"
"Are you going to the Gap for a doctor?"
"I reckon I can't leave Bub here alone agin all the Falins--not
even to git a doctor or to carry a love-message fer you."
"Then I'll go myself."
A thick protest came from the bed, and then an appeal that might
have come from a child.
"Don't leave me, Juny." Without a word June went into the kitchen
and got the old bark horn.
"Uncle Billy will go," she said, and she stepped out on the porch.
But Uncle Billy was already on his way and she heard him coming
just as she was raising the horn to her lips. She met him at the
gate, and without even taking the time to come into the house the
old miller hurried upward toward the Lonesome Pine. The rain came
then--the rain that the tiny cobwebs had heralded at dawn that
morning. The old step-mother had not come home, and June told Bub
she had gone over the mountain to see her sister, and when, as
darkness fell, she did not appear they knew that she must have
been caught by the rain and would spend the night with a
neighbour. June asked no question, but from the low talk of Bub
and Dave she made out what had happened in town that day and a
wild elation settled in her heart that John Hale was alive and
unhurt--though Rufe was dead, her father wounded, and Bub and Dave
both had but narrowly escaped the Falin assassins that afternoon.
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