AN ABDUCTION
The ride in Helen's car was enjoyable, especially for Aunt Alvirah. How
that old lady did smile and (as she herself laughingly said) "gabble" her
delight! Being shut inside the house so much, the broader sight of the
surrounding country and the now peacefully flowing Lumano River was
indeed a treat.
Helen drove up the river and over the Long Bridge, where she halted the
car for a time that they might look both up and down the stream. And it
was from this point that Ruth again caught a glimpse of the motor-boat
she had before spied near the roadside inn.
There was but one man in it now, and the boat was moored to the root of a
big tree that overhung the little cove. Not that there was anything
astonishing or suspicious in the appearance of the boat. Merely, it was
there and seemed to have no particular business there. And the girl of
the Red Mill recalled that Mr. Horatio Bilby's motor-car was backed into
the bushes near that spot.
Had Mr. Bilby, who had announced that his business in this vicinity was
to obtain possession of Wonota, anything to do with the men in the boat?
The thought may have been but an idle suggestion in Ruth's mind.
Intuition was strong in Ruth Fielding, however. Somehow, the abandoned
car being there near the inn where Totantora was staying and to which
Wonota had gone to see her father, and the unidentified motor-boat
lurking at the river's edge in the same vicinity, continued to rap an
insistent warning at the door of the girl's mind.
"Helen, let's go back," she said suddenly, as her chum was about to let
in the clutch again. "Turn around--do."
"What for?" asked Helen wonderingly, yet seeing something in the
expression of Ruth's face that made her more than curious.
"I--I feel that everything isn't right with Wonota."
"Wonota!"
Ruth, in low tones, told her chum her fears--told of Bilby's call at the
mill--mentioned the fact that the Indian girl was probably at this time
at the roadside inn and that the rival moving picture producer was
perhaps there likewise.
"What do you know about that!" gasped Helen. "Is there going to be a real
fight for the possession of Wonota, do you think?"
"And for Totantora too, perhaps. For he figures importantly in this
picture we are about to make up on the St. Lawrence."
"Fine!" exclaimed Helen Cameron. "There is going to be something doing
besides picture making. Why, Ruth! you couldn't keep me from going with
you to-morrow. And I know Tommy-boy will be crazy to be in it, too."
Ruth made an appealing gesture as Helen began to back and turn the car.
"Don't frighten Aunt Alvirah," she whispered.
Helen was delighted with any prospect for action. It must be confessed
that she did not think much about disappointment or trouble accruing to
other people in any set of circumstances; she never had been particularly
thoughtful for others. But she was brave to the point of recklessness,
and she was at once excited regarding the suggested danger to her chum's
plans.
Bilby had already, Ruth understood, offered more money to Wonota and
Totantora for their services than Mr. Hammond thought it wise to risk in
the venture. And, after all, the temptation of money was great in the
minds of the Indians. It might be that Bilby could get them away from
Ruth's care. And then what would the Alectrion Film Corporation do about
this next picture that had been planned?
Aunt Alvirah made no complaint as to how or where the car went--as long
as it went somewhere. She admitted she liked to travel fast. Having been
for so many years crippled by that enemy, rheumatism, she seemed to find
some compensation in the speed of Helen's car.
The inn was several miles away from the Long Bridge; but the road was
fairly straight, and as the car went over the ridges they could now and
then catch glimpses of the hotel. On the right were cornfields, the dark
green blades only six or eight inches high; and scattered over them the
omnipresent scarecrows which, in the spring, add at least picturesqueness
to the New England landscape.
Above the purring of the motor Aunt Alvirah raised her voice to remark to
the chums on the front seat:
"I don't see it now--did it fall down?"
"Did what fall down, Aunty?" asked Ruth, who, though troubled as she was
by her suspicions, could not ignore the little old woman.
"That scarecrow I see coming up. I thought 'twas a gal picking up stones
in that field--the one this side of the hotel. It had a sunbonnet on, and
it was just as natural! But it's gone."
"I don't see any scarecrow there," admitted Ruth, turning to look.
At that moment, however, the car she had seen parked in the bushes
wheeled out into the highway ahead of them. It started on past the hotel.
There was another figure beside that of the tubby Horatio Bilby on the
seat. Ruth recognized Bilby at once.
"Who's that?" asked Helen, slowing down involuntarily.
"That's the man I spoke of," explained Ruth, "I--I wonder who it is
that's with him?"
"A girl!" exclaimed Helen. "Do you suppose he has got Wonota?"
