en ever walked any,
an' he--" The man's open mouth closed on the broken sentence, and Ump
answered for him, sitting under the Bay Eagle with his arm around her
slim front leg. "An' he wanted to know what we did with little Quiller
when he cried."

I thought I should die of the intolerable shame. I had cried--blubbered
away as though I were a red-cheeked little girl in a clean calico
petticoat.

After the dead line which Ump had crossed for him with the brutal
frankness that went along with his dwarfed body, Jud continued with his
report. "He asked me where we was goin', an' I told him we was goin'
home. He asked me if we had had any word from Mr. Ward to-day, an' I
told him we hadn't had any. Then he said we had better take the Hacker's
Creek road because the Gauley was up from the mountain rains, an'
runnin' logs, an' if we got in there in the night we would git you
killed."

"An'," interrupted Ump, turning round under the Bay Eagle, "an' then
Miss Cynthia looked up sharp at him like a catbird, an' she laughed, an'
she said how that advice wasn't needed, because little boys always went
home by the safest road."

The taunt sank in as oil sinks into a cloth. I may have blushed and
stammered, and I may have blubbered like a milksop, but it was not
because I was afraid. I would show Woodford and I would show this fickle
Miss Gadabout that I did not need any advice about roads. If my life had
been then in jeopardy, I would not have taken it burdened with a
finger's weight of obligation to Rufus Woodford or Cynthia Carper. It
might have gone out over the sill of the world, for good and all.

I arose and put the bridle rein over El Mahdi's head while I stood, my
right hand reaching up on his high withers. Jud and Ump got into their
saddles and turned down toward the ford of the Stone Coal on the
Hacker's Creek road, which Woodford had suggested. But under the coat my
heart was stewing, and I would not have gone that way if the devil and
his imps had been riding the other. I climbed into the saddle and
shouted down to them. They turned back at the water of the ford. "Where
are you going?" I called.

"Home. Where else?" replied the dwarfed Ump.

"It's a nice roundabout way you're taking," I said. "The Overfield road
is three miles shorter."

"But the Gauley's boomin'," answered Jud; "Woodford said not to go that
way."

"It's the first time," I shouted, "that any of our people ever took
directions from Hawk Rufe. As