She wanted to ask Caroline please to say nothing about her being there, but when she looked again at the girl’s angry eyes and arrogant chin, she decided to leave things as they were. Perhaps Caroline would keep still on her own account, but if she did not she certainly would not do so for the asking. She was evidently angry at what Fraley had told her of the young man. Well, let it go at that. There were difficulties everywhere, and this was just one more.
“Good-bye, Billy,” said Fraley wistfully, “and thank your mother for the pleasant time. When I come back I’ll bring you something nice. Good-bye, Caroline, and thank you for the ride.”
Caroline lingered a minute to flirt with the two men on the platform, obviously showing off to the younger girl, and then, with a careless wave of her hand toward Fraley, she drove away and was soon a mere speck in the distance.
Fraley, giving a quick furtive glance around, moved away from the vicinity of the two men. She looked up and down the shining track that gleamed sharply in the morning sun and ran away in a bright ribbon as far as eyes could see in either direction. She marveled that this was a thing to bind the distance. Her mother had talked about the railroad. She had come west—on the railroad—years ago. Fraley knew about the sleeping cars and diners and the common cars. She of course could only afford a common car when she came to taking the railroad, but she was not ready yet. She would trust nothing but her two feet for the present. This getting mixed up with other people only seemed to make more and more trouble. But how was she going to get away with those two men watching her?
She studied the surroundings and read the sign over the store door. A store! She would buy something more to eat—some cheese or crackers or something that would be easily carried. It would be interesting to go into a store, and she would have an excuse to get away from the station without attracting their attention.
So she hurried across the space between and up the wooden steps of the store.
She had taken the precaution to tie one of her precious gold pieces from her belt into the corner of her crude handkerchief and to knot it round her wrist under her sleeve, for she had expected to have to pay something if she had to take the train; so now with confidence she entered the store and looked around.
It was as interesting to her wilderness eyes as a great city emporium would have been to a villager, and she longed to stay and examine the wares, of which there was a great variety, all the way from plows and shoes to crackers and cheese and dress goods. The bright tin pans were fascinating, also a nest of yellow bowls, and there was a piece of cotton cloth covered with little pink flowers. But she had no time for such things now. She looked around and saw some dried prunes with the groceries. Those were things that could be eaten raw; also there were apples. She bought two apples—after carefully asking the price—a quarter of a pound of prunes, ten cents’ worth of cheese—for hers was all gone—three eggs, and a box of stale crackers that had been in the store indefinitely. The eggs she meant to use in mixing up her corn meal when she found a safe place to make a fire by the wayside. They would be hard to carry but would make the corn meal go a great way.
She put the things in her coat pocket, placing the eggs carefully on the opposite side from the one on which she carried her bag, and while she waited for the storekeeper to make change, she asked a few questions. The storekeeper told her about the trains, gave her an old timetable, and was quite voluble in explaining the difference between local and express trains. He informed her that the next train east would be there in exactly one hour and fifteen minutes “if she wa’n’t late, which she usually was.” He invited her to be seated and offered her a Kansas City newspaper a week old to read. He said his wife came from “back east in Kansas,” but Fraley thanked him and declined. She said she would go out in the sunshine awhile and walk around, and so she slipped away.
The two men were just getting into a cart driven by a third man when she emerged from the door, and she waited by the door to examine a pair of shoes that hung just outside, tied together by its strings. She admired the smooth, stiff surface and decided that someday she would buy a pair, but she must not spare the money now. She did not even ask the price, but the shoes kept her back in the shadow until the men had driven away, and then she ventured forth.
She walked back to the station, glanced around, and seeing nobody watching her and nothing in sight either way, she began slowly to walk the rail that was next to the platform, balancing herself with her arms out, as if to amuse herself. When she had walked a few steps she turned and walked back, and the storekeeper nodded across to her and called, “When ye git tired, come over an’ set.” And Fraley called back a smiling “thank you” and kept on walking the rail.
The man went in presently, and she turned and walked the other way. This time she did not walk back but kept on down the track toward the east. The man had said there was no train until the eastern local came by an hour from then. She need not be afraid, so she walked on and on until the little gray station and the little gray store were mere specks in the bright distance. And if the storekeeper came to look out at her again and missed her he did not trouble himself long about a stray stranger. She was going to take the train, and she would likely look after herself.
But Fraley, when she came to a road that turned at right angles to the railroad, sprang from the track and started out across country, glad to get her feet off the hot steel and onto the cool ground again.
The road she took led across a hill, and when she had climbed the gentle slope, she looked around, took her bearings again, and after studying the long bright ribbon of tracks, decided to keep them in view as much as possible; for at least they were a clue to the world she sought, and eventually they would lead her on the right way.
She sat there resting, sheltered by a group of trees. Feeling in her pocket, she found that the eggs were still unbroken and decided to eat one of the apples, for it seemed a long time since breakfast and she might not find such a good place to rest in again for several hours. The country there was broad and flat, and much of the forest had been removed.
