Girl Alone Part 29

She was about to run back down the hill, but David strode after her and put his arms about her comfortingly. "Sally, honey, we haven't time!

Throw them a kiss from here, and then we've got to hurry away."

She broke from his embrace and flung her arms out in a pa.s.sionate gesture of love and farewell. "Goodby, Carnival. Thank you for sheltering David and me! Goodby, Pop Bybee and Mrs. Bybee! Goodby, Gus!

Goodby, Jan. Goodby, Noko! Goodby, Boffo! And Babe! Goodby, dancing girls! I hope you all land on Broadway with Ziegfeld! Oh, goodby, Pitty Sing, dear little Betty! Goodby, goodby!" Then she flung herself upon David's breast and held him tight with all the strength in her thin young arms. "I've only got you now, David! Oh, David, what is going to become of us? Do you really love me, darling?"

She strained away from him, to search his beloved face as well as the darkness of the night would permit. Faintly she could see the tremble of his tender, deeply carved lips, so dearly boyish. His eyes looked big and black in the night, but there was a gleam of such divine light in them that her fingers crept up his face tremblingly and closed his eyelids, for she suddenly felt abashed, unworthy of his love.

"I love you with every cell in my body, every thought in my mind and every beat of my heart," David answered huskily. "And now let's travel, honey. I don't know where we're going, but we've got to put as much distance as possible between us and this town before morning."

But before they set off again he kissed her, not one of the long ardent kisses that made her dizzy and frightened even as they exalted her, but a shy, sweet touching of his lips to her forehead. It was as if he were telling her, wordlessly, that she would be utterly safe with him through the long, dark hours ahead of them.

They did not talk much as they walked steadily along the dirt roads, choosing them in preference to the frequented paved highway, for David cautioned her to save her breath for the all-important task of covering many miles before daybreak. Neither of them had any idea of the geography of this state to which the carnival had brought them, but they felt that it mattered little. David, country-bred, had an instinct for direction. He had chosen to turn toward the east, and Sally trotted along by his side, supremely confident that he would lead her out of danger.

"One o'clock, darling," he announced at last, when Sally was so tired that she could hardly put one foot before the other. "We'll rest awhile and then plod along. There's a farmhouse near. See the cows lined up by the fence? We'll find a well and have a drink."

A three-quarters moon rode high in the sky but its light was intermittently obscured by ragged, scuddling clouds. When they had had their drink of ice-cold cistern water David made a pillow of his coat which he had been carrying over his arm, and forced Sally to lie down for awhile in the soft loam of a recently ploughed field.

He sat at a little distance from her, not touching her, his knees drawn up and clasped by his strong, tanned hands, but his head was thrown back and his eyes brooded upon the cloud-disturbed beauty of the night sky.

"Does your shoulder hurt, darling?" Sally asked anxiously.

"No," he answered, without looking at her. "It's all healed. Just a flesh wound, you know."

The tone of his voice silenced her. She knew he was brooding over their future, puzzling his young head as to what he was to do with her, and she lay very still, humble before his masculinity.

"I've been thinking, Sally," he said at last, gently. "First, we'll get married in the morning, or as soon as we find a county seat, and then-"

"But David." Sally sat up, her heart pounding with joy but her mind unexpectedly clear and logical, "we mustn't, darling. You've got to finish college, somehow, somewhere-I can't bear to be a burden upon you!

You're so young, so young!"

"I'm going to take care of you," David answered steadily. "We love each other and I think we always will. My father married when he was nineteen, and I'm nearly twenty-one-and big for my age," he added, grinning at her. "We can't go on like this, honey. Mrs. Stone would have a right to think the worst of us-of you-if we were not married when she catches up with us. She would be justified in thinking that Clem Carson told the truth to the police when he charged us with-with immorality.

Don't you see, darling, that we just _must_ be married now?"

"Then I'll run away by myself!" Sally flashed at him, springing to her feet. "I'm not going to have you forced into marriage when you're not old enough and not really ready for it. You'd hate me for being a drag on you-"

"Sally!" David was on his feet now and his stern voice checked her before she had run a dozen steps away from him. "Come here!"

She crept into his arms, and laid her head against his chest, so that his heart beat strongly and steadily just beneath her ear.

"Listen, Sally, beloved," he urged softly. "I want to marry you more than anything in the world. It might have been better if we had met and fallen in love when we were both older, but fate took care of that for us, and I'm only proud and happy to be able to ask you now to marry me.

I'll not make much money at first, maybe, but neither of us has been used to a great deal, and I promise you now that I'll not fail you in love and loyalty. I've never cared for any other girl and I never will.

Let's not try to look too far ahead. We're young and strong and in love.

Isn't that enough, sweet?"

"Yes," she agreed, nodding her head against his breast.

"Then let's travel," he laughed jubilantly. "This is our wedding day, Sally! Think of it, sweet! Our wedding day!"

As they plodded hand in hand through the long hours before dawn Sally thought of nothing else. She was glad that walking made talking a waste of energy, for she wanted to think and feel and search her heart and soul for treasure to lavish upon the boy-man she was to marry.

