“You can see for yourself, what a fine performer she is,” Sisson sneered. “High tragedy, that’s her line.”
“Oh, Mrs. Bowen,” wailed the girl, “mamma was good to you. Won’t you help me?”
“Turning on the tear taps now,” grinned Sisson.
“Oh, shut up,” snapped the new woman. “What did you expect the girl to do? Didn’t think she’d rejoice, did you? Leave her be, you Sisson. You’ve got her, that’s the main thing; now give her a chance to cool down a little. I’m sorry for the young un, that’s what I am—taking her away from a good home to tag along with a lot like us!”
Sisson raised his heavy fist and made as if to strike the woman.
“You take your choice,” he growled. “Shut up or be shut up.”
“While we’re rowing around here, Hank,” broke in Betty Bowen, “the folks will be after us. Do we carry out our plan, or don’t we?”
“We carry it out and we do it quick,” announced Sisson. Nor was Azalea long in finding out what the plan was. Taking it for granted that as soon as Azalea was missed, the Sisson All Star Combination would be under suspicion, it was the intention of Sisson and his troupe to go on up into the mountains; but Betty Bowen and her son Rafe were to take the best team of horses, and the wagon with its load of conveniences, hide by night in the woods, and then make their way before dawn into South Carolina. The state line was not more than twelve miles from where they then were, and once across that, they were comparatively safe.
This program had been carried out rapidly—more rapidly, in fact, than was at first intended. Azalea was compelled to go in the old covered wagon and to lie down there under a pile of odds and ends. Betty sat beside her son Rafe and directed their course. They had struck an old wood-road, and wound along through the heart of a silent forest, meeting no one. So much more solitary was the road than they had supposed it would be that Betty urged her son to press on. The horses were young and strong—a new team which Azalea had not before seen—and the result was that by twelve o’clock that night they had camped in an out-of-the-way grove across the line dividing the two Carolinas. The mountains were left behind, and an almost level plain stretched around them. But the underbrush in this grove of poor trees was thick, and as Betty intended to do her cooking at night and to show no smoke from her camp fire to curious strangers during the day, they felt that there was little danger of their being found.
The rain that had drenched the valley of Lee had thrown out no more than a light shower over the spot where the Bowens kept Azalea prisoner, and while the girl lay on her rickety bed wondering what had happened back at home, she did not dream of the wild experiences through which her friends Jim and Hi had been passing. It was not of them that she thought chiefly—though she knew how they would be fuming about her and putting plans on foot for her recovery—but of Ma McBirney and her anxiety.