Again she looked behind. There were many miles between her and Adonia, and the doors of the woods kept closing.
“I need all your help in this thing. I must have a faithful friend. It is the one great effort of my life. You can understand so well! I—I am Lida Kennard!”
Rickety Dick threw up his arms. The reins fell from his hands. “Praise the Lord!” he yelled. The discarded reins slapped the big bays, the shout in that silence caused them to leap wildly. The tote road was rough and rocky and the equipage was light. Almost instantly the horses tore the tongue from the jumper, which was trigged by a bowlder. The animals crashed around in a circle through the underbrush, leaped into the tote road, and went galloping back toward Adonia, seeking their stalls and safety.
Dick rose from where he had fallen and rushed to the girl, who was clinging to the seat of the jumper. He took her in his arms, comforting her as he would have soothed a child. He wept frankly and babbled incoherently. A part of his emotion was concern for her, but more especially was it joy because she had discovered herself to him.
“It was in me—the hope that it was you. But I buried it; I buried it,” he sobbed.
For some moments he was too much absorbed to note the plight in which they had been left. Then his laments were so violent that the girl was obliged to soothe him in her turn.
“But when those horses rush into the yard! Think of it! He’ll cal’late we’re killed. Him penned there in his chair with worry tearing at him! I must get the word to him.” In his frantic care for the master’s peace of mind he ran away down the road, forgetting that he was abandoning the girl.
But in a few moments he came running back to her. “That’s the way it always is with me! Him first! But after this it’s you—and I was leaving you here in the lurch. But I don’t know what to do!” He looked at her, then at the broken jumper; he gazed to the north and he stared to the south; in that emergency, his emotions stressed by what she had told him, he was as helpless as a child.
Her own concern just then was for her grandfather as well as for herself. Those runaway horses appearing in the yard would rouse his bitter fear; they would also start a hue and cry which would follow her into the north country.
“You must go back, at once!” she urged Dick. “Follow as fast as you can. The horses will quiet down; they’ll walk. You may overtake them. You must try.”