Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest by Alice B. Emerson

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Aside from Wonota herself, there were few of the characters of the
picture of "Brighteyes" appearing in the scenes at this point. Mr.
Hammond had obtained a police permit of course, and the traffic officers
and some other policemen in the neighborhood took an interest in the
affair.

Traffic was held back at a certain point for a few moments so that there
would not be too many people in the scene. Wonota could not be hidden.
Ruth stood in the street watching the arrangements by the director and
his assistants. Two films are always made at the same time, and the two
camera men had got into position and had measured with their tapes the
field of the picture to be taken.

Ruth had noticed an automobile stopped by the police on the other side
of the cross street. She even was aware that two men in it were not
dressed like ordinary city men. They had broad-brimmed hats on their
heads.

But she really gave the car but a momentary glance. Wonota took up her
closest attention. The Indian girl crossed and recrossed the field of
the camera until she satisfied the director that her gait and facial
expression was exactly what he wanted.

"All right!" he said through his megaphone. "Camera! Go!"

And at that very moment, and against the commanding gesture of the
policeman governing the traffic, the car Ruth had so briefly noticed
started forward, swerved into the avenue, and ran straight at Ruth as
though to run her down!

CHAPTER XI

EVADING THE TRAFFIC POLICE

Ruth had turned her back on the car and did not see it slip out of the
crowd of motor traffic and turn into the avenue. But Wonota, the Indian
girl, saw her friend's danger. She uttered a loud cry and bounded out of
the camera field just as the two camera men began to crank their
machines.

"Look out, Miss Fielding!"

The cry startled Ruth, but it did not aid her much to escape. And
perhaps the chauffeur of the car only intended to crowd by the girl of
the Red Mill and so escape from the traffic hold-up.

At Wonota's scream the director shouted for the camera men to halt. He
started himself with angry excitement after the Indian girl. She had
utterly spoiled the shot.

But on the instant he was adding his warning cry to Wonota's and to the
cries of other bystanders. Ruth, amazed, could not understand what
Wonota meant. Then the car was upon her, the mudguard knocked her down,
and her loose coat catching in some part of the car, she was dragged for
several yards before Wonota could reach her.

Over and over in the dust Ruth had been whirled. She was breathless and
bruised. She could not even cry out, the shock of the accident was so
great.

The instant the Indian girl reached the prostrate Ruth the motor-car
broke away and its driver shot the machine around the nearest corner and
out of sight.

A policeman charged after the car at top speed, but when he reached the
corner there were so many other cars in the cross street that he could
not identify the one that had caused the accident.

To Ruth, Wonota gasped: "That bad man! I knew he would do something
mean, but I thought it would be to me."

Ruth could scarcely reply. The director was at her side, as well as
other sympathetic people. She was lifted up, but she could not stand.
Something had happened to her left ankle. She could bear no weight upon
it without exquisite pain.

For the time the taking of the picture was called off. The traffic
officer allowed the stalled cars to pass on. A crowd began to assemble
about Ruth.

"Do take me into the hotel--somewhere!" she gasped. "I--I can't walk--"

One of the camera men and the director, Mr. Hooley, made a seat with
their hands, and sitting in this and with Wonota to steady her, the girl
of the Red Mill was hurried under cover, leaving the throng of
spectators on the street quite sure that the accident had been a planned
incident of the moving picture people. They evidently considered Ruth a
"stunt actress."

It was not until Ruth was alone with Wonota in a hotel room, lying on a
couch, the Indian girl stripping the shoe and stocking from the injured
limb, that Ruth asked what Wonota had meant when she first bounded
toward her, shrieking her warning of the motor-car's approach.

"What did you mean, Wonota?" asked the girl of the Red Mill. "Who was it
ran over me? I know Mr. Hooley will try to find him, but--"

"That bad, _bad_ Dakota Joe!" interrupted the Indian girl with
vehemence, her eyes flashing and the color deeping in her bronze cheeks.
"When your friend told us he was in this city, I feared."

"Why, Wonota!" cried Ruth, sitting up in surprise, "do you mean to say
that Dakota Joe Fenbrook was driving that car?"

"No. He cannot drive a car. But it was one of his men--Yes."

"I can scarcely believe it. He deliberately ran me down?"

"I saw Dakota Joe in the back of the car just as it shot down toward
you, Miss Fielding. He is a bad, bad man! He was leaning forward urging
that driver on. I know he was."

"Why, it seems terrible!" Ruth sighed. "Yes, that feels good on my
ankle, Wonota. I do not believe it is really sprained. Oh, but it hurt
at first! Wrenched, I suppose."

