Anything Once Part 2

"I'd like to go back and lick him to a standstill!" to his own utter amazement Botts heard his own voice saying thickly.

The fire had died out of Lou's face and she replied composedly:

"What for? He don't matter any more, does he? We're goin' on."

The last sentence recalled his problem once more to his mind. What in the world was he to do with this young creature whom fate had thrust upon his hands? Four quarters and a fifty-cent piece represented his entire capital at the moment, and if he did put her into the hands of the county authorities until his journey was completed and he could make other arrangements for her, it would mean a delay on his part now, when every hour counted for so much just now.

"Do you know how far we are from Hudsondale?" he asked.

"Not more'n two miles, the farm-hands used to walk there often of an evenin' to the movies."

The girl had cleaned her knife in the brook and was now wrapping it in the ap.r.o.n, together with the remains of their repast.

"They say that not more'n twenty miles from there you can see the big river, but I ain't ever been."

"That's the way I was going," he observed thoughtlessly. "From Hudsondale to Highvale, and right on down the west bank of the river to New York."

Lou sat back on her heels reflectively.

"All right," she said at last. "I ain't ever figgered on goin's far as New York, but I might as well go there as anywhere, and I guess I kin keep up with you now your back's kinder sprained. We'll go along together."

James Botts gulped.

"Certainly not!" he retorted severely, when he could articulate. "It's utterly out of the question! You're not a little child any longer, and I'm not old enough to pose as your father. You must think what people would say!"

"Why must I?" Her clear eyes shamed him. "What's it matter? I guess two kin puzzle out the roads better than one, an' if I have been in a brick house with a high fence an' a playground between where never a blade of gra.s.s grew, for about eighteen years, it looks to me as if I could take care of myself a lot better 'n you kin!"

"But you don't understand!" he groaned. "There are certain conditions that I can't very 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 Sat.u.r.day; that's ninety miles or more, and you never could make it in the world. 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 that 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 a.s.surances 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 all 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 off 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. "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. "n.o.body 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, for Jim had already discovered that his companion was not one to speak unless she had something to say, and he was breathing in short s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 pa.s.sed.

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 in this vicinity could his self-const.i.tuted 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 a.s.sured 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.