Girl Alone Part 21

It was not quite so hard to push her way back into the center of the tent; crazed men and women offered little resistance to anyone who was so foolish as to tempt death under a collapsed tent.

She had almost reached the midget's platform when she suddenly felt herself lifted into a pair of strong arms, swung high above the heads of the last of the crowd that was battling its way to the exits. Her cry was instinctive, unreasoning, direct from her heart: "David! Oh, David!"

A mocking laugh answered her and she squirmed in the man's arms so that she could see his face. It was not David at all, but the man whom "Enid"

had called "Van." His face was laughing, gay, mocking, untouched by the shameful pallor of fear; exultant, rather, in the excitement of the storm. His dark eyes were wide, s.h.i.+ning even through the fitful darkness made by the flickering of the crazily swinging gas jets.

"Isn't it glorious?" he challenged her, above the uproar of wind, rain, hail and the frightened animal sounds of human beings in fear of death.

"I've got to find the midget-Pitty Sing!" she shouted, struggling frantically to release herself.

"The charming barker has rescued her," Van shouted. "I was afraid some officious a.s.s had cheated me of the pleasure of rescuing you. I've waited all day-"

But his sentence was broken in two by the long-threatened collapse of the tent. A center-pole struck him a glancing blow, knocking him flat, and Sally with him.

For what seemed like hours of nightmare she struggled to release herself from the steel-like clasp of his arms and the smothering embrace of the rain-sodden canvas. To add to the horror, rain fell heavily upon the canvas that held them pinned helplessly to the earth; hail pelted her flesh bitingly even through the dubious protection of the canvas; and every moment they were in mortal danger of being trampled to death by the feet of fleeing carnival visitors, who had been clear of the tent when it had collapsed.

"Don't-struggle," came that mocking voice, panting a little with the effort of speaking under the smothering caul of canvas. "Lie-still. I'll hold up-the canvas-so you-can breathe. s.h.i.+eld your face-with your-arms.

Sorry-I m.u.f.fed-the role-of rescuer-of damsels-in distress."

"Oh, hus.h.!.+" Sally cried angrily, but doing her best to obey him. She crooked an arm over her face, so that the hail no longer punished it.

And she relaxed as much as possible, her head on Van's shoulder, her feet pus.h.i.+ng futilely at the sodden ma.s.s of canvas that weighted them down.

"Better?" he asked casually, no fear at all in his voice, and only a mocking sort of anxiety. "We'll be safe enough here until the tent is raised, unless someone steps on us. And by this time your charming employer, the redoubtable Pop Bybee, has of course a.s.sembled his roustabouts to raise the tent in the expectation of finding buried treasure-ostrich men, midgets, and Turkish harem girls who read crystals."

"Aren't you ever serious? Aren't you frightened?" Sally gasped.

"Serious? Well, hardly ever!" the man chuckled. "Frightened? Frequently!

But I am so appreciative of this opportunity to be alone with you that I could hardly quibble with fate to the extent of being frightened at the means which accomplished it."

"Oh, I wonder what's happened to-to everybody!" Sally began to s.h.i.+ver with sobs.

"To-David?" Van's mocking voice came strangely out of the darkness.

"Lucky David, wherever he is now, that your first thought should go to him. David and Sally! How do you like 'play-acting,' Sally Ford?"

CHAPTER XI

The terror which the menace of violent death had held for her now seemed a pallid, weak thing, beside the heart-stopping emotion which the New Yorker's mocking, amused voice uttering her real name called into being.

Her head jerked instinctively from the comfort of his arm. Squirming away from him, under the sodden blanket of canvas, she curled into a tight little ball of agony, her face cupped in her hands. "So that's why you bothered me so!" she cried, her voice m.u.f.fled by her fingers.

"You're a detective! You knew all the time! You were going to take me to jail! Oh, you-Oh! David, David!"

"Listen, you little idiot!" Van's voice came sharply, bereft of its mocking note for once. "I'm not a detective! Good heavens! Do I look like one? I've always understood that they have enormous feet and wear derbies and talk out of the corner of their mouths." Mockery was creeping back. "Did you think that a poor little tyke like you was worth sending to New York for a detective to bay at your heels like a bloodhound? I merely overheard the little Betsy's keen penetration of your disguise. And I took the trouble to inquire casually of the governor this evening just who-if anybody-Sally Ford might be-"

"Then you gave me away-David and me!" she accused him, shuddering with sobs.

"Not at all. How it does pain me for you to persist in misunderstanding me! I gave nothing away-absolutely nothing! I merely found out that David Nash and Sally Ford are fugitives from justice, wanted on rather serious charges. After making the acquaintance of 'Princess Lalla,' I might add that I don't believe a word of the silly story. Besides, I have your own word for it-" and he laughed-"that you are 'not that kind of a girl.' As a matter-of-fact-oh! We're about to be rescued, Sally Ford! I hear the 'heave-ho' of stalwart black boys. And the storm is over except for a gentle, lady-like rain."

