The brute swung the blacksnake—this time in earnest. It cracked, and then the snapper laid along the girl’s forearm as though it were seared with a hot iron.
Ruth shrieked again. The pain was more than she could bear in silence. She turned to flee up the Cedar Walk, but Perkins shouted at her to stand.
“You try ter run, my beauty, and I’ll cut ye worse than that,” he promised. “You tell me about Sade Raby.”
Suddenly there came a hail, and Ruth turned in hope of assistance. Old Dolliver’s stage came tearing along the road, his bony horses at a hand-gallop. The old man, whom the girls of Briarwood Hall called “Uncle Noah,” brought his horses—and the Ark—to a sudden halt.
“What yer doin’ to that gal, Sim Perkins?” the old man demanded.
“What’s that to you, Dolliver?”
“You’ll find out mighty quick. Git out o’ here or you’ll git into trouble. Did he hurt you, Miss Ruth?”
“No-o—not much,” stammered Ruth, who desired nothing so much as to get way from the awful Mr. Perkins. Poor Sadie Raby! No wonder she had been forced to run away from “them Perkinses.”
“I’ll see you jailed yet, Sim, for some of your meanness,” said the old stage driver. “And you’ll git there quick if you bother Mis’ Tellingham’s gals——”
“I didn’t know she was one ‘o them tony school gals,” growled Perkins, getting aboard his wagon again.