture
people, and especially those that would steal "that Injun gal" from a
hard-working man like himself. He stated that the efforts of a "shark
named Hammond" and this girl here that he thought was a lady an'
friendly to him were about to ruin his show.

"They'll crab the whole business if they git Wonota away from me. That's
what will happen! And I ought to give her a blame' good lickin'--"

"We won't hear nothing more about that," interrupted the old miller,
advancing a stride or two toward the angry Westerner. "Whether the gal's
got blue blood or red blood, or what color, she ain't going to be
mishandled none by you. Understand? You git up and git!"

"But what has happened, Wonota?" the puzzled Ruth asked the Indian girl.

Wonota pointed scornfully at Fenbrook, just then struggling to his feet.

"Joe, heap smart white man. Wuh!" She really was grimly chuckling. "He
go get a talking paper from the court. Call it injunction, eh?"

"I heard about the injunction," admitted Ruth interestedly.

"All right Wonota can't leave Joe to work for you, eh? But the paleface
law-man say to me that that talking paper good only In that county. You
see? I not in that county now."

"Oh, Jerry!" gasped Jennie Stone. "Isn't that cute? She is outside the
jurisdiction of the court."

"Sho!" exclaimed Jabez Potter, much amused by this outcome of the
matter. "It is a fact. Go on back to your show, mister. The gal's here,
and she's with friends, and that's all there is to it."

Dakota Joe had already realized this situation. He climbed slowly into
his saddle and eyed them all--especially Ruth and Wonota--with a savage
glare.

"Wait!" he growled. "Wait--that's all. I'll fix you movie people
yet--the whole of you! It's the sorriest day's job you ever done to get
Wonota away from me. Wait!"

He rode away. When he was some rods up the road, down which he had
galloped, he set spurs to his horse again and dashed on and out of
sight. For a little while nobody spoke. It was Jennie who, as usual,
light-hearted and unafraid, broke the silence.

"Well, all right, we'll wait," she said. "But we needn't do it right
here, I suppose. We can sit down and wait just as easily."

Helen laughed. But Ruth and Wonota were sober, and even Uncle Jabez
Potter saw something to take note of in the threat of the proprietor of
the Wild West Show.

"That man is a coward. That's as plain as the nose on your face. And a
coward when he gits mad and threatens you is more to be feared than a
really brave man. That man's a coward. He's mean. He's p'ison mean! You
want to look out for him, Niece Ruth. I wouldn't wonder if he tried,
some time, to do you and Mr. Hammond some trick that won't bring you in
no money, to say the least."

The old miller went off with that statement on his lips. Ben, the hired
man, followed him, shaking his head. The girls looked at each other,
then at the rapidly disappearing cloud of dust raised by Dakota Joe's
pony. Jennie said:

"Well, goodness! why so serious? Guess that man won't do such a much!
Don't be scared, Wonota. We won't let anybody hurt you."

"I wish Tom were here," Ruth Fielding repeated.

And in less than forty-eight hours this wish of the girl of the Red Mill
seemed to her almost prophetical. Tom Cameron was coming home!

The whole land rejoiced over that fact. The whole world, indeed, gave
thanks that it was possible for a young captain in the American
Expeditionary Forces to look forward to his release and return to his
home.

The armistice had been declared. Cheslow, like every town and city in
the Union, celebrated the great occasion. It was not merely a day's
celebration. The war was over (or so it seemed) and the boys who were so
much missed would be coming home again. It took some time for Ruth and
her friends to realize that this return must be, because of the nature
of things, postponed for many tiresome months.

Before Tom Cameron was likely to be freed from the army, the matter of
the Indian girl's engagement with the moving picture corporation must be
completely settled--at least, as far as Dakota Joe's claim upon Wonota's
services went.

CHAPTER IX

THE PLOT DEVELOPS

Ruth had insisted upon Wonota's remaining at the Red Mill from the hour
she had ridden there for protection. Not that they believed Fenbrook
would actually harm the Indian girl after he had cooled down. But it was
better that she should be in Ruth's care as long as she was to work
somewhat under the latter's tutelage.

Besides, it gave the picture writer a chance to study her subject. It
would be too much to expect that Wonota could play a difficult part. She
had had no experience in acting. Ruth knew that she must fit a part to
Wonota, not the girl to a part. In other words, the Indian girl was
merely a type for screen exploitation, and the picture Ruth wrote must
be fitted to her capabilities.

Grasping, like any talented writer does, at any straw of novelty, Ruth
had seen possibilities in the little incident Aunt Alvirah had told
about her ancestor who had crossed the Western plains in the early
emigrant days. She meant to open her story with a similar incident, as
a prologue to the actual play.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10