Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest; Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies

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.

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."

"Well, wasn't that handy?" cried the girl.

"It sounded good. But Silas didn't have it on paper. First off they did stop for him if he hailed the train. He didn't go to town more'n three or four times a year. Then the railroad changed hands. 'There arose up a new king over Egypt which knew not Joseph'—you know, like it says in the Bible. And when Silas Bassett waved his hat, the train didn't even hesitate!"

Ruth laughed, but reminded her that they were talking about her great-grandmother's adventures in the Indian country years and years before.

"Yes, that's a fact," said Aunt Alvirah Boggs. "She did have exciting times. Why, when they was traveling acrosst them Western prairies one day, what should pop up but a band of Indians, with tall feathers in their hair, and guns—mebbe bow and arrows, too. Anyway, they scare't the white people something tremendous," and the old woman nodded vigorously.

"Well, the neighbors who were traveling together hastened to turn their wagons so as to make a fortress sort of, of the wagon-bodies, with the horses and the cattle and the humans in the center. You understand?"

"Yes," Ruth agreed. "I have seen pictures of such a camp, with the Indians attacking."

"Yes. Well, but you see," cackled the old woman suddenly, "them, Indians didn't attack at all. They rode down at a gallop, I expect, and scared the white folks a lot But what they come for was to see if there was a doctor in the party. Those Indians had heard of white doctors and knowed what they could do. The chief of the tribe had a favorite child that was very sick, and he come to see if a white doctor could save his child's life."

"Oh!" cried Ruth, her eyes sparkling. "What an idea!"

"Well, my pretty, I dunno," said Aunt Alvirah. "'Twas sensible enough, I should say, for that Indian chief to want the best doctoring there was for his child. The medicine men had tried to cure the poor little thing and failed. I expect even Red Indians sometimes love their children."

"Why, of course, Aunt Alvirah. And you ought to see how lovable this girl Wonota is."

"Mm—well, mebbe. Anyway, there was a doctor in that party my great-grandmother traveled with, and he rode to the Indian village and cured the sick child. And for the rest of their journey across them plains Indians, first of one tribe, then of another, rode with the party of whites. And they never had no trouble."

"Isn't that great!" cried Ruth.

And when she told Helen and Jennie about it—and the idea it had given Ruth for a screen story—her two chums agreed that it was "perfectly great."

So Ruth was hard at work on a scenario, or detailed plot, even before Mr. Hammond made his arrangements with the Indian Department for the transferring of the services of Princess Wonota from Dakota Joe's Wild West Show to the Alectrion Film Corporation for a certain number of months.

The matter had now gone so far that it could not be kept from Dakota Joe. He had spent money and pulled all the wires he could at the reservation to keep "Dead-Shot" Wonota in his employ. At first he did not realize that any outside agency was at work against him and for die girl's benefit.

Ruth and her friends drove to a distant town to see the Indian girl when the Wild West Show played for two days. They attended the matinee and saw Wonota between the two performances and had dinner with her at the local hotel. After dinner they all went to an attorney's office, where the papers in the case were ready, and Wonota signed her new contract and Helen and Jennie were two of the witnesses thereto. Mr. Hammond could not be present, but he had trusted to Ruth's good sense and business acumen.

In a week—giving Dakota Joe due notice—the old contract would be dead and Wonota would be at liberty under permission from the Indian Agent to leave the show. As Helen stopped the car before the torch-lighted entrance to the show for Wonota to step out, Dakota Joe strode out to the side of the road. He was scowling viciously.

"What's the matter with you, Wonota?" he demanded. "You trying to queer the show? You ain't got no more'n enough time to dress for your act. Get on in there, like I tell you."

Instead of propitiating Ruth now, he showed her the ugly side of his character.

"I guess you been playin' two-faced, ain't you, ma'am?" he growled as Wonota fled toward the dressing tent "I thought you was a friend of mine. But I believe you been cuttin' the sand right out from under my feet. Ain't you?"

"I do not know what you mean, Mr. Fenbrook," said Ruth sharply.

"You're Ruth Fielding, ain't you?" he demanded.

"Yes. That is my name."

"So they tell me," growled Dakota Joe. "And you are coupled up with this Hammond feller that they tell me has put in a bid for Wonota over and above what she's wuth, and what I can pay. Ain't that so?"

"If you wish to discuss the matter with Mr. Hammond I will give you his address," Ruth said with dignity. "I am not prepared to discuss the matter with you, Mr. Fenbrook."

