“The hurt is in de bottom part of my leg an’ de top part of my foot,” said Toddie, who had turned his ankle.
“An’ he just hollered ‘mam-ma’s and ‘pa-pa,’ so sad,” continued Budge. “An’ ’twas awful. An’ I looked up the road an’ there wasn’t anybody, an’ down the front of the mountain and there wasn’t anybody, an’ I didn’t know what to do, ’cause ’twouldn’t do to go ’way off home to tell, when a poor little brother was feelin’ so dreadful bad. Then I ’membered how papa said he’d sometimes seen shot soldiers carried away when there wasn’t any wagons. So I pulled at the limb of a tree to get the thing to drag him on.”
“Why, Budge!” exclaimed Mrs. Burton, “you don’t mean to say you got that bough all alone by yourself, do you?”
“Well, no, I guess not,” said Budge, hesitatingly. “I pulled at one after another, but not one of them would split, and then I thought of somethin’ an’ kneeled right down by the tree, an’ told the Lord all about it, an’ told Him I knew He didn’t want poor little hurt Tod to lie there all day, an’ wouldn’t He please help me break a limb to draw him on? An’ when I got up off of my knees I was as strong as forty thousand horses. I don’t think I needed the Lord to help me a bit then. An’ I just gave one pull at the limb, an’ down it came kersplit, an’ I put Tod on it, an’ dragged him. But I tell you it was hard work!”
“’Twash fun, too,” said Toddie, “’cept when it went where dere was little rocks in de road, an’ dey came up an’ hitted de hurt playsh.”
“I dragged it in the soft parts of the road,” said Budge, “whenever I could, but sometimes there wasn’t any soft place all across the road. An’ things jumped inside of me—that little heart-engine, you know, awfully. I could only go about a dozen steps without stoppin’ to rest. An’ then Tod stopped cryin’ an’ said he was hungry, an’ that reminded me that I was hungry, too.”
“But we didn’t lose the fyne,” said Toddie.
Mrs. Burton took the memento from her breast and kissed it.
“Why,” said Budge, “you like it, don’t you? All right, then. Tod an’ me don’t care for bothers an’ hurts now, do we, Tod?”
“No, indeedy,” said Toddie. “Not when we can ride like shotted soldiers, an’ get home to get breakbux an’ lunch togevver.”