Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest Part 11

"Some wigwam this, isn't it, Wonata?" said Helen, smiling, as the girls went upstairs after dinner to prepare for the theatre.

"The Osage nation does not live in wigwams, Miss Cameron," said Wonota quietly. "We are not blanket Indians and have not been for two generations."

"Well, look at the clothes you wore in that show!" cried Jennie. "That head-dress looked wild enough, I must say--and those fringed leggings and all that."

Wonota smiled rather grimly. "The white people expect to see Indians in their national costumes. Otherwise it would be no novelty, would it?

Why, some of the girls--Osage girls of pure blood too--at Three Rivers Station wear garments that are quite up to date. You must not forget that at least we have the catalogs from the city stores to choose from, even if we do not actually get to the cities to shop."

"Printer's ink! It is a great thing," admitted Helen. "I don't suppose there are really any wild Indians left."

The four girls and Aunt Kate were whisked in a big limousine to the play, and Wonota enjoyed the brilliant spectacle and the music as much as any of the white girls.

"Believe me," whispered Jennie to Ruth, "give any kind of girl a chance to dress up and go to places like this, and see other girls all fussed up, as your Tommy says--"

"Helen's Tommy, you mean," interposed Ruth.

"Rats!" murmured the plump girl, falling back upon Briarwood Hall slang in her momentary disgust. "Well, anyway, Miss Fielding, what I said is so. Wonota would like to dress like the best dressed girl in the theatre, and wear ropes of pearls and a plume in her hat--see that one yonder! Isn't it superb?"

"The poor birdie that lost it," murmured Ruth.

"I declare, I don't believe you half enjoy yourself thinking of the reverse of the s.h.i.+eld all the time," sniffed Jennie Stone. "And yet you do manage to dress pretty good yourself."

"One does not have to be bizarre to look well and up-to-date," declared the girl of the Red Mill. "But that has nothing to do with Wonota."

"I did get off the track, didn't I?" laughed Jennie. "Oh, well! Dress her up, or any other foreign girl, in American fas.h.i.+on and she seems to fit into the picture all right--"

"'Foreign girl' and 'American fas.h.i.+on'?" gasped Ruth. "As--as _you_ sometimes say, Jennie, 'how do you get that way'? Wonota is a better American than we are. Her ancestors did not have to come over in the _Mayflower_, with Henry Hudson, or with Sir Walter Raleigh."

"Isn't that a fact?" laughed Jennie. "I certainly am forgetting everything I ever learned at school. And, to tell the truth," she added, making a little face at her chum, "I feel better for it. I just _crammed_ at Ardmore and Briarwood."

Helen heard this. She glanced scornfully over Jennie's still too plump figure. "I should say you did," she observed. "You used to create a famine at old Briarwood Hall, I remember. But I would not brag about it, Heavy."

"Crammed my brain, I mean," wailed the plump girl. "Can't you let me forget my avoirdupois at all?"

"It is like the poor," laughed Ruth. "It is always with us, Jennie. We cannot look at you and visualize your skeleton. You are too well upholstered."

This sort of banter did not appeal to the Indian girl. She did not, in fact, hear much of it. All her attention was given to the play on the stage and the brilliant audience. She had traveled considerably with Dakota Joe's show, but she had never seen anything like the audience in this Broadway theatre.

She went back to the Stone domicile in a sort of daze--smiling and happy in her quiet way, but quite speechless. Even Jennie could not "get a rise out of her," as she confessed to Helen and Ruth after they were ready for bed and the plump girl had come in to perch on one of the twin beds her chums occupied for the night.

"But I like this Osage flower," observed Jennie. "And I am just as anxious as I can be to see you make a star actress out of her, Ruthie."

"It will be Mr. Hammond and the director who do that."

"I guess you'll be in it," said Helen promptly. "If it wasn't for your story they would not be able to feature Wonota."

"Anyway," went on Jennie, "I want to go West with you, Ruth--and so does Helen. Don't you, Nell?"

"I certainly do," agreed Ruth's good friend. "Heavy and I are going to tag along, Ruthie, somehow. If there is a chaperone, father said I could go."

"Not Aunt Kate!" cried Jennie. "She says she has had enough. We dragged her down East this summer, but she will not leave Madison Avenue this winter."

"No need of worrying about that. Mother Paisley is going with the company. I have a part for her in my picture. She always looks out for the girls--a better chaperone than Mr. Hammond could hire," said Ruth.

"Fine!" cried Helen. "We'll go, then."

"We will," echoed Jennie.

"I wish you'd go to bed and let me go to sleep," complained the girl of the Red Mill. "I have a hard day's work to-morrow--I feel it."

She was not mistaken in this feeling. At eight Mr. Hammond's a.s.sistant telephoned that the director and the company would meet Ruth and Wonota at a certain downtown corner where several of the scenes were to be shot. Dressing rooms in a neighboring hotel had been engaged. Ruth and her charge hastened through their breakfast, and Mr. Stone's chauffeur drove them down to the corner mentioned.

It was a very busy spot, especially about noon. Ruth had seen so much of this location work done, that it did not bother her. She was only to stand to one side and watch, anyway. But Wonota asked:

"Oh! we don't have to do this right out here in public, do we, Miss Fielding?"

"You do," laughed her friend. "Why, the people on the street help make the picture seem reasonable and natural. You need not be frightened."

"But, shall I have to be in that half-Indian costume Mr. Hammond told me to wear? What will people say--or think?"

Ruth was amused. "That's the picture. You will see some of the characters in stranger garments than those of yours before we have finished. And, anyway, in New York you often see the most outlandish costumes on people--Turks in their national dress, Hindoos with turbans and robes, j.a.panese and Chinese women dressed in the silks and brocades of their lands. Oh, don't worry about bead-trimmed leggings and a few feathers. And your skirt in that costume is nowhere near as short as those worn by three-fourths of the girls you will see."

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 a.s.sistants. 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!"