CHAPTER XII
THE EDGY-EDGE!
Dorothy stood and looked down. It was a very steep descent, and the bottom, a black sheet of water, that looked like ink.
The danger of the spot seemed to fascinate her. Then the thought that perhaps poor, wilful Tavia had fallen down such a place; that perhaps at that very moment, she lay alone, helpless, at the bottom of a cliff!
"But there is a road down there," Dorothy mused. "I never would have thought to find a roadway along those rocks. Even the Indians, who very likely, made most of these trails, might easily have found a better and safer road to and from the same woodland ways."
Then she remembered that the lumbermen had use of streams in their traffic, and she decided that this was one of the roads made for their log teams.
Still fascinated with the danger, she looked over again. A sudden dizziness seized her. She tried to step back, but the ledge seemed to crumble beneath her feet!
Staring wildly at the black water below, she was pitched forward--down, down, down!
Then she thought the water would save her; that it was not rough and sharp like the rocks! She thought she would rest awhile on that soft bed! After that she ceased to think!
Dorothy Dale lay there alone, unconscious!
Trundling along the narrow roadway, old Josiah Hobbs and his wife, Samanthy, rode in their farm wagon. They had been to town with berries and in the back of the covered vehicle the empty crates told quite as plainly as the contented smile on the wrinkled faces of the couple, that berries were in demand that morning, and that the Hobbs" kind had met a ready market.
Near the elbow in the lower road, at the foot of the precipice, where lay so still the form of pretty Dorothy Dale, the old horse slowed up.
Mrs. Hobbs saw the girl lying by the water"s edge.
"Mercy on us, Josiah!" she cried. "It"s a girl!"
"Sure as you live!" replied the old man, giving the reins a jerk.
"What can have happened to the little one?"
"Pray to goodness she ain"t dead!" went on Samanthy. "Let me get to her!" and before her husband could straighten his cramped limbs, she had crawled out, and was beside Dorothy.
"Is she?" asked Josiah, hesitating.
"She is," replied the wife. The pair seemed to define each other"s meaning in spite of the vagueness of their words.
"But she"s awful weakish," whispered the wife. "We got to get her somewhere."
"Samanthy!" and the farmer"s voice trembled, "mebby she the gal from the asylum! She that escaped! Let"s load her up on the cart and fetch her home."
"You old skinflint! To cal"late on the half-dead girl," and she raised Dorothy"s head tenderly. "But all the same she got to get somewhere, and ours is as near as any other house. Here, take hold," she put her arms about the helpless form. "Mercy on us! Lucky if she don"t die before we get her there. Make that horse know he"s to go. If that whip won"t do, yank up a tree and let him have it."
The farmer trembled visibly as he helped put poor Dorothy in the wagon. If she could only have known!
The woman dragged off her ap.r.o.n and her jacket to make something of a pillow for the pretty yellow head, that lay so still. Suddenly Dorothy opened her eyes.
"As sure as you live," whispered Samanthy, "It _is_ that girl from the san--sanitation! I saw her once out with the nurse, and this is her!"
"And there"s a reward----"
"Shet up!" she snapped. "Lay still, dearie. You"re awful weak and we"re taking you home."
"Home!" murmured Dorothy in a dazed way.
"Yes, to mommer and popper!" This from the farmer.
"Shet up, you, Josiah! How do you know she wants to go to them folks!
There, dearie, is your head hurt?"
Dorothy only moaned and closed her eyes again.
"Heven"t you got a drop of anything? Not even a peppermint? I told you not to eat them all at a gullup," growled the woman. "I never saw the like of you fer gluttonin", Josiah!"
"And I never saw the beat of you fer growlin". How do you feel, missy?"
"Will--you--shet--up? Josiah Hobbs! Don"t you see she"s sleepin" like a babe?"
"And do you think it"s her? The one from the sanitation?"
"Shet up!"
"And there"s a lot of money in that. Well, we need it."
Mrs. Samanthy Hobbs simply pulled the farmer"s long s.h.a.ggy beard that bobbed up and down, goat fashion. Her "shet-ups" seemed exhausted.
Dorothy heard a little--she could hear the rumble of the wagon, and she could feel the hard, rough, but kind hand of the woman who smoothed her brow in a motherly way. That in itself was enough to make her close her eyes and feel content.
What a power is the hand of woman! Even though it be hardened by the hardest kind of work it has in it the magic stroke of tenderness.
"Now, there," Samanthy would murmur, "soon you will be in bed. Then we will fix you all up nice."
Bed! Dorothy thought she was in bed--it was so much better than the stones, and that black water.
But she was getting her senses and with them came pain. Her head hurt, and the wagon jolted so that she was sore all over.
"We have only a few more trots, then we will be at home," soothed Samanthy. "After that you kin sleep in a feather bed--as soft as your own white hands."
She was smoothing those hands--they were very white, and very soft.
What had turned Dorothy Dale"s camping days into this tragedy? Where was Tavia? And what was to become of Dorothy?
Strange how illness melts the strongest! Dorothy just wanted to rest--to rest--yes, to rest!
At the dingy back door, the old horse stopped. The farmer and his wife almost carried Dorothy in, and the strain made her close her eyes again; made her forget everything.
After much talk between the farmer and his wife, and many contrary directions, Dorothy was finally enveloped in a nightdress that even Tavia in her palmiest days could not have antic.i.p.ated. It was big, it was broad, it was long, and it was roomy!