THE RESCUE
Johnnie caught her uncle's hand and ran with him through the little
thicket of saplings toward the main road.
"We'll get the track of the wheels, and when we find that car--and Shade
Buckheath--and Pap Himes....I ..." Johnnie panted, and did not finish
her sentence. Her heart leaped when they came upon the broad mark of the
pneumatic tires still fresh in the lonely mountain road.
"Looks like they might have passed here while we was standin' back there
talkin' to Roxy," Uncle Pros said. "They could have--we'd not have heard
a thing that distance, through this thick woods. Wonder could we catch
up with them?"
Johnnie shook her head. She remembered the car flying up the ascents,
swooping down long slopes and skimming like a bird across the levels,
that morning when she had driven it.
"They'll go almost as fast as a railroad train, Uncle Pros," she told
him, "but we must get there as soon as we can."
After that scarcely a word was spoken, while the two, still hand in
hand, made what speed they could. The morning waxed. The March sunshine
was warm and pleasant. It was even hot, toiling endlessly up that
mountain road. Now and again they met people who knew and saluted them,
and who looked back at them curiously, furtively; at least it seemed so
to the old man and the girl. Once a lean, hawk-nosed fellow ploughing a
hillside field shouted across it:
"Hey-oh, Pros Passmore! How yuh come on? I 'lowed the student doctors
would 'a' had you, long ago."
Pros ventured no reply, save a wagging of the head.
"That's Blaylock's cousin," he muttered to Johnnie. "Mighty glad we
never went near 'em last night."
Once or twice they were delayed to talk. Johnnie would have hurried on,
but her uncle warned her with a look to do nothing unusual. Everybody
spoke to them of Gray Stoddard. Nobody had seen anything of him within a
month of his disappearance, but several of them had "hearn say."
"They tell me," vouchsafed a lanky boy dawdling with his axe at a chip
pile, "that the word goes in Cottonville now, that he's took money and
lit out for Canada. Town folks is always a-doin' such."
"Like as not, bud," Pros assented gravely. "Me and Johnnie is goin' up
to look after the old house, but we allowed to sleep to-night at
Bushares's. Time enough to git to our place to-morrow."
Johnnie, who knew that her uncle hoped to reach the Consadine cabin by
noon, instantly understood that he considered the possibility of this
boy being a sort of picket posted to interview passers-by; and that the
intention was to misinform him, so that he should not carry news of
their approach.
After this, they met no one, but swung on at their best pace, and for
the most part in silence, husbanding strength and breath. Twelve o'clock
saw them entering that gash of the hills where the little cabin crouched
against the great mountain wall. The ground became so rocky, that the
track of the automobile was lost. At first it would be visible now and
again on a bit of sandy loam, chain marks showing, where the tire left
no impression; but, within a mile or so of the Consadine home, it seemed
to have left the trail. When this point arrived, Johnnie differed from
her uncle in choosing to hold to the road.
"Honey, this ends the cyar-tracks. Looks like they'd turned out. I think
they took off into the bushes here, and where that cyar goes we ought to
go," Pros argued.
But Johnnie hurried on ahead, looking about her eagerly. Suddenly she
stooped with a cry and picked up from the path a small object.
"They've carried him past this way," she panted. "Oh, Uncle Pros, he was
right here not so very long ago."
She scrutinized the sparse growth, the leafless bushes about the spot,
looking for signs of a struggle, and the question in her heart was, "My
God, was he alive or dead?" The thing she held in her hand was a blossom
of the pink moccasin flower, carefully pressed, as though for the pages
of a herbarium; The bit of paper to which it was attached was crumpled
and discoloured.
"Looks like it had laid out in the dew last night," breathed Johnnie.
"Or for a week," supplied Pros. He scanned the little brown thing, then
her face.
"All right," he said dubiously; "if that there tells you that he come
a-past here, we'll foller this road--though it 'pears to me like we
ought to stick to the cyar."
"It isn't far to our house," urged Johnnie. "Let's go there first,
anyhow."
