Barry Lincoln was helping Sam Fitch to build a fence for his chicken
run. The Fitch place stood up and back from the street on a slight
elevation among a grove of light maples. The chicken run was higher up
the hill to one side and commanded a wide view of the road winding round
to the bridge, and over into the woods. It was the last house on the
street as you went toward Frogtown from the south end of Silver Sands.
Barry had just pounded his thumb trying to straighten a refractory nail,
and had thrown down the hammer and stuck the soiled thumb in his mouth
when the flash of a scarlet hat, and the flutter of scarlet tulle came
into sight down the road. For an instant he stared in astonishment for
such a sight was not native to Silver Sands and Barry knew everybody
that lived there, by sight at least. Then something familiar in the
swagger of the plump figure struck him and he drew his brows in a frown
and turned a quick look at Sam.
Sam was down on his hands and knees with his back to the street nailing
wire to the base. He would not be likely to see her. Barry stooped and
picked up his hammer, and began a tremendous pounding on the corner
post, straightening another nail, his weather eye to the road, unheeding
the blood which was streaming from his bruised thumb.
At just the right instant as Athalie passed behind the group of tall
cedars and was for a few seconds lost to view, he threw down his hammer
with an exclamation, and called to Sam in an imperative voice:
“Oh, I say, Sam, run to the house quick and get me a rag to do up this
blamed thing. It’s bleedin’ like the deuce!”
Sam accustomed to obey Barry, his baseball idol, dropped his own hammer
instantly and with a sympathetic glance toward his wounded companion
steamed toward the house without delay. When he returned with the
required rag and a bottle of arnica Athalie was well across the bridge.
A tumult of thoughts was running through Barry’s brain, foremost among
them the telephone conversation he had overheard the day before. Vaguely
in the background the sudden flash of coral and silver draperies and
little shiny slippers, the tempest of words he had heard in the Silver
hall the evening before, with the stormy sobs, lasting long after the
music had begun. How much responsibility had he, Barry Lincoln, for this
strange fat specimen of womanhood who wore pants and made appointments
over the telephone to meet men from the city agreeing to stay till all
hours of the night? Barry Lincoln’s code was a simple one, but it had an
old-fashioned twist to its ideas of womanhood. His mother was a sweet
faced, sad-eyed little widow who wore plain black dresses and did her
hair smoothly except for the satiny crinkle of it around the edges of
her forehead. She had given him the habit of a clean mind in the midst
of a wicked and perverse world, and he somehow patterned his ideas of
Girl and what she should be on a picture of his mother taken just before
she was married, when the light of joy was in her face and her eyes were
like reflections of the kingdom of heaven. Barry knew a whole lot more
about the world than his mother had ever told him, but he had kept his
clean habit of mind, and any deviation from it on the part of a woman,
especially a young woman, gave him always a feeling of nausea. However,
this was something no one would ever have guessed. Barry was one who
told not his thoughts among men.
So, now, when he saw this poor little daughter of Eve taking her way
toward the path of temptation he was not interested. But the memory of a
haunted look in her father’s eyes the night before and the good
comradeship he had offered on the evening of the fire, together with the
lingering fragrance of cookies imbibed now laid upon Barry’s conscience
a duty toward his fellowman. If this girl was really going on an
unlawful holiday which might bring pain and shame to his friend, ought
he not in all loyalty to that friend to do something about it?
Out of the tail of his eye he watched the scarlet flash as it followed
along the line of the road, crossed the bridge, left the road and crept
up the hill toward the woods. He sat down on the doorstep and kept Sam’s
back to the hillside until the scarlet hat and the dark cloak
disappeared into the woods, and only glimmered unnoticeably among the
young leaves as it went farther and farther away from the road. At last
his mind was made up.
“Doggone it, Sam, now that hand’s goin’ to be no good today. Wha’d I
have to pound that for? Clumsy! Say, Sam, les finish this t’morra.
What’d’ya say we take a day off and go see if we can find Beazley? He
ought to be back home from his aunt’s by this time and it isn’t much of
a run over to the Corners. Say, you go get the roadster and run her over
to the Pike, an’ I’ll skip across to the creek where I was yesterday
morning and see if I can find my knife. I’ll meet you up by the old camp
entrance in about fifteen minutes. But if it’s half an hour or longer
you stick, for I’ll be there! Beat it now, and don’t talk, Sam. Remember
to keep yer mouth shut!”