It was not till he mentioned the blessed fact that Sally realized that the storm was indeed over. The only sound, besides the shouts of the "white hopes" engaging in raising the collapsed tent, was the patter of rain upon the canvas which still weighted down her small cold body, as wet as if she had been swimming.

Struggling to a sitting position under the already moving ma.s.s of canvas, the New Yorker cupped his hands about his mouth and shouted: "s.h.i.+p ahoy! s.h.i.+p ahoy!" In an aside to Sally he chuckled: "What does one shout under the circ.u.mstances-or rather, under the canvas of a collapsed tent?"

Sally managed a weak little laugh. "One shouts, 'Hey, rube!'" she told him.

And his stentorian "Hey, rube!" struggled up through layers of dripping canvas, bringing speedy relief for the submerged "rube" and performer.

When at last the tent was raised, Sally walked out, Van's arm still about her s.h.i.+vering, soaked body, to find apparently the entire carnival force huddled in the rain to welcome her, drawn by that fateful cry of "Hey, rube!"

Jan, the giant, was there, sad-eyed but smiling, "Pitty Sing" perched on one of his shoulders, Noko, the male midget, on the other. "The girl n.o.body can lift" was there, too, her right arm in splints; a deep gash down her pale cheek; Eddie Cobb, who, they told her as they chorused their welcome, had been crying like a baby as he searched for her through the wreck of the carnival, was clasping a drenched Kewpie doll to his breast, apparently the sole survivor of his gambling wheel stock.

Pop and Mrs. Bybee were there, Mrs. Bybee clad only in a black sateen petticoat and a red sweater. And in spite of his heavy loss from the fury of the storm Pop was smiling, his bright blue eyes twinkling a welcome. But-but-Sally's eyes roved from face to face, confidently at first, grateful for their friendliness, then widening with alarm. For David was not there.

"Where's David?" she cried, then, her voice growing shrill and frantic, she screamed at them: "Where's David? Tell me! He's hurt-dead? Tell me!"

She broke away from Van, ran to Pop Bybee and tugged with her little blue-white hands washed free of their brown make-up, at his wet coat.

"Reckon he's safe and sound in the privilege car," Bybee rea.s.sured her, but his blue eyes avoided hers, pityingly, she thought.

"Was anyone killed in the storm? Tell me!" she insisted, her bluish lips twisting into a piteous loop of pain.

"We can't find Nita nowhere," Babe, the fat girl, blurted out, her eyes wide with childish love of excitement. "We thought she was buried under a tent but they've got all the tents up now and she ain't nowhere."

Nita-and David. Nita-David-missing. For she did not believe for an instant that Pop Bybee was telling her the truth.

"It seems to me," Van interrupted nonchalantly, "that dry clothes are indicated for Princess Lalla. May I escort you to your tent?" and he bowed with mocking ceremony before her.

"He saved my life," Sally acknowledged suddenly, half-angrily, for she resented with childish unreasonableness the fact that it had been this mocking, insolent stranger, this "rube" from New York, not David, who had saved her.

An hour later when she was uneasily asleep in her berth in the show train, whose sleeping cars had been pressed into service in lieu of the soaked cots in the dress tent, a sudden uproar-hoa.r.s.e voices shouting and cursing-shocked her into consciousness. Broken sentences flung out by angry men, Pop Bybee's voice easily distinguished among them, told her what had happened:

"Every d.a.m.n cent gone!-Pay roll gone!-Safe cracked!-Told you you was a fool to take in them two hoboes that was already wanted by the police.

That Dave guy's beat it-made a clean-up-"

"Everybody tumble out! Pop Bybee wants us all in the privilege car," a carnival employe shouted, running down the sleeping car and pausing only to thrust a hand into each berth, like a Pullman porter awakening its pa.s.sengers.

But Sally was already dressing, getting her dress on backward and sobbing with futile rage at the time lost in reversing it. When she was scrambling out of her upper berth, a tiny hand reached out of the lower and tugged at her foot.

"Don't forget me, Sally," the midget commanded sharply. "And for heaven's sake, don't take on so! You'll make yourself sick, crying like that. Of course your David didn't rob the safe. I'm all dressed."

Sally parted the green curtains and stretched out her arms for the midget, who was so short that she could stand upright upon her bed without her head touching the rounded support of the upper berth. Little Miss Tanner ran into Sally's arms and clambered to her shoulder.

"It's that Nita." She nodded her miniature head emphatically. "I always did have my suspicions about her. Always turning white as a sheet when a policeman hove into sight."

"But David's missing, too," Sally sobbed, as she hurried down the aisle which was becoming choked with frowsy-headed women in all stages of dress and undress. "Of course he didn't do it-"

"Hurry up, everybody! Don't take time to primp, girls!" a man bawled at them from the door.

They found most of the men employes and performers of the carnival already a.s.sembled with the Bybees in the privilege car. Pop Bybee's usually lobster-colored face was as white as putty, but his arm was gallantly about his wife's shoulder. Mrs. Bybee still wore the black sateen petticoat and red sweater in which she had hurried from the show train to the carnival immediately after the storm. Her reddened eyes showed that she had been crying bitterly, but as the carnival family crowded into the privilege car she searched each face with fury and suspicion.