“He saved my life,” Sally acknowledged suddenly, half-angrily, for she resented with childish unreasonableness the fact that it had been this mocking, insolent stranger, this “rube” from New York, not David, who had saved her.
An hour later when she was uneasily asleep in her berth in the show train, whose sleeping cars had been pressed into service in lieu of the soaked cots in the dress tent, a sudden uproar—hoarse voices shouting and cursing—shocked her into consciousness. Broken sentences flung out by angry men, Pop Bybee’s voice easily distinguished among them, told her what had happened:
“Every damn cent gone!—Pay roll gone!—Safe cracked!—Told you you was a fool to take in them two hoboes that was already wanted by the police. That Dave guy’s beat it—made a clean-up—”
“Everybody tumble out! Pop Bybee wants us all in the privilege car,” a carnival employe shouted, running down the sleeping car and pausing only to thrust a hand into each berth, like a Pullman porter awakening its passengers.
But Sally was already dressing, getting her dress on backward and sobbing with futile rage at the time lost in reversing it. When she was scrambling out of her upper berth, a tiny hand reached out of the lower and tugged at her foot.
“Don’t forget me, Sally,” the midget commanded sharply. “And for heaven’s sake, don’t take on so! You’ll make yourself sick, crying like that. Of course your David didn’t rob the safe. I’m all dressed.”
Sally parted the green curtains and stretched out her arms for the midget, who was so short that she could stand upright upon her bed without her head touching the rounded support of the upper berth. Little Miss Tanner ran into Sally’s arms and clambered to her shoulder.
“It’s that Nita.” She nodded her miniature head emphatically. “I always did have my suspicions about her. Always turning white as a sheet when a policeman hove into sight.”
“But David’s missing, too,” Sally sobbed, as she hurried down the aisle which was becoming choked with frowsy-headed women in all stages of dress and undress. “Of course he didn’t do it—”
“Hurry up, everybody! Don’t take time to primp, girls!” a man bawled at them from the door.