“Oh, but we couldn’t think of it,” she protested. “After we have had something to eat we must hurry off to the station.”
“What station?” asked Crosby sententiously.
“I don’t know, but it wouldn’t be a bit nice to spoil the adventure by stopping now.”
“But we can’t walk all over the State of Illinois,” he cried.
“For shame! You are ready to give up the instant something to eat comes in sight. Mr. Higgins may be able to suggest something. What is the nearest——”
“I have it,” interrupted Crosby. “The Wabash road runs through this neighborhood, doesn’t it? Well, where is its nearest station?”
“Lonesomeville—about four miles south,” said Higgins.
“Do the night trains stop there?”
“I guess you can flag ’em.”
“There’s an east-bound train from St. Louis about midnight, I’m quite sure.”
While the fugitives were enjoying Mrs. Higgins’s hastily but adorably prepared meal, the details of the second stage of the flight were perfected. Mr. Higgins gladly consented to hitch up his high-boarded farm wagon and drive them to the station on the Wabash line, and half an hour later Higgins’s wagon clattered away in the night. To all appearances he was the only passenger. But seated on a soft pile of grain sacks in the rear of the wagon, completely hidden from view by the tall “side-beds,” were the refugees. Mrs. Delancy insisted upon this mode of travel as a precaution against the prying eyes of persistent marshal’s men. Hidden in the wagon-bed they might reasonably escape detection, she argued, and Crosby humored her for more reasons than one. Higgins threw a huge grain tarpaulin over the wagon-bed, and they were sure to be dry in case the rainstorm came as expected. It was so dark that neither could see the face of the other. He had a longing desire to take her hand into his, but there was something in the atmosphere that warned him against such a delightful but unnecessary proceeding. Naturally, they were sitting quite close to each other; even the severe jolting of the springless wagon could not disturb the feeling of happy contentment.
“I hope it won’t storm,” she said nervously, as a little shudder ran through her body. The wind was now blowing quite fiercely and those long-distant rolls of thunder were taking on the sinister sound of near-by crashes. “I don’t mind thunder when I’m in the house.”
“And under the bed, I suppose,” he laughed.
“Well, you know, lightning could strike this wagon,” she persisted. “Oh, goodness, that was awfully close!” she cried, as a particularly loud crash came to their ears.
The wagon came to an abrupt stop, and Crosby was about to crawl forth to demand the reason when the sound of a man’s voice came through the rushing wind.
“What is it?” whispered Mrs. Delancy, clutching his arm.
“Sh!” he replied. “We’re held up by highwaymen, I think!”
“Oh, how lovely!” she whispered rapturously.
“How far are you goin’?” came the strange voice from the night.
“Oh, ’s far ag’in as half,” responded Higgins warily.
“That you, Scott?” demanded the other.
“Yep.”
“Say, Scott, gimme a ride, will you? Goin’ as far as Lonesomeville?”
“What you doin’ out this time o’ night?” demanded Higgins.
“Lookin’ for a feller that tried to steal Mr. Austin’s horses. We thought we had him cornered up to the place, but he got away somehow. But we’ll get him. Davis has got fifty men scouring the country, I bet. I been sent on to Lonesomeville to head him off if he tries to take a train. He’s a purty desperate character, they say, too, Scott. Say, gimme a lift as far as you’re agoin’, won’t you?”
“I—I—well, I reckon so,” floundered the helpless Higgins.
“Really, this is getting a bit serious,” whispered Crosby to his breathless companion.
The deputy was now on the seat with Higgins, and the latter, bewildered and dismayed beyond expression, was urging his horses into their fastest trot.
“How far is it to Lonesomeville?” asked the deputy.
“’Bout two mile.”
“It’ll rain before we get there,” said the other significantly.
“I’m not afeared of rain,” said Higgins.
“What are you goin’ over there this time o’ night for?” asked the other. “You ain’t got much of a load.”
“I’m—I’m takin’ some meat over to Mr. Talbert.”
“Hams?”
“No; jest bacon,” answered Scott, and his two hearers in the wagon-bed laughed silently.
