Tommie nodded. Already she was leaving the building with him.
“You go by the cut, and if you see Hugh McClintock tell him what you’ve told me and that he’s to stay in town, she explained.
“Yes’m,” Tommie said. “I’ll ’member.”
“Don’t tell Mr. Dodson anything except that I want him just as soon as he can get to me.”
“No’m, I won’t.” His heart beat fast with excitement, but he crushed back the fear that mounted in him.
They separated. Tommie hurried along through the cut and Vicky climbed the hill to the summit. She knew that the man lying in the junipers could see her. If she had known exactly where he was, she would have gone straight to him and forced him to give up his plan by remaining at his side. But in the thick underbrush she knew there would be small chance of finding him.
At the brow of the hill she stopped and swept the path with her eyes. Nobody was coming toward her along it from town. Her heart was in a tumult of alarm. If Hugh came by the cut and Tommie failed to meet him or to impress him sufficiently of the danger, he would walk straight into the ambush prepared for him.
She was torn by conflicting impulses. One was to hurry down the hill to town with the hope of finding Hugh before he started. Another was to retrace her steps toward the junction of paths and wait for him there. Perhaps if the bushwhacker saw her there he would not dare to risk a shot. But she rejected this as a vain hope. He could fire in perfect security from the brush and slip away in the gathering dusk without any likelihood of detection.
It was not in her nature to wait in patience while Hugh might be hurrying into peril. She turned and walked swiftly back along the path she had just climbed. The shadow of dusk was falling. Objects at a distance began to appear shadowy, to take on indistinctness of outline. The panic in her grew with the passing minutes. A pulse in her parched throat beat fast. Sobs born of sheer terror choked her as she stumbled forward.
She stopped, close to the tunnel where the little boy had been entombed. With all her senses keyed she listened. No sound came to her tortured brain, but waves of ether seemed to roll across the flat and beat upon her ears. She waited, horrible endless minutes of agonized distress. In a small voice she cried out to the man in the chaparral that she was watching him, that if he fired she would be a witness against him. But her hoarse voice scarce carried a dozen yards.