The talk with her father was comforting, but not encouraging, and it was with a heavy, heavy heart that Rhoda Hammond waved good-by to her friends at the airport a few minutes later.
Nan stifled a sob as the plane taxied across the field and rose into the air. Adair MacKenzie looked down on her. “There, there, child,” he said gently, “Things will turn out all right and we’ll make this up to the girl sometime later.”
Nan caught her upper lip between her teeth and tried to smile up at him. “Please, please, make everything right.” It was a prayer that she breathed.
CHAPTER IX
RESOLUTIONS
It was a sad little party that drew out of Laredo that afternoon. The thoughts of Nan and her friends were all with Rhoda. At every turn they wondered where she was and what she was doing.
Only Adair MacKenzie’s insistence had made them depart from the city on the border at all.
“Got to be on our way now,” he had said brusquely when he and Nan had driven up to the hotel after seeing Rhoda off. “Now, get busy, you,” he ordered the girls after they had heard the details of Rhoda’s departure from Nan. “Can’t stay around here any longer. Sick and tired of this place. Nothing but a hole in the wall. Don’t like it. Don’t like the people. We’re leaving. Get busy, I say.” He tapped his cane impatiently on the floor of the hotel veranda. “I mean you and you and you.” He pointed with it to each separate member of the party.
The girls jumped. Alice jumped. And Walker Jamieson jumped. Everyone got busy and in an hour’s time they were all sitting on the veranda, dressed for traveling, waiting for the car to come.