CHAPTER IVBILBY
The old, shingled Red Mill, which Jabez Potter had revamped each spring with mineral paint, was as brilliant a landmark on the bank of the Lumano River as ever it had been. In fact, it seemed as though Ben, the hired man, had got the red of the shingles and the trim a little redder and the blinds a little greener this last spring than ever they had been before.
Overshadowed by great elms, with the yard grass growing thick and lush right up to the bark of the trees, the surroundings of the mill and farmhouse connected with it (at least, all of those surroundings that could be seen from the Cheslow road), were attractive indeed.
Although the old house seemed quite as it always had been from without, many changes had been made inside since first Ruth Fielding had stepped out of Dr. Davison’s chaise to approach her great-uncle’s habitation.
At that time Ruth had been less than a motein the eye of Uncle Jabez. She was merely an annoyance to the miller at that time. Since then, however, she had many and many a time proved a blessing to him. Nor did Jabez Potter refuse to acknowledge this—on occasion.
When Ruth began to do over the interior of the old house, however, Uncle Jabez protested. The house and mill had been built a hundred and fifty years before—if not longer ago. It was sacrilege to touch a crooked rafter or a hammered nail of the entire structure.
But Ruth insisted that she be allowed to make her own rooms under the roof more comfortable and modern. Ruth had seen old New England farmhouses rebuilt in the most attractive way one could imagine without disturbing their ancient exterior appearance. She gathered ideas from books and magazines, and then went about replanning the entire inside of the mill farmhouse. But she began the actual rejuvenation of the aspect of the structure in her own rooms, and had had all the work done since her return from the war zone the year before.
She now had a bedroom, a sitting room, a dressing room and bathroom up under the roof, all in white (Helen said “like a hospital”), and when one opened Ruth’s outer door and stepped into her suite it seemed as though one entered an entirely different house. And if it was a girlwho entered—as Wonota, the Osage princess, did on a certain June day soon after Jennie Stone’s marriage—she could not suppress a cry of delight.
Wonota had stayed before at the Red Mill for a time; but then the workmen had not completed Ruth’s new nest. And although Wonota had been born in a wigwam on the plains and had spent her childhood in a log cabin with a turf roof, she could appreciate “pretty things” quite as keenly as any girl of Ruth’s acquaintance.
That was why Ruth—as well as Mr. Hammond of the Alectrion Film Corporation—believed that the Indian girl would in time become a successful screen actress. Wonota, though her skin was copper-colored, liked to dress in up-to-date clothes (and did so) and enjoyed the refinements of civilization as much as any white girl of her age.
“It is so pretty here, Miss Ruth,” she said to her mentor. “May I sleep in the other bed off your sitting room? It is sweet of you. How foolish of people wanting to see on the screen how poor Indians live in their ignorance. I would rather learn to play the part of a very rich New York lady, and have servants and motor-cars and go to the opera and wear a diamond necklace.”
Ruth laughed at her, but good-naturedly.
“All girls are the same, I suppose, under theskin,” she said. “But we each should try to do the things we can do best. Learn to play the parts the director assigns you to the very best of your ability. Doing that will bring you, quicker than anything else, to the point where you can wear diamonds and ride in your own motor-car and go to the opera. What does your father, Chief Totantora, say to your new ideas, Wonota?”
“The chief, my father, says nothing when I talk like that to him. He is too much of an old-fashioned Indian, I fear. He is staying at a country hotel up the road; but he would not sleep in the room they gave him (and then he rolled up in his blanket on the floor) until they agreed to let him take out the sashes from all three windows. He says that white people have white faces because they sleep in stale air.”
“Perhaps he is more than half right,” rejoined Ruth, although she laughed too. “Some white folks even in this age are afraid of the outdoor air as a sleeping tonic, and prefer to drug themselves with shut-in air in their bedrooms.”
“But one can have pretty things and nice things, and still remain in health,” sighed Wonota.
Ruth agreed with this. The girl of the Red Mill tried, too, in every way to encourage the Indian maiden to learn and profit by the better things to be gained by association with the whites.
There were several days to wait before Mr. Hammond was ready to send Mr. Hooley, the director, and the company selected for the making of Ruth’s new picture to the Thousand Islands. Meanwhile Ruth herself had many preparations to make and she could not be all the time with her visitor.
As in that past time when she had visited the Red Mill, Wonota was usually content to sit with Aunt Alvirah and make beadwork while the old woman knitted.
“She’s a contented creeter, my pretty,” the old woman said to Ruth. “Red or white, I never see such a quiet puss. And she jumps and runs to wait on me like you do.
“Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!” exclaimed Aunt Alvirah, rising cautiously with the aid of a cane she now depended upon. “My rheumatism don’t seem any better, and I have had it long enough, seems to me, for it to get better,” she added.
“Poor dear!” said Ruth. “Don’t the new medicine do any good?”
“Lawsy me, child! I’ve drenched myself with doctor’s stuff till I’m ashamed to look a medicine bottle in the face. My worn out old carcass can’t be helped much by any drugs at all. I guess, as my poor old mother used to say, the only sure cure for rheumatics is graveyard mould.”
“Oh, Aunt Alvirah!”
“I don’t say it complainingly,” declared the little old woman, smiling quite cheerfully. “But I tell Jabez Potter he might as well make up his mind to seeing my corner of his hearth empty one of these days. And he’ll miss me, too, cantankerous as he is sometimes.”
But Uncle Jabez was seldom “cantankerous” nowadays when Ruth was at home. To the miller’s mind his great-niece had proved herself to be of the true Potter blood, although her name was Fielding.
Ruth was a money-maker. He had to wink pretty hard over the fact that she was likewise a money spender! But one girl—and a young one at that—could scarcely be expected (and so the old miller admitted) to combine all the virtues which were worth while in human development.
“Keep a-making of it, Niece Ruth,” Uncle Jabez advised earnestly. “You never can tell when you are going to want more or when your ability to make money is going to stop. I’d sell the Red Mill or give up and never grind another grist for nobody, if I didn’t feel that perhaps by next year I should have to stop, anyway—and another year won’t much matter.”
“You get so little pleasure out of life, Uncle Jabez,” Ruth once said in answer to this statement of the old man.
“Shucks! Don’t you believe it. I don’t know no better fun than watching the corn in the hopper or the stuns go round and round while the meal flour runs out of the spout below, warm and nice-smellin’. The millin’ business is just as pretty a business as there is in the world—when once you git used to the dust. No doubt of it.”
“I can see, Uncle Jabez, that you find it so,” said Ruth, but rather doubtfully.
“Of course it is,” said the old man stoutly. “You get fun out of running about the country and looking at things and seeing how other folks live and work. And that’s all right for you.Youmake money out of it. But what would I get out of gadding about?”
“A broader outlook on life, Uncle Jabez.”
“I don’t want no broader outlook. I don’t need nothing of the kind. Nor does Alviry Boggs, though she’s got to talking a dreadful lot lately about wanting to ride around in an automobile. At her age, too!”
“You should own a car, Uncle Jabez,” urged Ruth.
“Now, stop that! Stop that, Niece Ruth! I won’t hear to no such foolishness. You show me how I can make money riding up and down the Lumano in a pesky motor-car, and maybe I’ll do like Alviry wants me to, and buy one of thecontraptions.” “Hullo, now!” added the miller suddenly. “Who might this be?”
Ruth turned to see one of the very motor-cars that Uncle Jabez so scorned (or pretended to) stopping before the wide door of the mill itself.
But as it was the man driving the roadster, rather than the car itself, Uncle Jabez had spoken of, Ruth gave her attention to him. He was a ruddy, tubby little man in a pin-check black and white suit, faced with silk on lapels and pockets—it really gave him a sort of minstrel-like appearance as though he should likewise have had his face corked—and he wore in a puffed maroon scarf a stone that flashed enough for half a dozen ordinary diamonds—whether it really was of the first water or not.
This man hopped out from back of the wheel of the roadster and came briskly up the graveled rise from the road to the door of the mill. He favored Ruth with a side glance and half smile that the girl of the Red Mill thought (she had seen plenty of such men) revealed his character very clearly. But he spoke to Uncle Jabez.
“I say, Pop, is this the place they call the Red Mill?”
“I calkerlate it is,” agreed the miller dryly. “Leastways, it’s the only Red Mill I ever heard tell on.”
“I reckoned I’d got to the right dump,” saidthe visitor cheerfully. “I understand there’s an Injun girl stopping here? Is that so?”
Uncle Jabez glanced at Ruth and got her permission to speak before he answered:
“I don’t know as it’s any of your business, Mister; but the Princess Wonota, of the Osage Nation, is stopping here just now. What might be your business with her?”
“So she calls herself a ‘princess’ does she?” returned the man, grinning again at Ruth in an offensive way. “Well, I have managed a South Sea Island chief, a pair of Circassian twins, and a bunch of Eskimos, in my time. I guess I know how to act in the presence of Injun royalty. Trot her out.”