"Is that so?" he snarled. "Well, ma'am, whether you want to talk or don't want to talk, things ain't goin' all your way. No, ma'am! I got some rights. The courts will give me my rights to Wonota. I'm her guardian, I am. Her father, Totantora, is dead, and I'll show you folks—and that Injun agent—just where you get off in this business!"

"Go on," said Ruth to Helen, without answering the angry man. But when the car had gone a little way along the road, the girl of the Red Mill exclaimed:

"Dear me! I fear that man will make trouble. I—I wish Tom were here."

"Don't say a word!" gasped Helen. "But not only because he could handle this Western bully do I wish Tommy-boy was home and the war was over."

"Why don't you offer Dakota Joe a job in your picture company, too?" drawled Jennie Stone.

"He'd make such a fine 'bad man.'"

"He certainly would," agreed Helen.

Just how bad the proprietor of the Wild West Show could be was proved the following day. Mr. Hammond sent Ruth a telegram In the morning intimating that something had gone wrong with their plans to get Wonota into their employ.

"The Court has given Fenbrook an injunction. What do you know about it?"

Now, of course, Ruth Fielding did not know anything at all about it. And after what she had seen of Dakota Joe she had no mind to go to him on behalf of Mr. Hammond and herself. If the Westerner was balking the attempt to get Wonota out of his clutches, nothing would beat him, Ruth believed, but legal proceedings.

She telegraphed Mr. Hammond to this effect, advising that he put the matter in the hands of the attorney that had drawn the new contract with the Indian girl.

"The goodness knows," she told Aunt Alvirah and Uncle Jabez, "I don't want to have anything personally to do with that rough man. He is just as ugly as he can be."

"Wal," snorted the miller, "he better not come around here cutting up his didoes! Me and Ben will tend to him!"

Ruth could not help being somewhat fearful of the proprietor of the Wild West Show. If the man really made up his mind to make trouble, Ruth hoped that he would not come to the Red Mill.

Helen and Jennie drove over to the mill to get Ruth that afternoon, and they planned to take Aunt Alvirah out with them. She had lost her fear of the automobile and had even begun to hint to the miller that she wished he would buy a small car.

"Land o' Goshen!" grumbled Uncle Jabez, "what next? I s'pose you'd want to learn to run the dratted thing, Alvirah Boggs?"

"Well, Jabez Potter, I don't see why not?" she had confessed. "Other women learns."

"Huh! You with one foot in the grave and the other on the gas, eh?" he snorted.

However, Aunt Alvirah did not go out in Helen's car on this afternoon. While the girls were waiting for her to be made ready, Helen looked back, up the road, down which she and Jennie had just come.

"What's this?" she wanted to know. "A runaway horse?"

Jennie stood up to look over the back of the car. She uttered an excited squeal.

"Helen! Ruthie!" she declared. "It's that Indian girl—in all her war-togs, too. She is riding like the wind. And, yes! There is somebody after her! Talk about your moving picture chases—this is the real thing!"

"It's Dakota Joe!" shrieked Helen. "Goodness! He must have gone mad. See him beating that horse he rides. Why—"

"He surely has blown up," stated Jennie Stone with conviction. "Ruthie! what are you going to do?"

A WONDERFUL EVENT

Wonota was a long way ahead of the Westerner. She was light and she bestrode a horse with much more speed than the one Dakota Joe rode. She lay far along her horse's neck and urged it with her voice rather than a cruel goad.

The plucky pony was responding nobly, although it was plain, as it came nearer to the girls before the old mill farmhouse, that it had traveled hard. It was thirty miles from the town where the Wild West Show was performing to the Red Mill.

"Oh, Wonota!" cried Jennie Stone, beckoning the Indian girl on. "What is the matter?"

Ruth had not waited to get any report from Wonota. She turned and dashed for the house. Already Sarah, the maid-of-all-work, had started through the covered passage to the mill, shrieking for Ben, the hired man.

Ben and the miller ran down the long walk to roadside. Jabez Potter was no weakling despite his age, while Ben was a giant of a fellow, able to handle two ordinary men.

Wonota pulled her pony in behind Helen's car, whirling to face her pursuer. She did not carry the light rifle she used in her act. Perhaps it would have been better had she been armed, for Dakota Joe was quite beside himself with wrath. He came pounding along, swinging his whip and yelling at the top of his voice.

"What's the matter with that crazy feller?" demanded the old miller in amazement. "He chasin' that colored girl?"

"She's not colored. She is my Indian princess, Uncle Jabez," Ruth explained.

