"Better put them up. I'll tell her about it. Here wait, let me open that door."
Val looked into Ricky's room. As usual, it appeared as though a whirlwind, a small whirlwind but a thorough one, had passed through it. Her discarded costume lay tumbled across the bed and her slippers lay on the floor, one upside down. He stooped to set them straight.
"It do beat all," Lucy said frankly as she put her burden down on a chair, "how dat chile do mak' a mess. Now yo', Mistuh Val, jest put eberythin' jest so. But Miss 'Chanda leave eberythin' which way afore Sunday! Looka dat now." She pointed to the half-open door of the closet. A slip lay on the floor. Ricky must have been in a hurry; that was a little too untidy even for her.
A sudden suspicion sent Val into the closet to investigate. Ricky's wardrobe was not so extensive that he did not know every dress and article in it very well. It did not take him more than a moment to see what was missing.
"Did Ricky go riding?" Val asked. "Her habit is gone."
"She ain' gone 'cross de bayo' fo' de hoss," answered Lucy, reaching for the curtain rod. "An' anyway, Sam done took dat critter down de road fo' to be shoed."
"Then where—" But Val knew his Ricky only too well.
She had a certain stubborn will of her own. Sometimes opposition merely drove her into doing the forbidden thing. And the swamp had been forbidden. But could even Ricky be such a fool? Certain memories of the past testified that she could. But how? Unless she had taken Sam's boat—
Without a word of explanation to Lucy, he dashed out of the room and downstairs at his best pace. As he left the house Val broke into a stumbling run. There was just a chance that she had not yet left the plantation.
But the bayou levee was deserted. And the post where Sam's boat was usually moored was bare of rope; the boat was gone. Of course Sam Two might have taken it across the stream to the farm.