He wondered if, after all, it was too late. There were things he knew how to do. If his mother would give up this wandering and settle down in some quiet little place and keep Azalea with her, and if they could have really good things to eat, and a hearth to sit before rainy nights, and clothes that were decent and clean, why perhaps, after all, a fellow could “get shet” of the drinking of corn whiskey and the gambling and all. Rafe was young still, and the little kind angel of his better impulses had not all been slain by his black selfishness and his coarse appetites. So he sat and dreamed before the fire, and was somehow washed almost innocent again by the great sea of goodness that forever stretches about us, and in which we may, if we will, bathe and purify ourselves. The night and the stars, the wind and the fire were there to help him find himself. And while he dreamed, Azalea clipped on through the thick-growing laurel, skirted a little spring-fed pond, and finding the wagon-road, fled down the mountain with feet that felt as light as feathers—as light as her heart. All of her courage had come rushing back. She said to herself that she would never be taken again—never. She was not going to have her life spoiled. It was her life and she meant to “run it” to suit herself. And as she fled, it seemed as if the little brown, thin hands of her dead mother were held out to help her; and as if the strong, kind hands of Ma McBirney were stretched in welcome; and the good, freckled hands of Jim and Hi beat together in encouragement.
Yes, they were patting “juba” for her, were Jim and Hi, and to the patter, patter, her feet sped on. She was not afraid of the night. She liked it. The stars saw what she was doing and were glad. The night bird that called out, kept the woods from being too solitary. The very wind was in her favor, and pushed at her back. Sometimes she stopped to rest, and she would have liked to sleep. But it seemed foolish to do that. The point now, was to get safe away.
“I was caught napping once,” she said to herself with a dry little laugh, “but I don’t mean to be again.”
Along toward morning she came on a little village—one she had not seen before. There was not a light anywhere, but the houses clustered together like comfortable sheep in the darkness, and she felt happier for being among them. Now that she was safe with these other human creatures, her weariness and sleepiness almost overcame her. It was growing chilly as the morning air quickened—though as yet there was no hint in the sky of coming light—and she shivered in her thin clothes. She still wore the white frock that had been so dainty and sweet the day of the Singing, but which was now a dusty rag. Her hat she had left behind her. The hair Ma McBirney had taught her to brush every night was full of the dust of the road. All of that pleasant cleanliness which she recently had been taught, had been of necessity lost in the life she had been leading. She felt ashamed as she thought how she would look to strangers, who probably would think her a miserable vagabond. However, her state could be remedied in time. Now the thing was to get in out of the cold; for she was drenched with sweat and her damp clothes clung to her.
She turned into one of the little yards, and going around to the rear of the house, tried the handle of a shed door. It yielded, and she stepped into a dark little room smelling of firewood. At the far side was an open door, and she groped her way to it and stood on a little framed-in porch with wire netting on the one exposed side. And there, neatly made, was a cot bed, waiting, it seemed, for some weary child to crawl in between its warm blankets. Azalea took off her worn and dusty shoes and her disgraceful frock, and stretched herself between the comforts. The next moment she was sound asleep.
* * * * *
A few hours later, the Sisson All Star Combination, rattling down the mountain side, came upon the wagon and the tent of Betty Bowen, ranged side by side in a comfortable little pocket away back from the road—the same road that Azalea had taken a mile lower down, after her hurried taking of the short cuts.
Sisson greeted the encampment with a whoop, and brought Rafe, shock-headed and heavy-eyed, from his bed of straw in the wagon.
“Well,” said Sisson, “you ain’t getting up early to hang out the wash, be you? Where’s Bet? Where’s the girl?”