The girl was already throwing her discarded shawl about her shoulders.
"You go right back ter bed. I reckon ye kin trust me ter warn him." Her eyes were full of warlike fire. "I kin go quicker then you, an' I won't pause till I've got thar an' told him."
"Ye'll fare right back again, won't ye?" quavered the sick woman. "An' fotch me tidin's—thet he got away safe."
Blossom had been a little stoop-shouldered of late with that carelessness of carriage that comes from grief, but now again she was lance-like in her straightness and vibrant with the determination of a Valkyr.
"I'll come back ter ye," she vowed and then she burst out: "I reckon this day I kin pay back some leetle part of ther debt I owes to Turney. God knows he's done enough fer me!"
She went over the steep path with the light fleetness of some wild thing—and of course she did not know that after her, unseen and silent as a shadow, followed a slouching figure, using her as a guide. She did not know either that, as she left the more traveled ways and turned abruptly into the thicketed forest, that figure was joined by two others, or that one of them, after a few whispered words, struck off to communicate with more distant members of the hidden pack.
A wild haste drove her for she knew that Turner trusted the secrecy of that cave, known, as he thought, only to his friends. Every moment she could gain for him would mean a distance put between him and his peril.
Several times she paused just long enough to look about and assure herself that she was not being followed—and then went forward again, falsely reassured by the silence and seeming emptiness of the wintry woods.
Pantingly she came to the mouth of the cave. Before it lay a small plateau, gashed across by a gulch that went down a sheer hundred feet and littered with piles of broken and gigantic rock. The opening to the grotto itself was tucked back between these great bowlders, and for that reason had remained so nearly undiscovered. Just outside the fissure, she halted and gave the old signal of the owl's call. Thrice she repeated it, and then as she stood with her hands pressed to her heart, she saw a face appear, and a moment later Bear Cat had thrust himself lengthwise out of the bottle neck, and stood at her side, his face glowing with surprised delight for her coming.
"Blossom!" he cried. "What brought ye?" and in his voice throbbed the rebirth of wild hope for the miracle which, he had told himself, would never come back into his life.