As he made ready to do so Nancy flew back to the table and blew out the light, and the next minute Huldah Spiller, dripping like a mermaid, was standing in the middle of the darkened room, and Doss Provine, breathing short, was barring the door behind her.
“Who’s here?” gasped the girl peering about the gloom. “What air you-all a-goin’ to do to me?”
Nancy relighted the lamp and set it on the table, and Huldah discovered with a long-drawn sobbing sigh of relief that there was no one save the immediate family present.
“I came quick as I could,” she began in the middle of her story, grasping Creed by the arm and shaking him in the violence of her emotion and insistence. “Blatch Turrentine’s alive. Andy and Jeff have got him hid out. I seed him myse’f with my own eyes, in a hideout thar below Foeman’s Bluff, not more’n a hour ago. I’ll bet he aims to layway you, ef he cain’t git ye hung for murderin’ of him. You got to git out o’ here. It was as much as my life was worth to come over and tell ye. I’m afraid to go back. I’m goin’ right on down to Hepzibah and stay thar.”
“Come up closeter to the fire,” commanded Nancy, who had watched the girl keenly throughout her recital. “Doss, put some sticks on and git a little blaze so she can dry herself. Huldy, you’re a good girl to come over and warn Creed—when was you aimin’ to go to Hepzibah?” She looked up from the hearth where she knelt with the frankest inquiring gaze.
“To-night—right now,” half whimpered Huldah. “I’m scared to go back. I’m scared to be here on the mountain at all.”
“And did ye aim to have Creed go along of ye?” old Nancy questioned mildly.
“Yes—yes—he’d better,” agreed Huldah hysterically. “Hit’s the onliest way for him now.”
Nancy caught Creed’s eye above the girl’s drenched head, and shook her own warningly. Leaving Doss to look after the newcomer, she drew the young justice into the kitchen.
“Whatever ye do,” she warned him hastily, “don’t you put out with that red-headed gal in the dark. Things may be adzackly as she says—looks to me like she thinks she’s a-speakin’ the truth; but then agin the Turrentines might a’ sent her for to draw you out. They wouldn’t like to shoot ye in my cabin, ’caze they know me and my kinfolks would be apt to raise a fuss; but halfway down the mountain with this sweetheart of Wade’s—huh-uh, boy; I reckon they could tell their own tale then, of how you come by yo’ death. Don’t you go with her.”