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Johnnie’s throat swelled at the humble kindness. They ate, thanked Roxy and her man Zack in the simple uneffusive mountain fashion, and started away in the twilight of dawn. The big road was barely reached, when they heard steps coming after them in the dusk, and a breathless voice calling in a whisper, “Johnnie! Johnnie!”
The two turned and waited till Roxy came up.
“I—ye dropped this on the floor,” the woman said, fumbling in her pocket and bringing out a bit of paper. “I didn’t know as it was of any value—and then again I didn’t know but what it might be. Johnnie—” she broke off and stood peering hesitatingly into the gloom toward the girl’s shining face.
With a quick touch of the arm Johnnie signed to Pros to move on. As he swung out of earshot, the bulging light eyes, so like Mandy’s, were suddenly dimmed by a rush of tears.
“I reckon he’d beat me ef he knowed I told,” Roxy gasped. “He ain’t never struck me yit, and us married five year—but I reckon he’d beat me for that.”
Johnnie wisely forbore reply or interference of any sort. The woman gulped, drew her breath hard, and looked about her.
“Johnnie,” she whispered again, “the—that there thing they ride in—the otty-mobile—hit broke down, and Zack was over to Pres Blevin’s blacksmith shop a-he’pin’ ’em work on it all day yesterday. You know Pres—he married Lura Dawson’s aunt. Neither Himes nor Buckheath could git it to move, but by night they had it a-runnin’—or so hit would run. That’s why you never saw tracks of it on the road—hit hadn’t been along thar yit. But hit’s went on this morning. No—no—no! I don’t know whar it went. I don’t know what they was aimin’ to do. I don’t know nothin’! Don’t ask me, Johnnie Consadine, I reckon I’ve said right now what’s put my man’s neck in danger. Oh, my God—I wish the men-folks would quit their fussin’ an’ feudin’!”
And she turned and ran distractedly back into the cabin while Johnnie hurried on to join her uncle.
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.
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