Tom & Huck

The Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn of Idaho are Ward Alexander, 14, and Sam Bryant. 16. Last week they found the desperadoes who kidnaped Lieut. Governor W. B. Kinne.

One night last week Lieut. Governor Kinne was driving his automobile along the dark roads from Lewiston to Orofino. Before him, as the car dipped over knolls, swung around curves, the headlights hollowed out a bright cone of light in the enveloping blackness. Suddenly, into the bright cone, four men sprang from the roadside, shouted to him to halt. Before he knew it, Kinne was grovelling on the tonneau floor, a gun at his back. His car, with a stranger at the wheel, was streaking away at 60 m. p. h. A tire blew out. The car overturned. All five men were flung into a ditch, unhurt. W. L. Tribbey and Paul Kille, neighbors, drove up, offered help, were greeted with guns. Would-be Rescuer Kille was beaten over the head and shot in the leg. Captives Kinne, Kille and Tribbey were driven through the mountains, dumped in a field, tied up and deserted. They freed themselves, walked to nearby Greer and sent the alarm through three States. Soon the posses were out.

"Tom" Alexander and "Huck" Bryant joined the hunt but followed an idea of their own. They knew that the bushes along Potlatch Creek near Julietta make a perfect hideout. They went and looked. Sure enough, there lay four men asleep, and a fifth whom the alarms had not mentioned. The boys tiptoed away, came back with armed aid. The arrests were made without a fight. Lieut. Governor Kinne identified his four kidnapers. The police knew the fifth man as "Seattle George" Norman, Northwest desperado, leader of the gang. Kinne's abductors confessed they had sought to steal a car while Seattle George was laying plans for a bank robbery in Pierce.