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Page 58
Ruth looked somewhat troubled and made no further comment Of course, the
coat and hat were probably like the coat and hat of numberless other men
in the West. But the last time Ruth had seen Dakota Joe Fenbrook, that
individual had been wearing a broad-brimmed gray sombrero and a brown
duck coat.
CHAPTER XXIII
REALITY
Ruth Fielding was not a coward. She had already talked so much about
Dakota Joe that she was a little ashamed to bring up the subject again.
So she made no comment upon the man in the brown coat and gray hat that
Jennie Stone declared she had seen climbing the path up the canyon wall.
Mr. Hammond was not annoyed by it. His mind was fixed upon the scenes
that could be filmed in the canyon. Like Jim Hooley, the director, his
thought was almost altogether taken up with the making of Ruth's
"Brighteyes."
The work of making the picture was almost concluded. Wonota, the Indian
maid, had lost none of her interest in the tasks set her; but she
expressed herself to Ruth as being glad that there was little more to
do.
"I do not like some things I have to do," she confessed. "It is so hard
to look, as Mr. Hooley tells me to, at that hero of yours, Miss
Fielding, as though I admired him."
"Mr. Grand? You do not like him?"
"I could never love him," said the Indian girl with confidence. "He is
too silly. Even when we are about to engage in one of the most thrilling
scenes, he looks first in the handglass to see if his hair is parted
right."
Ruth could not fail to be amused. But she said cautiously:
"But think how he would look to the audience if his hair was tousled
when it was supposed to be well brushed."
"Ah, it is not a manly task," said Wonota, with disgust. "And the Indian
man who is the villain--Tut! He is only half Indian. And he tries to
look both as though he admired me and hated the white man. It makes his
eyes go this way!" and Wonota crossed her eyes until Ruth had to cry
out.
"Don't!" she begged, "Suppose you suffered that deformity?"
"But he doesn't--that Jack Onehorse. Your Brighteyes, I am sure, would
have felt no pity for such an Indian."
"You don't have to feel pity for him," laughed Ruth. "You know, you
shoot him in the end, Wonota."
"Most certainly," agreed Wonota, closing her lips firmly. "He deserves
shooting."
The calm way in which the Indian girl spoke of this taking off of the
Indian lover who became the villain in the end of the moving picture,
rather shocked the young author.
"But," said Jennie, "Wonota it only a single generation removed from
arrant savagery. She calls a spade a spade. You shouldn't blame her. It
is civilization--which is after all a sort of make-believe--that causes
us white folk to refer to a spade as an agricultural implement."
But Ruth would not laugh. She had become so much interested in Wonota by
this time that she wished her to improve her opportunities and learn the
ways--the better ways, at least--of white people.
Mr. Hammond naturally looked at the commercial end of Wonota's
improvement. Nor did Ruth overlook the chance the Osage maid had of
becoming a money-earning star in the moving picture firmament. But she
desired to help the girl to something better than mere money.
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