And behind the scattered white were blowing gray ones, their edges frayed like torn clothes on a line, and after the gray ones loomed a dark, black one, rushing nearer.
And suddenly the woods at their right began to thresh about, with a surprised rustling, and a low mutter, as of smothered warning, ran over the shoulder of the mountain.
"Rain! As sure as the Lord made little rain drops," said Johnny unconcerned. "There"s going to be a cloudful spilled on us," he told the troubled girl, "but it won"t last a moment. Come into the wood and find the dry side of a tree."
He caught at her hand and brought her crashing through the underbrush, pushing through thickets till they were in the center of a great group of maples, their heavy boughs spread protectingly above.
A giant tree trunk protected her upon one side; upon the other Johnny drew close, spreading his sweater across her shoulders. Looking upwards, Maria Angelina could not see the sky; above and about her was soft greenness, like a fairy bower. And when the rain came pouring like hail upon the leaves scarcely a drop won through to her.
They stood very still, unmoving, unspeaking while the shower fell. There was an unreal dreamlike quality about the happening to the girl. Then, almost intrusively, she became deeply aware of his presence there beside her--and conscious that he was aware of hers.
She shivered.
"Cold," said Johnny, in a jumpy voice, and put a hand on her shoulders, guarded by his sweater.
"N-no," she whispered.
"Feel dry?"
His hand moved upward to her bared head, lingered there upon the heavy braids.
"Yes," she told him, faintly as before.
"But you"re shivering."
"I don"t like t-thunder," she told him absurdly, as a muttering roll shook the air above them.
His hand, still hovering over her hair, went down against her cheek and pressed her to him. She could hear his heart beating. It sounded as loudly in his breast as her own. She had a sense of sudden, unpremeditated emotion.
She felt his lips upon the back of her neck.
She tried to draw away, and suddenly he let her go and gave a short, unsteady laugh.
"It"s all right, Ri-Ri--you"re my little pal, aren"t you?" he murmured.
Unseeingly she nodded, drawing a long, shaken breath. Then as he started to draw her nearer again she moved away, putting up her arms to her hair in a gesture that instinctively shielded the confusion of her face.
"No? . . . All right, Ri-Ri, I won"t crowd you," he murmured. "But oh, you little Beauty Girl, you ought to be in a cage with bars about. . . .
You ought to wear a mask--a regular diving outfit----"
Unexpectedly Ri-Ri recovered her self-possession. Again she fled from the consummation of the scene.
"I shall wear nothing so unbecoming," she flung lightly back. "And it has not been raining for ever so long. Unless you wish to build a nest in the forest, like a new fashion of oriole, Signor Byrd, you had better hurry and catch up with the others."
Johnny did not speak as they came out of the woods and in silence they hurried along the path on the river"s edge.
The sun came out again to light them; on the green leaves about them the wetness glittered and dried and the ephemeral shower seemed as unreal as the memory it evoked.
With her head bent Maria Angelina pressed on in a haste that grew into anxiety. Not a sound came back to them from those others ahead. Not a voice. Not a footstep.
And presently the path appeared dying under their feet.
Green moss overspread it. Brambles linked arms across it.
"They are not here. We are on the wrong way," cried Maria Angelina and turned startled eyes on the young man.
Johnny Byrd refused to take alarm.
"They must have crossed the river farther back--that"s the answer," he said easily. "We went past the right crossing--probably just after the storm. You know you were speeding like a two-year-old on the home stretch."
But Ri-Ri refused to shoulder all that blame.
"It might have been before the storm--while we were lingering so," she urged distressfully. "You know that for so long we had heard nothing--we ought to go back quickly--very quickly and find that crossing."
Johnny did not look back. He looked across the river, which ran more deeply here between narrowed banks, and then glanced on ahead.
"Oh, we"ll go ahead and cross the next chance we get," he informed her.
"We can strike in from there to old Baldy. I know the way. . . . Trust your Uncle Leatherstocking," he told her genially.
But no geniality appeased Maria Angelina"s deepening sense of foreboding.
She quickened her steps after him as he strode on ahead, gallantly holding back brambles for her and helping her scramble over fallen logs, and she a.s.sented, with the eagerness of anxiety, when he announced a place as safe for crossing.
It was at the head of a mild rush of rapids, and an outcropping of large rocks made possible, though slippery, stepping-stones.
But Ri-Ri"s heelless shoes were rubber soled, and she was both fearless and alert. And though the last leap was too long for her, for she landed in the shallows with splashing ankles, she had scarcely a down glance for them. Her worried eyes were searching the green uplands before them.
Secretly she was troubled at Johnny"s instant choice of way. Her own instinct was to go back along the river and then strike in towards old Baldy, but men, she knew from Papa, did not like objections to their wisdom, so she reminded herself that she was a stranger and ignorant of this country and that Johnny Byrd knew his mountains.
He told her, as they went along, how well he knew them.
Steadily their path climbed.
"Should we not wind back a little?" she ventured once.
"Oh, we"re on another path--we"ll dip back and meet the other path a little higher up," the young man told her.
But still the path did not dip back. It reached straight up. But Johnny would not abandon it. He seemed to feel it inextricably united with his own rightness of decision, and since he was inevitably right, so inevitably the path must disclose its desired character.
But once or twice he paused and looked out over the way. Then, hopefully, Ri-Ri hung upon his expression, longing for reconsideration.
But he never faltered, always on her approach he charged ahead again.
No holding back of brambles, now. No helping over logs. Johnny was the pathfinder, oblivious, intent, and Ri-Ri, the pioneer woman, enduring as best she might.
Up he drove, straight up the mountain side, and after him scrambled the girl, her fears voiceless in her throat, her heart pounding with exertion and anxiety like a ship"s engine in her side.
Time seemed interminable. There was no sun now. The gray and white clouds were spread thinly over the sky and only a diffused brightness gave the suggestion of the west.
When the path wound through woods it seemed already night. On barren slopes the day was clear again.