So after school that day he
slipped up on the hill with the little girl and helped her rebuild
again.
"Now I'll lay for him," said Bob, "and catch him at it."
"All right," said June, and she looked both her worry and her
gratitude so that Bob understood both; and he answered both with a
nonchalant wave of one hand.
"Never you mind--and don't you tell Mr. Hale," and June in dumb
acquiescence crossed heart and body. But the mountain boy was
wary, and for two or three days the play-house was undisturbed and
so Bob himself laid a trap. He mounted his horse immediately after
school, rode past the mountain lad, who was on his way home,
crossed the river, made a wide detour at a gallop and, hitching
his horse in the woods, came to the play-house from the other side
of the hill. And half an hour later, when the pale little teacher
came out of the school-house, he heard grunts and blows and
scuffling up in the woods, and when he ran toward the sounds, the
bodies of two of his pupils rolled into sight clenched fiercely,
with torn clothes and bleeding faces--Bob on top with the mountain
boy's thumb in his mouth and his own fingers gripped about his
antagonist's throat.
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