“Not many people out a night like this,” volunteered the deputy.
“Nope.”
“That a tarpaulin you got in the back of the bed? Jest saw it by the lightnin’.”
“Got the bacon kivered to keep it from gittin’ wet ’n case it rains,” hastily interposed Scott. He was discussing within himself the advisability of knocking the deputy from the seat and whipping the team into a gallop, leaving him behind.
“You don’t mind my crawlin’ under the tarpaulin if it rains, do you, Scott?”
“There ain’t no—no room under it, Harry, an’ I won’t allow that bacon to git wet under no consideration.”
A generous though nerve-racking crash of thunder changed the current of conversation. It drifted from the weather immediately, however, to a one-sided discussion of the escaped horse thief.
“I guess he’s a purty slick one,” they heard the deputy say. “Austin said he had him dead to rights in his barn! That big bulldog of his had him treed on a beam, but when we got there, just after dark, the darned cuss was gone, an’ the dog was trapped up in a box-stall. By thunder, it showed how desperate the feller is. He evidently come down from that beam an’ jest naturally picked that turrible bulldog up by the neck an’ throwed him over into the stall.”
“Have you got a revolver?” asked Higgins loudly.
“Sure! You don’t s’pose I’d go up against that kind of a man without a gun, do you?”
“Oh, goodness!” some one whispered in Crosby’s ear.
“But he ain’t armed,” argued Higgins. “If he’d had a gun don’t you s’pose he’d shot that dog an’ got away long before he did?”
“That shows how much you know about these crooks, Higgins,” said the other loftily. “He had a mighty good reason for not shooting the dog.”
“What was the reason?”
“I don’t know jest what it was, but any darned fool ought to see that he had a reason. Else why didn’t he shoot? Course he had a reason. But the funny part of the whole thing is what has become of the woman.”
“What woman?”
“That widder,” responded the other, and Crosby felt her arm harden. “I never thought much o’ that woman. You’d think she owned the whole town of Dexter to see her paradin’ around the streets, showin’ off her city clothes, an’ all such stuff. They do say she led George Delancy a devil of a life, an’ it’s no wonder he died.”
“The wretch!” came from the rear of the wagon.
“Well, she’s up and skipped out with the horse thief. Austin says she tried to protect him, and I guess they had a regular family row over the affair. She’s gone an’ the man’s gone, an’ it looks darned suspicious. He was a good-lookin’ feller, Austin says, an’ she’s dead crazy to git another man, I’ve heard. Dang me, it’s jest as I said to Davis: I wouldn’t put it above her to take up with this good-lookin’ thief an’ skip off with him. Her husband’s been dead more’n two year, an’ she’s too darned purty to stay in strict mournin’ longer’n she has to—”
But just then something strong, firm, and resistless grasped his neck from behind, and, even as he opened his mouth to gasp out his surprise and alarm, a vise-like grip shut down on his thigh, and then, he was jerked backward, lifted upward, tossed outward, falling downward. The wagon clattered off in the night, and a tall man and a woman looked over the side of the wagon-bed and
waited for the next flash of lightning to show them where the official gossiper had fallen. The long, blinding, flash came, and Crosby saw the man as he picked himself from the ditch at the roadside.
“Whip up, Higgins, and we’ll leave him so far behind he’ll never catch us,” cried Crosby eagerly. The first drops of rain began to fall and Mrs. Delancy hurriedly crawled beneath the tarpaulin, urging him to follow at once. Another flash of lightning revealed the deputy, far back in the road waving his hands frantically.
“I’m glad his neck isn’t broken. Hurry on, Mr. Higgins; it is now more urgent than ever that you save your bacon.”
“’Tain’t very comfortable ridin’ for Mrs. Delancy,” apologized Higgins, his horses in a lope.
“If the marshal asks you why you didn’t stop and help his deputy, just tell him that the desperado held a pistol at your head and commanded you to drive like the devil. Holy mackerel, here comes the deluge!”
