“Wait!” commanded Ruth. “Can you bear to stay as you are for a while?” she asked Mr. Pendleton.
“If I lie still—don’t try to move—I seem to be all right,” he said.
“Then,” said the oldest Corner House girl, “you run and bring the car, Neale. Get it in here just as close as you can. Then when you and Luke lift him you will not have so far to carry the poor man, and,” she whispered the rest in Luke’s ear, “if he is seriously hurt it will not rack him so badly.”
“Thoughtful girl,” said Luke proudly. “Go ahead, Neale.”
“I’ll bring the car around to this other road. It is not far out to the quarry. And maybe I can drive in to the burned cabin. There used to be a road to it.”
He started on the run as soon as he had spoken. The others gathered around the fallen man. Dot hugged up her Alice-doll, and remarked:
“I’m glad he isn’t dead. I don’t think I should like dead folks. And isn’t it lucky Sammy’s wolves didn’t find him here while his children were hunting for us?”
Carrie, the smallest Pendleton, gasped a horrified “Oh!” Then she asked: “Are there wolves in the chestnut woods—like the wolf in ‘Little Red Riding Hood’?”
“The wolves are in Sammy’s mind,” said Agnes cheerfully. “And wolves in your mind never bite.”
“Huh!” grumbled Sammy, “how do you know there aren’t really, truly wolves here?”