The Young Runaway, page 3
"Howdy, Hiram Perkins," she drawled, as she passed him. "Hope you heered from Mizzourie."
"Good evening, Wyoming Mad," he replied, rising with a bow.
Young Proctor wheeled in surprise, but did not speak until he had placed Martha Ann at a table and found a seat for himself.
"You spoke to that fellow. He called you 'Wyoming' something!"
"Yes. We met back at Norfolk. Just a little camaraderie of the road."
"Oh, I see. Gosh, it sort of took the starch out of me...Well, I can sure recommend our fried chicken."
Martha Ann sat where she faced Bonning and had to meet his eyes. Suddenly the hot blood stole along her veins. If she did not read disappointment, as well as scorn in his dark gaze, then her reckoning was all wrong. At any rate, it had the same unaccountable effect that his first look had had upon her. Martha deigned not to notice him again and audaciously plied young Proctor with all the feminine wiles she could muster. She was actually flirting with eyes, lips, smiles and arch words when Bonning suddenly left his table and went out. The entrance of George's uncle saved Martha Ann at that blank juncture.
Nevertheless, she enjoyed her dinner, and later, when the old Nebraskan began to tell stories of his life on the frontier, Martha forgot all about Bonning. Once again in her room, however, packing the pretty dress, she remembered him, and she found herself thinking of that evening when a young man's strength had stood between her and a terrible fate. She divined that she would meet him tomorrow, or sometime on the road west, and the thought was both bitter and sweet. Before she went to sleep she had almost forgotten the young man's obvious disapproval in the anticipation of meeting him again on the open road.
At six next morning she bade good-by to the Proctors and started out again on her way northward. If her heart beat faster whenever she heard the hum of approaching cars she did not permit herself to turn around to identify the driver. But as car after car caught up with her and passed she confessed to herself that she had hoped Andrew Bonning might be driving one of them, and would give her another lift. Could he pass her by?
The freshness and fragrance of pastures, the green folds of the lonely hills, the lure of the road, and the warming sun—all seemed to have lost some of their delight for the runaway. Martha Ann marveled at this and wondered why the beautiful morning had not the zest of other days. She walked steadily along until nine o'clock. As the sun rose higher and higher she found the road narrowing and the farm houses growing more scattered.
She heard the sounds of wagon wheels and hoof beats behind her. As they drew nearer Martha looked back and observed an ancient wagon with a man perched on a high seat, and five small boys leaning over the side of the wagon box.
"Wal, sis, kin we give you a lift?" called the driver, as he halted the vehicle beside her.
"You surely can," replied Martha, gladly.
"Scramble up. Boys, make room thar for sis...Air you goin' fur?"
"Wyoming."
"Ain't thinkin' of walkin' all thet way?"
"No indeed, not when I can meet such accommodating people as you."
"Wal, this ain't no gas wagon, but you're welcome. Hep yourself to some apples an' make yourself comfortable for three miles."
Munching juicy red apples and talking to these five lively farm boys was the most enjoyable experience Martha Ann had had so far on her journey. But it ended all too soon. Once more she was reduced to shank's mare.
In the ensuing hour only one car caught up with her. It was full and did not stop. The sun was beating down now with tropical intensity and her clothes were soaked with perspiration. She had not seen a farm house for hours. Worry followed soon upon fatigue and she began to wonder about how far it was to the next town. Fields after fields! They must run on forever. But after a time the fields gave way to rocky wasteland harboring only tall weeds.
Four o'clock found Martha Ann still trudging along the highway. A lump seemed fixed in her throat and often the landscape was blurred by the tears in her weary eyes. She kept saying that she did not mind the walk, endless though it seemed. Before she had started this wild-goose venture she had realized that there would be many, many miles of walking. It was the uncertainty of where she might find shelter and the approach of night that weighed her down with anxiety.
