“There’s a warrant out for your arrest, but don’t you care narry bit!”
“For my arrest?” Florence stared. “What have I done?”
“Hit’s for carryin’ concealed weapons, a pistol gun, I reckon.”
“Why, I never—”
The girl paused and caught her breath. It all came to her like a flash. Those stealthy movements on the mountain had been made by some of Black Blevens’ men. They had been spying on her. She blushed as she realized that they might have seen her sleeping there in the leaves. But her face was flushed with anger as she realized that, having seen her pocket that all but harmless pistol, they had taken a mean advantage and had sworn out a warrant for her arrest.
“Don’t you keer,” said the little mountain man, putting a hand on her arm. “Don’t you keer narry bit. This store’s mine, an’ all them goods. I’ll mortgage hit all to go your bond. You go right on teaching your school. We’ll take keer of old Black Blevens and all them of his sort.”
Quick tears blinded her, but she brushed them away. It was hard to be treated as a criminal in a strange land and by the very people you were trying to help.
Quickly, instead of tears, there was a gleam of battle in her eyes.
“We’ll beat it!” said Ransom, clinching his fists hard. “Down here in the mountings law’s a club to beat your enemies with. Hit’s quare, but hit’s true. We’ll git a lawyer from the court house. We’ll beat old Black Blevens, just you wait and see!”
Three times more that morning Florence was reduced to tears by rough-clad, shuffling mountaineers who came to knock timidly at the schoolhouse door and to assure her that they had heard of her plight and were ready to go her bail and to help in any way. “If hit takes the roof off from over my ole woman an’ the last hog shoat I got runnin’ in the branch,” as one of them expressed it.