For a few minutes they pressed ahead in silence; then some subtle
excitement made them break into a run. Thus they rounded the turn. The
cabin came in sight. Its door swung wide on complaining hinges. The last
of the rickety fence had fallen. The desolation and decay of a deserted
house was over all.
"There's been folks here--lately," panted Pros. "Look thar!" and he
pointed to a huddle of baskets and garments on the porch. "Mind out! Go
careful. They may be thar now."
They "went careful," stealing up the steps and entering with caution;
but they found nothing more alarming than the four bare walls, the
ash-strewn, fireless hearth, the musty smell of a long-unoccupied house.
Near the back door, at a spot where the dust was thick, Uncle Pros bent
to examine a foot-print, when an exclamation from Johnnie called him
through to the rear of the cabin.
"See the door!" she cried, running up the steep way toward the cave
spring-house.
"Hold on, honey. Go easy," cautioned her uncle, following as fast as he
could. He noted the whittling where the sapling bar that held the stout
oaken door in place had been recently shaped to its present purpose.
Then a soft, rhythmic sound like a giant breathing in his sleep caught
the old hunter's keen ear.
"Watch out, Johnnie," he called, catching her arm, "What's that?
Listen!"
Her fingers were almost on the bar. They could hear the soft lip-lip of
the water as it welled out beneath the threshold, mingled with the
tinkle and fall of the spring branch below.
Johnnie turned in her uncle's grasp and clutched him, staring down.
Something shining and dark, brave with brass and flashing lamps, stood
on the rocky way beneath, and purred like a great cat in the broad
sunlight of noon--Gray Stoddard's motor car! The two, clinging to each
other on the steep above it, gazed half incredulous, now that they had
found the thing they sought. It looked so unbelievably adequate and
modern and alive standing there, drawing its perfectly measured breath;
it was so eloquent of power and the work of men's hands that there
seemed to yawn a gap of half a thousand years between it and the raid in
which it was being made a factor. That this pet toy of the modern
millionaire should be set to work out the crude vengeance of wild men in
these primitive surroundings, crowded up on a little rocky path of these
savage mountains, at the door of a cave spring-house--such a food-cache
as a nomad Indian might have utilized, in the gray bluff against the
sky-line--it took the breath with its sinister strangeness.
They turned to the barred door. The cave was a sizable opening running
far back into the mountain; indeed, the end of it had never been
explored, but the vestibule containing the spring was fitted with rude
benches and shelves for holding pans of milk and jars of buttermilk.
As Johnnie's hand went out to the newly cut bar, her uncle once more
laid a restraining grasp upon it. A dozen men might be on the other side
of the oaken door, and there might be nobody.
"Hello!" he called, guardedly.
No answer came; but within there was a sound of clinking, and then a
shuffling movement. The panting motor spoke loud of those who had
brought it there, who must be expecting to return to it very shortly.
Johnnie's nerves gave way.
"Hello! Is there anybody inside?" she demanded fearfully.
"Who's there? Who is it?" came a muffled hail from the cave, in a voice
that sent the blood to Johnnie's heart with a sudden shock.
"Uncle Pros, we've found him!" she screamed, pushing the old man aside,
and tugging at the bar which held the door in place. As she worked,
there came a curious clinking sound, and then the dull impact of a heavy
fall; and when she dragged the bar loose, swung the door wide and peered
into the gloom, there was nothing but the silvery reach of the great
spring, and beyond it a prone figure in russet riding-clothes.
"Uncle Pros--he's hurt! Oh, help me!" she cried.
The prostrate man struggled to turn his face to them.
"Is that you, Johnnie?" Gray Stoddard's voice asked. "No, I'm not hurt.
These things tripped me up."
The two got to him simultaneously. They found him in heavy shackles.
They noted how ankle and wrist chains had been rivetted in place.
Together they helped him up.
