THE-BOY-ON-THE-TRAIN
“H-s-s-sh!” The boy’s anxious eyes were on her. “I—I thought you
knew me, Hilda. I’d never have come into this place to hide—if I
hadn’t thought you knew me. I knew you, the minute I saw your eyes.”
“Did you?” Hilda thought that was rather a stupid, inadequate thing
to say, the minute it was out. But the shock of having the memory
and the dream burst in upon the realities of her play and mix up
with it like this left her almost without words. “It’s all right,”
she whispered, finally. “I’ll take care of you—same as Father would
have done.”
There was no danger of being overheard, yet she whispered. In her
breast flamed all the ardors of all the heroines whose brave deeds
she delighted in and envied. The amazing, the incredible, had
happened. The-Boy-On-The-Train was here. He hadn’t arrived with
music and flying banners. He had fled to her, accused, pursued, in
danger. He had fled to her! That thought would have given her
strength for more than she had to do. She bent forward and murmured
eagerly:
“Nobody knows this place but me. Nobody can find you. I’ll bring you
food—I can bring plenty—even if you have to stay for days and days.
I’ll get the coffee now—just wait.”
She hurried out, threaded the passage swiftly, went up the stairs
into the kitchen—and came upon Uncle Hank standing talking to Sam
Kee!
Why did she not rush to him with news of the lad in the cellar? He
had given money, as well as shelter, to that other fugitive—the one
the boys had hidden in the bunk house that time—the one that had
killed a man. Was it only an unwillingness to share her
responsibility and her joy in that responsibility?
Hank had never seen the castle-lady dress which she now carelessly
exposed to his view. It made him smile, as he asked:
“What you up to, Pettie, all rigged out that-a-way? Playin’ lady?”
She stiffened at the kindly patronage of the tone.
“Yes, I’m playing,” she said briefly. A furtive look went to the
candle and cup of hot coffee which Sam Kee had prepared and set on
the table, according to the bargain made and ratified with him. She
got away from Uncle Hank, just how, she could not afterward
remember; details of this sort escape from persons of her
temperament. As a matter of fact, she had made up her mind to be a
little severe with the old man if he was too inquisitive. But,
fortunately for him, he was busy, his thoughts were elsewhere, and
so he escaped this severity, and she got downstairs with the coffee
before it cooled.
When Hilda got back she found that the boy had opened the shutter
under the woodbine, and stood there looking at something he held in
his hand.
“Oh—ought you?” Hilda asked.
“Yes. It’s all right. When I was out there, and spoke to you, I
couldn’t see a thing till I came right up and put my face against
the vines. What does this mean, Hilda?”
She saw now that he held a letter-head of the ranch; printed at the
top was: “Ranch of the Three Sorrows, Lame Jones County, Texas,
Henry J. Pearsall, Mgr.”
“Is—is that man here—now?”
“He isn’t in the house—but he will come—at dinner time, I guess,”
Hilda spoke falteringly; her responsibility for the fugitive had
been sweet; but, of course, he’d rather depend on Uncle Hank than on
a small girl. “I’ll tell him about you when he comes, if you want me
to,” she finished in a diminished voice.
There was a long silence between them, of a quality curiously
embarrassing to Hilda. She felt ready to cry.
“Don’t you want me to tell Uncle Hank?” The boy looked bewildered.
“Is that your father’s brother? It isn’t any one that was with you
coming out here?”
“He’s not my real uncle. It’s—you know—the manager.” She pointed to
the sheet he still held. “He’d be just the same as papa. He’d do
anything that papa would do.”
She broke off, noting how reluctant he seemed.
“I’ll not tell him—or anybody—if you’d rather not,” she said—and
felt a guilty thrill of rapture as he responded:
“Well—for the present—maybe it would be better.”
Hilda tried to say something in answer to that, but somehow she
couldn’t. A sort of disconsolate silence held the dim little chamber
for a time. Then, just as the young fellow seemed about to speak
again, this silence was broken startlingly by the jingling and
thudding sounds of mounted men coming at a trot into the side yard,
almost over their heads.
