He disappeared after the two prisoners and their guards, leaving Blackie with the aged farmer. The latter led Blackie back to the house, where his wife was fussing about the kitchen in a faded red wrapper, stirring up the fire and raising a most tantalizing smell of cooking. Mr. Woods, with rare forbearance, did not bother Blackie with questions, but every now and then he caught the farmer looking at him with a puzzled frown, shaking his head and muttering to himself, “Wal, who would have thought it?” His wife mothered Blackie, making him wash his face and hands and seating him at the table, where she piled hot food before him and watched him gorge himself on sausage and fried potatoes, pressing him to eat more pie and cookies until he felt as though his eyes must be bulging with repletion. When he could eat no more, she packed him off upstairs to bed, and left him with a gentle good-night. He undressed, almost dozing off once or twice in the process, climbed into a high four-poster bed, and lay snugly stretched out under a brilliantly-colored old-fashioned crazy quilt. He fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.
A short time later Wally returned and woke him to say that he had seen the tramps safely under lock and key in the jail at Newmiln Center, and that he need not worry any more. Blackie hardly heard the words before he was asleep again. Wally blew out the lamp and crawled in beside the sleeping boy, and once more all was peaceful in the farmhouse at the foot of the mountain.
CHAPTER XV
THE LAST RACE
Blackie and Wally were up at the first crack of dawn; it was to prove an active day for them, and they had no mind to get a late start. After a hearty breakfast provided by Mrs. Woods, they took the road south on foot. The grateful farmer offered to harness his team and drive them back to camp, but Wally knew that he was needed to tend his stock, and courteously refused.
“We’ll take the road down the valley and over the mountains,” explained Wally as the two hiked side by side down the yellow road. “It’s a bit longer than straight over the ridge, but we’ll avoid a lot of tough going, and save time in the long run.”
Blackie was not sorry to be tramping along in Wally’s company on that bright summer morning. His clothing had been neatly brushed and cleaned by the farmer’s motherly wife, and his rescued blankets were strapped over one shoulder. The sky was a lustrous, enamelled blue; the fields and thickets sparkled with dewdrops; and a cheerful chorus of birds chirruped a marching song for them. The way led down the valley of the Flatstone, running on a wooded height above the wandering creek. Occasionally they passed orchards and farmhouses, lazy in the sun; once they climbed a spur of the hills and looked down upon a great red mill, with a plashing race of water leaping down through the dripping teeth of a clacking wooden wheel. Several times they were passed by farmers driving wagons or cars, but always they were heading the opposite way, toward the Center; and the two hikers were not fortunate enough to get a lift. As they went they chatted gaily, and all the grim hours of Blackie’s flight and bondage seemed like the half-remembered fragments of a nightmare.
By ten o’clock they had reached the crossroads, beside a steepled little schoolhouse with a yard overgrown with weeds, and halted several minutes before turning eastward.
“This route is longer than I thought,” observed Wally. “We’re only about half-way back to Lenape now, and we still have the hardest part of the journey ahead. I thought we might be back in camp by this time. You see, to-day we hold the big regatta and water-sports. Every fellow in Camp Shawnee will have come down from Iron Lake to compete with our swimmers and divers, and I should be on hand to take the entries and run the meet.”
“It’s my fault you’re not there now,” said Blackie. “If I hadn’t run away, everything would have been all right.”
“If you hadn’t run away, two desperate characters wouldn’t be in jail to-day, facing trial for murder,” pointed out the leader. “That’s the way of the world—there’s no situation so bad that courage and brainwork can’t mend it, and many a bad start has ended with a whirlwind finish.”