She no longer minded or noticed the crowd that collected and followed her—wherever she went; she had become used to it already. The crowd did not interest her, for it did not hold David, who was forced to hide ignominiously in the show train, for fear the heavy hand of a local constable would close menacingly over his shoulder. At the thought Sally shuddered and flung away her taffy. They would be leaving Stanton tonight, leaving danger behind them. It had not occurred to her to ask where the show train was going. But it was going away, away. David could come out of hiding. Bybee had said the authorities in other states wouldn’t be interested in a couple of minors who had done nothing worse than “bust a farmer’s leg and beat it—”
“What kinda burg is the capital?” she was startled to hear a hot-dog concessionaire call to the ticket-seller for the ferris wheel.
“Pretty good pickin’s,” the ticket-seller answered. “We run into a spell of bad weather there last year and it was a Jonah town, but it looks good this season. The Kidder says he has to plank down half a grand for the lot—the dirty bums—them city councillors.”
“We’re going to the capital next?” Sally leaned over the counter to ask the hot-dog man.
“Sure, kid. Didn’t you know? I heard you come from that burg. Old home week for Eddie, too. You and him going out to give the old homestead the once-over?”
Sally did not wait to answer. Although it was almost time for the last show the little red sandals flew toward the side-tracked show train—and David. Her jealousy, even her just-realized love for him, were forgotten. There was only fear—fear of iron bars and shameful uniforms, iron bars which would cage David’s superb young body and break his spirit; fear of the reformatory, in which she would again become a dull-eyed unit in a hopeless army, but branded now with a shameful scarlet letter which she did not deserve.
They couldn’t go to the capital city where they were both known; they would have to run away again, walk all night through the dark, fugitives from “justice.”
————
“Poor kid!” David consoled her after her first almost hysterical outburst. “I can’t talk to you now, and you shouldn’t be here. You’ve got to go back for your last performance. The show has to go on. They’ve been decent to us, and we can’t throw them over without warning.”
“But David, we’ve got to run away again!” Sally whimpered, clinging to both his arms, bare to the shoulders in anticipation of his work in helping to load the carnival for its thirty-mile drag to the capital. “We can’t go back to Capital City! We’ll be caught! Listen, David—”