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Page 37
"Goodness! I am glad we are going far away from him."
"Yes, he is not a nice neighbor," agreed Mr. Hammond. "I hope Wonota
will repay us for all the bother we have had with Dakota Joe."
"It seems too bad. Of course, it is not Wonota's fault," said Ruth. "But
if we had not come across her--if I had not met her, I mean--you would
not have been annoyed in this way, Mr. Hammond."
"Take it the other way around, Miss Ruth," returned her friend, with a
quizzical smile. "We should be very glad that you did meet Wonota.
Considering what that mad bull would have done to you if she had not
swerved him by a rifle shot, a little bother like this is a small price
to pay."
"Oh--well!"
"In addition," said Mr. Hammond briskly, "look what we may make out of
the Indian girl. She may coin us a mint of money, Ruth Fielding."
"Perhaps," smiled Ruth.
But she was not so eager for money. The thing that fascinated her
imagination was the possibility that they might make of Wonota, the
Osage maiden, a great and famous movie star. Ruth desired very much to
have a part in that work.
She knew, because Mr. Hammond had told her, as well as Wonota herself,
that the Osage Indians as a tribe were the wealthiest people under the
guardianship of the American Government. Their oil leases were fast
bringing the tribe a great fortune. But Wonota, being under age, had no
share in this wealth. At this time the income of the tribe was between
four and five thousand dollars a day--and the tribe was not large.
"But Wonota can have none of that," explained the Indian maid. "It is
apportioned to the families, and Totantora, the head of my family, is
somewhere in that Europe where the war is. I can get no share of the
money. It is not allowed."
So, with the incentive of getting money for her search, Wonota was
desirous of pleasing her white friends in every particular. Besides,
ambition had budded in the girl's heart. She wanted to be a screen
actress.
"If your 'Brighteyes,' Miss Fielding, is ever shown at Three Rivers
Station or Pawhuska, where the Agency is, I know every member of the
tribe will go to see the film. When some of the young men of our tribe
acted in a round-up picture when I was a little girl, even the old men
and great-grandmothers traveled a hundred miles to see the film run off.
It was like an exodus, for some of them were two days and nights on the
way"
"The Osage Indians are not behind the times, then?" laughed Ruth. "They
are movie fans?"
"They realize that their own day has departed. The buffalo and elk have
gone. Even the prairie chickens are seen but seldom. Almost no game is
found upon our plains, and not much back in the hills. Many of our young
men till the soil. Some have been to the Carlisle School and have taken
up professions or are teachers. The Osage people are no longer warlike.
But some of our young men volunteered for this white man's war."
"I know that," sad Ruth warmly. "I saw some of them over there in
France--at least, some Indian volunteers. Captain Cameron worked in the
Intelligence Service with some of them. That is the spy service, you
know. The Indians were just as good scouts in France and Belgium as they
were on their own plains."
"We are always the same. It is only white men who change," declared
Wonota with confidence. "The redman is never two-faced or two-tongued."
"Well," grumbled Jennie, afterward, "what answer was there to make to
that? She has her own opinion of Lo, the poor Indian, and it would be
impossible to shake it."
"Who wants to shake it?" demanded Helen. "Maybe she is right, at that!"
The thing about Wonota that "gave the fidgets" to Jennie and Helen was
the fact that she could sit for mile after mile, while the train rocked
over the rails, beading moccasins and other wearing apparel, and with
scarcely a glance out of the car window. Towns, villages, rivers,
plains, woods and hills, swept by in green and brown panorama, and
seemed to interest Wonota not at all. It was only when the train, after
they changed at Denver, began to climb into the Rockies that the Indian
maid grew interested.
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