Things gits out of order
without him."
"Well, what do you think now?" Johnnie inquired impatiently. "We mustn't
stay here talking when Mr. Stoddard may be in mortal danger. Shall we go
on to our place, just the same?"
The old man looked compassionately at her.
"Hold on, honey girl," he demurred gently. "We--" he sighted at the sun,
which was declining over beyond the ridges toward Watauga. "I'm mighty
sorry to pull back on ye, but we've got to get us a place to stay for
the night. See," he directed her gaze with his own; "hit's not more'n a
hour by sun. We cain't do nothin' this evenin'."
The magnitude of the disappointment struck Johnnie silent. Pros Passmore
was an optimist, one who never used a strong word to express sorrow or
dismay, but he came out of a brown study in which he had muttered,
"Blaylock. No, Harp wouldn't do. Culp's. Sally Ann's not to be trusted.
What about the Venable boys? No good"--to say with a distressed drawing
of the brows, "My God! In a thing like this, you don't know who to
look to."
"No. That's so, Uncle Pros," whispered Johnnie; she gazed back down the
road she had come with the stranger. "I went up Slater's Lane to find
Mandy Meacham's sister Roxy that married Zack Peavey," she said. "But
they've moved from the cabin down there. They must have been gone a good
while, for there's no work done on the truck-patch.
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