Part 15 (1/2)

”Well, then, get David's coat from the car,” she pleaded.

”Will you stand back in the shadow of that tree until I do?” he asked.

He had caught across the fire a glimpse of the restive Hobson and a sudden mad desire prompted him to s.n.a.t.c.h this one joy from Fate, come what would--just a few hours with her under the winter stars, when life seemed to offer so little in the count of the years.

”Why, yes, of course! Did you think I'd dare go out in the dark alone, without you?” and her joyous ingenuous casting of herself upon his protection was positively poignant. ”Hurry, please, because I--don't want anybody to find me before you come!” After which request it took him very little time to run across the lot and vault the fence into the road where the electric stood.

”It's so uncertain how things arrange themselves sometimes, some places,”

she remarked to herself as she caught sight of the movements of the foiled Hobson, whose search had now become an open maneuver.

Suddenly she laid her cheek against the arm of the sweater and sniffed it with her delicate nose--yes, there was the undeniable fragrance of the major's Seven Oaks heart-leaf. ”He steals the tobacco, too,” she again remarked to herself as she caught sight of him skirting the fires as he returned.

Just at this moment a pandemonium of yelps, barks, bays and yells broke forth up the ravine and declared the hunt on.

”Everybody follow the dogs and keep within hearing distance! We'll wait for the trailers to come up when we tree before we shake down!” shouted David as with one accord the whole company plunged into the woods.

Away from the fire, the starlight, which was beginning to be reinforced by the glow from a late old moon, was bright enough to keep the rush up the ravine, over log and boulder, through tangle and across open, a not too dangerous foray.

The first hurdle was a six-rail fence that snaked its way between a frozen meadow and a woods lot. David stationed himself on the far side of the lowest and strongest panel and proceeded to swing down the girls whom Hob and Tom persuaded to the top rail.

The champion for the rights of women took long and much a.s.sistance for the mount and entrusted her somewhat bulky self to the strong arms of David Kildare with a feminine dependence that almost succeeded in cracking those stalwart supports.

Polly climbed two rails, put her hand on the top and vaulted like a boy almost into the embrace of young Ma.s.sachusetts and together they raced after the dogs, who were adding tumult to the hitherto pandemonium of the hot trail.

Tom Cantrell managed Mrs. Cherry most deftly and seemed anxious to direct David in the landing though she was most willing to trust it entirely to him. After hurrying Phoebe to the top rail he vaulted lightly to the side of David and departed in haste, taking the reluctant widow with him by main force.

Phoebe perched herself on the top of the fence, which brought her head somewhat above the level of David's, and seemed in no hurry to descend in order to be at the shake-down, which from the shouts and yelps seemed imminent.

”Ready, or want to rest a minute?” asked David gently; but his eyes looked past hers and there was the shadow of reserve in his voice.

”No,” answered Phoebe, ”but you must be tired so I'll just slip down,”

and she essayed to cheat him with the utmost treachery. David neither spoke nor looked at her directly but took her quietly in his arms and swung her to the ground beside him.

Now this was not the first pursuit of the possum that had been attended by Phoebe in the company of David Kildare, and she was prepared for the audacious hint of a squeeze, with which he usually took his toll and which she always ignored utterly with reproving intent; the more reproving on the one or two occasions when she had been tempted into yielding to the caress for the remotest fraction of a second. But for every snub in the fence events that had been pulled off between them in the past years, David was fully revenged by the impa.s.sive landing of Phoebe on the dry and frozen gra.s.s at his side. Revenged--and there was something over that was cutting into her adamant heart like a two-edge marble saw.

But Phoebe had been born a thoroughbred and it was head up and run as she saw in a second, so she smiled up at him and said in a perfectly friendly tone:

”I really don't think we'd better wait for Caroline and Andrew. Do let's hurry, for they've treed, and I think those dogs will go mad in a moment!” And together they disappeared in the woodland.

Around a tall tree that stood on the slope of the hill they found a scene that was uproar rampant. Five maddened dogs gazed aloft into the gnarled branches of the persimmon king and danced and jumped to the accompaniment of one another's insane yelps. A half-dozen negro boys were in the same att.i.tude and state of mind, and the tension was immense.

Polly gasped and giggled and the suffrage lady almost became entangled with the waltzing dogs in her endeavor to sight the quarry.

”Dar he am!” exclaimed the blackest satyr, and he pointed to one of the lower limbs from which there hung by the tail the most pathetic little bunch of bristles imaginable. ”Le'me shake him down, Mister David, I foun' him!”

”All right, s.h.i.+n up, but mind the limbs,” answered David. ”And you, Jake, get the dogs in hand! We want to take home possums, not full dogs!”

And like an agile ape the darky swung himself up and out on the low limb.

”Here he come!” he shouted, and ducked to give a jerk that shook the whole limb.