Sam hurried away with a light of eagerness in his eyes and Barry arose
and took long strides across the fields toward a spot in the landscape a
quarter of a mile to the north of where Athalie had entered the woods.
As he disappeared among the undergrowth he cast a speculative eye to the
distant road, but no one was to be seen as yet.
Now the “roadster” above-mentioned was as much a part of Barry Lincoln’s
existence as his dog or his fishing rod or anything but his mother. It
was called the “roadster” by courtesy because it could get over the road
so rapidly, but there was nothing about it that would have suggested
that name in the modern acceptation of the term. It was ancient and worn
and stripped of everything that it could be stripped of and be. It
consisted merely of its throbbing loyal heart, its four wheels, and
enough timber and metal to keep them from flying apart when they went
catapulting through space. However Barry and whomever he elected to take
with him as a companion managed to stick on and always come home alive
was a continual wonder in Silver Sands. People told Mrs. Lincoln that
they didn’t see how she stood it having her son go off in that awful
thing, that it wasn’t safe and it wasn’t Christian, and he always looked
as if he was going to destruction and was glad of it, that they should
think it would affect his morality, a boy like that to own an infernal
machine. He was in daily danger of becoming a murderer!
And besides, how could they _afford_ to keep it!
When they twisted on that prying look and said that about affording—it
was usually the people for whom she did plain sewing that said
that—Barry’s mother always crinkled up her lips into a smile that let
little gold lights into her brown eyes and made her look like Barry, and
answered always quite pleasantly:
“Oh, the old roadster is one of the family. We couldn’t live without
that. Barry never has killed anybody yet. I hope he never will.” And she
never even reminded them how he had saved a girl’s life once with it,
running after a machine that had got out of her control, nor how he
rushed Tad Moffat to the hospital in the city in time to save his hand,
the time he got it caught in the reaper.
But if you had asked the boys of the town about the old roadster they
would have told you that Barry made it “out of pieces of nothin’ off the
junk heap behind the garage” and that its chief characteristic was that
it could “go like the devil.”
It was this same go-devil that Sam climbed into, as it stood waiting
under its oilcloth lean-to beside the Lincoln cottage, and presently
shot out of the yard and around the Creek road toward the Pike, a proud
lad that Barry had selected him to run his car.
Barry himself had rustled across the creek by a route well known to
himself, and stolen up to a favorite rendezvous of his own near an old
tree under which he often sat by the hour fishing, looking down from his
perch on a rock into the limpid stream below, or swinging up in the
trusty branches above, from limb to limb till he reached a point where
all the woods was an open book and himself enveloped in foliage.
It was to this point of vantage that he now hastened, silently,
stealthily, as only such as he knew how to go. The tree was the tallest
in all the region round about. Looking east from its height he could see
the Flats of Frogtown with the gleaming water and Silver Sands shining
in the late afternoon sun. Between him and the Flats wound the smooth
white ribbon of a road, and far as he could see a black speck sped like
a spider down its thread. He watched it an instant and then his eyes
scanned the hillside below him, down through the trees. Yes, there was a
gleam of scarlet. Her hat. She had thrown it on the ground and was
sitting on the log. Her scarlet frock was spread about her radiantly
like a splash of vermilion in the spring newness of green. She seemed
like some great scarlet tanager waiting for its mate. Yet when she
lifted her face to look up at the strangeness of her surroundings, her
bare neck and arms, her painted lips and pencilled brows, the white,
white whiteness of her face seemed out of place there in the holy quiet
of nature’s temple, a parody on a living soul, stark and shameless in a
setting of God’s things as they are. Something of this thought perhaps
entered the boy’s mind as he saw her first, half startled to realize how
near he was to her trysting place, half tempted to slide quietly down
and slip away before she discovered him.
Yet her waiting, listening attitude held him. She was evidently
expecting someone. If the guy she had phoned up should turn out to be an
all-right fellow, why then he would just make a quiet getaway and join
Sam, and no one the wiser. If, on the other hand, he should turn out to
be one of these fresh rotters from the city he could let him know where
to get off and see that no harm came to that silly little simp down
there, just for the sake of her father who was a good old scout.