As she enjoyed her apple, she suddenly heard a rumbling in the distance, and starting to her feet, she looked wildly around her in every direction until finally she discovered a dark speck back on the railroad track coming along like a wild steer, or a whole herd of wild steers. In amazement, she dropped down in the grass again and watched it, breathless, her eyes shining with wonder. This must be the train she was supposed to have taken! How did people stay in their seats on a thing that went as fast as that?
Her mother had told her about the railroad trains, but she had never imagined it would be like that.
She watched it as it came on, and in another moment, it was before her. Like a flash it passed and was gone—a darting, disappearing speck in the distance. How strange! How wonderful!
She sat there visualizing the sight again, the great black puffing monster in front. That would be the engine. Cars and cars hitched together with little windows in most of them, windows close together and the outline of heads of people inside at each window. At the last car there had been a man wearing a white kind of cap that looked like paper and a white coat and apron. He would be the cook for the dining car, or one of the waiters. Her mother had described it all. But somehow she had never thought it would be like this, rushing so fast! She was glad she had not taken that train; it would have frightened her. She resolved to wait as long as possible before she took to the railroad.
When Fraley started on again, she had a sense of being comparatively safe for the time at least. If Caroline had told her plans to either of her enemies, at least they had not been able to find her at the train station, even if they could have reached there in time. And perhaps if they thought she had taken the train, they would stop their search for her in that region. She did not realize that she had already gone beyond the boundaries the outlaws had set for themselves and that they would come no farther out in the open seeking her. If they carried on thei
r search, they would have to conduct it through others, and it might be that those others would be in the most unexpected places, even far from where she started.
She did remember later that the storekeeper might have seen her walking the track and perhaps told someone, and so her old uneasiness returned to keep her on the alert.
With very little rest, she kept on her pilgrim way during most of the day, but at sunset, well spent, she discovered a little nook where two small hills came together, leaving a tiny point of land jutting between them at their base. There were trees above, leaning over and quite sheltering the retreat, and a small brook that had been wandering around all the afternoon in the general direction. Fraley gathered sticks and, finding three large stones, put the flat one across the other two, making a very good fireplace. She soon had a brisk little fire of twigs and sticks and the top stone heating nicely.
She examined her eggs in the right-hand pocket and found only one cracked, and that she broke into her tin cup. She had no spoon or fork, but she stirred it with her finger and began mixing in the corn meal with a pinch of salt and a little water from her freshly filled water bottle. As soon as the stone was hot enough to sizzle at a drop of water, she dropped her little cake on the stone, and it began to bake, sending forth such a savory odor that she was almost afraid it would attract some wild thing of the forest, or perhaps some wilder humans; but the cake went on baking, and the soft blue smoke from the tiny fire rose straight up between the sheltering pines on the banks above, and nothing came to harm her or make her afraid.
She was just eating the last crumb of the cake when there came that low terrifying rumble that signaled a train. Three times that afternoon, since the first train in the morning, had the silence of the open been broken by that sound, and now that she was becoming more accustomed to it, it seemed even friendly.
So she sat quite still by her little fire and watched a freight train slamming by, down beyond the mist of the meadowland. The smoke from the engine sent up a fiery glow in the twilight, and the end of the long, long train carried a little red berrylike light that waved and winked and twinkled jauntily as the train flung on into the prairie vastness.
When the train was entirely out of sight, Fraley put out every vestige of fire, even trampling the dirt into the spot where it had been, and pushed the stones under the bank where no curious passer would notice them. She then ascended the bank to find a night’s lodging. She would not be afraid if she could find the right kind of tree. True a tree was not always as restful as the ground, but it was safer and could be climbed in a hurry.
She found one to her purpose just up the bank, a big pine for she always took a pine if there was one around; she loved its sweet odor and its plumy tassels and swinging up into it a few branches high, settled herself and her bag quite comfortably for a rest. Even supposing she should turn in her sleep, there would be little danger of falling far, for the branches were wide and low and closely interlaced. She could almost rest back upon their springy resinous arms. She was high enough from the ground so that no animal would be likely to disturb her and near enough to good climbing branches to easily get herself out of harm’s way in case anything came to trouble her.
A drawing-room train from California swept along the railroad track near enough to be interesting, and Fraley, lying among her branches, watched. She could see bright windows and people sitting cozily together, doing something at little tables. Some of them seemed to be eating. She watched in wonder until the train swept out of sight, and then she thought of the pleasant home where she had spent the last night. Hungrily she wished for such a home. If only Mother were back and they two could have a home of their own, where joy and safety and love abode!
She remembered each little incident of the evening before—the faces with the flickering firelight on them, the wonder in their eyes when she read the Word of God. She had not realized before that some people did not know the Bible—except perhaps such men as Brand who had deliberately chosen to go away from God. And sometimes even he spoke in his anger words that showed he must have heard some of the Bible.