"I swanny, you don't mean it! Hi, Ben!" But nobody had to tell Ben what to do. As Fenbrook drew in his horse abruptly, the millhand jumped into the road, grabbed Dakota Joe's whip-hand, broke his hold on the reins, and dragged the Westerner out of the saddle. It was a feat requiring no little strength, and it surprised Dakota Joe as much as it did anybody.

"Hey, you! What you doin'?" bawled Dakota Joe, when he found himself sitting on the hard ground, staring up at the group.

"Ain't doing nothing," drawled Ben. "It's done. Better sit where you be, Mister, and cool off."

"What sort o' tomfoolishness is this?" asked the miller again. "Makin' one o' them picture-shows right here on the public road? I want to know!"

At that, and without rising from his seat in the road, Dakota Joe Fenbrook lifted up his voice and gave his opinion of all moving picture people, and especially those that would steal "that Injun gal" from a hard-working man like himself. He stated that the efforts of a "shark named Hammond" and this girl here that he thought was a lady an' friendly to him were about to ruin his show.

"They'll crab the whole business if they git Wonota away from me. That's what will happen! And I ought to give her a blame' good lickin'—"

"We won't hear nothing more about that," interrupted the old miller, advancing a stride or two toward the angry Westerner. "Whether the gal's got blue blood or red blood, or what color, she ain't going to be mishandled none by you. Understand? You git up and git!"

"But what has happened, Wonota?" the puzzled Ruth asked the Indian girl.

Wonota pointed scornfully at Fenbrook, just then struggling to his feet.

"Joe, heap smart white man. Wuh!" She really was grimly chuckling. "He go get a talking paper from the court. Call it injunction, eh?"

"I heard about the injunction," admitted Ruth interestedly.

"All right Wonota can't leave Joe to work for you, eh? But the paleface law-man say to me that that talking paper good only In that county. You see? I not in that county now."

"Oh, Jerry!" gasped Jennie Stone. "Isn't that cute? She is outside the jurisdiction of the court."

"Sho!" exclaimed Jabez Potter, much amused by this outcome of the matter. "It is a fact. Go on back to your show, mister. The gal's here, and she's with friends, and that's all there is to it."

Dakota Joe had already realized this situation. He climbed slowly into his saddle and eyed them all—especially Ruth and Wonota—with a savage glare.

"Wait!" he growled. "Wait—that's all. I'll fix you movie people yet—the whole of you! It's the sorriest day's job you ever done to get Wonota away from me. Wait!"

He rode away. When he was some rods up the road, down which he had galloped, he set spurs to his horse again and dashed on and out of sight. For a little while nobody spoke. It was Jennie who, as usual, light-hearted and unafraid, broke the silence.

"Well, all right, we'll wait," she said. "But we needn't do it right here, I suppose. We can sit down and wait just as easily."

Helen laughed. But Ruth and Wonota were sober, and even Uncle Jabez Potter saw something to take note of in the threat of the proprietor of the Wild West Show.

"That man is a coward. That's as plain as the nose on your face. And a coward when he gits mad and threatens you is more to be feared than a really brave man. That man's a coward. He's mean. He's p'ison mean! You want to look out for him, Niece Ruth. I wouldn't wonder if he tried, some time, to do you and Mr. Hammond some trick that won't bring you in no money, to say the least."

The old miller went off with that statement on his lips. Ben, the hired man, followed him, shaking his head. The girls looked at each other, then at the rapidly disappearing cloud of dust raised by Dakota Joe's pony. Jennie said:

"Well, goodness! why so serious? Guess that man won't do such a much! Don't be scared, Wonota. We won't let anybody hurt you."

"I wish Tom were here," Ruth Fielding repeated.

And in less than forty-eight hours this wish of the girl of the Red Mill seemed to her almost prophetical. Tom Cameron was coming home!

The whole land rejoiced over that fact. The whole world, indeed, gave thanks that it was possible for a young captain in the American Expeditionary Forces to look forward to his release and return to his home.

The armistice had been declared. Cheslow, like every town and city in the Union, celebrated the great occasion. It was not merely a day's celebration. The war was over (or so it seemed) and the boys who were so much missed would be coming home again. It took some time for Ruth and her friends to realize that this return must be, because of the nature of things, postponed for many tiresome months.

Before Tom Cameron was likely to be freed from the army, the matter of the Indian girl's engagement with the moving picture corporation must be completely settled—at least, as far as Dakota Joe's claim upon Wonota's services went.

THE PLOT DEVELOPS

Ruth had insisted upon Wonota's remaining at the Red Mill from the hour she had ridden there for protection. Not that they believed Fenbrook would actually harm the Indian girl after he had cooled down. But it was better that she should be in Ruth's care as long as she was to work somewhat under the latter's tutelage.