Presently Barry turned his eyes westward and noted the “roadster”
darting along like a small black bug as if it had the speed of a
thousand-legger. He watched it to the Pike, and knew when it passed
behind the old red barn that Sam would be waiting there for him should
it be ten minutes hence or ten hours. Then he glanced to the south and
saw the other car, coming at full speed down toward the bridge. Now, if
he was right this would be his city man. There were two other cars
coming, Eli Ward’s old gray limousine that he bought for two hundred and
fifty dollars and fixed up himself, and the grocery delivery, speeding
recklessly back from the afternoon rounds. But this was a strange car he
saw at a glance, and presently it came to a halt, just below the group
of chestnut trees, and a head came out and looked around. The car jerked
on a few feet farther and the man got out, looking around him
uncertainly. He measured the distance from the bridge with his eye and
began an ascent at random, looking this way and that, furtively. As he
came on there were places where the branches were thin and his face was
in full view. Barry studied him curiously. He was tall and thick set,
with a heavy jowl and a tiny black moustache over his full red lips. He
had taken off his hat and was mopping his face. The climb seemed to be
hard on him. As he looked up once the boy was astonished to see that he
was not young and that there were bags under his eyes, puffy places that
belonged to a high liver.
“He’s old enough to be her grandfather!” thought Barry disgustedly,
“what a doggone little fool!”
Athalie arose and poised on the log with outspread arms, and the man
cautiously approached, a hungry bestial glint in his eye that the boy in
the tree resented.
“He’s rotten!” said the boy to himself. “Gosh! what’ll I do about this?
Her father oughtta keep her in! Gee!”
The man was upbraiding Athalie for coming in such a noticeable dress.
“Are you sure nobody saw you come?” he asked her in a surly tone
smoothing the plumpness of her bare arms with his well groomed hand as
he talked. “It won’t do to have your dad get onto us,” he added, “you’ve
got to be careful you know.”
Athalie pouted, and the man talked to her in a low rumble. Barry could
not hear many words. He wished he were well out of that tree and back
making a chicken run. He wished he had never gone to that fire in
Frogtown nor met the new Silver man, nor taken his old worms to him.
Heck! What a mess! What did folks want to be fools for?
The word “divorce” floated up once, and then something about the state
line. He heard Athalie protest that she must go home and get on a white
dress, but the man insisted that he could not wait, it was now or never.
What on earth did it all mean? The state line was miles to the south.
Premonition filled his breast. That man certainly was a rotter. He
wished he could get down and punch his head, but it didn’t seem to be
advisable at the moment. He didn’t know enough about things to
interfere. Maybe the man was just wanting to take her back to her
mother. Her mother was divorced from her father. _Sure_, that was it.
Some conspiracy to get her away to her mother again. Well, why worry?
Wouldn’t that be a good thing for Mr. Greeves? From all he had heard the
night before, and all the gossip that had been going around the town
that day, he would not expect his new friend to be deeply grieved at his
daughter’s disappearance. And yet—he didn’t like that man’s face! Of
course he might be her uncle or something come after her. But anyhow, he
didn’t like the way the man felt of her wrist. It wasn’t nice. Gosh, she
was just a kid! Just a foolish little kid. She was too fat of course.
She’d been eating too much candy and soda water. If she’d only get into
condition, and take a little training she’d be all right. Gosh! He’d
like to punch that man’s head even if he _was_ her uncle!
While he was thinking these things the two below him suddenly got up and
began to move down toward the road. The man made the girl put on her
cloak and turn the white fur inside out of sight. He made her hold up
her scarlet dress so it wouldn’t show below the black, and tuck her red
hat under the cloak, and then he pointed down the road to where a clump
of bushes were embowered with wild honeysuckle, close to the roadside
making a complete refuge, and the girl hurried off and crept under it.
The man waited, hidden in the grove till the bread wagon passed by, and
then went down to where he had parked his car.
A few rods up the hill in a shelter of laurel bushes a tramp looked out
with greedy eyes like an old bird of prey and watched the girl.