An instant later he was under the tarpaulin, crouching beside his fellow fugitive. Conversation was impossible, so great was the noise of the rain-storm and the rattle of the wagon over the hard pike. He did his best to protect her from the jars and bumps incident to the leaping and jolting of the wagon, and both were filled with rejoicing when Higgins shouted “Whoa!” to the horses and brought the wild ride to an end.
“Where are we?” cried Crosby, sticking his head from beneath the tarpaulin.
“We’re in the dump-shed of the grain elevator, just across the track from the depot.”
“And the ride is over?”
“Yep. Did you get bumped much?”
“It was worse, a thousand times, than sitting on the beam,” bemoaned a sweet, tired voice, and a moment later the two refugees stood erect in the wagon, neither quite sure that legs so tired and stiff could serve as support.
“It was awful; wasn’t it?” Crosby said, stretching himself painfully.
“Are you not drenched to the skin, Mr. Higgins?” cried Mrs. Delancy anxiously. “How selfish of us not to have thought of you before!”
“Oh, that’s all right. This gum coat kept me purty dry.”
He and Crosby assisted her from the wagon, and, while the former gave his attention to the wet and shivering horses, the latter took her arm and walked up and down the dark shed with her.
“I think you are regretting the impulse that urged you into this folly,” he was saying.
“If you persist in accusing me of faintheartedness, Mr. Crosby, I’ll never speak to you again,” she said. “I cast my lot with a desperado, as the deputy insinuated, and I am sure you have not heard me bewail my fate. Isn’t it worth something to have one day and night of real adventure? My gown must be a sight, and I know my hair is just dreadful, but my heart is gayer and brighter tonight than it has been in years.”
“And you don’t regret anything that has happened?” he asked, pressing her arm ever so slightly.
“My only regret is that you heard what the deputy said about me. You don’t believe I am like that, do you?” There was sweet womanly concern in her voice.
“I wish it were light enough to see your face,” he answered, his lips close to her ear. “I know you are blushing, and you must be more beautiful—Oh, no, of course I don’t think you are at all as he painted you,” he concluded, suddenly checking himself and answering the plaintive question he had almost ignored.
“Thank you, kind sir,” she said lightly, but he failed not to observe the tinge of confusion in the laugh that followed.
“If you’ll watch the team, Mr. Crosby,” the voice of Higgins broke in at this timely juncture, “I’ll run acrost to the depot an’ ast about the train.”
“Much obliged, old man; much obliged,” returned Crosby affably. “Are you afraid to be alone in the dark?” he asked, as Higgins rushed out into the rain. The storm had abated by this time and there was but the faintest suggestion of distant thunder and lightning, the after-fall of rain being little more than a drizzle.
“Awfully,” she confessed, “but it’s safer here than on the beam,” she added, and his heart grew very tender as he detected the fatigue in her voice. “Anyhow, we have the papers safely signed.”
“Mrs. Delancy, I—I swear that you shall never regret this day and night,” he said, stopping in his walk and placing his hands on her shoulders. She caught her breath quickly. “Do you know what I mean?”
“I—I think—I’m not quite sure,” she stammered.
“You will know some day,” he said huskily.
When Mr. Higgins appeared at the end of the shed, carrying a lighted lantern, he saw a tall young man and a tall young woman standing side by side, awaiting his approach with the unconcern of persons who have no interest in common.
“Ah, a lantern,” cried Crosby. “Now we can see what we look like and—and who we are.”
Higgins informed them that an east-bound passenger train went through in twenty minutes, stopping on the side track to allow west-bound No. 7 to pass. This train also took water near the bridge which crossed the river just west of the depot. The west-bound train was on time, the other about five minutes late. He brought the welcome news that the rain was over and that a few stars were peeping through the western sky. There was unwelcome news, however, in the statement that the mud was ankle deep from the elevator to the station platform and that the washing out of a street culvert would prevent him from using the wagon.
“I don’t mind the mud,” said Mrs. Delancy, very bravely indeed.
“My dear Mrs. Delancy, I can and will carry you a mile or more rather than have one atom of Lonesomeville mud bespatter those charming boots of yours,” said Crosby cheerfully, and her protestations were useless against the argument of both men.
