AN UNEXPECTED ALLY
Bessie's heart leaped at the sight of the man who had given her her wild
tramp through the night, and it was all she could do to resist her
impulse to rush out, accuse him of the crime she knew he had committed,
and demand that he give Dolly up to her at once. It was hard to believe
that he was really dangerous.
Here, in the early morning light, his clothes soaked by the wet woods,
as were Bessie's for that matter, he looked very cheap and tawdry, and
not at all like a man to be feared. But a moment's reflection convinced
Bessie that, for the time at least, it would be far wiser to leave
matters in the hands of Lolla, the gypsy girl, who understood this man,
and, if she feared him, and with cause, did so from reasons very
different from Bessie's.
For a moment after he came in sight John did not see Lolla. Bessie
watched the pair, so different from any people she had ever seen at
close range before, narrowly. She was intensely interested in Lolla, and
wondered mightily what the gypsy girl intended to do. But she did not
have long to wait.
Lolla, with a little cry, rushed forward, and, casting herself on the
ground at her lover's feet, seized his hand and kissed it. At first she
said not a word; only looked up at him with her black, brilliant eyes,
in which Bessie could see that a tear was glistening.
"Lolla! What are you doing here?"
At the sight of the girl John had started, nervously. It was plain that
he did not feel secure; that he thought his pursuers might, even thus
early, have tracked him down, and, in the moment before he had
recognized Lolla, Bessie saw him quail, while his face whitened, so that
Bessie knew he was afraid.
That knowledge, somehow, comforted her vastly. It removed at once some
of the formidable quality which John had acquired in her eyes when he
stole Dolly after the fright that he must have had when the flashlight
powder exploded, almost in his face. But Bessie remembered that he had
plucked up his courage after that scare; the chances were that he would
do so again now.
But, if Bessie was afraid of the kidnapper, Lolla was not. She rose, and
faced him defiantly. Bessie thought there was something splendid about
the gypsy girl, and she wondered why John, with such a girl ready and
anxious to marry him, had been diverted from her by Dolly, charming
though she was.
"I have come to save you, John," said Lolla. "Where is the American girl
you stole from her friends!"
John started, evidently surprised by Lolla's knowledge of what he had
done, and said something, sharply, in the gypsy tongue, which Bessie, of
course, could not understand. Her question, it was plain, had
frightened, as well as startled him; but it had also made him very
angry. Lolla, however, did not seem to mind his anger. She faced him
boldly, without giving ground, although he had moved toward her with a
threatening gesture of his uplifted hand.
"Hit me, if you will," she said. "I am not your wife yet, but when I am
it will be your right to strike me if you wish. But I know what you have
done. I know, too, that the Americans know it. Do you think you can
escape from these woods without being caught?"
John stared at her angrily.
"I am going now to the camp," he said. "If. they come looking for news
of the girl, they will find me there, and plenty to swear that I have
been there all this night, and so could not have done what they charge.
My tribe will help me; it is my right to call upon it for help."
"You forget me," said Lolla, dangerously. "I will swear that I saw you
here, where I came to look for you because you had stayed away from the
camp all the night. And when I tell my brothers, what will they swear?"
Again the man muttered something in the gypsy-tongue, but under his
breath. When he spoke aloud to Lolla it was in English.
"They are Barlomengri; they will support me. They will never let the
policemen take me away. They are my brothers--"
"Do you think you can jilt their sister, the girl you asked for as your
wife before all the tribe, and escape their vengeance? Do you think they
will not punish you, even by seeing that you die in a prison, in a
cell?"
And now John, beside himself with anger, fulfilled the threat of his
uplifted hand, and struck Lolla sharply.
"Strike me again!" cried Lolla, furiously. "I have done no wrong! I am
trying only to save you from your own folly. Tell me, at least, where
you have hidden the girl? Would you have her starve? You will be
watched, so that you may not bring her food. Had you thought of that?"
