The long, hot, dusty day was sinking into twilight, and the precious waif last seen with a travelling show, in a strange city twenty miles from home! Miss Morrison was conscience-smitten, Lucy Waring in tears, in which Cynthia and Doris were quite ready to join, and poor Mrs. Brown all but overcome by this unexpected ending to their exciting day.
There was no train for Westwood that night. Of course, there were always the telegraph and telephone, but no one knew just how to reach any responsible person, or even whether the “Wild West” might not be already on its way to Hartford or elsewhere. That, Miss Sophia said, was in all probability the case.
“You may be sure,” she announced, with her usual cold precision, “that the wretched child has run away with the show. What else could you expect, indeed, after deliberately putting her in the way of temptation? You will remember that I advised against it from the first. The sight of the beads and feathers and all the rest of the savage finery was too much for her, no doubt, and she will be exhibiting herself in them, if possible, this very evening. Perhaps this painful incident may convince you, my dear Lucy, that you can not make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear!”
After all, the only person to keep all his wits about him in this emergency was Ethan Honey. That youth stopped to consult nobody, but hastily recollecting that an express train for Westwood stopped at the next town, three miles off, in twenty minutes, he felt in his pockets to assure himself that he had just money enough for the fare, sprang on his bicycle and was off. Breathless and dusty, he arrived barely in time to turn the wheel over to the agent and board the express, which landed him at eight o’clock in the evening, anxious, supperless and penniless, among the flaring lights of the big town.
CHAPTER VII
BEHIND THE SCENES
The corner of the big sleeping-tent allotted to Young Eagle and his wife and baby was untidy enough, with a smell of paints and grease and buckskin on the hot, close air. Dexterously Yellow Star rolled the baby out of his heavy, beaded cradle and took him in her arms.
He was quiet, even for an Indian baby; unnaturally quiet, she thought; and there was a pinched look about the tiny, expressionless features that went straight to her heart.