Instantly he reached forward and snuffed out the flame of the
candle, and Hilda darted to the window and softly closed the
shutter. As she came back on her way toward the passage, he groped
out in the darkness and caught her hand, whispering:
“What shall we do?”
“Just be still,” Hilda breathed, close to his ear. “You’re safe
here. I’ll go and deceive—the—pursuers.”
She went toward the door; stopped a moment, looking over her
shoulder, trying to see him in the dark, then went out; dragged shut
the sagging door after her; blundered along the passage; slammed the
outer one with a noise that scared her; pantingly shoved the empty
boxes and barrels in place to conceal it, and ran up the cellar
stairs. In the warm, sweet-smelling kitchen Sam Kee was making
dried-apple pies. As she fled past, she thought he said to her, “You
all light. No be scare.” Then she was in the office door, and some
strange men were coming in at its other door with Uncle Hank.
“You’re free of the whole ranch, Sheriff Daniels,” the old man was
saying. “You and your posse are welcome to search.” The crispness of
his tone made something way down deep in Hilda giggle and clap its
hands. Goodness—wasn’t she glad she hadn’t told Uncle Hank! He—even
he—couldn’t have spoken up that way if he’d known what was hid in
the cyclone cellar. Now he went on:
“Miss Van Brunt has got the little boy with her in Fort Worth. Just
at this speaking there’s only Pettie and me and the cook about the
place. It’s broad daylight. Couldn’t nobody have got into the house
without being seen—but you’re free to search. And you’re welcome to
go around to the bunk house and see if you can find any one there. I
always give the law any assistance in my power.”
“Well, we trailed him so far, and I’ve been pretty well over your
ranch, Pearsall,” the Sheriff said in the irritable tone of a man
who is losing. “If he ain’t in the house, I don’t know where he’s
at. With your permission, we’ll look here, and when your boys come
in at noon we’ll see if he’s lifted a horse off of you and made a
getaway.”
Pearsall’s eye fell on Hilda, and the look on her face instantly
struck him. He stepped across at once and put an arm around her
shoulders. He did not notice that she had not come to him.
“Ain’t a thing to be afraid of, Pettie,” he reassured her. “These
gentlemen think they’re on the trail of a feller that’s—” he
hesitated appreciably—“er that’s got into trouble down in Wild Hoss
County. They believe he’s rode right into the Sorrers and et his
pony and camped in one of our bedrooms.”
There was a somewhat sheepish acknowledgment of this sally as the
men trooped after Pearsall, making a search of the rooms, upstairs
and down. After that Hilda crouched above them on the steps,
daylight behind her, her face in shadow, watching in fascinated
terror while they explored the cellar, carrying lamps and candles.
But they gave only a negligent glance to the tiers of empty cracker
boxes which screened the door to the passage, as everybody else
except Hilda had done for years. They abandoned the cellar finally
and tramped noisily back into the kitchen.
“You see ’um white man?” the sheriff demanded of Sam Kee. “Heap
tired—been ridin’ long ways—all dusty and dirty—you see ’um?”
Hilda’s heart stood still. But Sam Kee never glanced toward her.
“I see ’um you,” he grunted, looking Daniels up and down, and turned
aside to his pie-making.
The men grinned.
“Look-a here, you don’t want to get fresh with me.” Daniels’s face
was red. “You never can get nothing out of a Chink,” he growled.
“Scatter out, boys, and search the yard.”
The yard! Hilda shook so that she could hardly walk; but she
followed them. Sam Kee’s hen-house gave up nothing; the shrubbery
was inspected without profit. They finally trailed down to the
spring for a drink, preparatory to riding away baffled, if not
satisfied. Hilda was so close after them that it brought Uncle Hank
along, though it had been his thought to speed them, somewhat
stiffly, from the porch steps.
Right at the edge where the fugitive had stopped to drink Hilda saw
footprints.
“Whose tracks are these?” demanded the sheriff, bending to them. “By
jinks! They’re mighty like those we found where that feller’d camped
last night.”
“They’re mine, I guess,” Hilda spoke out very loud, because she was
so afraid to speak at all.
