“I guess I’ll be goin’ too,” he said.
Perkins whirled. “Bully for you!” he shouted, and made a flying wedge of himself through the other fellows, to shake the giant’s brawny hand.
There came a second hill boy, younger and slighter than the first. “He’s my pardner,” he said, with an awkward gesture toward the other. “I guess if he goes, that’ll mean me too.”
There were four of these. Fathers and mothers rose in protest. The first lad turned and faced them.
“Looky here!” he called defiantly. “We ain’t goin’ to let them city fellers do our fightin’, are we? Not on your life!”
That settled it. They were not going to let anything like that happen—not on those unhappy lives of theirs.
It was over. The car got away from the last clinging young hand that would have detained it, and in the long shadows of the late afternoon swung down the hills to the plain below, and the big town, and the last hours of the day. When at length it halted in Jane’s narrow street beside her door, above which her little sign no longer hung, Black, getting out with her and Sue, said a word in Red’s ear. The other shook his head.
“We’ll wait,” he insisted. “You’ve mighty little time to spare now, if you have a bit of a snack with us before your train goes. And I vow we won’t let you off from that.”
“I don’t want to be let off. Give me five minutes here, and I’ll be with you.”
“We will come back for you at train time, Miss Ray,” said Mrs. Burns.