Martha Ann stumbled on over the mud-caked road and more than once came near falling. Both her heart and her feet seemed leaden. Suddenly the sound of a laboring motor caught her ear. She stood still and listened. She heard the sound again—the straining clatter of a car traversing the uncertain road. Soon it came in sight. Should she flag it? How could she stay on the road all night? Coyotes, snakes—probably more tramps! She waved frantically. The car halted, and Martha, running hurriedly to meet it, called out: "Please can you take me to the next town."
The occupants, a man and a woman, were Negroes. Martha swallowed her surprise. They evidently were as surprised as she. Martha studied the couple with penetrating eyes, but they looked honest and kind.
"Missy, if yo-all don't mind ridin' with us yo's sho welcome," replied the woman, in a soft drawl.
"Thank you. I'm glad to come with you," said Martha, as she climbed in. "I didn't know it was so far to the next town."
"We are lost, too. I nevah did see so much land in all mah life with nuthin' on it."
"I didn't either," agreed Martha.
While the man drove his buxom spouse talked. They were from St. Louis, on the way west to find work and a home. Sundown found them still on the road, but by seven o'clock they had reached the outskirts of a town. At the town square Martha got out and thanked them, and bade them good luck and good-by. She stopped at a small restaurant for a light supper, and was directed to the only hotel in the valley. She went immediately to bed. To be tired out was the usual thing, but this night she felt forlorn and homesick for the first time. She could no longer keep home and mother out of her consciousness, because she had not sent either telegrams or letter, and she absolutely must not delay another day.
In the morning she was so stiff and sore that she could hardly get up. What would this new day bring forth? Always this was her waking thought. But this morning her sense of humor and the call of adventure did not come to the rescue of her drooping spirits. For the first time she was experiencing the pangs of the guilty conscience of a runaway.
Therefore the first thing she did upon going downstairs was to begin a letter to her mother. She discovered that the decision to write was one thing. What to write was something else again. In the end she found that she would have to continue with the falsehood with which she had started her journey. She wrote with tears blotting the page that when she and Alice McGinnis had arrived in Omaha, Alice's uncle had invited them to drive to the Black Hills with them. Of course she and Alice were wild to go. "And you know, mother darling, how I've always yearned to see the West, so don't scold—and forgive me for disobeying."
Posting that letter was a relief, yet it did not still her accusing conscience. How could she ever make amends for this untruth to her family, especially her mother? Her first innocent falsehood had enmeshed her in a situation which would require more and more lies and deception. Where would it all end?
Martha Ann had not been on the road ten minutes that morning before a touring car bearing an Illinois license plate passed with two middle-aged men in the front seat. They slowed down, smiled an invitation, then waved and went on. Soon after that a truck ground up a grade behind Martha and stopped at the crest of the hill.
"Whoa," sang out a deep booming voice. A little boy on the seat beside the driver reached down and with tiny hands made what Martha thought was a pretense of helping to stop the car.
"Hey, traveler, want a ride with my pardner an' me?" called the same deep voice.
Martha glanced up at a strange pair—the man in a blue shirt open at a bronzed throat, with ruddy frank face and his left arm off at the elbow—the lad in diminutive overalls, looking like a wistful little elf.
"I'd like to ride very much if I won't crowd you," replied Martha.
"Plenty room," he boomed.
She hopped up onto the high seat beside the boy. He smiled at her and she smiled back. Then for a while they rattled along the road in silence. Martha thought of a hundred questions she wanted to ask.
After some time the driver started to talk. He came originally from Detroit and had lost his arm in the war. Upon arriving home from France he had learned from the doctors that he had lung trouble and would not live long unless he went west. He had come to Nebraska and in eight months he was a well man. Then he had gone in for farming and had been successful. Much of this good fortune, he said, was owing to the wonderful wife he had found out west.
"I've an older boy, too," he concluded with pardonable pride. "But I just couldn't get along without this young fellow here. He's my left-hand man."
At this sally both father and son laughed happily. Martha at last had run across one returned and disabled veteran of the war who had found himself. This broad open land seemed hospitable to strangers. Martha added to her growing list another reason to love the West.
They drove along chattering gaily until they let her off at a road that branched off to the south. Martha waved farewell to a gallant soldier and a lovable youngster.
