“Where shall we go, Elam—where? We—I can’t go back to the Arrow! Oh, I just can’t! And Carrington will be back! Oh! isn’t there any way to escape him?”
“We’ll go to Dawes, girl; that’s where we’ll go!” declared Parsons, his dread and fear of the big man equaling that of the girl. “We’ll go to Dawes and tell them there just what kind of a man Carrington is—and what he has tried to do with you tonight! There must be some men in Dawes who will not stand by and see a woman persecuted!”
And as they rode the river trail toward the town, the girl, white and silent, riding a little distance ahead of him, Parsons felt for the first time in his life the tingling thrills that come of an unselfish deed courageously performed. And the experience filled him with the spirit to do other good and unselfish deeds.
They rode fast for a time, until the girl again spoke of Carrington’s announced intention to return shortly. Then they rode more cautiously, and it was well they did. For they had almost reached Dawes when they heard the whipping tread of a horse’s hoofs on the trail, coming toward them. They rode well back from the trail, and, concealed by some heavy brush, saw Carrington riding toward the big house. He went past them, vanishing into the shadows of the trees that fringed the trail, and for a long time the girl and Parsons did not move for fear Carrington might have slowed his horse and would hear them. And when they did come out of their concealment and were again on the Dawes trail, they rode fast, with the dread of Carrington’s wrath to spur them on.
It had been Martha’s voice that Parsons had heard when he had been standing in the timber near the front of the house. The negro woman was walking back and forth in the room where her captor had confined her, vigorously berating the man. She was a dusky thundercloud of wrath, who rumbled verbal imprecations with every breath. Her captor—a small man with a coarse voice, a broken nose, and a scraggy, drooping mustache—stood in the doorway looking at her fiercely, with obvious intent to intimidate the indignant Amazon.
At the instant Parsons heard her voice she was confronting the man, her eyes popping with fury.
“You let me out of heah this minute, yo’ white trash! Yo’ heah! An’ doan’ you think I’s scared of you, ’cause I ain’t! If you doan’ hop away from that do’, I’s goin’ to mash yo’ haid in wif this yere chair! You git away now!”
The man grinned. It was a forced grin, and his face whitened with it, betraying to Martha the fear he felt of her—which she had suspected from the moment he had brought her in and the light from the kitchen lamp shone on his face.
She took a threatening step toward him; a tentative movement, a testing of his courage. And when she saw him retreat from her slightly, she lunged at him, raising the chair she held in her hands.