“Trot who out?” asked the miller calmly, but with eyes that flashed under his penthouse brows. “Wonota ain’t no horse. Did you think she was?”
“I know what she is,” returned the man promptly. “It’s what she is going to be that interests me. I’m Bilby—Horatio Bilby. Maybe you’ve heard of me?”
“I have,” said Ruth rather sharply.
At once Mr. Bilby’s round, dented, brown hat came off and he bowed profoundly.
“Happy to make your acquaintance, Miss,” he said.
“You haven’t made it yet—near as I can calkerlate,”gruffly said Uncle Jabez. “And it’s mebbe a question if you get much acquainted with Wonota. What’s your business with her, anyway?”
“I’ll show you, old gent,” said Bilby, taking a number of important looking papers from his pocket. “I have come here to get this princess, as you call her. The Indian Department has sent me. She is a ward of the Government, as you perhaps know. It seems she is held under a false form of contract to a moving picture corporation, and Wonota’s friends have applied to the Bureau of Indian Affairs to look into the matter and get at the rights of the business.”
Ruth uttered a cry of amazement; but Uncle Jabez said calmly enough:
“And what have you got to do with it all, Mister—if I may be so curious as to ask?”
“The girl is given into my charge while her affairs are being looked into,” said Mr. Horatio Bilby, with an explanatory flourish which included both the miller and Ruth in its sweeping gesture.
CHAPTER VTROUBLE IN PROSPECT
Ruth Fielding wished that Mr. Hammond was within reach; but she knew he was already on his way to the Thousand Islands, for which she herself expected to start the next day with Wonota and her father. She had not heard much about this Bilby; but what she had learned—together with what she now saw of him—impressed her not at all in his favor.
In any event she was not willing to accept either Horatio Bilby or his declaration at face value. And she was glad to see that the hardheaded old miller was not much impressed by the man, either.
“I don’t know much about this business, Mister,” said Uncle Jabez, with much calmness. “But it strikes me that you’d better see the girl’s father.”
“What girl’s father?” demanded the visitor, and now he seemed surprised.
“Wonota’s. Chief Totantora is the name hegoes by. It strikes me that he ought to have a deal more to say about the girl than any Government department.”
“Why, he’s nothing but a blanket Injun!” ejaculated Bilby, with disgust.
“Mebbe so,” rejoined Uncle Jabez. “But his wearing a blanket (though I never see him with it on; he wears pants and a shirt when he comes here) don’t figger none at all. He still remains the girl’s father.”
“I guess you don’t know, Pop, that these Injuns are all wards of Uncle Sam.”
“Mebbe so,” again observed the miller. “And I have sometimes thought that Uncle Sam ain’t always been any too good to his red relations. However, that isn’t to the point. The girl’s here. She’s sort of in my care while she is here. Unless Chief Totantora shows up and asks to have her handed over to you, I calkerlate you won’t get her.”
“See here, my man!” exclaimed Bilby, at once becoming blusterous, “you’ll get into trouble with the Government if you interfere with me.”
“That doesn’t scare me none,” was the prompt reply of Jabez Potter. “Right now the Government of the United States don’t look so important to me as our local constable. I guess to get possession of the girl you will have to bring an officer with you to certify to all this you say you are.Until you do, I might as well tell you, first as last, that you ain’t got a chance—not a chance!—to even see Wonota.”
Mr. Bilby grew even redder in the face than nature seemed to have intended him to be. And his little greenish-gray eyes sparkled angrily.
“You’ll get into trouble, old man,” he threatened.
“Don’t you let that bother you none,” rejoined the miller. “I’ve had so much trouble in my life that I’m sort of used to it, as you might say. Now, if that is all you got to offer, you might as well get back into that go-cart of yours and drive on.”
Mr. Potter turned on his heel and went back into the mill, beckoning to Ruth to come with him. She did so—for a little way at least; but she soon stopped to peer out and watch the man, Bilby.
When they were, as he thought, out of hearing, he gave vent to several grunts, kicked a pebble across the road, and scowled ferociously. He said something about “these rubes are smarter than they used to be.” He seemed convinced that he could do nothing further in the matter he had come upon. Not at this time, it was quite plain.
He turned and climbed into the roadster. But he did not drive back toward Cheslow; instead hewent up the river road, and Ruth Fielding remembered that Wonota’s father was stopping at the country inn which was only three or four miles up that road.
