When this point arrived, Johnnie differed from
her uncle in choosing to hold to the road.
"Honey, this ends the cyar-tracks. Looks like they'd turned out. I think
they took off into the bushes here, and where that cyar goes we ought to
go," Pros argued.
But Johnnie hurried on ahead, looking about her eagerly. Suddenly she
stooped with a cry and picked up from the path a small object.
"They've carried him past this way," she panted. "Oh, Uncle Pros, he was
right here not so very long ago."
She scrutinized the sparse growth, the leafless bushes about the spot,
looking for signs of a struggle, and the question in her heart was, "My
God, was he alive or dead?" The thing she held in her hand was a blossom
of the pink moccasin flower, carefully pressed, as though for the pages
of a herbarium; The bit of paper to which it was attached was crumpled
and discoloured.
"Looks like it had laid out in the dew last night," breathed Johnnie.
"Or for a week," supplied Pros. He scanned the little brown thing, then
her face.
"All right," he said dubiously; "if that there tells you that he come
a-past here, we'll foller this road--though it 'pears to me like we
ought to stick to the cyar."
"It isn't far to our house," urged Johnnie. "Let's go there first,
anyhow."
For a few minutes they pressed ahead in silence; then some subtle
excitement made them break into a run.
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