sand towards the cypress and pine trees that grew in greater profusion. Linda did not look back, but she knew that while "Slats" carried Susie with one arm, he kept his pistol at her back with his other hand.
At last, by the aid of her flash-light, Linda spied several tents set up near together, and a welcome smell of food cooking greeted her as she advanced.
"Stop here!" came the order. "This is where you spend the night!"
Chapter IV
Captive
Linda and her companions stopped in front of a large tent that was dimly lighted within by a lantern. Two men were standing inside – one bending over an oil cook-stove, the other at the door.
"We got Linda!" announced "Slats" triumphantly. "Without even smashing her plane!"
He pushed through the doorway, past the other man, and deposited Susie on a cot by the wall of the tent.
The man at the stove, a big, fat, repulsive looking brute, turned around and uttered an ugly, "Hah!"
"Susie hurt?" inquired the tall, thin man who had been standing at the edge of the tent.
"Yeah. Crashed her plane. I've got some scratches meself, but I ain't whinin'!"
"My ankle's broken!" sobbed Susie, unable to suffer any longer in silence. "Hurry up and get some bandages, Doc!"
Linda, who had been standing perfectly still during this conversation, was startled by the use of the name "Doc." Was it possible that this man was a physician? If so, wouldn't he perhaps be above the level of the others – and might she not expect, if not sympathy, at least fair play from him? But "Slats" instantly shattered her hopes with his explanation.
"This is the 'Doc,' Linda," he said. "We call him that because he fixes up all our aches and cuts for us. In a profession like our'n, it ain't safe to meddle with 'saw-bones' and hospitals. They keep records."
Linda smiled at the idea of calling robbery a "profession," but she made no comment.
"So long as you'll be with us fer a while," continued her captor, "I'll interduce you to everybody. That there cook is 'Beefy.' Ain't he a good ad for his own cookin'?"
Linda nodded; she could hardly be expected to laugh at such a poor joke under the circumstances.
"You can go over and wash – there's water in Susie's tent – if you want to, while the 'Doc' fixes Susie up. Then we'll eat."
Glad to be alone for a moment, Linda stepped across to the tent which the man had indicated, hidden behind some pine trees a few yards away. Guiding herself by her flash-light, she found the entrance, and dropped down on a cot inside.
Letting the light go off, she sat, dry-eyed and utterly hopeless, staring into the darkness. What terrible fate was hanging over her, she dared not imagine. Would they torture her, perhaps, if her father refused to raise the ransom, and called the police to his aid?
In these last few hours she had learned to realize how infinitely crueler human-beings were than the elements of nature. The ice and snow, the cold winds of Canada, or the vast, trackless depths of the Atlantic could never bring about such untold agony as these fiends in human form. She almost wished that she had gone down, like Bess Hulbert, in the ocean, before she had lived to learn how evil men could be.
A call from the mess-tent, as she supposed the larger one to be, aroused her from her unhappy meditations, and she hastily turned on the light and washed from a pitcher of water on a soap-box in Susie's tent.
When she returned to the group, she found them already seated about a board table, plunging into the food like hungry animals. Susie, who sat with her bandaged ankle propped up on a box, was the only one who ate with any manners at all. But it had been a long time since Linda had tasted food, and she was too hungry to be deterred by the sight of "Beefy" putting his fingers into his plate. So she sat down next to Susie, and silently started to eat.
She found the meal exceedingly good, and was surprised at her own appetite, for she hardly expected to be able to enjoy anything under the circumstances.
The lantern threw a weird, ghastly light over the strange, ugly faces about her, and the silence was unbroken, except by the noise and clatter of eating. A tenseness took possession of her; she wished desperately that somebody would say something. It was exactly like a horrible dream, whose spell could not be destroyed. And still no one uttered a word until the meal was concluded.
"You girls can go to bed now," Slats announced, finally. "I'll carry you over, Susie, and give you a gun, in case Linda tries to sneak off in the night." He smiled with vicious triumph.
"I'm afraid that wouldn't do me any good," replied Linda, trying to make her voice sound normal. "I haven't an idea where I am."
"On Black Jack Island, in the Okefenokee Swamp," he again told her. "With water all around you. Get that! You can't get away, without a boat or a plane. And I'm tellin' you now, I seen to it that your Bug's bone-dry!"
With a conceited grin, he leaned over and picked up his wife so roughly that she cried out in pain.
When they were alone, the girls took off some of their outer garments, and lay down on their cots. Linda longed to talk, but she was afraid to begin, for fear it would only lead to some sort of punishment. So she lay still, trying to forget her troubles, to believe everything would come out right in the end, when her father paid the ransom.
She was just dozing off, when she was abruptly aroused by agonized sobs from her tent-mate. She sat up and asked her companion whether there was anything she could get her. But Susie did not answer; she continued to cry wildly like a child of six.
"Oh, my ankle! My ankle!" she moaned. And then she used worse language than any Linda had ever heard – from man or woman.
Linda was sorry for her, but she could not help contrasting this girl's cowardice in the face of physical pain with Dot Crowley's, when the latter had met with a similar accident, and had smiled bravely at the hurt. She thought, too, of Ted Mackay's courage in the hospital, and Susie suffered by the comparisons.
"Is there anything I can do?" she asked, again.
"No. Only take me to a real doctor – or a hospital."
"I'd be glad to, if your husband would let me fly my plane!"
"Well, he won't!" There followed more oaths. "What does he care – so long as he ain't the one that's hurt?" She continued to cry hysterically, until a snarling order came from without the tent.
"Shut up your noise!" bawled her husband, and Susie softened her sobbing.
Linda lay very still, thinking. Dared she suggest that the other girl deceive her husband – or would she only be punished for such an idea? She decided to give it a try.
"You must know where the men keep the gasoline," she whispered. "Wouldn't you rather have your ankle fixed right, and not run the chance of being a cripple for life?"
"What do you mean?" demanded Susie, raising her head from her pillow.
"I mean – wait till the men are asleep, and then you tell me where the gas is, and we'll sneak off. I'd take you to a hospital, and I'd promise never to tell on you."
"And lose all that ransom money? Slats'd never forgive me!"
"But
