“Did you hear that threat Juan made as he ran off?” Connie recalled. “Do you suppose he meant it?”
“He was annoyed because the land owner had ordered him off the property,” Miss Gordon said. “I’m sure Juan didn’t mean his threat seriously.”
As the Brownie leader spoke, the girls were startled to hear a yell of dismay. The cry had come from Eileen, who had walked a short distance ahead of the others down the road.
In attempting to leap a tiny ditch from the roadside to the pavement, she had slipped and fallen. Now as she slowly picked herself up, her shirt and jeans were plastered with mud. So were her hands and face.
“Just look at me,” Eileen wailed. She began to cry.
Miss Gordon tried to comfort her. “We’ll go to a filling station rest room and clean you up,” she said brightly. “Don’t cry, Eileen.”
“But the truck is coming!” exclaimed Sunny, who had spied it far down the road. “There won’t be time.”
“It will take Bill Flint a little while to unload the cherries,” Miss Gordon said. “I’ll take Eileen to the filling station. The others go on to the factory loading dock and meet Bill.”