His hat fluttered off into the road. He sprang at Pauline and wrested the gun from her. As Harry rushed him, he had no time to fire, but the butt of one revolver crashed on the young man's forehead. Harry sank unconscious in the road.
Pauline knelt beside him. She was screaming for Owen—even for Hicks. Hicks was instantly beside her but not to aid or rescue, for Hicks was the man with the handkerchief mask. He half dragged, half carried Pauline to a thicket that concealed the runabout. He drew a roll of tire tape from under the seat and bound it cruelly around her lips. He took ropes and tied her hands and feet, placed her in the seat beside him and started the machine. If Harry, struggling to rise out of the dust of the road, could have seen Pauline now, bound and gagged beside Hicks in the runabout, he would have known her to be in greater peril than ever the balloon had brought her.
Pauline was not long unhidden. As the quick ear of Hicks caught the sound of wheels, he grasped her roughly by the arm and thrust her into the bottom of the machine. Without taking his hand from the lever or slackening speed, he pulled a blanket over her and tucked it in with one hand.
"Don't move, either," he growled, "or you know."
A farmer on his wagon came around a bend. His cheery "good morning" brought only a grunt from Hicks, but the sound of the kind voice thrilled Pauline. She struggled under the blanket and almost reached a sitting posture before Hicks crushed her back.
The runabout had flashed by, but the farmer had seen something that alarmed even his stolid mind.
When a half mile up the road he came upon a young man, dazed and wounded, staggering through the dust, he drew rein and leaped out.
A draught of whiskey from the farmer's bottle braced Harry.
"You passed them on the road?" he cried.
"A machine with a man in it and somethin' else—somethin' in the bottom of it that moved," said the farmer.