"Will you betray me? If you do not I shall not be watched! They will
know as soon as they look for me that I was in the camp all through the
night. Lolla, you fool, I love you, only you. I want her to win a
ransom. They will pay to have her back, those Americans."
Lolla had guessed right when she had said that this would be his plea.
But Bessie was surprised, and thought Lolla must also wonder at his
telling her such a story. Lolla looked scornfully at John.
"I am no baby that I should believe such a tale as that," she said
witheringly. "I give you your chance, John, your last chance. Will you
take this girl back to her people, or set her free and show her the
road? Or must I bear witness against you, and tell the tribe that you
would shame me by forsaking me even before I am your wife?"
"Let me go," said John furiously. "We shall see if a woman's talk is to
be taken before mine. You fool! Even your brothers will laugh at your
Jealousy, and rejoice with me over the money this girl will bring us.
Let me pass--"
"Tell me, at least, where you have hidden her! She will starve, I tell
you--"
"She will not starve. Think you I know no more than that of doing such a
piece of work! It is not the first time we have made anxious fathers pay
to win their children back! Ha-ha! Peter, my friend, comes to take my
watch. He will see to it that she does not suffer for food. And he will
keep her safe for me. Out of my way!"
He brushed Lolla aside roughly, and strode off down the trail that
Bessie had followed. For a moment, while she could hear the sound of his
retreating footsteps, Lolla did not move. But then she raised herself, a
smile in her eyes, and beckoned to Bessie.
"Go up that path, quickly," she whispered. "Somewhere up there, hidden,
you will find your friend. Comfort her, but do not let her move. If she
is tied up, leave her so. Tell her that help is near. I will free her."
"But why--why not come with me, and free her now!" protested Bessie,
eagerly. "We can find her, for he came down that path, so he must have
left her somewhere up there. Oh, come, Lolla, you will never regret it!"
"Did you not hear him say that Peter was coming? Peter is his best
friend; they are closer together, and are more to one another, than
brothers. If we tried to escape with her now, Peter would find us, and
his hand is heavy. We should do your friend no good, and be punished
ourselves. We must wait. But hurry, before he comes. Tell her to be
happy, and not to fear. I will save her, and you. We will work together
to save her."
And with that Bessie, much as she would have liked to get Dolly out of
the clutches of her captor at once, had to be content. She realized
fully that in Lolla she had gained an utterly unexpected ally, in whom
lay the best possible chance for the immediate release of her chum, and
the mere knowledge of where Dolly was hidden would be extremely
valuable.
After all, it was all, and, possibly, more, than she had expected to
accomplish when she had plunged into the woods after the gypsy and his
prisoner, and she felt that she ought to be satisfied. So she hurried at
once up the path that Lolla pointed out, leaving the gypsy girl below as
a guard.
The path was rough and steep, rising sharply, but Bessie paid little
heed to its difficulties, since she felt that it was taking her to
Dolly. She kept her eyes and ears open for any sight or sound that might
make it easier to find Dolly, but she did not call out, since she felt
that it was practically certain the gypsy had managed, in some manner,
to make it impossible for poor Dolly to cry out, lest, in his absence,
she alarm some passerby and so obtain her freedom.
Bessie was sure that Dolly would not be left in some place that could
be seen from the path, but she was also sure that she could not be far
from it, since there had not been time for the gypsy to make any
extended trip through the woods off the trail. Bessie had traveled fast
through the night, and she was sure that John, with the weight of Dolly
to carry, had not been able to move as fast as she, and could not,
therefore, have been more than twenty minutes or half an hour ahead of
her in reaching the trail she was now following.
So she watched carefully for some break in the thick undergrowth that
lined the trail, for some opening through which John might have gone
with his burden. There might even, she thought, be another of those
precious sign posts that, back on the other trail, had been made by the
torn pieces from Dolly's skirt.
But, careful as was her search, she reached the end of the trail without
finding anything that looked like a promising place, or seeing anything
that made her think Dolly was within a short distance of her. The trail
led to an exposed peak, a ragged outcrop of rock, bare of trees, and
covered only with a slight undergrowth.
