Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest by Alice B. Emerson

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Ruth made her heroine (the part she wished to fit to Wonota, the Osage
Indian girl) repay in part the debt her family owed the white physician
by saving a descendant of the physician from peril in the Indian
country. This young man, the hero, is attracted by the Indian maid who
has saved his life; but he is under the influence of a New York girl,
one of the tourist party, to whom he is tentatively engaged.

But the New York girl deserts the hero when he gets into difficulty in
New York. He is accused of a crime that may send him to the penitentiary
for a long term and there seems no way to disprove the crime. Word of
his peril comes to the Indian maid in her Western home. She knows and
suspects the honesty of the timber men with whom the hero is connected
in business. She discovers these villains are the guilty ones, and she
travels to New York to testify for him and to clear him of the charge.
The end of the story, as well as the beginning, was to be filmed in the
wilds.

With the incidents of her plot gradually taking form in her mind and
being jotted down on paper, Ruth's hours began to be very full. She was
with Wonota as much as possible, and the Indian girl began to show an
almost doglike devotion to the girl of the Red Mill.

"That is not to be wondered at, of course," Jennie Stone said, as she
was about to return to her New York home. "Everybody falls for our Ruth.
It's a wonder to me that she has not been elected to the presidency."

"Wait till we women get the vote," declared Helen. "Then we'll send Ruth
to the chair."

"Goodness!" ejaculated Jennie. "That sounds terrible, Nell! One might
think you mean the electric chair."

"Is there much difference, after all, between that and the presidential
chair?" Helen demanded, chuckling. "The way some people talk about a
president!"

"We are a loose-talking people," Ruth interrupted gravely, "and I think
you girls talk almost as irresponsibly as anybody I ever heard."

"List to the stern and uncompromising Ruthie," scoffed Jennie. "I am
glad I am going back to Aunt Kate. She is a spinster, I admit; but she
isn't anywhere near as old-maid-like as Ruth Fielding."

"I'll tell Tom about that," said Tom's sister wickedly.

"Spinsters are the balance-wheel of the universe machinery," declared
Ruth, laughing. "I always have admired them. But, joking aside, at this
time when the whole world should be so grateful and so much in earnest
because of the end of a terrible war, trivial matters and trivial talk
somehow seems to jar."

"Not so! Not so!" cried Helen vigorously. "We have been holding in and
trying to keep cheerful with the fear at our hearts that some loved one
would suddenly be taken. It was not lightness of heart that made people
dance and act as though rattled-pated during the war. It was an attempt
to hide that awful fear in their hearts. See how the people in Cheslow
acted as though they were crazy the night of the armistice. And did you
read what the papers said about the times in New York? It was only a
natural outbreak."

"Well," remarked. Ruth, shrugging her shoulders, "you certainly have got
off the subject of old maids--bless 'em! Give my love to your Aunt Kate,
Jennie, and when we come to the city to take the shots for this picture,
I'll surely see her."

"Hi!" cried Miss Stone energetically. "I guess you will! You'll come
right to the house and stay with us during that time!"

"Oh, no. I shall have Wonota with me. We will stay at a hotel. Our hours
are always so uncertain when we shoot a picture that I could not
undertake to be at any private house."

There was some discussion over this. Ruth did not intend to let Wonota
out of her sight much while the picture was being made. Nor did she
propose to let the script of the picture out of her sight until copies
could be made of it, and the continuity man had made his version for the
director. Ruth was not going to run the risk of losing another scenario,
as she had once while Down East.

Ruth put in two weeks' hard work on the new story. As she laughingly
said, she ate, slept, and talked movies all the time. Wonota had to
amuse herself; but that did not seem hard for the Indian girl to do. She
was naturally of a very quiet disposition. She sat by Aunt Alvirah for
hours doing beadwork while the old woman darned or knitted.

"You wouldn't ever suspect she was a Red Indian unless you looked at
her," Aunt Alvirah confessed to the rest of the family. "She's a very
nice girl."

As for Wonota, she said:

"I used to sit beside my grandmother and work like this. Yes, Chief
Totantora taught me to shoot and paddle a canoe, and to do many other
things out-of-doors. But my grandmother was the head woman of our tribe,
and her beadwork and dyed porcupine-quill work was the finest you ever
saw, Ruth Fielding. I was sorry to leave my war-bag with Dakota Joe. It
had in it many keepsakes my grandmother gave me before she passed to
the Land of the Spirits."

