“He did,” Fanny explained, “and knocked him down and would have torn him to pieces if Inez had not called him off.”
“Why did she do that? She might have let him hold the villain till he was captured. There are surely enough men here to have secured him,” Tom said, speaking so low that Inez did not hear him.
She was leaning against a tree, with Nero at her side. He had seemed suspicious of Tom and declining his advances had gone to Inez, looking at her inquiringly as if asking the cause of the commotion.
“I wish he had held him,” Fanny said, vehemently, “but I wish still more that you had met us earlier and this would not have happened. You ought to have seen Inez when she sprang over the wheel and confronted the robber. She was grand and her eyes were terrible as she marched straight up to him as if she were not a bit afraid. I think she would have fired if he had not turned and ran.”
Tom made no reply except to say, “I wish I had come earlier,” then, addressing Inez he asked if she would go on to Clark’s, or go home.
“I must go home,” she answered quickly. “It is the best place.”
Fanny at once offered to go with her, but Inez declined.
“No, no,” she said. “I want to be alone.”
“How will you go? You cannot walk so far,” someone asked, and Tom replied, “She will take my horse and I shall walk.”
By this time the driver was getting anxious to be off. and the passengers gathered around Inez, bidding her good bye, telling her they should never forget her bravery, and calling her the heroine of the valley, as Tom was the hero.