Jim Hooley, the director, had telephoned for Mr. Hammond, and the
producer hurried to the hotel. He insisted on bringing a surgeon with
him. But by the time of their arrival Ruth felt much easier, and after
the medical man had pronounced no real harm done to the ankle, Ruth
dressed again, insisting that a second attempt be made to shoot the
scene while the sun remained high enough.

The police had endeavored to trace the motor-car that had caused the
accident. But it seemed that nobody had noted the numbers on the
machine, or even the kind of car it was. Ruth had forbidden Wonota to
tell what she revealed to her. If it was Dakota Joe who had run her down
there was no use attempting to fasten the guilt of the incident upon him
unless they were positive and could prove his guilt.

"And you know, Wonota, you cannot be _sure_--"

"I saw him. It was for but a moment, but I _saw_ him," said the Indian
girl positively.

"Even at that, it would take corroborative testimony to convince the
court," mused Ruth.

"I do not understand paleface laws," said Wonota, shaking her head. "If
an Indian does something like that to another Indian, the injured one
can punish his enemy. And he almost always does."

"But we cannot take the law into our own hands that way."

"Why not?" asked Wonota. "Is a redman so much superior to a white man?
If the redman can punish an enemy why cannot a white man?"

"Our law does not leave it in our hands to punish," said Ruth, quietly,
though rather staggered by the Indian girl's question. "We have courts,
and judges, and methods of criminal procedure. A person who has been
injured by another cannot be the best judge of the punishment to be
meted out to the one who has harmed him."

"Why not?" demanded Wonota, promptly. "He is the one hurt. Who other
than he should deal out punishment?"

Ruth was silenced for the time being. In fact, Wonota looked upon
mundane matters from such a different angle that it was sometimes
impossible for Ruth to convince her protege that the white man's way was
better.

However, this incident gave Ruth Fielding a warning that she did not
intend to ignore. A little later she told Mr. Hammond of the Indian
girl's suspicion that it was Fenbrook who had been the cause of Ruth's
slight injury. It was too late then to set the police on the track of
the showman, for on making private inquiry Mr. Hammond found that Dakota
Joe's show had already left Brooklyn and was _en route_ for some city in
the Middle West.

"But it seems scarcely probable, Miss Ruth," the producer said, "that
that fellow would take such a chance. And to hurt _you!_ Why, if he had
tried to injure that Indian girl, I might be convinced. She probably saw
somebody in the car with a sombrero on--"

"I noticed two men in that car with broad hats," confessed Ruth. "But I
gave them only a glance. It doesn't seem very sensible to believe that
the man would deliberately hurt me. Yet he did threaten us when he was
angry, there at the mill. No getting around that."

Mr. Hammond shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "You will begin to
believe that the making of moving pictures is a pretty perilous
business."

"It may be." She laughed, yet rather doubtfully. "I am to be on the
watch for the 'hand in the dark,' am I not? At any rate when we are hear
Dakota Joe again, I will keep a very sharp lookout."

"Yes, of course, Miss Ruth, we'll all do that," returned Mr. Hammond,
more seriously now, for he saw that Ruth was really disturbed. "Still,
whatever his intentions, I do not believe Fenbrook will have the power
to do any real harm. At any rate, keep your courage up, for we are
forewarned now, and can take care of ourselves--and of you," he added,
with a smile, as he left her.

CHAPTER XII

BOUND FOR THE NORTHWEST

Because of the accident in which Ruth might have been seriously hurt,
the company was delayed for a day in New York, Altogether the various
shots (some of them of and in one of the tallest office buildings on
Broadway) occupied more than a week--more time than Mr. Hammond wished
to give to the work in the East.

Nevertheless, Ruth's finished script, as handled deftly by the
continuity writer, promised so well that the producer was willing to
make a special production of it. The money--and time--cost were
important factors in the making of the picture; but the selection of the
cast was not to be overlooked. Jim Hooley had chosen the few acting in
the Eastern scenes with Wonota, including the hero, whom, to tell the
truth, the Indian girl considered a rather wonderful person because she
saw him in a dress suit"

"Yes, it is true! No Indian could look so heroic a figure," she
whispered to Ruth. "He looks like--like a nobleman. I have read about
noblemen in the book of an author named Scott--Sir Walter Scott.
Noblemen must look like Mr. Albert Grand."

"And to me he looks like a head waiter," said Ruth, when laughingly
relating this to Helen and Jennie.