A demand had been made upon the proprietor of the Wild West Show for
Wonota's possessions, but the man had refused to give them up. The girl
had not brought away with her even the rifle she had used so
successfully in the show. But her pony, West Wind, was stabled in the
Red Mill barn. Indeed, Uncle Jabez had begun to hint that the animal was
"eating its head off." The miller could not help showing what Aunt
Alvirah called "his stingy streak" in spite of the fact that he truly
was interested in the Indian maid and liked her.

"That redskin gal," he confessed in private to Ruth, "is a pretty shrewd
and sensible gal. She got to telling me the other day how her folks
ground grist in a stone pan, or the like, using a hard-wood club to
pound it with. Right slow process of makin' flour or meal, I do allow.

"But what do you think she said when I put that up to her--about it's
being a slow job?" and the miller chuckled. "Why, she told me that all
her folks had was time, and they'd got to spend it somehow. They'd
better be grinding corn by hand than making war on their neighbors or
the whites, like they used to. She ain't so slow."

Ruth quite agreed with this. The Osage maiden was more than ordinarily
intelligent, and she began to take a deep interest in the development
of the story that Ruth was making for screen use.

"Am I to be that girl?" she asked doubtfully. "How can I play that I am
in love when I have never seen a man I cared for--in that way?"

"Can't you imagine admiring a nice young man?" asked Ruth in return.

"Not a white man like this one in your story," Wonota said soberly. "It
should be that he did more for himself--that he was more of a--a brave.
We Indians do not expect our men to be saved from disgrace by women.
Squaws are not counted of great value among the possessions of a chief."

"So you could not really respect such a man as I describe here if he
allowed a girl to help him?" Ruth asked reflectively, for Wonota's
criticism was giving her some thought.

"He should not be such a man--to need the help of a squaw," declared the
Indian maid confidently. "But, of course, it does not matter if only
palefaces are to see the picture."

But Ruth could not get the thought out of her mind. It might be that the
Indian girl had suggested a real fault in the play she was making, and
she took Mr. Hammond into her confidence about it when she sent him the
first draft of the story. Her whole idea of the principal male character
in "Brighteyes" might need recasting, and she awaited the picture
producer's verdict with some misgiving.

While she waited a red-letter day occurred---so marked both for herself
and for Helen Cameron. The chums had hoped--oh, how fondly!--that they
would hear that Tom Cameron was on his way home. But gradually the fact
that demobilization would take a long time was becoming a fixed idea in
the girls' minds.

Letters came from Tom Cameron--one each for the two girls and one for
Mr. Cameron. Instead of being on his way home, Captain Cameron had been
sent even farther from the French port to which he had originally sailed
in the huge transport from New York.

* * * * *

"I am now settled on the Rhine--one of the 'watches,' I suppose, that
the Germans used to sing about, now stamped 'Made in America,' however,"
he wrote to Ruth. "We watch a bridge-head and see that the Germans don't
carry away anything that might be needed on this side of the most
over-rated river in the world. I have come to the conclusion, since
seeing a good bit of Europe, that most of the scenery is over-rated and
does not begin to compare with the natural beauties of America. So many
foreigners come to our shores and talk about the beauty-spots of their
own countries, and so few Americans have in the past seen much of their
own land, that we accept the opinions of homesick foreigners as to the
superiority of the beauties of their father-and-mother-lands. After this
war I guess there will be more fellows determined to give the States the
'once over.'"

* * * * *

Tom always wrote an Interesting letter; but aside from that, of course
Ruth was eager to hear from him. And now, as soon as she could, she sat
down and replied to his communication. She had, too, a particular topic
on which she wished to write her friend.

Now that embattled Germany would no longer hold its prisoners
_incommunicado_, Ruth hoped that news about the imprisoned performers of
the Wild West Show might percolate through the lines. Chief Totantora
had been able but once to get a message to his daughter.

This message had reached America long before the United States had got
into the war. Although the Osage chieftain was an American (who could
claim such proud estate if Totantora could not?), the show by which he
was employed had gone direct to Germany from England, and anything
English had, from the first, been taboo in Germany. Now, of course, the
Indian girl had no idea as to where her father was.

"See if you can hear anything about those performers," Ruth wrote to
Tom. "Get word if you can to the Chief of the Osage Indians and tell him
that his daughter is with me, and that she longs for his return.

"I should love to make her happy by aiding in Chief Totantora's
reappearance in his native land. She is so sad, indeed, that I wonder if
she is going to be able to register, for the screen, the happiness that
she should finally show when my picture is brought to its conclusion."