As they did so tears ran down Johnnie's cheeks unregarded. Passmore
deeply moved, yet quiet, studied him covertly. This, then, was the man
of whom Johnnie thought so much, the rich young fellow who had left his
work or amusements to come and cheer a sick old man in the hospital;
this was the face that was a stranger's to him, but which had leaned
over his cot or sat across the checker-board from him for long hours,
while they talked or played together. That face was pale now, the brown
hair, "a little longer than other people wore it," tossed helplessly in
Stoddard's eyes, because he scarcely could raise his shackled hands to
put it right; his russet-brown clothing was torn and grimed, as though
with more than one struggle, though it may have been nothing worse than
such mishap as his recent fall. Yet the man's soul looked out of his
eyes with the same composure, the same kindness that always were his. He
was eaten by neither terror nor rage, though he was alert for every
possibility of help, or of advantage.
"You, Johnnie--you!" whispered Gray, struggling to his knees with their
assistance, and catching a fold of her dress in those manacled hands. "I
have dreamed about you here in the dark. It is you--it is
really Johnnie."
He was pale, dishevelled, with a long mark of black leaf-mould across
his cheek from his recent fall; and Johnnie bent speechlessly to wipe
the stain away and put back the troublesome lock. He looked up into the
brave beauty of her young, tear-wet face.
"Thank God for you, Johnnie," he murmured. "I might have known I
wouldn't be let to die here in the dark like a rat in a hole while
Johnnie lived."
"Whar's them that brought you here? The keepers?" questioned the old man
anxiously, in a hoarse, hurried whisper.
"Dawson's gone to his dinner," returned Gray. "There were others
here--came in an auto--I heard that. They've been quarrelling for more
than an hour."
--"About what they'd do with you," broke in Pros. "Yes, part of 'em
wants to put you out of the way, of course." He stooped, eagerly
examining the shackles on Gray's ankles. "No way to git them things off
without time and a file," he muttered, shaking his head.
"No," agreed Stoddard. "And I can't run much with them on. But we must
get away from here as quick as we can. Dawson came in and told me after
the other had gone that they had a big row, and he was standing out for
me. Said he'd never give in to have me taken down and tied on the
railroad track in Stryver's Gulch."
Johnnie's fair face whitened at the sinister words.
"The car!" she cried. "It's your own, Mr. Stoddard, and it's right down
here. Uncle Pros, we can get him to it--I can run it--I know how." She
put her shoulder under Stoddard's, catching the manacled hand in hers.
Pros laid hold on the other side, and between them they half carried the
shackled captive around the spring and to the door.
"Leggo, Johnnie!" cried her uncle. "You run on down and see if that
contraption will go. I can git him thar now."
Johnnie instantly loosed the arm she held, sprang through the doorway,
and headlong down the bluffy steep, stones rattling about her. She
leaped into the car. Would her memory serve her? Would she forget some
detail that she must know? There were two levers under the
steering-wheel. She advanced her spark and partly opened the throttle.
From the steady, comfortable purr which had undertoned all sounds in the
tiny glen, the machine burst at once into a deep-toned roar. The narrow
depression vibrated with its joyous clamour.
Suddenly, above the sound, Johnnie was aware of a distant hail, which
finally resolved itself into words.
"Hi! Hoo--ee! You let that car alone, whoever you are."
She glanced over her shoulder; Passmore had got Gray to the top of the
declivity, and was attempting to help him down. Both men evidently heard
the challenge, but she screamed to them again and again.
"Hurry, oh hurry! They're coming--they're coming."
Stoddard had been stepping as best he could, hobbling along in the
hampering leg chains, that were attached to the wrists also, and
twitched on his hands with every step. His muscles responded to
Johnnie's cry almost automatically, stiffening to an effort at extra
speed, and he fell headlong, dragging Pros down with him. Despairingly
Johnnie started to climb down from the car and go to their aid, but her
uncle leaped to his feet clawing and grabbing to find a hold around
Gray's waist, panting out, "Stay thar--Johnnie--I can fetch him."
With a straining heave he hoisted Gray's helpless body into his arms.
The car trembled like a great, eager monster, growling in leash.
Johnnie's agonized eyes searched first its mechanism, and then went to
the descending figures, where her uncle plunged desperately down the
slope, fell, struggled, rolled, but rose and came gallantly on, half
dragging, half carrying Gray in his arms.
