After a while she stopped again, panting. Her hair had come unfastened
and she braided it as she waited. Then she listened intently, not
now in terror for sign of pursuit, but in hope of another sound. She
had descended a long distance and she had kept well to the left. She
should hear before long an automobile horn blown warningly on the long
descent, or the chug, chug of a machine climbing the hill.
But as yet there was nothing. She drew a deep breath and went on. Again
she stopped and listened. She heard no sound, but she saw before her
an open field. She had gone down through the spur of woods which ran
out from the main forest and in a moment she was in the weedy fields
of John Baring’s property, the old house far above her, and in a few
moments more she stood panting by the roadside.
There she waited. She did not walk on toward Gettysburg, because here
on this comparatively level strip at the foot of a short curve the
drivers would have slackened their speed and it would be easy for a car
to stop. But no car came. She held her breath as she listened.
When, at last, she heard a distant horn, she stepped out toward the
road. She heard also laughing voices above the sound of the horn. As
the car came round the curve she lifted her hand.
“Will you take me to Gettysburg?” she cried. “I have--” But the riders
did not stop to hear what she had. They were young; it may have been
that her appearance frightened them. They did not even answer, but
sailed on. One young man stood up in the car and looked back at her.
Elizabeth shrank against the fence.
Then she heard a different sound, this time the throb of an engine
rapidly climbing the hill. Here there would be no use to ask. But when
the car came into view, long and low and powerful and occupied by a man
alone, she walked out into the road.
The driver stopped with a grinding of brakes, his machine turned a
little to one side. It was to be gathered from his expression that he
believed himself to be halted by a madwoman.
Elizabeth laid her hand across her heart. Consciousness seemed to be
going once more. If he would not listen she would despair.
“I am not crazy,” she explained earnestly. “I am in great trouble. I
tried to get some people to take me to Gettysburg to get the officers,
but they would not stop. Perhaps if you would wait here and help me I
could get a ride.”
“What is your trouble?” asked the man.
Elizabeth could not answer. Her blue eyes rested upon him in anguish.
The stranger called to her to stand out of the way and began to turn
his car. She watched him incredulously as he opened the door.
“Get in. Where do you want to go in Gettysburg?”
“I want to see Colonel Thomas,” she explained. Already the car seemed
to be leaping down the hill. “I live up here and the mountaineers have
threatened to do us harm. They hold a fancied wrong against us and they
have carried off my brother.”
The stranger stared. The story was, indeed, fantastic beyond belief.
“What mountaineers?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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