“But nothing can happen because of that, of course,” the girl thought, as she entered the passage that led to the farmhouse from the mill. “Wonota is perfectly safe here, and surely Totantora can take care of himself with that little fat man, or with anybody else!”
She entered the kitchen expecting to find the Indian girl at work with Aunt Alvirah in the old woman’s sunny corner of the great room. The old woman was alone, however.
“Where is Wonota?” Ruth asked.
Before Aunt Alvirah could reply an automobile siren echoed outside of the house. Aunt Alvirah was smiling and waving at somebody and Ruth hurried to the window to look out.
“Here’s Helen come for you, my pretty, in that beautiful big car of hers,” said Aunt Alvirah. “Isn’t it fine to be rich?”
“Wait till I make a few more pictures, Aunty, and we’ll have a car too. If Uncle Jabez won’t buy one, I’ve made up my mind to get a car if it’s only to take you to drive once in a while.”
“It wouldn’t hurt Jabez Potter to buy a car,” declared the old woman. “She’s coming inRuthie. Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!” she murmured, as she got up to receive the visitor.
Helen swept into the house gaily. She always had a kiss for the little old woman who thought her, next to Ruth, the finest girl who ever lived.
“You’re always a sight for anyone to look on with pleasure, Helen Cameron,” said Aunt Alvirah. “And you’re mighty smart in that long coat and cap.”
“And do you put on your coat and bonnet, Aunty,” cried Helen, patting her wrinkled cheek. “I’ve come to take you for a spin. And Ruth, too.”
“There’s Wonota,” suggested Ruth.
“Of course. The princess shall join us,” Helen cried merrily. “Where is she? Tell her to leave her everlasting beadwork long enough to ride in the white man’s motor-car.”
“I suppose,” said Ruth, starting for the stairway, “Wonota must be up in her own room.”
“No, no!” Aunt Alvirah called from her bedroom, to which she had hobbled for her cloak and bonnet. “I was just about to tell you, my pretty. Wonota has gone out.”
“Where did she go?” and Ruth suddenly turned back, and with surprise if not exactly with a feeling of alarm.
“She said she would walk up the road to see her father. She is quite fond of her father, Ibelieve,” added Aunt Alvirah, coming back with her wrap and bonnet. “Of course, Indians have family feelings, if they do seem to hide ’em so well.”
“I am sorry she went out alone,” murmured Ruth.
“Pooh! she isn’t a child. And she’ll not lose her way, that’s sure,” laughed Helen. “Anyway, we’ll overtake her and give her a ride. Chief Totantora, too, if he will deign to step into the white man’s car.”
Ruth said no more. But after the visit of Bilby to the mill she could not help but feel some little anxiety. She remembered that Dakota Joe, in whose show Wonota had once worked, had tried his best to make trouble for her and Mr. Hammond because of the Osage maiden; and this Bilby was plainly a much shrewder person than the Westerner had been.
She and Helen aided Aunt Alvirah out to the car. It was a heavy, seven passenger machine; but Helen could drive it as well as Tom himself.
“And Tommy-boy,” she explained as she tucked the robe about Aunt Alvirah before following Ruth into the front seat, “went to town to-day with father.”
“I hope he will really get down to work now,” said Ruth softly, as Helen began to manipulate the levers.
“Pooh!” exclaimed Helen carelessly. “Work was made for slaves. And Tom had a hard time over in France. I tell dad he ought not to expect Tommy-boy to really work for a long, long time to come.”
“Do you think that is right, Helen?” admonished her chum. “Idleness was never good for anybody.”
“It isn’t as though Tom was poor. He hasn’t got to toil and delve in an old office—”
“You know it isn’t that,” cried Ruth warmly. “But he should make good use of his time. And your father needs him. He ought to be idle now, not Tom.”
“Grandmother Grunt!” laughed Helen. “You’re twice as old as Aunt Alvirah right now.”
“After what we have been through—after what the world has been through for five years—we all ought to be at work,” said Ruth rather severely. “And Tom is no exception.”
“Why, I never knew you to be hard on Tommy-boy before!” pouted Tom’s sister.
“Perhaps I never had occasion to be hard on him before,” Ruth answered. “He is only one of many. Especially many of those who were over there in France. They seem to be so unsettled and—and so careless for the future.”
“Regular female Simon Legree, you are, Ruthie Fielding.”
“But when Tom first came back he was as eager as he could be to get to business and to begin a business career. And lately, it seems to me, he’s had an awful slump in his ambition. I never saw the like.”
“Oh, bother!” muttered Helen, and started the car.