"Let that car alone!" a new voice took up the hail, a little nearer this
time; and after it came the sound of a shot. High up on the mountain's
brow, against the sky, Johnnie caught a glimpse of the heads and
shoulders of men, with the slanting bar of a gun barrel over one.
"Oh, hurry, Uncle Pros!" she sobbed. "Let me come back and help you."
But Passmore stumbled across the remaining space; mutely, with drawn
face and loud, labouring breath he lifted Gray and thrust him any
fashion into the tonneau, climbing blindly after.
The pursuit on the hill above broke into the open. Johnnie moved the
levers as Gray had shown her how to do, and with a bound of the great
machine, they were off. Stoddard, dazed, bruised, abraded, was back in
the tonneau struggling up with Uncle Pros's assistance. He could not
help her. She must know for herself and do the right thing. The track
led through the bushes, as they had found it that morning. It was fairly
good, but terribly steep. She noted that the speed lever was at neutral.
She slipped it over to the first speed; the car was already leaping down
the hill at a tremendous pace; yet those yelling voices were behind, and
her pushing fingers carried the lever through second to the third speed
without pausing.
Under this tremendous pressure the car jumped like a nervous horse,
lurched drunkenly down the short way, but reeled successfully around the
turn at the bottom. Johnnie knew this was going too fast. She debated
the possibility of slackening the speed a bit as they struck the
highway, such as it was. Uncle Pros, yet gasping, was trying to help
Gray into the seat; but with his hampering manacles and the jerking of
the car, the younger man was still on his knees, when the chase burst
through the bushes, scarcely more than three hundred feet behind them.
There was a hoarse baying of men's voices; there were four of them
running hard, and two carried guns. The noise of the machine, of course,
prevented its occupants from distinguishing any word, but the menace of
the open pursuit was apparent.
"Johnnie!" cried Gray. "Oh, this won't do! For God's sake, Mr. Passmore,
help me over there. They wouldn't want to hurt her--but they're going to
shoot. She--"
The old man thrust Gray down, with a hand on his shoulder.
"You keep out o' range," he shouted close to Gray's ear. "They won't aim
to hit Johnnie; but you they'll pick off as far as they can see ye. Bend
low, honey," to the girl in the driver's seat. "But freeze to it.
Johnnie ain't no niece of mine if she goes back on a friend."
The girl in front heard neither of them. There was a bellowing
detonation, and a spatter of shot fell about the flying car.
"That ain't goin' to hurt nobody," commented Pros philosophically. "It's
no more than buck-shot anyhow."
[Illustration: THE CAR WAS ALREADY LEAPING DOWN THE HILL AT A TREMENDOUS
PACE]
But on the word followed a more ominous crack, and there was the whine
of a bullet above them.
"My God, I can't let her do this," Gray protested. But Johnnie turned
over her shoulder a shining face from which all weariness had suddenly
been erased, a glorified countenance that flung him the fleeting smile
she had time to spare from the machine.
"You're in worse danger right now from my driving than you are from
their guns," she panted.
As she spoke there sounded once more the ripping crack of a rifle, the
singing of a bullet past them, and with it the flatter, louder noise of
the shot-gun was repeated. Her eye in the act of turning to her task,
caught the silhouette of old Gideon Himes's uncouth figure relieved
against the noonday sky, as he sprang high, both arms flung up, the
hands empty and clutching, and pitched headlong to his face. But her
mind scarcely registered the impression, for a rifle ball struck the
shaly edge of a bluff under which the road at this point ran, and tore
loose a piece of the slate-like rock, which glanced whirling into the
tonneau and grazed Gray Stoddard's temple. He fell forward, crumpling
down into the bottom of the vehicle.
"On--go on, honey!" yelled Pros, motioning vehemently to the girl.
"Don't look back here--I'll tend to him"; and he stooped over the
motionless form.
Then came the roaring impression of speed, of rushing bushes that
gathered themselves and ran back past the car while, working under full
power, it stood stationary, as it seemed to Johnnie, in the middle of a
long, dusty gray ribbon that was the road. The cries of the men behind
them, all sounds of pursuit, were soon left so far in the distance that
they were unheard.
