She nodded briefly.
"Put on your hat and help me tote him. He lives in that shack just over yonder."
Her voice was low and musically clear, but it bore a ring of authority as well as of impatience at the obviousness of his question, and Thode meekly obeyed.
The prostrate figure was that of a boy, dark-skinned and thin to the point of emaciation. He was clad only in a ragged shirt and trousers, with a battered straw hat lying torn and crushed beside him.
"Stand aside, please. I can carry him," Thode directed, and as he slung the inert form gently over his shoulder he saw that the boy's shoulders were pathetically humped.
In spite of his assertion, he found it no easy matter to struggle up from the steep ditch, cumbered by his helpless burden, but the girl steadied it with a capable hand and leaped lightly up beside him.
"Put him across your galapago, I'll walk on the other side and hold him up. It's only to that shack there, where the light is."
Again Thode obeyed, but he could not forbear a further query.
"You are not hurt yourself, are you? It was that maniac in the car who ran him down?"
"I came on him just now, lying that-a-way in the ditch. Poor little José! I know who did it, though; he passed me a minute before, going like hell. It was Wiley."