“Take this and the paper along to Mother. She’ll want to see them right away. And say, Ruth,” he went on, as he looked anxiously at the great sloping stretches of bone-dry underbrush that lay between them and his home on the hill three miles away, “the country’s awful dry. If anything happens, get Mother and Aunt Letty down out of this country. You can make them go. Nobody else could.”
The girl had not yet spoken. There was no need for her to ask questions. She knew what lay under every one of Jeffrey’s pauses and silences. It was no time for many words. He was laying upon her a trust to look after the ones whom he loved.
She put out her hand to his and said simply:
“I’m glad we didn’t quarrel, Jeff.”
“I was a fool,” said Jeffrey gruffly, as he wrung her hand. “But I’ll remember. Forgive me, please, Ruth.”
“There’s nothing to forgive––ever––between us, Jeffrey. Go now,” she said softly.
Jeffrey wheeled his horse and followed the other man back over the hill on the road which he and Ruth had come. Ruth sat still until they were out of sight. At the very last she saw Jeffrey swing his rifle across the saddle in front of him, and a shadow fell across her heart. She would have given everything in her world to have had back what she had said of seeing murder in Jeffrey’s eyes.
Jeffrey and Myron Stocking rode steadily up the French Village road for an hour or so. Then they turned off from the road and began a long winding climb up into the higher levels of the Racquette country.
“We might as well head for Bald Mountain right away,” said Jeffrey, as they came about sundown to a fork in their trail. “The breeze comes straight down from the east. That’s where the danger is, if there is any.”