“I don’t know why we should—do you, Dot?” pursued Tess, undisturbed. “He was going to hurt her——”
Tess turned around. The strange girl who had helped them out of the cedar boat and later had brought them to the river bank from Wild Goose Island, had disappeared like a shadow!
“Why—why,” stammered Tess. “And she never said ‘Good-bye’!”
“I guess she was afraid of this man,” Dot said, eyeing the prostrate and miserable victim of Tom Jonah’s attack without much pity. “What shall we do with him?”
“Oh!” cried Tess, with a sudden sharp idea. “She was afraid of him. Let us help her. She helped us.”
“How will we?” inquired the smaller girl.
“Just let Tom Jonah hold him where he is. We will give that pretty girl a good chance to get away. Won’t we?”
“That will be just the thing,” agreed Dot. “We can sit down and wait. I hope it isn’t too long a walk to the camp, Tess. Somehow those strawberries didn’t stay by me—much. I’m hungry right now!”
“We’ll keep him here a few minutes. Then we’ll find the road and start right back home. I know the direction,” said Tess, with confidence.
The frightened Gypsy moaned and begged for them to call off the dog; and Tom Jonah growled most frightfully every time the man squirmed. Under other circumstances the girls would have been quite stricken with pity for the poor man; but he had tried to steal Ruth’s hens, and he had now frightened their new friend away, and, as Dot whispered, “it served him right.”