“I can go now,” said he angrily. “But I can’t go very fast.”
“Well, go as fast as ye can,” said Sheldon. Then he directed Herbert to step out from behind Smith and take another way. “You fetch her,” said he to Smith. “We’ll be there ahead of you.”
Smith started rapidly, looking forward not without pleasant anticipation to the moment when, gun in hand, he should lead Elizabeth to Mammy Sheldon’s cabin. It would be not only another triumph for the mountain people to have outwitted the people of the plain, but it would end an anxiety which was really acute. Mammy Sheldon knew their past history, and there were incidents which Smith and his friends believed might get them into serious trouble. Heaven only knew how much she had told! They would end her chances for making mischief by moving her nearer to their own cabins, annoying as was her constant crying.
Then Smith stopped speculating and stood still. The rock on which he had left Elizabeth was bare; she was not there either awake or sleeping. Under his black beard he grew deathly white. Then, cursing, he stepped rapidly into the woods. After a while he returned to the rock. Elizabeth was still not there. He stepped out again in a different direction, and this time he was longer away. When he returned a second time, he stared with a terror which had ceased to be intelligent. His journey and his meal had made his absence long. She could not have gone to fetch those black-coated police! Some one would kill him if she had; he knew that, but in his confusion he was not sure whether it would be Sheldon or the police. The girl had said that they could be punished for past crimes. Again, now without any conscious plan, he plunged into the woods.
When Elizabeth reached the house of Colonel Thomas, not much more than a quarter of an hour after she had accosted the stranger on the roadside, she saw that old gentleman sitting, as usual, on his porch. As usual, he did not wait for his visitors to come to him, but rose and walked to the porch steps. The kindly stranger bade Elizabeth sit still in the car and went to meet him.
“I was stopped on the Cashtown road by a young woman named Elizabeth Scott, who says that her brother has been carried off into the mountain. She has come to find you and the constabulary. My car is at your service, if you need it.”
Colonel Thomas said “Wait!” and vanished indoors. His voice could be heard, first shouting to his family, then into a telephone. When he reappeared a hat was set rakishly on his head, and he was answering over his shoulder protests of some one indoors.
“Of course I’m going!” said he.
In another instant his foot was on the car step.