The first thing was to get to Craig. He caught the afternoon train for Selma, and had to wait there overnight, for there was no train down the other side of the river till next morning. In this quietest and most charming of little Southern cities Lockwood elaborated his plans. He bought a better hat; he bought another automatic pistol to replace the one that Blue Bob now carried. He slept soundly at the hotel, fortified with hope, and took the morning train for Bay Minette.
It rained in torrents during the night, and rained nearly all that morning as the slow train wound down the line, through the hills and pine woods, past scattered cotton and cornfields.
The rain had ceased when he reached Bay Minette, late in the afternoon, but it threatened to recommence at any moment. There was a motor repair shop that he knew, where a car could usually be hired, and he made straight for it. He wanted desperately to make Craig’s camp that night; and he had no more than entered the shop than he perceived a mud-covered car that he knew well, being worked over in the repair pit.
CHAPTER XVI
THE PAY CAR
The car was fearfully incrusted with red, yellow, and white mud, but Lockwood recognized it at once as the light car that Craig used for sending out to the railroad. A moment later he espied, sitting stiffly upon a box in a corner, not Craig, indeed, but Williams, the camp foreman.
“Hello!” he exclaimed joyfully. “Just what I wanted. What are you out for, Williams? I’ll ride back with you.”
“Howdy, Lockwood!” responded the foreman, looking almost equally pleased. “Where you been? Where’d you get them clothes? Craig’s been gettin’ right anxious about you. This is Friday, you know. I come out to the bank.”
Lockwood had lost count of the days. On Fridays the car went out to the bank at Bay Minette to bring back the thousand dollars or so for the weekly pay roll.
“I oughter been back two hours ago,” the turpentine man went on, “but the roads—O Lawd! I skidded every way—hadn’t no chains on—and last thing, I skidded right inter a tree, and shook something outer gear.”
“But what’s the matter with you? You didn’t get hurt?” asked Lockwood, observing Williams’ constrained attitude.