The Mission of Janice Day Part 26

"Yes, you have," he pursued. "I don't see how you come to have any money left at all--eatin' your three squares a day in the dining car. Not me!

I get lunches at the stop-over places, I do."

"But I saw you in the dining car," Janice said, with sudden conviction.

"Yep. Once. And you can bet that I didn't pay for my supper that time. I was treated."

"But you're not telling me a thing I want to know," cried the girl. "Did Uncle Jason send you? Never!"

"I'll break it to you easy," grinned Marty. "I did just what you did."

"What do you mean?"

"I ran away; that's what I did."

"Didn't you leave word for your father and mother? _I_ did."

"I telegraphed," said Marty proudly, taking full credit for that act.

"Told 'em you were all right and that I had my eye on you."

"Well! Of all things!"

"Yep. 'Tis kinder strange, isn't it?" said Marty, blowing a sigh. "Don't scarcely seem real to me."

"But your mother--and Uncle Jason! They will be worried to death about you, Marty."

"Huh! How about you?" demanded her cousin.

"But you are only a boy."

"And you're only a girl," he retorted.

"Marty, I _had_ to come," she told him gravely.

"Of course you did. I know it. Frank and Nelse, and the rest of 'em, couldn't see it; but _I_ saw it. I was wise to you right away, so I watched."

He went on to relate his experiences in getting away from Polktown, chuckling over his own wit.

"But your mother and father will never forgive me," she sighed.

"What they got to forgive you for?" demanded Marty.

"If it hadn't been for me you never would have run away. And I don't really see what good it has done, your having done so, anyway. You can't help me find daddy."

"Why not?" snapped the boy. "What d'you think I came 'way off here for?

Just to sit around and suck my thumb? Huh! I guess I can do as much toward finding Uncle Brocky as ever you will, Janice Day."

"I am afraid," the girl sighed, "that you don't realize what a task there is before me."

"Before _us_," growled Marty.

Janice smiled faintly without otherwise acknowledging the correction.

"Say! what have you done toward learning how to get across that river and up there to San Cristoval?" the boy suddenly asked.

"Why--_that_ is too far ahead. I shall have to be guided by circ.u.mstances."

"Ye-as! That's what the feller said when they were goin' to hang him.

But I've been lookin' ahead and I've been askin' questions."

"Of whom, Marty?" his cousin cried.

"Folks. I got acquainted with a good many back there in the smoker."

"I thought you intimated it was dangerous to make such acquaintances?"

suggested Janice.

"'Tis--for girls," announced her cousin stoutly.

"And why not for boys, I'd like to know?"

"'Cause nothin' can hurt boys. They're tough," grinned Marty. "Now, this big woman you been hobn.o.bbing with----"

"Oh! I wonder what can have become of Madam?"

"Maybe she had reason for cutting her tow-rope," said the slangy boy, "just as soon's she saw you had somebody to take care of you. Oh, yes!

Did you notice just where I picked up that package of newspapers that you lost?"

"Oh, Marty!"

"Almost under the feet of Miz' Madam, as you call her," went on the boy.

"She was right. You _were_ robbed. Somebody took that packet out of your blouse all right, all right!"

"Why, Marty! how very terribly you talk!"

"Ye-as. Maybe I do. But she certainly was kind o' crusty when she left us there on the platform."

"Oh! I wouldn't have offended her," grieved Janice. "I don't believe she was a bad woman at all, Marty Day."

"I don't know anything about her," declared Marty. "But you'd better be mighty careful with folks you meet. Now, the men I've been talkin' with are regular fellers, they are. And they've told me a lot about what we'll haf to do when we get to that Rio Grande River."

"Marty, dear! It may be dangerous. I can't let you run into peril for me."

"No. But I will for Uncle Brocky--if I have to. And _you_ won't stop me," he declared. "'Sides, it isn't goin' to be so dangerous as you think if we go about it right."

"How do you know?"

"Why, up North there we thought that the Border was like a barbed-wire fence that you had to climb through ev'ry time you went from the United States into Mexico an' back again, and it was lucky if you didn't ketch your pants on the barbed wire an' get 'em tore, too!" and the boy was grinning broadly again.

"But 'tisn't nothing like that. You'd think from what you read in the newspapers that the towns on the northern side of the Border was spang full of Americans--white folks that talk English, you know--while every town over the Border and in shootin' distance of it, as you might say, was all populated with nothin' but greasers."