Barry waited only long enough to see the man turn about, drive to the
honeysuckle harbor and stop. Then he began quickly to slide down the
tree. As he reached the ground he heard the purr of the engine starting
again, and his feet hardly touched the sod as he sprang away along the
ridge above the creek to where a log spanned the water, across like a
bird in flight, and up the opposite bank he ran. Now this field, and the
roadster waited for him.
“Over!” he shouted to Sam as he came panting up the hill and vaulted the
fence, “we gotta hurry! Took me longer’n I expected.”
“Got’cher knife?” queried Sam as he moved over and gave Barry the wheel.
“Yep,” said Barry pulling his knife out of his pocket for a brief
glimpse and started his engine.
“Say, which way you going, Blink? You don’t wantta turn round. I turned
here a purpose. You said you were going after Beazley.”
“That’s all right, Sam. We gotta make the state line now before another
guy gets there. You sit tight.”
Sam perceived that Blink had had one of his inspirations. This was an
expedition! He settled his lank length on the airy structure of his seat
and prepared to enjoy himself. Sam had pale blue eyes under golden
lashes, carroty straight hair that stuck up like bristles, a gaunt
mouth, and was peppered with freckles. He remembered contentedly that
his mother was making apple dumplings for supper when he went in for the
arnica. He glanced at Blink’s hand and noticed that the rag had
disappeared. A smudge of blood on the finger was all that remained of
the accident.
“Have any trouble findin’ yer knife, Blink?”
“Nope.”
The roadster was going like a bullet through the air now, its four
wheels scarcely seemed to travel the earth. They had rounded the top of
the hill and curved down into the lower thoroughfare. Far ahead on the
road another car like a speck appeared, and disappeared. Barry eyed it
steadily as he shot ahead, the speck in the distance growing visibly
larger mile by mile. He let the roadster out a trifle more and watched
the distance grimly. Was this his man? He didn’t want to waste time.
Sam pulled his hat over his eyes and flipped up his collar with a lank
hand. His teeth were chattering.
“Gee! Blink, this is—grrr-reat!” he gulped and held on tight, a trifle
pale under the freckles.
Barry shot ahead silently. Was that a glint of scarlet fluttering out
the side of the car, or only a budded maple branch by the road?
At last they were within hailing distance and Barry let down his speed a
trifle. He didn’t want to pass before the crossroad, now half a mile
ahead. Strange he saw no sign of anyone on the back seat of that car,
and only one head appeared at the front. If that was his man what had he
done with the girl? If it wasn’t his man it was a pity to waste any more
time and lose the trail. He began to cast about in his mind where his
quarry could have gone if this was not the right car and to plan for
instant action in case he found out his mistake.
The car ahead did not turn off at the crossroads and three minutes later
Barry shot ahead. As he passed the other car he was sure he caught a
glimpse of something red like a big ball suddenly dropping down out of
sight in the back seat.
“Lamp that car, Sam!” he ordered grimly.
Sam fixed his pale eye on a bit of mirror fastened in midair over the
engine, but the car seemed to be coming on steadily enough.
“Watch if there’s more than one person in it.”
Sam shifted the gum between his teeth and gave himself to more
concentrated effort.
“Thought I saw something move in the back seat,” he said at length.
“There it went again. Mightta ben mistaken though.”
Barry thought he saw it too. He suddenly ground his brakes on and sprang
off to kneel before his engine.
“Nut loose,” he explained to the astonished Sam who had been nearly
precipitated to the ground by the sudden halt. He wasn’t quite sure
which car Blink meant “the nut” travelled in.
Barry’s car was well into the road. A passing vehicle must turn out if
it went by. Barry reclined by a wheel, apparently deeply absorbed. At
the very instant however, when the other car was about to curve by him,
he was as by a miracle upright on his feet in the middle of the
remaining road space, with one arm raised in distress. The oncoming
driver had perforce to stop or submit to being a murderer. As the man
ground on his brakes and jerked to a violent stop he let out an ugly
oath, but Barry unconcerned asked nonchalantly:
“Len’ me a wrench?”
“No!” said the man shortly, “mine’s lost! Get out of my way!”
Barry lifted his cap from his curls politely and grinned.
“Thank you!” he said with his eye on the tonneau, and stepped out of the
way. The car shot ahead, but Barry had seen what he was after, a big
black eye peering up over the door of the car, surmounted by a
travelling robe that seemed exceedingly alive. A flash of a white arm
and a dash of scarlet showed against the darkness of the tonneau as the
car swept by, and Barry was satisfied. He was on the right track.