"Well," soliloquized Martha Ann, "there's nothing to this hitchhiking but walking and riding, and meeting a lot of people I like...and a few I don't."
She thought of Andrew Bonning. He seemed to be fading into the past, the truth of which she recognized with a pang. How could she ever forget his gallant service in her behalf? But he had taken her for a common flirt. "Oh! it's just as well if I never meet him again," she sighed.
The country was growing more rugged. It swept away in series of desolate ridges where signs of civilization were becoming scarce. The trees were now taller and more numerous; the air had a finer, keener edge. It was invigorating. Martha Ann felt that she could walk on forever. Gradually with the exercise she found her stiffness was wearing away. She hoped to reach the next town late in the afternoon. If these towns were only not so far apart she would not have to be so much afraid of not getting a ride. As she swung along, her mind skipping from one thought to another, from home to the imagined ranch of her uncle, a Ford coupé came rolling up behind her and with a screeching of brakes stopped a few feet beyond her.
"How's chances, baby?" queried a young fellow from the driver's seat. He was alone and he had a sunburned, impudent face.
"Not so good," replied Martha Ann, shortly. He kept his car moving alongside of her as she walked.
"Long way to Barton," he said significantly, and stopped the Ford.
Nothing else in the way of words could have made such an impression on the weary wayfarer. She had found very little traffic on this road and she wanted so very much to get along with her journey. She stopped. He smiled at her in a knowing way, as if he were accustomed to being indulgent to a willful girl who was bound to capitulate in the end. When he opened the door her old confidence reasserted itself and she stepped in. She had done so despite an instant instinctive dislike for this overconfident young man. Perhaps her feeling derived mostly from the way he called her "baby." He started the car with one hand and passed his cigarette case with the other.
"Have one?"
"No, thanks."
"Don't you really smoke or are you being snooty?" His eyes were a little too close together and emitted curious glints as they ran over her slim person.
"I really don't like cigarettes...How far are you going on this road?"
"A few miles more. Have to turn off to see a farmer...Where are you bound for, babe?"
"Wyoming," she returned, curtly, hating the epithet he used so freely. She began to fear that she had made a blunder in accepting this young man's lift.
"Gee! That's too far for a dame to be going alone. Not in a hurry, are you, babe?"
"Indeed I am. In a very big hurry," declared Martha Ann sharply. Whether or not her reply penetrated his mind Martha could not tell. Certainly he seemed not to resent it.
"Ever been to an Indian pow-wow?"
"No-o."
"We're having a pow-wow and dance in Lagrange tonight. Why doncha come on and go with me. You'll have a swell time."
"I've relatives expecting me at Barton tonight."
"Tell that to your grandmother," he retorted with a grin. "You're one of these hitchhikers. They're all sports. I know."
"Well, this one isn't."
"C'mon, babe. Be a sport. You can phone from Lagrange. Say you got in late. I'll give you a real time."
"I'm sorry, but I couldn't think of it," rejoined Martha. She felt his eyes on her, as she watched the speedometer mounting higher.
"'Smatter, babe? Afraid to speed a little?"
"I'm not afraid," she said scornfully. "I was just wondering if you were driving to a fire."
He laughed and laid a freckled hand upon Martha's knee. "Maybe you're afraid of me, babe?"
"Humph! Hardly," she returned. Then decisively, and very deliberately and firmly she removed his hand.
"You know, baby, I could go for you in a big way," he said, persuasively.
"I dare say. But it's not necessary. If you'll slow down I'll get out and walk."
"Aw, don't be like that. You just came. Am I such a bad guy?"
"Skip it!" ejaculated Martha Ann, in disgust. "I'm not your type."
"You're just trying to high-hat me."
"Stop this car and let me out!"
"But, gee whiz, girlie, we're nearly there."
By this time the Ford was careening along the road at the rate of a mile a minute. Martha grew frightened with the speed of the car, if not with the lout who was driving it. To be killed in a wreck—what a futile and tragic end to her dream! Why had she ever yielded to this mad escapade? She called sharply to be let out.
