“I’ve got an order here from the Central City Market for Jordan,” said Joe. “All right?”
“Sure,” answered the other. “Give it to me.” He proved to be a boy some two years older than Joe; perhaps eighteen. He was tall and broad-shouldered and uncouth. His clothes seemed too large for him and fell into strange wrinkles as he stepped close to take the wire basket. He wore no hat, and Joe found the fact oddly worrying him for the instant. Then, as he yielded the carrier and said, “Four dollars and thirty cents to pay, please,” he knew why.
“All right,” said the boy gruffly in his unpleasant voice, and started toward the rear of the house, Joe was following more slowly when the other turned. “You wait here,” he said in a threatening tone. “Watch him, Gyp.”
The dog growled and Joe stopped very still. For several minutes boy and dog stared at each other there in the rain and gloom, but Joe didn’t see Gyp at all. He saw, instead, a figure in a dark slouch hat bending over the handlebars of a shining purple bicycle, and although the hat was now wanting, he knew beyond the possibility of any doubt that the youth on the bicycle and the unpleasant-voiced boy who had disappeared beyond the corner of the house were one and the same.
His thoughts were interrupted by the return of the boy with the empty carrier and the money. “Here you are, kid,” he grunted. “Now beat it.”
“Guess I’d better,” said Joe pleasantly. “It’s a long way out here, isn’t it? Gee, I was nearly bogged down getting along that road!”
“Well, why didn’t they send a team then?” demanded the other.
“There wasn’t any of them coming this way to-day. That’s a nice dog you’ve got,” Joe snapped his fingers invitingly, but Gyp only growled deeply. “Is he cross?”
“He don’t take to strangers,” answered the other gruffly. “Come here, Gyp. I’ll look after him till you’re out o’ the way, kid. Better get a move on.”
“All right. Good night,” said Joe. He turned back across the ragged and sodden lawn and gained the road. There he dared one brief backward look. Boy and dog still stood where he had left them, unmoving, silent, two dark forms in the falling darkness. The light in the house had gone, but that in one of the outbuildings—possibly a stable—had increased in brilliancy. Against its radiance a figure—two figures—moved, coming and going from sight across the square opening of a wide doorway. Then Joe brought his eyes back to the uneven road and floundered on toward the road and his bicycle.