Terry scrambled to his feet. “I’m going down to the brook and fill my canteen,” he announced. “I don’t know where there is a spring around and that brook looks perfectly all right.”
“Maybe you had better boil the water and make sure before you drink it,” Vench suggested.
Terry went back into the bushes some fifty feet until he found a gurgling little brook. The water looked cool and refreshing as it bubbled around the stones, and the redhead bent down to fill his canteen. It was then that a sound reached him, a sound that caused him to straighten up.
“Now, did the brook make that sound?” he wondered.
But it came again and Terry hesitated no longer. With a single bound he hopped across the water and parted the bushes on the other side. There, in a tiny hollow like a cave, her feet wet and her clothing covered with mud, sat the little Carson girl, her eyes red with weeping and her face swollen from her contact with vines and branches. She stared in wild terror at Terry as he broke his way through the bushes, but as he spoke to her the look faded for one of glad recognition.
A trembling gladness filled the boy. With a smothered cry he jumped at the child, sweeping her in his arms and pressing her to him as though she had been his own.
“You blessed little mischief-maker!” he choked. “What are you doing out here?”
“The ghost, he chase me,” wailed the child, beginning to tremble. “I go for my dolly and the ghost come after me. I want my mama.”
“You’re going to have your mama,” promised Terry. “So that confounded ghost is at the bottom of it, is he?”
“Yes, he chase me,” sighed the child. “You’re the soldier that ate mama’s pie.”