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Page 20
Helen and Jennie drove over to the mill to get Ruth that afternoon, and
they planned to take Aunt Alvirah out with them. She had lost her fear
of the automobile and had even begun to hint to the miller that she
wished he would buy a small car.
"Land o' Goshen!" grumbled Uncle Jabez, "what next? I s'pose you'd want
to learn to run the dratted thing, Alvirah Boggs?"
"Well, Jabez Potter, I don't see why not?" she had confessed. "Other
women learns."
"Huh! You with one foot in the grave and the other on the gas, eh?" he
snorted.
However, Aunt Alvirah did not go out in Helen's car on this afternoon.
While the girls were waiting for her to be made ready, Helen looked
back, up the road, down which she and Jennie had just come.
"What's this?" she wanted to know. "A runaway horse?"
Jennie stood up to look over the back of the car. She uttered an excited
squeal.
"Helen! Ruthie!" she declared. "It's that Indian girl--in all her
war-togs, too. She is riding like the wind. And, yes! There is somebody
after her! Talk about your moving picture chases--this is the real
thing!"
"It's Dakota Joe!" shrieked Helen. "Goodness! He must have gone mad. See
him beating that horse he rides. Why--"
"He surely has blown up," stated Jennie Stone with conviction. "Ruthie!
what are you going to do?"
CHAPTER VIII
A WONDERFUL EVENT
Wonota was a long way ahead of the Westerner. She was light and she
bestrode a horse with much more speed than the one Dakota Joe rode. She
lay far along her horse's neck and urged it with her voice rather than a
cruel goad.
The plucky pony was responding nobly, although it was plain, as it came
nearer to the girls before the old mill farmhouse, that it had traveled
hard. It was thirty miles from the town where the Wild West Show was
performing to the Red Mill.
"Oh, Wonota!" cried Jennie Stone, beckoning the Indian girl on. "What is
the matter?"
Ruth had not waited to get any report from Wonota. She turned and dashed
for the house. Already Sarah, the maid-of-all-work, had started through
the covered passage to the mill, shrieking for Ben, the hired man.
Ben and the miller ran down the long walk to roadside. Jabez Potter was
no weakling despite his age, while Ben was a giant of a fellow, able to
handle two ordinary men.
Wonota pulled her pony in behind Helen's car, whirling to face her
pursuer. She did not carry the light rifle she used in her act. Perhaps
it would have been better had she been armed, for Dakota Joe was quite
beside himself with wrath. He came pounding along, swinging his whip and
yelling at the top of his voice.
"What's the matter with that crazy feller?" demanded the old miller in
amazement. "He chasin' that colored girl?"
"She's not colored. She is my Indian princess, Uncle Jabez," Ruth
explained.
"I swanny, you don't mean it! Hi, Ben!" But nobody had to tell Ben what
to do. As Fenbrook drew in his horse abruptly, the mill-hand jumped into
the road, grabbed Dakota Joe's whip-hand, broke his hold on the reins,
and dragged the Westerner out of the saddle. It was a feat requiring no
little strength, and it surprised Dakota Joe as much as it did anybody.
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