“Come here, Pearsall,” called Daniels. “Listen to what this young
lady says. She never made these tracks.” He glanced curiously at
Hilda’s flamboyant attire.
“I’m not a lady!” The small hands flew up to Hilda’s breast in a
startled gesture. “I’m just a little girl. This is a—a play dress.”
She looked down at the footprints, and the world about her wavered
toward the awful calamity, but she went on gallantly: “When I’m
playing sometimes I wear different clothes and different shoes.”
“Were you down here this morning?”
“Yes. I was here. I was right where I could see this place all
morning.”
“Where you could see this place?” The sheriff repeated her words,
and Hilda’s tortured eye sought the woodbine lattice which masked
the window of the cyclone cellar. They were all watching her. Hank
came at a stride and took his position beside her. She almost wished
he hadn’t come. He was sure to look at the vine stems and see what
she saw.
Her captive must have opened the shutter; she thought she could make
out the faint white blur of his face inside there. She dragged her
gaze away and looked dumbly at the men about her. Had she betrayed
him, after all? Would they take him out and kill him, through her
fault?
“Well?” demanded the sheriff, impatiently. “Speak up, little
girl—and be quick about it, too.”
But at that Uncle Hank bristled.
“See here, Daniels, the child may say she’s not a lady, yet, but
you’ve got to treat her like one. She’s Miss Hildegarde Van Brunt;
she and her little brother are owners of the Three Sorrows ranch,
and I’m her paid manager.”
It gave Hilda a strange thrill to hear herself thus set forth by
Uncle Hank. It was as though she had all at once grown years older.
The sheriff stepped back a bit, and a fumbling hand found and
removed his hat.
“Well, Miss Van Brunt,” he said, “I’ve come on your ranch kind of
sudden; but I had no intention of being rough. I was obliged to
search—you ain’t no objection to that, have you? I didn’t aim to
make no trouble for you. You’re willing for us to search, ain’t
you?”
Hilda looked mutely to Uncle Hank.
“Sure, she’s willing,” assented the old man. “Hilda’s not very tall,
but she’s a law-abiding citizen. If they’s any help she can give you
to ketch up with a criminal, she’ll do it gladly.”
Every trusting word was to Hilda a blow. She was keeping the
presence of the fugitive a secret from Uncle Hank; she was going to
do that and more. It was strange that it could be right—and yet it
was. She was sorry for the old man, with a great rush of compassion
which she herself could not understand. She caught his arm and clung
to it, rubbing her cheek against his sleeve—but she never wavered in
her determination to tell him nothing.
“I had to foller my duty, wherever it led,” Daniels continued,
defensively.
“Whoo—ee! Whoo—ee!” came a hail from the man posted down by the
gate.
They turned to hearken.
“Come on, boys. Nothing doing there. Billy’s got the track of that
pony up yonder in the road.”
Without a word, the sheriff and his men ran to their horses, and in
a moment’s time there was no reminder of their presence or their
errand left but a little dust.
Uncle Hank and Hilda stood alone. The old man brought his gaze back
from following the last departing rider, and it encountered the
queer little figure beside him. He took her by the shoulder, looked
a bit anxiously in her face, and said:
“I was hunting for you, Pettie, to tell you that I may not be home
to-night before ten o’clock. Shorty’s getting cattle ready for
shipment, out in the Spring Creek pasture, and like’s not I’ll have
to stay at the camp there till late. But this pesky business of
Sheriff Daniels coming up this-a-way—you going to be afraid here
alone in the house with just old Sam Kee?”
“Oh, no, Uncle Hank—not a bit afraid!” she cried.
“Don’t feel as if any skulking Door-imps or Barrel-tops would be
likely to pester you? Reckon mebbe Daniels and his men has scared
away all that sort of cattle—hey?”
Hilda laughed a little nervously, yet relieved—why what a world away
was the girl who had been afraid of such things!
“I’ll be all right,” she declared. “I’ve got something—I’ve got a—”
“—A story to read,” supplied Hank, out of ample experience. And,
with a sense of guilt upon her, Hilda let the matter go at that.
And it turned out to be a story after all, only she heard it instead
of reading it.