“Come along and let’s find that hot coffee, June,” he said almost cheerfully. “There must be a house somewhere around here, I reckon.”
“Sure must!” replied the other, falling instantly into Wayne’s humour. “Lawsy-y, I can jus’ taste that coffee now! Which way we goin’, Mas’ Wayne?”
Wayne stamped his feet on the still frosty ground and considered. At last: “North,” he replied, “and north’s over that way. Come along!”
He led the way back toward the track, followed by June and Sam, and after squeezing himself between the wires of a fence climbed the embankment and set off over the ties with a speed born of long practice. The rose hue was fast changing to gold now, and long rays of sunlight streamed upward heralding the coming of His Majesty the Sun; and against the glory of the eastern sky the three travellers stood out like animated silhouettes cut from blue-black cardboard as they trudged along—[the white boy, the black boy, and the yellow dog].
[CHAPTER II]
JUNE STRIKES A BARGAIN
That they didn’t travel absolutely due north was only because the track chose to lead more westerly. By the time the sun was really in sight they had covered the better part of a half-mile and had caught a glimpse of a good-sized town in the distance. Tall chimneys and a spire or two pointed upward above a smoky haze. They crossed a big bridge beneath which flowed a broad and sluggish river, and had to flatten themselves against the parapet, Sam held tightly in Wayne’s arms, while a long freight train pounded past them on the single line of track. Beyond the bridge a “Yard Limit” sign met them, and the rails branched and switches stood up here and there like sentries and a roundhouse was near at hand. But they found their first habitation before that in a tiny white cottage set below the embankment, its gate facing a rambling clay road, rutted and pitted, that disappeared under a bridge. There was a path worn down the bank to the road, and Wayne and June and Sam descended it. A trail of smoke arose from the chimney of the house straight into the morning sunlight and suggested that the occupants were up and about.
Wayne’s knock on the door was answered by a tall, thin, slatternly woman who scowled questioningly.
“Good morning, ma’am,” began Wayne. “Could you give us a cup of coffee, please? We’ve been——”