They sat side by side, hands not touching but hearts reaching toward each other, and the minutes slipped silently away as David drank in her moon-silvered young beauty, and she fed her love-hunger upon his Viking-like handsomeness and strength. They were silently agreeing to go when a sharp, metallic voice materialized suddenly out of the hush of the darkness.
“No monkey-business now, Steve! I’m warning you! If you double-cross me I’ll cut your heart out! Fifty-fifty and—”
The rest was lost as the couple passed on, walking swiftly, two shadows that seemed like one. The voice was Nita’s.
CHAPTER IX
When Sally was awakened soon after dawn the next morning—Wednesday—by the shouts and songs of the “white hopes” unloading the carnival on the outskirts of the Capital City, the question which had insisted on worming its way through the heavenly joy of knowing that David loved her sprang instantly to the foreground of her mind; who was “Steve” with whom Nita had quarreled and bargained in the dark last night?
Sally and David had met or had had pointed out to them nearly every member of the show troupe, and there was no Steve among them. Of course Steve might be one of the roughneck white roustabouts. But a star performer, such as Nita considered herself, would hardly consort with such a man. The two classes—simply did not mix, except in rare instances. David of course was different. Everyone connected with the carnival knew that he was a university student, working in the kitchen with Buck only because he was hiding from the police.
Then the thought of David dismissed Nita and her threats and her Steve. She crawled out of her berth, scurried to the women’s dressing room and hastily applied her show make-up. Pop Bybee had summoned her to the privilege car on her return from her momentous walk with David the night before to caution her not to appear in Capital City, even in the dress or cook tent, without her “Princess Lalla” complexion, which she was to apply with exceeding care so that the disguise might be impenetrable.
Because the carnival lot selected by “the Kidder,” Pop Bybee’s advance man and “fixer,” was in the heart of the city, and the railroad spur allotted to the show train on the outskirts of it, the cars would be abandoned by the carnival performers and employes, only Pop and Mrs. Bybee continuing to occupy their drawing room in one of the Pullmans. Sally, being told the arrangements, suspected that they stayed with the train to guard the safe under the green plush seat, the existence of which was known only to Sally. Mrs. Bybee took little interest in the carnival itself, caring only for the heaviness of the canvas money bags, which were brought to her at the end of each day’s business.
It was still not seven o’clock when Sally joined the straggling procession of performers headed for the cook tent and dress tent, a quarter of a mile from the show train. She knew very little of the city itself, since the orphanage was situated on its own farm in a thinly settled suburb.
There was no glow of pride, no sense of home-coming as she trudged through the almost deserted streets, but every time she passed a policeman idly swinging his “billie” on a street corner she thanked Pop Bybee in her heart that he had cautioned her to don her disguise. For beyond a casually interested glance at her brown face and hands and her long swinging braids of fine, lustrous black hair, the law did not seem to find her worthy of attention.