"Ain't this rather fast?" shouted Uncle Pros, who had lifted Stoddard's
bleeding head to his knee and, crouched on the bottom of the tonneau,
was shielding the younger man from further injury as the motor lurched
and pitched.
"Yes, it's too fast," Johnnie screamed back to him. "I'm trying to go
slower, but the foot-brake won't hold. Uncle Pros, is he hurt? Is he
hurt bad?"
"I don't think so, honey," roared the old man stoutly, guarding Gray's
inert body with his arm. Then, stretching up as he kneeled, and leaning
forward as close to her ear as he could get: "But you git him to
Cottonville quick as you can. Don't you werry about goin' slow, unlessen
you're scared yourself. Thar ain't no tellin' who might pop up from
behind these here bushes and take a chance shot at us as we go by."
Johnnie worked over her machine wildly. Gray had told her of the
foot-brake only; but her hand encountering the lever of the emergency
brake, she grasped it at a hazard and shoved it forward, as the god of
luck had ordered, just short of a zigzag in the steep mountain road
which, at the speed they had been making, would have piled them, a mass
of wreckage, beneath the cliff.
The sudden, violent check--shooting along at the speed they were, it
amounted almost to a stoppage--gave the girl a sense of power. If she
could do that, they were fairly safe. With the relief, her brain
cleared; she was able to study the machine with some calmness. Gray
could not help her--out of the side of her eye she could see where he
lay inert and senseless in Passmore's hold. The lives of all three
depended on her cool head at this moment. She remembered now all that
Stoddard had said the morning he taught her to run the car. With one
movement she threw off the switch, thus stopping the engine, entirely.
They must make it to Cottonville running by gravity wherever they could;
since she had no means of knowing that there was sufficient gasoline in
the tank, and it would not do to be overtaken or waylaid.
On and on they flew, around quick turns, along narrow ways that skirted
tall bluffs, over stretches of comparatively level road, where Johnnie
again switched on the engine and speeded up. They were skimming down
from the upper Unakas like a great bird whose powerful wings make
nothing of distance. But Johnnie's heart was as lead when she glanced
back at the motionless figure in the tonneau, the white, blood-streaked
face that lay on her uncle's arm. She turned doggedly to her
steering-wheel and levers, and took greater chances than ever with the
going, for speed's sake. The boy they had talked with two hours before
at the chip pile, met them afoot. He leaped into the bushes to let them
pass, and stared after them with dilated eyes. Johnnie never knew what
he shouted. They only saw his mouth open and working. Mercifully, so
far, they had met no vehicles. But now the higher, wilder mountains were
behind them, there was an occasional horseman. As they neared
Cottonville, and teams were numerous on the road, Johnnie, jealously
unwilling to slacken speed, kept the horn going almost continuously.
People in wagons and buggies, or on foot, drawn out along the roadside,
cupped hands to lips and yelled startled inquiries. Johnnie bent above
the steering-wheel and paid no attention. Uncle Pros tried to answer
with gesticulation or a shouted word, and sometimes those he replied to
turned and ran, calling to others. But it was black Jim, riding on Roan
Sultan, out with the searchers, who saw and understood. He looked down
across the great two-mile turn beyond the Gap, and sighted the climbing
car. Where he stood it was less than an eighth of a mile below him; he
could almost have thrown a stone into it. He bent in his saddle, shaded
his eyes, and gazed intently.
"Fo' God!" he muttered under his breath. "That's Mr. Gray hisself!
Them's the clothes he was wearin'!"
Whirling his horse and digging in the spurs, he rattled pell-mell down
the opposite steep toward Cottonville, shouting as he went.
"They've done got him--they've found him! Miss Johnnie Consadine's
a-bringin' him down in his own cyar!"