"Don't let Mr. Grand hear you say that," warned Helen. "They tell me
that he refuses to appear in any picture where at least once he does not
walk into the scene in a dress suit. He claims his clientele demand
it--he looks so perfectly splendid in the 'soup and fish.'"

"Then why laugh at Wonota?" demanded Jennie Stone. "She is no more
impressed by his surface qualities than are the movie fans who like Mr.
Grand."

"Well, it is a great game," laughed Ruth. "Some of the movie stars have
more laughable eccentricities or idiosyncracies than that. I wonder what
our Wonota will develop if she becomes a star?"

The development of the Indian girl was promising so far. She had feeling
for her part, if it was at first rather difficult for her to express in
her features those emotions which, as an Indian, she had considered it
proper to hide. She did just enough of this to make her feelings show
on the screen, yet without being unnatural in the part of Brighteyes,
the Indian maid.

Mr. Hammond was inclined to believe that "Brighteyes" would be a big
feature picture. The director was enthusiastic about it as well. And
even the camera man (than whom can be imagined no more case-hardened
critic of pictures) expressed his belief that it would be a "knockout."

Mr. Hammond arranged for a special car for the cross-continent run, and
he took his own family along, as the weather prophesied for the ensuing
few weeks was favorable to out-of-door work and living. The special car
made it possible for Ruth and her two friends, Helen and Jennie, as well
as the Osage Indian girl, to be very comfortably placed during the
journey.

Ruth had traveled before this--north, south, east and west--and there
was scarcely anything novel in train riding for her. But a journey would
never be dull with Jennie Stone and Helen Cameron as companions!

They ruined completely the morale of the car service. The colored porter
could scarcely shine the other passengers' shoes he was kept so much at
the beck and call of the two wealthy girls, who tipped lavishly. The
Pullman conductor was cornered on every possible occasion and led into
discourse entirely foreign to his duties. Even the "candy butcher" was
waylaid and made to serve the ends of two girls who had perfectly idle
hands and--so Ruth declared--quite as idle brains.

"Well, goodness!" remarked Helen, "we must occupy our minds and time in
some way. You, Ruthie, are confined to that story of yours about
twenty-five hours out of the twenty-four. Even Wonota has thought only
for her tiresome beadwork when she is not studying her part with Mr.
Hooley and you. I know we'll have fun when we get to the Hubbell Ranch
where Mr. Hammond says your picture is to be filmed. I do just dote on
cowboys and the fuzzy little ponies they ride."

"And the dear cows!" drawled Jennie. "Do you remember that maniacal
creature that attacked our motor-car that time we went to Silver Ranch,
years and years and years ago? You know, back in the Paleozoic Age!"

"Quite so," agreed Helen. "I have a photographic remembrance of that
creature--ugh! And how he burst our tires!"

_"He,_ forsooth! What a way to speak of a cow!"

"It wasn't a cow; it was a steer," declared Helen confidently.

Ruth retired from the observation platform where her chums were
ensconced, allowing them to argue the matter to a finish. It was true
that the girl of the Red Mill was very busy most of her waking hours on
the train. They all took a recess at Chicago, however, and it was there
a second incident occurred that showed Dakota Joe Fenbrook had not
forgotten his threat to "get even" with Ruth Fielding and the moving
picture producer with whom she was associated.

The special car was sidetracked just outside of Chicago and the whole
party motored into the city in various automobiles and on various
errands. The Hammonds had relatives to visit. Ruth and her three girl
companions had telegraphed ahead for reservations at one of the big
hotels, and they proposed to spend the two days and nights Mr. Hammond
had arranged for in seeing the sights and attending two particular
theatrical performances.

"And I declare!" cried Helen, as they rolled on through one of the
suburbs of the city, "there is one of the sights, sure enough. See that
billboard, girls?"

"Oh!" cried Wonota, who possessed quite as sharp eyes as anybody in the
party.

"We can't escape that man," sighed Jennie, as she read in towering
letters the announcement of "Dakota Joe's Wild West and Frontier
Round-Up."

"I am sorry the show is here in Chicago," added Ruth with serious mien.
"I am still limping. Next time that awful man will manage to lame me
completely."

"You ought to have a guard. Tell the police--do!" exclaimed Jennie
Stone.

"Tell the police _what?"_ demanded Ruth, with scorn. "We can't prove
anything."

"I know it was Joe in that car that ran you down, Miss Fielding,"
declared Wonota, with anxiety.

