“Look a-thar!” whispered Bud, with a ghastly face and dilating eyeballs. “Oh, Lord A’mighty, thar’s her—an’ him!”
Ruffner saw a boat leisurely propelled by a long pole approaching from the river-side, a black-haired young man in the bow with the pole, a fair-haired little girl in the stern. The little girl jumped up, and at the same instant a shower of water from light flying heels blinded the young man.
“Paw! Paw!” screamed the little girl. “Maw tole Ma’ Bowlin’—meet up—paw!”
Just as the big clock in the store struck the last stroke of six, Sukey Quinn, who had been cowering on the platform steps, lifted her head and put her hand to her ear. Then everybody heard it, the long peal of a horn. The widow from Georgia ran quickly up to Sukey and threw her arms about her shoulders. For a second the people held their breath. It had been arranged that whoever found the lost child should give the signal by blowing his horn, once if the searchers came too late, three times if the child should be alive. Would the horn blow again?
“It are Bud’s horn!” sobbed Sukey. “He’d never blow fur onst. Hark! Thar’t goes agin! Three times! An’ me wouldn’t hev no truck with ’im, but she set store by Ma’ Bowlin’ all the time.”
Horn after horn caught up the signal joyfully, and when the legitimate blowing was over, two enterprising boys exhausted themselves on a venerable horn which was so cracked that no one would take it. In an incredibly short time every soul within hearing distance, not to mention a herd of cattle and a large number of swine, had run to the store, and when at last two horses’ heads appeared above the hill, and the crowd could see a little pink sun-bonnet against Bud Quinn’s brown jean, an immense clamor rolled out.
