“Dave, you answer me this minute!” the old lady commanded, shaking a skinny finger in his face. “Do you know the outfit’ll be stranded if those two crooks did get away with the money? Every cent we had in the world was in that safe! You oughta be ashamed of yourself, teasing an old woman!”
“I did save the money, if that’s what they had in the suitcases, Mrs. Bybee,” David answered more seriously.
“Then where is it? What have you done with it? Left it lying in the road?” the showman’s wife screeched, her eyes wild in her gray, wrinkled face.
“Now, now, Mother,” Bybee soothed her. “If he did, he shan’t be blamed. How could you expect him to walk six or seven miles with two heavy suitcases and his shoulder shot through?”
Sally lifted her face from David’s caressing hand and glared at Mrs. Bybee. “Of course he didn’t leave it lying in the road! After risking his life to save it for you? David is the cleverest and bravest man in the world! Don’t you know that yet?”
Her eyes dropped then to David’s face, softened and glowed with such a divine light of love that the boy’s head jerked impulsively upward from the pillow. “Where did you hide it, David darling?”
“Dear little Sally!” he murmured, as he fell back, overcome with dizziness. “She guessed it, sir,” he said drowsily, turning his head with an effort to face Bybee. “I knew I couldn’t carry it far, so I hid it. The Steve chap was knocked out cold—I suppose they’ll have another charge of ‘assault with intent to kill’ against me now—so I knew he couldn’t see what I was doing.
“I took the two suitcases across the road, holding them in one hand, because by that time my shoulder was bleeding so I was afraid to strain it. There’s a farm right at the end of the road. I struck a match and read the name on the mail box nailed to a post on the road. The name’s Randall—C. J. Randall, R. F. D. 2. You oughtn’t to have any trouble finding the place.
“There wasn’t any moon, but the stars were so bright after the storm that I could just make out a barn about a hundred yards from the road. I cut across the cornfield and managed to reach the barn. There wasn’t a sound, not even a dog barking, lucky for me, for if I’d been caught with the suitcases I’d have had a fine time explaining how I happened to get them and what I was doing with them. But I had to take that chance.”
“Even if the police had caught you with them, I’d never have believed that you robbed Pop Bybee,” Sally assured him, tears slurring her voice, but her eyes shining with pride.