"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 the contraptions." "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," said the 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