Anything Once - Isabel Ostrander (reading tree TXT) 📗

well explain, and if I did you’d think I had gone crazy.”

“Maybe,” Lou observed non-committally, but she settled herself on the bank once more with such an air of resigned anticipation that he felt forced to continue.

“You know an army has to obey orders, don’t you?” he floundered on desperately. “Well, I’m like a one-man army; there are a lot of rules I’ve got to follow. This is Monday afternoon, and I must reach New York by midnight on Saturday; that’s ninety miles or more, and you never could make it in the 24world. I’ve got just a dollar and a half, and I mustn’t beg, borrow, or steal food or a lift or anything, but work my way, and never take any job that’ll pay me more than twenty-five cents.

“Of course, if people invite me to get up and ride with them for a little I can accept, or if they offer me food, but I can’t ask. Even the money I earn in quarters here and there I mustn’t use for traveling, but only to buy food or medicine or clothes with. And the worst of it is that I cannot explain to a soul why I’m doing all this.”

Lou regarded him gravely, and opened her lips to speak, but closed them again and for an appreciable moment there was silence.

“Well, I don’t see anythin’ in that that says you can’t have somebody travelin’ along with you,” she remarked, and that odd little smile flashed again across her face. “It don’t make any difference to me what you can or can’t do. I’m foot-loose!”

Not until later was the meaning of that final statement to be made manifest to her companion; the one fact upon his mind was 25that nothing he had said had moved her an iota from her original decision. They would go along together.

Well, why not? It was obvious that he could not send her back to the Hess farm nor hand her over to the authorities. His own appearance would not be conducive to confidence in his assurances if he attempted to leave her in the care of some country woman until he could return and make proper arrangements for her, and the only alternative was that she must tramp the roads by herself until she found work, and that was out of the question.

At least, he could protect her, and she looked wiry in spite of her skinniness; it was as possible that she might make the distance as he, with his aching back. But on one point he was determined: when they neared the suburbs of New York he would telephone to a certain gray-haired, aristocratically high-nosed old lady and persuade her to send out her car for this waif.

The child had been kind to him, and he would protect her from all harm, but not for 26all the gilt-edged securities in Wall Street would he have the story of his knight-errantry get abroad, nor the unprepossessing heroine of it revealed to his friends.

The old lady would find some suitable position for her, and, as she evidently possessed no reputation of any sort at the moment, a six-day journey in his company could harm it no more if the truth became known than if she had tramped upon her way alone.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll be partners, and I’ll do my best to look out for you.”

She laughed outright, a merry, tinkling little laugh like the brook rippling over the pebbles at her feet, and the man involuntarily stared. It was the sole attractive thing about her that he had observed.

“Reckon it’ll be me that’ll look after you!” she retorted. “Oh, there’s somethin’ comin’! Duck in here, quick!”

Seizing her bundle, she wiggled like an eel through the willow thicket until she was completely hidden from view, and Botts followed as well as he was able, with one hand fending 27off the supple young shoots from whipping back upon his wounded forehead.

He had heard nothing, yet the girl’s quick ears had caught the faint creaking of a cart along the road, and now a cheerful but somewhat shrill whistle came to him in a vaguely reminiscent strain.

“That’s Lem Mattles,” Lou whispered as she reached behind him and drew the willows yet more screeningly about their trail. “He’s whistlin’ ‘Ida-Ho’; it’s the only tune he can remember.”

“Who is he?” demanded her companion.

“The Hess’s next-door neighbor. She’ll stop him right away an’ ask if he’s seen me on the road, an’ they’ll all be after me, but they’ll never think of the old cow-trail; one of the hands showed it to me an’ told me it led clear to Hudsondale, an’ came out by the freight-yards.”

For a moment she paused with a little catch in her breath. “Think you kin make it, Mr. Botts?”

“Sure!” He smiled and held out his hand. 28“We’re partners now, and I’m ‘Jim’ to my friends, Lou.”

“All right, Jim,” she responded indifferently, but she laid her little work-worn hand in his for a brief minute. “Come on.”

With the bundle under her arm once more she led the way, and her partner followed her to where the brook dwindled and the thicket gave place to a stretch of woodland, between the trees of which a faint, narrow trail could be discerned.

“We’re all right now if we kin keep on goin’,” announced Lou. “Nobody comes this way any more, an’ the feller said that the tracks runs through the woods clear to the Hunkie settlement by the yards. Feelin’ all right, Jim?”

“I guess so.” Jim put his hand to his side, where each breath brought a stab of pain, but brought it down again quickly lest her swift glance catch the motion. “It’s pretty in here, isn’t it?”

“It’s longer,” replied Lou practically. “An’ the sun’s gittin’ low. Let’s hurry.”

