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Page 17
"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."
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