“A Red Indian!” cried somebody.
“That makes no difference,” said Ruth placidly. “She is amenable to white customs, and is really a very smart girl. And she has a lovely disposition.”
“Especially,” put in Helen, who remembered the occasion clearly, “when she wanted to shoot Dakota Joe Fenbrook when he treated her so unkindly in his Wild West show. But, I wanted to shoot him myself,” she added, frankly. “Especially after he tried to hurt Ruth.”
“Never mind him,” said her chum at that. “Joe Fenbrook is in the penitentiary now, and he is not bothering us. But other people are bothering Mr. Hammond about Wonota.”
“How?” asked Helen.
“Why, as I said, there are other picture producers who have seen ‘Brighteyes’ and would like to get the chief and his daughter under contract. They have told Totantora that, as the contract with his daughter was made while she was not of age, it can be broken. Of course, the Indian agent agreed to the contract; but after Totantora returned from Europe, where he had been held a prisoner in Germany during the war, the guardianship of Wonota reverted to her father once more.
“It is rather a complicated matter,” went on Ruth, “and it is giving Mr. Hammond and his lawyers some trouble. There is a man named Bilby, who has been a picture producer in a small way, who seems to have some influence with the head of the Government Bureau of Indian Affairs. He seems to have financial backing, too, and claims to have secured a series of stories in which Wonota might be featured to advantage. And he certainly has offered Totantora and the girl much more money than Mr. Hammond would be willing to risk in a star who may, after all, prove merely a flash in the pan.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Ann. “I thought she was a sure-fire hit.”
“No amateur screen actress—and that is all Wonota is as yet—is ever a ‘sure-fire hit’, as you call it,” said the practical Ruth. “Many a producer has been badly bitten by tying up a new actor or actress to a long-time contract. Because a girl films well and is successful in one part, is not an assurance that she can learn to be a really great actress before the camera.
“In ‘Brighteyes’ Wonota merely played herself. I was successful in fitting my story to her individuality. But she cannot always play the same part. In this story we are about to do on the St. Lawrence, she will be called upon to delineate a character quite different from that of the heroine of ‘Brighteyes.’”