At about the same time the sheriff at Lee and Pa McBirney and Mr. Carson and Elder Mills and Mr. Pickett and a great many other persons were bestirring themselves to the same end. They telegraphed here and they telephoned there, and all over the county the good neighbors were keeping an outlook. Ma McBirney and Mrs. Carson kept together and talked over this and that phase of the matter, and both of them poured out their kind hearts in good wishes, as if their love would build a wall around the lost child to keep her from harm.
“Let no evil touch her, dear Lord,” prayed Mary McBirney over and over again. “Thy power is everywhere, and Thy love is all protecting. Spread Thy love about her like a cloak and keep her from harm.”
And that was just about the time that Azalea, aroused from her thin and worried sleep by the first streaks of the dawn that streamed to her over the level low country, drew the dirty bedclothes closer about her chin, and tried to make out whether or not it was all a bad dream. Tige, the bulldog, crouching there at the tent door, and snarling if she but moved, certainly seemed like a nightmare. Betty Bowen with her frowsy head and her horrid red flannel bed-gown, sleeping with her mouth open on the shake-down next to Azalea, and the miserable old show wagon outside, with lumbering Rafe Bowen, the son of Betty, snoring in rivalry to the robins—not that his opera in any way resembled theirs—was something worse than ordinary nightmare.
“It isn’t a dream,” sighed Azalea, with deep, terrible conviction. “It’s true.”
She went over the sharp little drama of all that had happened the day before; remembered the sweet hollow in the woods where she and Carin had gone, the fright they had had at the snake, the appearance of that queer, kind old Haystack Thompson; she remembered how she had followed them a little way, and then had stopped for some wake robins which were growing in a sunny little spot and which she had thought would look lovely at Ma McBirneys’ belt; and then had come the strange whimpering of an animal in pain. She had thought it a dog caught in a rabbit trap, and she had gone toward it, and as she went on, the sound seemed to move too, and it grew more agonizing as if the animal were being tortured beyond anything it could stand. And then, suddenly, from among the great trees, had come Sisson, the “showman,” her old enemy. He had his huge hand over her mouth in a minute, and had pushed her before him, making her run against her will, and presently they were among all the old companions of her wandering years. Rafe Bowen, who had run away three years before, was back too. He was a big fellow with broad shoulders and a sullen face. And there was a new woman—to take her mother’s place, Azalea thought. They had laughed at her and told Sisson not to be too rough with her.
“You treat her like she was a mad steer, Hank,” Betty Bowen had said. “Don’t scare the young un like that.”
Sisson let go of her and pushing her a little way from him broke into a roar of laughter. It made cold chills run over the girl. She knew that when Sisson laughed it was when some one else was in trouble. Nearly the only thing he really enjoyed was tormenting some one.
“She ran out to meet me,” he cried, roaring with that cruel laughter, his eyes full of evil pleasure. “Just toddled out to meet me, she did. You never saw anything like it. Couldn’t stay away from her old friend, Zalie couldn’t. Once a show girl always a show girl, eh?”
Azalea had been learning lessons of self-control since she had been with Mary McBirney, but now her old-time temper flamed up in her. She felt the familiar wave of fire sweeping across her brain and she screamed out angry things at Sisson.
“I’m no show girl!” she protested. “I never wanted to be a show girl. I think you are wicked, wicked, Hank Sisson! You’ve taken me away from the best people I ever knew and they’ll be so frightened! Oh, please, Mrs. Bowen, make him let me go. Oh, Hank Sisson I hate you! I hate you! Oh, why isn’t my mamma alive? You wouldn’t dare treat me like this if she was alive. You bad, bad man!”