Say, when I looked down at that blanket with the little five-year-old girl wrapped in it, and saw the great big handkerchief the kidnapper had stuffed into her mouth as a gag to keep her from talking or screaming, and as we unwrapped her and saw that her hands were tied together and also her feet so she couldn’t walk, and when I saw the pretty yellowish all-tangled-up hair around her face and shoulders, I forgot all about having been half scared to death a while ago, and got a terribly angry feeling inside that made me want to find the kidnapper and for just about three minutes turn loose both of my fiery-tempered fists on his chin and nose and stomach and literally knock the living daylights out of him.
My pop had told me true stories about how there are wicked men in the world who don’t have any respect for God or girls or women, and how every one of them ought to be locked up somewhere until a doctor can get them cured, or else they should stay in jail for life or be executed for their awful crimes, which means they ought to be put to death in the electric chair or hung, Pop says. Anyway, there ought not to be even one of them allowed to run free in this world, and if they are allowed to, it’s the law’s or the people’s fault.
Well, we couldn’t stand there just staring and wasting good temper on something we couldn’t help, but ought to get the firewarden quick and he would know what to do.
Poetry certainly had presence of mind. “Take my flashlight,” he ordered me, and almost before I could get it into my hand, he was stooped over and taking the gag out of the girl’s mouth, and with his pocket-knife was cutting the cords that were around her wrists and hands.
It was pitiful the way that pretty little girl, who was about three or four years younger than Little Jim, sobbed and cried when we got the gag out of her mouth. She had a terribly scared look in her face. “H-E-L-P!” she half cried, but in a very muffled hoarse voice, like she had been crying for a terribly long time and had worn her vocal cords out.
“Mama! Mama!” she cried. “I want my M-M-Mama!” Then she would just go into a kinda hysterical sobbing and we couldn’t hear a word she was saying.
“We’re your friends,” we tried to tell her, “we’ve come to rescue you. We’ll help you get to the firewarden’s house, and——”
But the poor little thing was so scared that she couldn’t say a word we could understand, except she wanted her mama. She was also so weak she couldn’t stand up and wouldn’t be able to walk the rest of the way to the firewarden’s house, and we didn’t think we ought to try to carry her.
We had to do something quick, though ’cause she probably needed a doctor, too, so Poetry made me go on the run for the firewarden, while he stayed with the helpless girl. He would yell to us when we came back and flash his light so we could know where he and the girl were.
I tell you I ran, but I was trembling so much that it was hard for me to keep going.