ay 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 re