Part 3 (1/2)

”Oh dear, oh dear, I wisht I was home!” sobbed Carl; but he started to run to Gertie's protection.

The Black Dutchman set down the lamp. ”_Wer ist da?_ I see you!

d.a.m.nation!” he roared, and lumbered out, seizing a pitchfork from the manure-pile.

Carl galloped up to Gertie, panting, ”He's after us!” and dragged her into the hazel-bushes beyond the corn-crib. As his country-bred feet found and followed a path toward deeper woods, he heard the Black Dutchman beating the bushes with his pitchfork, shouting:

”Hiding! I know vere you are! _Hah!_”

Carl jerked his companion forward till he lost the path. There was no light. They could only crawl on through the bushes, whose malicious fingers stung Gertie's face and plucked at her proud frills. He lifted her over fallen trees, freed her from branches, and all the time, between his own sobs, he encouraged her and tried to pretend that their incredible plight was not the end of the world, whimpering:

”We're a'most on the road now, Gertie; honest we are. I can't hear him now. I ain't afraid of him--he wouldn't dast hurt us or my pa would fix him.”

”Oh! I hear him! He's coming! Oh, please save me, Carl!”

”Gee! run fast!... Aw, I don't hear him. I ain't afraid of him!”

They burst out on a gra.s.sy woodland road and lay down, panting. They could see a strip of stars overhead; and the world was dark, silent, in the inscrutable night of autumn. Carl said nothing. He tried to make out where they were--where this road would take them. It might run deeper into the woods, which he did not know as he did the Arch environs; and he had so twisted through the brush that he could not tell in what direction lay either the main wagon-road or the M. & D.

track.

He lifted her up, and they plodded hand in hand till she said:

”I'm awful tired. It's awful cold. My feet hurt awfully. Carl dear, oh, plea.s.sssse take me home now. I want my mamma. Maybe she won't whip me now. It's so dark and--ohhhhhh----” She muttered, incoherently: ”There! By the road! He's waiting for us!” She sank down, her arm over her face, groaning, ”Don't hurt me!”

Carl straddled before her, on guard. There was a distorted ma.s.s crouched by the road just ahead. He tingled with the chill of fear, down through his thighs. He had lost his stick-saber, but he bent, felt for, and found another stick, and piped to the shadowy watcher:

”I ain't af-f-fraid of you! You gwan away from here!”

The watcher did not answer.

”I know who you are!” Bellowing with fear, Carl ran forward, furiously waving his stick and clamoring: ”You better not touch me!” The stick came down with a silly, flat clack upon the watcher--a roadside boulder. ”It's just a rock, Gertie! Jiminy, I'm glad! It's just a rock!... Aw, I knew it was a rock all the time! Ben Rusk gets scared every time he sees a stump in the woods, and he always thinks it's a robber.”

Chattily, Carl went back, lifted her again, endured her kissing his cheek, and they started on.

”I'm so cold,” Gertie moaned from time to time, till he offered:

”I'll try and build a fire. Maybe we better camp. I got a match what I swiped from the kitchen. Maybe I can make a fire, so we better camp.”

”I don't want to camp. I want to go home.”

”I don't know where we are, I told you.”

”Can you make a regular camp-fire? Like Indians?”

”Um-huh.”

”Let's.... But I rather go home.”

”_You_ ain't scared now. _Are_ you, Gertie? Gee! you're a' awful brave girl!”

”No, but I'm cold and I wisht we had some tea-biscuits----”