"See here, Lance Cleaverage," said Buck Fuson, "we-all throwed in to get you to play; but we ain't a-goin' to pay the money and have you fool away yo' time with Ola."
This was the first that Callista knew of Lance earning money by his banjo-playing.
"All right," said Cleaverage laconically, not looking up from his instructions. "I've had me a good supper, and I've got a warm place to stay, and that's all I want. Go on and dance."
He addressed himself singly to Ola and her chords, moving her fingers patiently, taking the banjo himself to show her just how the thing was done. She was a dull pupil, but a humbly grateful one; and after a while it seemed to Callista that she could no longer bear the sight. She was debating starkly between the desperate course of returning home alone and the yet more 202 desperate enterprise of going in, when a deeper shadow crossed the darkness behind her, and she turned with a smothered scream to find Iley Derf's Indian husband moving impassively through the glow from the window and making his way to the back door.
At the sight she wheeled and fled across the yard toward the front gate and the road. She gained that doubtful refuge just as a man on a horse came splattering up out of the muddy little hollow below the Derf place. With another cry she flung about and ran from him, stepped on a round stone, and fell.
For a moment she crouched, shivering, wet, bruised, trying to get to her feet, the breath sobbing through her parted lips; then somebody set a not-too-gentle grasp on her shoulder, and she looked up to divine in the dimness Flenton Hands's face above her. There was sufficient light from the noisy cabin behind to allow him to recognize her.
"Lord God—Callista!" he whispered, lifting her to her feet and supporting her with an arm under hers. "What in the world—"
"I—I—something scared me," she faltered. "It was that old Indian that Iley Derf married. He came right a-past where I was and, and—he scared me."
"Whar was you at?" inquired Hands blankly.
