“I am sorry the show is here in Chicago,” added Ruth with serious mien.  “I am still limping.  Next time that awful man will manage to lame me completely.”

“You ought to have a guard.  Tell the police—­do!” exclaimed Jennie Stone.

“Tell the police what?" demanded Ruth, with scorn.  “We can’t prove anything.”

“I know it was Joe in that car that ran you down, Miss Fielding,” declared Wonota, with anxiety.

“Yes.  But nobody else saw him—­to recognize him, I mean.  We cannot base a complaint upon such little foundation.  Nor would it be well, perhaps, to get Dakota Joe into the courts.  He is a very vindictive man—­he must be——­”

“He is very bad man!” repeated Wonota vehemently.

“Yes.  That is just it.  Why stir up his passions to a greater degree, then?”

“Of course, Ruthie would want to turn ‘the other cheek,’” scoffed Jennie.

“I am not going around with a chip on my shoulder, looking for somebody to knock it off,” laughed the girl of the Red Mill.  “I just want Joe to leave us alone—­that’s all.”

Wonota shook her head and seemed unconvinced of the wisdom of this.  She was not a pacifist.  She knew, too, the heart of the showman, and perhaps she feared him more than she was willing to tell her new friends.

The four girls made their headquarters at the hotel, and then set forth at once to shop and to look.  As the hours of that first day passed Wonota was vastly excited over the new sights.  For once she lost that stoic calmness which was her racial trait.  The big stores and the tall buildings here in the mid-western city seemed to impress her even more than had those in New York.

There was reason for that.  She was, while in New York, so much taken up with the part she was playing in “Brighteyes” that she could think of little else.  She saw many things in the stores she wished to buy.  Ruth had advanced Wonota some money on her contract with the Alectrion Film Corporation.  But when it came right down to the point of buying the things that girls like and long for—­little trinkets and articles of adornment—­the Indian girl hesitated.

“Buy it if it pleases you,” Ruth said, rather wondering at the firmness with which Wonota drew back from selecting and paying for something that cost less than a dollar.

“No, Miss Fielding.  Wonota does not need that.  Chief Totantora may be lost to me forever.  I should not adorn myself, or think of self-adornment.  No!  I will save my money until I can go to that Europe where the great chief is held a prisoner.”

The girls—­Helen and Jennie—­were both for buying presents for the Indian girl, as she would not use her own money.  But Ruth would not allow them to purchase other than the simplest souveniers.

“That would spoil it all.  Let her deny herself in such a cause—­it will not hurt her,” the girl of the Red Mill said sensibly.  “She has an object in life and should be encouraged to follow out her plan for helping Chief Totantora.”