EVERYBODY AGREES BUT DAKOTA JOE
An inspiration is all right--even when it strikes one in the middle of
the night. So Jennie Stone remarked. But there had to be something
practical behind such a venture as Ruth Fielding had suggested to the
sleepy girl.
Her thought regarding Princess Wonota of the Osage Tribe was partly due
to her wish to help the Indian girl, and partly due to her desire to
furnish Mr. Hammond and the Alectrion Film Corporation with another big
feature picture.
Ruth and Jennie (who became enthusiastic when she was awake in the
morning) chattered about the idea like magpies from breakfast to lunch.
Then Helen drove over from The Outlook, and she had to hear it all
explained while Ruth and Jennie were making ready to go out in the car
with her.
"You must drive us right to Cheslow," Ruth said, "where I can get Mr.
Hammond on the long-distance 'phone. This is important. I feel that I
have a really good idea."
"But what do you suppose that Dakota Joe will say?" drawled Helen. "He
won't love you, I fear."
"Has he got to know?" demanded Jennie. "Don't be a goose, Helen. This is
all going to be done on the q.t."
"Very well," sniffed the other girl. "Guess you'll find it difficult to
take Wonota away from the Wild West Show without Joe's knowing anything
about it."
"Of course!" laughed Ruth. "But until the fatal break occurs we must not
let him suspect anything."
"I see. It is a fell conspiracy," remarked Helen. "Well, come on! The
chariot awaits, my lady. If I am to drive a bunch of conspirators, let's
be at it."
"Helen would hustle one around," complained Jennie, "if she were in the
plot to kill Cæsar."
"Your tense is bad, little lady," said Helen. "Cæsar, according to the
books, has been dead some years now. Right-o?"
The girls sped away from the old mill, and in a little while Ruth was
shut into a telephone booth talking with Mr. Hammond in a distant city.
She told him a good deal more than she had the girls. It was his due.
Besides, she had already got the skeleton of a story in her mind and she
repeated the important points of this to the picture producer.
"Sounds good, Miss Ruth," he declared. "But it all depends upon the
girl. If you think she has the looks, is amenable to discipline, and has
some natural ability, we might safely go ahead with it, I will get into
communication by telegraph with the Department of Indian Affairs at
Washington and with the agent at Three Rivers Station, Oklahoma, as
well. We can afford to invest some money in the chance that this Wonota
is a find."
"Fifty-fifty, Mr. Hammond," Ruth told him. "On whatever it costs,
remember, I am just as good a sport as you are when it comes to taking a
chance in business."
He laughed. "I have often doubted your blood relationship to Uncle
Jabez," Mr. Hammond declared "He has no gambler's blood in his old
veins."
"He was born too long before the moving picture came into existence,"
she laughingly returned. "Now I mean to see Wonota again and try to
encourage her to throw in her fortunes with us. At least, I hope to get
her away from that disgusting Dakota Joe."
Later Jennie teasingly suggested: "You should have taken up with his
offer, Ruthie. You could have had free passes to the show in several
towns."
"I don't much wish to see the show again," Ruth declared.
"I bet Mercy Curtis would like to see it," giggled Helen, "if Wonota was
sure to shoot Joe. What a bloodthirsty child that Mercy continues to
be."
"She has changed a lot since we were all children together," Ruth said
reflectively. "And I never did blame Mercy much for being so scrappy.
Because of her lameness she missed a lot that we other girls had. I am
so glad she has practically gotten over her affliction."
"But not her failings of temper," suggested Jennie. "Still, as long as
she takes it out on Dakota Joe, for instance, I don't know but I agree
with her expressions of savage feeling."
"Hear! Hear!" cried Helen.
Despite their expressed dislike for Fenbrook, Helen and Jennie Stone
accompanied Ruth the next day to the afternoon performance of the Wild
West Show at a town much farther away than that at which they had first
met Wonota, the Indian princess.
Wonota was glad to see them--especially glad to see Ruth Fielding. For
Ruth had given her hope for a change. The Indian girl was utterly
disillusioned about traveling with a tent show; and even the promises
Fenbrook had made her of improved conditions during the winter, when
they would show for week-runs in the bigger cities, did not encourage
Wonota to continue with him.
"Yet I would very much like to earn money to spend in searching for the
great Chief Totantora," she confessed to the three white girls. "The
Great Father at Washington can do nothing now to find my father--and I
do not blame the White Father. The whole world is at war and those
peoples in Europe are sick with the fever of war. It is sad, but it
cannot be helped."
"And if you had money how would you go about looking for Chief
Totantora?" Helen asked her curiously.
"I must go over there myself. I must search through that German
country."
"Plucky girl!" ejaculated Jennie. "But not a chance!"
"You think not, lady?" asked Wonota, anxiously.
"We three have been to Europe--to France. We know something about the
difficulties," said Ruth, quietly. "I understand how you feel, Wonota.
And conditions may soon change. We believe the war will end. Then you
can make a proper search for your father."
"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.