The burlap sack was stiflingly hot. Moreover it seemed impregnated with fine particles of dust which burned her throat and nostrils and set her coughing. Dorothy was frightfully uncomfortable. Breathing became more and more difficult.
"Let me go--I'm smothering!" she gasped.
"And get another piece bit out of me arm?" snorted her captor. "Nothin' doin'."
"But I'm choking to death in this filthy bag! It's full of dust!"
"Keep yer mouth shut, then," gruffed the man. "And stop that wrigglin'. I'll tap yer one if yer don't. What do ye think this is, anyway--a joy ride?"
"But--" she began again.
"Shut up!" he growled. "Behave, will yer? Say, sister, if I had me way youse'd get bumped off right now. Give me more of yer lip and I'll do it, anyway!"
There was a grim menace in the gangster's tone that frightened Dorothy more than his words. Thereafter she spoke no more. She even refrained from struggling, although her head swam and his grip of iron about her knees had become torture.
What had happened to Bill, she wondered, and cold fear entered her heart. She was almost certain that it had been a blow from his fist she had heard directly after her warning shout. But the shot and the scream immediately afterward? Had that been the sound of his automatic--or another's? The thought of Bill lying in the woods wounded--perhaps dead--drove her frantic. Yet she was powerless, with her wrists lashed behind her back. While the man who carried her lurched forward, stumbling now and then over the uneven ground, each step causing his victim fresh agony, Dorothy's conviction of hopelessness assailed and overwhelmed the last shreds of her fighting spirit. She wept.
Presently,--it seemed an age,--she sensed that the gangster was mounting a flight of steps. There came the creak of a board underfoot. Then she knew that he was fumbling with a doorknob. A glow of light appeared through the burlap.