“Awful straight.”
“Can you shoot it?”
The mountain girl gave her a look of scorn. “In the mountains everyone shoots.”
“Good! I’m glad!” There was warmth in the girl’s tone. There was comfort in knowing that though there was no man in their party, there was a rifle carried by a girl who knew well how to handle it.
A moment more and they were feeling the damp night air upon their cheeks. It was a narrow trail they were following. Now and then as they hurried forward the dew drenched branch of dogwood or rhododendron slapped them full in the face. Here and there some wild creature, frightened from the trail, went bounding away into the bush.
It was spooky enough, this climbing higher and higher up the side of Little Black Mountain in the dead of night. Spooky and dangerous, too. What if those men, catching the sound of their footsteps behind them, should draw aside from the trail and waylay them? Marion dared not dwell on this. One thing was uppermost in her mind—the saving of Little Hallie. How was this to be done? She could not tell. The answer would be there when the time came. At all hazards the men must be followed.
So, drenched by dripping dew, torn at by out-reaching brambles, catching the faint tinge of waters in the gulch far below, they ascended higher and higher until at last they had reached the crest.
“See!” whispered Patience as they rested here. “There are Hallie’s footprints!”
It was true. Having dismounted, that they might rest their tired muscles, the men had lifted the child to the ground.
Marion found comfort in this. “They can’t be entirely bad,” she told herself. “They think of the child’s comfort.”