"Well, I'm glad I amused you, anyway," said Jimmy, cheerfully. "Now about going to Mountain City, where were we? Oh, yes! The Emporium. Would you go if I got their consent—for a ten dollar bill you know?"
The boy brightened visibly.
"If you can get old Wade to say I can, you bet I'll go!" said the boy with marked enthusiasm. "He's got a 'phone, and there's one in the depot. Ask him!"
Jimmy hastened inside as fast as his stiffness would permit and was starting toward the ticket office to make a request for permission to use the 'phone when he happened to glance through the window looking toward the street. An arc light had sprung into being, and—he stopped with a gasp. Down the street was coming a crowd that was evidently in some haste and he recognized its leader. It was a large, bony woman, who strode like a man, and Jimmy thought that she carried something in her hand, something that he surmised might be a selected missile.
"Good Lord!" he breathed. "If she hit me a clip with a little chunk before, what'll she do with a full-grown brick? Why, it'd be murder I I've got to get away from here if I have to steal the horse and kidnap that boy!"
Being quick in decision and swift in enterprise, and adaptable to sudden emergency, he ran back out with great presence of mind and shouted to the boy, "Come on, son! Get a move on you. Mr. Wade says it's all right and for you to take me as fast as you can. Let's be off before that crowd gets here looking for the train."
The boy barely caught the tail of the sleigh and thus proved that he might have boarded the train; for Jimmy, not waiting for him, had clutched the lines and stirred the restless nag to action by a surreptitious slap with his hand.
"The shortest road is back the way we come," insisted the boy, as Jimmy drove the horse recklessly across the end of the platform and into a road that appeared fortuitously in front of him.
"But I certainly do like this way best," insisted Jimmy, urging the horse to speed. "I've always been fond of this road."
"Well it's a mile outen the way," protested the boy.