At the Hardwick place, where the front lawn sloped down with its
close-trimmed, green-velvet sward, stood two horses. Charlie Conroy had
come out as soon as the alarm was raised to help with the search. He and
Lydia had ridden together each day since. Moving slowly along a quiet
ravine yesterday, out of sight and hearing of the other searchers,
Conroy had found an intimate moment in which to urge his suit. She had
begged a little time to consider, with so encouraging an aspect that,
this morning, when he came out that they might join the party bound for
the mountains, he brought the ring in his pocket. The bulge of the big
diamond showed through her left-hand glove. She had taken him at last.
She told herself that it was the only thing to do. Harriet Hardwick, who
had returned from Watauga, since her sister would not come to her, stood
in the door of the big house regarding them with a countenance of
distinctly chastened rejoicing. Conroy's own frame of mind was evident;
deep satisfaction radiated from his commonplace countenance. He was to
be Jerome Hardwick's brother-in-law, an intimate member of the mill
crowd. He was as near being in love with Lydia Sessions at that moment
as he ever would be. As for Lydia herself, the last week had brought
that thin face of hers to look all of its thirty odd years; and the
smile which she turned upon her affianced was the product of
conscientious effort. She was safely in her saddle, and Conroy had just
swung up to his own, when Jim came pelting down the Gap road toward the
village. They could see him across the slope of the hill. Conroy
cantered hastily up the street a bit to hear what the boy was
vociferating. Lydia's nerves quivered at sight of him returning.
"Hurrah! Hurrah!" shouted Conroy, waving his cap. "Lord, Lord; Did you
hear that, Lydia? Hoo-ee, Mrs. Hardwick! Did you hear what Jim's saying?
They've got Gray! Johnnie Consadine's bringing him--in his own car."
Then turning once more to his companion: "Come on, dear; we'll ride
right down to the hospital. Jim said he was hurt. That's where she would
take him. That Johnnie Consadine of yours is the girl--isn't she a
wonder, though?"
Lydia braced herself. It had come, and it was worse than she could have
anticipated. She cringed inwardly in remembrance; she wished she had not
let Conroy make that pitying reference--unreproved, uncorrected--to
Stoddard's being a rejected man. But perhaps they were bringing Gray in
dead, after all--she tried not to hope so.
The auto became visible, a tiny dark speck, away up in the Gap. Then it
was sweeping down the Gap road; and once more Conroy swung his cap and
shouted, though it is to be questioned that any one marked him.
Below in the village the noisy clatter brought people to door and
casement. At the Himes boarding-house, a group had gathered by the gate.
At the window above, in an arm-chair, sat a thin little woman with great
dark eyes, holding a sick child in her lap. The sash was up, and both
were carefully wrapped in a big shawl that was drawn over the two
of them.
"Sis' Johnnie is comin' back; she sure is comin' back soon," Laurella
was crooning to her baby. "And we ain't goin' to work in no cotton mill,
an' we ain't goin' to live in this ol' house any more. Next thing we're
a-goin' away with Sis' Johnnie and have a fi-ine house, where Pap Himes
can't come about to be cross to Deanie."
High up on Unaka Mountain, where a cluttered mass of rock reared itself
to front the noonday sun, an old man's figure, prone, the hands clutched
full of leaf-mould, the gray face down amid the fern, Gideon Himes would
never offer denial to those plans, nor seek to follow to that
fine house.
The next moment an automobile flashed into sight coming down the long
lower slope from the Gap, the horn blowing continuously, horsemen,
pedestrians, buggies and wagons fleeing to the roadside bushes as it
roared past in its cloud of dust.
"Look, honey, look--yon's Sis' Johnnie now!" cried Laurella. "She's
a-runnin' Mr. Stoddard's car. An' thar's Unc' Pros ... Is--my Lord! Is
that Mr. Stoddard hisself, with blood all over him?"
Lydia and Conroy, hurrying down the street, drew up on the fringes of
the little crowd that had gathered and was augmenting every moment, and
Johnnie's face was turned to Stoddard in piteous questioning. His eyes
were open now. He raised himself a bit on her uncle's arm, and declared
in a fairly audible voice:
"I'm all right. I'm not hurt."
"Somebody git me a glass of water," called Uncle Pros.