The distance was not great from the sheds to the station and was soon covered. Crosby was muddy to his knees, but his fair passenger was as dry as toast when he lowered her to the platform.
“You are every bit as strong as the hero in the modern novel,” she said gaily. “After this, I’ll believe every word the author says about his stalwart, indomitable hero.”
To say that Higgins was glad to be homeward bound would be putting it too mildly. The sigh of relief that came from him as he drove out of town a few minutes later was so audible that he heard it himself and smiled contentedly. If he expected to meet the unlamented Harry Brown on the home trip, he was to be agreeably disappointed. Mr. Brown was not on the roadway. He was, instead, on the depot platform at Lonesomeville, and when the westbound express train whistled for the station he was standing grimly in front of two dumbfounded young people who sat sleepily and unwarily on a baggage truck.
The feeble-eyed lantern sat on the platform near Crosby’s swinging feet, and the picture that it looked upon was one suggestive of the cheap, sensational, and bloodcurdling border drama. A mud-covered man stood before the trapped fugitives, a huge revolver in his hand, the muzzle of which, even though it wobbled painfully, was uncomfortably close to Mr. Crosby’s nose.
“Throw up your hands!” said Brown, his hoarse voice shaking perceptibly. Crosby’s hands went up instantly, for he was a man and a diplomat.
“Point it the other way!” cried the lady, with true feminine tact. “How dare you!—Oh, will it go off? Please, please put it away! We won’t try to escape!”
“I’m takin’ no chances on this feller,” said Brown grimly. “It won’t go off, ma’am, unless he makes a move to git away.”
“What do you want?” demanded Crosby indignantly. “My money? Take it, if you like, but don’t be long about it.”
“I’m no robber, darn you.”
“Well, what in thunder do you mean then by holding me up at the point of a revolver?”
“I’m an officer of the law an’ I arrest you. That’s what I’m here for,” said Brown.
“Arrest me?” exclaimed Crosby in great amazement. “What have I done?”
“No back talk now, young feller. You’re the man we’re after, an’ it won’t do you
any good to chew the rag about it.”
“If you don’t turn that horrid pistol away, I’ll faint,” cried femininity in collapse. Crosby’s arm went about her waist and she hid her terror-stricken eyes on his shoulder.
“Keep that hand up!” cried Brown threateningly.
“Don’t be mean about it, old man. Can’t you see that my arm is not at all dangerous?”
“I’ve got to search you.”
“Search me? Well, I guess not. Where is your authority?”
“I’m a deputy marshal from Dexter.”
“Have you been sworn in, sir?”
“Aw, that’s all right now. No more rag chewin’ out of you. That’ll do you! Keep your hands up!”
“What am I charged with?”
“Attempted horse stealin’, an’ you know it.”
“Have you a warrant? What is my name?”
“That’ll do you now; that’ll do you.”
“See here, my fine friend, you’ve made a sad mistake. I’m not the man you want. I’m ready to go to jail, if you insist, but it cost you every dollar you have in the world. I’ll make you pay dearly for calling an honest man a thief, sir.” Crosby’s indignation was beautifully assumed and it took effect.
“Mr. Austin is the man who ordered your arrest,” he explained. “I know Mrs. Delancy here all right, an’ she left Austin’s with you.”
“What are you talking about, man? She is my cousin and drove over here this evening to see me between trains. I think you’d better lower your gun, my friend. This will go mighty hard with you.”
“But—”
“He has you confused with that horse thief who said his name was Crosby, Tom,” said she, pinching his arm delightedly. “He was the worst-looking brute I ever saw. I thought Mr. Austin had him so secure with the bulldog as guardian. Did he escape?”
“Yes, an’ you went with him,” exclaimed Brown, making a final stand. “An’ I know all about how you come over here in Scott Higgins’s wagon too.”
“The man is crazy!” exclaimed Mrs. Delancy.
“He may have escaped from the asylum up north of here,” whispered Crosby, loud enough for the deputy to hear.
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 161