CHAPTER X

ONE NEW YORK DAY

That "happy ending" became a matter of much thought on Ruth's part, and
the cause of not a little argument between her and Mr. Hammond when he
came up to Cheslow and the Red Mill to discuss "Brighteyes" with its
youthful author. He had come, too, to get a glimpse of Wonota in the
flesh.

One of the first things Ruth had done when the Indian girl came under
her care was to take Wonota to Cheslow and have the best photographer of
the town take several "stills" of the Indian girl. Copies of these she
had sent to the Alectrion Film Corporation, and word had come back from
both Mr. Hammond and his chief director that the photographs of Wonota
were satisfactory.

The president of the film company, however, was interested in talking
with Wonota and judging as far as possible through cursory examination
just how much there was to the girl.

"What has she got in her? That is what we want to know," he said to
Ruth. "Can she get expression into her face? Can she put over feeling?
We want something besides mere looks, Miss Ruth, as you very well know."

"I realize all that," the girl of the Red Mill told him earnestly. "But
remember, Mr. Hammond, you cannot judge this Osage girl by exactly the
same standards as you would a white girl!"

"Why not? She's got to be able to show on the screen the deepest
feelings of her nature--"

"Not if you would have my 'Brighteyes' true to life," interrupted Ruth
anxiously. "You must not expect it."

"Why not?" he demanded again, with some asperity. "We don't want to show
the people a dummy. I tell you the public is getting more and more
critical. They won't stand for just pretty pictures. The actors In them
must express their thoughts and feelings as they do in real life."

"Exactly!" Ruth hastened to say. "That is what I mean. My 'Brighteyes'
is a full-blooded Indian maiden just like Wonota. Now, you talk with
Wonota--try to get to the very heart of the girl. Then you will see."

"See what?" he demanded, staring.

"What you will see," returned Ruth, with a laugh. "Go ahead and get
acquainted with Wonota. Meanwhile I will be getting this condensed plot
of the story into shape for us to talk over. I must rewrite that street
scene again, I fear. And, of course, we are in a hurry?"

"Always," grumbled the producer. "We must start for our Western location
as soon as possible; but the New York scenes must be shot first."

It was a fine day, and the shore of the Lumano River offered a pleasant
prospect for out-of-door exercise, and after he had spent more than an
hour walking about with Wonota, the canny Mr. Hammond obtained, he said,
a "good line" on the character and capabilities of the Indian girl.

"You had me guessing for a time, Miss Ruth," he laughingly said to the
girl of the Red Mill. "I did not know what you were hinting at I see it
now. Wonota is a true redskin. We read about the stoicism of her race,
but we do not realize what that means until we try to fathom an Indian's
deeper feelings.

"I talked with her about her father. She is very proud of him, this
Totantora, as she calls him. But only now and then does she express (and
that in a flash) her real love and admiration for him.

"She is deeply, and justly, angered at that Dakota Joe Fenbrook. But she
scarcely expresses that feeling in her face or voice. She speaks of his
cruelty to her with sadness in her voice merely, and scarcely a flicker
of expression in her countenance."

"Ah!" Ruth said. "Now you see what I see. It is impossible for her to
register changing expressions and feelings as a white girl would. Nor
would she be natural as 'Brighteyes' if she easily showed emotion. Yet
she mustn't be stolid, for if she does the audience will never get what
we are trying to put over."

"The director has got to have judgment--I agree to that," said Mr.
Hammond, nodding. "Wonota must be handled with care. But she's got it in
her to be a real star in time. She photographs like a million dollars!"
and he laughed. "Now if we can teach her to be expressive enough--well,
I am more than ever willing to take the chance with her, provided you,
Miss Ruth, will agree to supply the vehicles of expression."

"You flatter me, Mr. Hammond," returned Ruth, flushing faintly. "I shall
of course be glad to do my best in the writing line."

"That's it. Between us we ought to make a lot of money. And incidentally
to make an Indian star who will make 'em all sit up and take notice."

Ruth was so much interested in "Brighteyes" by this time that she "ate,
slept, walked and talked" little else--to quote Helen. But Tom's sister
grew much interested in the production, too.

"I'm going with you--to New York, anyway," she announced. "I might as
well. Father is so busy with his business now that I scarcely see him
from week end to week end. Dear me, if Tommy only would come home!"

"I guess he'd be delighted," rejoined Ruth, smiling. "But if you go with
me, honey, you're likely to be dragged around a good deal. I expect to
jump from New York to somewhere in the Northwest. Mr. Hammond has not
exactly decided. The weather is very promising, and if we can shoot the
outdoor scenes before Christmas we'll be all right."