From the branches, she could see the stars coming out one by one and the moon beginning to climb the heavens, and she repeated softly to herself, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man that thou are mindful of him—”
On through the psalm her mind went, as if she were talking to the invisible One. But she was not quite finished before her eyelids dropped and she was asleep, rocked in the arms of the great pine.
The Atlantic and Pacific Express woke her in the early dawn, rattling through the land in two sections, its sleepers still dark-windowed where the travelers lay asleep. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes to watch its trail against the dawn, she found thanksgiving in her heart that the night was past and she was still safe.
Slipping down from her piney bough, a little stiff from her cramped position, she pattered softly down to the stream to a spot where she had noticed low growing trees and a sheltered pool. There, shut in by the foliage and the dark, she could safely bathe.
Ten minutes later, she returned to her shelter of the night before, assembled her fireplace and some wood, and baked another little cake out of the last of her meal. She might not find another opportunity to do this conveniently, and the meal would be wasted.
She had put on fresh undergarments and washed out the thin ones she had been wearing since she left the cabin, and now she hung the wet things around the fire to dry while the cake was baking. With her bit of comb, she combed her hair out and spread it to dry over her shoulders, and then she ate her cake, saving a small piece to eat on her way. There was one more egg in her pocket, still unbroken, and that she could eat raw for lunch if there was no chance to cook it.
By the time she had put out her fire and broken camp, the flimsy garments hanging on the low limb over the fire were dry. She wrapped them up, stuffed them into the bag, and started on into a new day, almost sorry to leave the pleasant retreat that had housed her so comfortably.
The morning proved long and uneventful. The way was rough in some places, unless she wanted to climb the hills and get farther away from the railroad; but she felt that it was the only guide she had to her unknown port, so she trudged on, through boggy land or rough stubble grass, and around noon she came in sight of a small village.
Chapter 9
It was only a small straggling village—a settlement it would have been called in the East—but it looked like a swarming hive of population to the girl whose eyes were trained by mountain loneliness. She stood uncertain afar and studied it through her binoculars.
The railroad wandered before her, cutting a clean steel gash across the country, shining in the midday sun. She studied the buildings in detail and finally came to the one closest to the tracks. That would likely be a station. Then her heart stood still. There were two riders just arriving, and one rode a white horse!
That was enough for Fraley. She put down her binoculars and dashed into the bushes, making a wide detour around that village and resolving to keep as far as possible from human habitation for the next several days. Would she never be free from her enemies?
The detour carried her far out of her course, and for three hours she lost track of her railroad entirely and began to think she would never find it again; but it rediscovered itself to her toward evening near a brown lake set around with reeds and reflecting dark pines in its depths.
She had steadily avoided human habitation so far, but as night drew on again, she felt a strange dread of the loneliness. The lake looked large and dark, and the world seemed interminable. A dislike of passing that sheet of dark water possessed her, and she was aching in every muscle with fatigue. She was hungry, too. She had eaten the raw egg early in the day, the apple at noon with the last bit of corn cake, and later in the afternoon had eaten some of the dried prunes with a few of the stale crackers and a little cheese. Her store of eatables was gro
wing very low, and how could she go on unless she ate? Even though she had dipped deep into her supply, she was not satisfied but felt empty and faint as she dragged on her weary way.
As it neared the lake, the railroad plunged into a dark forest and was lost again, and Fraley, half running, found herself sobbing as she tried to keep on higher ground because it was wet down near the tracks; but at last in desperation, she went splashing across the marshy land straight over to where the railroad grade rose up high and dry.
She had been watching the trains ever since she had left the station where Caroline had conducted her. She knew that there would be no train either way now for some time, for the usual afternoon expresses had passed. Should she venture to walk the track a little way? She could keep a sharp lookout and roll down the grade quickly if she heard a train coming. There was a double track, and she had noticed two freights passing yesterday. She could walk toward the one that would be coming west.
She stood, hesitating, at the foot of the steep grade and then started upward. It was difficult climbing, especially with the heavy bag to carry, but she struggled up and at last reached the top of the grade and stood, palpitating, on a tie. She looked back and saw nothing but track and landscape as far as her eye could reach. She looked forward and saw the dark lake at the foot of gloomy mountains on one hand and marshland on the other, the track plunging into the depths of the forest just beyond the lake. But there was light beyond. She could see that the wooded place was not of great extent. Should she try it?
The memory of those two riders she had seen at that village gave her impulse, and she decided to press on.
It was hard, nervous work walking the ties, and her feet were sore from the climb through the cinders, her head dizzy with watching her steps and both distances at the same time. It seemed the longest walk she had ever taken, but at last she got beyond the woods and came out into a wide stretch of country that was brilliant with sunshine.