The car shot ahead, and in five minutes they passed the country inn, but saw nothing of either Wonota or the Indian chief. In a cove below the river bank, however, Ruth caught a glimpse of a small motor-boat with two men in it. And backed into a wood’s path near the highway was a small motor-car.
Was it the smart roadster Mr. Horatio Bilby had driven to the Red Mill? Ruth could not be sure. But she did not enjoy the ride with Helen and Aunt Alvirah very much for thinking of the possibility of its being Mr. Bilby’s car so close to the inn where Chief Totantora was stopping.
CHAPTER VIAN 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. HoratioBilby’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!” gaspedHelen. “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 wouldthe 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 Alvirahand 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, Totantorastarted 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, theput, 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.
CHAPTER VIIEXPEDIENCY
Up in the Big North Woods Ruth Fielding had seen loons dive and swim (and of all the feathered tribe, loons are the master divers) and she had wondered at the birds’ mastery of the water. But no loon ever seemed more at home in that element than did the Indian chief.
Totantora tore through the water after the escaping motor-boat as though he, too, were propelled by a motor. And his motor was more powerful, in a short race at least, than that driving the launch in which Wonota was held prisoner.
Before the men who had abducted the Osage maiden could get their boat out of the little cove, Totantora reached the stern of it. He rose breast high in the water and clutched the gunwale with one hand. One of the men swung at him with a boathook; but the other picked up his canvas coat and managed to smother the chief’s head and face in it for a minute.
Totantora flung himself backward and draggedthe canvas coat out of the man’s hand. Indeed, he came near to dragging the man himself into the water.
The coat did not retard the Indian much. He grabbed it with both hands, spread it abroad, and then plunged with it under the stern of the motor-boat. At once the propeller ceased turning and the boat lost headway. Totantora had fouled the propeller blades with the canvas jacket, and the abductors could not get away.
The Indian lunged for the gunwale of the boat again. One of the men was now attending to the mechanism. The other beat at Totantora’s hands with the boathook.
In a flash the chief let go of the rail with one hand and seized the staff of the implement. One powerful jerk, and he wrenched the boathook from the white man’s grasp. The latter fell sprawling into the bottom of the boat. With a display of muscle-power at which Ruth could not but marvel, Totantora raised himself over the gunwale of the boat and scrambled into it.
The second white man turned on him, but the Indian met him stooping, seized him around the waist, and tossed him, seemingly with scarcely an effort, into the water. The other abductor scrambled forward to get out of his reach. The chief bent for a minute over his daughter, and then Ruth saw that the girl was free and that shestood up, unhurt. It was all over so quickly that it left Ruth breathless.
“Miss Ruth! Miss Ruth!” cried the Indian girl. “I am all right. My father, Chief Totantora, would not let these bad white men carry me away a captive.”
Ruth waved her hand to the younger girl. But she watched the white man who was swimming for the shore. She was not afraid of him—any more than the Indian chief was fearful of the other white man perched in the bow of the motor-boat.
The swimmer reached the bank, caught hold of an overhanging bush, and dragged himself out of the river. He was a hang-dog looking sort of fellow, anyway; and in his saturated condition his appearance was not improved. He lay panting for a minute like an expiring fish, and Ruth looked down at him perhaps more contemptuously than she realized.
“Well, who you looking at?” he growled at length.
“I suppose I am looking at one of Mr. Horatio Bilby’s choice assistants,” Ruth returned scornfully.
“Huh? What do you know about Bilby?” demanded the fellow, evidently much surprised.
“I know nothing very good of him, I am sure,” the girl of the Red Mill replied coolly. “And Iam quite confident that you are a fit companion for him.”
The fellow sat up and leered at her.
“I ain’t such a mighty fine sight just now, I guess,” he said. “But there are worse than me. I didn’t know there were any white folks interested in this business.”
“You make a perfectly proper distinction,” Ruth told him. “Bilby is not a white man—not in his business ethics I am sure. I want to warn you that those Indians have powerful friends and you would do well to have nothing more to do with them.”
“I get you,” growled the fellow. “But take it from me; that Injun don’t need no friends. He can take care of himself. He’s as strong as a bull.”
“And with a temper you would best not ruffle. I do not know what Bilby’s scheme was, or how he got you into it. But take my advice and keep out of any further association with Bilby in this matter.”
“You don’t have to warn me and my partner,” said the fellow. “We got enough right now. Is he coming ashore?”