Once there Bessie understood why the trail had been made through the
woods. The view was wonderful. Below her were the waving tops of
countless trees, and beyond them she could look down and over the
cultivated valleys, full of farms, whose fields, marked off by stone
fences, looked small and insignificant from her high perch.
Bessie, however, was in no mood to enjoy a view. She wasted no time in
admiring it, but only peered over the edge of the peak on which she
stood, to satisfy herself that Dolly was not hidden just below her. One
look was enough to do that. There was a way, she soon saw, of
descending, and reaching the woods again, but no man, carrying any sort
of a burden, could have accomplished that descent.
It was a task that called for the use of feet and hands and Bessie
turned desperately, convinced that she must, in some manner, have
overlooked the place at which John had turned off the main trail with
his burden.
Now, as she went downward, she searched the woods at each side with
redoubled care, and at last she found what she had been looking for, or
what, it seemed to her, must be the place, since she had seen no other
that offered even a chance for a successful passage through the thick
growth of trees and underbrush.
Without hesitation she turned off the trail, and, though the going was
rough, and her hands and face were scratched, while her clothes were
torn, she was rewarded at last by finding that the ground below her grew
smooth, showing that human feet had passed that way often enough to wear
the faintest sort of a path.
Once she became aware of the path her heart grew light, for she was sure
now that she was going in the right direction at last. And, indeed, it
was not more than five minutes before she almost stumbled over Dolly
herself, bound to a tree, and with a handkerchief stuffed in her mouth
so that she could not cry out.
"Oh, Dolly! I'm so glad, so glad! Listen, dear; I can't stay. You'll
have to be here a little while longer, but we will soon have you back at
the camp, as safe and well as ever. Are you hurt? Does it give you pain?
If it doesn't shake your head sideways."
Dolly managed to shake her head, and in her eyes Bessie saw that now
that she knew help was near Dolly's courage would sustain her.
"That gypsy girl we saw is near, but the man who carried you off is
going to send another man to watch, and if I let you go now we'd only
meet him, and be in more trouble than ever. But be brave, dear! it won't
be long now."
Poor Dolly could not answer, for Bessie, remembering that Lolla had
seemed to fear the man Peter more than she did John, dared not even
loosen the gag. She saw, however, that while it must be making Dolly
terribly uncomfortable, she could breathe, and that it was probably
worse in appearance than in fact. So she leaned down and kissed her
chum, and whispered in her ear.
"I'm going back to Lolla now, dear, but I'll soon be back with enough
help so that we needn't care how many of the gypsies there are near us.
If I stay now I'm afraid they'll catch me, too, and then no one would
know where you were. They can't get you away from here, so you're sure
to be safe soon."
Dolly nodded to show that she understood, and Bessie moved silently
away. But, as she turned down the trail that would take her back to the
spot where she had left Lolla, she had a new cause for fright. She heard
Lolla's voice, raised loudly, arguing with a man who answered in low,
guttural tones. What they were saying she could not distinguish, but
somehow she understood that Peter had come even sooner than Lolla had
feared, and the gypsy girl, at the risk of angering him, was trying to
warn her, so that she might not descend the trail and so stumble right
into his arms.
So, although the prospect frightened her, she turned and made her way
swiftly up to the peak again, determined that if the man should go past
the opening that led to the place where Dolly lay, she would risk the
danger and the difficulty of the rocky descent from the peak itself.
As she hastened along silence fell behind her, and she knew that Peter
must have started. He was whistling a queer gypsy tune and Bessie heard
him pass the partly masked opening that she had herself found with so
much difficulty.
After that she hesitated no longer, but rushed to the rocky top of the
peak, and in a moment she was making her way down, with as much caution
as possible, swinging from one ledge to the next, hanging on to a bush
here, and a projecting piece of rock there.
Even an expert climber, equipped with rope and sharp pointed stick,
would have found the descent difficult. And all that enabled Bessie to
succeed was her knowledge that she must.