Besides, it gave the picture writer a chance to study her subject. It would be too much to expect that Wonota could play a difficult part. She had had no experience in acting. Ruth knew that she must fit a part to Wonota, not the girl to a part. In other words, the Indian girl was merely a type for screen exploitation, and the picture Ruth wrote must be fitted to her capabilities.

Grasping, like any talented writer does, at any straw of novelty, Ruth had seen possibilities in the little incident Aunt Alvirah had told about her ancestor who had crossed the Western plains in the early emigrant days. She meant to open her story with a similar incident, as a prologue to the actual play.

Ruth made her heroine (the part she wished to fit to Wonota, the Osage Indian girl) repay in part the debt her family owed the white physician by saving a descendant of the physician from peril in the Indian country. This young man, the hero, is attracted by the Indian maid who has saved his life; but he is under the influence of a New York girl, one of the tourist party, to whom he is tentatively engaged.

But the New York girl deserts the hero when he gets into difficulty in New York. He is accused of a crime that may send him to the penitentiary for a long term and there seems no way to disprove the crime. Word of his peril comes to the Indian maid in her Western home. She knows and suspects the honesty of the timber men with whom the hero is connected in business. She discovers these villains are the guilty ones, and she travels to New York to testify for him and to clear him of the charge. The end of the story, as well as the beginning, was to be filmed in the wilds.

With the incidents of her plot gradually taking form in her mind and being jotted down on paper, Ruth's hours began to be very full. She was with Wonota as much as possible, and the Indian girl began to show an almost doglike devotion to the girl of the Red Mill.

"That is not to be wondered at, of course," Jennie Stone said, as she was about to return to her New York home. "Everybody falls for our Ruth. It's a wonder to me that she has not been elected to the presidency."

"Wait till we women get the vote," declared Helen. "Then we'll send Ruth to the chair."

"Goodness!" ejaculated Jennie. "That sounds terrible, Nell! One might think you mean the electric chair."

"Is there much difference, after all, between that and the presidential chair?" Helen demanded, chuckling. "The way some people talk about a president!"

"We are a loose-talking people," Ruth interrupted gravely, "and I think you girls talk almost as irresponsibly as anybody I ever heard."

"List to the stern and uncompromising Ruthie," scoffed Jennie. "I am glad I am going back to Aunt Kate. She is a spinster, I admit; but she isn't anywhere near as old-maid-like as Ruth Fielding."

"I'll tell Tom about that," said Tom's sister wickedly.

"Spinsters are the balance-wheel of the universe machinery," declared Ruth, laughing. "I always have admired them. But, joking aside, at this time when the whole world should be so grateful and so much in earnest because of the end of a terrible war, trivial matters and trivial talk somehow seems to jar."

"Not so! Not so!" cried Helen vigorously. "We have been holding in and trying to keep cheerful with the fear at our hearts that some loved one would suddenly be taken. It was not lightness of heart that made people dance and act as though rattled-pated during the war. It was an attempt to hide that awful fear in their hearts. See how the people in Cheslow acted as though they were crazy the night of the armistice. And did you read what the papers said about the times in New York? It was only a natural outbreak."

"Well," remarked. Ruth, shrugging her shoulders, "you certainly have got off the subject of old maids—bless 'em! Give my love to your Aunt Kate, Jennie, and when we come to the city to take the shots for this picture, I'll surely see her."

"Hi!" cried Miss Stone energetically. "I guess you will! You'll come right to the house and stay with us during that time!"

"Oh, no. I shall have Wonota with me. We will stay at a hotel. Our hours are always so uncertain when we shoot a picture that I could not undertake to be at any private house."

There was some discussion over this. Ruth did not intend to let Wonota out of her sight much while the picture was being made. Nor did she propose to let the script of the picture out of her sight until copies could be made of it, and the continuity man had made his version for the director. Ruth was not going to run the risk of losing another scenario, as she had once while Down East.

Ruth put in two weeks' hard work on the new story. As she laughingly said, she ate, slept, and talked movies all the time. Wonota had to amuse herself; but that did not seem hard for the Indian girl to do. She was naturally of a very quiet disposition. She sat by Aunt Alvirah for hours doing beadwork while the old woman darned or knitted.

"You wouldn't ever suspect she was a Red Indian unless you looked at her," Aunt Alvirah confessed to the rest of the family. "She's a very nice girl."

