Toward the end of the afternoon his footsteps lagged, and sunset found him resting by the roadside. He was so hungry! He felt so little, so alone, and the coming darkness brought disturbing thoughts of coyotes and prairie wolves, of robbers and ghosts that the hired man said he had seen when he had stayed out too late o’ nights.
Ravines, with their still, eloquent darkness, are fearsome places for imaginative boys to pass alone. Hobgoblins—the very name sent chills up and down Bruce’s spine—would be most apt to lurk in some such place, waiting, waiting to jump on his back! He broke and ran.
The stars came out, and a late moon found him trudging still. He limped and his sturdy shoulders sagged. He was tired, and, oh, so sleepy, but the prolonged howl of a wolf, coming from somewhere a long way off, kept him from dropping to the ground. Who would have believed that twenty-five miles was such a distance? He stopped short, and how hard his heart pumped blood! Stock-still and listening, he heard the clatter of hoofs coming down the road ahead of him. Who would be out this time of night but robbers? He looked about him; there was no place on the flat prairie to hide except a particularly dark ravine some little way back which had taken all his courage to go through without running.
Between robbers and hobgoblins there seemed small choice, but he chose robbers. With his fists clenched and the cold sweat on his forehead, he waited by the roadside for the dark rider, who was coming like the wind.
“Hello!” The puffing horse was pulled sharply to a standstill.
“Oh, Wess!” His determination to die without a sound ended in a broken cry of gladness, and he wrapped an arm around the hired man’s leg to hold him.
“Bruce! What you doin’ here?”
“They plagued me. I’m going home.”
“You keep on goin’, boy. I’m after you and your father.” There was something queer in the hired man’s voice—something that frightened him. “Your mother’s taken awful sick. Don’t waste no time; it’s four miles yet; you hustle!” The big horse jumped into the air and was gone.
It was not so much what the hired man said that scared him so, but the way he said it. Bruce had never known him not to laugh and joke, or seen him run his horse like that.