He turned to look at the boat, and then leaped to his feet in some fear. Totantora, by leaning well over the stern of the boat, had dragged the torn coat out of the propeller, and now he wascoolly examining the mechanism with the evident idea of starting the boat. The Indian seemed familiar with the driving power of such a craft.
“I think he will bring his daughter ashore,” Ruth said composedly. “If I were you I would not cross him further.”
“I ain’t going to, Miss,” said the fellow, now on his feet. “I see Jim is keeping as far away from him as he can. Jim can’t swim.”
“Go aside somewhere. When they reach the bank I will try to take Totantora and the girl away with me. Do nothing to cross him, for the temper of an Indian is not easily quelled. It just simmers and may break out again at any time.”
“Believe me,” said the fellow, starting off through the bushes, “I ain’t aiming to have another run-in with him. Not with my bare hands. I hope he don’t smash the boat, that’s all.”
“I will do all I can to pacify Totantora,” said Ruth, and she really was somewhat anxious on this point, for the grim countenance of the Indian chief threatened further reprisal.
He was busy with the engine for a time; but by and by the regular popping of the exhaust revealed the fact that everything was all right with it. The boat described a circle and came back into the cove and to the place where Ruth stood on the bank.
The second white man, who was younger and looked less like a drowned rat, remained in the bow, staring back in apprehension at the Indian. The moment he could do so, this man leaped ashore.
“Say nothing to him,” advised Ruth. “I will try to take them both away. And, as I have warned your companion, have nothing more to do with Bilby or his schemes. These Indians are my friends, and they have other friends who are much more powerful than I am, I can assure you.”
“Yes, Miss,” said the man, politely enough. “I don’t want to mix in with that redskin. I guess not!”
Wonota stepped ashore and Ruth gave her the shoe she had lost. Her father followed her. He turned as though to set the boat adrift, but Ruth laid her hand upon his wet sleeve.
“Let it alone, Totantora. I hope you will be advised by me. We will go right away from here. Instead of waiting until to-morrow, let us leave here to-night and start for the North.”
Wonota said something to her father in their own tongue, and he looked at Ruth more peacefully.
“White lady is always my friend, I know; and Wonota’s friend,” he observed. “But these bad men tried to steal Wonota.”
“Tell me how it happened,” Ruth put in, hopingto change his trend of thought and determination.
“I will tell you, my friend,” said the Indian girl. “A little fat man came in a car when Chief Totantora and I were walking in the road. He got us to sit down yonder and talk to him. He is one of those who have tried to get Chief Totantora and me to go away from you to make pictures. He offers much money. And while we talked, those other two men crept up behind us and they all seized Chief Totantora and me. We were bound and our mouths closed before we knew how many, or how few, our enemies were. Then my father was left in the wood and I was carried to the boat. I do not know what became of the little fat man.”
“I saw him drive away,” Ruth said. “It made me suspicious. I had already seen and talked with the fat man, whose name is Bilby. Don’t forget that name, Wonota.”
“I will remember,” said the Indian girl, composedly.
“He may make some other attempt to get possession of you. Some attempt by aid of the courts.”
“The white man’s law is very strange,” muttered Totantora.
“But we will get ahead of Bilby before he can do anything else,” Ruth went on. “MissCameron’s car is outside in the road. Go to the hotel and change your clothes, Totantora, and I will take both you and Wonota back to the Red Mill. Until we get away for the North I shall not want you out of my sight.”
The Indian shook himself much as a dog might. A lighter expression flickered over his dark face.
“I shall not suffer cold from a wetting,” he said. “It is nothing. I have nothing at the hotel. We will go now.”
“Come on, then,” rejoined Ruth, promptly. “It is best that we get away before Bilby can learn that his plan to make Wonota a captive miscarried. Hurry!”
She swept them in her earnestness out to the road where Helen and Aunt Alvirah saw them with considerable surprise—particularly because of the saturated condition of the Indian.
“I declare, Ruth!” cried Helen, “you do manage to get into such perfectly lovely rows. What is the matter?”
But Ruth postponed all explanation for a later time. On their way back to the Red Mill she did explain to Helen, however, that she intended to take the two Indians to Cheslow and get a train for Albany that evening.
“I will fool Bilby and whoever is aiding him. We will get away.”
“If you go to-night, so do I!” exclaimed herchum. “You can’t lose me, Ruth Fielding. I can see that we are going to have perfectly scrumptious times before this picture you are going to make is finished.”
“I hope we’ll fool Bilby—leave him behind,” sighed Ruth.
“The worst of it is, we must leave Tommy-boy behind,” said Tom’s twin. “Won’t he be sore when he hears about it!”