As for Wonota, she said:

"I used to sit beside my grandmother and work like this. Yes, Chief Totantora taught me to shoot and paddle a canoe, and to do many other things out-of-doors. But my grandmother was the head woman of our tribe, and her beadwork and dyed porcupine-quill work was the finest you ever saw, Ruth Fielding. I was sorry to leave my war-bag with Dakota Joe. It had in it many keepsakes my grandmother gave me before she passed to the Land of the Spirits."

A demand had been made upon the proprietor of the Wild West Show for Wonota's possessions, but the man had refused to give them up. The girl had not brought away with her even the rifle she had used so successfully in the show. But her pony, West Wind, was stabled in the Red Mill barn. Indeed, Uncle Jabez had begun to hint that the animal was "eating its head off." The miller could not help showing what Aunt Alvirah called "his stingy streak" in spite of the fact that he truly was interested in the Indian maid and liked her.

"That redskin gal," he confessed in private to Ruth, "is a pretty shrewd and sensible gal. She got to telling me the other day how her folks ground grist in a stone pan, or the like, using a hard-wood club to pound it with. Right slow process of makin' flour or meal, I do allow.

"But what do you think she said when I put that up to her—about it's being a slow job?" and the miller chuckled. "Why, she told me that all her folks had was time, and they'd got to spend it somehow. They'd better be grinding corn by hand than making war on their neighbors or the whites, like they used to. She ain't so slow."

Ruth quite agreed with this. The Osage maiden was more than ordinarily intelligent, and she began to take a deep interest in the development of the story that Ruth was making for screen use.

"Am I to be that girl?" she asked doubtfully. "How can I play that I am in love when I have never seen a man I cared for—in that way?"

"Can't you imagine admiring a nice young man?" asked Ruth in return.

"Not a white man like this one in your story," Wonota said soberly. "It should be that he did more for himself—that he was more of a—a brave. We Indians do not expect our men to be saved from disgrace by women. Squaws are not counted of great value among the possessions of a chief."

"So you could not really respect such a man as I describe here if he allowed a girl to help him?" Ruth asked reflectively, for Wonota's criticism was giving her some thought.

"He should not be such a man—to need the help of a squaw," declared the Indian maid confidently. "But, of course, it does not matter if only palefaces are to see the picture."

But Ruth could not get the thought out of her mind. It might be that the Indian girl had suggested a real fault in the play she was making, and she took Mr. Hammond into her confidence about it when she sent him the first draft of the story. Her whole idea of the principal male character in "Brighteyes" might need recasting, and she awaited the picture producer's verdict with some misgiving.

While she waited a red-letter day occurred—-so marked both for herself and for Helen Cameron. The chums had hoped—oh, how fondly!—that they would hear that Tom Cameron was on his way home. But gradually the fact that demobilization would take a long time was becoming a fixed idea in the girls' minds.

Letters came from Tom Cameron—one each for the two girls and one for Mr. Cameron. Instead of being on his way home, Captain Cameron had been sent even farther from the French port to which he had originally sailed in the huge transport from New York.

"I am now settled on the Rhine—one of the 'watches,' I suppose, that the Germans used to sing about, now stamped 'Made in America,' however," he wrote to Ruth. "We watch a bridge-head and see that the Germans don't carry away anything that might be needed on this side of the most over-rated river in the world. I have come to the conclusion, since seeing a good bit of Europe, that most of the scenery is over-rated and does not begin to compare with the natural beauties of America. So many foreigners come to our shores and talk about the beauty-spots of their own countries, and so few Americans have in the past seen much of their own land, that we accept the opinions of homesick foreigners as to the superiority of the beauties of their father-and-mother-lands. After this war I guess there will be more fellows determined to give the States the 'once over.'"

Tom always wrote an Interesting letter; but aside from that, of course Ruth was eager to hear from him. And now, as soon as she could, she sat down and replied to his communication. She had, too, a particular topic on which she wished to write her friend.

Now that embattled Germany would no longer hold its prisoners incommunicado, Ruth hoped that news about the imprisoned performers of the Wild West Show might percolate through the lines. Chief Totantora had been able but once to get a message to his daughter.

This message had reached America long before the United States had got into the war. Although the Osage chieftain was an American (who could claim such proud estate if Totantora could not?), the show by which he was employed had gone direct to Germany from England, and anything English had, from the first, been taboo in Germany. Now, of course, the Indian girl had no idea as to where her father was.

"See if you can hear anything about those performers," Ruth wrote to Tom. "Get word if you can to the Chief of the Osage Indians and tell him that his daughter is with me, and that she longs for his return.

"I should love to make her happy by aiding in Chief Totantora's reappearance in his native land. She is so sad, indeed, that I wonder if she is going to be able to register, for the screen, the happiness that she should finally show when my picture is brought to its conclusion."