He lifted his foot from the accelerator and made a quick turn to the right down a grassy lane lined with trees that brushed against the car. The swerve of the car had thrown Martha off her balance and over against the driver. He let go of the wheel with one hand and seized her around the waist. Then he slowed down the car so that he would not drive off the rough lane into the brush. He tried to pull the girl to him.
"How dare you! Let me go—you rowdy!" cried Martha Ann, drawing back with all her might.
"Too late, babe!" He had the car barely moving now. "C'mon. Be nice to me. What're you afraid of?"
"Not a thing! Least of all—you!" panted Martha, struggling. "Let me go—let me out of this car—or I'll have you arrested."
"Say, cutie, where do you think you are? There's no sheriff near here."
"I have—relatives near enough—to see that plenty is done to you...Let me out!"
He gave a derisive laugh. "Say, listen, dame, you're so far from a sheriff, or anybody, that it isn't even funny. No one will hear you if you do scream. But have a heart. Cut the upstage stuff. Am I as bad as all that?"
"Our tastes differ. I just don't happen to care for your type."
"Hell you say! I'll just have to change your mind. Anyway, I like my women wild."
With that he let go of the wheel and caught her to him. Martha had succeeded in wrenching almost free. For an instant she was fascinated by his small, scalloped, tobacco-stained teeth. She recognized for the first time in her life contact with a raw, bold elemental force. Then his thick mouth was moving toward her. All the other features faded before this animal ugliness. A terrible rage flashed hot and overpowering through her. What a miserable rotten bully! She sensed that there was no use to scream. She had better save her breath. She was utterly dependent upon her own resourcefulness and strength. The car bumped against a stump, and lurched along the bank side of the lane. She feared for a moment that it might overturn. He had been trying to get farther and farther off the main road. Martha knew that she could not afford to get any further away from the highway.
With one arm tight and contracting around her shoulder he suddenly pressed his other grimy hand over Martha's breast. She kicked out with all her might. One of her heavy hiking boots struck him on the shin. He let out a yell of pain, but continued to hold her tighter than ever with one arm while again he endeavored to steer with the other. He wanted to get her far along this lonely lane, out of sight and sound of the highway.
The savage kick Martha had administered to the driver of the Ford awakened her to her one chance. She knew her greatest strength was in her legs, so she lashed out again with both feet. At length she kicked herself free, and then doubling up, she shot both boots into the pit of his stomach. Yelling hoarsely he let go of the wheel. Swiftly Martha reached down, locked the ignition, and flung the key far out into the tall grass.
"You damn she-devil!" he screamed, his face contorted by anger and pain.
Then Martha's rage knew no bounds. If she had felt any fear before, it now vanished. With her back braced in the corner of the coupé and her feet up she continued to batter him—all over the front of his body—with swift, hard, savage kicks from her heavy boots. Twice he seized her flying feet, but could not hold them. He was not strong enough—Martha saw, savagely exultant. He could not force her. She could whip him any day. And she kicked him with a hard left to the stomach and a harder right in the nose. Blood spattered the interior of the car. But that only augmented her determination to maim him and even to kill him.
"Let up—you infernal wildcat," he bawled.
Martha Ann dropped her boots with a thump, and sat up to snatch at her bag. Then, opening the door, she plunged out. He had his hands to his nose. Blood was pouring through his fingers down his wrists, staining his shirt sleeves.
"Next time you—get fresh—" she panted, "pick some girl—your class and size—you big bully!"
She marched breathlessly back down the lane to the road—an outraged but a triumphant young woman. This elation lasted only for a few moments; then a reaction set in, and she began to tremble violently and to sob. She could no longer stand up. Staggering against a culvert she sat down, trying to dip her handkerchief into the water to wipe her face and hands with it. A car hummed close by. Could that bully be after her again? Oh, God, she could not find the strength for another battle. But the hum did not come from down the lane. A car hove in sight. She recognized it as the Illinois Buick that had passed her with the two pleasant-faced men. They bore down upon the culvert, and seeing her, halted.