"Well, I do love to travel. Maybe we could get Jennie to go, too," Helen
said reflectively.

"She certainly would help," laughed Ruth. "I would rather laugh with
Jennie than grouch with anybody else."

"The wisdom of Mrs. Socrates," scoffed Helen. "Anyway, Ruthie, I'll
write her at once and tell her to begin pulling wires. You know, Mr.
Stone is as 'sot as the everlasting hills'--and it takes something to
move the hills, you know. He will have to be convinced, maybe, that
Jennie's health demands a change of climate at just this time."

"She looks it."

"Well, one might expect her to fade away a bit because of Henri's
absence. I wonder if she's heard from him since the armistice?"

"If she hasn't she'll need something besides a change of climate, I
assure you," laughed Ruth again. "She hates ocean voyaging, does Jennie;
but she wouldn't wait till she could go in an ox-cart to get back to
France if Henri forgot to write."

There was one thing sure: Jennie Stone was a delighted host when Helen
arrived in New York a few days ahead of Ruth and Wonota. Ruth had not
intended to go to the Stones; she would have felt more independent at a
hotel. She did not know what engagements Mr. Hammond or the director of
the picture might make for her. So she tried to dodge Jennie's
invitation.

When the train got in from New England, however, and Ruth and the Indian
girl, following a red-capped porter with their bags, walked through the
gateway of entrance to the concourse of the Grand Central Terminal,
there were both Jennie and Helen waiting to spy them.

"Mr. Hammond told me to come to the Borneaux. He has made reservations
there," Ruth said.

"That's all right for to-morrow," declared Jennie bruskly. "Hotel rooms
are all right to make up in, or anything like that. But you are both
going to my house for to-night"

"Now, Jennie--"

"No buts or ands about it!" exclaimed her friend. "If you don't come,
Ruthie Fielding, I'll never speak to you again. And if Wonota doesn't
come I declare I'll tell Dakota Joe where she is, and he'll come after
her and steal her. In fact," Jennie added, wickedly smiling, "his old
Wild West Show is playing right here in the Big Town this week."

"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Ruth, while the Indian girl shrank a
little closer to her friend.

"Sure do. In Brooklyn. A three-day stand in one of the big armories over
there, I believe. So a telephone call--"

"Shucks!" exclaimed Helen. "Don't you believe her, Wonota. Just the same
you folks had better come to the Stone house. Mr. Stone has taken a
whole box to-night for one of the very best musical shows that ever
was!"

Ruth could see that the Indian girl was eager to agree. She did show
some small emotions which paleface girls displayed. She laughed more
than at first, too. But she was often downright gloomy when thinking of
Chief Totantora.

However, seeing Wonota wished to accept the invitation, and desiring
herself to please Helen and Jennie, Ruth agreed. They telephoned a
message to the Hotel Borneaux and then went off to dinner at the Stone
house. It was a very nice party indeed, and even busy Mr. Stone did his
best to put Wonota at her ease.

"Some wigwam this, isn't it, Wonata?" said Helen, smiling, as the girls
went upstairs after dinner to prepare for the theatre.

"The Osage nation does not live in wigwams, Miss Cameron," said Wonota
quietly. "We are not blanket Indians and have not been for two
generations."

"Well, look at the clothes you wore in that show!" cried Jennie. "That
head-dress looked wild enough, I must say--and those fringed leggings
and all that."

Wonota smiled rather grimly. "The white people expect to see Indians in
their national costumes. Otherwise it would be no novelty, would it?
Why, some of the girls--Osage girls of pure blood too--at Three Rivers
Station wear garments that are quite up to date. You must not forget
that at least we have the catalogs from the city stores to choose from,
even if we do not actually get to the cities to shop."

"Printer's ink! It is a great thing," admitted Helen. "I don't suppose
there are really any wild Indians left."

The four girls and Aunt Kate were whisked in a big limousine to the
play, and Wonota enjoyed the brilliant spectacle and the music as much
as any of the white girls.

"Believe me," whispered Jennie to Ruth, "give any kind of girl a chance
to dress up and go to places like this, and see other girls all fussed
up, as your Tommy says--"

"Helen's Tommy, you mean," interposed Ruth.

"Rats!" murmured the plump girl, falling back upon Briarwood Hall slang
in her momentary disgust. "Well, anyway, Miss Fielding, what I said is
so. Wonota would like to dress like the best dressed girl in the
theatre, and wear ropes of pearls and a plume in her hat--see that one
yonder! Isn't it superb?"

