Seizing her bundle, she wiggled like an eel through the willow thicket until she was completely hidden from view, and Botts followed as well as he was able, with one hand fending 27off the supple young shoots from whipping back upon his wounded forehead.
He had heard nothing, yet the girl’s quick ears had caught the faint creaking of a cart along the road, and now a cheerful but somewhat shrill whistle came to him in a vaguely reminiscent strain.
“That’s Lem Mattles,” Lou whispered as she reached behind him and drew the willows yet more screeningly about their trail. “He’s whistlin’ ‘Ida-Ho’; it’s the only tune he can remember.”
“Who is he?” demanded her companion.
“The Hess’s next-door neighbor. She’ll stop him right away an’ ask if he’s seen me on the road, an’ they’ll all be after me, but they’ll never think of the old cow-trail; one of the hands showed it to me an’ told me it led clear to Hudsondale, an’ came out by the freight-yards.”
For a moment she paused with a little catch in her breath. “Think you kin make it, Mr. Botts?”
“Sure!” He smiled and held out his hand. 28“We’re partners now, and I’m ‘Jim’ to my friends, Lou.”
“All right, Jim,” she responded indifferently, but she laid her little work-worn hand in his for a brief minute. “Come on.”
With the bundle under her arm once more she led the way, and her partner followed her to where the brook dwindled and the thicket gave place to a stretch of woodland, between the trees of which a faint, narrow trail could be discerned.
“We’re all right now if we kin keep on goin’,” announced Lou. “Nobody comes this way any more, an’ the feller said that the tracks runs through the woods clear to the Hunkie settlement by the yards. Feelin’ all right, Jim?”