ONE NEW YORK DAY

That "happy ending" became a matter of much thought on Ruth's part, and the cause of not a little argument between her and Mr. Hammond when he came up to Cheslow and the Red Mill to discuss "Brighteyes" with its youthful author. He had come, too, to get a glimpse of Wonota in the flesh.

One of the first things Ruth had done when the Indian girl came under her care was to take Wonota to Cheslow and have the best photographer of the town take several "stills" of the Indian girl. Copies of these she had sent to the Alectrion Film Corporation, and word had come back from both Mr. Hammond and his chief director that the photographs of Wonota were satisfactory.

The president of the film company, however, was interested in talking with Wonota and judging as far as possible through cursory examination just how much there was to the girl.

"What has she got in her? That is what we want to know," he said to Ruth. "Can she get expression into her face? Can she put over feeling? We want something besides mere looks, Miss Ruth, as you very well know."

"I realize all that," the girl of the Red Mill told him earnestly. "But remember, Mr. Hammond, you cannot judge this Osage girl by exactly the same standards as you would a white girl!"

"Why not? She's got to be able to show on the screen the deepest feelings of her nature—"

"Not if you would have my 'Brighteyes' true to life," interrupted Ruth anxiously. "You must not expect it."

"Why not?" he demanded again, with some asperity. "We don't want to show the people a dummy. I tell you the public is getting more and more critical. They won't stand for just pretty pictures. The actors In them must express their thoughts and feelings as they do in real life."

"Exactly!" Ruth hastened to say. "That is what I mean. My 'Brighteyes' is a full-blooded Indian maiden just like Wonota. Now, you talk with Wonota—try to get to the very heart of the girl. Then you will see."

"See what?" he demanded, staring.

"What you will see," returned Ruth, with a laugh. "Go ahead and get acquainted with Wonota. Meanwhile I will be getting this condensed plot of the story into shape for us to talk over. I must rewrite that street scene again, I fear. And, of course, we are in a hurry?"

"Always," grumbled the producer. "We must start for our Western location as soon as possible; but the New York scenes must be shot first."

It was a fine day, and the shore of the Lumano River offered a pleasant prospect for out-of-door exercise, and after he had spent more than an hour walking about with Wonota, the canny Mr. Hammond obtained, he said, a "good line" on the character and capabilities of the Indian girl.

"You had me guessing for a time, Miss Ruth," he laughingly said to the girl of the Red Mill. "I did not know what you were hinting at I see it now. Wonota is a true redskin. We read about the stoicism of her race, but we do not realize what that means until we try to fathom an Indian's deeper feelings.

"I talked with her about her father. She is very proud of him, this Totantora, as she calls him. But only now and then does she express (and that in a flash) her real love and admiration for him.

"She is deeply, and justly, angered at that Dakota Joe Fenbrook. But she scarcely expresses that feeling in her face or voice. She speaks of his cruelty to her with sadness in her voice merely, and scarcely a flicker of expression in her countenance."

"Ah!" Ruth said. "Now you see what I see. It is impossible for her to register changing expressions and feelings as a white girl would. Nor would she be natural as 'Brighteyes' if she easily showed emotion. Yet she mustn't be stolid, for if she does the audience will never get what we are trying to put over."

"The director has got to have judgment—I agree to that," said Mr. Hammond, nodding. "Wonota must be handled with care. But she's got it in her to be a real star in time. She photographs like a million dollars!" and he laughed. "Now if we can teach her to be expressive enough—well, I am more than ever willing to take the chance with her, provided you, Miss Ruth, will agree to supply the vehicles of expression."

"You flatter me, Mr. Hammond," returned Ruth, flushing faintly. "I shall of course be glad to do my best in the writing line."

"That's it. Between us we ought to make a lot of money. And incidentally to make an Indian star who will make 'em all sit up and take notice."

Ruth was so much interested in "Brighteyes" by this time that she "ate, slept, walked and talked" little else—to quote Helen. But Tom's sister grew much interested in the production, too.

"I'm going with you—to New York, anyway," she announced. "I might as well. Father is so busy with his business now that I scarcely see him from week end to week end. Dear me, if Tommy only would come home!"

"I guess he'd be delighted," rejoined Ruth, smiling. "But if you go with me, honey, you're likely to be dragged around a good deal. I expect to jump from New York to somewhere in the Northwest. Mr. Hammond has not exactly decided. The weather is very promising, and if we can shoot the outdoor scenes before Christmas we'll be all right."