“What’s eatin’ you, Barry? The wrench’s in its place under the cushion.”
Sam eyed him puzzled. It wasn’t like Barry to forget anything.
“Oh, is it?” said Barry innocently, swinging up on his minute cushion,
“pile in, boy, we gotta hurry.”
Sam scrambled back into place again as the roadster leapt forward. The
other car was some distance ahead now. Barry seemed to have lost
interest in it. Sam couldn’t make him out. Somehow Sam never could quite
make out Barry. He said so to the boys once and Ben Holden told him it
was because he hadn’t any sense of humor, but that troubled Sam still
more, because what did a sense of humor have to do with understanding a
person who was perfectly grave and serious?
Whenever they came near a crossroad or a village, Barry speeded up. Sam
kept hoping he would stop and buy something to eat. He kept remembering
those apple dumplings. The sun was getting lower and lower. A dank
little breath swept up from the valley, full of sleepy violets and
drowsy bees humming. The birds were calling good night. Sam’s legs were
long for the space allowed on the roadster. He grew uneasy.
“Say, what time do you expect to get home for supper?” he questioned,
shifting a leg, and putting his hand under his knee surreptitiously to
ease the stiffness.
“Don’t expect!” said Barry crisply, “if you do you might get
disappointed. Hungry, Sam? Let you out on the road anywhere you say, if
you like.”
“Oh, no,” said Sam detecting displeasure in his idol’s voice, “oh, no,
no, I’m just enjoying this, havin’ the time of my young life. Gee, it’s
great. Only I was wondering what your plans were?”
“That depends,” said Barry, and said no more. With shut lips the two
whizzed through the county, watching a little black speck ahead that
grew dimmer and dimmer as the light of the sun failed.
Then suddenly it seemed quite dark. The other car was only a place of
blackness in the darkness, one could not be sure if it were there or
only had been. There were lights ahead. They were nearing a town. The
roadster reached the top of a hill leading down into the main street
among dwellings. A little trolley like a toy plied to and fro with
childish bells and lights. A church bell rang with a sweet wholesome
call to prayer. Cottages appeared. A child under a light with a green
porcelain shade looking at a book. A family in the dining room eating
their supper. Pleasant thought. Dumplings, apple dumplings with plenty
of goo! Ummmmm! Sam looked wistfully back.
The other car at the foot of the hill turning into the main street,
stopped for an instant by the trolley. Barry made time and arrived in
its immediate vicinity as it started on again. Barry slowed up. He let
several cars and trucks and foot passengers get between him and the open
road. Sam eyed him wonderingly. The other car had gone on. Sam hadn’t
noticed it particularly.
Barry saw it slow up in front of a drug store, and immediately he ran
his car down a side street by the blank side of a real estate office
closed for the night, and sprang out.
“Watch me, Sam! keep yer eyes peeled,” he said to his astonished vassal.
“If I don’t come back soon you folla. I gotta get that car and its
contents back to Silver Sands t’night! See? But mind you keep yer mouth
shut.”
He was gone in the darkness, and Sam, whirling dazedly round on his
unsteady seat saw him vanishing round the car that was parked in front
of the drug store. An instant more and he heard the door on the driving
side slam and the engine begin to purr.
“By gosh!” said Sam and unfolded himself to his full height on the curb
stone. “He’s a nut if there ever was one,” said Sam to the roadster
aloud.
The other car was moving! It was passing out of sight! Blink was nowhere
to be seen. Sam must move too if he were not to lose him. Sam clambered
to his task with sudden panic and threw in the clutch.
“By gosh!” he ejaculated, but the roadster was already going so fast
that his words fell backward on the real estate curb unheard in the
darkness. Sam had already assumed his new importance. Apple dumplings
were forgotten for the time. He had to get that roadster home or he’d
hear about it all the rest of his mortal days. Besides he knew his
mother would keep plenty of dumplings warm for him on the back of the
stove against his coming.
He made out to see a dim outline of a car in the darkness ahead and
followed, being mildly aware of an excited man on the pavement behind
him shouting and waving his arms.