“I didn’t run away, I walked. And I had my dinner pail, and in it was some lunch I didn’t eat at school. I tooked some cookies from my Aunt Felda’s pantry too.”
The others came tearing up, expectant, excited, puffing with their speed. After so much walking an extra run told on them; but the relief of finding the little girl safe and well was as good as rest.
Billy ordered them back to a more open space to make camp, carrying the little girl himself. In a jiffy they prepared their light meal, dispensing with coffee for no one felt like taking time to hunt for water.
While Billy was carrying the child to a place of honor at their luncheon she spoke up shyly. “I ’spect my face is dirty—I didn’t wash this morning; I couldn’t find any water.”
“I’ll fix you, kid.” He put her down, took from one of his pockets a clean handkerchief, searched a moment till he found a wide, cup-shaped leaf full of rain water in which he wet a part of the handkerchief, and went back to her. “Here you are, a whole toilet outfit, little kid.”
“No, I can do it myself,” she said as he began gently to wipe the smudged little face. She caught the cloth and used it vigorously.
“Weren’t you afraid?” Redtop asked when the first, busy part of the meal was over.
“Of what?” she asked nonchalantly.
“Of everything: bears, the dark, and—”
“Dark doesn’t hurt; it isn’t anything. And bears—we don’t have much of them. For a minute I was afraid of—of him.” She pointed to Billy. “I thought he was a gypsy man, and they are the baddest, they are.”