"Yes. But nobody else saw him--to recognize him, I mean. We cannot base
a complaint upon such little foundation. Nor would it be well, perhaps,
to get Dakota Joe into the courts. He is a very vindictive man--he must
be----"

"He is very bad man!" repeated Wonota vehemently.

"Yes. That is just it. Why stir up his passions to a greater degree,
then?"

"Of course, Ruthie would want to turn 'the other cheek,'" scoffed
Jennie.

"I am not going around with a chip on my shoulder, looking for somebody
to knock it off," laughed the girl of the Red Mill. "I just want Joe to
leave us alone--that's all."

Wonota shook her head and seemed unconvinced of the wisdom of this. She
was not a pacifist. She knew, too, the heart of the showman, and perhaps
she feared him more than she was willing to tell her new friends.

The four girls made their headquarters at the hotel, and then set forth
at once to shop and to look. As the hours of that first day passed
Wonota was vastly excited over the new sights. For once she lost that
stoic calmness which was her racial trait. The big stores and the tall
buildings here in the mid-western city seemed to impress her even more
than had those in New York.

There was reason for that. She was, while in New York, so much taken up
with the part she was playing in "Brighteyes" that she could think of
little else. She saw many things in the stores she wished to buy. Ruth
had advanced Wonota some money on her contract with the Alectrion Film
Corporation. But when it came right down to the point of buying the
things that girls like and long for--little trinkets and articles of
adornment--the Indian girl hesitated.

"Buy it if it pleases you," Ruth said, rather wondering at the firmness
with which Wonota drew back from selecting and paying for something that
cost less than a dollar.

"No, Miss Fielding. Wonota does not need that. Chief Totantora may be
lost to me forever. I should not adorn myself, or think of
self-adornment. No! I will save my money until I can go to that Europe
where the great chief is held a prisoner."

The girls--Helen and Jennie--were both for buying presents for the
Indian girl, as she would not use her own money. But Ruth would not
allow them to purchase other than the simplest souveniers.

"That would spoil it all. Let her deny herself in such a cause--it will
not hurt her," the girl of the Red Mill said sensibly. "She has an
object in life and should be encouraged to follow out her plan for
helping Chief Totantora."

"Maybe he is not alive now," said Helen, thoughtfully.

"I would not suggest that," Ruth hastened to rejoin. "As long as she can
hope, the better for Wonota. And I should not want her to find out that
Totantora has died in captivity, before my picture is finished."

"Whoo!" breathed Jennie. "You sound sort of selfish, Ruthie Fielding."

"For her sake as well as for the sake of the picture," returned the
other practically. "I tell you Wonota has got it in her to be a valuable
asset to the movies. But I hope nothing will happen to make her fall
down on this first piece of work. Like Mr. Hammond, I hope that she will
develop into an Indian star of the very first magnitude."

CHAPTER XIII

DAKOTA JOE MAKES A DEMAND

At first Ruth and her friends did not worry about the presence of
Fenbrook and his Wild West Show in Chicago.

"Just riding past the billboard of the show isn't going to hurt us,"
chuckled Jennie Stone.

It was a fact soon proved, however, that the Westerner had made it his
business in some way to keep track of the movements of Wonota and her
friends. He made this known to them in a most unexpected way, Mr.
Hammond called Ruth up at her hotel.

"I must warn you, Miss Fielding" he said, "that I had a very unpleasant
meeting with that man, Fenbrook, only an hour ago. He actually had the
effrontery to look me up here in Wabash Avenue where I am staying with
my family, and practically demanded that I help finance his miserable
show because I had taken Wonota from him. He claims now she was his
chief attraction, though he would not admit that she was worth a living
wage when he had her under contract He was so excited and threatening
that I called an officer and had him put out of the house."

"Oh!" murmured Ruth. "Then he is in jail? He will not trouble us, then?"

"He is not in jail. I made no complaint. Just warned him to keep away
from here. But he said something about finding Wonota and making
trouble."

"I am sure, Mr. Hammond," said Ruth with no little anxiety, "that we had
better leave Chicago, then, as soon as possible. And if he comes here to
the hotel I will try to have him arrested and kept by the police. I am
afraid of him.

"I do not believe he will do anything very desperate--"

"I am not so sure," Ruth interrupted. "Wonota is confident it was he who
ran me down in New York. I am afraid of him," she repeated.

"Well, I will arrange for the shortening of our stay here. Mr. Hooley
will 'phone you the time we will leave--probably to-morrow morning very
early."

Ruth said nothing to the other three girls--why trouble them with a mere
possibility?--and they went to the theatre that evening and enjoyed the
play immensely. But getting out of the taxicab at the hotel door near
midnight, Wonota, who was the first to step out, suddenly crowded back
into Ruth Fielding's arms as the latter attempted to follow her to the
sidewalk.

