"But Tom will not know where we have gone," objected Ruth, feebly.
"I'll write him a note and leave it pinned to the seat."
She proceeded to do this, while Ruth lit the auto lamps so that neither Tom, on his return, or anybody else, would run into the car in the dark. Then they were ready to go with the woman, removing only their personal wraps and bags. They would have to risk having the touring car stripped by thieves before Tom Cameron came back.
"I don't believe there are any thieves around here," whispered Helen. "They would be scared to death in such a lonesome place!" she added, with a giggle.
Ruth felt some doubt about going with the woman. She was so dark and foreign looking. Yet she seemed desirous of doing the girls a service. And even she, Ruth, did not wish to stay longer on the lonely road. Something surely had happened to detain Tom.
In the south, too, "heat lightning" played sharply—and almost continuously. Ruth knew that this meant the tempest was raging at a distance and that it might return to this side of the lake.
The thought of being marooned on this mountain road, at night, in such a storm as that which they had experienced two or three hours before, was more than Ruth Fielding could endure with calmness.
So she agreed to go with the woman. Tom would know where they had gone when he returned, for he could not miss the note his sister had left.
At least, that is what both girls believed. Only, they were scarcely out of sight of the car with the woman, when one of the rough-looking men, who had walked ahead of the Gypsy caravan, appeared from the bushes, stepped into the auto, tore the note from where it had been pinned, and at once slipped back into the shadows, with the crumpled paper in his pocket!
Now the girls and their guide were down on the lower road. There was a twinkling light that showed the green van, horses, and the handsome driver—and the man looked like Roberto.