“Let’s go, girls!” cried Carrie Poole, snatching her hand away from the supposed old woman.
Ruth and Agnes had already seized their sisters and were hurrying them toward the lumberman.
“Whoa, Buck! Whoa, Bright!” shouted the teamster, cracking the whiplash before the leading span of oxen. “Sh-h! Steady. What’s the matter, girls?”
“Won’t you take us to the main road where we can get the stage for Pleasant Cove?” cried Ruth.
“Sure, Miss. Going right there. Want to ride?”
“Oh, yes, sir!” cried the Corner House girls.
“That will be great fun!” shouted some of the others. “Come on!”
They clambered all over the logs, that were chained together and swung from the axle of the rear pair of wheels. The Gypsies began gathering around and some of them muttered threateningly, but the lumberman cracked his whip and the oxen started easily.
“Cling on, girls!” advised the driver. “No skylarking up there. Soon have you out to the pike road. And you want to keep away from that Gypsy camp. They are a tough lot—very different from the crowd that camped there last year and the year before. We farmers are getting about ready to run them out, now I tell ye!”
Ruth said nothing—not even to Agnes—about what she had discovered. She had penetrated “Queen Zaliska’s” disguise. She believed that the supposed old crone was the handsome, dark girl whom she had observed so narrowly on the train.