2
After a while Virginia looked back, and clutched my arm convulsively.
"There's a carriage overtaking us!" she whispered. "Don't stop! Help me to climb back and cover myself up!"
She was quite out of sight when the carriage turned out to pass, drove on ahead, and then halted partly across the road so as to show that the occupants wanted word with me. I brought my wagon to a stop beside them.
"We are looking," said the man in the carriage, "for a young girl traveling alone on foot over the prairie."
The man was clearly a preacher. He wore a tall beaver hat, though the day was warm, and a suit of ministerial black. His collar stood out in points on each side of his chin, and his throat rested on a heavy stock-cravat which went twice around his neck and was tied in a stout square knot under his chin on the second turn. Under this black choker was a shirt of snowy white, as was his collar, while his coat and trousers looked worn and threadbare. His face was smooth-shaven, and his hair once black was now turning iron-gray. He was then about sixty years old.
"A girl," said I deceitfully, "traveling afoot and alone on the prairie? Going which way?"
The woman in the carriage now leaned forward and took part in the conversation. She was Grandma Thorndyke, of whom I have formerly made mention. Her hair was white, even then. I think she was a little older than her husband; but if so she never admitted it. He was a slight small man, but wiry and strong; while she was taller than he and very spare and grave. She wore steel-bowed spectacles, and looked through you when she spoke. I am sure that if she had ever done so awful a thing as to have put on a man's clothes no one would have seen through her disguise from her form, or even by her voice, which was a ringing tenor and was always heard clear and strong carrying the soprano in the First Congregational Church of Monterey Centre after Elder Thorndyke had succeeded in getting it built.
"Her name is Royall," said Grandma Thorndyke--I may as well begin calling her that now as ever--"Genevieve Royall. When last seen she was walking eastward on this road, where she is subject to all sorts of dangers from wild weather and wild beasts. A man on horseback named Gowdy, with a negro, came into Independence looking for her this morning after searching everywhere along the road from some place west back to the settlement. She is sixteen years old. There wouldn't be any other girl traveling alone and without provision. Have you passed such a person?"
"No, I hain't," said I. The name "Genevieve" helped me a little in this deceit.
"You haven't heard any of the people on the road speak of this wandering girl, have you?" asked Elder Thorndyke.
"No," I answered; "and I guess if any of them had seen her they'd have mentioned it, wouldn't they?"
"And you haven't seen any lone girl or woman at all, even at a distance?" inquired Grandma Thorndyke.
"If she passed me," I said, turning and twisting to keep from telling an outright lie, "it was while I was camped last night. I camped quite a little ways from the track."
"She has wandered off upon the trackless prairie!" exclaimed Grandma Thorndyke. "God help her!"
"He will protect her," said the elder piously.
"Maybe she met some one going west," I suggested, rather truthfully, I thought, "that took her in. She may be going back west with some one."
"Mr. Gowdy told us back in Independence," returned Elder Thorndyke, "that he had inquired of every outfit he met from the time she left him clear back to that place; and he overtook the only two teams on that whole stretch of road that were going east. It is hard to understand. It's a mystery."
"Was he going on east?" I asked--and I thought I heard a stir in the bed back of me as I waited for the answer.
"No," said the elder, "he is coming back this way, hunting high and low for her. I have no doubt he will find her. She can not have reached a point much farther east than this. She is sure to be found somewhere between here and Independence--or within a short distance of here. There is nothing dangerous in the weather, the wild animals, or anything, but the bewilderment of being lost and the lack of food. God will not allow her to be lost."
"I guess not," said I, thinking of the fate which led me to my last night's camp, and of Gowdy's search having missed me as he rode by in the night.
They drove on, leaving us standing by the roadside. Virginia crept forward and peeked over the back of the seat after them until they disappeared over a hillock. Then she began begging me to go where Gowdy could not find us. He would soon come along, she said, with that tool of his, Pinck Johnson, searching high and low for her as that man had said. Everybody would help him but me. I was all the friend she had. Even those two good people who were inquiring were helping Gowdy. I must drive where he could not find us. I must!
"He can't take you from me," I declared, "unless you want to go!"
"What can you do?" she urged wildly. "You are too young to stand in his way. Nobody can stand in his way. Nobody ever did! And they are two to one. Let us hide! Let us hide!"
"I can stand in anybody's way," I said, "if I want to."
I was not really afraid of them if worst came to worst, but I did see that it was two to one; so I thought of evading the search, but the hiding of a team of four cows and a covered wagon on the open Iowa prairie was no easy trick. If I turned off the road my tracks would show for half a mile. If once the problem of hiding my tracks was solved, the rest would be easy. I could keep in the hollows for a few miles until out of sight of the Ridge Road, and Gowdy might rake the wayside to his heart's content and never find us except by accident; but I saw no way of getting off the traveled way without advertising my flight. Of course Gowdy would follow up every fresh track because it was almost the only thing he could do with any prospect of striking the girl's trail. I thought these things over as I drove on westward. I quieted her by saying that I had to think it out.
It was a hot afternoon by this time, and looked like a stormy evening. The clouds were rolling up in the north and west in lofty thunderheads, pearl-white in the hot sun, with great blue valleys and gorges below, filled with shadows. Virginia, in a fever of terror, spent a part of her time looking out at the hind-end of the wagon-cover for Gowdy and Pinck Johnson, and a part of it leaning over the back of the seat pleading with me to leave the road and hide her. Presently the clouds touched the sun, and in a moment the day grew dark. Far down near the horizon I could see the black fringe of the falling rain under the tumbling clouds, and in a quarter of an hour the wind began to blow from the storm, which had been mounting the sky fast enough to startle one. The storm-cloud was now ripped and torn by lightning, and deep rumbling peals of thunder came to our ears all the time louder and nearer. The wind blew sharper, and whistled shrilly through the rigging of my prairie schooner, there came a few drops of rain, then a scud of finer spray: and then the whole plain to the northwest turned white with a driving sheet of water which came on, swept over us, and blotted everything from sight in a great commingling of wind, water, fire and thunder.
Virginia cowered on the bed, throwing the quilt over her. My cattle turned their rumps to the storm and stood heads down, the water running from their noses, tails and bellies, and from the bows and yokes. I had stopped them in such a way as to keep us as dry as possible, and tried to cheer the girl up by saying that this wasn't bad, and that it would soon be over. In half an hour the rain ceased, and in an hour the sun was shining again, and across the eastern heavens there was displayed a beautiful double rainbow, and a faint trace of a third.
"That means hope," I said.
She looked at the wonderful rainbow and smiled a little half-smile.
"It doesn't mean hope," said she, "unless you can think out some way of throwing that man off our track."
"Oh," I answered, with the brag that a man likes to use when a helpless woman throws herself on his resources, "I'll find some way if I make up my mind I don't want to fight them."
"You mustn't think of that," said she. "You are too smart to be so foolish. See how well you answered the questions of that man and woman."
"And I didn't lie, either," said I, after getting under way again.
"Wouldn't you lie," said she, "for me?"
It was, I suppose, only a little womanly probe into character; but it thrilled me in a way the poor girl could not have supposed possible.
"I would do anything for you," said I boldly; "but I'd a lot rather fight than lie."