“I suppose Sally has told you that we saw Nita and some man walking in the moonlight that last night we were in Stanton,” David addressed Pop Bybee. “We heard her call him Steve, and say something about what she’d do to him if he double-crossed her. I should have told you then, Mr. Bybee, but I didn’t have an idea Nita was planning to rob the outfit, and anyway—” he blushed, his eyes twinkling fondly at Sally—“by morning I’d forgotten all about it. I couldn’t think of anything but—but Sally. You see we’d just told each other that night that—that—well, sir, that we loved each other and—”
“Anybody else in the whole outfit could have told you that,” Bybee chuckled. “It’s all right, Dave. Carnival folks usually mind their own business and spend damn little time toting tales.”
“I’m glad you’re not blaming me,” David said gratefully. “Well, sir, I was walking up and down the tracks, just wild to get away and see if anything had happened to Sally, when suddenly I heard a soft thud, like somebody jumping to the ground on the other side of the train. I crossed over as quick as I could, but by that time they were running down the side of the train pretty far ahead of me. It was Nita and a man. They must have been hidden on the train, waiting their chance, when the storm broke—were there when Mrs. Bybee left.
“I suppose they hadn’t counted on any such luck; had probably intended to overpower her before you got back, sir, and the storm saved them the trouble.”
“I’d have give them a run for the money,” Mrs. Bybee retorted grimly, her skinny old hand knotting into a menacing fist.
“That’s just what I did,” David grinned rather whitely at her. “I yelled at them to stop, because I had an idea they’d been up to something, since they’d jumped off this car, and I knew Nita had no business on the train, since all you people were sleeping on the lot.
“They were carrying a couple of suitcases that looked suspiciously heavy to me. It flashed over me that Mrs. Bybee, being treasurer of the outfit, must have left a lot of money in her stateroom, and that Nita and this Steve chap had been planning to rob her when Sally and I heard them talking the other night. I started after them, still yelling for them to stop, and Steve turned and fired at me. He missed me, lucky for me, and I kept right on.
“About a hundred yards beyond the end of the train they climbed into a car that was parked on the road that runs alongside the tracks and after telling me goodby with another bullet that missed me, too, Steve had the car started. I was about to give up and start toward Capital City to notify the police when I noticed there was a handcar on the tracks, just where this spur joins the main line.
“I threw the switch and in a minute I had the handcar on the main line and was pumping along after them. The state road parallels the railroad track for about five or six miles, you know, and I could make nearly as good time in my handcar as they could in their flivver, for it’s a down grade nearly all the way.” He paused, his eyes closing wearily as if every muscle in his body ached with the memory of that terrible ride in the dead of night.
“Better rest awhile, Dave,” Pop Bybee suggested gently, bending over the boy to wipe the cold drops of sweat from his forehead.