Then she saw that the little stranger had not stirred from his first alighting-place.
“Beg yore pardon, ma’am, fer startling you or fer addressing you at all, which I shouldn’t, but—”
“Oh, never mind that,” said the girl, impatiently, shaking back her hair. So deprecating and timid were the tones, that almost without an effort of the imagination she could picture the little man’s blushes and his half-sidling method of delivery. At this supreme moment his littleness and lack of self-assertion jarred on her mood. “What’re you doin’ there? Thought you’d vamoosed.”
“It was safer here,” explained the stranger, “I left no trail.”
She nodded comprehension of the common-sense of this.
“But, ma’am, I took the liberty of speakin’ to you because you seems to be in trouble. Of course, I ain’t got no right to ask, an’ if you don’t care to tell me—”
“They’re goin’ to kill Billy,” broke in Nell, with a sob.
“What for?”
“I don’t just rightly make out. They’s after someone, and they thinks Billy’s caching him. I reckon it’s you. Billy ain’t caching nothin’, but they thinks he is.”
“It’s me they’s after, all right. Now, you know where I am, why don’t you tell them and save Billy?”