There was little further talk between them, 29for Jim had already discovered that his companion was not one to speak unless she had something to say, and he was breathing in short snatches to stifle the pain. The track wound endlessly in and out among the trees, and in the dim light he would have lost it altogether more than once had it not been for her light touch upon his arm.

At length the track turned abruptly through the thinning trees and led down to a rough sort of road, on either side of which ramshackle wooden tenements leaned crazily against each other, with dingy rags hanging from lines on the crooked porches. Slatternly, dark-skinned women gazed curiously at them as they passed.

From somewhere came the squalling of a hurt child and a man’s oath roughly silencing it, while through and above all other sounds came the bleating of a harmonica ceaseless reiterating a monotonous, foreign air.

The sun had set, and from just beyond the squalid settlement came the crash and clang of freight-cars being shunted together. In spite of his pain, Jim realized that nowhere 30in this vicinity could his self-constituted companion rest for the night; open fields or dense woodland were safer far for her.

“Let us cross the tracks and push on up that hill road a little,” he suggested. “We can’t stay here, and they’ll think we are tramps if they catch us by the railroad.”

“I guess that’s what we are.” Lou wrinkled her already upturned nose. “But the country would be nicer again, if you ain’t give out.”

He assured her doggedly that he had not, and they crossed the tracks and started up the steep hill road past the coal-dump and the few scattered cottages to where the woodland closed in about them once more.

Jim picked up a stout stick and leaned heavily upon it as they plodded along, while the twilight deepened to darkness and the stars appeared. The girl’s step lagged now, but she kept up in little spurts and set her lips determinedly.

At length they came to another stream, a rushing mill-race this time, with an old mill, moss-covered and fallen into decay beside it, 31and by tacit consent they sank down on the worn step.

“I don’t believe we can go any farther,” Jim panted. “I guess this is as good a place as any to camp for the night, and you can sleep in there.”

He indicated the sagging door behind him, and Lou followed his gesture with a reluctant eye. Jim noted the glance and, misunderstanding it, added hastily:

“I don’t believe there are any rats in there, but if you’ll lend me your matches I’ll see.”

“Rats!” she repeated in withering scorn. “There was plenty of them in the insti–where I come from. I was just thinkin’ maybe somebody else was sleepin’ there already.”

She handed over the matches and Jim pushed open the door and entered, feeling carefully for rotten boards in the decayed flooring. A prolonged survey by the flickering light of the matches assured him that the ancient, cobwebbed place was deserted, and he turned again to the door, but its step was unoccupied and nowhere in the starlight 32could he discern a flutter of that blue-and-white striped dress.

Could she have run away from him? At the thought a forlorn sense of loneliness swept over him greater than he had known since he had started upon his tramp. She was tired out; could he in some way have frightened her, or had a mad spirit of adventure sent her on like a will-o’-the-wisp into the night?

“Lou!” he called, and his voice echoed back. “Lou!”

All at once he noticed what he had not observed before–a single light by the roadside in a clearing ahead. Perhaps she had gone there for more secure shelter.

His cogitations were abruptly interrupted by a dog’s excited barking, subdued by distance, but deep-throated. The sound came from the direction of the clearing, and, taking up his heavy stick, Jim hobbled to the road. If Lou had got into any trouble─

The barking turned to growls; horrible, crunching growls which brought his heart up into his throat as he broke into a run, forgetting his pain. He had not gained the top 33of the rise in the road, however, when the growls gave place to wild yelps and howls which rapidly diminished in the distance and presently Lou appeared holding carefully before her something round and white which gleamed in the starlight.

“Good Heavens!” he exclaimed when she neared him. “What on earth have you been doing?”

“Git on back ’round the other side of the mill!” ordered Lou. “I gotta go slow or I’ll spill it.”

“What is it?”

But she vouchsafed him no reply until they reached a ledge of rock over the tumbling stream, well out of sight of that light on the hill. Then she set down the object she was carrying and he saw that it was a bright tin pan, filled almost to the brim with milk.

“I thought it would go good with our bread an’ ham,” she explained ingenuously. “I figgered from what I learned at that Hess place that they’d leave some out in the summer cellar to cream, for they ain’t got any spring-house, an’ they won’t be likely to miss one 34pan out of fifteen. Besides, there’s nothin’ in them rules you told me that stops me from beggin’ or borrowin’, or stealin’, either, an’ if I give you some of this you ain’t got any call to ask me where it come from.”

This feminine logic left Jim almost speechless, but he managed to gasp out:

“The dog! Didn’t he attack you?”

“I guess that was what he intended, but I put down the pan an’ fit him off.” She added, with evident pride. “I never spilled a drop, either!”

“Good Lord!” Jim ejaculated. “I believe you’d do anything once!”

“I b’lieve I would, provided I wanted to,” Lou agreed placidly. Then her tone changed. “There’s somebody comin’ up the road from Hudsondale like all in creation was after ’em.”

Indeed, the