"Well, I do love to travel. Maybe we could get Jennie to go, too," Helen said reflectively.

"She certainly would help," laughed Ruth. "I would rather laugh with Jennie than grouch with anybody else."

"The wisdom of Mrs. Socrates," scoffed Helen. "Anyway, Ruthie, I'll write her at once and tell her to begin pulling wires. You know, Mr. Stone is as 'sot as the everlasting hills'—and it takes something to move the hills, you know. He will have to be convinced, maybe, that Jennie's health demands a change of climate at just this time."

"She looks it."

"Well, one might expect her to fade away a bit because of Henri's absence. I wonder if she's heard from him since the armistice?"

"If she hasn't she'll need something besides a change of climate, I assure you," laughed Ruth again. "She hates ocean voyaging, does Jennie; but she wouldn't wait till she could go in an ox-cart to get back to France if Henri forgot to write."

There was one thing sure: Jennie Stone was a delighted host when Helen arrived in New York a few days ahead of Ruth and Wonota. Ruth had not intended to go to the Stones; she would have felt more independent at a hotel. She did not know what engagements Mr. Hammond or the director of the picture might make for her. So she tried to dodge Jennie's invitation.

When the train got in from New England, however, and Ruth and the Indian girl, following a red-capped porter with their bags, walked through the gateway of entrance to the concourse of the Grand Central Terminal, there were both Jennie and Helen waiting to spy them.

"Mr. Hammond told me to come to the Borneaux. He has made reservations there," Ruth said.

"That's all right for to-morrow," declared Jennie bruskly. "Hotel rooms are all right to make up in, or anything like that. But you are both going to my house for to-night"

"Now, Jennie—"

"No buts or ands about it!" exclaimed her friend. "If you don't come, Ruthie Fielding, I'll never speak to you again. And if Wonota doesn't come I declare I'll tell Dakota Joe where she is, and he'll come after her and steal her. In fact," Jennie added, wickedly smiling, "his old Wild West Show is playing right here in the Big Town this week."

"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Ruth, while the Indian girl shrank a little closer to her friend.

"Sure do. In Brooklyn. A three-day stand in one of the big armories over there, I believe. So a telephone call—"

"Shucks!" exclaimed Helen. "Don't you believe her, Wonota. Just the same you folks had better come to the Stone house. Mr. Stone has taken a whole box to-night for one of the very best musical shows that ever was!"

Ruth could see that the Indian girl was eager to agree. She did show some small emotions which paleface girls displayed. She laughed more than at first, too. But she was often downright gloomy when thinking of Chief Totantora.

However, seeing Wonota wished to accept the invitation, and desiring herself to please Helen and Jennie, Ruth agreed. They telephoned a message to the Hotel Borneaux and then went off to dinner at the Stone house. It was a very nice party indeed, and even busy Mr. Stone did his best to put Wonota at her ease.

"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 shield 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 fashion and she seems to fit into the picture all right—"

"'Foreign girl' and 'American fashion'?" 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 assistant 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, Japanese 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 assistants. 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!

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!"

The cry startled Ruth, but it did not aid her much to escape. And perhaps the chauffeur of the car only intended to crowd by the girl of the Red Mill and so escape from the traffic hold-up.

At Wonota's scream the director shouted for the camera men to halt. He started himself with angry excitement after the Indian girl. She had utterly spoiled the shot.

But on the instant he was adding his warning cry to Wonota's and to the cries of other bystanders. Ruth, amazed, could not understand what Wonota meant. Then the car was upon her, the mudguard knocked her down, and her loose coat catching in some part of the car, she was dragged for several yards before Wonota could reach her.

Over and over in the dust Ruth had been whirled. She was breathless and bruised. She could not even cry out, the shock of the accident was so great.

The instant the Indian girl reached the prostrate Ruth the motor-car broke away and its driver shot the machine around the nearest corner and out of sight.

A policeman charged after the car at top speed, but when he reached the corner there were so many other cars in the cross street that he could not identify the one that had caused the accident.

To Ruth, Wonota gasped: "That bad man! I knew he would do something mean, but I thought it would be to me."

Ruth could scarcely reply. The director was at her side, as well as other sympathetic people. She was lifted up, but she could not stand. Something had happened to her left ankle. She could bear no weight upon it without exquisite pain.

For the time the taking of the picture was called off. The traffic officer allowed the stalled cars to pass on. A crowd began to assemble about Ruth.