"Wonota--with a sunbonnet on?" cried her chum.
"I bet he's running away with Wonota!" cried Helen, and started to speed
up after the other car.
Ruth laid a quick hand on her chum's arm.
"Wait! Stop!" she cried. "See what a curiously acting thing that is he
has got beside him? Is--It can't be a girl, Helen!"
"It certainly isn't a boy," declared her friend, with exasperation.
"He'll get away from us. That is a fast car he is driving."
"Wait!" exclaimed Ruth again, and as Helen brought her machine to an
abrupt stop Aunt Alvirah was heard saying:
"Now, ain't that reediculous? Ain't it reediculous?"
"What is ridiculous?" asked Helen, looking back with a smile at the
little old woman while Ruth opened the door and leaped out to the side of
the road nearest the river.
"Why, where are your eyes, Helen Cameron?" demanded Aunt Alvirah.
"There's that scarecrow now. That feller is a-running away with it!"
Helen flashed another look along the road. The figure beside Bilby on the
seat had been set upright again. Now the girl saw that it was nothing but
a figure. It was no girl at all!
"What under the sun, Ruth--"
But Ruth was not in hearing. She had dashed into the bushes and to the
spot where she had previously seen the roadster belonging to Horatio
Bilby parked. The bushes were trampled all about. Here and there were
bits of torn cloth hanging to the thorns. Yonder was a slipper with
rather a high heel. She recognized it as one belonging to Wonota, the
Osage girl, and picked it up. The Indian maid was really attempting the
fads, as well as the fancies, in apparel of her white sisters!
But what had become of the girl herself? She certainly would not have
removed one of her pumps and thrown it away. Like Aunt Alvirah and Helen,
Ruth knew that the figure beside Bilby in the car was not the missing
Indian girl. He had attempted to use the scarecrow he had stolen from the
cornfield across the road to bewilder anybody who might pursue him.
And this very attempt of the rival picture producer to foul his trail
impressed Ruth that something serious regarding Wonota and her father was
afoot. If the Indian girl had not gone with Bilby, where had she gone?
And where was Totantora?
Ruth could not believe that either Wonota or her father would prove
faithless to their contract with Mr. Hammond--not intentionally, at
least. She hesitated there in the trampled bushes for a moment, wondering
if she ought not first to go on to the hotel and make inquiries.
Then she heard something thrashing in the bushes not far away. She
started, peering all about, listening. The noise led her to the head of a
gully that sloped down toward the river's edge. It was bush-bestrewn and
the way was rough. Ruth plunged down the slant of it, and behind the
first clump of brush she came upon a man struggling on the ground.
His ankles and his wrists were lashed, and when the girl turned him over
she was amazed to see that he was most cruelly gagged with a piece of
stick and a handkerchief.
"Totantora!" she screamed. "What is the matter? Where is Wonota?"
His glaring eyes seemed almost popping from their sockets. His
copper-colored face was a mask of demoniacal rage. His dignity as an
Indian and his feelings as a father had been outraged. Yet, Ruth was
positive that the figure in the roadster beside Horatio Bilby was not
Wonota, the chief's daughter.
Her strong and nimble fingers had gone to work almost at once upon the
cord that held the Indians wrists. She loosened them in a few moments.
Totantora leaped to his feet, drew a clasp-knife from the pocket of his
trousers, snapped it open, and slashed through the cords about his
ankles.
"Where is Wonota? What has happened?" Ruth cried.
The Indian slashed the handkerchief that held the gag in place, dragged
it out, and cast it away. He made no reply to Ruth's question, but
lifting up his head sent a long and quavering cry through the grove--a
cry that might have been the war-whoop of his tribe generations before.
However, Ruth knew it was a signal to his daughter that he was free and
was in pursuit. If Wonota was where she could hear!
Speaking not at all to the anxious Ruth, Totantora started down the gully
to the riverside. The girl followed him, running almost as wildly as did
the Indian chief.
Bounding out into the more open grove at the edge of the stream,
Totantora uttered another savage yell. Ruth heard, too, the _put, put,
put_, of a motor-boat. When she reached the water the boat she had
previously observed was some few yards from the bank. There were two men
in it now, and Ruth saw at first glance that Wonota, likewise bound and
gagged, lay propped up against the small over-decked part of the launch.
The Indian chief halted not even to kick off his moccasins. He ran to the
edge of the bank and, the water being deep, dived on a long slant into
the river. He rose almost instantly to the surface, and with a long,
swift side-stroke followed after the motor craft, which was now gaining
speed.