She forgot that she was without make-up, that the police were looking
for her as well as for the criminals who had robbed the safe. But Pop
Bybee had not forgotten. Still talking with the plainclothes detectives,
he motioned to her violently behind his back. She turned and forced
herself to walk slowly and sedately toward the other end of the car as
the detectives made their farewells and their brusque promises of “quick
action.”
When the men had left the car Bybee’s voice summoned her in a husky
stage whisper, calling her “Lalla,” so that the detectives, if they were
listening, should not identify her with the girl who had run away from
the orphanage in the company of a man wanted on a charge of assault with
the intent to kill.
“Are you crazy?” Bybee demanded hoarsely when she had come running to
the stateroom. “Them was dicks! Policemen, understand? They mighta
nabbed you. What are you doing up? Get back to bed and try to sleep.”
“Have you found David?” she quavered, brushing aside his anxiety for
her.
“Not a sign of him.” Bybee shook his head. “But I didn’t spill the beans
to the dicks. I’d given you my word, and Winfield Bybee’s word is as
good as his bond.”
“I’m going to look for David,” she announced simply, but her blazing
eyes dared him to try to prevent her. “He’s hurt somewhere—or killed.
I’m going to find him.”
And before the astonished man or his wife could stretch out a hand to
detain her she was gone. When she dropped from the platform of the car
she heard the retreating roar of the police car. Instinct turned her in
the opposite direction, away from the city, down the railroad tracks
leading into the open country.
She did not know and would not have cared that Mr. and Mrs. Bybee were
following her, Mrs. Bybee muttering disgustedly but refusing to let
Sally search alone for the boy in whom she had such implicit faith.
Dawn was breaking, pale and wan, in a sky that was shamelessly cloudless
and serene after the violence of last night’s storm, when, over a slight
hill, a man’s figure loomed suddenly, then seemed to drag with
unbearable weariness as it plodded toward the show train.
“David!” Sally shrieked. “David!”
She began to run, her ankles turning against clots of cinders, but her
arms outstretched, a glory greater than that of the dawn in her face.
Before she reached him Sally almost fainted with horror, for in the pale
light of the dawn she saw that David’s shirt about his left shoulder was
soaked with blood. But his uninjured right arm was stretched out in
urgent invitation, and his voice was hailing her gaily, in spite of his
terrible weakness and fatigue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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