garding 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