"Do take me into the hotel—somewhere!" she gasped. "I—I can't walk—"

One of the camera men and the director, Mr. Hooley, made a seat with their hands, and sitting in this and with Wonota to steady her, the girl of the Red Mill was hurried under cover, leaving the throng of spectators on the street quite sure that the accident had been a planned incident of the moving picture people. They evidently considered Ruth a "stunt actress."

It was not until Ruth was alone with Wonota in a hotel room, lying on a couch, the Indian girl stripping the shoe and stocking from the injured limb, that Ruth asked what Wonota had meant when she first bounded toward her, shrieking her warning of the motor-car's approach.

"What did you mean, Wonota?" asked the girl of the Red Mill. "Who was it ran over me? I know Mr. Hooley will try to find him, but—"

"That bad, bad Dakota Joe!" interrupted the Indian girl with vehemence, her eyes flashing and the color deeping in her bronze cheeks. "When your friend told us he was in this city, I feared."

"Why, Wonota!" cried Ruth, sitting up in surprise, "do you mean to say that Dakota Joe Fenbrook was driving that car?"

"No. He cannot drive a car. But it was one of his men—Yes."

"I can scarcely believe it. He deliberately ran me down?"

"I saw Dakota Joe in the back of the car just as it shot down toward you, Miss Fielding. He is a bad, bad man! He was leaning forward urging that driver on. I know he was."

"Why, it seems terrible!" Ruth sighed. "Yes, that feels good on my ankle, Wonota. I do not believe it is really sprained. Oh, but it hurt at first! Wrenched, I suppose."

Jim Hooley, the director, had telephoned for Mr. Hammond, and the producer hurried to the hotel. He insisted on bringing a surgeon with him. But by the time of their arrival Ruth felt much easier, and after the medical man had pronounced no real harm done to the ankle, Ruth dressed again, insisting that a second attempt be made to shoot the scene while the sun remained high enough.

The police had endeavored to trace the motor-car that had caused the accident. But it seemed that nobody had noted the numbers on the machine, or even the kind of car it was. Ruth had forbidden Wonota to tell what she revealed to her. If it was Dakota Joe who had run her down there was no use attempting to fasten the guilt of the incident upon him unless they were positive and could prove his guilt.

"And you know, Wonota, you cannot be sure—"

"I saw him. It was for but a moment, but I saw him," said the Indian girl positively.

"Even at that, it would take corroborative testimony to convince the court," mused Ruth.

"I do not understand paleface laws," said Wonota, shaking her head. "If an Indian does something like that to another Indian, the injured one can punish his enemy. And he almost always does."

"But we cannot take the law into our own hands that way."

"Why not?" asked Wonota. "Is a redman so much superior to a white man? If the redman can punish an enemy why cannot a white man?"

"Our law does not leave it in our hands to punish," said Ruth, quietly, though rather staggered by the Indian girl's question. "We have courts, and judges, and methods of criminal procedure. A person who has been injured by another cannot be the best judge of the punishment to be meted out to the one who has harmed him."

"Why not?" demanded Wonota, promptly. "He is the one hurt. Who other than he should deal out punishment?"

Ruth was silenced for the time being. In fact, Wonota looked upon mundane matters from such a different angle that it was sometimes impossible for Ruth to convince her protégé that the white man's way was better.

However, this incident gave Ruth Fielding a warning that she did not intend to ignore. A little later she told Mr. Hammond of the Indian girl's suspicion that it was Fenbrook who had been the cause of Ruth's slight injury. It was too late then to set the police on the track of the showman, for on making private inquiry Mr. Hammond found that Dakota Joe's show had already left Brooklyn and was en route for some city in the Middle West.

"But it seems scarcely probable, Miss Ruth," the producer said, "that that fellow would take such a chance. And to hurt you! Why, if he had tried to injure that Indian girl, I might be convinced. She probably saw somebody in the car with a sombrero on—"

"I noticed two men in that car with broad hats," confessed Ruth. "But I gave them only a glance. It doesn't seem very sensible to believe that the man would deliberately hurt me. Yet he did threaten us when he was angry, there at the mill. No getting around that."

Mr. Hammond shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "You will begin to believe that the making of moving pictures is a pretty perilous business."

"It may be." She laughed, yet rather doubtfully. "I am to be on the watch for the 'hand in the dark,' am I not? At any rate when we are hear Dakota Joe again, I will keep a very sharp lookout."

"Yes, of course, Miss Ruth, we'll all do that," returned Mr. Hammond, more seriously now, for he saw that Ruth was really disturbed. "Still, whatever his intentions, I do not believe Fenbrook will have the power to do any real harm. At any rate, keep your courage up, for we are forewarned now, and can take care of ourselves—and of you," he added, with a smile, as he left her.