"The poor birdie that lost it," murmured Ruth.

"I declare, I don't believe you half enjoy yourself thinking of the
reverse of the shield all the time," sniffed Jennie Stone. "And yet you
do manage to dress pretty good yourself."

"One does not have to be bizarre to look well and up-to-date," declared
the girl of the Red Mill. "But that has nothing to do with Wonota."

"I did get off the track, didn't I?" laughed Jennie. "Oh, well! Dress
her up, or any other foreign girl, in American fashion and she seems to
fit into the picture all right--"

"'Foreign girl' and 'American fashion'?" gasped Ruth. "As--as _you_
sometimes say, Jennie, 'how do you get that way'? Wonota is a better
American than we are. Her ancestors did not have to come over in the
_Mayflower_, with Henry Hudson, or with Sir Walter Raleigh."

"Isn't that a fact?" laughed Jennie. "I certainly am forgetting
everything I ever learned at school. And, to tell the truth," she added,
making a little face at her chum, "I feel better for it. I just
_crammed_ at Ardmore and Briarwood."

Helen heard this. She glanced scornfully over Jennie's still too plump
figure. "I should say you did," she observed. "You used to create a
famine at old Briarwood Hall, I remember. But I would not brag about it,
Heavy."

"Crammed my brain, I mean," wailed the plump girl. "Can't you let me
forget my avoirdupois at all?"

"It is like the poor," laughed Ruth. "It is always with us, Jennie. We
cannot look at you and visualize your skeleton. You are too well
upholstered."

This sort of banter did not appeal to the Indian girl. She did not, in
fact, hear much of it. All her attention was given to the play on the
stage and the brilliant audience. She had traveled considerably with
Dakota Joe's show, but she had never seen anything like the audience in
this Broadway theatre.

She went back to the Stone domicile in a sort of daze--smiling and happy
in her quiet way, but quite speechless. Even Jennie could not "get a
rise out of her," as she confessed to Helen and Ruth after they were
ready for bed and the plump girl had come in to perch on one of the
twin beds her chums occupied for the night.

"But I like this Osage flower," observed Jennie. "And I am just as
anxious as I can be to see you make a star actress out of her, Ruthie."

"It will be Mr. Hammond and the director who do that."

"I guess you'll be in it," said Helen promptly. "If it wasn't for your
story they would not be able to feature Wonota."

"Anyway," went on Jennie, "I want to go West with you, Ruth--and so does
Helen. Don't you, Nell?"

"I certainly do," agreed Ruth's good friend. "Heavy and I are going to
tag along, Ruthie, somehow. If there is a chaperone, father said I could
go."

"Not Aunt Kate!" cried Jennie. "She says she has had enough. We dragged
her down East this summer, but she will not leave Madison Avenue this
winter."

"No need of worrying about that. Mother Paisley is going with the
company. I have a part for her in my picture. She always looks out for
the girls--a better chaperone than Mr. Hammond could hire," said Ruth.

"Fine!" cried Helen. "We'll go, then."

"We will," echoed Jennie.

"I wish you'd go to bed and let me go to sleep," complained the girl of
the Red Mill. "I have a hard day's work to-morrow--I feel it."

She was not mistaken in this feeling. At eight Mr. Hammond's assistant
telephoned that the director and the company would meet Ruth and Wonota
at a certain downtown corner where several of the scenes were to be
shot. Dressing rooms in a neighboring hotel had been engaged. Ruth and
her charge hastened through their breakfast, and Mr. Stone's chauffeur
drove them down to the corner mentioned.

It was a very busy spot, especially about noon. Ruth had seen so much of
this location work done, that it did not bother her. She was only to
stand to one side and watch, anyway. But Wonota asked:

"Oh! we don't have to do this right out here in public, do we, Miss
Fielding?"

"You do," laughed her friend. "Why, the people on the street help make
the picture seem reasonable and natural. You need not be frightened."

"But, shall I have to be in that half-Indian costume Mr. Hammond told me
to wear? What will people say--or think?"

Ruth was amused. "That's the picture. You will see some of the
characters in stranger garments than those of yours before we have
finished. And, anyway, in New York you often see the most outlandish
costumes on people--Turks in their national dress, Hindoos with turbans
and robes, Japanese and Chinese women dressed in the silks and brocades
of their lands. Oh, don't worry about bead-trimmed leggings and a few
feathers. And your skirt in that costume is nowhere near as short as
those worn by three-fourths of the girls you will see."

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