Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence Part 6

"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 circ.u.mstances; 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 thras.h.i.+ng 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.