“Oh yis I did. Ye said old Baltie was down in the ditch yonder and like ter die if I didn’t git him out. Wal, that’s jist ’zactly what I want him to do, an’ jest ’zactly what I turned him out inter that field fer him ter do, an’ jist ’zactly what I hope he will do ’fore morning. He’s got the last ounce o’ fodder I’m ever a’goin’ ter give him, an’ I aint never a’goin’ ter let him inter my barns agin. Now put that in yer pipe an’ smoke it, an’ then git out durned quick.”
Jabe Raulsbury had partially risen from his stool as he concluded this creditable tirade, and one hand was raised threateningly toward the little figure standing with her dripping umbrella just within the threshold of the barn door.
That the burly figure did not rise entirely, and that his hand remained suspended without the threatened blow falling can perhaps best be explained by the fact that the child before him never flinched, and that the scorn upon her face was so intense that it could be felt.
[CHAPTER III—The Spirit of Mad Anthony]
Jean Carruth stood thus for about one minute absolutely rigid, her face the color of chalk and her eyes blazing. Then several things happened with extreme expedition. The position of the closed umbrella in her hands reversed with lightning-like rapidity; one quick step forward, not backward, was made, thus giving the intrepid little body a firmer foothold, and then crash! down came the gun-metal handle across Jabe Raulsbury’s ample-sized nasal appendage.
The blow, with such small arms to launch it, was not of necessity a very powerful one, but it was the suddenness of the onslaught which rendered it effective, for not one sound had issued from the child’s set lips as she delivered it, and Jabe’s position placed him at a decided disadvantage.
He resumed his seat with considerable emphasis, and clapping his hand to his injured feature, bellowed in the voice of an injured bull:
“You—you—you little devil! You—you, let me get hold of you!”
But Jean did not obey the command or pause to learn the result of her deed. With a storm of the wildest sobs she turned and fled from the barnyard, down the driveway leading to the road, and back to the spot where she had left Baltie in his misery, her tears nearly blinding her, and her indignation almost strangling her; back to the poor old horse, so sorely in need of human pity and aid.
This, all unknown to his little champion, had already reached him, for hardly had Jean disappeared beneath the tumble-down fence, than a vehicle came bowling along the highway driven by no less a personage than Hadyn Stuyvesant, lately elected president of the local branch of the S. P. C. A. Poor old Baltie’s days of misery had come to an end, for here was the authority either to compel his care or to mercifully release him from his sufferings.