"What is the matter, Wonota?" the girl of the Red Mill asked.

"There he is!" murmured the Indian girl, drawing herself up.

"There who is?" was Ruth's demand. Then she saw the object of Wonota's
anxiety, Dakota Joe stood under the portico of the hotel entrance. "He's
waiting for us!" hissed Ruth. "Stop, girls! Don't get out."

Helen and Jennie, over the heads of the others, saw the man. Jennie was
irrepressible of course.

"What do you expect us to do? Ride around all night in this taxi?"

"Call a policeman!" cried Helen, under her breath.

"Come back in here, Wonota," commanded Ruth, making up her mind with her
usual assurance. "Say nothing, girls." Then to the driver Ruth observed:
"Isn't there a side entrance to this hotel?"

"Yes, ma'am. Round on the other street."

"Take us around to that door. We see somebody waiting here whom we do
not wish to speak with."

"All right, ma'am," agreed the taxicab driver.

In two minutes they were whisked around to the other door, and entered
the hotel thereby. As they passed through the lobby to the elevators
one of the clerks came to Ruth.

"A man has been asking for you, Miss Fielding" he said. "He--he seems a
peculiar individual--"

Ruth described Dakota Joe Fenbrook and the clerk admitted that he was
the man. "A rather rude person," he said.

"So rude that we do not wish to see him," Ruth told the clerk. "Please
keep him away from us. He is annoying, and if he attempts to interfere
with me, I will call a policeman."

"Oh, we could allow nothing like that," the clerk hastened to say. "No
disturbance would be countenanced by the management of the hotel," and
he shook his head. "We will keep him away from you, Miss Fielding."

"Thank you," said Ruth, and followed her friends into the elevator. She
felt that they were free of Dakota Joe until morning at least She
assured Wonota that she need not worry.

"That bad man may hurt you. I am not afraid," declared the Indian girl.
"If I only had him out on the Osage Reservation, I would know what to do
to with him."

But she did not explain what treatment she would accord Dokota Joe if
she were at home.

It was only seven o'clock when Jim Hooley called on the telephone and
told Ruth that, following instructions from Mr. Hammond, he had
gathered the company together and that the special car standing in the
railroad yard outside Chicago would be picked up by the nine-thirty
western bound Continental. The girls had scarcely time to dress and
drive to the point of departure. There was some "scrabbling," as Jennie
expressed it, to dress, get their possessions together, and get away
from the hotel.

"Didn't see Dakota Joe anywhere about, did you?" Helen asked, as their
taxi-cab-left the hotel entrance.

"For goodness' sake! he would not have hung about the hotel all night,
would he?" demanded Jennie.

"Mr. Hammond seems to be afraid of the man" pursued Helen. "Or we would
not be running away like this."

Ruth smiled. "I guess," she said, "that Mr. Hammond is hurrying us on
for a different reason. You must remember that he has this company on
salary and that the longer we delay on the way to the Hubbell Ranch the
more money it is costing him while the company is idle."

It was proved, however, that the picture producer had a good reason for
wishing to get out of Dakota Joe's neighborhood. When the four girls in
the taxicab rolled up to the gate of the railroad yard and got out with
their bags, Dakota Joe himself popped out of hiding. With him a
broad-hatted man in a blue suit.

"Hey!" ejaculated the showman, standing directly in Ruth's path. "I got
you now where I want you. That Hammond man won't help me, and I told him
the trouble I'm in jest because he got that Injun gal away from me. I
see her! That's the gal--"

"What do you want of me, Mr. Fenbrook?" demanded Ruth, bravely, and
gesturing Wonota to remain behind her. "I have no idea why you should
hound me in this way."

"I ain't houndin' you."

"I should like to know what you call it then!" the girl of the Red Mill
demanded indignantly.

She was quick to grasp the chance of engaging Fenbrook in an argument
that would enable Wonota and the two other girls to slip out of the
other door of the taxicab and reach the yard gate. She flashed a look
over her shoulder that Helen Cameron understood. She and Jennie and
Wonota alighted from the other side of the cab.

"I got an officer here," stammered Dakota Joe. "He's a marshal. That
Injun gal's got to be taken before the United States District Court.
She's got to show cause why she shouldn't come back to my show and fill
out the time of her contract."

"She finished her contract with you, and you know it, Fenbrook,"
declared Ruth, turning to pay the driver of the cab.

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