Marriage! The word made her feel s.h.i.+very and solemn and more than a little frightened, but when a shudder of fear made her hand twitch in David's, the firm, warm pressure of his fingers rea.s.sured her. She resolutely forced her mind away from the mysteries that lay ahead of her, mysteries at which Mrs. Stone had hinted in that last, embarra.s.sing lecture she had delivered to a cowering, shamefaced Sally the day Clem Carson had taken her to the farm. Whatever lay before her, David would be with her, gentle, sweet, infinitely tender-

"I'll be Mrs. David Nash," she told herself childishly. "I'll be David's wife. I'll have David for my family, and maybe-some day-there'll be a baby David, with hair like gold in the sun-"

"You'll have to tell a fib about your age, honey," David interrupted her thoughts, his voice grave and, it seemed to her, a little embarra.s.sed.

Maybe David, too, was frightened a bit, just as she was! That made it easier. She was suddenly jubilantly glad that he was not wise and sophisticated and very much older than she, like Arthur Van Horne, for instance.

"I'll have to say I'm eighteen, won't I?" she laughed. "Do I look eighteen, David? Now that most girls have bobbed hair, my long hair, ought to make me look very old and dignified. I _do_ look eighteen, don't I, David?"

"Oh, Sally!" David stopped abruptly and held her close to him, pityingly. "You look the adorable baby that you are! I pray to G.o.d that marrying me won't make you old before your time! Why, honey-child, you haven't had any girlhood at all, or childhood either! You should have dozens of sweethearts before you marry-go to theaters and parties and dances for years and years yet, before you settle down."

"Then I shan't settle down," Sally laughed shakily. "I'll be a giddy flapper, if you'd rather! Ah, no, David! I want to be a good wife to you! But we won't get old and serious. We'll work together and play together and study together and hobo all over the country together when we feel like it. I think we make good hoboes, don't you?"

"Not at this rate," David laughed, relieved. "I'm not going to kiss you a single other time before dawn, or we'll never get anywhere. And don't you try to vamp me, you little witch!"

He did not quite keep his promise, for when Sally became so tired about four o'clock in the morning that she could walk no further, he picked her up in his big-muscled young arms, and strode proudly into the dawn with her, and of course the best antidote for fatigue and sleepiness was an occasional kiss on her drooping eyelids or upon her babyishly lax, pink little mouth.

When the sun came up they were a little shy with each other, inclined to talk rapidly about trivial things.

"Canfield-two miles," David read from a sign post at a cross-roads. "I'm going to ask that truck driver the name of the nearest county seat, and how to get there."

Sally watched him proudly as he ran swiftly, apparently not at all fatigued after seven hours of hiking, to hail a dairy truck approaching along the state highway. The sun was in his tousled chestnut hair, turning it into gold, and the bigness and splendid beauty of his body thrilled her to sudden tears of joy that he was hers-hers. Her heart offered up a prayer: "Please G.o.d, don't let anything happen so that we can't be married today! Please!"

"Canfield is a county seat," David shouted exultantly before his long strides had brought him back to Sally. "The driver of the milk truck guessed why I wanted to know," he added in a lower voice, as he came abreast of her and took her hands to swing them triumphantly. "He says we crossed the state line about ten miles back and that the marriage laws are very easy on elopers here. In some states you have to establish a legal residence before you can be married, but there'll be no trouble like that here. Elopers from two or three bordering states come here to get married, he says. We're in luck, sweetheart."

"You didn't tell him our names?" Sally asked anxiously. "Mrs. Stone will have sent out a warning-"

"I'm not quite such an idiot," David laughed, "even if I am crazy in love. Now the next problem is breakfast. I suppose a farmhouse will be the best bet. It wouldn't be safe for us to hang around Canfield for three or four hours, waiting for the marriage license bureau to open.

We're going to be married, darling, before the law has a chance to lay its hands on us."

They trudged along the state highway, miraculously revived by hope that all their troubles would soon be over, their eyes searching eagerly for a farmhouse. And just over the rise of a low hill they found it-a tenant farmer's unpainted shack, from whose chimney rose a straight column of blue smoke.

They found the family at breakfast-the wife a slim, pretty, discontented-looking girl only a few years older than Sally; the husband, thick, short, dark and dour, at least a dozen years older than his wife; and a tow-headed baby boy of three.

The kitchen was an unpainted and unpapered lean-to of rough, weather-darkened pine. But Sally and David had eyes only for the tall stack of buckwheat cakes, the platter of roughly cut, badly fried "side meat," the huge graniteware coffee pot set on a chipped plate in the center of the table. "Breakfast?" the dour tenant-farmer grunted, in answer to David's question. "Reckon so, if you can eat what we got.

It'll cost you 50 cents a piece. I don't work from sun-up to sun-down to feed tramps."

"Oh, Jim!" the wife protested, flus.h.i.+ng. "Cakes and coffee ain't worth 50 cents. I might run down to the big house and get some eggs and cream-" she added uncertainly, her distressed brown eyes flickering from Sally and David in the doorway to her scowling husband.

"We'll be delighted with the buckwheat cakes and bacon and coffee, and not think a dollar too much for our breakfast," David cut in, smiling placatingly upon the farmer. "We're farmers ourselves, and we're used to farm ways. How are crops around here, sir?"

"My name's Buckner," the dour farmer answered grudgingly. "I'll bring in a couple of chairs. Millie, you'd better fill up this here syrup pitcher and you might open a jar of them damson preserves."

"And I'll beat up some more hot cake batter," Millie Buckner fluttered happily. "It won't take me a minute."

Sally and David washed their hands and faces at the pump outside the kitchen door, drying them on a fresh roller towel that Jim Buckner brought them.

"Run away to get married, have you?" the farmer asked in an almost pleasant voice, as he led the way to the newly set table.