Mavity Bence ran out with one, but when she got close enough to see
plainly the shackled figure Passmore supported, she thrust the glass
into Mandy Meacham's hand and flung her apron over her head.
"Good Lord!" she moaned. "I reckon they've killed him. They done one of
my brothers that-a-way in feud times, and throwed him over a bluff. Oh,
my Lord; Why will men be so mean?"
Pros had taken the glass from Mandy and held it to Gray's lips. Then he
dashed part of the remaining water on Stoddard's handkerchief and with
Mandy's help, got the blood cleared away.
From every shanty, women and children came hastening--men hurried up
from every direction.
"Look at her--look at Johnnie!" cried Beulah Catlett. "Pony! Milo!"
turning back into the house, where the boys lay sleeping. "Come out here
and look at your sister!"
"Did ye run it all by yourself, Sis' Johnnie?" piped Lissy from the
porch.
The girl in the driver's seat smiled and nodded to the child.
"Are you through there, Uncle Pros?" asked Johnnie. "We must get Mr.
Stoddard on to his house."
The women and children drew back, the crowd ahead parted, and the car
got under way once more. The entire press of people followed in its
wake, surged about it, augmenting at every corner.
"I'm afraid my horse won't stand this sort of thing," Lydia objected,
desperately, reining in. Conroy glanced at her in surprise. Bay Dick was
the soberest of mounts. Then he looked wistfully after the crowd.
"Would you mind if I--" he began, and broke off to say contritely, "I'll
go back with you if you'd rather." It was evident that Lydia would make
of him a thoroughly disciplined husband.
"Never mind," she said, locking her teeth. "I'll go with you." One might
as well have it done and over with. And they hurried on to make up for
lost time.
They saw the car turn in to the street which led to the Hardwick
factory. Somebody had hurried ahead and told MacPherson and Jerome
Hardwick; and just as they came in sight, the office doors burst open
and the two men came running hatless down the steps. Suddenly the
factory whistles roared out the signal that had been agreed upon, which
bellowed to the hills the tidings that Gray Stoddard was found. Three
long calls and a short one--that meant that he was found alive. As the
din of it died down, Hexter's mills across the creek took up the
message, and when they were silent, the old Victory came in on their
heels, bawling it again. Every whistle in Cottonville gave tongue,
clamouring hoarsely above the valley, and out across the ranges, to the
hundreds at their futile search, "Gray Stoddard is found. Stoddard is
found. Alive. He is brought in alive."
MacPherson ran up to one side of the car and Hardwick to the other.
"Are you hurt?" inquired the Scotchman, his hands stretched out.
"Can you get out and come in?" Hardwick demanded eagerly.
On the instant, the big gates swung wide, the factory poured out a tide
of people as though the building had been afire. At sight of Stoddard,
the car, and Johnnie, a cheer went up, spontaneous, heart-shaking.
"My God--look at that!" MacPherson's eyes had encountered the shackles
on Stoddard's wrists.
"Lift him down--lift him out," cried Jerome Hardwick. With tears on his
tanned cheeks the Scotchman complied; and Hardwick's eyes, too, were wet
as he saw it.
"We'll have those things off of him in no time," he shouted. "Here,
let's get him in to the couch in my office. Send some of the mechanics
here. Where's Shade Buckheath?"
A dozen pairs of hands were stretched up to assist MacPherson and Pros
Passmore. As many as could get to the rescued man helped. And when the
crowd saw that shackled figure raised, and heard in the tense silence
the clinking sound of the chains, a low groan went through it; more than
one woman sobbed aloud. But at this Gray raised his head a bit, and once
more declared in a fairly strong voice:
"I'm not hurt, people--only a little crack on the head. I'm all
right--thanks to her," and he motioned toward the girl in the car, who
was watching anxiously.
Then the ever thickening throng went wild; and as Gray was carried up
the steps and disappeared through the office doors, it turned toward the
automobile, surging about the car, a sea of friendly, admiring faces,
most of them touched with the tenderness of tears, and cheered its very
heart out for Johnnie Consadine.